Like Grownups Do (21 page)

“I want you to know that it means a lot to us, Marshall,” Babe said.

“But you’re not going to cover a lot of pro bono type work at five hundred dollars a pop.”

“Some people get, shall we say, a slightly
higher
rate,” Marshall smiled.

“But we don’t need your money. Every year millions of dollars come into colleges and universities through alumni associations. You hear about them because every once in a while the NCAA will pop its head out of the sand and make a big show of spanking the alumni of some university because Johnny Quarterback or Jimmy Jumpshot has a new Corvette. Or maybe he has a job at the car wash that pays him seventy five dollars an hour, a job that he doesn’t even have to show up for.

“It’s a scam, I’m telling you. And it will never change. Why not? Because there are people with more money than they know what to do with. People like us worry about the mortgage and the car payment and where little Tommy is going to go to school. Some of these alumni associations have members that think nothing about writing a check that would pay off
all
of our homes, all so that
their
alma mater, which is also their daddy’s and granddaddy’s alma mater, can have a shot at a bowl game or a conference title or a national championship or a trip to the Final Four.”

“
This
is what I’m talking about—The Medical Alumni Association. That’s not an official title. It’s just what I call it. There could be a hundred of us—might be a hundred thousand. I’m sure I’ll never know.

“ I’m proud to know that there are active and retired physicians, and some wealthy individuals with a conscience, that have decided to make better use of their money. We’re not trying to buy sports teams. This is God’s work. Let me show you something.”

Marshall reached inside his coat and pulled out a half-dozen well-worn and dog-eared photos. He arranged theses on a table. Three photos he placed face down.

“These are three before and afters. This pair and that pair are mother and son. The mother in this photo was maybe seventeen or eighteen. We’re not sure because it’s not like you’re going to find a birth certificate. We found her through our church—through my mother, really. Note the lack of bone structure on the left side, particularly the lack of support around the nose and the upper lip—birth defects. God knows how she lived. She was living with a small group of homeless that migrate around the canals. MG, I’m not sure you want to see the first picture of the little boy.”

MG nodded. She pointed at the table.

“Oh, my God,” MG and Babe exclaimed almost simultaneously while covering their mouths.

“We assume the mother was raped, based on her living conditions and her physical condition. Two of her group was all that would speak to us, and no one recalls the girl ever speaking more than one word at a time.

“Neither of them was present when the boy was born but they said that there were four women that took care of the baby. From what we were told he was a normal, healthy baby, until— everyone was asleep when the screaming woke them up,” Marshall pointed to the picture.

“It was a starving pit bull that belonged to another homeless person. It had a filthy old piece of rope tied around his neck. We know all that because the girl’s group beat the dog to death.”

Marshall sighed. He sat back and stretched his neck.

“Sure, any medical staff anywhere would have saved that boy’s life. They probably would have done some reconstructive surgery. And
maybe,
just
maybe
, there would have been some media attention, a little pressure to go farther and not just shovel these two back out to the street. Look at this.”

He flipped over the picture of the mother. She was clear-eyed and smiling. The signs of the reconstructive surgery were evident yet the difference was still amazing. Marshall flipped over the picture of the little boy who was maybe two and a half years old, and though his scarring was severe, he was a good looking kid and smiled like any happy toddler.

“Our church is taking care of these two,” Marshall said, “The girl sits in with the grade school classes. She is smart as a whip and she’s learning to speak at the same time that she’s learning to read,” Marshall chuckled, shaking his chair and the table.

“She talks a mile a damn minute, and she
loves
to read. She reads to that little boy all the time. When you see her reading Curious George to that baby and she’s hearing it for the first time, too, if that don’t turn on the eye faucets for you, then you ain’t no damned human.”

“That’s incredible, Marshall,” Babe said.

“This little girl,” Marshall said, pointing to the last pair of photos.

“This is my cousin’s little girl—bad cleft palate. Her jaw wasn’t fully formed and her gums were almost nonexistent. They thought they were going to lose her because she couldn’t eat and she was in an almost constant state of gag reflex. My cousin and his wife were freaking out. I talked to a couple of surgeons about the baby’s condition, and I took out a forty thousand dollar loan. We got everything scheduled and I had them cover up where the money was coming from. I canceled a cruise we had planned that year.

“Everything went perfectly. Chad says it looks like her teeth are going to come in normally. After the surgeries I took my checkbook to the financial office. The girl there said, ‘the balance is thirty eight seventy five’. I wrote a check for thirty eight thousand and seventy five dollars. She looked at it, and said, ‘So, is this my tip?’

She slid the check back to me and said, ‘thirty eight dollars and seventy five cents, please, Dr. Gates. I take it you have a fairy Godmother that you don’t know about?’”

“I guess I do,” Marshall said.

“Hell of a story, Marshall. Makes my head hurt, but man, this is amazing,” Babe said.

“You know who the most important people are?” Marshall asked.

“The dentists,” MG said.

“The dentists. That’s right, MG,” Marshall said.

“We could never pull this off without them. The offices are usually a little more low-key and isolated, and if anyone sees something happening there after hours, they just assume it’s a dental emergency and they thank God that it’s not them. Dentists know how to deal with trauma, pain, and bleeding. We have several setups like this one—x-ray machines and the like.”

Chad Jenson spoke up.

“I’ve been patiently waiting to have my ass kissed. Was that it?”

Everyone laughed.

“Well,” Marshall said, “It looks like Millie’s tummy is okay with the medicine. I have to get back.”

Babe shook hands with Chad and gave Marshall a big hug. MG hugged them both. She kissed Marshall on the cheek.

“Give your mother a kiss for me. She isn’t the only one who would be happy to see you on the Supreme Court.”

“Can you help me get Millie into her apartment before I take you home?” MG asked Babe as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Of course,” Babe said, “Just drop me off at the office. I’m going to use Jordan’s apartment. I have a ten o’clock.”

“I guess I have an eight o’clock”, MG said. “Looks like I’ll be bringing you coffee for a little while. Just like the good old days.”

“Shit, that’s right,” Babe said. “What are we going to tell everyone?”

“There aren’t many options and it’s going to sound like bullshit no matter what we say. I guess we just go with she slipped on the stairs, fell, and hit her head,” MG said.

“And
who
do we tell?” Babe asked.

“I don’t expect Jordan in the office before Monday. Why don’t you call him and tell him what happened. And be sure to tell him that it was all my idea,” MG said.

“What about Jack?” Babe asked.

“I’ll talk to Jack. I’ll tell him I’m going to be covering for Millie for a couple of weeks and if he asks why, I’ll just ask him if he really wants to know. Right now, I don’t think he does.”

Twenty-Three

B
abe flipped on his workstation on his way to the apartment. He changed into a black track suit and a pair of athletic shoes. Before he draped his coat over a chair he reached into a pocket and took out Millie’s phone. A few keystrokes on his computer and he had what he wanted. He picked up the desk phone and called for a taxi.

Babe had the taxi driver stop two blocks from his destination. He paid the cabbie with a healthy tip and asked the cabbie to wait for him for what shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes. Babe walked up to the front door of a small house and rang the doorbell. He waited; one minute and no response. He knocked firmly on the door; still no answer. He knocked again, louder. The door jerked open, stopping at the security chain.

“What the fuck do you want, Joshua?” Bradley Weyner seethed through the opening. “This is none of your goddamned business.”

“You’re wrong about that, Bradley.” Babe said, leaning toward the three inches of open space. “It is very much my business.”

“She’ll be lucky if I don’t press charges. She could have killed me.”

“Do you really think a judge is going to look at her and not put you away? Try not being an idiot for a second,“ Babe said.

“Look, the fucking bitch—”

Babe pulled both hands from his coat pockets and slammed the heels of his palms into the door at the level of the security chain. The screws splintered the wood and the impact of the heavy door knocked Bradley’s feet from under him and put him onto his back. He scrambled backward against the door frame of the entry hall as Babe walked in. The only light in the entry trailed in from the rear bedroom. Babe knelt and leaned in toward Bradley.

Bradley’s face was darkened by the bruise that surrounded his wrecked nose. He continued to kick at the floor, backing up in a crab walk.

A swirl of darkness weaved among his flailing limbs, wrapping its tendrils under and around his neck and shoulders like the graceful moves of a conductor’s arms. The shadow engulfed his torso in a dark symphony of smoke.

“You are not to attempt to contact Millie ever again,” Babe said, softly.

“What are you going to do, Joshua?” Bradley asked. He turned his face away from Babe and kicked his legs, pressing himself farther against the door frame. “Beat me up? Kill me? You broke into my house. I’ll have you arrested!”

Babe spoke calmly.

“Three things can happen to you, Bradley. Your
best
option is that I come back for you. Option number two is that you become a very popular prison bitch. The very worst option? Bradley, you have some idea who Millie works with, don’t you?”

Babe leaned in closer.

“People disappear all the time,” Babe said.

That was the line that Bradley Weyner remembered—over and over and over; that line, and also the last thing that Babe said before he left the house, though Bradley was never able to make sense of it.

“They’ve already come for you.”

Babe woke in a dense mind fog and pried open one eye. He groaned when he saw sunlight peeking around the edge of the drapes of the office apartment.

Shit
, he thought.
It’s at least seven—a one snooze maximum
.

But that wasn’t going to happen, because his head was pounding. He worked at memory construction, feeling like a test chimp trying to push colored block shapes through the corresponding holes of a plastic cube.

Did I leave a bottle of Tylenol here or did I just think that it would be a good idea?

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and took a minute for his equilibrium to settle. He stood and took two steps toward the bathroom. His right leg seized in a cramp. He hopped around and suppressed the need to scream. He knew immediately what had happened; too much beer and not enough water.

This was not his first experience with self-imposed dehydration. It was an excellent companion for the effects of the rock hard mattress that Jordan had picked out. As the cramp in Babe’s leg subsided the pain moved vertically, nestling into his lower back.

Can you die from old age at thirty two?

It didn’t help Babe’s mood knowing that MG was already in the office, the coffee was dripping, and she was bouncing around in there like a hummingbird on crack, probably doing one handed pull-ups in the doorway and waiting for “the mortals” to join her.

I know what I’m going to do
, Babe thought.

I’m going to find out when the Blood Bank van is in the area, make sure that MG donates, and then go in behind her. Then I’ll whip out a pistol and hold the Bloodmobile hostage and demand that they transfuse me with her blood. Then we’ll see…
Babe lost the train of thought because all he could picture at this point was the Incredible Hulk.