Final Stroke (33 page)

TWENT
Y

Immediately after the stroke, lying on his back in the
hospital, Steve had felt as if a great weight pressed down on him. He had not been able to move and, more importantly, had not been able to think. The weight affected him not only physically, but mentally as well. The weight had a life of its own, because when a flicker of memory showed itself in the distant darkness, the weight redistributed itself to make certain the memory remained just that, a flicker.

Immediately after the stroke, lying on his back in the hospital, the first thing he’d seen when he opened his eyes were the eyes of a woman. He knew she was a woman and wondered how he knew this when he didn’t seem to know anything else. Yes, the first thing he’d been aware of after the stroke was that the eyes belonged to a woman and that he was a man. But there was more. Despite the weight hold
ing back the flickers, he gathered the woman was fond of him, and this made him fond of her. Then, because she must have known him be
fore the stroke, he presumed they had been together and shared many things flickering in the darkness.

Immediately after the stroke, lying on his back in the hospital, words had been elusive. But even though words were elusive, concepts began coming back. The first concept was that of love. He knew the woman at his bedside loved him, and he loved her. As if love between them existed in his blood rather than in the cells of his tormented brain. Another concept that made its way to the surface was motiva
tion. He wanted to poke holes in the cloak that had descended over him. He wanted to search for flickers from the past and bring them closer so he could examine them. In order to be able to initiate this search, he realized early on that he must live and not let the stroke take him down.

She stayed with him during those early days. She was the one who had given him the test to see if he’d had a stroke—Have the person try to smile, raise both arms, speak a simple sentence. She was the one who looked into his eyes and stroked his head where another thing called a stroke had assailed him. She explained things, like the same word—stroke—standing for her act of caressing his head, and also standing for what had happened inside his head. This and many other things he had tried to comprehend. His initial comprehension of the world seemed to take a long time, but he’d gotten through it because of a thing she called desire, a desire he knew had been spawned from the underlying emotion of … love.

Initially, her love for him was apparent when she was with him, then became apparent when she was not there. At first he wondered if he were being taught how to love. But he soon realized her love un
earthed tunnels into the past in which he could explore, tunnels in which he could search, tunnels like blood vessels through which nutri
ents destined for brain cells traveled.

The concept of time came alive because of her. It was measured by the intervals of her presence and absence. One morning, shortly
after the stroke, when he was able to take food by mouth and she was there early to feed him, he’d been able to relate this to her by remov ing her watch from her wrist, hiding it in his fist, then revealing it and pointing to her. It was strange during those first days following the stroke. Although he could not remember his wife’s name, he knew he loved her and he knew this thing on her wrist measured time. What made it even stranger was that this business of knowing some things and not others drifted in and out of focus so it was difficult to put it all together into one single frame of reference.

His first spoken word after the stroke had been her name. He said it in the middle of the night when she was not there. He’d been visu
alizing her and the name had floated in like a leaf falling from a tree. When he heard himself say her name aloud that first time, he believed that saying her name would make her appear. The lights would come on in the room and she would be there, her face hovering above him the way it had when he first came awake after the stroke.

“Jan.”

It was a wonderful name. The movement of tongue against pal
ate while the lower lip juts out slightly and the mouth opens rapidly to allow trapped air to escape for the J, felt sensual. When he suc
ceeded in saying her name the next day while she was there, she wept. He wanted to tell her it was all right, that there was no reason to weep. But the conglomeration of words necessary to express this con
cept played hide-and-seek in his head and, instead of trying to say she should be happy, he held her and kissed her and drew her atop him.

“Jan.” He said her name now as he sat in his room wondering where the hell she could be. He repeated her name as he squeezed and released the grip exerciser with his good left hand. He repeated her name as he curled the dumbbell again and again with his good left arm.

It was his fault. She had not gone with Lydia to the reunion be
cause he had opened his big mouth, changing everything. The con sequences and seriousness of the stroke were in the past, yet they were not in the past. The seriousness of the situation had crept up on him. But what could he do? How could a stroker, paranoid because he’s being watched from down the hall, do anything?

While he waited for Tamara to call back again, he exercised physi
cally and mentally. He tried to recall something, anything that would give him a clue to where Jan might have gone. He’d hoped the physi
cal exercise would make it easier to keep his thoughts focused. But it was no use. Interspersed with thoughts of Jan he recalled the man at the end of the hall, and this made him think of Dwayne Matusak.

A bad summer. The constant threat hanging over him. A knock
down drag-out fight from which only one would come out alive. At least that’s how he remembered it. Perhaps growing up in a rough neighborhood was why he’d looked to Sergeant Joe Friday for help. Joe Friday, with the 714 badge and the definitive “dum-da-dum-dum” re
frain signaling that in the end good wins out over evil. Joe Friday star
ing knowingly into his boyhood eyes. (Did Joe Friday have dark eyes? He wasn’t sure.) And at the end of the show, with badge 714 blown up to screen size, in walks the stroke, shooting up his brain despite return fire from Joe’s thirty-eight from behind the medulla oblongata.

As he continued exercising he could hear the sound of the televi sion down the hall. Something about it not being too early to get your boat order in for the upcoming boating season. He closed his eyes and could see, inside his head, a lone water skier being dragged about. He imagined beings from another world looking down on the planet and assuming this was how these creatures called humans punished those who had committed petty crimes. The channel changed and now the sound was a news report from a war-torn part of the world. As a re sult of this, the beings from another world would assume this was how
more serious crimes were punished. The criminals were made to put on uniforms and fight one another. Fighting one another in order to see who can squander more of the planet’s resources. Crazy. A planet that’s had a stroke. But is the stroke ischemic or hemorrhagic? It was hard to tell.

Finally, when the volume of the television down the hall was low
ered, he heard footsteps and the squeak of wheelchair tires on the tile outside his open door. When he opened his eyes and looked up he ex
pected to see the man from the end of the hall in his leather jacket, his baseball cap wagging in his hand, but what he saw was Phil and Frank and Joe wheeling past.

The room had darkened while he exercised and his train of thought had wandered far afield. He turned on his lamp, looked at his watch, and realized the other strokers were coming back from the rehab cen
ter to get ready for dinner. How much time had gone by since he re
alized Jan was missing? And, for that matter, was she really missing? When Phil wheeled up to his door and motioned for him to get ready for dinner, the phone rang. He motioned Phil away, heard a muttered, “Jesus fuck,” and answered, “Jan?”

“It’s me, Steve,” said Tamara. “You heard from Jan?”

“Tam. No.”

“Okay. Slow, like before. Stop me, or let me know if you want me to repeat anything.”

“Right.”

“I filed a missing person report on Jan.”

“You filed? Why?”

“I filed it because of some things I’ve found out. Listen for a while and don’t try to talk. After checking on Phil Hogan at the Eighth District, my contact wanted to know what I knew about Phil’s recent activities. I said I knew nothing. Then he told me he talked to his
chief and asked if I could put a tail on Phil. So we did, and Phil wasn’t out of the office a half hour before he made contact with a prominent member of the organized crime brotherhood that’s officially not sup posed to exist in Chicago anymore. I don’t know if you remember Max Lamberti, but the organized crime unit’s been after him for years. He’s related to the Gianetti family, Tony Gianetti’s nephew. Suppos edly he took over some of the operation after Gianetti’s murder back in eighty-six. Anyway, it wasn’t long after this that I heard about a fatal traffic accident in Orland Park this afternoon. Gianetti’s son was killed and I think it’s becoming too much for coincidence. His full name is Antonio Gianetti Junior. His attorney was killed with him. William Brown, known as Buster Brown downtown.”

Tamara paused to let this sink in, but Steve’s mind was working too fast to respond.

“So,” said Tamara, “I called in a missing person report on Jan. There’s probably nothing to it. Most likely she’s at a shopping mall or stuck in traffic, her phone switched off or broken. Even so, I decided not to take any chances. Jan contacted Phil Hogan, Phil seems to have something going on with Lamberti, and now Lamberti’s cousin and his attorney are dead. It’s being reported as an accident, but I talked to the Orland Park chief and he says the accident is under investigation and they might at least file a manslaughter charge.

“So it’s like this, Steve. On the remote chance Jan’s ruffled some feathers, I thought it best to reel her in. If there’s nothing to all this, which there probably isn’t, you can help me explain it to her later.”

Steve held onto the phone tightly with both hands, closed his eyes, worked his jaw, trembled, but was unable to say anything. He wanted to suggest logical steps, to say things that would start an investiga tion in the right direction. The names Max Lamberti and Marjorie Gianetti and Antonio Gianetti Junior and Rickie Deveno and Rickie
Justice and Dino Justice floated in his brain, but he could not say them. He wanted to tell Tamara about Marjorie and how this all started. He wanted to tell Tamara he should have known better than getting Jan involved in something like this. And now Jan grabbing onto this thing because she wanted to create a case for him. A new case for Steve Babe, the failed detective who most likely brought on his own stroke and deserved whatever he got. He’s so selfish he drags Jan into a goddamn fantasy so once again he can be who he used to be.

Details swam in his head, and the details became enmeshed with the words, everything coming to mind at once. Even the stupid jokes shared in rehab. He tried to concentrate, to say one solitary important thing that might help, but all that came out was a whimper.

“I’m sorry, Steve. You want me to call someone there? You need some help?”

Yes, he needed help.
Jan! My God, Jan!

“Steve? You need help? I can come there if you need me. You want me to come there?”

He looked to the window where gray sky was turning into the blackness of night. A jet rumbled overhead, vibrating the window glass. The lights had gone on in the parking lot and they were reflected in raindrops on the outside of the glass. The raindrops flickered as the jet passed overhead, thousands of coded messages from the signal bridges of thousands of ships lost at sea. Signals he could not compre
hend. Tamara was waiting for an answer to her question. Did he want her to come there? Would it do Jan any good, wherever she was in that darkness, if Tamara came to his room at Hell in the Woods? Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “No.”