Final Stroke (2 page)

“Never could see the point in it,” said Valdez.

“What?” asked Hanley.

“Fishing. You must not see any point in it either,” said Valdez. “Living next to the pier and I’ve never seen you out there.”

“Right,” said Hanley, adjusting his dark wraparound sunglasses. “But I’d wager it’s more relaxing than what we do.”

“That’s for sure,” said Valdez. “Why are we still in this business at our age?”

“We’re in it because we can’t get out,” said Hanley. “But get back to this Chicago dick named Babe. How did he get that name anyhow?”

“Apparently it comes from a longer Hungarian name,” said Val
dez. “An ancestor shortened it. A great name when you think about it. I’m told the stroke made him a happy guy. Even though I’ve never met him, I kind of like him.”

“Why is that?”

“Because people who have strokes mix words around in humorous ways and sound like they don’t know what they’re talking about. They think they’re talking about one thing when they’re really talking about something else.” Valdez laughed.

“It’s not funny,” said Hanley. “We might be there some day.”

“You’re right,” said Valdez. “Except I heard about this drug on talk radio the other night. They say if you get it right after you have a stroke, your memory loss can be minimized. Apparently hospitals down here are well stocked being that we live in heaven’s waiting room.”

“I’m glad the hospitals are prepared,” said Hanley. “The only problem is the drug they give us when we have a stroke won’t be the one they give other people.”

“You really think the director put that into effect?”

“A lot of things went into effect after the Patriot Act. But please, get back to Babe. Did you confirm his stroke?”

“We double-checked the medical records,” said Valdez. “Our man sat in on rehab sessions. Babe definitely had a stroke.”

“Is our contact up there a young man?” asked Hanley.

“Yes, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s gotten himself into the place as an aide.”

“Did he make sure no one else was trying to get to the widow? Be
cause if anyone does, you know what’s got to be done.”

“I know,” said Valdez. “For now we should simply continue watch
ing her. No need to do anything just yet.”

“Why do you say, just yet?”

“Because she’s becoming more lucid and she’s getting visitors.”

“Family?” asked Hanley.

“Yes, family. Somebody’s probably looking for buried treasure. Our man has ears in her room. So far her words have been meaning
less, but that could change.”

“Anybody named Lamberti been around?”

“Yes, the nephew. The son’s also been there. But the two never visit together. Bad blood in the family, I guess.”

“This young man you’ve got watching her, has he been there since she’s been in the place?”

“He has.”

“Besides visitors, anything else going on?”

“The usual health care scams,” said Valdez. “Rip offs run by the workers. So far, nothing involving the old lady and her family.”

“Does our contact think she knows anything about what hap
pened in the past?”

“He can’t say. But spouses talk to one another and she spent a lot of years with the old man before he died. Even though she’s had a stroke there’s bound to be something buried in her head.”

“That’s been the problem all along,” said Hanley. “We can’t con
firm she’s a blank slate.”

“Perhaps in this world people with strokes are the lucky ones,” said
Valdez.

“You mean because they get a chance to start fresh?”

“Like children,” said Valdez. “Except because stroke victims also have trouble comprehending things, their brains stay fresh longer. In
stead of being bombarded with media garbage, they have the freedom to ruminate. Instead of being told what to think by pundits, they make up their own minds.”

“And,” said Hanley, “instead of having their minds occupied by the latest celebrity trial or conspiracy theory, they might also have the freedom to piece things together that we don’t want them to piece together.”

After the sun disappeared into the Gulf, the crowd gathered at the end of the pier began to make its way back, sidestepping fishermen and pelican shit. A flock of seagulls moved in and two of the gulls fighting over fish guts screamed at one another like belligerent children. Now that the sun had set, the porch on which the two men sat was swathed in darkness.

Valdez took off his sunglasses and put on his regular glasses. “Some day maybe you’ll tell me what this whole thing is about?”

“Maybe,” said Hanley. “But for now you’ll simply have to tell our young aide back there to keep tabs on the widow and be ready to make a move if necessary. However, I do think it’s time to assign a backup in case things heat up in a hurry.”

After a pause, during which he frowned as he rubbed an aching shoulder, Valdez said, “A backup … sure, I’ll get on it. By the way, I know this thing goes way back. But at our age, who gives a damn what happens after we’re gone? Do you really care what happens after you’re gone? Come on, be truthful about it.”

Hanley took off his wraparounds and stared at Valdez in the dark.

“Well, do you?” repeated Valdez.

“Yes,” said Hanley. “I care very much what happens after I’m gone.”

Cars began starting up in the parking lot at the foot of the pier. But because of the stone wall lining the edge of Hanley’s property, the men could not see the cars driving off into the hot dusk. After a while Valdez got up slowly, went into the house, used the facilities, then headed out to his own car and the long drive in the dark across the Everglades Parkway.

As Valdez drove he tuned in the satellite radio weather for the cen
tral northern states. The Midwest was rainy and cold, especially in Chicago and suburbs where an easterly wind swept off Lake Michigan. Unlike here in south Florida, there had been no sunset in Chicago, no sun visible all day long according to the weather channel.

Valdez could occasionally see a pair of eyes reflected in his head
lights. The eyes were behind the safety fence bordering the highway. Sometimes the eyes would disappear as the creature either turned back into the safety of the Everglades, or as it sank back down into the swamp. In a way, thought Valdez, we are all creatures living in a swamp with boundaries beyond which we have no control, beyond which we have no knowledge.

Valdez took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Although he’d gotten the glasses less than a year earlier, he had a feeling his prescrip
tion had changed yet again. He didn’t like this night driving, espe
cially when oncoming vehicles rushed past in a blur. Next time Han-ley wanted to see him he’d be sure to arrange their meeting earlier in the day. Driving all this way at night was risky. Sometimes, when he glanced at the rearview mirror and saw nothing but the black night, he had the feeling death was catching up to him. Maybe a one-car acci
dent wouldn’t be such a bad way to go compared to having a stroke.

Valdez switched from the weather to a Latin Rhythms music channel. What the hell, too late now to worry about how he’d lived
his life. At least he’d made it this far with all his body parts intact. And only one scar after all these years. One knife wound from that crazy bastard Mexican turned terrorist.

As he listened to the music channel, Valdez heard a momentary dropout, probably a plane or a flock of birds or something between him and the satellite, perhaps even another satellite. The momentary blip in the otherwise uninterrupted digital signal reminded him of the old days of amateur radio. All analog back then. First code when he was a boy of sixteen and received his novice license, then voice, first on AM, then SSB. From deep inside his brain the Morse code dots and dashes for the number seventy-three played out. Dah-dah-dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit-dah-dah. Seventy-three, the traditional amateur radio end
of-contact signoff, meant good luck.

Valdez had been an amateur radio operator (a ham) when he was recruited by the agency. He and Tom Christensen and George Skin
ner had all three been hams when they were in training. Upon gradu
ation, Christensen and Skinner had stayed at Langley while Valdez was assigned back to his native Miami. For years he and Christensen and Skinner had communicated on the high frequency bands, a weekly schedule on whatever band was open. But the good old days of ham radio were long gone. Skinner was his current contact at Langley and their only contact was via scrambled landline. Christensen was retired in Arizona and Valdez hadn’t spoken with him in years.

Earlier today, back at his apartment on the scrambled line, Skin
ner had reminisced with Valdez about the old days. He had men
tioned Tom Christensen and spoken of the three of them “chewing the rag” with one another and any other ham from any part of the world who could contact them.

“It was so unlike now,” Skinner had said earlier that day. “Com munication today is viewed as a right. Everyone needs his or her own
personal phone. Everyone needs instant communication. It’s really too bad when you think about it. Back then it was a nice hobby, and what we could do, talking to the other side of the world, was some thing only we could do.”

The conversation with Skinner, and the mention of Tom Chris
tensen retired somewhere in Arizona, had made Valdez feel his age. It had set him up for this entire day. Aches and pains and having to visit Hanley, who was also retired. The conversation with Hanley about a detective with a stroke and an old widow in a nursing home. And now, after all that, and at his age, he’s got to drive back to Miami in the dark.

The rhythm of the music matched the pounding of his tires on the highway expansion joints. It was hypnotic. It was cerebral. He felt at peace with himself. What’s done is done. He’d lived the way he wanted and with any luck he’d make it to retirement and his pen
sion bonus and then, like Hanley, build himself a fortress down here designed to withstand hurricanes, and maybe build another place up north for use during hurricane season. He imagined sitting on his own porch watching the sun set into the Gulf each evening. Not a care in the world.

TW
O

It had been a winter of strokes, seemed everyone she
knew had one. It had been a winter like a stroke, coming on strong in November—surprising everyone, the way cerebrovascular acci
dents do—and lasting into March. By now there were supposed to be good days here and there—harbingers of spring—but the weather had soured the way words did in her throat when she couldn’t get them out. Today, when she looked through the windows of this place, the trees beyond the brown lawns and gray parking lots had looked like skinny soldiers with limbs akimbo marching home from war, march
ing home in the wet cold month of March.

To Marjorie Gianetti, life could be frustrating. Bad enough when words didn’t do what they were supposed to do, what really frosted her was when something was happening and she had no idea what it was.

Like now. Here she is being escorted down the hallway by a young man who obviously knows her quite well, and trees from the woods are marching around in her head like skinny priests in black robes so that no matter how hard she tries, she can’t think of the young man’s name.

She tried to ask his name, but was aware, even as the question came to the surface, that she shouldn’t have done this, because the words that bubbled out, like vile odors from a sewer, were, “Fuck the Pope.”

The smile on the young man’s face, when she paused within the confines of the walker and glanced up to him, seemed inappropriate. Not because of what she’d said. After all, she was a severe right-brain stroke victim, everyone who ever came to her or washed her or walked beside her in this place knew that. Saying what she said about the Pope made sense to her because these were words from the past, and words from the past had a way of spewing out of her mouth before she could stop them. Not that she’d made a habit of cursing the Pope. No, that wasn’t it at all. But because she’d been a devout Catholic, and because the word
fuck
was a curse her late husband—God rest his soul—had used in every other sentence, “Fuck the Pope” had simply popped out. Words erupting from a stroke victim’s mouth were sometimes crazy mixes of what had once been there. It was as simple as that.