The Devil's bed

chapter
thirty-eight

Bo drove to his apartment in Tangletown, the whole way battling against rage. Losing control of himself now was the last thing he needed. When he mounted the stairs to his apartment and discovered his door was unlocked, his mood didn’t brighten any.

Fortunately, it was Otter he found inside.

“Used the key you hide in the garage,” Otter said. He saw Bo’s dark look and added without apology, “You told me anytime.”

“Yeah,” Bo said, relenting. “I did.”

Otter was at the kitchen table with some playing cards spread out before him.

“How was the trip?”

“It was fine.”

“You sure? You look like you just drank spoiled milk.”

“Bad day,” Bo said.

He went to the phone and dialed Wildwood, the direct number for the main house. The call was intercepted by Secret Service. When Bo identified himself, he was told politely that he couldn’t be connected.

“Shit,” he said as he hung up.

Otter looked up from his cards. “What’s the problem?”

“Everywhere I turn, somebody’s dropping a wall in front of me.” Bo sat down at the table. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you could use something to keep you busy during your convalescence. So I brought you a little gift.”

Otter got up and went to the living room. He lifted a plant in a terra-cotta pot and held it up for Bo to see.

“It’s a dieffenbachia,” Otter said. “A real one. I know you like the artificial things because they don’t require your attention, but they don’t give you anything either. Now this dieffenbachia, you take care of it, water it, talk to it, it’ll give you something in return, Spider-Man. It’ll grow for you.”

Otter put the plant back in the sunlight.

Bo went into the bedroom, set his overnight case down, and laid his garment bag on the bed. He walked to the closet, cleared his shoes from the floor, and pulled back a flap of carpet. There was a safe built into the floor underneath. Bo worked the combination, lifted the door, and pulled out his Sig Sauer. He took the holster from where it lay on the closet shelf, snugged the weapon into place, and clipped it to his belt. When Bo returned to the living room, Otter took a look at the weapon on his hip and whistled.

“Big gun, Spider-Man.”

“I’m beginning to think not big enough. Look, Otter, I’ve got to run.”

“That’s okay.”

“You sticking around for a while?”

“Just long enough to water your plant.”

“Lock up when you leave.”

It was late afternoon when Bo headed to the St. Croix Regional Medical Center for his second visit with Tom Jorgenson. He never made it to Jorgenson’s room. A Secret Service agent, one of the new ones, stopped him as soon as he stepped off the elevator.

“Sorry, Thorsen. You’re not allowed up here now. Orders.”

“Ishimaru?”

“These came from Assistant Director Malone himself.”

Bo was only yards from the room, but he knew he’d get no closer now. It was useless to argue. He went down to the lobby and used a pay phone.

“St. Croix Regional Medical Center.”

“Would you connect me with room four-twenty-two B, please?”

“Just one moment.”

More than a moment passed. Bo didn’t recognize the voice that came on the line.

“Yes?”

“I’m trying to reach Tom Jorgenson.”

“Your name?”

“How about yours first?”

“This is Special Agent Pederman, Secret Service.”

“My name’s Gaines,” Bo said, figuring it was a name Jorgenson would respond to. “Hamilton Gaines.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Gaines.” Bo waited another moment that wasn’t. “I’m sorry, you’re not on the list of authorized callers.”

Bo hung up without the courtesy of a good-bye.

He stood at the pay phone, trying to get a handle on the situation. Was this really about the incident at Wildwood? Or was the ubiquitous hand of NOMan behind the stone wall he’d encountered? His head ached, and he realized he hadn’t eaten all day and he was hungry. He decided he could think better with a little food in his stomach. He left the hospital and headed for St. Paul.

The sun was setting as Bo parked in the lot of O’Gara’s, a popular Irish bar on Snelling Avenue. The place was crowded, but he found an empty booth in the back and sat down. He had to wait a few minutes before a waitress spotted him, then he ordered a Leinie’s and a Reuben. The beer came, and he settled back. While he waited for his sandwich, he tried to put together in a coherent way the pieces of information that he had.

It was clear his worst suspicions about NOMan were correct. Tom Jorgenson had confirmed the dark turn the organization had taken, but Bo had no solid proof of its current nature, nor of a conspiracy to murder Robert Lee. The testimony of a man like Tom Jorgenson might be enough to generate a full, formal investigation, but who knew how deep the darkness of NOMan ran or how broad the shadow it cast?

He needed a way to get back to Jorgenson. Every avenue so far had been blocked. But what if the contact came from someone else, someone of higher authority than Bo, from the White House itself? It was time to call Lorna Channing and brief her. He’d had no contact with her since before he left D.C. She didn’t even know he was in Minnesota. He took out his cell phone and from his wallet pulled out the slip of paper on which she’d written her number.

“Excuse me.”

Bo folded the paper and slid it into his shirt pocket, then he looked up.

Two men stood at his table. They wore jeans and sleeveless T-shirts, a little dirty, and work boots. They both held beer mugs in their hands. They looked like construction workers drinking after a day on the job.

“Me and my buddy here have a bet,” one of the men said. His hair was long and sandy colored, and he had a scraggly mustache of the same color. “I say you’re that Secret Service guy who saved the First Lady’s ass. My buddy bets I’m wrong.”

“Your buddy wins,” Bo said. He put the cell phone in the inside pocket of his sport coat.

“Told you,” the other man said. “Come on, Lester.”

“Now wait a minute. I seen your face on the cover of theNational Enquirer, and I never forget a face. It’s…Thorsen, right?”

“Leave him be, Lester.”

“That must’ve been something out there. I mean, taking a bullet for the First Lady.”

“It was a knife,” Bo said.

“There, see. See, I told you it was him. Your glass is almost empty, man. Let me buy you a drink.”

The other guy offered Bo a look of sympathy. “Better do it. He’ll pester you till you do.”

“What’ll it be?” Lester asked.

“Leinie’s.”

“Leinie’s it is. Curtis, get this man a beer.”

Curtis headed off toward the bar. Lester sat down in the booth across from Bo.

“So. What was it like?”

“Look, Lester, your drink I’ll take. Your company I’d rather forgo at the moment.”

“Drinking alone? Bet it’s the pressure of the job does that. Seems to me I heard the rate of alcoholism and suicide is pretty high with you guys.”

“That’s dentists,” Bo said.

Curtis returned. “Here you go,” he said. He set the beer in front of Bo.

“To a real hero,” Lester said and lifted his glass in a toast.

Bo drank with them, from the beer they’d bought him.

“Come on, Lester,” Curtis said.

Lester slid a napkin toward Bo. “Say, could I get your autograph?”

Curtis grabbed his buddy by the shirtsleeve and pulled him away.

“Sorry to have bothered you,” he said to Bo.

Bo was grateful to be alone again. His Reuben arrived immediately, and the smell brought home to him just how hungry he was. He still had to make the call to Channing. He got his cell phone out again, but before punched in the number, he realized that the noise in the bar would make a coherent conversation almost impossible. He decided to wait until he was in the quiet outside O’Gara’s.

He hadn’t eaten all day, still hadn’t touched his sandwich, and the beer was beginning to affect him. He was feeling light-headed. He took a bite of the Reuben. The food didn’t seem to help. He was dizzy and getting sick to his stomach. He pulled out his wallet, dropped a few bills on the table. Hoping the fresh air might help, he made his way outside.

As he leaned against the side of the building, the sky above him flashed and thunder followed almost immediately. Bo felt the first drops of rain from a summer storm. The rain was cold and sharp, but it didn’t seem to be any help in clearing his head.

He was having trouble standing up now. He tried to remember where he’d parked his car. He pushed away from the building, and the world seemed to come at him in a slant.

“Whoa, buddy. You okay?”

The voice was familiar to Bo. Lester, who’d bought him a beer.

“Sick…” Bo managed to say.

“Come on, we’ll help you to your car.” It was another familiar voice, but more distant than the first.

Bo felt support slip under each of his arms. He tried to help them, tried to walk, but he couldn’t seem to make his legs move. He felt himself slipping, going under. But before he was gone completely, he had one lucid thought.

How did they know which car was his?

He felt the vehicle moving and he smelled exhaust. And then he was driving again. Driving the old bus. He sat behind the wheel, as he always did in his dreaming. The bus was on the river, caught in the sweep of a strong current, and he was trying desperately to turn toward the safety of the riverbank. The wheel spun uselessly in his hand. He felt himself and the others who rode with him, all those who relied on him, sweeping toward a blind curve of the river, beyond which something terrible awaited them.

A big bump threw him upward and he hit his head. He half-woke and opened his eyes. There was dark all around him, and the smell of exhaust and water on hot metal, and the rattle of the undercarriage as it negotiated old pavement, and the hiss of tires on wet asphalt. He wondered dreamily, Where am I?

• • •

He woke again to the feel of hands and the sound of voices.

“That’s right, Thorsen. Time to go night-night.”

They lifted his legs and turned him so that he was sitting up, more or less. Bo saw a line of lights like a string of bright pearls against the black throat of the night and the rain.

“Come on, buddy. Just a few steps and you’re there.”

They helped him up. He stood unsteadily. He looked back. At first he saw a huge, gaping mouth. Then he understood that it was a car trunk. They’d lifted him out of a car trunk. That seemed odd. But they were helpful.

“You can do it, Thorsen. That’s right. A step at a time.”

Rain fell against his face, cooling and refreshing. The fresh air felt good after the stuffy car trunk. The air carried on it a familiar scent. The dank, muddy smell of the Mississippi River.

“There we go.”

They leaned him against a metal railing. Bo looked down. In the flash of lightning, he saw the river far below him, black and shiny for a moment, then lost in the dark again, and the rain.

He knew where he was. His old stomping grounds. The High Bridge over the river. In the shadow of that bridge, he’d lived with his family of runaways in the old bus.

“Damn it, Curtis, hold on to him.”

“It’s the goddamn rain. He’s slippery as an eel.”

Bo felt them grasp him low around his hips. He knew he was about to travel again on the black river he’d driven so often in his nightmares.

But this was no nightmare.

Bo gathered himself around that small, hard realization and acted without thinking. His body moved in the way he’d trained it for nearly two decades. He yanked his arm loose and delivered a hard kick to the knee joint of the man to his right, who went down howling. The other man Bo struck with a forearm blow to the middle of his face, and a fountain of blood squirted into the rain. Bo lurched away from the railing toward the car that sat idling on the bridge.

“Christ, don’t shoot him,” one of the men hollered.

Bo tumbled into the car parked at the curb, and he slumped over the wheel. As he jammed the stick into gear, the front door on the passenger’s side popped open. He hit the gas, and the car shot forward. Behind him, someone screamed a curse.

Bo sped across the bridge into St. Paul. He was sleepy, barely able to keep his eyes open or his foot on the pedal. The car swerved across lanes. He mounted the bluff to Summit Avenue and headed west along the rain-swept street between rows of big, fine houses.

Where? he tried to think.

Not to Tangletown. They would look for him there.

Then he thought of Diana Ishimaru. She lived on East River Road, less than a mile from Tangletown. All he had to do was stay awake for a few more minutes and he would be there.

He drifted, heedless of stoplights. Dimly, he understood that it must be very late because there was almost no traffic. On East River Road, he tried to remember which house was hers. In the dark and the rain, it was hard to tell. He pulled to the side of the street, and the front right wheel jumped the curb. He jerked the door handle and tumbled out onto the pavement. He stumbled up the walk to the front door, leaned against the clean white wood, and pounded.

The porch light came on. The locked clicked, the door opened, and Bo fell forward. A man caught him and stood him up.

“Diana?” Bo said.

“Ishimaru? Diana Ishimaru? She lives next door.” The man swung his hand in that direction. He wore a white robe and an angry look.

Bo took a couple of steps back into the rain and almost toppled over.

The man said, “Drunken asshole,” and slammed the door.

Bo crossed the wide lawn, tramped through a flower bed, reached the porch of the next house, and hit his fist against the door.

Diana Ishimaru answered immediately. Despite the hour and being dressed in a red chenille bathrobe, she looked wide awake.

“Bo? Jesus, come in out of that rain.” She reached out and took his arm.

Bo stumbled into the hallway. “Tried to kill me…” he mumbled.

“What?”

“Coffee,” he said. He leaned against the wall. He felt so tired.

“Out of those clothes, first. You’re dripping all over my rug.”

She led him to the bathroom. By the time she came back with dry clothes, he’d curled up on the tile floor and was drifting off.

“Bo.” She shook him. “Here, let me help.”

She worked him out of his shirt and then his pants. That left him in boxers. “I’ve done all the helping I’m going to. Get out of those wet Skivvies and into these things.” She dropped a set of gray sweats into his lap. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

Slowly, Bo finished what Ishimaru had started. She knocked on the door, came in, helped him stand up, then walked him into her living room, where she settled him on the couch.

“I’ll get the coffee and be right back.”

Bo laid himself down. The couch cushions felt so good, so soft, so welcoming.

Diana Ishimaru was an enigma in many ways. Although Bo knew where she lived, had driven past her house many times, he’d never been invited inside. So far as he knew, none of the agents in the field office had. In this way, and others, she’d kept her personal distance. As he took in the interior of her home, Bo was treated to a side of Ishimaru he’d never seen. A pair of gold-flaked screens decorated with cranes separated the living room and dining room. In the middle of the table near the front window sat a zen rock garden, six stones in raked white sand. On top of her bookcase were two clay pots containing tiny bonsai trees. On the wall behind the sofa hung a mirror in a blond wooden frame into which had been carved the delicate image of birds perched on branches. Bo was surprised by all this, for in her office, Ishimaru kept little evidence of her ancestry. He was just closing his eyes, ready to dream of the Orient, when Ishimaru shook him vigorously.

“Wake up, Bo.”

She pulled him upright and shoved the coffee cup into his hand. As he sipped, she drew an armchair near him and sat down.

“All right, what’s going on?”

In a stumbling patchwork of narrative, Bo told her everything. About the president’s request. About his own investigation into NOMan. About the men who’d drugged him and tried to throw him from the High Bridge. Although he got all the information out, he wasn’t certain how coherent it was. At the end, he felt better, but only a little less tired than before.

Ishimaru looked thoughtful. “I haven’t been able to sleep, thinking about everything that’s going down now. I’ve had a bad feeling about a lot of this, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it was that felt hinky.”

“Sorry about blowing up this afternoon,” Bo said.

“Forget it. We’ve got more important things to worry about.” Ishimaru stood up, stuffed her hands into the pockets of her robe, and began to pace. For a little while, she said nothing, then she looked at Bo, who was tilting to one side. “That coffee hasn’t done you much good. Go ahead and lie down. Get some sleep. You deserve it.”

Bo followed her suggestion. “What about you?” he asked as he let his eyelids close.

“I’ve got some heavy thinking to do. Considering the cloud you’re currently under, you’re not going to be viewed as the most reliable source. But rest, Bo. Let me worry about that now. You’ve done a good job.”

Bo appreciated that. Coming from Ishimaru, it meant a lot. He finally gave himself over to the sleep that had been calling to him for what seemed like forever.

In his sleep, he heard the sound of thunder, but it was a different kind of thunder. Fragile. More like the shattering of glass.

He struggled to come up from his good, pleasant dreaming. As he opened his eyes, his head exploded. A stunning blow sent him right back into the dark from which he’d just climbed. Deep enough to dream again, this time a nightmare full of blood, but only for a moment before he tried once more to pull himself back to consciousness. As he did so, his body was yanked upright.

“Good,” he heard a voice that was all too familiar say. “Now put the Sig in his hand.”

He felt the press of a gun butt against his right palm, and a hand molded his own hand around the grip. He felt the trigger slip under his index finger.

“Where?” the voice asked. “I think between the eyes.”

“No. Stick it in his mouth. An agent like him would eat the bullet.”

Bo felt his hand rising under the power of another hand. An alien finger wormed its way into his mouth, prying his jaws apart. The finger tasted of leather.

Bo bit down hard.

“Jesus, God,” the voice screamed. “He tried to bite my finger off.”

Bo dimly aimed the gun in the direction of the voice and he fired. The sound of confusion followed, the clatter of upended furniture.

“Move, goddamn it,” someone shouted.

Two figures, vague in Bo’s vision, merged with the dark near the back of the house. A door slammed shut. Everything fell quiet.

Slowly, Bo stood, wavering in his stance, trying to pull his senses together. His head hurt and his eyes still felt heavy. He took a step forward, and he stumbled, but not from his own weakness. He looked back at what he’d tripped over. His heart nearly broke.

Diana Ishimaru lay at his feet, her eyes half open. Had it not been for the small, bloody hole in her forehead, Bo might have thought she was simply staring at the ceiling. Although he knew it was useless, he reached out and felt at her neck for the pulse that was not there. From beneath her head, from the exit wound Bo knew would be large and ugly, blood leaked, spreading across her clean beige carpet, staining it steadily fiber by fiber.

“No,” Bo cried. “God, no.”

He stood up and gripped the gun tightly in his hand. He wanted to kill the men who’d done this. He wanted to blow their fucking hearts right out of their fucking chests.

He stumbled toward the dark at the rear of the house where the men had fled. As his thinking cleared, he realized the uselessness of pursuing them. They were well gone by now. He looked back and saw that he’d tracked blood across the room. Her blood.

He stared down at the gun in his hand. It was a Sig Sauer. He checked the registration number. His Sig. And he was pretty sure that the only prints on it were his as well.

Slicing through the sound of the storm outside came the whine of a siren approaching. Someone had called the police.