Thomas Prescott Superpack (39 page)

Chapter 22

Within a mile was the Seattle Convention and Visitors Center, Westlake shopping center, the Seattle Symphony’s Benaroya Hall, the Seattle Art Museum, the Pacific Science Center, waterfront shopping along Elliott Bay, Safeco Field and the Seahawks’ Qwest Field, yet the Pike Place Market had remained the number one tourist attraction in the state of Washington.

I’d come to Pike for two reasons.
One, Christmas was less than two weeks away and I was yet to buy Lacy a present. I’d never sent anything overseas, but I imagined I wouldn’t be able to overnight it as per my usual method. Second, Shelly’s “bad man” might be in attendance. I wasn’t overly optimistic, but it was one of those rare Seattle sunny days—there wasn’t a cloud in the sky—and I had a feeling people would be out in record numbers.

The place was a zoo.
And I use the word “zoo” both literally and figuratively. Seriously, some of these people belonged in cages. I’m not talking about the bums and the beggars, who were ever-present—I’m talking about the street performers. Seattle was a hub of culture—art, music, and dance—and the street performers came in hordes.

In just the first block alone, I encountered about ten street performers.
Let’s see, there was Disco Dancing Guy, Manikin Guy, Multiple Instrument Guy, Piano Playing Bum, Old Chinese Guy with String Bow-Type Instrument, Hippie Band with One Too Many Sleeping Dogs, Blind Musician Guy, and countless others vying for your shiny quarter or crumpled George Washington.

My first objective was this Polish pastry joint.
The line was out the door, but I remembered it moved fast and I hopped in back. I ordered an apple cinnamon roll—they had a special name for it, of course, probably an eight-letter word with no vowels, like, “plztkjvc,” then moved on to Coffee Shop Alley.

There were about twenty coffee shops, including both the first Starbucks and the first Seattle’s
Best. I chose Starbucks because I am loyal and they need the money. Plus, they had the Pumpkin Spice latte, which, in two months when they discontinued, would land me in rehab. I sipped the beautiful drink and made my way over to watch the Piano Playing Bum.

About sixty people huddled in a half-moon around the man and his dwarf piano.
The guy was unkempt and probably hadn’t showered in a week, but he was simply amazing. Beethoven meets Gary Busey. He was the one guy who always had a thick crowd and his tip jar was always full. He had long white hair flowing from beneath a knitted cap, a ragged, green army jacket, and knitted gloves. The fingertips had been cut off the gloves, and you could see his fingers flittering away. On the side of his piano he advertised his CD was only $19.95 and he did private parties.

Good to know.

I listened to him play two songs, then stuffed a five-dollar bill in his tip jar.

Saturday was always the busiest day at Pike, at least for the picketers. They congregated nearest the north entrance where a huge park was nestled up on the water. Six or seven different groups congregated on the grassy knoll leading into the market, some were picketing the war—for and against—some the current traffic problems, some for candidates that I never heard of (for positions I’d never heard of), and even one that was picketing
picketing
.

I read a handful of the various signs:
Bush Wants Your Son Dead
,
Let’s Invade Canada
,
Make I-5 19 Lanes (Both Directions)
,
Vote Balsky Second Vice Treasurer
, and
No More Picketing at Pike.

Maybe there was an irony convention in town.

Anyhow, I didn’t come by a red-faced man with a pooch so I decided to take my chances with the booth owners.
Nobody caught my eye the front half of the market, but I did start and finish my Christmas shopping. I bought Lacy some earrings, a cool bracelet, and a couple pieces of local art she would love.

About the midpoint of the market is the Pike Place Fish Company.
Thousands of pounds of fish were displayed behind thick glass as well a hundred feet of shelved ice covered in every fish imaginable. I read some of the handwritten signs:
Fancy Alaskan King Crab
,
We Pack Fish for Travel
,
Local Live Mussels
,
Fresh Catfish
,
We Deliver all Downtown Hotels for Free, Wild Troll King Salmon is Finally Here,
and various others. One section was littered with enormous fish: giant salmon, marlin, swordfish. I guessed some of these weighed upwards of sixty pounds.

About a hundred people waited around the wraparound for the four employees, decked out in bright orange jumpers, to start throwing fish.
A timid young woman stepped forward from the crowd—she looked like one of those shy kids who step in front of the microphone at the National Spelling Bee—and asked for a particular kind of fish. The four orange-clad men yelled in unison, “Fish in!” One man went around the ice and grabbed an enormous fish about three feet long and heaved it into the air. The crowd “oohed” and “ahhed” at every toss, until the prize fish’s head was chopped off and it was neatly packaged. The woman paid for the fish and returned to the sanctity of the crowd. 

I watched the ruckus for twenty minutes, then started the second leg.
I perused for another two hours, making my way down to the far south end. I was watching a young man airbrush a hat when I noticed a man a couple booths down. Or I noticed the big dog perched in front of his booth.

I made my way over.
The dog was big and white. A husky. He had those light blue husky eyes. I’m not sure if the dog had a metabolism problem or if his diet consisted entirely of honey and jam—as the two empty jars beside him would indicate—but he was like the Jabba the Hutt of dogs. He didn’t seem all that scary and I gave him a rub behind the ears. As for the booth owner, he was more or less a kid. Maybe eighteen, maybe twenty. He had dark brown hair and a generous amount of raw acne, which gave his face a red cast. Worth a try.

He was working a booth that sold honeys and jams.
The young man was just finishing up with an older woman with a cane, packing her many jars into a box.

I sidled up to the table, set the bag holding Lacy’s gifts on the ground and leaned the two paintings I was lugging against the table legs.
A bunch of samples were laid out and I picked a straw of honey, which turned out to be peach, and sucked it down. It was heavenly.

The kid wrapped up the transaction with the woman and turned to me.
On closer inspection the kid’s face was a mess. Like one of those before pictures on the Proactive infomercials.

He smiled and said, “Whaddaya think?”

I thought about telling this kid he needed to invest in some tetracycline honey, but I still had the straw in my mouth and garbled, “Tastes like honey.”

The kid found this amusing, then said, “Yeah, the peach is one of our best-sellers.”

I cocked my head to the side and asked, “That your dog?”

“Yep. Larry.”

I looked down, but Larry had moved into the center of the walkway and appeared to be licking up the remnants of a dropped wafflecone.
Yeah, that’s just what he needed.

I turned back around.
The kid was fishing around under the table. He emerged with a honey stick from some secret supply and said, “Give this one a try.”

I took the straw from him and squeezed it into my mouth.
It was hard to describe, tart but delicious. I gave him a slight nod and he said, “Pomegranate.”

He had me taste several of his other flavors, all the while rambling about the quality of his honey, its origins, why it was better than the competition, and so on and so forth.
Then he went in for the kill, “So how bout we do one of each?”

The kid was good.

I’d forgotten why I’d stumbled to his booth in the first place.
I said, “Sure.”

He was packaging up my items when I said, “I have a couple questions for you.”
I added, “And they aren’t about honey.” I should mention that at this point I had my badge out and dangling in front of me. 

Pimply Face’s eyes registered the badge and his jaw literally dropped.
His Adam’s apple went up twice and I thought he might actually throw it up, two actions that rank extremely high on my list of suspicious behaviors.

Pimply Face went back to packing up my order, then in one quick movement lurched in my direction.
I didn’t have time to react, the entire contents of a jar of honey blasting me in the face.

For the record, it was the peach.

I’m not going to go into the particulars of honey and its structure, but it’s heavy and it’s sticky. I had honey in my hair, my nose, my eyes, my ears, my mouth, honey all over my chest, huge globs of it dripping off my chin and into my shirt.

I was not a happy camper.

I did a quick swipe of my face and turned on my heel.
My vision was a bit blurry on account of the honey glaze on my contacts, but I could still make out the back of the kid’s head as he darted through the crowd. I figured he had a ten step head start. I tore through the crowd screaming for people to get out of my way. Most people did. I turned a corner and smashed into a man strumming a guitar. I had just enough time to see that he was wearing dark sunglasses and a top hat. I struck the man hard and we both tumbled to the ground in a heap. I’d fallen on the man’s guitar case and pushed myself up.

I said, “Sorry.
I told you to watch out.”

The man said, “I’m blind.”

Right.

I guess watching out wouldn’t be his strong suit.
I turned. The kid was now about ten booths ahead of me, screeching around a large booth filled with flowers. I resumed the chase.  

At some point I noticed something clinging to my chest.
I glanced down. There were five or six quarters, three one dollar bills, and one ten dollar bill sticking to my honey-drenched sweatshirt. The blind guy must not be half bad.

I made it to the flower booth.
It was one of the longer booths, covered with bright bouquets. People were backed up four deep, sniffing and poking at the flowers. I needed to make up some ground on the kid, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d leapt onto the closest table. The table wobbled but held. There were four Asian women working the booth, and they all began screaming. One of the women grabbed a broom and swung it at me as I darted across the long booth. I’m not going to sugarcoat it—many a plant died that day.

I hopped off the platform, pulled the $14.25 off my sweatshirt, and plopped it on the counter. Karma and all.

A second round of screaming ensued and I peered down the length of the table.
At first I thought it was a polar bear. It wasn’t. It was Larry. He had decided to join the chase and had somehow jumped up onto the wobbly tables. I watched rapt as Larry slowly, methodically, knocked over—or ate—every flower in sight. Had I not been in the midst of a chase, I imagine I would have been rolling around on the ground in hysterics. 

But back to the chase.

Less than twenty yards behind me, there was a stairwell and I figured the kid probably went down. I took the stairs four at a time. When I reached the bottom I could make out Pimply Face going up the stairs at the opposite end. A couple dozen people were waiting in line for the restrooms, but for the most part the corridor was barren. I sprinted the stretch and vaulted up the stairs and into the sunlight.

I could see the kid huffing and puffing in the middle of the street.
His eyes bugged out when he saw me and he took off. He bolted left, crashing through a booth selling an assortment of multi-colored pepper mills. The kid ran through the back of the booth, knocking over a beam in the process, and the entire booth came crashing down.

It was a good move; the kid put some distance between the two of us.
I ran around the booth and entered into a densely packed walkway. We were nearing the Pike Place Fish Company where the crowd had quadrupled in the last hour.

I could see the kid weaving his way through the people.
I decided to make up some ground and darted behind the ice shelving to where the men in orange jumpers were standing, thinking if I could cut through the back, I would come out before the kid, then just wait for him to emerge. At least that’s how I figured it in my head.     

I heard the first “ooh,” then a loud “ahh.”

I never saw the fish coming.
It hit me hard in the chest. It felt like a truck. Apparently, someone had ordered a sperm whale.

I lay flat on my back, eyes closed, gasping for a breath that would never come.
The last thing I remember was the sensation of a tongue running down the length of my face.

Larry.

Then I blacked out.
 

Chapter 23

I looked up at the doctor. He was all white. White hair, white mustache, white coat, white face. His name was also White. Dr. White. Dr. White was holding something black. On closer inspection, it appeared to be X-ray film. He shook his head from side to side. I hate it when they do that

He said, “It looks like you’ve suffered a collapsed lung, Mr. Prescott.”

I readjusted myself on the bed—a blinding pain shooting through my chest—and managed, “Is that bad?”

“It isn’t
good
.” He added, “We actually thought you’d suffered a heart attack until we looked at the X-rays. You were reaching oxygen levels in the ninety-eighth percentile with your right lung alone.”

To my knowledge, I’d never reached the ninety-eighth percentile in anything in my life.
“Can you call my tenth grade Trigonometry teacher and tell her that?”

He threw me a half smile, probably his thirtieth of the day.
He turned and said, “Well, what we’re going to have to do is pump up that left lung of yours.”

Sounded easy enough.

“It will take about twenty-four hours.
And I’d be lying if I said it was pleasant.”

Not exactly the words a patient longs for.
But I guess it’s better than, “It’s malignant,” or, “It’s going to have to come off,” or, “I hope you didn’t buy any green bananas.”

He explained what exactly would be taking place and he was right, it didn’t sound pleasant.
They would make a small incision just under my armpit and insert a hose. The hose would vacuum out all the air surrounding the outside of my lung. In a sense, they were
sucking
my lung back open. The doctor started towards the doorway, then turned and said, “A nurse will be in shortly to get things started.”

Twenty-seven minutes later, there was a knock at the door and Patty walked into my life.
How would one describe Patty without invoking the gag reflex? I think she might have been a patient and won some
be a nurse for a day
sweepstakes. She had two moles. One on her forehead and one just under her chin. Let me tell you about these two moles. First off, they had a combined surface area of a tennis ball. Second, these two moles could have been the after picture on a Hair Club for Men infomercial. And third, they jiggled. Like Jell-O molds. 

If Patty wasn’t scary enough, she was pushing this huge machine.
Using my uncanny detective abilities, I deduced this was the machine that I would soon be attached to, ergo, it was the machine which would
suck
my lung open. Seriously, get Wes Craven on the phone.

Patty slipped this little thing on my finger—she called it a pulse oximeter—that monitored my oxygen levels.
She was putting an IV in my arm when it happened. I’m fine with needles, stick one in my eye if you please, but I was
not fine
with the proximity of Patty’s mole. As she was leaning down to insert the needle, Patty’s mole danced in the breeze like a Sugar Ray Leonard punching bag. Just as she found my vein, Mr. Mole brushed my shoulder. My arm flew up, Patty screamed, and I gagged—all within a nanosecond of one another. Patty covered her face and ran from the room.

I was confused until I looked at my finger.
There, on the plastic contraption on my left pointer finger, was Patty’s mole.

I may have screamed.

Two nurses barged through the door and asked what was wrong.
I told them. One of them turned white. The other picked the contraption off the floor thirty feet away—where I’d thrown it—and outfitted me with a fresh one.

The doc came in twenty minutes later.
He asked if I wanted to be put to sleep or if I wanted a local anesthesia. I told him to run the operation by me a second time. He said the surgery was simple enough; he would make a small incision under my armpit, insert a “chest tube” into my “pleural cavity,” which was attached to the “suction device,” which I would be hooked up to for “the foreseeable future.”

Anesthesia please.

I woke up two hours later in a fog.
The sterile post-op room slowly came into focus, as did the small child in the bed directly opposite mine. Apparently, I’d booked a double. And here I thought I was getting a suite. Looking back on it, I’m fairly certain Patty was responsible for this decision. I must have ripped off her
favorite
mole. I did her a favor if you ask me. A dermatologist would have charged a hundred bucks to lance that atrocity. If he charged by the ounce, it would have been twice that.

The kid’s name was Danny.
Danny was twelve. Danny had just had his tonsils removed. Because Danny couldn’t talk, Danny had a big pad and Danny would write messages on his big pad and Danny would wave his big pad at Thomas until Thomas read it. This is how Thomas would learn all the aforementioned data about Danny. Thomas would also learn that Danny liked to play basketball. And draw. And fish. And annoy the hell out of Thomas.

After about an hour of this, young Danny picked up some little video game thingy and started playing it.
Thank God.

I watched the clock for twenty minutes.
Then I watched my heart beat for twenty minutes. Funny thing is, when Danny was annoying the shit out of me, the time went considerably faster.

I asked, “What is that thing?”

He put the game down, scribbled on his pad, and held it up. It read, “Nintendo DS.”

I’d never heard of it.
“What game are you playing?”

He wrote some game I’d never heard of.
I asked, “Do you have Tetris?”

He nodded.
Then he wrote, “Do you want to play it?”

Oh, sweet, sweet Danny.

Danny walked the thing over and with a bunch of jostling and cajoling he showed me how to play it.
Needless to say, they’d made drastic improvements since the day of the Gameboy. Danny watched me play a game then retired back to his bed.

I was just getting the hang of things when I noticed Danny’s pad being waved in my peripheral.
I looked up. Written on his pad was, “Can I have it back now?”

I smiled and said, “Ten more minutes.”

He wrote ferociously, then held his pad up again. It read, “That’s what you said two hours ago.”

Actually it was three hours ago.
I smiled at him and punched the button on the side of my bed. Thirty seconds later, a nurse came bursting through the door. She ran to my bed and said, “Is everything okay? You tripped your panic button.”

“I’m fine.
But he won’t stop screaming.” I pointed at young Danny.

She looked at Danny.
She did the Poor Baby headshake, then proceeded to pull a syringe from her waist and stick it into Danny’s IV.

Danny looked confused.
I smiled at him and waved. Night, night, Danny. Three minutes later he was out cold.

I played the video game until it ran out of batteries.
I tossed it to Danny and it landed on his chest with a thud. He didn’t budge. Still out. Speaking of which, the medicine they’d given me was wearing off and I called the nurse for another dose. She obliged and a couple minutes later, I too was in a narcotic-induced slumber.

I woke up a couple hours later in a groggy stupor.
I sat up. Danny was awake and had a message waiting for me, “Rise and shine sleepyhead.”

I looked for something to throw at him, but everything in reach was bolted down.

Thirty seconds later Danny had a new message, “Grumpy. Paging Dr. Grumpy.”

I closed my eyes and mentally shoved Danny’s pen and pad down his throat.
When I opened my eyes, a lady was standing in the doorway, and it wasn’t Patty. I glanced at the heart rate monitor. Luckily, it was facing away from the woman in the doorway’s field of vision. The red numbers jumped from 63 to 83 to 97 to 106 to 118.

 
Not a good sign.

I said, “Are you here for your measles, mumps, and rubella shot too?”

Erica smiled and said, “Got mine last year.”

She took a couple steps towards my bed.
For the record, she was wearing blue jeans and a tan jacket. She had a pink hat pulled down low on her forehead. Not to mention, she
looked
like she
smelled
good. If that makes any sense. I glanced at the heart rate monitor.

115.

127.

135.

Erica plopped down in the chair nearest my bed and grabbed my hand. She smiled and
said, “Howya feeling?”

She was directly underneath the heart rate monitor which was now reading 161 in big red numbers.
If I didn’t get my heart rate under control here in the next couple seconds, three nurses were going to come crashing through the door.

I slipped my hand from hers and said, “Like Brett Favre on Monday.”

She flashed an uncomfortable smile. At my slipping my hand away or my dumb joke, she didn’t specify.

I asked, “How did you know I was here?”

“I have my ways.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She said, “I heard honey was involved.”

She must have read the police report. I nodded. “Peach.”

“They ended up catching the kid, you know.”
She paused, then added, “How did you know?”

“How did I know
what
?”

“About his secret stash?”

“The pomegranate? He let me sample it. Tastes a little like a mango wrapped in seaweed.”

“I’m talking about the
other
stash.”

I tried to sit up.
“Drugs?”

“Yeah.
He had a couple boxes of honey that was infused with methamphetamines.”

Meth honey.
No wonder he freaked when I showed him my badge.

Erica studied me for a second, then said, “If you didn’t know about the drugs, then why were you chasing him?”
She stood up. “Please tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with Ellen Gray.”

I put up my hands.
“Settle down there. Now, who is this Ellen Gray you speak of?”

She shook her head from side to side.
Like she had Parkinson’s. She looked like she belonged on the eighth floor.

She stammered, “I thought you said you weren’t going to get involved.”

“I’m
not
involved. I’m sitting in a hospital bed with a big tube in my side getting my lung sucked open.”

She sat back down.

“But for the sake of argument, why don’t you tell me how the case is progressing?”

“You promise you won’t get involved?”

“Scout’s honor.”
I failed to mention the closest I’d ever been to a scout was playing Stratego.

She took a deep breath.
“As you know, we arrested him last Thursday. He spent a total of forty-five minutes behind bars. This guy has connections like you wouldn’t believe. People are scared of him. Cops don’t want to go near him. Judges are ducking and covering like a field full of prairie dogs. I’ve never seen anything like it. Anyhow, a grand jury is convening starting Monday. They’ll decide if there’s enough evidence against him to mandate a trial.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And is there?”

“An overwhelming amount.”

I laughed.
This was inconvenient and I nearly threw up from the pain that coursed through my chest. Erica patted my arm and asked, “You okay?”

Her touch was electric.
The pain shooting through my chest was the last thing on my mind. I took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, I’m all right.”

What I wanted to say was, “Come on, kid, get a clue.
Why would Adam Gray, a man who reached the pinnacle of his profession by making a habit of not making mistakes—
any
—
ever
—leave a trail of cookie crumbs? It was an obvious setup. Such an obvious setup that I was starting to think that Adam Gray had set up his own setup. But again, he was too smart. Lawyers are the experts of persuasion and mind molding. And they do it without the jury knowing. Adam Gray was a master of manipulation. That’s what made him the best. If Adam Gray had committed this murder, Ellen Gray’s body would never have been found. This I knew for certain.

I stared into Erica’s deep hazel eyes.
She had these tiny little green flakes. Like little chunks of ivy growing from her perfect pupil. There was an intelligence in those eyes, the same intelligence I saw in the back of a spoon. She’d get to the truth eventually. I just hoped it was before I caused myself any more bodily harm.

There was a knock at the door and Patty popped in her head.
Or popped in her mole if you want to get technical. She said, “Visiting hours are over.”

I scratch my chin and said, “Thanks, Patty.”
She didn’t find this humorous and disappeared.