The Finder

10

The pain woke him. As always at this time of night, just a few minutes before the machine sent a shot of lovely wonderful morphine through the tube in his arm. He loved the drug more than he could say, craved it, yes, of course-no wonder people destroyed themselves for it. I'm addicted. But these minutes were when he was most clear, the pain rising quickly yet bearable, the veil of the morphine pulled away just far enough to let his mind work. Precious seconds to him. Precious time to think, think about the only thing he had left now: his son. All else was lost to him-his body, failing further every day; his spirit, which needed a body to be manifest; his physical belongings, which he could no longer use or even see from where he lay; and his memory, weakened by suffering, medication, and time. And of course he had lost his wife, Mary, years ago, he had lost the fellowship of his brother detectives when he retired, he had lost so much, nearly everything now.

And yet, he knew, this was in the way of things. Everyone lost everything at the end. You became unified with every human being who had ever lived and who ever would live, including his parents, his brother and sister, Mary, of course, and even Ray. Perhaps that was consoling. You know again the people who have died and you feel they know you now. Dying slowly, you think about death, you study its approach. You imagine the world after you are gone, you see the enormity of time, the final privacy of consciousness. He'd sat with Mary in the last weeks of her life, her mouth pulling back day by day into an emaciated mask, her breath fouler each day, too, and he had gazed into her dull eyes and spoken to her and she to him and he knew now that he had no idea then what she was thinking. She had tried to share it but known she could not. They'd held hands for hours and that had been everything. Worlds within worlds. He saw that no one alive knew what he was thinking. Even the nurses, the lovely professional death watchers.

But he was not dead yet. Not quite. He turned his head to see that it was just after two a.m. Ray was upstairs. The night nurse slept in the next room. Sometimes he heard her talk in her sleep, which made him smile. Such an intimate thing, a sweetness.

Now he lifted the sheet to examine the long incision where the doctors had cut him open trying to find out what was wrong with him. Right through the stomach muscles. They had closed him up, knowing there was no hope. The incision had not healed well and kept getting infected. The nurses left the wound unbandaged with the wish that the air would help. How it hurt to lift his head, but he did, just to see the giant cut, which ran from his breastbone to the top of his public hair. The edges of the incision did not meet, had dried and puckered back from each other. Beyond that lay his penis in a nest of gray hair, a white plastic catheter stuck in it to drain any incidental urine that dribbled through his blocked kidneys. He could barely feel the catheter anymore. He had stopped missing his penis, years earlier, in fact. It had become a mere hose. Old men didn't talk about this, not even to each other. Just bore the truth of it, the change of life. You learned something about the world when you lost your sexual desire, you saw things differently, how tormented young men were, how stupid and out of control.

He could feel the liquids gurgle inside him and he could feel them gurgle out. The nurses measured his urine, the watery mud of feces that came from him. Not that it changed anything. They meant well and were trying their best. Just quietly helping him, hour after hour. Few men honestly confronted the superior unselfishness of women. Because to do so unraveled their entire belief systems and that was something they could not endure. He always tried hard to follow the nurses' directions- please, lift your legs… here's the spoon, Mr. Grant.. we need to turn you so we may clean you… He was not afraid of the pain. The little box worked quite well and he had been very clear with Ray that when the time came, Ray was to push him softly into oblivion. It would be hard for his son, he knew his son would resist doing so, especially given his training, but he hoped Ray would do what needed to be done, in the end.

He hoped his son would have the strength to kill him.

And yet, to repeat himself-as he was doing, he knew, repeating his thoughts over and over, slowly wearing them into nothing-and yet his son was here and would go on. But there was trouble for Ray now. The Chinese girl. The men who had taken away his machine. Ray had explained the problem. And he had been able to respond, to nod his head a bit and say yes. Ray was very clever. But the father always knew the son's flaws. Ray could be too impulsive, too instinctive. This might change as he got older. He had a weakness for women, too. Not a womanizer, not exactly. His weakness was that he cared for them easily, without remembering to protect himself.

Ray's other weakness was more serious. It was that he assumed that he was lucky. He had done so since he was a boy. Lucky how? Not that good things always happened to him but that bad things wouldn't. He'd been buried alive and lived. You were that lucky only once in a life. And maybe that used up all the rest of your good luck.

As for what Ray did while he was away, the old detective didn't quite understand all that. Foreign countries, he didn't know about. He knew about Brooklyn, Queens, and parts of Manhattan. The trouble with the Chinese girl was real enough. It was New York City kind of trouble. He sensed it. Somebody wanted something badly. Probably had to do with money, maybe the half-dead Mafia in some way, given the neighborhood. Mob carting services, truck companies, garages. He'd never dealt with Chinese gangsters but knew they could be tough, ruthless. Ray was mixed up in it now… he'd find that sewage company tomorrow and somebody there would know a few facts. Or Ray would sense a lie. He had that gift. As a detective you told yourself that people were telling the truth unless you had reason to think they were lying. Otherwise you would drive yourself mad with suspicion. But nonetheless you could tell. The brain knew. Something in the voice, the eyes, the facial muscles. Scientists had studied this, proved it. But as a detective you just got very good at sensing the lie. You listened to hundreds of people lie, you learned how human beings do it. He'd forgotten-oh, yes. This Chinese girl had gotten to Ray somehow. Ray was in this thing now, whether he wanted to be or not. It was going to get worse for someone, he was sure. Two girls had died, and if he knew anything about how these things went, they wouldn't be the last. He knew Ray had moved his guns to the shed and put on a new lock. He knew that Ray had hidden the key in the birdhouse. And he knew that Ray had checked on the guns yesterday. This was unlike him. It meant Ray was preparing himself, worried. And the nurse had told him about what Ray had done to the men in the hallway, the savagery he'd displayed.

Does all this scare me? thought the old detective. Maybe. Well, yes. But I have to believe in Ray, because otherwise I am dying for nothing. I have to try to help him. Be victorious.

And that was when he thought of something, something important that Ray needed to-?

The Dilaudid pump clicked and sent him a bolus. The warmth of it was so beautiful… I'm addicted… But wait! What was the thing he had just thought of, the thing Ray had to know? The morphine was taking it away from him… something important, having to do with Ray's problem, the kind of information that he used to… the exact sort of thing a detective always wrote down in his… just so he couldn't possibly… And here he… he had forgotten, the morphine warming his eyes, slowing his heart, pulling his breath deeper toward painless sleep… oh, he had thought of… it was

… the thing that his son needed to know… what was it?