15 Seconds (15 page)
Authors: Andrew Gross
V
ance found John Schmeltzer at a bar in Dania, Florida, just north of Hollywood. It was a dark, sleazy, sixties-style place, set between a Jiffy Lube and a debt company, with a heavily tattooed Hispanic behind the bar. Dog races were on the TV.
Vance wasn't sure he'd ever seen a more depressing place as he stepped in, in his sweaty shirt and rumpled pants, removing his hat.
Schmeltzer was at a table drinking a beer in a wifebeater T-shirt and pink shorts. He was thin, with coarse, curly hair, bald on top, and sideburns clear down to his chin. Maybe forty. He was with a couple of other lowlifes who, Vance thought, might have recently crawled their way out of the Everglades, and didn't look a whole lot higher up the food chain than Schmeltzer himself.
Vance walked up to his table. “Dexter Vaughn said I could find you here. He said you could help me with my back. Hurts like the devil. Show me how it works down here.”
“Dexter, huh?” Schmeltzer looked at him a bit skeptically, squinting over his shades. “He said that. Not that it really matters . . .” The guy grinned, clearly not sizing Vance up as much of a threat. “That's the beauty of it down here. I know what you've come for and welcome to the Promised Land.”
He proceeded to try to raise Dexter by phone, just to be sure, but failing to for obvious reasons, Vance knewâSchmeltzer just said, “Ah, hell with it,” and offered to take Vance around. They climbed into a silver Mercedes convertible, Schmeltzer saying how he had to do a little business anyhow, so why not climb on in. “So
how
you know Dex?” he asked casually.
Vance pressed his fingers against the fancy leather console. He felt the gun in his belt dig into his back as he pressed against the seat. “Through his cousin. Del. From South Carolina.”
“That's where you're from?”
Vance shrugged. Didn't really matter much if he told him the truth.
Â
.
 .
So he simply nodded.
“
Del?
Not sure I know any Del,” Schmeltzer said, squinting over his shades.
“No matter.” Vance shrugged, looking ahead. “You probably never will.”
“So what's your story?” Schmeltzer asked. “Work accident? Chronic? Got any disability papers? X-rays you can show? A scrip?”
“Uh-uh.” Vance shook his head.
“Man, they really sent you down here cold, didn't they?” Schmeltzer squinted. “Tell me, partner, no secrets here, you even
got
a bad back?”
Vance looked at him and smiled thinly. “Nope.”
“Ha! No worries, bro. Your secret's safe with me. You
will
need some kind of story, though. We can do migraines. You're under a doctor's treatment up where you live, right? But you're visiting. I know exactly where to take you. You may have to just spiff the doc a fifty or something. Okay by you?”
“Sure, whatever,” Vance said. He sat back. He felt the gun. He felt he was close.
“So relax! Won't be but a while, and that back of yours will be floating in the clouds. Welcome to paradise, dude. Take off that jacket . . . Enjoy the ride.”
Vance pushed back deeper into the seat. John got off the highway at Oakland Park Road. In Ft. Lauderdale. The street was busy and commercial. Gas stations. Car dealerships. Fast-food outlets on both sides. Lots of long lights and traffic.
There was something else Vance soon noticed. Pain clinics. Lots of fucking pain clinics. One after another.
“Welcome to Broward County,” Schmeltzer proclaimed, noticing Vance crane his neck. “Pharmaland, USA. More fucking pain clinics on the streets than there are McDonald's. And that's a fact!”
“This is where you get them?” Vance had thought Schmeltzer was going to take him to his source, maybe a doctor who wrote bogus scrips. But this . . . “A pain clinic.” He widened his eyes in surprise. This was starting to make him mad. “All legal?”
“Clinic?” Schmeltzer's grin was wide. “Dude, I'm on the VIP list of half the pill mills from here to Palm Beach. For an extra five bills they sell you a gold card. No wait. Back-to-back prescriptions. Everything you need filled directly on-site. Oxy. Vicodin. Muscle relaxers . . . Whatever floats your boat! All you need to be a dealer here is a license to be an MD! These guys are raking it in.”
Vance felt his fists clench.
“Some of these places, you can just walk right in and rub your back like you're in pain and they'll lay it all out like a Chinese take-out menu.
Won from Corumn A
. . . Just a drug dispenser. But you gotta know the ropes. And you gotta choose your sources carefully.
Comprende, partner . . . ?
Which is what I do. I used to drive around in some Korean piece of shit. Now look at what we're riding in . . .”
Vance looked around. There were more of these clinics than there were barbecue stops back where he was from.
All you need is an MD? This was how the sonovabitches poisoned his Amanda.
“I'm especially interested in the ones where you got what you gave Dexter,” he said.
“Dexter?
” Schmeltzer grinned, kind of deferentially. “You are? No worries, I'm gonna take good care of you.
And
your back!”
Getting closer to the beach, they passed a more upscale section of office buildingsâbrick and glass. Vance was feeling himself growing angrier by the minute.
Schmeltzer slowed. “See that one over there?”
Across the street. On the ground floor of a redbrick office building. A fancy glass front.
The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers.
“I see it,” Vance said, feeling his pulse start to pound.
“There's the one. You said Dexter, right? Top-of-the-line. There's a real MD on the premises, not some Pakistani just out of med school looking to rake in a few bucks. You need a real prescription. No scrip, they turn you away. But no worries . . .” Schmeltzer patted his pocket. “I know someone there. I got us covered . . .”
“This is where the pills you sold to Dexter came from?” Vance's mood picked up. The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers. He felt he was at the end of a long journey. He felt his fingers itch.
“You're sure about that?”
“Dexter. Frank. Hector . . . Got all the bases covered, dude.” Schmeltzer pulled into the turn lane and shot Vance a quick glance. “You're not a cop, are you?”
A cop?
Vance looked back at him. “No.”
“Good. 'Cause you're starting to sound to me like you wouldn't know an Oxy from an Advil . . . And I gotta be sure.”
“My daughter . . .” Vance started to say.
“Your
daughter . . .
?” He cut in at a break in the traffic and pulled into the driveway of the clinic, going behind the store and into a spot with
PAIN CLINIC
written on the concrete barrier.
No one was around.
Schmeltzer shook his head. “Just be glad your daughter's not from down here. More shit in the schools down here than in the damn hospitals. 'Course, I probably don't help those numbers, if I say so myself . . . No age discrimination when it comes to business. That's the Fourth Amendment, right? Everyone gets to pay.”
He put the car in park and cut the motor. “Anyway, you were saying . . . ?”
He turned back to Vance and his eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw the gun.
“My daughter ran over a woman and her baby,” Vance said, hardening his gaze on Schmeltzer's startled eyes. “Jumped the road while she was highâon OxyContin. Ran 'em over right on their own front lawn. The woman's husband was in Afghanistan. Never even saw his own kid. Not once.”
Schmeltzer swallowed. “I'm sorry, mister.”
“Her boyfriend gave it to her. Who got it from some leech named Del. Dexter's aforementioned cousin . . .”
A bead of sweat wound its way down Schmeltzer's temple. “Where you going with all this, friend? You said that Dexâ”
“Dexter's
dead,
” Vance said. “They're all dead. Del. Wayne. All of them except my little girl, Amanda, who might as well be. She's serving twenty years. And where I'm going with it, friend . . .” Vance said, “is that I traced back the Oxy that twisted my little girl's brain that day, that done ruined her very existence, to you.”
Schmeltzer stared back at him, the grimness and resignation on his face suggesting that he realized he only had a few more seconds to live. “This ain't gonna solve anything, you know. They're just gonna get it from somewhere. Fuck, man, they can find it in their parents' medicine chests if theyâ”
Vance shoved the gun into Schmeltzer's chest and pulled the trigger, twice, the sound muffled, Schmeltzer's torso flung back against the side window with a lung-emptying groan
,
his eyes glazed, staring at his hands smeared with blood.
“Solves it for me. Anyway, you were right on one thing, though . . .” Vance leaned over and jammed the gun into Schmeltzer's mouth, the dealer's eyes about three times their normal size and stunned, and drew back the action. “Nice car.”
V
ance left Schmeltzer's crumpled body on the floor of his car. He checked himself just to make sure he didn't have blood all over him.
He had found what he was looking for and his search had pretty much come to an end.
Then he left the car and went to the door of the clinic.
He felt a stirring in his chest and his blood was all alive and buzzing, a voice deep inside him telling him that this was it. The end of the line. He had set out to prove that causes had effects and that you couldn't escape the consequences of what you'd done. The sin from the sinner, the Bible said. The wheat from the chaff.
The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers.
This was where his little girl's life got all caught up in the tide that ruined it.
Time to end it now.
Vance stepped inside and looked around. Blond paneling on the walls and a classy, almost Asian feel. All beige and white. In the waiting area, a heavyset black woman was in a chair with a metal walker in front of her. A video was running on a screen. Another woman was seated behind the counter. Pretty. In a blue nurse's uniform. Her blond hair in a ponytail.
“Can I help you?”
The woman behind the counter was looking at him. Vance felt the emotions in his chest start to build.
Can you
help
me?
Can you make right everything that's gone wrong in my life? Can you bring back my wife? My home? My job? Can you bring back my job on the force, which was the last time I felt like a man?
You can only take so much.
Vance looked at this woman, his hand reaching into his pocket, wrapping around the gun handle.
“Just gimme a minute,” was all he could grunt.
The woman smiled at him. “First time here? I know it can be a bit unsettling. Here's a brochure that describes the procedures we do here. They're all doctor performed. Dr. Silva on staff is one of the foremost pain specialists in the area. But take your time.”
Vance nodded and took the brochure. His blood throbbed. The sweats had come over him. He could do it now.
Do it!
This was the source of it all. A sense of absolute certainty rushed through him.
“Or feel free to check out the video over there.” She pointed toward the overhead monitor in the waiting area. “It's only three minutes, and it explains most of the procedures.”
“Thank you,” Vance said, taking his hand off the gun handle.
He went over to the screen, his heart drumming like a bass drum,
boom, boom
, and tried to listen, as best as he could, to a description of a bunch of procedures he didn't give a damn about. Or could even pronounce.
Epidural steroid injection. Nerve root block. Pulsed radiofrequency neurotomy. Stellate ganglion block.
Electromyogram.
His head spun. The only thing you needed to become a drug dealer down here was to have an MD license . . . They were as bad as the ones who pushed the pills. Bloodsuckers.
They were the ones who profited the most!
He gazed at the doctor who was narrating the video. He sounded smart, almost caring. Probably just some actor.
All a sham!
He looked at the woman behind the counter and wrapped his hand around his gun.
End it.
Vance's chest felt like a furnace.
Now.
The video came to an end. “Let us know how we can help you . . .” the doctor said, staring at Vance with those earnest eyes.
Help me?
He was about to turn back to the counter with the gun in his hand when he noticed the doctor's name.
He wasn't an actor at all. In fact, Vance now realized, he was the one person who should rightfully pay. Not these people here. They were just pegs, like him.
The one who had profited most from Amanda's suffering.
Suddenly Vance felt uplifted, stronger, infused with purpose. He eased the gun back into his pants.
He stared at the earnest, smiling face, sure now where his rage should truly be directed.
The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers of South Florida.
Henry Steadman. M.D.
CEO
.
T
he first place I went to in South Carolina was a town called Summerville, north of Charleston.
It was actually a pretty place, nestled among woods of tall pines and, I guess, well named, as the road map said it had been a kind of summer refuge in the 1800s from the stifling humidity and heat of Charleston.
The name I had was a Donald Barrow. 297 Richardson Avenue. The map said it was just outside of town. The plate number ADJ-496. According to the information I had, it was registered to a 2004 Buick Marquis.
I ordered a sandwich in a local shop on Main Street, which was ringed with budding azaleas, then took it back to my car and drove to the addressâan old white clapboard house on a street shaded by tall pinesâand ate it, looking over the house, in my car.
I really didn't know what to do. How to handle this. I wasn't exactly a pro at this. What if it was the right place? What if the Buick was blue, and I went up to that door and the face came back to me and I stared directly into the eyes of the person who had done these horrible things? Realizing my daughter was there!
And he recognized me! He had to know my face.
What then?
I'd been running that scenario over in my mind since I'd left Florida.
I wrapped up my sandwich and placed it on the seat next to me. I tucked in my shirt and took a breath.
You have to do this, Henry
.
Never any time like the present, right?
I left the car and walked up the short walkway leading to the house and onto the porch, trying to calm my heart, which was beating fast.
Anxiously I rang the bell.
I heard footsteps inside, and a middle-aged woman with flecks of gray in her short, curly hair came to the door.
“Hello,” she said, and when she didn't recognize me, she asked in a pleasant drawl, “Can I help you?”
“Hi.” I stepped forward. “Is Mr. Barrow at home?”
“Mr. Barrow . . . ?” The woman hesitated with a slight look of surprise. “May I ask why?”
I stepped forward. “I was sent by his insurance company. To take a look at his car.”
“His car . . . ?”
“A 2004 Buick Marquis? Plate number ADJ-496 . . . It was in an accident, I was told.”
The woman looked at me curiously and shook her head. “There must be some mistake. There hasn't been any accident . . .”
“You're sure?” I asked her again. “Maybe if Mr. Barrow is at home . . . ?” Here in the Deep South people were generally polite and unsuspicious. If I were in South Florida, she'd already be asking to see my ID.
“I'm afraid my father isn't here. He's
. . .
He's been ill. He's been living in a nursing home in Ladson for the past six months.”
“Oh.”
I stared back, suddenly feeling foolish and intrusive. “I'm very sorry.
Is it here?
Mr. Barrow's car. Any chance I could just take a look at it? I don't understand the confusion. Just to be sure . . .”
The plates could always have been stolen.
She thought about it for only a second, then stepped out and led me around the side of the porch. “It's in the garage. But I assure you, it hasn't been in any accident.” She went down another set of steps that led to the garage, pushed a button, and the garage door started to go up.
There was a white Buick in one of the two bays. With a South Carolina plate. ADJ-4967.
“You're right. Clearly, it hasn't been in any accident,” I said, shrugging.
“I can assure you, it hasn't been out of the garage in the past six months,” the woman said. “Since my father left. For the life of me, I can't see how anyone could have thought . . .”
“No, probably our error,” I said. This clearly wasn't the car I was looking for. “I'm sorry to bother you. I hope your father gets well.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, “but I don't know. He's eighty-six. You know how it is.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
I went straight back to my car, before it occurred to her to ask for some ID or for the name of the insurance company I represented. There was also the fear that she might call the police, especially after I noticed her looking at my car.
I drove away, out of town the way I had come, and when I thought I was safe, I pulled into a gas station, my heart still pounding.
You're no Harrison Ford, Henry . . .
One down.
ADJ-4653. That was next. A town named Martinsville.