Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[Duncan Sheik \\ In The Absence of Sun]

Intermezzo  –  Madness and the Desperate Flight of aquaTarkus

Part IV: Murder, Mayhem, and Flight

His dreams came in numbers, only now all his numbers were changing.

The first change came to him in the form of a cat. Schrödinger’s cat, he realized with a start. He began to see quanta as he slept – and then the interactions between vast mechanical systems and large celestial bodies. In his waking hours Brendan Geddes soon became obsessed with gravity, and then quite suddenly his dreams metamorphosed into guiding animations of gravity waves – yet before he really understood what was happening these new animations examined gravitational interactions on a galactic scale.

He would wake in the morning soaked in sweat and utterly exhausted, and when he opened his eyes he usually found Susan sitting up in bed beside him, looking disoriented and confused. One morning he found a curious mark on the back of her neck, a small, delicately raised melanin-like horseshoe-shaped oblate, something he might have easily mistaken for a birthmark. Yet he knew her skin. He had kissed the contours of this neck. And this was new. When he pointed the mark out to her she reached up to touch it and flinched as sharp, burning stabs radiated down her arms and out to her fingertips. She didn’t have any birthmarks, she said, but she’d had a nightmare about something biting her on the neck as she’d slept.

And he knew then what she’d encountered. One of them. One of the Greens, one of the technicians. So…now they were interested in her, too.

But…why?

The Doc picked them up the very next Friday. After work. Bound for Sea Ranch, bound for Callahan’s house, and The Doc seemed happy enough to see him – though there was now an undercurrent of unease swirling around the physician. That was to be expected, and Brendan understood what he saw inside the eyes he watched in the rearview mirror. Susan had told them, after all, that he’d been hospitalized. In one of those places. What was the term the blind used? The ‘Booby Hatch?’ Or…the hospital with rubber rooms? But that was so unfair, and so far away from the truth.

And yet he felt their unease even more acutely as they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge – with its ‘suicide fences’ and suicide hotline signs posted at regular intervals. But he’d never wanted to die, had never wanted to harm himself, so why were they regarding him as if he did? Didn’t anyone understand? Couldn’t they see beyond all that noise?

The Doc liked to take the Coast Highway. He liked the peace, he said, the windblown meadows and the flat slate blue sea beyond. Susan had decided to sit up front with her father, and that had left him sitting in back with Susan’s stepmother, and Brendan regarded her with cool, dispassionate precision. He was on guard as soon as he sat beside this woman – because she was closed-off to him. She was an abyss; no numbers formed around her so he had way of solving for her, and that unsettled him.

And she had been face down in a folder full of financial statements as he climbed in the rear seat; she had hardly looked up, barely acknowledged his presence through the city and out across the Golden Gate, and even then she had picked up a brick sized cellular telephone and called a broker in Hong Kong and another in Tokyo.

Yet when she finished her calls she had put away her papers and turned to him.

“Sorry,” she began, “but I had to get some loose ends tied up before we lose cell coverage.” Her easy smile was filled with genuine warmth and he’d instantly felt at ease. Numbers filled the air over her head and he started sifting through her various solutions.

“I missed you,” he said to her, and even Susan had thought that an odd thing to say.

“Really?” DD said, nonplused. “Well, how nice of you to say so. How have you been?”

He didn’t really know how to answer that question, so he decided the truth was best. “Lonely. Terrified and lonely.”

“Terrified? What scared you most?”

“Not knowing what they want.”

Unfazed, DD turned and looked into the boy’s eyes. “Who wanted what from you, Brendan?”

“I still don’t know what they want from me. From us. Or even why they are here?”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Brendan.”

“The Blues. I’m not sure why they’re here.”

“The Blues? Do you mean some kind of depression?”

He shook his head. “No. The Blues, like this one,” he said, reaching out and touching something that could have easily been mistaken for a mote of dust. It was hovering near the overhead light between them, and DD looked at the tiny blue sphere and her eyes narrowed.

“What is that?” she said to no one in particular – as she reached up to touch it.

“Be careful,” Brendan said. “It’s very cold, close to absolute zero, I think.”

Susan had turned and was now looking at the orb, and even The Doc had adjusted his rearview mirror to take in the action – but as soon as he saw the sphere he slowed and pulled off the highway and onto the shoulder.

DD reached up and touched the sphere and her hand immediately recoiled.

“What the Hell is that thing?” The Doc said as he picked up his wallet and swatted the sphere. Yet the sphere did not move. At all. So The Doc pushed on the sphere. Gently at first, then more forcefully. And still it did not move. Yet where his leather wallet touched the sphere, material began to sputter and smoke. “Okay everyone, out of the car,” The Doc said, now clearly unnerved.

“There’s no need,” Brendan said quickly. “The Blues won’t hurt you. They might even protect us.”

DD reached out and touched him. “Do they ever hurt you?” she asked. Her voice was overflowing with empathy, her eyes full of the gentle, unknowing sincerity so common among the innocent. The untouched.

“The Greens hurt,” he told her, his words measured and equally sincere. “I don’t think they mean to, but they do. I think the Greens are measuring Susan now, and that troubles me.”

“Susan?” The Doc growled. “What has she got to do with this?”

“I don’t know. They don’t talk to me.”

“They don’t, Brendan, or they won’t?” The Doc asked.

And Brendan shrugged. “Is there a difference?”

But The Doc shrugged. “Have you asked them anything?”

But the boy shrugged his man-child shoulders. “I never see Them. Only their spheres.”

“You mean,” The Doc said, pointing at the sphere, “that there’s someone inside that thing?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I think they come when I sleep. Susan, show them your neck.”

Susan pulled her hair away, revealing the horseshoe shaped oblate, and The Doc palpated the area with his surgeon’s fingers, then he sighed. “I think there’s something in there,” he said, his voice trembling a little. “Brendan? Who do you think these people are?”

“I’m not sure. But Harry knows, and I think you’ve seen them before, too.”

And then the sphere simply disappeared.

And in the blink of an eye they arrived at their house in Sea Ranch, having traveled seventy miles in what felt like less than a second. Only now it was dark out, and when The Doc looked at the clock on his car’s dash he realized four hours had simply vanished – and that he didn’t remember driving since he’d pulled over to the side of the road.

“What just happened?” DD asked the darkness.

But Brendan was simply looking out the car’s window – as if there was nothing out of the ordinary going on – and he opened the door and climbed out into the night. He looked up into the night sky, trying to orient himself to his surroundings, trying to see Them and where they were hiding now. He heard Susan running and he turned to her with open arms.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said to her as she wrapped herself around him. It was all so clear now, the why and the how. The only variable remained the when of things.

“I can’t help it,” she cried into his chest.

“I think I understand, but I don’t think they will hurt you.”

The Doc heard that and swung around to face Brendan. “What are you talking about? What’s going to happen?”

Brendan looked at the physician then he pointed at the sky. “They’re going to take Susan, but you will try to stop them.”

“What? Who’s going to take my daughter…?”

“They are,” Brendan said, still pointing at the sky.

DD came over and stood next to her husband, and then she took his hand while they both turned and looked up.

“What the devil is that…” The Doc whispered.

The sphere was so translucent it hardly registered to the human eye, but it was there, it was decidedly green…and it was huge, at least compared to the blue mote they’d seen earlier.

“Brendan,” DD started to ask, “can you stop them?”

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that.”

“But…can you?” Susan asked, now clearly more than terrified.

“Let’s drive back into the city,” The Doc began, but Brendan cut him off.

“That won’t matter,” he said.

Susan stepped back a little, and she looked up into the man-child’s eyes. “You told me you needed to see Harry, and that you wanted to talk to him about a murder…”

“What?” The Doc screamed. “what murder?”

“Susan. Susan is going to be murdered.”

“Who’s going to kill her, Brendan?” The Doc stuttered. “Do you know?”

“Oh, yes. I am.”

DD rushed to her stepdaughter’s side and pulled her away from the man-child. The Doc reached inside his car and pulled a small pistol from a cubby in the door, and then he placed the black hole of the barrel right up against the man-child’s forehead. “Start walking, mother-fucker,” The Doc growled as he pushed Brendan up the street towards the Coast Highway, the end of the barrel pressing into the skin above the man-child’s eyes.

“You shouldn’t interfere,” Brendan said, his voice flat, his words matter-of-fact and dripping with icy-cold finality. “Harry Callahan is supposed to stop me. They need him to stop me. Don’t interfere!”

“DD! Go inside, now! And for God’s sake, call Harry!”

DD pulled Susan free of her confusion, pulled her back into the comforting grasp of that other reality, and she slammed the door shut on the unfolding anarchy consuming what remained of the life they’d known. She ran for the phone and dialed Harry’s number, and Eisenstadt answered on the seventh ring.

“Deborah, get Harry and come quick. It’s that boy, Brendan!”

“The one in the mental hospital?”

“Yes! And he says he’s going to kill Susan!”

Then everyone heard the sound of a pistol firing. Once. Then a second time.

“Oh my God,” DD screamed, dropping the phone… 

“We’re on the way…” Eisenstadt said to the nothingness.

Susan clung to DD, her eyes closed so tightly her tears couldn’t run down her face, and they stood there waiting until they heard Harry’s Land Rover rounding the corner and racing down the street – then brakes screeching to a stop.

But an impossible stillness had enveloped the houses on the little cul-de-sac.

DD looked out a window and saw pulsing strobes in red and blue and so she assumed that Harry had somehow called for backup. She went and opened the door and stepped out into the night… 

…and then she fell to her knees.

Brendan was inside a spinning blue sphere that was hovering about fifty feet above the pavement, and she could see that the man-child’s naked body was now bruised and bloody.

And Doc Watson was laying face up in the street, Deborah Eisenstadt doing CPR on his still, lifeless body. She started for her husband but Harry stopped her, and DD collapsed into his arms. Then she heard Susan run past, running to her father’s side.

But she stopped short – as a large pink sphere descended and settled a few feet above the pavement – and Susan watched in astonished agony as an impossible looking creature stepped out of the pink sphere and walked over to The Doc. It bent over Watson’s lifeless body and then gently pushed Eisenstadt away before it summoned another sphere. This second sphere settled over The Doc’s body then simply winked out of existence, leaving the tall pink feathered creature standing there. It looked up at Brendan inside the blue sphere and it summoned that sphere, too, only this one settled on the pavement and disappeared – leaving the man-child curled up on the pavement – then it turned to Susan.

“I think your friend needs some clothes,” the creature said, her voice decidedly feminine, and oddly enough she spoke with an accent that seemed to have been born on a beach while hanging around with a bunch of sunburnt surfer dudes. It bent over Brendan and sprayed something that looked like viscously transparent foam all over his body, then it turned to Susan, again. “Uh, like could you find him something to put on? He’s going to freeze his ass off out here.”

Susan twitched and her head shook rapidly, then she walked out to the car and picked Brendan’s duffel from the trunk. She found some briefs and shorts and a t-shirt and carried them back to the creature.

“Hey, if you think I’m putting his clothes on you got another thing coming,” it said.

“What?” Susan gasped.

“Put his clothes on, please,” the creature added, now exasperated.

Susan found that the foam had evaporated and Brendan’s skin was now spotlessly clean. She couldn’t see even one injury…no gunshot wound, no scrapes or contusions…not a – thing. She nodded and bent over to help dress Brendan, but she stopped and looked up at the creature. “What happened to my dad?”

“Acute myocardial infarction. Which does not explain why he subsisted on dead animal flesh and rum, but what the Hell. You only go around once, I say.”

Callahan walked up to the creature, a new stainless steel Model 629 hanging limply by his side.

“Excuse me,” the pink creature said, “but those things really scare the shit out of me.”

“Huh? Oh,” Callahan said as he slipped the Smith & Wesson into its shoulder holster. “Sorry about that.”

“No big, man,” the creature said. “Uh, like, I don’t mean to make a big deal out of all this, but could you, like, help her get some clothes on this dude?” Deborah came over to lend a hand and the creature finally noticed Harry’s stainless steel leg. “Oh! What the fuck is that?” the creature said, pointing at Callahan’s prosthesis.

DD walked down slowly – feeling bereft and alone – and she walked into Callahan’s arms. “Where’s my husband?” she sighed.

“The physician? You know, you really should take better care of him. No salt, just lemon juice, and no more red meat!”

“What?” DD gasped, openly weeping now.

The creature looked away, shaking her head a little as she spoke into the night. Moments later another pink sphere descended and settled on the pavement, and the creature reached down and took DDs hand then led her to the sphere. Once DD was inside this third sphere it too popped out of existence, and the creature returned to Callahan, Eisenstadt, and Susan. Then she looked down at Brendan.

“He won’t remember any of this,” she said, “but Susan, don’t blame him. He had nothing to do with this.”

“What – are you saying?”

“Harry,” the creature sighed, “maybe she could sleep with you two tonight?”

Callahan nodded, but his brow furrowed deeply now. “You know, it sure seems like you know an awful lot about us.”

“You know,” the pink creature replied, “I think so too,” she said as she stepped into her sphere and winked out of existence.

+++++

And Brendan did indeed not remember a thing. In point of fact he had no memory of the last two years. None. He woke up on the sofa in Callahan’s living room early the next morning and started screaming, and nothing anyone said got through to him. The last thing he remembered was heading off to Stanford – two years ago – and quite literally everything else was gone. 

Harry called the boy’s parents and tried to describe in the most basic terms imaginable where their son was and then he asked what he should do with him; the boy’s father wanted to know if Harry could get him down to SFO and onto a flight to Los Angeles. Not wanting to make the drive he called the CatHouse and arranged for a noon pickup at the little airstrip near Sea Ranch, then he told the boy what had happened last night, while Susan filled Brendan in on the last two years of their life together.

And Brendan calmed down as the morning progressed. He wanted to know more about Susan, like how they’d met and how close were they. The basics, in other words, but he had a hard time putting two years into proper context. He managed to eat a little avocado and lemon juice, and for good measure he ate a handful of blueberries from Oregon, then it was time for his helicopter and Susan said goodbye to him before he left the house. Harry sat beside the boy all the way to SFO, and he and Deborah got him out to the gate and onto a Southwest flight into LAX before they left him.

He felt a yawning black chasm where his life had been, and looking down through the clouds at the sunburnt coastal hills he thought of a book he had read once. Henderson the Rain King. And he started hearing a voice that said I want, I want, I want…the rest of the way to Los Angeles International.

He recognized the Valley down there and then the 737 was turning onto final and downtown LA slipped by. He watched another aircraft – maybe a mile away – line up to land on the other parallel set of runways, the pair on the south side of the airport. The other jetliner seemed to hang there motionless in the sky – because the two aircraft were flying at about the same speed, and he wondered what it would be like to be suspended in the sky, neither flying nor falling, just being…

…and then he saw a helicopter vault up from below… 

…and as he watched the helicopter struck the other airliner’s right engine. The engine fell away and an immense fire broke out on the wing, immediately engulfing the right side of the airliner as it shuddered like a wounded animal before it rolled and began to fall out of the sky…

And almost immediately the pilots of his airliner applied full power and climbed back into the safety of the sky, back to being suspended inside a metal tube surrounded by nothingness and now all he could see in the air was an equation that screamed I want I want I want – more life. 

His airliner turned hard to the south and out over the Pacific and he saw the marina below and a rising column of black smoke coming up to meet the clouds and everything seemed different now. Life no longer felt like an abstract series of equations to be solved, but a precious thing to be nurtured above all else.

The pilot came on over the PA and told his passengers that LAX was now closed and that dozens of inbound aircraft were being rerouted to Long Beach, John Wayne, and Lindbergh Field, and that he’d let them know where they were going to end up as soon as he found out from air traffic control.

They landed in San Diego a few hours later and he called his parents. His father asked him to rent a car and come home as soon as he could and the boy remembered that he had in fact learned to drive once and he thought he could still drive. He had a license, anyway, and lots of credit cards, so why not give it a try…?

He got onto the Interstate and headed north just as the sun settled into the sea. He got off in Irvine and made his way down to the Coast Highway. He stopped for dinner in Newport Beach before he continued north along the coast. He felt alone. He felt lonely. And he’d never considered that those two things were separated by things like fear and faith, and now he considered that he’d never really known the difference – between fear and faith.

He saw things now with a clarity that had eluded him all his life, but he had to wonder about all the other things he’d missed out on along the way. And soon enough he saw the Vincent Thomas Bridge just ahead and he wondered what waited on the far side of this very peculiar night.

[Duncan Sheik \\ She Runs Away]

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

A brief segment, little more than a shattered fragment setting the stage for…something new.

[Joe Cocker \\ Feelin’ Alright]

Intermezzo  –  Madness and the Desperate Flight of aquaTarkus

Part III: Madness

His dreams came in numbers, just as they always had. 

Then he found his way to music and he had hoped, for a while, that the numbers he dreamed might lead to something new, to some new way of seeing, and being, in this life.

But maybe it really had all come undone out there at the house perched above the cliffs. He still wasn’t sure, because in the aftermath none of what happened had made the slightest sense. When he returned to school after that weekend nothing was as it had been, yet everything was the same, even after Susan got angry and left.

But no, that wasn’t quite right, because one thing really had changed. The spheres came to him after he met that detective, and they had been with him ever since. But the thing he had first seen in the other girl, the girl with the odd last name, he had also seen in the detective, and in the woman always by his side. They were closed off to him, like there was nothing left to solve. Their music had disappeared, and he desperately wanted to know why…

+++++

He found he missed Susan, sometimes so much that he began to feel her absence. Like a gut punch, when he thought about her he doubled over to hide from her pain. Then he would find himself thinking about the chameleon, Tracy, and all the ways she had used him to get what she wanted from him. But the pain she gave was different. The hurt he felt, the pain she gave him, was easier to solve, if only because the pain she gave him had been bought and paid for with such an easily found currency.

But then he thought about Debra Sorensen.

Her pain wasn’t really pain at all. She’d never done anything to hurt him. She’d simply been. Alive. And in the days after Sea Ranch there had been times when he’d looked in the mirror and he’d found her there, looking into his eyes, asking questions she’d never had the chance to ask. He wanted to talk to her so much but silvered glass wasn’t good for that. The equations he saw there were little more than reflections of echoes that had faded into nothingness a long time ago.

He flew home one weekend and he saw her with a hulking jock and he had felt betrayed. It was too much.

So he sat under their avocado tree and words came to him as new equations formed in the bitter juice he had swallowed, and his father found him out there barely clinging to life. He had not wanted to come back, so he had clung to the darkness. When he came-to he felt betrayed, again, but his hands were tied to the rails of a hospital bed. He was being fed through the veins in his arms and things in that food began dulling the world he had known. The equations he had relied on to see his way through life began to fade and soon everything felt unfamiliar and hostile. Soon he only wanted to die even more than before, and as all these new, unwanted sensations coursed through his veins he felt himself dissolving.

His minders wanted him to play their game. They wanted him to swallow their magic pills and paint pictures after he made his bed and he had to eat their dead animal flesh or they would tie him to the bed again and anything was better than that. Wasn’t it? And yes, there was. He decided to sleep, because the pain went away when he closed his eyes to their world. And so he slept. And he slept and he did his best to turn away from all their poking and prodding and he longed to just fall away from the light.

But then they strapped him to a gurney and wheeled him to some kind of procedure room. They strapped electrodes to his head and chest and wrists and ankles, then they forced his mouth open and put some kind of cold rubber in his mouth just before the hard sleep came. He never felt the cold, hard shocks of their electro-convulsive therapy, but he came out of the fog for a few days and he saw their strange, dull world – while it lasted.

The next time they used insulin to shock his system and when he came-to he felt exhausted. His muscles ached. He was so hungry it hurt. But the fog had lifted. Again. A week later they used electricity again, then insulin the week after that and on and on it went – until the fog seemed to lift one time, and it didn’t come back.

He began to talk. And people listened to what he had to say. They helped him cope.

Yet none of these people could account for his dreams of the blue spheres. He simply had to have some kind of schizo-affective disorder, so they labeled him again and started all kinds of new medicines to treat his hallucinations.

And then one night a nurse came into his room and what she saw made her scream.

Brendan Geddes had been covered with swirling blue spheres, and his body seemed to be on fire – on the inside. But worst of all, his glowing body had been hovering several feet above the bed in his room, and the other nurses who answered the screams they’d heard and all of them reported seeing the same thing. So the dutiful physicians discontinued the anti-psychotics they had just prescribed and they spoke of starting over, of going back to square one.

Only no one knew how to account for what those nurses had seen and experienced.

So there was no square one.

In fact now these very same physicians wanted nothing more than to get this most peculiar patient well enough to be on his way and out of their hospital.

Because, frankly, if they had been forced to admit the truth they would have had to admit that they were all now quite scared of Brendan Geddes.

The unknown did that to some people, and he understood that kind of confusion… 

Yet Brendan thought that fear was kind of funny and pointless. Because in the equations he built, like castles in the clouds, he always solved for the unknown.

+++++

So he went back to Stanford and resumed his studies. And though the spheres came with him they only came out at night.

And he began to see again. People, reduced to equations. People, as equations to be solved. 

And soon enough he knew he would have to go back up to the house perched above the cliffs, because that was where it had all come together. Before it had all came undone. But he saw a great pain coming. Pain he might be able to stop.

But first he wanted to make music. He wanted to make sense of this new old world – and music seemed to be the best way to find his way back. He started taking his guitar over to the Shumway Fountain and playing what he saw, watching and waiting for unsolvable people to drift by. On sunny afternoons he might pick his way to In Her Shadow and people would stop and listen; some even recognized him and waited for more but more never came.

But then one day Susan walked by while he was playing and she stopped and listened for a while – before the pain became unbearable – and then she walked away. Yet he’d seen her. And her equations were still cool blue stone cold simple. Even so, when the sight of her rekindled memories of Charlie’s masalas he had smiled.

A few days later she walked by again and this time she stopped.

She wanted, she said, to talk. About all the things that hadn’t happened.

He watched numbers form in the cool blue air over her stone cold heart and he smiled as new chords formed to answer the questions in her eyes.

“Is that my song?” she asked as she watched him watching her.

And he nodded.

“Do you hate me?” she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t summon the courage so he answered for her.

“No, I don’t hate you. But why would you care what I think?”

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

He had shrugged. “Does that matter?”

“Yes, it does. Do you think you know me so well?”

“I thought I did. Once.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

“Liz?”

“Yes,” she cried. “Liz!”

“No, not really. But she was…interesting.”

“Interesting? What does that mean?”

“She was complex.”

“Complex?”

He nodded. “Yes. I saw layers of time unfolding beyond the sky, and she let me see inside.”

“What?” Susan said, now completely befuddled. “See inside…what, exactly?”

“The past. I could see her past, and for a moment I felt like I could see her future.” He looked into the air over Susan’s downturned eyes and he found the chord he was searching for, then another and another.

“Are you writing a song?” she asked.

“Always,” he replied.

“Is that how you see me? As…music?”

“That’s how I see everything, Susan. It’s how I feel my way through the pain.”

“And that’s how you saw Liz?”

He nodded his head slowly, then he smiled as new chords formed through her understanding.

And then she came and sat beside him, and she started to cry. “Oh, God no,” she said through her tears, “what have I done to you?”

“The doctors tried to take it all away, but they couldn’t. The Others wouldn’t let them.”

“The others?”

He shrugged. “When they want you to meet them they will let it happen.”

“Brendan? What are you talking about?”

“Look up. Straight up.”

She did – and at first she couldn’t see anything, then she rubbed her eyes and squinted into the sky.

And she saw the faintest outlines of a blue ball overhead, the color almost a perfect match to the sky beyond. “I think I see something,” she said.

“A blue sphere, right?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Don’t be afraid. They won’t hurt you. The Greens hurt, so leave them alone.”

“What do you mean, they hurt?”

“Sometimes they come in the night and even the Blues leave. The Greens hurt, but they understand me.”

Susan swallowed hard, and she was suddenly very afraid. She wasn’t sure if Brendan was simply insane or if he was speaking to some kind of terrible truth, but then he turned and looked into her eyes and she felt a little more at ease. His were not the eyes of insanity, at least not what she had imagined insanity might look like, so she took his hand. “If you’re not afraid then I won’t be either.”

And he smiled at her simple truth. “Sometimes I dream about your mother’s masalas. Those are the best dreams of all.”

Maybe you could come over this weekend. I know she’d love to see you again.”

“I’ve missed her.”

“My mother? Really?”

“Yes, of course. She’s the only mother I’ve ever really had, you know?”

“You should tell her that, Brendan. I know that would make her very happy.”

“Okay, I will. And could you ask your father to take me up to see Harry?”

“Harry?” she asked. “You mean – the detective?”

“Yes, just so. I need to see Inspector Callahan about a murder, and I want to stop it.”

[The Cars \\ Drive]

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

I see, said the blind man as he stepped onto the roller coaster.

Oh…never mind. Better go put some water on for tea. A few ups and downs for you here, so hang on tight – and beware of things that go bump in the night.

[Howard Shore \\The Grey Havens]

Intermezzo  –  Madness and the Desperate Flight of aquaTarkus

Part II: The Guitar Man

His dreams came in numbers, and perhaps they always had. 

His waking life had been defined by set patterns of being, from the way he ate to his limited means of expression. One morning a physician called it autism, and it had seemed to the boy that his mother was very upset by the word. He was three years old at the time and so he did not understand what the word meant, so when he arrived back at his parent’s house later that day he read one of his mother’s neurology textbooks, at least as much as he needed to understand what autism was.

And he was sure then that he wasn’t autistic, and that the physician’s diagnosis was not even close.

But he had soon been systematically labeled and categorized and, to a degree, studied, all the result of being so defined by an unfazed hierarchy of notably bright neurologists. They knew what he was because that was the way he had to be; square pegs and round holes were not to be tolerated.

Yet by the time the boy was five years old these very same physicians had discarded that diagnosis. Autistic toddlers rarely read medical texts, but Brendan Geddes did and that was that. “It must be something we haven’t run across before,” Brendan overheard his mother telling his father one night after he’d brushed his teeth and climbed into bed. 

And night was his favorite time of day. The anticipation, all his impatient waiting about to come to an end. Before the dreams came, anyway. Because when his eyes closed on their own…that was when the real fun began.

+++++

His father was a curious sort of musician. He rarely played an instrument, unless of course you considered a symphony orchestra an instrument. Because his father wrote soundtracks to movies, he had become something of a celebrity. He had golden statues on the mantle in his study, and when guests came over for parties everyone wanted to see them. The toddler thought that was very odd indeed.

But Brendan rarely saw these parties, as important as they seemed to be to his parents. 

For he was usually contained in an upstairs suite with a nanny, though once he heard one of these girls say something like he was “out of sight, out of mind,” and while he wasn’t exactly sure what all that meant, he was sure that it seemed to hurt more than just a little.

Teachers came to the Geddes house on Foothill Road in Beverly Hills, and they came to teach him about the world beyond these walls, and how to communicate with the people beyond the walls of his life.

There was a very strange house next door to the Geddes house, a house that appeared to have no windows, and as the boy grew he began to look for the girl who he knew lived in the house. Because he was pretty sure he was going to love her one day, and that he would marry this girl and have a child with her. He knew this because his teachers told him this was so. And no, not the silly teachers that came during the day. His other teachers told him that in the deepest part of the night.

One day, and this was when he was seven years old, he heard his father downstairs playing the piano so he went down to investigate. His father was hardly ever at home and never played the piano when he was, so it was a little unusual to find him at home working at his piano. And, as the boy had never expressed any interest in music, he’d never had any lessons. He hardly knew, in fact, what a piano did.

But he watched as his father’s hands moved across the keyboard and he began to see numerical relationships form in his mind, and as his father developed the song’s melody he began to see ever more intricate patterns shift and form in a space beyond his mind.

And then his father saw him standing there and he stopped playing – and the patterns seemed to hesitate then to turn to dust and fall away.

“Hey, Spud, what are you up to?” his father asked.

“I was watching your patterns.”

“My…patterns?”

“When you play I see numerical patterns form.”

His father seemed a little disconcerted by this revelation. “What kinds of patterns do you see?”

“I’m not sure how to describe it, Father. It is like you are playing an emotion, maybe like the feelings you have for mother. I can show you if you like?”

“You…can…show me?”

“Yes, of course. I watched you play so now I think I can too.”

“Oh, well then, by all means,” his father said, now very unsure of the moment, “please come and show me.”

And so the boy sat where his father had and he began to play without any hesitation, and while at first he played with his eyes wide open soon enough he closed his eyes and let the music of his emotions out to play for the first time in his life. He played for perhaps a half hour and when he was finished he turned to his father and was dismayed to find him openly weeping.

“Is this how you feel?” his father finally asked, heartbroken. “Have you really been so alone?”

“Yes, father,” the boy said, “but I feel better now.”

+++++

So music teachers now came to the Geddes house, along with all his other teachers, and soon enough one of these new teachers came with something new, an acoustic guitar. The boy watched the teacher play the instrument and he could instantly see how difficult it was to shape these new chords, yet he was also mesmerized by the purity of the tones he saw in the air dancing above the instrument.

It took him a few weeks to master this peculiar new instrument, and a few more weeks to learn to fully see all the new patterns he could create, and his father watched in awe as this latent ability burst forth like a flower under the sun. Still, as he watched his son play his new guitar, he wondered where the inspiration for all this hidden music was coming from, for he heard emotive expressions that rarely came from such an acoustically limited instrument. 

But, perhaps, the boy’s father would have been surprised by the source.

For Brendan had watched people all his life. Their infinite interactions fascinated him, especially the people who came to parties at his parent’s house. Sometimes he had watched from his bedroom window as people gathered below around the swimming pool, and other times, when he was older, he watched people as they gathered around his father. Women behaved one way towards his father, while men operated in other, much more peculiar ways. Men strutted about in puffed up dominance dances, almost like the frigate birds he’d seen in nature documentaries, while the women they sought walked between suitors with coy, measured movements. He loved to watch these women as they sat in muted clusters, their silken legs swishing about in ways that could only be to attract these men, and he began to see these interactions as equations. Equations to be constructed. Human variables to be accounted for, one by one. Variables the boy catalogued as he watched the guests at parties in his parent’s house.

And then one night, a few weeks after he started playing the guitar, the girl next door came to one of his parent’s parties and his world began to change. Because his outlook began to change. 

Though she was – by all appearances, anyway – a few years older than he, the boy no longer wanted to observe. He wanted to participate. He wanted to play the dominance games he had only witnessed from afar all his life. So he watched her as she moved about the living room, the equations she presented obvious, her solution easy to render.

She was shy. Her eyes locked on his for a moment but she quickly looked away and he smiled. This was going to be so easy!

But in the end it wasn’t easy at all and he wondered where he had gone wrong. If the solution he’d arrived at didn’t agree with the reality he’d encountered, then that could only be because he’d missed important variables. Emotional variables he didn’t yet understand.

So with guests still lingering he’d gone to the music room off his father’s study and picked up his guitar. He closed his eyes and reimagined the emotions he’d thought she’d presented, and then he reduced his own emotional expectations to a series of equations – and without any conscious awareness he began to play these equations through his mind to his fingers. He wasn’t aware of closing his eyes to the world outside this process, he simply worked through each equation as it presented itself, working towards a new conclusion… 

And as he finished he opened his eyes.

And there she was. Staring at him, her eyes full of tears.

“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,” Debra Sorensen whispered.

And Brendan Geddes smiled. He smiled because he’d solved her equation. He knew her now, and that was all that mattered.

And so they talked. And talked. For hours that night, and then – in the days and weeks that followed – they talked more and more. He saw something in her, something unusual, something not quite there yet, some kind of power within that was waiting to be released. He learned she was going away to college in a few months and for the first time in his life he was at a loss. No equations came to him. He had found his first null set and he was bereft of a way through the pain he felt.

He saw her differently after that. She was no longer open to him, and while he tried to see new equations he found only emptiness. Yet he discovered that even emptiness can be expressed in equations, and as he found his way into the depths of this immeasurable darkness he formed new chords, and a new music began to take shape.

There were avocado trees in backyard of his parent’s house, and even a few lemon trees, and his favorite thing in the world was to beat the squirrels to a ripe avocado and cut it open, squeeze some lemon into the little bowl made when the seed was removed, and then to grind some pepper into the lemon. He would take a spoon and eat the avocado and close his eyes as he felt a peculiar strength return. He would turn and face the sun, feel the warmth and flake the coldness away, then he would pick up his guitar and resume playing, and in time he came to realize how deeply attuned he was growing to the sun and the earth. And to how deeply attuned the equations he formed were to these cycles of birth and regeneration.

And one afternoon while he was sitting out under one of the avocado trees he began playing his music of longing and loss and he began to sing. Words came, words that seemed ordained by the sun and the simple foods that sustained him, words born of an impossible love for the girl next door…

And his father was videotaping him from inside the house. Recording his son’s otherworldly music, born of his son’s loneliness. Loneliness born, perhaps, from a father’s benign neglect. He finished recording the music and the next morning he drove down to the studio and played the music for a few of his friends.

Then the boy’s father asked him to come to the recording studio.

He’d never been. Not once. In fact, Brendan had almost no idea what his father did for a living, not really. His father wrote music for movies, but Brendan had never considered how to watch a film without music. So he watched that morning, and he saw how his father set about constructing a score. Movies presented life as a series of scenes, and each scene had an underlying set of emotions, but as he watched his father he seemed to get it all wrong. Love was an emotion so his father used a rote deconstruction of love to emote any scene with Love in it. Suspense was presented musically in the same way, with predictable sets of formulaic chord progressions to denote how the director wanted the audience to respond. There was little nuance, little variance, and after watching his father for an hour or so he grew bored.

His father was writing music for a new movie while sitting in a control room. There were several keyboards in front of his father, and he faced a huge movie screen. The movie played and his father responded to the action on the screen by creating an accompanying musical response on the keyboards arrayed around him…but then as Brendan watched, the film stopped playing and a videotape of him playing in the backyard appeared on the huge screen… 

And at first he had no idea what he was watching.

Then it dawned on him.

“You taped this yesterday,” he said to his father.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s beautiful and I wanted to share it with people.”

“But…why?”

“Because beauty should be shared, Brendan,” one of the studio executives explained. “And we’d like to share this with everyone.”

“But it wasn’t meant for everyone,” Brendan sighed.

“Who was it meant for?” his father asked.

“Debra,” Brendan said, looking away – as if he should have been embarrassed to admit such a thing.

“Debra? Sorensen?” his father cried. “Seriously?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Brendan screamed, his ego now feeling raw and exposed, like he was being ridiculed. Worse than that, he felt like the very idea of love was being trampled upon and dragged through the mud and dirt.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” another studio exec cooed. She was younger than his father, much younger, and she was objectively gorgeous. 

Brendan turned to face this woman and equations exploded in the air all around her.

And he smiled.

+++++

She wanted more. Always more.

And when she smiled at him he sang the music of her smile.

Her name was Tracy. And she was an enchantress, a chameleon even, and perhaps a little bit of a trickster, but she was also able to read people, especially artists. And most particularly musicians. Yet she had never encountered anyone quite like Brendan. She had worked with the best of them, the Dylans and the Simons of this little corner of the universe, and she thought she’d seen it all. Until she met the precociously innocent man-child that was Brendan Geddes.

She saw his pain, then she saw through it to his struggle to break free. Free of his father. 

She had hustled him out of the studio and to her office, and she had let his tears come. She held him and right away she realized the man child had hardly ever been touched. He drank her up and she felt the explosions of pure expression rippling through his body, and she recognized his loneliness. She adapted to his loneliness, then she began to see how she could use his loneliness to her own advantage. To the studio’s advantage. In his loneliness, she saw the key to unlock his genius.

She took him out. To the beach one day, and she was surprised to learn that he’d never been. He’d never seen a ferris wheel so she took him on the wheel out there on the Santa Monica pier. He’d never been to Disneyland so she took him. He’d never been kissed, so she took him there, too, and then to the hidden places beyond a kiss.

And through it all, Brendan was blind. Blinded by the explosions of the endless equations she presented. She took him to the studio and set him free, turned him loose, and her engineers recorded it all. The words and the music of his love. For her. And for Debra. She massaged the music, added strings and horns, diluting the purity, obscuring the implications of her complicity. Making the work of others marketable, as was her lot in life.

She released the album and it exploded onto the charts.

His music from the avocado tree she titled ‘In Her Shadow’ and she named the album that as well, and the single hit number one on the Billboard Top Ten a week after it was released.

But by then Debra Sorensen had left for college, yet when she heard the song she knew where it had come from. And what it meant. And once again she cried.

+++++

He left home a year later. He was sixteen years old and he left for Stanford, to study mathematics. Hardly anyone connected the hit album to the stringy-thin vegan working his way through the advanced curriculum in the Math and Physics Department, and though he kept a guitar in his dorm room he rarely played anymore. He’d finally seen through Tracy and even his father seemed suspect now, so all those human things he simply walked away from, and he left all their emptiness behind. He returned to the purity of numbers and variables.

Until he met another wayward soul rather like his own.

Susan Watson was an astronomer, or at least she was studying to be an astronomer, and though Brendan was the first to admit he’d never once looked through a telescope there had been an undeniably mutual attraction from the start. She was from the city so she wore denim overalls and Birkenstocks and she was smart as hell, and besides, her explosions were easy to read. She wasn’t a threat. And besides, her mom was a great cook.

He’d not been in the least interested when the blazing pulsar in Sagittarius exploded two summers ago, nor had he been in any way surprised when the pulsar simply went away, but Susan kindled an interest in those seven nights. She showed him a recording of the event and in an explosive instant he’d seen the patterns. Within hours he had deciphered the encoded message. Susan took him to her faculty advisor and this gentle old cosmologist had recognized the genius behind the work and called an emergency meeting of the physics department to go over Brendan’s discovery.

For any number of reasons the faculty and staff decided to keep silent about what Brendan Geddes had uncovered, for the meaning and import could only startle a complacent world into dangerously unpredictable terrain. Worse still, if the government learned about the depth of material in the transmission they would no doubt get involved, and that had to be avoided at all cost.

But while Brendan was credited with discovering the secret encoding within the original message, his interest in astronomy never really blossomed. He continued studying Newton’s and Russell’s underlying Principia while he found his way towards a deeper kind of love for Susan. And oddly enough, he found his way to a new way of thinking about home – through her mother’s cooking.

He soon discovered how atrocious his own parents had been at parenting. And Susan’s mother, a single mother who worked as a para-legal at a small law firm in San Francisco, had proven to be the exact opposite of his own mother. Charlene Watson doted on him. She saw his string bean frame and decided to fill him out. When she learned he wouldn’t eat meat she adapted. She cooked vegan masalas that made Brendan feel like singing with joy. She crafted elaborate tabouli salads and they would sit in her backyard under the sun and for the first time in his life he felt like he was actually loved. Like he belonged. Belonging was a strange sensation, but he liked it. He liked being loved even more, so he was happy.

Charlene had married young and, predictably, the marriage hadn’t lasted long. Her husband, a freewheeling medical student at Stanford, had been somewhat less than faithful and Charlie – as Charlene liked to be called – had divorced him when their daughter was still in diapers. A self-sufficient type, Charlie hustled real estate on the side and had always managed to make ends meet, yet she’d always made time for what mattered most: her daughter. And that inclusivity instantly blossomed to encompass Brendan.

And still no one quite made the connection. The string-bean vegan had once upon a time put out one of the highest grossing albums of all time, a double platinum Grammy award winning masterpiece grounded in a man-child’s love of and for another girl.

+++++

Yet Brendan wondered about the absent figure in Susan’s life. 

Her father.

She had “visited” her father once a month all her life – at least until she started at Stanford. She saw him more frequently now if only because he was on the faculty of the medical school, as well as a hospitalist at the Stanford University Medical Center. He had remarried and was happily living up north of the city in a development called Sea Ranch, but it had been a few years since she had made the trek up there. 

Her father had noted the change in his daughter and he asked her about it one day over grilled pastrami sandwiches and a beer at The Oasis, one of the local hangouts they liked to meet at from time to time. She danced around the subject for a while then finally came clean.

“His name is Brendan, Daddy,” and Doc Watson could tell she was in love.

“So, this is the real deal? Is he the one?”

When she nodded the Doc smiled. “So, when do we get to meet this guy?”

Susan had smiled and then she’d shrugged. “Whenever,” she said, somewhat cagily.

“Okay, Kiddo, you wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“I think he’s going to ask me to marry him, Dad.”

But while the Doc had smiled he’d done so carefully, mindful of the past wanting to play out again. He felt the burdens of his own past in the smile he saw on his daughter’s face, maybe because she had reminded him so much of her mother just then. He could still see Charlie’s happiness, especially in his dreams, so Susan’s smile left him feeling a little off balance. “And you’ve known this boy how long? Since the semester began?”

She nodded enthusiastically.

“Well, do you know anything about his family?”

“Nope.”

“And he’s studying math?”

“Yup.”

“What does he plan doing after school?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea, Daddy.”

“Oh. So then…you’ve really thought this thing through. That’s nice.”

“So, do you still want to meet him?”

“Well, don’t you think I should?”

As it happened, DD and The Doc picked up Susan and Brendan late on a Friday afternoon two weeks later, and they drove up to Sea Ranch together – after they stopped at San Francisco International to pick up Liz Bullitt, who had come out for the weekend. Deborah Eisenstadt’s birthday was the stated occasion and all kinds of friends were coming up to Sea Ranch for what was shaping up to be a party of legendary proportions.

But two rather funny things happened on the drive up to Sea Ranch.

Liz was of course a musician. And it took her about two-tenths of a second to recognize Brendan Geddes – and so that cat hopped right out of the bag and was now on the loose.

And the second cat to break free?

Well, when Brendan Geddes took one look at Liz Bullitt he was well and truly smitten, and even Susan Watson could see the handwriting on that wall.

The Doc had simply rolled his eyes as he made his way through traffic to the Golden Gate, but DD had quickly surmised what had happened and she had looked at her husband just once on the drive up.

And hardly anyone spoke – except of course Liz. She had a million questions she wanted to ask Brendan, and the boy seemed only too happy to oblige.

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

[Joni Mitchell \\ Both Sides Now (2000)]

Very difficult writing. Uncertain terrain in these shadows. One more piece of the puzzle.

[Bread \\ Guitar Man]

The Eighty Eighth Key

Intermezzo  –  Madness and the Desperate Flight of aquaTarkus

Part I: Synchronicities 

Harry Callahan walked from his living room to the kitchen, trying out his new leg. His latest new leg. 

“What a fucking pain in the ass,” he growled as he stopped and leaned against a column, turning the cup ever so slightly, seating the soft deerskin to his stump.

“Is it better than the chair?” Deborah Eisenstadt asked his back, warily watching his flaring moods. “If not, I can bring it up from the garage if you like?”

Callahan grumbled and walked into the kitchen, headed for the coffee maker. He poured a large cup and added a strong hit of Baileys Irish Cream – just because – then he walked back through the living room to the piano. He pulled out his “Works in Progress” file from the desk and looked at the sheet music on top – and then he sighed.

“Some days this feels too much like work,” he said, his voice a coarse whisper.

“Why don’t we drive down to the city? Maybe go to the Cathouse for a visit?”

He nodded but turned and sat at the keyboard, then tentatively played a few disjointed notes – until he felt Eisenstadt walk up from behind.

“What’s troubling you, Harry? Is it the dream – again?”

He hesitated, but then he nodded. “Yes. It felt even more real last night.”

“How so?”

“It was very hot but it was dark out – and the ground was dry – almost dusty, but even the dust was white – almost like flour – in a way,” Callahan said, his words coming in short bursts followed by long, drawn out pauses, as if he was sifting through debris left by a passing storm. 

“It was night, like the last one?”

“Moonlight. Bright moonlight – like under a full moon. Cactus shadows – and even the rocks cast shadows.”

“What did you hear?” she asked…carefully…placing her hand on his shoulder as his hands levitated, fingers spreading like talons in search of prey. She heard the chord form and closed her eyes and in the next instant they were both standing inside a high desert landscape, the moon like the beam of a searchlight high overhead. ‘Blue,’ she thought aloud, ‘everything is blue…’

She looked down and gently kicked a stone…and the stone tumbled away. Again. Just like last time. They were no longer passive observers, not in this landscape, and she knew now that they had to proceed with the utmost caution…because one falling rock could soon turn into a landslide.

“Is that a trail?” Harry asked as he pointed at the rough outlines of a path ahead.

“I think so, but Harry…?”

“Yes…?”

“If this is a dream why are we here?”

“What?”

“Dreams are constructs of the unconscious mind. They are not real places.”

He nodded. “Ah, I see. And this is, or at least it appears to be, a real place.”

“Or…we can now access the real through the unconscious mind.”

An aircraft of some kind crossed the night sky high overhead, its white strobes pulsing across the inky blackness as it flew from northeast to southwest, and Callahan had no trouble identifying it. “Looks like a trip-7 headed to LAX,” he sighed.

“How can you tell?”

“Find Polaris, check the angle against Arcturus and Spica. He’s headed west-southwest and powering down for his descent. So, we’re in Nevada – or maybe even western Utah.”

“So, this isn’t a dream?”

Callahan shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it a dream within a dream, or was I dreaming of a real place?”

“What happened next? In your dream, I mean?”

“Well, I…” Callahan began saying – just as a low humming sound filled the night.

“What is that?” Eisenstadt cried – as the humming quickly built in intensity…

Callahan turned and pointed: “There it is,” he said, his voice barely audible now.

Eisenstadt turned and she saw a triangular shaped hole in the sky. “What is that?” she whispered.

“That,” Callahan sighed, “is a ship.”

“You mean…like an UFO?”

“Not like. Is,” Callahan said, nodding at the ship as it descended towards the valley floor. 

“And this is what you dreamt about?”

“Yeah, and it usually ends about now.”

“What…with the ship just up there?”

“Yup.”

She broke contact and they were in the living room again, yet when she looked at her shoes they were almost completely covered with the fine white powdery sand of the desert trail, and Callahan’s were, too. “Harry, we were there.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m still cold.”

And then Eisenstadt realized she was, as well. She touched Callahan’s arm and his skin was almost ice cold, yet he was warming up nicely in the piano room as it was close to the fireplace. Then, almost on a hunch she turned and looked at the ceiling in the living room – and yes, one of the tiny blue spheres was hovering silently inside a shadowy corner. “Harry,” she whispered.

“Yeah, I know. I can feel them now.”

“Wait…you can feel them?”

He nodded. “Its almost like a fullness in my neck, at least it feels that way when one of them is around…”

“It’s up there,” she added, nodding her head in the direction of the fireplace.

“What color is this one?”

“What color? But…they’re always blue…” but her words were full of doubt, like the memory wasn’t quite trustworthy.

“No, they’re not,” he said, his words steely calm.

“They aren’t? Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Yup. Blues most of the time, but I’ve seen green and red ones. And a pink.”

“Are you sure it’s not the scotch?”

He chuckled at that. “Yeah, I’m sure.” He paused then, and she thought he might have been lost in thought – until a tremor crossed his frame. “The blues aren’t friendly, Deborah. None of them are, not really, but I’m not sure about the pink one. For some reason…” he started to say, but then he stopped again, like maybe he was looking for just the right memory. Then his head canted a little. “The pink one is a friend. She’s very curious…about…”

“The piano,” she sighed.

“Yes, the piano.” He squinted once then felt his neck. “How many are up there now?” he asked.

When she looked now she saw several were up there, and suddenly she felt sleepy and wanted to tell Harry. When she turned and looked at him he was already asleep, and for the briefest moment she thought she was floating through vast fields of stars.

+++++

Jeff Woodson drove up Central Avenue and, as he approached the crash site he pulled off the road and parked the van on the grass, then set the stabilizers, leveling the van for the remote feed antenna. His crew jumped out and sprang into action, setting up tripods and mounting their heavy video cameras, then hooking the output lines directly to the satellite transmitter. Woodson got the dish aligned just as Sandy Mullins and her team drove up; this second van parked beside Woodson’s and now, in effect, the Eagle Network had an on-site studio set up less than a hundred yards from where the stricken airliner had fallen. 

Henry Taggart got out of the van and watched the blue sphere settle and rise just inside the dense black smoke – and unless you knew exactly what you were looking at you’d have never realized anything was there, and he had to smile at that, at their ability to hide undetected right above the scene of such an immense disaster. He also realized there was nothing he could do here except get in the way so he called for a taxi then walked over to Woodson.

“I’m going back to the boat,” he told the team leader. “When you guys wrap here you’d better come…”

“Man, we won’t be done here for days,” Woodson said, and Mullins nodded. 

“The network has on air reporters headed this way right now,” Mullins said. “This is a great spot to shoot from.”

Taggart nodded. “When you two knock off why don’t you come back down to the boat.”

“That cop?” Mullins said, the situation dawning on her.

“Yeah. Strength in numbers, or something like that,” Taggart said. “I called a cab so I’m headed back that way now.”

“Okay,” Woodson added, “we’ll try. My best guess is we might get off around seven.”

Taggart nodded, then he saw a taxi pull up and he waved to the driver. “Okay. See you tonight.”

Henry walked over to the taxi, and as he stepped inside he felt as if he was being watched.

“Did you see that mess?” the cabbie asked, pointing at the flaming airliner.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“It’s all over the news right now. Some are saying it was a helicopter that hit the jet.”

“Yup.”

“You saw it?”

“I did.”

“Jesus. So, where can I take you?”

“The Marina. A restaurant down there called The Warehouse.”

“Okay.” The cabbie pulled out into traffic and Taggart leaned back on the slimy old vinyl seat, beyond caring as the old Chevy made its way towards the water. At one point he felt a wave of nausea wash over him and he asked the cabbie to turn up the air conditioner – but it didn’t help. Nothing, he knew, would ever wipe the sight of that helicopter vaulting up and hitting the airliner’s engine. He could still see the helicopter’s rotors splintering, then the huge engine tearing away from the wing, before the worst part unfolded. It was the way the jet wallowed for a moment, then it just seemed to roll to the right as it started to fall out of the sky, and he couldn’t help but think of the sheer terror all the people on board must have experienced. Those last few seconds – knowing these were your last heartbeats, the last breaths you’d take. The last things you’d see and try to file away as a memory before the world around you dissolved into fire and chaos. Would you, he wondered, feel pain? Or would death come on so hard and fast that even pain would fail to register?

The thought made his skin crawl.

Then he let his head fall away and he looked up into the sky and yes, there it was. Following him, still up there in the clouds.

‘So,’ he mumbled to the cresting realization, ‘it’s following me?’

He got out at the restaurant and walked over to a park bench and began watching Deb’s boat, and when he was sure no one else had her under surveillance he made his way out the pier and quietly slipped onboard, disarming the alarm as he entered the cockpit. 

“Deb?” he called out, and he heard Daisy Jane bark once so he went and looked in the hatch over her berth and saw she was sound asleep. He unlocked the companionway, found Daisy’s leash and took her for a quick walk, then went below to wake Deb, maybe take her out to lunch. And afraid of upsetting her he decided to not talk about the crash…

“Could you take the Rover, go get some Thai?” she asked after she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“I reckon so? You want the usual?”

“Seafood Tom Yum and a fresh spring roll.”

“Okay. I’ll be back in a half hour or so.”

“Should I set the alarm?”

“Hell-yes!” Taggart said through his habitual grin.

By the time he made it back she was setting out places on the cockpit table and Daisy was curled up in the sun, her long line of sutured skin healing well. He sat beside the pup and began rubbing the top of her head and she moaned. 

“What did you get?” Deb asked as she studied the lingering uncertainties within his aura.

“Tom Ka Gai and a green curry.”

“Shrimp?”

“Just veggies. Extra mushrooms, though. And two orders of spring rolls.”

“Good. I was hoping you might.”

Daisy rolled over and put her head on his lap and he knew what she wanted now. “Time for an ear rub?” he whispered – and then he smiled when her tail swished back and forth across the teak cockpit seat.

“She loves you so,” Debra sighed.

“And…?” he replied as he looked up at Deb.

“And I wish you would have been able to love me half as much.”

“If only your ears were furry.”

She laughed a little, but not enough to hide the pain she felt. “I also wish I’d gotten to know you sooner.”

“Que sera, sera,” he said, his mind drifting away to sunnier times. 

“And what does that mean, exactly? That we were never meant to be?”

“If I remember things correctly, I seem to recall you had a thing for The Kid.”

“Ah. You mean Mr. William Taylor, the William Taylor currently residing on the orthopedics floor at UT Southwestern in Dallas?”

Taggart shook his head. “You know, I’m pretty sure I heard bones snapping, on the TV, I mean.”

Debra shook away the memory of her father and Moloch as they smiled triumphantly after Will went down. “I think my father arranged that, Henry.”

He seemed taken aback by that, but then he thought about her words for a moment. “You know, I guess nothing surprises me about him. Just moving another pawn on the board, I guess.”

“Is that how you see him?”

But Taggart simply shrugged the question away. “When I think about your dad I see danger, pure and simple. He’s always pushing his little pieces all over the board, but he’s playing a game I really don’t understand.” He put some rice in his bowl and spooned curry over it, then he picked out a golden shiitake with his chopsticks and regarded it for a moment, turning it over in the sun while he admired all the hidden details. “So, you seemed intrigued by Gilbert’s longing for you. Tell me about that?”

“Nothing to tell, Henry. And I’m not in the market for entanglements right now.”

“Well, there’s always lust…”

“Not my type.”

“Oh?”

“Cops don’t interest me. People who see the world in blacks and whites don’t interest me.”

“And so what am I? Shades of grey?”

“Cool blue…until you look at me.”

“And then what do you see?”

“Three women and a dog. And while the three of you are running, the dog knows everything.”

He sat back and regarded her cooly for a moment. “Oh? And when does this happen?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe fifteen years from now.”

“And so you’re seeing into the future now? Any other startling new developments you’re keeping from me, Kiddo?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Henry. It’s always bothered me.”

“Sorry. Now, care to answer the question, or do you want to thrust and parry some more?”

“I saw the airplane last night.”

“The airplane?”

“The one you just saw. I saw it happen last night. A helicopter hit it.”

“Okay.”

“We have to be in San Pedro tonight. Late, I think. There’ll be fog, and…”

“And?”

She just shrugged, but then she looked away.

“Okay. So…who dies?”

“I couldn’t see that, but many more people will die.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

She nodded then, a quick yet discursive nod, like a playful child’s. “I heard music, Henry. And it was leading the way.”

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift to us all.]

[Glen Campbell \\ Ghost on the Canvas]

A brief chapter today, a transition of sorts. Maybe a sip of scotch, I dare say…

[Sting \\ Something The Boy Said]

Chapter 63

Colonel Goodman was in his office sitting at his desk, looking out his window, looking out over the city of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean beyond. He’d been reading summaries of ongoing operations all morning but his mind kept drifting back to Harry Callahan and his return to California. What a blown operation that had been, the very definition of a clusterfuck, but what exactly had gone wrong?

The idea of ‘wounding’ Callahan, maybe with a grazing shot, was the first thing that had gone wrong – but probably because the entire premise behind it had been so morally out of bounds. Why had he approved such an outlandish plan? Then the fucking sniper had almost blown Callahan’s leg off. Brilliant! And so Didi had been locked out of Callahan’s life and years of work keeping him under observation had come to an end. The Watson woman, Harry’s assistant, had proven too competent, and once she’d figured out what was happening she’d moved all of Callahan’s assets out of reach. She moved to secure the residence in Davos and she’d also worked to get the planned recording studio in the village up and running. Goodman sighed, wishing he had one person on staff who was half as competent as this Watson woman.

So for weeks he’d been frozen out and he could only guess what Callahan was up to. Worse still, he was no longer in any kind of position to render assistance to Callahan if he needed help. But then Deborah Eisenstadt had come along out of the blue. The physicist had every imaginable security clearance and had even worked for Mossad on two occasions, but her allegiance to the State of Israel was questionable – so that had to be settled before he could move forward with his plan. 

A Danish Jew, her life’s circumstances had pushed her to the Soviet Union and then to Armenia, until Anders Sorensen had snatched her up and married her. Funny too, because Sorensen had probably saved her life by getting her beyond the reach of the KGB. But Mossad had recruited her shortly after she arrived in Israel, ostensibly to keep an eye out for possible Soviet operations within the academic community, so her immigration to the U.S. had come as a blow. But now there was news almost too good to be true. Was Callahan coming into her life – even peripherally? Because if so then things had come full-circle and he might have access to Callahan once again.

He’d just finished reading the contact report from Ted Sorensen that had come in last night. Eisenstadt hadn’t mentioned her contact with Liz Bullitt so Goodman had to assume Eisenstadt had already learned of the acoustic shift and if her background was any indication she’d understood the implications of Imogen Schwarzwald’s discovery. As long as she didn’t actively begin work on the Shift she’d be safe enough, at least for now – but something else was bothering Goodman.

A Mossad operative in the consulate had passed along that Sorensen was headed to New York for a meeting today, and yet Sorensen had omitted that detail from his contact report. Why?

So now Goodman was worried, because…what was Sorensen up to?

So first thing this morning he’d sent word to New York to make sure Sorensen’s movements on the ground were detailed, and to keep him in the loop as the surveillance progressed throughout the day. Then Didi had called and he’d asked her to come down to the office for lunch. She’d been working down in the desert on the Shift Project and he hadn’t seen her in weeks – and besides, he was always curious about her work down there.

Still, something was wrong, and Goodman could feel it in his bones. Something was wrong with Sorensen. Something…big. Why would Sorensen keep things from him? Why now? And what was he up to in New York?

He knew he needed answers, too.

Didi appeared in his doorway and she smiled. He turned to her and nodded.

“Come. Sit. Tell me of the problems of the world,” he said with a smile.

“It’s a very complicated world, Papa,” she sighed as she came into his inner sanctum, “but you looked troubled this morning, not me.”

“No? Well, you look sunburned. Are you at least using sunscreen?”

She shook her head and grinned. “No, never.”

“You’ll not like the results,” Goodman said with a shrug as he pointed at two recent biopsies taken from the top of his left forearm. “Basal cell carcinoma, I think the doctor calls it.”

“Is it serious?”

“Serious? No, not really. It was caught early.”

“So, what’s troubling you?”

“You recall Ted Sorensen?”

“The producer at Paramount?”

Goodman nodded. “I’ve been running him for years. He grew up with Callahan.”

Didi’s eyes darkened. “I didn’t know that.”

“No reason you should have. They rarely see one another, and haven’t for, well, quite a while now.”

“And he reports to you?”

Goodman nodded. “Ever since his father moved here. Nothing major, just deep background on Hollywood, things he thinks we might be interested in. It’s all very informal, or at least it was until recently. But he’s keeping things from me, things he knows would be of interest to me.”

“And that is what is troubling you?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve had this feeling all morning long, like something bad is…”

“Papa? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Goodman said as he reached for the television’s remote. He flipped it on and turned to CNN and his eyes squinted when he saw black smoke pouring from one of the World Trade Center towers. “Where is bin Laden?” he whispered as he picked up his phone and dialed a four digit extension. “Lev? Ben. Are you watching CNN? No? Well turn it on and find out where bin Laden is and let me know. Thanks.” He pushed down on the cradle and then dialed his receptionist. “Doris, get me the Prime Minister.”

Didi pulled her chair close to the TV and they both watched as a second airliner slammed into the unharmed tower…

“Shit,” Colonel Goodman sighed, just before his phone chimed. He reached over and picked it up: “Ariel. CNN now!”

He hung up and watched the grainy feed from a helicopter, and then it hit him. Sorensen had just landed in New York, at La Guardia. Coincidence? Or planned?

“I hate coincidences,” he whispered under his breath, fingers drumming on his desktop. “What the hell are you up to, Sorensen?”

By the time United 93 was down in a field in Pennsylvania, the Mossad, like the entire Israeli government, was in full crisis mode. Everyone knew bin Laden was behind the operation so now it was just a matter of running him down and taking him out – except he’d simply disappeared, gone to ground and now presumably somewhere in Afghanistan. But Colonel Goodman presumably had other matters on his mind, too.

Because when he learned that Ted Sorensen’s Gulfstream was headed for London, he also learned that Delbert Moloch was on board. Moloch was no friend of the State of Israel, but he had been causing problems all over Eastern Europe for years, and was now understood to be operating in South America. He had at one point been a Kremlin operative but was now living in Surrey, south of London. Exactly what he was doing, and who was paying for his services, still remained a mystery.

Yet if Moloch was now operating with Sorensen then this very clearly fell within his purview. But now, with everything else happening in the United States today, Goodman simply made the decision to move a few pieces on the board. This sort of mission compartmentalization ensured operational security, yet the lack of back-up would perhaps unnecessarily expose his agent to greater than normal risk.

So with well-founded misgivings, he immediately sent his daughter to London to find out what was happening with Sorensen and Moloch, then he got on the phone and called Boston.

+++++

Out among the slender pines and white-limbed birch trees northwest of Boston, at the dead end of Millstone Road you come upon MIT’s Haystack Observatory – the facility rather like a needle in a haystack out there by itself in the forests of central New England. Debra Sorensen thought as much, anyway, as they passed the Millstone Hill Radio Telescope. But that was nothing compared to the huge, white dome that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She was sitting beside Deborah Eisenstadt, while Professor Gene Sherman sat in the rear seat working on lesson plans and lab assignments for the coming term when she first saw the dome, and Sherman looked up when he heard Sorensen gasp. He put away his papers, lost in thought, still lost on…the Matterhorn.

The observatory’s undergraduate liaison led the group on a short tour of the facility and then Sherman and Sorensen listened as Eisenstadt went over the basic premises of radio astronomy and what Haystack and Millstone were working on – before driving over to Mario’s for a quick bite.

“So, Dr. Sherman,” the girl said, “what did you think of the light in Sagittarius?”

But Sherman simply shrugged before he reconsidered. “I’m still puzzled about the duration of the event,” he said. “If it’s some kind of periodic pulsar, it is of a type we’ve never encountered before, so that’s of interest. So too was the nature of the light emitted, but we’ll be studying this event for years, if not decades.”

“Do you think you could use my recordings?”

“Of course. I’d love to go over them, so if you have time please send me a copy.” He looked at the girl, still unsure of her motives. She didn’t appear to be the studious type, yet her grades were spot on. But…why was she here? “So tell me, what did you make of the event?”

“I think there was an embedded pattern in the sequence, and I’d like to know what it is.”

Sherman nodded but he looked away. “What kind of pattern,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“The number seven repeats in a number of ways…”

“Yes, yes, there’s been a lot of speculation about that in the newspapers. Numerology, the Kabbalah and all that, but did you see any deeper patterns?”

“No, not really.”

“Okay,” Sherman said, somewhat relieved, “well, perhaps we should head back to the city. I’ve a dinner appointment,” he added, looking at Eisenstadt and nodding, “and I don’t want to be late.”

 After they dropped Sorensen off at her father’s hotel, Eisenstadt turned to Sherman. “What was that all about.”

“Hm-m? What do you mean?”

“About patterns in the pulsar’s light.”

“Oh, just a thought.”

“Well, you dropped her like a hot rock after that. Why?”

“Tell me, Deborah, about this father of her’s. Is that why you wanted to roll out the red carpet for this girl.”

“In a way, yes, but she’s also family.”

“So you said. If she applies I take it you’d like my endorsement?”

“Only if freely given, Gene. No pressure on my part.”

“Well, frankly, I doubt you’ll hear from her again, at least concerning coming to school here. She’s not the type, and my guess is this is just a passing fancy to her.”

“Do you think that’s a fair assessment, Gene?”

“Fair or not, she doesn’t have the intensity. She’s not a scientist, Deborah, and you know it.”

Eisenstadt sighed, but she nodded. “Well, I suspected as much, but I needed to be sure. That’s why I called you.”

+++++

Didi Goodman watched the south end of runway 04 at London’s Stansted Airport, waiting for Sorensen’s Gulfstream to taxi to the Harrods Aviation FBO on the west side of the airport. She needed to pee – desperately – but she simply had to hold it now. The Gulfstream taxied to a stop and she watched Sorensen and another man walk down the air stairs and climb into the black Range Rover they’d already identified, and geotagged, so she relaxed a little.

“They ought to come out this way, to the M11,” her driver said. Padi Chomski was Mossad and was also nominally assigned as a commercial attaché at the main Kensington Gardens Embassy, but as soon as Moloch’s name entered the equation he had been detached to help Goodman. The sun had been down for almost two hours and and it was beginning to rain, but as they were waiting to intercept the Range Rover Chomski saw an ambulance head out to the Gulfstream…

“Do you think we should tail the Rover or the ambulance?” he asked.

“We follow Moloch,” Goodman said, her mind focused on anything but her bladder.

“Are you alright?”

“No, I haven’t taken a pee since Tel Aviv…”

“Get out now…do it on the side of the road!”

She hopped out and did the deed and Chomski dropped the car into drive and took off after the Range Rover as soon as she was buckled in. They followed the Rover onto the A406 to the A10 into central London…

“They’re headed to Embassy Row,” Chomsky sighed a few minutes later. “What the fuck is going on here?”

And indeed the Rover pulled up to the Argentine Embassy on Brook Street and Goodman watched Moloch and Sorensen disappear inside. “I didn’t see that coming,” she grumbled as they watched the Rover disappear. She was pulling out her binoculars when there came a tapping on her window.  She looked up and saw a Constable and had started to roll down her window when she noticed the black Walther in the man’s hand.

The man double-tapped the Israeli agents before he tossed a time delayed grenade inside the car, then he walked off into another dark and rainy night, disappearing in the mist. The deep red sphere overhead followed him for a while, before it too vanished into clouds overhead.

Next up: Intermezzo  –  Madness and the Desperate Flight of aquaTarkus 

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

Rounding out this little parable of ethical relativism, you might even have time for tea. Excuse the grammar goofs, please. Tough time seeing right now.

[Andy Bey \\ Someone To Watch Over Me]

Part II: the echoes of hollow laughter in marble halls

“Hold your legs up,” the Bexar County sheriff’s deputy told Harwood, and once his legs were shackled the deputy pulled him roughly from the van. Once he was out on the pavement the deputy began pushing Harwood through the sally port into the inmates entrance, but no one noticed rough treatment down here in the basement – and no one cared if they saw anything out of place. They waited for an elevator with other inmates and deputies, and when the elevator came they all rode up in silence to the fourth floor holding block, and he was quickly locked up in a small holding cell.

He’d had a jerk-water public defender who hadn’t objected once to questionable evidence presented at his trial and Harwood then knew his trial was a slam-dunk, a show trial. The DEA had rammed the case through pre-trials and before a judge in record time, and from then on he knew he was being made an example of how not to fuck with the Feds, and physicians were the intended audience. What had surprised him was Quintana, and how the cartels had simply dropped him like a hot rock. Still, he’d decided on silence, banking on the cartel having people on the inside who’d keep him relatively safe. And who knows, maybe the’d even be able to keep him alive.

Today’s appearance was for sentencing, but by this point he really didn’t give a shit. He’d gone from being a physician in a lucrative American practice to taking care of illiterate peasants in Mexico’s central highlands, and now it looked like he’d spend the rest of his life in federal prison. Not exactly how he’d seen things working out once upon a time, but what hurt most of all was leaving McKinnon down there, because just before the Federales came for him she’d told him she was pregnant.

So now it looked like everything he could have possibly done wrong in this life he’d managed to do, because on top of everything else he’d have a kid he’d never know…and maybe that hurt most of all. But yeah, he’d moved the cartel’s product for years. He’d been part of an intricately planned and executed supply pipeline that was moving Mexican heroin and Chinese fentanyl through San Antonio to Dallas, New Orleans, and Atlanta, and yeah, he’d made a shitload of money along the way but that was the game. Moving product through hospitals had worked, and worked well, for more than a decade, but someone somewhere along the distribution pipeline had ratted out the scheme. Probably a very bloody jailhouse confession, but none of that mattered now.

Another deputy came for him a few hours later and walked him down a marble hallway to a courtroom, and then he was pushed through another door into the courtroom. And there he was.

J. Alan Wentworth III, the federal prosecutor ramrodding his case through the system. Wentworth was short, fat, baldheaded and bespectacled – a paragon of every modern virtue imaginable. He was playing the game, alright. Throwing sevens every time, and always with an ace up his sleeve. He was asking the court to consider the death penalty, or at the very least life without parole, because if they didn’t come down hard on physicians law enforcement would never get a handle on the problem…

The problem with your thesis, Mr. J. Alan Wentworth III, is that law enforcement is in on the scam at every fucking level, from cops on the beat to the guards in the jails; all of them were feeding at the cartel’s trough – but there was no way Harwood would be allowed to say this in open court. This simple truth was so readily apparent even a dime-bag dealer could figure it out: pay anyone enough and they’ll look the other way, and every fucking time, too…but Wentworth had a quota to meet, a conviction rate to maintain, and that more than anything was dictating the outcome this afternoon. Harwood was just a mid-level executive in a thriving international manufacturing and distribution operation, but instead of working for one of the big pharmaceutical outfits he’d chosen to work for the cartels. Too bad anti-trust laws didn’t apply, because the irony was a little too rich.

Harwood wasn’t exactly surprised when, a half hour later and due to the aggravating circumstances of his crimes, he was sentenced to life in prison at ADMAX Florence, the notorious and justifiably dreaded super-max facility in central Colorado. When asked by the court if he had anything to say prior to sentencing he declined to speak, and so was simply escorted from the courtroom straight to the elevator – this time by a nattily dressed US Marshall to a black Ford Explorer.

Harwood was driven to the basement parking garage at a nearby office building and led inside a basement level office, and then right into a restroom. Not at all sure what was happening now, the marshal handed Harwood a gym bag and the keys to the Ford, then the cop turned around and walked out of the restroom, and he left Harwood standing there – almost in a state of shock. Not knowing what else to do, he opened the gym bag and found an envelope, two changes of clothes and some toiletries, as well as a new pair of Adidas running shoes. He opened the envelope and found an airline ticket, cash, credit cards and a French passport. 

“Quintana,” he muttered to himself with a smile, then he changed into the street clothes and dumped the orange jumpsuit in a dumpster on his way to the Explorer. The NAV system was already programed for the airport and he put on a ball cap and sunglasses the cop had left on the driver’s seat and he drove right to the airport. Once there he parked the car in the long term lot and went straight into the terminal. He checked the envelope and found a boarding pass so went right up to and then through the TSA security screening and then he walked out to his gate, for an AeroMexico flight to Mexico City. His assigned seat, he realized, was in the business class section, and he suddenly felt as if he was inside a particularly nice dream.

When his flight was called he halfway expected a dozen DEA agents to come crawling out of the woodwork…but no, nothing happened, and that was positively surreal. He walked out the Jetway and boarded the 737Max and a flight attendant brought him a Bohemia and a slice of lime, and he did his best to ignore the people boarding the flight because he just knew that any moment now he was going to wake up and this was all going to turn out to be a really nasty trick of the mind.

But no, the main door was about to close – when, apparently, one more person ran into the cabin, and Harwood watched as Quintana boarded and came to the seat next to his own.

“Mind if I sit here?” the number three man in the Sinaloa Cartel asked.

“No, please,” Harwood said, then he watched as Quintana put a small carry-on in the overhead bin.

Then he sat and took the offered Bohemia from the flight attendant, and Harwood watched as the main door was pivoted into the closed and locked position, and he looked out the window as the Boeing was pushed back from the gate. When he could stand it no longer, he turned to Quintana and smiled.

“Did you have a nice visit?” he asked the capo.

“Yes. And you?”

“I’d have to say, all in all, that it was an interesting trip.”

“Perhaps someday we’ll have time to sit over dinner and talk.”

Which meant, Harwood understood, now was not that time. He nodded and smiled and looked out the window as the Boeing turned onto the active runway and dashed into the evening sky. 

He ate his dinner in silence and watched intently as the jetliner lined up to land in Mexico City, and just before Quintana left him he advised that he not forget his two bags in the overhead bin, and Harwood thanked his friend then watched him leave. He pulled the bags down and walked out the jet and through immigration and then he opened Quintana’s parting gift.

Another envelope on top…

A ticket to Paris on Air France, departing in an hour and a half. Enough cash to live comfortably for several years. Documents to provide a completely new identity along with the academic degrees and transcripts of post-grad work to back everything up.

And then there was a note from Quintana.

‘Silentium ac fides super omnia.’

There wasn’t a whole lot else to say, was there? He’d never talked, never sought a plea bargain right up to sentencing, and maybe that had come as a surprise to Quintana. Maybe that was why he’d risked it all to come up the States, to see this through to the end. To see what kind of man this Harwood really was.

Maybe. Maybe not. Harwood would probably never know the answer to that one, would he?

He walked over to the First Class lounge and went inside, checked-in for the flight and saw that he was indeed flying alone. Not knowing what else to do he sat and watched jets come and go until his flight was called, then he walked out and boarded the 777 and made his way up to seat 1A. 

A simply gorgeous flight attendant came by and introduced herself, offered him a glass of champaign and a warm towel for his face, then she smiled and sashayed up to the galley. After three months behind bars the sight of such a woman was enough to leave him in puddles of despair. 

He heard the main doors close a few minutes later and looked down at his hands.

How long had it been? Three months since he’d last operated on a patient? Three months since he’d given up on ever doing anything like that again?

Three months since he’d seen McKinnon?

How would she look now? Would she be showing?

Dare he even try to get in touch with her? Wouldn’t the DEA be monitoring her every communication? Especially now that he’d managed to flee?

The jet pushed back and taxied out to the active, then it turned onto the runway and lumbered into the sky, turning to the northeast to fly up the east coast of North America on its way to the Old World. He saw Washington DC down below just after his second dinner of the evening, then New York City and Boston before the long crossing. His seat was turned into a cozy little bed and he slept the miles away, waking up in time for a lite breakfast and a mid-morning arrival in Paris.

He waited until almost everyone else had deplaned before grabbing his bags and heading out the Jetway into the terminal. He made his way to immigration and as he was now a citizen of France he walked right through the ‘Nothing To Declare’ line and then out to queue of people lining up to ride into the city.

And then he felt an arm slip into his.

“Well hello there,” Patty McKinnon said, a coy little smile crossing her face. “Fancy running into you here.”

“Yes, small world.” She leaned into him and they kissed with a ferocity that might have escaped most of the people standing in line, but hey…this was, after all, Paris. And they were home.

This work © 2017-2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkühnwrites.com and all rights reserved, and as usual this was a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s (rather twisted) imagination or coincidentally referenced entities are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. In other words, this is just a little bit of fiction, pure and simple.

A minor diversion down another road less traveled. A two part trail with time for tea.

[Neil Young \\ The Needle and the Damage Done]

Copper Canyon

Part I: fight or flight

He checked his rearview mirror again. Nothing. But he was sure he was being followed; he could feel it in his gut and that was all he needed to know. He made it to his house on East Summit Street and pulled into the garage, hitting the button and closing the overhead door even before he turned off his truck’s motor. He went inside and showered, then made a reservation at the Marriott in the French Quarter for tomorrow night, staying four nights, then he called Quintana on one of his burner phones.

“I’m blown.”

“Too bad. So, the truck goes to New Orleans as planned?”

“Yes. I’ll put the product and other stuff you requested under the seat.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Bueno. The boy will be there in an hour.”

He hung up and powered-off the phone, then went to the bathroom and shaved his head and then his face, even trimming his eyebrows unrecognizably short. He grabbed his go bag and waited for the courier to show up.

Once the truck was gone and headed to New Orleans he called an über to pick him up at Barbaro’s and then strapped a huge prosthetic stage belly around his waist and slipped out the side door, putting his ragged old go bag over his shoulder and now walking with a cane, hunched over and limping like an old man. He passed a black Ford Explorer parked down the block from his house, two DEA agents looking at his house through binoculars. He limped past the Ford and made it to the pick up just in time. 

The über took him to a large self storage complex just west of Lackland Air Force Base and he went to his unit and opened the door. His motorcycle, a new BMW R1250GS, was already packed and fueled, and he had fifty thousand dollars stashed inside the foam seat, and another 300,000 in Mexican pesos in the tank bag. He unhooked the battery charger and started the motor, and while the engine warmed he changed into a one piece riding suit after he discarded the fake latex belly. With that done, he locked the unit before he drove out onto Highway 90, westbound for Del Rio and the Mexican border.

The sun was still up on this hot September evening as he approached Uvalde, Texas, and he stopped at the Whataburger on the east side of town, then he topped off the bike’s fuel tank, paying cash now for everything before continuing on to Del Rio. He filled up the tank again before crossing, uneventfully, into Mexico. He found a quiet looking inn on the south side of town and put the cover over the bike before he set the alarm, and once in the little room he didn’t even bother to get out of his riding gear; he just flopped down in the bed and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

He spent three days making his way to Chihuahua, and once there he found a mechanic to change the oil and the filters, then, after another night in a sleepy little inn he turned west into the mountains, not quite sure where he was going but confident he’d know the right place when he got there.

+++++

He stumbled into the village of Batopilas on his seventh night in Mexico, and he was by then beyond exhausted. He pulled into a very upscale looking lodge and inquired about a long term stay.

“How long did you have in mind?” the proprietor asked.

“I’m a writer,” the man lied, “and I’m looking for someplace quiet to spend a few months.”

“We have two casitas for rent by the week, but soon it will be the off season and I am sure we could work something out.”

“Sounds good. Now, how about tonight?”

“Of course. I’ll just need your passport. Will you be paying cash, in dollars?”

“If you prefer, certainly.” He handed over his passport, one of two bogus passports he had with him.

“Ah, Dr. Eugene Smith, of Duluth, Minnesota?”

“Yes,” he lied.

“Are you a physician?”

“I am, yes. General surgery.”

“And you are writing about surgery?”

“No, I’m writing a novel about the Gulf War. I was in Iraq.”

“I see. Well, unlike Iraq it is quiet here, that much I can assure you.”

“Perfect. And is there a bank in town?”

“Yes. There are two, and in addition to the dining room we have here at the lodge, there are several restaurants in town. And of course breakfast is included with your room.”

“Internet?”

“Just here in the main building. We have a computer, but it uses a dial up modem, I’m afraid. The canyon walls are too steep for satellite coverage, and out village is still too small for other services. Here are the instructions, and the computer is in that room,” the proprietor added.

“Alright.”

“Will you need help with your luggage this evening?”

“No, I’ve got it.” He paid cash for a week’s stay then returned to the bike and carried his bags to his room, and then he showered and changed into lite summer street clothes before returning to the bike. He pulled the seat off and removed the tool kit stored inside the seat and while he checked his tire pressures he also removed his stockpiled cash and put the lead foil packets inside his tank bag before setting off down the street to find a restaurant. Every muscle in his body ached, but his ass most of all.

After dinner he fired off an email to Quintana from the restaurant’s computer, and then returned to his room to wait for the firestorm.

He woke in the middle of the night with gut ripping cramps accompanied with a spiking fever and chills, and he knew he’d picked up a nasty GI bug. And then he realized he’d not remembered to pick up any Ciprofloxacin before he left Texas. He shrugged, knowing there wasn’t a lot he could do right now, so he concentrated on drinking bottled water between bouts on the toilet until 0600, when the front desk supposedly opened. By 0530 there was blood in his stool and he groaned: he was going to need antibiotics and this tiny little village couldn’t possibly have a doctor – or a pharmacy.

“The closest clinic is in Guachochi,” the proprietress advised, “at the Mission Hospital.” She handed over a bottle of bismuth subsalicylate with a smile, and he popped the top and took a long slug right there at the desk.

“How far is it?” the man groaned as his gut did another barrel roll.

“Are you on a motorcycle?”

He nodded. “Yup. Lucky me.”

“It will take all day, I’m afraid, but if you leave soon you will avoid the rains.”

“Rains?”

“Yes, but there may be some snow at higher elevations.”

His eyes wide open now, he had to confront the reality that he wasn’t back in Texas anymore, and that there wasn’t a pharmacy just down the street across from a well-stocked supermarket, and that he had for all intents and purposes run from that life with the DEA and probably the FBI hot on his tail – but at least here he was a free man. “Alright,” he sighed. “Do you have a hotel safe? I want to leave a few things if you do.”

“Of course,” the woman said. “I’ll have some rehydration fluid ready for you.”

“Thanks.”

He went to his room and put his riding suit back on, then put his dollars in a small Pelican case and locked it before heading back up to the desk. The woman gave him a bottle of ORF, or oral rehydration fluid, and she gave him a couple of packets of the mix to add to bottled water as he crossed the mountains.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said as he walked out to his bike. He put his helmet on and fired up the engine, then entered the clinic’s address into the GPS as he stretched – but no…he ran for the restroom off the lobby and made it just in time.

+++++

He pulled into the clinic parking lot a little before eight that evening, and he was shaking now, and he knew he was borderline hypothermic. The bike’s engine heat, and the heated grips on the handlebars, had been the only thing between him and death for the past two hours. Snow in September? In fucking Mexico? Well, mountains are mountains no matter where you find them, but having to stop every half hour to shit on the side of the road had only added insult to injury – and now he was near the end of his rope.

He just got the bike on the side-stand and made his way through blowing sleet to the clinic entrance and passed out just inside the door.

+++++

He felt the stinging pinch of the IV, heard the calm, reassuring voice of a physician giving orders to a nurse and he relaxed – until he remembered he was in Mexico and these people were speaking English! Had the DEA caught up to him?

He grimaced and opened his eyes, and he saw a youngish American girl drawing blood from a stick in his right arm and another, even younger girl looking at his EKG, then this girl turned and looked at him.

“Oh, you’re up!”

“Where am I?”

“Guachochi. At the Tarahumara Mission Hospital, and I’m Dr. McKinnon.”

“Shouldn’t you be, oh, I don’t know, in Glasgow, maybe?”

She smiled. “Med school in Mexico City, my public service commitment here,” she shrugged.

“UTMB Galveston,” he smiled.

“You’re a doc? Where at?”

“Minnesota. Taking a year off to do some riding.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly dull, flat, and comprehending. “Well, your core temp was 95.6 so I put some heat packs under your arms and I’m running Cipro wide open. You should be good to go in the morning.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s your specialty?”

“General surgery?”

“Really? I’ve got a kid with a hot belly and no cutter. Think you can do an appendix?”

“When? Now?”

“You should be hot to trot in an hour,” she said, knocking his knee with her clipboard. “And look at it this way…you do me a favor and I’ll do one for you.”

“You got a gas passer?”

“A nurse practitioner. Well, kind of.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’ll figure it out.”

He shook his head and looked at his watch; he’d been out for several hours – but he really was feeling a lot better. He shivered once and the nurse draped a hot blanket over him and he fell into a deep sleep…again.

+++++

The overhead lights weren’t the best but the instruments were clean and the OR was spotless, and he stood over the eight year boy and checked off his landmarks for the incision, making a few dots with a marker on the boy’s belly before he swabbed betadine over the site. 

Patty McKinnon had taped hot packs to his axial pits and inside his thighs and at least he wasn’t shaking now, so when the anesthetist, a girl from San Diego named Debbie Surtees, gave him the go ahead he made his incision and dissected muscle to expose the kid’s appendix, and forty five minutes later he closed the incision and just made it back to his bed before he passed out. Again.

He woke in the middle of the night and saw two bags of antibiotics and a bag of platelets running. “What the Hell?” he wondered.

McKinnon came in an hour later and when she saw he was awake she pulled up a chair. “Your white count is in the basement, Dr. – uh – Smith. And your right nut is as hard as a golf ball. Some of the cord, too.”

“Fuck.”

“My surgeon will be here tomorrow, and we should do an orchiectomy first thing in the morning.”

“All my stuff is over in Batopilas…”

“At the Lodge?”

“Yeah.”

“I know Martin. I’ll have ‘em put your stuff in storage ‘til we can run over and pick it up.”

“We?”

“You won’t be riding that bike for a while, if you know what I mean.”

“We?”

“Yeah. We’ll treat you here, and you can work off your bill with the rest of the indentured servants working here.”

“I’ve got to be in Creel tomorrow morning.”

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“You have internet here?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, which cartel got to you? Sinaloa?”

He nodded.

“Quintana?” she sighed.

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

She chuckled. “Half the docs working in Mexico these days got sucked into their fentanyl operations. There used to be a shortage of doctors down here. No more.”

He nodded, if only because he’d already figured as much.

“I can get in touch with him if you like, but I’ll need to know your name, I think.”

“Trinity. Just tell him Trinity. He’ll know who you’re talking about.”

She looked away and shook her head. “Sooner or later you’re gonna have to trust someone.”

“I’m not there yet.”

“How long you been on the run?”

“A week.”

“Shit. No wonder…”

“Did you run an AFP?”

“Not yet. Our tech has to get supplies from Creel to run that one.”

“Sorry…it’s just a lot to wrap my head around.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I thought I felt something down there, like a burn, a pulled muscle kind of thing.”

“Probably the cord. We can decide on chemo after we look at the histology, but retroperitoneal radiation is probably warranted.”

“Uh-huh. Where? Not here, I assume?”

“No, not here. We do limited chemo, but I do mean limited.”

“So? Where?”

“I assume going home is out of the question?”

“Yup.”

“You could go to Creel, but…”

“Yeah…but no buts, please. Say no more. What about Mexico City?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, but there’s a good medical school in Chihuahua and the hospital has a decent radiology department.”

“What would you do, Patty?”

“I’d wait until I had the pathology report, ‘Gene.’”

He grinned. “You know, I was thinking when this blows over about heading over to someplace like Sudan or Ethiopia, joining MSF and maybe working over there.”

“Why?”

“Something about practicing medicine in the states, I guess. When I joined the group I was working with I was told we were a volume business, that the aim was to spend just enough time with patient to get a handle on the exact medical problem, then get ‘em in and out of surgery as fast as possible. I guess within a year I felt like I was flipping burgers at MickeyDs. I didn’t know my patients, not at all. It was like go into the OR and see a patch of skin already draped, get in and get out and go to the next OR for the next case, then off to the office for exams before heading back to the hospital to finish my paperwork. Pretty soon I realized I couldn’t even remember one patient’s name from the last couple of years.”

“Flipping burgers,” McKinnon sighed, shaky her head in disbelief. “That’s good. I’ll have to remember that one.”

He looked out a little window and nodded. “I think I felt useless.”

“Do you have any idea how many times you say ‘I’ when you’re talking?”

He turned and looked at her. “What…a little too much narcissism for your taste?”

“Just curious,” she shrugged, “but was someone holding a gun to your head when you decided not to get to know your patients?”

“Yeah. The office manager was, and the partners sure were…”

“Really. My-my. So, it’s off to Africa you go where, guess what, you won’t speak the language so there’ll be no way in hell you’ll ever get to know anyone…”

“And I sure won’t be part of another volume enterprise, will I?”

“What’s that got to do with medicine? You were treating sick people, right? I mean, isn’t that the point?”

“I don’t know that there is a point anymore.”

“Ah. The heart of the matter. You’ve lost your way.”

He looked away again and sucked in a deep breath, but finally he nodded his head just a little.

“So…you think you’ll find your way back by going to deepest, darkest Africa? Sound about right?”

“I don’t know what I’ll find…”

“Yeah? But isn’t that the point?”

“What?”

“The point, Gene? To find yourself?”

“You make it sound so…trite…?”

“Hey, if the shoe fits…”

“You like kicking people when they’re down, don’t you?”

“Like it? No, not really, but sometimes people listen when they’re face down in the mud. And who knows, if they’re lucky maybe they’ll even listen to themselves.”

His eyes blinked a few times and he nodded. “Anything else, Doc? Any more words of wisdom?”

She hooked up a syringe in his line and shot in something. “Get some sleep, okay? We’ll operate first thing in the morning.”

“What about my things?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

His eyes suddenly felt full and very heavy, and later, sometime in the dark he felt gloved hands running a catheter. More strange voices came and went and at one point someone drew blood, then he was aware of being lifted onto an operating table and then the strangest thing of all; he seemed to be aware of a mask sliding down over his mouth and nose – followed by an all consuming darkness that was not at all enjoyable… 

+++++

“Well, Dr. Frankenstein, it lives,” he heard someone say and he managed to open his eyes.

“McKinnon? That you?” 

“Yes, it is, Dr. Harwell. Can you rate your pain for me?”

‘She knows my name,’ the scared little voice inside Gene Harwell’s head screamed. ‘What else does she know?’ He strolled along her razor’s edge, with ambivalence on one side of the blade and utter fear on the other, all while trying to think of how to reply to this simplest question.

“Let’s just say I’m still deep in the land of I don’t give a flying fuck, and let’s leave it at that.”

“Okay, we’ll call it a nice, fat zero. Know where you are, by any chance?”

“In the wonderful land of Oz, and I’m about to pull back the curtain.”

“Memory intact. Sense of humor sucks,” she wrote out loud on her chart. “Know who the president is?”

“Snidely Whiplash, esquire.”

“Good one. I’d never have thought of that. Think you could handle some water?”

“If it comes out of a bottle, maybe.”

“Good situational awareness, too. Okay, five by five, Harwell.”

“You got a path report yet, smart ass?”

“Diffuse seminoma and teratoma in the left testes, no cells in the cord so no radiation needed.”

He felt a roaring surge of relief and then a few tears running down his face, so he cleared his throat before he spoke. “Thanks, McKinnon.”

“No problemo, Gene. Oh, Quintana is okay with things, he says to just lay low here for a while and he’ll be in touch. Martin is bringing your stuff over tomorrow.”

“How long you going to keep me here?”

“You could go home today, but…”

“…but no home to go to. I got that.”

“I’ve got a spare room at my place if you want to bunk out there for a while. There are plenty of places to rent around here, too. Like three, maybe four.”

“Ah. So, any port in a storm, huh?”

“How’s the pain now?”

“I’m feeling it now. Versed is wearing off.”

She picked up a syringe from a bedside tray and hooked it up to his IV and sent a little morphine down his line. “That’ll take the edge off for a while. You have any trouble taking Oxy?”

“Yeah. I don’t take it, period. You got naproxen?”

“Sure.”

“That’ll do.”

“You want me to get my spare bedroom cleaned up?”

He nodded her way, then grinned: “Yeah. That’ll do.”

+++++

He started easy, riding a few miles around local roads, then a few mining trails, but his groin still hurt when he pushed too hard. He worked three weekends at the hospital before he decided he’d had enough domesticity in his life. It wasn’t that McKinnon was hard to take, either; in fact, the opposite was true. She was bright as hell but should have gone into psychiatry, not general medicine, but her constant psychoanalyzing had grown stuffy and was often downright obtuse. Even after a couple of weeks with her she seemed to alternate between voracious horniness and bouts of moodily introspective analysis and he never felt like he belonged.

Probably because he didn’t. And maybe they both knew it.

But he’d liked Batopilas, and something about the place still seemed to pull at him. Maybe it was the steep-walled, tree-lined valley, or how the town was clinging precariously to a ledge just above the edge of the river, or even how the tiny village was defined by narrow cobbled lanes and red-tiled roofs, everything surrounded by overhanging trees and the roar of the rushing water just below. He wondered what it would feel like to stay in a village like that one and write and to call a place like that home. Maybe he could open up a little clinic there, too… 

Yet when he told McKinnon he was leaving she seemed to come undone.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he told her. “I haven’t been here a month…”

“But I’ve had this feeling for you since the moment I saw you,” she said, coming on hard. “Look, I don’t want you to go.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, I get that and yeah, I like you too. I’ve enjoyed spending time with you…”

“Then stay!”

“And what happens when I decide to head to Africa? What then?”

“We both go.”

“Simple as that, huh? You just pack up and head out?”

“Yeah. Simple as that. I’ve looked into it, I know what we’d have to do and we’d be a perfect team. Medicine and surgery…I mean, they’d love to have us!”

“Patty, doesn’t it bother you that I don’t love you?”

“No, not really. You’re a guy and guys are like that. I do know that we fit together, that we’d be a good team…”

“And what about you? What about love?” he asked.

And she shrugged. “We haven’t been together long enough for that, Gene, not really, but yeah, when I’m around you I’m happy. And it’s like I can’t imagine being happy unless I’m around you, and I don’t know what you call that…”

“Infatuation, maybe?”

“But I’m not a teenager, Gene,” she said, and perhaps a little too defiantly – like maybe she had ‘daddy issues.’ Still, he had Quintana to worry about, because if he bolted on the cartel now he might as well hang it up. He knew too much and they’d never let him go without an understanding of some kind.

So he stayed. He understood that, really, without Quintana’s blessing he had to stay put for the time being. And by that point he’d also recognized that McKinnon and Quintana had a bond of some kind. Like maybe she’d gotten him out of a tough spot before, and he owed her. Big time. At least…that’s what it felt like. On the other hand, he had money in banks down here, and a lot of it. He was safely out of reach from both the DEA and the FBI. He had a roof over his head and McKinnon was fun to hang around with.

And he was finding that even after a couple of weeks he missed medicine. His Spanish, after living in San Antonio for almost ten years, was already more than passable – but now he was quickly improving in this immersive setting – and so he was able to talk to his patients – without the commercial restraints imposed by corporate medicine. And he liked working that way – finally. It was what he’d always imagined medicine would be like. Or…should be like, he reminded himself.

He liked riding around the mountains but he also recognized he was living in a really hostile environment, too. At medium elevations vast fields of poppies were growing every he went, and at lower elevations marijuana cultivation was in full swing. And – everywhere he went he ran into armed guards, in many cases just kids with AK-47s and itchy trigger fingers. Rival clans were staking claims and some were encroaching on other clan’s grows, with turf wars the obvious result, and that made him think about his role in this house of cards.

There wouldn’t be cartels without users and all this semi-clandestine production was aimed at supplying the North American market. With almost two thirds of the people in the United States and Canada now being regular users of marijuana, and with domestic cultivation for all intents and purposes illegal, the cartels had been handed a market so insatiably vast it was almost beyond comprehension. It was no wonder the cartels were paying lobbyists in the U.S. to keep these products illegal, yet the handwriting was on the wall. U.S. tobacco companies had been buying up land in Northern California for decades, and why? Because it was prime land for marijuana cultivation. Not to mention federal taxes on marijuana related products could crush federal budget deficits. But it would severely limit the profitability of the cartels, so…

But riding these hills was dangerous now. Kidnappings were more frequent, and some kids had been known gun down bikers just to take their motorcycles for a joyride. And there were often no repercussions because the cartels owned cops. The only reason he could ride around the area was simple enough to understand: he was under the protection of a capo, one of the Sinaloa cartel’s commanders. He was therefore quite untouchable, so he rode around and kids with Ak-47s waved at him as he passed – though he usually stopped and talked with them, too. He learned about what they did, about their command structure, and he listened as they talked about their gripes – and their hopes and dreams. He found that a bunch of these kids were working while they were sick as hell, so he started loading up his saddlebags with medical supplies and he started taking care of the kids out there. 

People in the smaller villages along his route heard about that, too.

So when he rode through these hamlets people waved him down. He learned that most of these people didn’t trust doctors, or hospitals, but for some reason they trusted him, and probably because he’d treated their kids. And pretty soon he was treating people along a vast network of tiny villages along dirt roads in the boondocks, and the administrators at the Mission Hospital grew quite interested in his successes. When he ran across a case he couldn’t fix out on the road he put the patient on the back of his bike and took them to the hospital, and he fixed ‘em there.

And pretty soon he began to feel the one thing he’d been missing in his life: purpose.

So he lived with McKinnon and soon enough weeks turned into months, and months into a year, and still, at least three days a week he hopped on his bike and rode off into the boonies. He worked weekends in the OR, usually three to four surgeries a day, some days more, rarely less. He stopped caring about McKinnon’s perceived flaws and he started listening to her hopes and dreams, and her fears. He started caring for her, too.

He found her ovarian cancer and he did the procedure. He nursed her through chemo, and he held her hand as she regained her health. They took walks together, short walks in the beginning but longer ones as she got stronger, and her hopes and dreams turned into quiet talks about a future together, just the two of them. Maybe here in Mexico or maybe somewhere in Africa…it didn’t matter to her as long as they were together.

So on a Friday night in April one of the Jesuits at the mission said the words people say when they promise to stay together until death do they part, and standing there in the candlelight surrounded by his new life, Gene Harwood felt something he’d never really expected to feel after he left his home, and his country. He felt happy, and that even came as a surprise to the DEA agents who’d had him under surveillance for two months. 

Here ends Part I. This work © 2017-2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkühnwrites.com and all rights reserved, and as usual this was a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s (rather twisted) imagination or coincidentally referenced entities are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. In other words, this is just a little bit of fiction, pure and simple.

(hendrix\\wind cries mary)

Another short segment as the arc progresses from mind to screen. Cardamom tea after a long day of CT scans and the intrusions of random unwanted needles. It feels good to write.

[ Yes \\ South Side of the Sky \\ acoustic ]

Chapter 62.4

They heard screams. At least two people screaming, and Callahan looked at Eisenstadt – both now clearly confused.

“Where’s that coming from?” he asked.

Eisenstadt canted her head as if trying to fix the location, then she started for Harry’s bedroom. Harry clambered from the piano into his wheelchair and followed, getting to his bedroom in time to see some sort of commotion in his bathroom – and then, yes, there it was. Fresh sea ice everywhere, all over the slate floor and in the shower, too…which was where Deborah and Liz were now…but he saw there was also a little girl in the shower and she was still screaming hysterically. 

Eisenstadt handed a towel to Liz and then turned her attention to the girl, and as Harry rolled into the bathroom Liz saw him and literally flew into his lap. She was quaking now and clearly terrified so he held her close until she calmed a little, still keeping an eye on Deborah and the little girl – both now standing under the shower’s steaming spray. Then he recognized her: she was the same little girl he’d encountered on the Titanic, but something was different about her now.

She’d seemed nonplused when he ran into her, but now she was anything but. Now she was close to the edge.

He turned to Liz and stroked her hair. “Liz…where were you? Can you tell me what happened?”

He felt her shake her head against the skin of his neck, heard her quiet sobs as she came down, so he held her closer still.

“Oh Harry,” she whispered in his ear, “don’t ever let me go… Promise me, you’ll never let me go.”

“I’m here, kiddo,” he whispered as he stroked the back of her head. “It’s okay…I’m here.”

She squeezed him – and hard – then she palpably relaxed just a little…but a moment later he heard her snoring and her arms fell from his side. Her skin was still quite cool and her clothes were damp, but he was also virtually trapped in his wheelchair and the confinement he felt was now crushing, almost demoralizing. 

But the little girl’s cries had as quickly stopped, too, and now it appeared she too was sound asleep. Deborah could see Harry’s predicament and so she toweled the girl off, then shook her head and stripped her clothes off so she could completely dry her off. With that done Eisenstadt muscled her to Harry’s bed and got her covered, then the two of them got Liz dried off and in bed, too.

“Is that the same girl you saw on Titanic?” Deborah asked.

And Harry nodded. “Yeah, but she almost appears younger.”

Eisenstadt shook her head and sighed. “Why is she here?”

“I sincerely hope you don’t think I know the answer to that one, Kiddo.”

Which only made Deborah laugh – at least a little. “Harry, can you imagine? A few minutes ago this child was on the Titanic…and now…here she is?”

“Hey. Better here than there.”

“Perhaps. But…perhaps not. We must understand why she is here, Harald.”

“Did she say anything to you in there?” he asked, nodding his head in the direction of the head.

“No, not really. She babbled on about the president. Something she had to tell the president.”

“Clinton? Now that’s a good one.”

“Harald, she said she needed to see the president.”

“Okay, let’s go to the White House with a crazy naked kid and see…”

“Harald. You can stop now.”

“Have you noticed? When you’re getting your dander up you call me Harald…”

“I do not.”

“Uh-huh, whatever you say, Slick.” He crossed his arms over his lap and grinned at her. “Well, they obviously need sleep – and you obviously need another scotch, so…” Callahan sighed as she ambled off to the kitchen.

She poured two more while he put a heavy log on the fire and sat on the hearth, and yup, she came right back to his side and put her head on his shoulder.

“Thank you, Harald,” she said, giving him a little elbow in the ribs.

“You’re welcome, Doc.” He looked at his watch and growled then: “Well, we missed it.”

“Shit happens,” Eisenstadt said, and for some reason Callahan thought that was about the funniest thing he’d ever heard in his life.

+++++

When it was time to get Liz up they went to the bedroom and the little girl was gone. Just gone, like she’d never been there and everything else was simple imagination…except her wet clothes were still in the bathroom. Deborah took them to the washing machine and put them on with a small load of Harry’s things, and when she came back into the room Liz was sitting up in bed – and now wondering what she was doing in Harry’s room.

“Do you remember anything?” Harry asked.

She looked away and shook her head. “I’m not sure what’s going on, Harry, but it’s like I know some kind of memory is there – but I just can’t reach it.”

“Been there, done that,” Harry sighed. “Deb? You better get the rest of your things packed. Liz? Can you make it up to the house?”

“Can I borrow your bathrobe?” she asked carefully, holding the sheets up to cover her breasts.

“Oh, right…uh, whoa…yeah. I’ll go put on some coffee…” Callahan said as he rolled out of his room. Liz looked at Eisenstadt and they both laughed.

+++++

Harry slept all the way back out to Sea Ranch after he and the doc dropped off the girls, and he woke with a start when they pulled up to the driveway. The doc got Harry’s wheelchair set up and helped him settle in, then he pushed Harry up to the house. DD had finished cleaning up the mess in Harry’s bathroom and just for kicks she’d cleaned the house too, again – but she watched him carefully as he rolled through the living room and out onto the deck.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this,” she said to the doc as he came in behind Harry.

“He didn’t say a word coming back. Just fell asleep.”

“You think he’s depressed?”

“With a capitol fucking D, babe. I’ll take him into work with me tomorrow. He’s got the appointment for his leg, remember?”

“Has he had anything to eat?”

The doc shook his head. “Nope. Zero interest. He hardly ate the other night, and even Bennett said something to me about it.”

“You thinking anti-depressants?”

“You know me. I hate that shit; it ain’t right to go fucking around with the brain. He needs to get back to work, feel invested in life again.”

“I think I’ll fix a carbonara. He usually eats that.”

“Good idea,” said the doc.

“You go talk with him, see what’s up.”

“I better pour a couple of fingers, ya know?”

“Those two have been putting it down. Maybe we ought to slow that down a little?”

“Really? Harry? Drinking scotch?”

“Two bottles in four days.”

“Shit. Better make that two Cokes, okay?” Watson sighed as he turned and walked out to the deck, and he stood beside Callahan and watched him for a few moments…

“I’m not sure I can do this, Doc,” Callahan finally said.

“Do…what, Harry?”

“I’m not sure I can do ‘alone’ anymore, ya know? It was easier in the city, but out here? The only company out here is the wind and the waves, maybe a passing gull.”

“Don’t forget the sea lions.”

“Thanks, Doc, I needed that.”

“So, what are your options. You were talking about music, spending more time in the studio, working on youth programs. What happened to all that?”

“I can’t do it, Doc. Not by myself.”

“Hm-m. Maybe, Harry, that’s exactly what you need right now. Ever consider that?”

Callahan shook his head. “I’ve done ‘alone’ Doc. For most of my life, I think.”

“What about Deborah?”

“What about her?”

“You know, Harry, here you are talking about not wanting to be alone, yet when she got out of the car at the airport she came up to you and it was like some kind of a wall came up. I’ve never seen anyone in my life that wanted a kiss more than she did, while you for all intents and purposes turned into a glacier. Cold and hard, fracturing and falling into the sea. What on earth was going through your mind right then?”

“Fujiko. June. And even my boy.”

“Ah. The ghosts of Christmases Past.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Tell me something. Can you see yourself with her?”

“Who? Deborah?”

“Yeah, meathead. Deborah.”

Callahan sighed. “She’s comfortable, Doc…ya know? She fits. So yeah, I could see her with me?”

“You could? Or you can?”

“What’s the difference, Doc?”

“Commitment, for one thing. Trust also comes to mind.”

“Trust?”

“Yeah, trust. As in: can she trust you to be there for the long haul?”

“We started to talk about it, but things went sideways.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Liz came over.”

“Liz?”

“Yeah. And that’s the hard part, Doc. I think she’s…”

“She’s got a crush on you. Yeah, everyone’s got that, Callahan. She has since she was three. So what? She’s a child. You’re not. And remember that, would you?”

“I promised Cathy, and even Frank, that I’d take care of her.”

“Okay. Fine. Does that mean wedding bells and babies, Harry?”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay. So…what’s the problem?”

“She gets jealous,” Harry said.

“Jealous? Who, Liz?”

“Yeah, but I think even Deborah did, too.”

“You got to set boundaries, Harry. They both need to know where you stand, as in zero ambiguity. Got it?”

Callahan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Say you two,” DD said, coming out on the deck with Cokes and some nachos, “who wants dinner?”

“I’m not real hungry,” Harry sighed.

“Tough shit,” DD snarled. “I got bacon going for a carbonara, so get ready.” She wheeled around and zipped off to the kitchen, leaving Callahan with his mouth hanging open.

“What’s it like living with her, Doc?”

“Oh, like living with any other hurricane, Harry. She’s a force of nature, so you either get out of her way or get used to the wind.”

+++++

He called Eisenstadt after dinner. After DD cleaned up her colossal mess and folded his laundry.

She picked up the phone and right away he could feel the pain in her voice. “I’m sorry,” he said straight away.

“Sorry for what?”

“For the way I was at the airport. I’m really sorry.”

“How was the drive back to the house?”

“I slept. How ‘bout you? Did you sleep on the plane?”

“No. Liz and I talked the entire trip. About you.”

“Oh, no…”

“Oh, yes. And do you know what was said?”

“Uh…”

“She’s afraid for you, Harry. Afraid you will live your life by yourself.”

…

“And she’s afraid she’s to blame.”

“To blame? How so?”

“She loves you, Harry. Like a daughter loves her father, she loves you. And she wants to see you happy.”

“What about you, Deborah?”

“I’ve told you how I feel, Harry. Nothing has changed.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am sure!” she barked. “Yes, I love you, you silly man. I could hardly breathe when we walked away from the car. And I could not handle the thought of you all alone out there…”

“When can you come back?”

“Come back? To visit, or to…”

“Deb, come back if you’re going to stay, but only if you plan to stay. Otherwise, I’m not sure I could stand the pain.” 

They came to a long pause, a space where neither knew what to say, but Harry knew what she was waiting for.

“I love you, Kid,” he finally said, and he could feel her release from across the continent.

“I love you too, Meathead.”

They laughed for the longest time after that, and Harry slept well that night. So well he never noticed the blues gathered by his bed with their instruments.

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

And here’s the original.

Standing inside a rabbit hole…what must that be like? And is there an event horizon between the real and the unreal? What kind of gravity would pull you hardest there? How would it feel to meet the White Queen, or the Red?

Alas, dear reader, time for tea. Tea for two, I dare say. Or will it be three?

Only time will tell.

[Herb Alpert \\ This Guy’s In Love With You]

Chapter 62.3

After DD and the doc left, Callahan stoked the fire while Eisenstadt poured two glasses of scotch, and he checked his watch, wanting to take in the pulsar again. He regarded Eisenstadt as she came back into the living room, still not sure what to think of this woman. With her Coke bottle eyeglasses on she looked decidedly frumpy and bookish, yet with them off she had a pleasant, easy going demeanor he found…decidedly – comfortable. Sure, she was five years older than he was, but in the great scheme of things that hardly mattered…

And then he caught himself. ‘Why am I even thinking of this stranger in these terms?’

And only one thing came to mind, really.

‘Because I really dislike being alone. Especially now that I’m not going to work every day.’

And, he had to admit now, seeing Sam Bennett in his current state had shaken him up.

So…he sat on the hearth with his back to the fire and he wasn’t at all unhappy when she came and sat right beside him again.

“How you doin’?” he asked as she slid in close, handing over a tumbler.

And she leaned into him, put her head on his shoulder. “I feel better now.”

“Oh?” he said. “So I’m not the only one feeling this way?”

“I like the way I feel with you, Harry. Comfortable, like somehow we belong.”

He nodded. “It seems funny that we have a history. Copenhagen and all that…”

“I am not too old for you?” she wondered aloud.

He smiled. “As long as you don’t want babies I think we’ll be okay.”

“Dear God. Babies. I would never have been a good mother.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“I was too focused on my studies, and I hardly could manage being a wife, let alone a mother. Now, of course, all that has changed. I’ve been teaching for twenty years and I hate to say it, but I think that enough is enough.”

“What are your plans?”

“I hadn’t really made any, as strange as that may sound. I have my place in Cambridge, and I have a small cottage out on the Cape that I go to when it is warm enough, but all-in-all I’ve led a quiet life since Anders passed. Teaching has been enough for me, I think.”

“And now?”

“I like the way my head feels – right here beside you,” she said as she rubbed her head on his shoulder. “I think I might enjoy this a little too much.”

There came a knock on the front door and Liz announced herself before she made her way to the living room, and when she found Harry and Deborah sitting by the fire she grinned. “Fix me a scotch, Harry?” she asked.

“Got ID?” he growled.

“Oh, c’mon Harry! I’m nineteen! I can handle it!”

“You know,” Callahan grinned, “I think your twenty-first birthday will be memorable for a bunch of reasons, and maybe chief among them getting snockered, but I made a promise to your mom…”

“I know, I know. And here he is, ladies and gentlemen. I give you Harry Callahan! Protector of ladies’ virtue everywhere!”

“That’s me,” Harry sighed. “So? Did you come down to check out the pulsar, or my liquor cabinet?”

“No, I wanted to tell you I’m flying back to Boston with you, Professor Eisenstadt.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Harry said, and Deborah nodded in agreement. 

“I really should get my degree, one way or another, but a Harvard degree…”

“I agree,” Eisenstadt said. “You are off to a good start, but it is only that. You must finish what you begin.”

Liz nodded. “So, what time is the doc coming down to pick us up?”

Callahan looked at his watch. “Six hours. The pulsar should kick off in a half hour. Are you packed?”

“Yup. Would you guys mind if I hang around and watch the light show from here?”

“Not at all,” Deborah said, standing and going over to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with a tumbler of something and handed it to Liz.

“It’s ginger ale, Harry,” Eisenstadt grinned.

Harry shook his head. “You two are going to make it real hard for me not to play the asshole.”

Liz took a sip then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Geez, why do you even drink stuff that tastes like that? That’s revolting! It’s like battery acid with a little Tabasco thrown in for good measure.”

“See,” Harry sighed, holding up his hands, “I was just trying to protect you for the vices of old age.”

Liz put the drink down and and went to the piano; she started playing random notes but these efforts soon began to coalesce around a theme…

“Where have I heard that?” Harry mumbled – just under his breath.

“It’s what you began playing last night, just before…”

But now when Harry looked at Liz she was completely entranced, and for some reason he recognized what was happening to her – and what she was playing…

“Someone or something has linked up to her,” Harry whispered. “She’s being fed these notes. Did I look like this?”

Eisenstadt nodded, then out of curiosity she turned and looked behind and yes, there it was. The pink sphere. “Be very still now, Harry,” she barely whispered, “but the sphere has returned. The pink one.”

“Swell.”

The sphere was absolutely tiny now, no larger than an aspirin tablet, but it was bright – and spinning madly. It remained fixed near the ceiling, apparently locked into communicating with Liz and unconcerned with anything else going on in the room, so Deborah stood and walked across the living room until she was standing directly under the glowing orb. She walked to the hall closet and picked out a broom and returned, then held the bristled end up and inserted the straw ends into the sphere…

And there was no reaction at all, none whatsoever. 

And when she removed the broom the bristles appeared completely undisturbed.

“That cannot be?” she muttered, so she pushed the bristles back up and all the way through the sphere this time, and again the bristles appeared untouched. She swatted at the sphere with the bristled end and the sphere didn’t budge, so she flipped the broom and swatted the sphere with wooden handle – and the broomstick passed right through the sphere – and neither the sphere nor the broom reacted at all.

Eisenstadt looked at Harry and shrugged.

Though Harry, for his part, picked up his glass and drained it.

Eisenstadt came back to the hearth and sat by him once again. “It is as if it isn’t really here,” she whispered.

“Could it be some kind of projection? Maybe like a hologram?”

“Possibly. But there is another possibility, and one that disturbs me even more. There are theories concerning the possible existence of parallel dimensions, but what if there was a way for elements of one dimension to intrude on another?”

“I’m just curious,” Harry sighed, “but when you were growing up, did you eat your porridge with a slide rule?”

“Only on schooldays.”

“Figures.”

The sphere began moving now, and once again it slipped silently to the piano, hovering just above the closed cover. 

“Help me up, would you?” he asked Deborah, and once he had his walker underhand he slid over to the piano and pulled up the cover, exposing the various bridges and dampers – and the soundboard – and the sphere reacted immediately by spinning up to an even greater velocity.

Then Liz started playing the last movement of the Fourth, music she had seen only once – so Callahan really knew she had to be receiving instructions as she played…

…and then Harry realized she was playing his mother’s original score, the original phrasing unedited by von Karajan, and he stepped back from the piano in time to see Liz’s body shimmer in the air for a moment – and then disappear.

Harry looked up and watched the sphere – now spinning so fast it was hardly visible – and then he turned to Deborah. “I think we’re going to need a shitload of towels,” he grumbled.

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

[ELP \\ Take a Pebble]

A fairly brief snippet here. Maybe one cup of tea on the tea-meter?

[Paul McCartney \\ Every Night]

Chapter 62.2

He woke up with a start, sat up and looked around the room – not really knowing where he was – or where he’d been.

Callahan recognized his bedroom and for some reason he felt a surge of relief, then he realized he was sweating profusely and terribly thirsty. “And why do I feel so disoriented?” he growled at his shaking hands.

He swung his leg out of bed and pulled the wheelchair close, then swung himself onto the seat – very nearly missing the seat and just saving his ass from another fall – and he grumbled all the way into the head, peeling off his soaked t-shirt and tossing it into the hamper as he passed. Then he positioned himself before the countertop and hoisted his body up to brace and turn on the shower  – and that’s when he saw the markings.

He saw a bunch of puncture woulds, and each looked like a site where a large bore needle had been inserted…and then he noticed that the injection sites – if that’s what they were – were grouped in threes, and that these groupings formed perfect equilateral triangles. And he could see at least five groupings like that on his torso. He shook his head, not at all sure what might have caused these as he started to look at his leg.

He washed up and brushed his teeth in the shower, but something on the insides of his gums didn’t feel right so he just rinsed with mouthwash and sighed. Something was seriously wrong, but he still had no idea what that something was, or even what it might be. 

He hopped out of the shower and dried off, then unfolded his walker and made it to the dresser in his bedroom. There was a mirror there as well, and he saw more of the same triangular groupings under his arms, but he just couldn’t see his back, nor the backside of his leg. ‘Gotta call the doc,’ he sighed, thinking he might have picked up the measles.

Then he remembered Deborah…Eisenstadt. 

He pulled on his usual SFPD gym shorts and put a sweatshirt on over his t-shirt, then he got into his wheelchair and rolled into Lloyd’s old bedroom…and he found she was still asleep. He reached over and gave her a nudge and she woke with a start, and he could see enough to realize she too was covered in sweat.

She sat up and immediately grabbed her head. “Oh, God! I have a headache!” she cried.

And yet Callahan could already see several of the triangular groups on her upper arms.

“What are you staring at?” Deborah said when she saw Callahan.

“Those marks, on your arm,” Callahan said. “I hate to ask, but I need you to check my back.”

“What?”

“Here, look at my arms,” he said, holding his arms out.

“You have the same marks, too?”

“Yup. A bunch of ‘em, from my shoulders right on down my leg.”

She rolled out of bed and came around to his back and he leaned forward in his chair enough for her to pull up his shirts…then…

“Yes, there are six groups of three on your back,” she said. “In a simple rectangular pattern, too.”

“They look like puncture wounds, right?” he added. “Yet I don’t feel anything. You?”

“No. Nothing.”

“I woke up covered in sweat, and so did you. Is your headache…?”

“It’s gone. Completely. So…perhaps this was a circulatory event? Did you have a headache?”

“Not that I noticed,” he sighed, “but I feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali.”

“Who is this?”

He shook his head. “Not important.” He saw the same marks running down her legs and not one showed any sign of bleeding – or any evidence of other mishap, for that matter – and he thought it looked like these sites had been created by a machine of some sort. “What else could account for this kind of precision…?” he whispered.

“The sphere,” Eisenstadt said. “The angry blue sphere. I feel certain it has something to do with this…entity.”

“Did you see something?”

“I feel as if I should, but Harry, this is very strange. I feel a memory is there but that somehow it has been, or is somehow being suppressed.”

“I hate to say it, but yeah, it’s like a missing hole in my memory. I know something is there, but I just can’t find it.”

“This is nothing new, I’m afraid. There was a conference recently where I teach…”

“MIT, right?”

“Yes. This conference concerned the psychopathologies of the so-called UFO abductee, and I attended a few of the sessions, those that concerned specific references to time dilation, but many of the psychiatrists attending did not want to generalize these phenomena. While some could trace an etiology back to some sort of underlying schizoaffective disorder…”

“Uh, Doc, sorry, but you’re going to need to tone it down a notch…”

“Ah, yes. Well, some physicians present did not feel comfortable about calling the abduction phenomenon a medical, or even a psychiatric condition.”

“Which means?”

“These physicians have concluded some of these events are grounded in reality.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I know. I feel the same way, Harry, but…” And here she paused, perhaps gathering her thoughts. “What is the last thing you remember from last night?”

“We were on the deck and Sagittarius started…” he said, his voice suddenly a flat monotone.

“And?”

“And…then I woke up?”

“Just so. It is the same with me. Something has happened. To us, I mean.”

Callahan felt heavy, almost like he was coming out of a trance, then he heard the front door open, followed by DDs almost adolescent “Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?”

“Is the doc with you?” Harry replied.

“Yessiree-Bob, you betcha!”

“Oh dear God,” Callahan moaned. “She must’ve gotten laid last night…”

Deborah tried not to laugh but DD walked into the room just then and when she saw Harry with his shirt askew a prudish eyebrow arched high. “Well, well, well,” she sighed, “did somebody not have enough fun last night?”

“Come take a look at this,” Harry snarled, and as DD knew that tone she snapped to.

“What am I looking…oh shit, Harry! What the hell did that?”

“They’re all over Deborah, too,” Harry growled. “Where’s the doc?”

And then, as if right on cue: “Holy shit!” Doc Watson barked. “Where’d all this water come from?”

+++++

Delgetti and Sam Bennett walked up to the door and Callahan was there waiting for them.

“Shit, Harry,” Captain Bennett grumbled as he smacked Callahan’s leg, “I like the look, but why not get a peg-leg?”

“Because I might be tempted to kick your ass!” Callahan replied with a smile. “Howya doin’, Cap?”

“I keep forgetting how far it is out here,” Del added as he took Harry’s hand. “Harry? How’s it hangin’?”

“To my knee, shipmate. You look kinda thirsty, but I may have something out back to take care of that.”

He led Captain Bennett through his house but it was obvious his old captain’s legs were bothering him…then they reached the stairs to head down to the patio where everything was set up.

“Harry? I’m not sure I can make it down those stairs…” Sam sighed.

“Well Hell, Cap…I know I can’t but I’ve got a spare chair. Why don’t you take this one. I just got it and it’s got a motor and it’ll go just fast enough to get you into trouble.”

“I don’t know, Harry. I just don’t know.”

Harry looked up at Delgetti and grinned. “Del, why don’t you run down and grab a couple of brews.”

“Sure, Harry…” his old friend nodded, understanding the moment all too well.

“Harry? I’m not doing so good, ya know?”

“It’s hard without Elaine, I guess?”

Sam broke down when he heard that. “Oh Harry, you have no idea…but now, livin’ in a home? That’s what it is, Harry, ya know? Just a fuckin’ warehouse for old geezers waitin’ to shuffle off, ya know?”

“Sam…?”

“And don’t you spout off about getting a hobby or making new friends. Ain’t no friends left, Harry, except you guys. Hell, if Delgetti didn’t come down on weekends the only people I talk to all week are the aides who drop by to see if I’ve shit myself.”

“Is it as bad as that?” Callahan asked, shocked at the change he saw in Bennett.

“It’s fuckin’ worse, Harry. There ain’t nothing worse than bein’ alone, not now, not at this stage.”

“Not how you thought things would turn out, is it?”

Bennett looked away. “We used to look at you, at all those women you had coming and going and we used to worry about how you’d end up, and now here I sit. I think that’s called irony, Harry, and it fucking sucks. The big one.”

“So…have you thought about photography?” Callahan said jokingly.

“Yeah, maybe we could go down to the valley and shoot porn.”

“There ya go. Pop wood and you wouldn’t even need a tripod.”

They laughed and Del came up with a beer for his captain, and Harry asked DD to find his spare wheelchair.

“I’m gonna let Sam use this one today,” he said when he saw the question in her eyes.

It took a few minutes but they got Bennett down the outside path and out to the grill and Sam just couldn’t resist; he strapped on an apron and started tossing ribeyes on the fire, suddenly back in his element. Callahan looked at his captain and grinned.

“It’s the simple things, Harry,” Delgetti said, coming up beside his old wheelchair. “I haven’t been able to get him interested in anything, but look at him now. Maybe all any of us want is to be useful, you know?”

“I do, as a matter of fact.”

“Sorry man. I freaked out when I heard about the leg. What are you gonna do now?”

“Music. That’s all I’ve got left, Del.”

“Hear that. Can I grab you an Oly?”

“Only I you’re joining me,” Callahan smiled…just as Deborah Eisenstadt came over, with two fresh bottles – the bottles sweating now that they were out of the ice. She passed them over and made her way back to Bennett.

“Who’s the, uh, new girl?” Delgetti asked.

“She’s some kind of physics professor at MIT…”

“Yeah, she looks like it, too.”

Callahan laughed. “Ah, she’s alright. Good company, anyway.”

“She’s stayin’ out here with you?”

“Staying in Lloyd’s old room. She came out with Liz…”

“Liz? Is she here? Man, I’d love to see her!”

“Yeah, she’s around here somewhere.”

“Physics professor, huh?” Delgetti grinned. “Cute legs, but Harry, ain’t she a little too stringy for you?”

“Del! I haven’t been home a week! I wasn’t exactly expecting to get laid anytime soon, ya know?”

Everyone on the patio stopped talking.

Everyone turned and looked at Callahan.

“Oops,” Harry whispered, and he saw that Captain Bennett was glowering at him. “Well, all’s right in the world, I’d say.”

“Yeah,” Delgetti sighed, “you still got a raging case of foot in mouth disease, Harry.”

+++++

Harry played the piano after dinner, and Liz danced with Sam for a while and the sight got to both Del and Callahan. Eisenstadt even danced with Bennett, at least until he put his hands on her butt – but everyone laughs at old men when they do stuff like that and tonight was no exception to the rule, and soon enough all the guests were loading into cars and heading south, leaving DD and Eisenstadt to load the dishwasher while Harry and the doc cleared tables and carried stuff up to the kitchen.

“So,” Doc said after the hard part was wrapped-up, “what about those puncture wounds. They still not itching?”

“I hadn’t thought of them ‘til you mentioned it, Doc,” Harry said. “But no…”

“Then they used sterile fields. Did you notice any kind of residue on your arms or torso?”

“Residue?”

“Like some kind of antiseptic. Betadine, or something like that?”

“No, nothing, nothing at all,” Deborah said. “And that is odd, isn’t it?”

“Odd, yes,” Doc Watson sighed. “And it means whoever did this has some serious understanding of the human biome.” He shook his head, clearly perplexed. “I’m just curious, Harry, but what aren’t you telling me?”

Callahan looked at Eisenstadt but she simply shrugged.

So…Callahan told DD and the Doc about going back in time to visit his mother as she played the closing notes of the Fourth, then about finding himself on the Titanic just as she slammed into the iceberg…

“Are you saying that’s where all that water came from?” the doc cried. “No way, man!”

“Yeah. Way, man. Then we went out to look at the pulsar and the next thing I know I’m in bed. With these triangles all over my fat ass.”

“Harry!” DD cried. “You do not have a fat ass!”

The doc rolled his eyes.

“You’re still leaving out something, Harry,” Eisenstadt sighed. “Again.”

“I am?”

“The spheres, Harry. You haven’t mentioned the spheres.”

Callahan nodded and took a deep breath, then he told them about their encounter with the blues and the single pink sphere…

…and when he finished DD was incredulous while the doc seemed curiously unphased.

“You both saw these things, these spheres?” he asked.

“We did,” Deborah replied, “and I am not so sure these are simple mechanical devices. I think they may be some kind of transport mechanism…”

“Honey?” DD sighed, “maybe we’d better have some of the good stuff?”

Doc went to the kitchen and poured four shots of Drambuie and carried them back out, and he found Harry struggling to get a fire going but decided against helping. It took a while, but Harry worked his magic and soon a nice fire was blazing away in the fireplace. Deborah went and sat beside Harry on the stone hearth, and DD noticed how close she sat to him. The doc did too.

“A transport mechanism, you said?” the doc repeated.

“One of the blue spheres definitely seemed to react to our actions,” Deborah said as she nodded. “That one seemed more hostile, until the pink one intervened.”

“And they came after these events with your mother and the ship?” the doc asked. “What happened to set this off?”

And Harry nodded. “I was playing something…it was just coming to me, at least I thought it was, but now I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?” Deborah asked.

“You said, what, those doodling notes I was playing…”

“Had form and structure,” Deborah said.

“And…harmony,” Harry added.

“Yes! Harmonic structure…like the sound itself…”

“Is the gateway she mentioned,” Callahan sighed. “And the harmonic structure is bound up within those last few notes.”

“You mean,” the doc interjected, “that the last notes you discovered open up…”

“Something the spheres do not want us to play around with,” Deborah said, looking down at Harry’s fingers. “Harry, you hold the key. You know that now, don’t you?”

Callahan shook his head. “Can’t use it. No way.”

She leaned into him. “Good for you, Harry. Don’t tempt the fates.”

“I can’t tell whether you’re making fun of me or not,” he grinned.

“I’m proud of you, I think. It’s the right decision. Nobody should…” she started to say, but then she thought of that Old Man. Because what was he if not a time traveler?

“Nobody should what?” DD asked.

“Tempt the fates,” Callahan repeated…but he too was thinking about Lloyd and the Old Man…and of a looming battle between father and son.

© 2021 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…[but wait, there’s more…how about a word or two on sources: I typically don’t post all a story’s acknowledgments until I’ve finished, if only because I’m not sure how many I’ll need before work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances (i.e., Covid-19 and me generally growing somewhat old) waiting to list said sources might not be the best way to proceed, and this listing will grow over time – until the story is complete. To begin, the ‘primary source’ material in this case – so far, at least – derives from two seminal Hollywood ‘cop’ films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman’s brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen’s grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the ‘Briggs’/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician’s tour of duty in Vietnam – and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor’s Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I’ve ever read (think Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell’s Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. The UH-1Y image used from Pt VI on taken by Jodson Graves. The snippets of lyrics from Lucy in the Sky are publicly available as ‘open-sourced.’ Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I’ve managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new – perhaps a running commentary on the times we’ve shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I’d be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime…and what a gift.]

[Nick Drake \\ Things Behind The Sun]