CHAPTER 17
Truman
“Ignatz, eh? I remember you from our house in Vegas. You used to come visit and take us gambling.”
“Right,” I said happily. “We used to gamble at Paris and Fountainebleu.” I didn’t realize until much later that Fountainebleu had only been around for a couple of years.
That was probably why Erin stepped on my foot underneath the patio table. “Paris and Bellagio. You used to love playing the slots. And the roulette wheel.”
“Ah!” Pickett interlaced his fingers over his stomach and grinned lazily at the sky.
His fluffy white moustache rivaled Alessio’s, and his eyes still had the twinkle of a man with half a brain.
Completely bald on top, clown hair ringed his skull.
My heart stabbed with compassion, although I’d only known Pickett for half an hour.
This was my entire life’s training come to fruition—helping those who couldn’t help themselves.
“Roulette! The wheel goes round and round…” Sighing, he then looked with confusion at a passing wheelchair.
We were in the food court of Pine Valley.
We’d gotten in easy enough through the receptionist. There was nothing to differentiate this facility from others except the taller walls to prevent people from wandering off.
Signs of confusion surrounded us—inmates insisting they didn’t order something, or couldn’t swallow something, or wondering why a squirrel was wearing a tutu.
“Hey, uncle,” I said confidentially, hands knitted between my knees, “you must know this guy Dr. Pleasant Bridgewater.”
“Yes!” chirped Pickett. “He runs this place. Mighty fine young man. Mighty fine.” He rubbed his head. “Even balder than me.”
“Does he, ah, order your medications for you?”
“Oh, yes! And these fine nurses administer them.” Leaning in, he looked suspiciously from side to side. “Mostly Filipino gals. They come to my apartment three times a day to make sure I don’t forget my meds. One of them smells like ammonia.”
I nodded at Erin to tell her it was time for the big reveal. Taking my cue, she held out the bottle we’d ripped off from Les Moore. “This bottle has your name on it. Does it look familiar?”
Pickett took it gingerly, frowning. But I guess he saw his name on the label and he brightened up. “Why, yes! Have you come to administer it to me?”
Erin and I shared looks. I said, “Well, sis and I think we should go ask Dr. Bridgewater about this. We don’t like this drug. We’d like to take you to a new facility where they administer better drugs.”
Pickett didn’t like this at all. Flailing his arms, he cried, “But I love it here! We have little plays every night, and games where we toss balls to each other. They even let Shelby Hecox keep his mummy in his bag.”
That really threw us for a loop. Erin mouthed “mummy?” I guess we both came to the same conclusion he meant “mother,” and since we weren’t nearly prepared to move Pickett to another facility, I said,
“Okay. We’ll just go have a little talk with Dr. Bridgewater. We really think you’re on the wrong medication.”
Now Pickett became obstinate. “But I like that stuff! It makes me happy and kills the pain in my feet!”
Erin said, “There are other medications that can do that. Let’s see if we can get Dr. Bridgewater to change your meds.”
Pickett literally harrumphed, sticking out his lower lip and refusing to look at us. We had a nurse take him back to his room, grunting the whole way, and set out for the so-called doctor’s office.
Erin said, “If he likes the fentanyl so much, how are we going to convince him it’s bad?”
“There must be something about it he doesn’t like. Dizzy or headaches.”
I noticed Erin frowning at a food delivery bag lying alongside the wall in the hallway. Something round and black was sticking out of it, like a bowling ball. She muttered, “What the . . . ?” and bent over to gingerly lift the bag. When she jumped back like a ninja, I grabbed her upper arms.
And went to see what it was.
A mummy. An actual fucking mummy. Pickett wasn’t kidding.
Someone had been dragging this mummy around the facility, and that was all right with Bridgewater.
The eye sockets were empty of course, but ball joints stuck out every which way, and crooked teeth demonstrated bad dental hygiene.
I wondered if the owner could manipulate it, or was it stuck in this position?
“Oh, God,” I whispered to Erin as we huddled together. “This place just gets worse and worse. Let’s go confront this dingus.”
We sat in the waiting room for fifteen minutes as various relatives shuffled in and out. I heard one couple mumbling to each other.
“Do you really think Dad’s better?”
“He seems happier…”
“I don’t know. Something’s off about him.”
When we were ushered in, I was shocked to see a fortyish bald guy with pierced ears tapping away at his keyboard.
Bridgewater seemed trendy, as though preparing to play a bloodied, flesh-eating goon in a film.
Then again, I could see where people trusted him.
A button-up sort of guy with a tie, his cufflinks told of some swank alma mater. Or he got them from Goodwill.
We sat silently until he was done typing. He did so with a flourish, turning to us with a blinding smile. “So! You are nephew and niece of Pickett Yarborough. An outstanding fellow. Did you ever go see any of his plays in New York City?”
Of course we hesitated. We knew next to nothing about Pickett other than what we’d googled. But we had seen he’d produced some Broadway plays.
“Oh, yeah!” I cried, turning to Erin. “Remember that one production…”
“Jesus Christ Superstar.”
“Right. That was awesome.” I turned to Bridgewater. “He was great back in his day. What an amazing, uh…”
Erin filled in. “Artistic guy.”
Bridgewater slapped the desk with his palms. “He’s doing excellent here. I think his memory is even improving. The other day he remembered the name of his dog from the nineties.”
Since I obviously didn’t, I plunged right ahead.
Withdrawing the fentanyl bottle from my jeans pocket, I displayed it between forefinger and thumb.
“Speaking of memory. We’d like to know where you got this.
This is fentanyl. Street fentanyl. Fifty times stronger than morphine.
Pickett doesn’t need a painkiller. He needs memory care. This makes memory worse.”
As I’d prepared for, Bridgewater stiffened noticeably. Palms still flat on the table, he erected his spine, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing. “Where. Did. You. Get. That.”
“We got it from Pickett’s medicine cabinet,” Erin lied.
Bridgewater fumed. “That. Is a controlled substance. There should be nothing in his medicine cabinet. We administer the medication here. Nurse practitioners administer the medication, or I do. We do not leave bottles anywhere. Let me see that.”
I had no choice but to hand it over. His quick perusal of the label must’ve given him his answer, because his eyes narrowed into em dashes. He looked from Erin to me, me to Erin under white, albino lashes. “You were at Barstow high school, weren’t you?”
“What?” crowed Erin. “What Barstow high school?”
I asked, “Is that where you got the stuff?”
Bridgewater furiously jammed his forefinger onto his cellphone. “Security!” he roared. Then stood like some imperialistic ruler, fingertips on desk. “Out, out! If I ever see you here again I’ll have you arrested for murder!”
Now I was getting pissed. Standing, I shouted, “Murdering who? What the fuck are you talking about? We’re Pickett’s nephew and niece, checking on his bowel and memory problems! What the fuck do you have to be so defensive about?”
He practically spat. “Oh, and Ignatz Semmelweiss? He was a fucking Hungarian physician!”
Well, at least the peckerhead was educated. When two guards entered, Bridgewater demanded they rip my wallet from my back pocket and look at my driver’s license. Which of course showed a photo of one of the drug dealers we’d ripped off. Who happened to be black.
If Bridgewater hadn’t figured out who we were yet, he soon would. We could never return.
“Okay, okay!” I yelled, shaking off the guard’s hands and whipping my wallet from them. “We’re out of here!”
Guards hustled us out the front door so fast it was all a blur. They even tried to manhandle us down the front pathway, but we put a stop to that. In shaking off my guard, he fell onto his ass, and I blared,
“Get your fucking hands off me! We’re here to expose your drug-dealing, your medicating of Alzheimer’s patients, veterans dying from being fed poisoned pain pills!”
Erin had stomped on her guy’s leg. “You’re just mopping up all the money from government contracts and pocketing it yourselves! Do you hear us, people?” Since they didn’t let patients out front, the several people standing around must’ve been relatives. They all gaped at us open-mouthed.
So I pointed at them. “You’re not rich! We’re all caught in the common struggle to survive!
” It struck me in a split second—I sounded like Alessio on my own rooftop.
“This so-called ‘doctor’ Bridgewater can provide legal scrip for a drug to which your relatives become addicted. The patient becomes calm, won’t complain about a thing. They’re drugging them to death!”
Erin muttered, “We better get out of here,” but a couple of bystanders headed our way.
They weren’t just any old bystanders. The two men were hip, long-haired, leather-clad bikers. And I mean official real bikers with club patches, designating them members of The Bent Zealots MC. The shorter guy boasted a pierced eyebrow and an elaborate Asian sleeve, upper lip lifted in a snarl.
It was the other biker who got to me. Long, lush, shiny black curls below his shoulders, the Roman hawk nose I couldn’t stop licking on Alessio. His eyes flashed with intelligence, and he was the first to speak. The Dom.
“You guys. You’re talking about Dr. Bridgewater, right?”
The other guy said, “We’re investors here, been having our doubts lately. So we’re here to check on this joint in person.”
Erin took the shorter guy by the upper arm, moving us to a more remote stand of flowering bushes. “That’s what we’re doing,” she said. “But we’re not investors. I’m Erin D’Attire. We’re here to expose this gigantic scam that’s killing the elderly.”
I said, “They’re drugging them with street tranq and fentanyl. We just accidentally killed one of their suppliers while playing basketball.”
The handsome guy’s face lit up. He had amazing straight white teeth. “You’re the Undisputed Truth Club. You’re Truman.”
I’d never swelled with such pride. My eyes nearly burned with tears. “That’s us all right. And you guys are The Bent Zealots MC.”
He splayed his fingers on his chest. “Dr. Huntington Mountjoy. This is Dr. Thymus Moog. We invested in this place a couple years ago and figured we should take a look in person.”
I said, “Doctors in a motorcycle club?”
Hunt said, “A gay motorcycle club.”
I knew I’d met my match. “Look. Come back with us to our trailer park. We’ve got a podcaster on our side going viral. We can’t come back here, but you can.”