Those gentle voices are here, explaining all with a sigh.

Chapter 26.2

He couldn’t tell what he was looking at, not even if it was alive – or even something else, like a machine…

As the first rush of fear subsided, as confusion turned to curiosity and as Tracy’s shock morphed into a desire to run – anywhere – he tried to hold onto his sense of reality as he stared into what appeared to be – an eye. A huge eye, true, but the thing down there in the water looked just like an eye.

“Is that what I think it is,” he whispered.

“If you think it’s your eye you’re right on the money.”

“My eye? What are you talking about?”

“Blink again, would you, but this time with your left eye only…”

He closed his left eye and the eye in the water disappeared, but when he reopened his eye the doppelgänger in the water reappeared.

“Now…try the right,” she whispered.

He slowly closed his right eye and held it shut, and once again the eye in the water disappeared. “Well, that’s not something you see everyday,” he sighed. “Is it real, ya think?”

“At this point, Hank, I have no idea what’s going on…”

He blinked his right eye several times in rapid succession and they watched as the eye in the water disappeared and reappeared as quickly, then Henry stood on the swim platform and stared at the thing, now at a complete loss…

Then, without thinking, he jumped into the water, hoping to land right in the middle of the eye.

+++++

It felt as if he had landed in something like honey, something not as sticky yet thickly viscous even so. Thick, and exerting an inward force that made it difficult to breath – then he realized he was was awash in overwhelmingly bright light. And it was everywhere – not simply coming from a single point source – and that just didn’t make any sense at all. Vertigo hit when he couldn’t tell how he was oriented – because in this sudden shift there simply was no longer any up or down – indeed, no reference to any ‘external world’ at all.

Then upsetting him most of all, he felt some – thing – in his mind. He couldn’t understand the feeling, not when it first began, but soon he saw a rapid succession of memories flashing through his mind’s eye and realized this something was literally going through his mind, apparently searching for something specific.

And he was powerless to resist.

He closed his eyes and drifted, trying to ignore the flood of unwanted memory – until he felt a sudden shift –

And when he opened his eyes he realized he was hundreds of miles above the earth. Above Paris, if he wasn’t mistaken, and now the viscous goo was gone.

He looked around for evidence of some kind of structure – but saw nothing. He reached out – and felt nothing. He tried to walk – but there was nothing underfoot. Yet he was breathing.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back and reached out for Pinky and in his mind he saw the moon beyond the earth, yet his eye had taken the moon’s place – and when he blinked the moon disappeared. He opened his eyes and saw the moon again and he felt a little relieved.

He turned his head again, then he looked down. He could see Paris between a mottled deck of clouds, her lights peeking out between low lying clouds just thick enough to obscure the real contours of the city…

So close. So far away.

He reached out as if he trying to grab hold of the city and pull himself back through the clouds, then he shook his head as the feeling returned…

‘…something is going through my mind, looking for…?’

There!

Inside the mountain. Outside of Seattle. The security gates. Dr. Collins and the rest of the team.

Inside the Boeing Group’s reconstructed vehicle.

Sitting at the panel. Reaching out.

He closed his eyes and relaxed as best he could.

‘Move…up…’

His body accelerated away from the earth and he grinned.

‘Stop.’

Now he was hundreds of thousands of miles beyond the blinking eye of the moon, adrift within fields of dancing asteroids.

‘Go back…to the exact same place in orbit.’

The acceleration and deceleration was almost instantaneous, the distance covered in the time it took to think about it trip.

‘To the marina, just behind the swim platform, a foot above the water.’

Tracy was still sitting there, still looking down into the water, when he reappeared – and she screamed when his body seemed to materialize out of nothingness.

And he was standing there. A foot above the water.

When she realized what she was looking at she stood and moved to the aft deck, shaking through her sidelong gaze while she tried to reconcile the dissonant bile rising in her throat.

“Can you come here, please?” he asked.

“What?”

“I want to see if something works the way I think it might.”

“Henry! You just jumped in the water and a millisecond later you’re naked and just standing there…tell me what the fuck is going on!”

Then Clyde was there beside her and he barked once before he ambled down to the swim platform. He walked over to the edge and looked down, saw that the skinny white guy wasn’t standing on anything and he barked again.

Henry knelt then reached out and scratched Clyde behind the ears. All resistance melted away and the pup stepped out and settled next to Henry, then he looked up expectantly, and a little nervously.

“Tracy. Come on. I need to try something.”

She came down and stood close to the edge of the swim platform and looked past Clyde down into the water.

“Come on. Give me your hand.”

She reached out and took it, then slowly stepped away from Time Bandits.

Then she was by his side, holding on tight, her eyes squeezed shut.

‘Back to the same spot in orbit.’

Instantly the three of them were hundreds of miles above the earth.

Clyde farted…

Tracy sniffed the air, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

“There’s an atmosphere,” Henry said. “But…how can that be…?”

He looked down and around but he still couldn’t see anything that even remotely resembled a structure of any kind.

Then, a leap of faith.

‘Show the instrument panel.’

A panel appeared, and dozens of displays as well. They were of unrecognizable function, and he’d never seen anything like them before.

‘Show the rest of the ship.’

The cockpit took shape, and several corridors leading from the cockpit led, presumably, to other parts of the ship. He could feel Tracy shaking all over now, and Clyde have moved closer and was now sitting on his feet.

He took a deep breath and held it, then…

‘Show the rest of the crew.’

And in the next instant they were in the water behind Time Bandits, thrashing away as their surroundings began to register…

+++++

He carried Clyde down the companionway steps right to the shower in the aft head, then, when the water had warmed up a bit he stepped in and held the old boy under the spray until his shivering stopped. Clyde rested his head on Henry’s shoulder and moaned once, and Henry massaged Clyde’s back, letting the water work its magic…

“Can I get you anything?” Tracy asked when she arrived.

“Lay out some towels on the bed, would you? And hand me a couple to use in here.”

“Where are they?”

“Bottom drawer, just to your left.”

“Got it,” she said. “How many will you need?”

“Call it three.”

“Right.”

He turned off the water and took a towel from her, and he patted Clyde dry then wrapped him in another fresh towel and carried him to the bed. With two more towels wrapped around him he seemed content. A Golden Retriever burrito, Henry called it…then he looked at his watch.

“Ten-thirty-seven?” he said, clearly not believing what he saw on his wrist.

“That’s not right,” Tracy replied. “I have one fifteen on mine, and on my phone, too.”

Taggart went to slip on some clothes then up to the chart table; the old mechanical clock there showed one seventeen in the morning, so there was a nine hour and change discrepancy…

‘Which has to be about the amount of time I was stuck in that goo…’

He walked back to his cabin and found Tracy coiled up on the floor, stark terror in her eyes.

He followed her eyes until he found what she was looking at…

Pinky’s pale pink sphere, hovering in the doorway to the head.

“It’s okay,” he said to Tracy. “She’s a friend.”

“A friend? Henry, are you out of your fucking mind!?”

He turned to the sphere and spoke to it: “Go ahead. There’s plenty of space on the bed…”

Then he looked at the sphere again. This one was different. Not Pinky. Probably not even her people.

He crossed his arms defensively and then waited for it to make the next move…

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.

A short section today – but we’re getting to the point where music really matters…so pay attention…because you never really know where it’s going to take you. Or do you?

Chapter 58.2

The boy stood over the woman as she slept, for a time his eyes lost in the subtle textures of her hair. He thought he saw a pulsing in her neck and his eyes moved there, taking in the smooth, quiet motions of her beating heart, yet he quickly moved on because he realized it hurt too much to think about that heart growing still. ‘Why did my mother leave?’ he wanted to ask, but then again he’d never really gotten to know her. This woman was his mother, but how could that be? She wasn’t, not really. 

‘I wasn’t important enough to my mother. That’s why she left. Nothing else makes sense.’

“What are you doing in here, Spud?” his father said, coming out of the shower now and almost dressed for the day. “It’s kind of early for you to be up.”

But Lloyd had continued staring at Cathy, completely bereft now. Terrified. It was impossible not to see everything coming into focus. Death is. Coming for her. Where would he be without her? Who would understand his darkest moods if not this other mother?

Then he felt his father come close, felt his father’s hand reach out to him – but he pulled away and ran from the room.

+++++

Todd and Harry were scheduled for some serious studio-time in the coming days, with session musicians coming up from LA for most of the scheduled time in the second and third weeks, too. As these musicians represented a fifteen thousand dollar a day outlay, their time simply couldn’t be wasted, and even Todd recognized that.

So Todd started brainstorming, coming up with ideas and then bouncing them off Harry. Ideas Todd had nurtured while still out on the road began to take shape, and while Todd laid out simple guitar riffs – and occasionally the words he had in mind – Harry shaped the ideas on his racks of keyboards.

“Martin quit, Harry,” Todd said unexpectedly at one point their first morning. “Tired of the whole thing. Done.”

Martin Quist had been Bright’s keyboardist from the beginning, and while he had never been a real ‘creative’ he’d been a solid performer, especially out on the road. “Oh? What are you going to do?”

“Got no clue, man. I don’t suppose you’d come out on the road with us…?”

“No, I don’t see that happening.”

“Damn. I was kind of hoping…”

“Stage fright, Todd. Can’t do it.”

“No shit? Now that I isn’t see coming.”

“I had a hard enough time playing when my parents were around…”

“Really? So you never played for anyone?”

“No. There was a girl.”

“Was? What happened?”

“She died. High school.”

“Bummer. Sorry, man.”

“We went everywhere together. Taking pictures. Of everything, I think, and each and every photograph we took was the most important piece of art in the history of the universe.”

“I know that feeling. But don’t you think that just maybe whatever piece of art you happen to be working on is, in that moment, the most important thing ever?”

Callahan sighed. “You know, I haven’t written much on my own. I think I’ve always been content to play other material.”

“Yeah, you do kinda seem to have a thing for Gershwin.”

“So, you noticed, huh?”

Todd laughed a little. “Kinda-sorta. What about the stuff your mom wrote? You ever play that stuff?”

And Callahan shook his head. “No, not often. Not my thing.”

“What is your thing, Callahan? And don’t say Gershwin…”

Callahan sat back and thought for a while, then he kind of shook his head a little before he spoke. “I think maybe Bill Evans was on the right path. A trio. I guess if I could do anything I’d find a good bassist and drummer and just do my thing…”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever think about doing it?”

“Sometimes.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“Timing, I guess. Besides, I’m just another hack musician. No one would want to sit and listen to me.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “Timing? What do you mean?”

“The time never felt right.”

“What would ‘right’ feel like?”

“No responsibilities, no one to take care of. Then maybe I could just let go.”

Todd’s gaze sharpened and he focused hard on Callahan now, listening to the way he moved, the way he breathed. “Is letting go hard?”

Callahan nodded. “It seems like that’s all I’ve done with my life. Let go. Fall in love and then let go.”

“Tell me about her, Harry. The photographer. What was that like?”

“I taught her how to hear and she taught me how to see…”

“So…you completed each other?”

Callahan nodded. “Completed. Yeah. That’s about the right word.”

“What happened. To her, I mean?”

“Pregnant, and I didn’t know about it, then she went to see my mom – for advice. Mom sent her, well, not really directly but inadvertently, to an abortionist and she died afterwards.”

“Jesus, Harry. Man, I’m sorry…” Todd watched Callahan’s breathing change, then he saw the tears. “Do you, like, ever talk about this stuff with anyone?”

Harry shook his head, roughly wiped his face.

“Well, thanks for trusting me. I mean it, Harry.”

Callahan nodded. “We’d better get to work, Amigo. We’re burning daylight.”

Todd looked over by the entrance and saw Cathy standing there in her bathrobe, and she didn’t look – right. Harry followed Todd’s eyes then he saw her and ran to her side.

“I don’t feel right, Harry.”

“You’re burning up, baby. Come on, let’s get you to bed and let me call the doc…”

+++++

Cathy’s was a post-op infection. Septic shock followed, and death two days later. Once the ambulance picked her up, and when once she left the house on the cliffs, she never returned. Elizabeth did, but she seemed distant the entire time she was home, and she kept to that distance when Lloyd was around. Who knows, Harry thought. Maybe she blames me.

There was no else, were no other heirs, no one to divide the estate with, and Elizabeth didn’t want to sell the house. She’d keep it, she said as she packed to leave, to keep that part of her mother close – if only to remind her of better times. She had DD drive her to the airport.

Harry seemed to dissolve after he brought Cathy’s ashes to the cliffs from the funeral home. He was supposed to scatter her ashes on ocean breezes – but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t handle the idea of losing even what little there was of her left, at least until he saw the look in his son’s eyes – when Lloyd saw the crematory urn and ran from the house. Horror. Revulsion. Despair. Those were the words that came to mind as he watched his son run through the rocks down to the beach.

+++++

Todd had made real progress…or so it seemed to Callahan when he ventured back into the studio a few weeks after Cathy passed. He looked at all the studio musicians huddled together in a group and wondered why Todd chose to use stand-ins instead of his band-mates, then he watched Todd in action. The group gathered around Todd and listened – really listened to him as he explained what he wanted, what he was trying to achieve with a certain sound, and no one argued with him. Not one of them offered an opinion – unless asked – and this freed Todd to let his imagination roam.

“It’s a wonder more groups don’t do it this way,” Harry said as he watched the musicians packing up for the day.

“Brian Wilson started the thing, at least in the LA scene. I think he made Pet Sounds without his brothers, then the whole Surf’s Up Feel Flows thing that followed, but that’s what broke them up, too. He was getting really out there, man. He’s still the best.”

“You mean he used session artists to write those songs?”

“Yeah. And when he got the music where he wanted it he brought in the group and they recorded their version. The problem, at least from what I’ve heard, is their label liked the session versions more.”

“Shit. Yeah, I can see that causing problems.”

“Lloyd came down last night while I was wrapping up and I just wanted to know, Harry…is that gonna be a problem?”

Harry looked at Todd and shrugged. “You know, if you can get him to talk, to open up even just a little, well…that just might be the best thing that could happen right now…”

Todd nodded. “I didn’t want to step on anyones toes, that’s all, Harry. I know it’s a tough time but you’re about the only real friend I got in my life right now, and I really don’t want to fuck that up.”

Harry paused and looked at Todd, then nodded. “Well, thanks for asking. And I don’t know, but he seems to like talking to you, so let’s just go with it. Now…show me what you got…”

That little abdication, Harry’s little surrender, probably didn’t register as such that day, and who knows…maybe it never did…yet the truth of the matter was easy enough to see when looking back on things a few years later. Harry simply stopped trying to talk to Lloyd after that. Maybe he was so used to being rejected by the people who claimed to love him that this turning away seemed almost normal to Callahan, yet both DD and the doc – those two closest to the unfolding implosion – noticed the change and remarked that what was going on out in the house on the cliffs was nothing less than a slow-motion train wreck.

Central to the run-up was Todd Bright and his lingering addictions. Of course heroin was the main attraction, at least in the beginning. Yet the whole house of cards came tumbling down out there on the cliffs when it happened that Todd Bright had fallen in love with Harry Callahan…

© 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 last 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.]

Don’t let ’em tell you it’s all bullshit. And, oh yes, music matters…

Chapter 26.1

The weather was still unseasonably warm; even the trees seemed to think so, too. The little park surrounding the marina was almost verdant that Tuesday afternoon – and though a few trees had lost their leaves after the storms that had so recently caused so much havoc, the grass was green and most of the shrubbery surrounding the marina was still almost lush with life.

Clyde walked over to a new favorite patch and circled twice before dropping a load, and after waiting a moment for the most pungent waves of stink to drift away, Henry walked over and picked them up with his pooper-scooper. He bagged the still-warm turds – and like always a shiver of absolute revulsion ran up his spine – then he walked over and dumped the little pink bag in a special receptacle placed there just for dogs who had the temerity to shit on this pristine Parisian grass.

“Jesus…who thinks of stuff like this?” he said to Edith as she walked along by his side. “I mean, really, it was someone’s job to come up with this box for dog shit!”

“If you build it, Henry, they will come. Isn’t that the way of the world?” Edith replied, trying not to smile at Henry’s nervousness. “Anyway, having something like this right here is lots better than stepping in a hot fresh one.”

“I’ll give you that,” he replied.

“Speaking from experience, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I’ve managed to step in my fair share of shit over the years.”

She smiled, tried not to laugh at that jab. “Was it really so bad? You and I?”

Henry turned and looked at Claire’s echo once again, his eyes still not quite able to reconcile the past and the present, let alone all the discordant pain he felt when he looked into Edith’s eyes. If Claire was alive, he thought, if she hadn’t died forty-something years ago, it was impossible not to think that she’d look almost exactly like Edith did right now. They’d always resembled one another, often strikingly so, but the passage of time had simply blurred the lines between the two so much that his memory no longer worked. Claire was gone, but if this was true then who was he looking at now?

Edith? Yeah, but what then about that DNA? Where did the expression of traits end in one sibling and arise in another? Because looking at Edith now was like a journey into the looking glass – a kaleidoscope of hopes and dreams, memory and doubt that served only to open the way ahead to more questions than answers.

And Tracy had seen into his confusion, too. Because, he knew now, she had seen it coming from far, far away. Because she’d been paying attention during all those little talks between mother and daughter, and who knows, maybe she had because she’d seen this moment unfolding all her life. Maybe Tracy had come to think of herself as a kind of placeholder, holding Henry down until her mother could reach him again…

Or had Claire done it?

“We were never bad together, Edith. We were just never meant to be.”

“I used to believe that, Henry. After you went to Seattle.”

“We should have never been, Edith. It was wrong.”

“Wrong? How could it have been wrong, Henry? I’d wanted you my whole life and suddenly there you were.”

“You know, it took years to move on, Edith. Years to get over the one-two punch. First Claire, then you. Did you really have no idea?”

“Of course I knew, Hank. You didn’t fall off the edge of the earth, we had friends in common. They kept me up to date.”

“So…why are you here?”

Edith stepped close and took his hand. “When Tracy told me about things, about how bad things have gotten, I wanted to see you again. I wanted to touch the skin on the side of your face, look into your eyes.”

He sighed, shook his head. “I wish you’d stayed home.”

“Really? You’d wish for something like that?”

“I’m not sure I can deal with…all those old feelings now.”

“I don’t suppose you realize that what you’re saying is an admission of love…?”

He turned away – from everything about her. “And that’s the problem, Edith. Exactly. When I look at you I feel my love for Claire Come Alive. How could that be a good thing for any of us?”

“Because, Hank, that’s all I ever was – the problem that just wouldn’t go away.”

+++++

“Well, at least they’re talking to each other…” Tracy said to Anton.

“I don’t know. See how Genry hunched over. Defensive, if ask me. Like he afraid he hit.”

“You think I should go get her?”

“Better we both go.”

+++++

Henry walked over to a park bench and sat, feeling light-headed again and wishing he hadn’t left the hospital. Clyde came over and hopped up on the bench and laid down next to him, draping his head over Henry’s lap; Tracy followed a moment later, leaving Anton to to get Edith back down to Time Bandits.

“This was a mistake,” she said as she sat next to Clyde.

Henry crossed his arms over his chest, the reflexive move almost comically protective – at least under present circumstances.

“How long did she say she was going to stay?” he asked, his voice a lifeless monotone now.

“She didn’t book a return flight yet. Want me to work on that?”

He turned and looked at her, not quite knowing how to say what he needed to say, but he dove in feet first: “Nope. I want her to come to terms with herself. I want her to figure this out for herself.”

“What if she decides to stay?”

“Then she stays.”

“Henry, I don’t want her to take away from the time you and I have left…”

“Then don’t let her.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if I just told her to leave?”

“It might be easier, Tracy, but if you do she’ll keep turning up and raining on your parade until the day she dies.”

“Why…why would you say that?”

“Because she enjoys it.”

+++++

He took them out to dinner that night, to one of his father’s old faves. An Irish pub a block away from the George V that served excellent French grub and even better Irish beer, and the old dark brown interior suited his mood just fine. Besides, he’d invited both Anton and Mike to join the fray and he was looking forward to some fireworks as the evening wore on…

And cliché of clichés, Edith ordered French onion soup and a glass of the house red. How very American, he thought as he ordered his habitual escargot and duck. Not really caring anymore, he slipped a Zofran under his tongue and leaned back, rarely taking his eyes off Edith.

“So, Mr Lacy…”

“Call me Mike, please.”

“Okay, Mike. What do you do for a living?”

Mike looked from Edith to Henry and back again, but then he simply shrugged. “I’m a spy.”

“Really?” Edith said, her voice chipper. “How very interesting. And who do you spy for?”

“You, I guess.”

“Me? Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, assuming you pay taxes…I work for the navy.”

“Oh. I see. And who are you spying on?”

“Henry.”

“Really? Now that is interesting. I had no idea Henry was so, oh, what is the word I’m looking for…so important?”

Mike met that with stony silence, but he too kept his eyes focused on Edith’s.

“So, what were you off doing today? Spy-wise, that is?” she asked.

“I was at the embassy speaking to our naval attaché.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed.”

“And what were you talking about?”

“That Henry is the only human being alive that can fly the ARV the Seattle Working Group was working on.”

Henry blinked once, slowly, then turned his head ever so slightly and looked at Captain Lacy with sudden curiosity.

“What?” Tracy said, her voice tinged with a little hysteria. “What are you talking about, Mike?”

“Yes, Mike,” Henry added. “Just what are you talking about?”

“I found the files on your laptop, Henry. It took some digging, but I finally found them…”

Henry tried not to smile, but it was hard not to. “I see.”

“What files?” Edith screeched.

Mike turned to Tracy and spoke in quick, hushed tones: “When Henry was in Seattle he worked with Boeing for a while. One of the off the books projects he worked on was to use alien technology, stuff recovered from a crashed vehicle, in order to make a working spacecraft. And they did, too. But there was just one problem. No one could fly the damn thing because the aliens fly it using some kind of telekinetic bridge, and for years now everyone kind of left it at that…”

“Henry?” Tracy sighed. “What is he talking about?”

But Taggart just grinned. “Go on, Mike. You’re on a roll now, aren’t you?”

“I sure am, Taggart, you goddamn sonofabitch. You did it, you got it to work – then you didn’t tell anybody. Why? Why’d you do that?”

Henry kept grinning, his eyes never once leaving Lacy’s as he let the silence build.

“The only thing we haven’t figured out, Henry, is did you actually fly the thing…?”

“That’s the only thing, Mike? Really?”

“Well, no. But there are a bunch of people in the inner ring really pissed right now, Taggart. Pissed – at you. So pissed they want to kill you. And do you know what the only thing holding them back is? I finally got my hands on those files. I’ve convinced them that once the new team has the information they’ll be able to get the craft operational.”

“Good for you, Mike. I’m happy for you. Then what?”

“Then we see if it works, Henry. That’s what.”

“I see.”

“Henry?” Edith groaned. “What is this man talking about?”

Taggart turned to her, his face a blank, but he simply shook his head before he turned to face Mike again. “And if it works, Mike, what’s next?”

“Boeing will put the craft into serial production.”

Henry smiled when he heard that, then he laughed – a little. “Do you and that group of clowns you work for actually think they’ll let things slide that far?”

“What makes you think they’ll try to stop us, Henry? They’d have to tip their hand, wouldn’t they? You really think they’re ready to do that?”

“Well, let me ask you a question, Mike. Boeing built one, right? But so did Lockheed. And Northrup-Grumman built another one, did they not? Have you, by any chance, seen all three of them? Like…side by side?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, Mike, because they’re different. Different technologies, and even the basic design parameters are radically different.”

“What do you mean?”

Henry shook his head. “Man, you guys really haven’t thought this thing through, and I’m afraid it’s gonna reach out and bite you on the ass big time now.”

“What are you talking about, Henry?!”

“Well, Mike, the craft the Boeing team was working on was designed around occupants about three meters tall. The ship Lockheed was working on had a cockpit about the size of a three drawer file cabinet, yet there were six seats in there. And the ship out on Long Island? Well, they had to build a special hangar for that one, Mike, because the occupants are fucking huge. I mean, like the size of a house.”

“So?”

“That’s three different races, Mike. Three of them, here. Now. Each with an objective. Maybe even competing objectives, if you get my meaning. And what your friends in the inner ring might not know yet is that these three civilizations aren’t really on speaking terms with one another these days, so if for some reason we happen to show up to the party in a faster than light spacecraft at least two of the groups involved are going to be major-league pissed at the other one.”

“Jesus…”

“So, yeah, you go right ahead and get to work on that. Tell the boys out in Renton to just pour their hearts and souls into it, okay? But here’s the thing, Mike, so be sure to pass it along, willya? We’ve fucked up the planet. Bad. So bad they can’t use it now. And that means they’re pulling out of here now, no harm no foul. But…these guys might have second thoughts if we somehow start showing up in their neighborhood in FTL ships.”

“Oh God…”

“God ain’t gonna help the boys in the inner ring, Mikey. God will more than likely just sit this one out and watch as two civilizations capable of intergalactic travel reduce the earth to rubble.”

“Jesus, Henry…”

“Oh, and Mike, one last thing. Do you really think I’d be stupid enough to leave a file like that on my laptop?”

+++++

He was sitting on the swim platform, his bare feet dangling in the water, listening to the sounds of the city beyond the wall of shrubs as he leaned back just a little, his eyes closed and his mind reaching out deep into the dome of the night.

‘They know,’ he said to Pinky when he reached her.

“I know. And I don’t think I was the only one there.”

“How far away?”

“Within a year, perhaps sooner.”

“Is there anything else we can do?”

“No, not now. All talk of an alliance has broken down.”

“So…this is it. Everything we did…was for naught.”

“I’m sorry. Yours was a good plan and you’ve made many friends, but…”

“I know. C’est la vie.”

“You saw the doctor this morning? Before you left the hospital?”

“I did. Wait – you mean, you weren’t there?”

“I assumed you’d like some privacy.”

“You know, I think I’ll miss you most of all.”

“I would like to have spent this time with you, Henry, but I understand. Do you find yourself thinking about what life might have been like if you’d met her two years ago?”

“Yeah. Constantly.”

“I never liked Dina. Too brittle. Tracy was the better match.”

“Is that why you helped them get back to Bergen?”

“Of course.”

“Brittle. I never would have thought that.”

“The music. You’ve been humming the same music again.”

“I know, I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“Do you know what it is yet?”

“No. I think it’s something I heard a few years ago, but I’m not really sure where.”

“It seems complex. Unusually so.”

“Complex? What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a thought.”

“I know that tone, Pinky. You think it means something, don’t you?”

“Tracy is coming. I’ll talk with you later…”

+++++

“I brought you some tea,” Tracy said as she passed over a mug and sat next to Taggart.

“Thanks.”

“Ginger, honey, and lemon. And I brought a Zofran, just in case.”

“Perfect.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“Better. Humiliated and I don’t get along together.”

“Humiliated?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever barfed on a sidewalk before. Especially not after a meal like that.”

She put her arm around him and pulled him close, shocked at how frail he’d grown over just a couple of days. “I thought you handled it as well as anyone might.”

He leaned over a bit and rested his head on her shoulder. “I love you, kid.”

“I love you, Hank.”

“Sorry I’ve got to put you through this.”

“I’m glad I’m here, Henry. I feel like I was born for this.”

“You’re not going to ask me about all that spaceship crap?”

“No, why? Did you want me to?”

“God, no. I just thought…”

“Try not to think too much, Hank. All that stuff just gets in the way, if you get my drift.” She leaned forward a little and he heard her gasp a little, then point down into the water. “What’s that?”

He leaned over and looked down into the water, then he grew very still…and quite afraid.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.

And so…what were you expecting? A little music that mattered, once upon a time?

Chapter 58.1

Life was quiet now. Aside from the sea and the waves beyond the cliffs, which seemed to impose a rhythm all their own.

Yet Elizabeth was far away now, and the anchor that had moored Lloyd to his place in this order had suddenly gone. Cathy came undone just a little, before a sudden twinge in her belly changed the order of the universe one more time.

Ovarian cancer. Surgery. Chemo and radiation and the wildfires that followed. Elizabeth flying home to be with her mother and a hoped for sense of calm returned for a while, and yet with that quiet certitude firmly in mind, Harry Callahan finally understood just how much he had come to rely on a precious teenaged soul to hold his son’s life together.

Because now, suddenly, there was a little voice in the shadows that kept whispering to him. “Keep away. Don’t get too close to him. You’ll just push him away…like she did…”

Because, perhaps, Harry Callahan had arrived at that station in life where he was beginning to doubt all the simple things he had taken for granted all his life. Principally, that he was a good man. That his motivations were pure. No, now he was almost possessed by the idea that all the women he had ever known had rejected him for cause, that he was – somehow – little more or less than evil. He thought back to all the family disturbances he had responded to and a nauseating parade of angry men flashed through his mind’s eye, men ultimately helpless as he pistol-whipped them into submission, leaving them beaten and bloody on the living room floors of all their broken dreams.

He was standing in a surgical waiting room with DD and the Doc, looking out a window at stands of eucalyptus trees in the light of a golden morning sun. The air on the other side of the glass was thick and yellow-gray, the Stanford campus awash in autumnal smog, the temperature almost hitting triple digits, yet the only woman who could hold him to the present was in an operating room having her belly cut open…

He drifted to thoughts of Fujiko-san and all her silent rejections and he knew those had hurt most of all, that those cuts had been deepest. Yet he could always disappear. He could run from the pain, and so he had. To work. On the streets or in the air. And for a while he had even tried to talk with his old man, yet because some things never change those words never came easily, not even at the end. And so it went. He thought about Fujiko and the failure she represented and that naturally enough led him to thoughts about his father and how he had, ultimately, failed him as a son…so what made him think he was even remotely capable of being a father to his son…?

DD came up to him and handed him a cup of coffee, which for some reason reminded him of burnt acorns, and in the next instant he was thinking about Todd Bright and The Song…because wasn’t everything happening now because of that rock and rolling fiasco?

+++++

Bright was going to play Candlestick, so of course they had invited Harry and his family to come see the show. Then word had filtered down; Todd wanted Lloyd to perform their song on stage. Live. In front of seventy thousand people, playing with the group. 

This was a Big Deal, and Harry knew it. Yet he was against the very idea of his son up on a stage playing with a nascent super-group, potentially becoming some sort of teen idol, or worse, and without the mental framework to handle that kind of sudden fame. Yet Elizabeth had intervened, had promised to be there with Lloyd when he stepped out into the light, and more importantly, to be there after. And that was, what? – four months before she left to head east for college?

So Harry had relented.

The Song was slated to be the group’s second encore that night, because that was the song everyone in the Bay Area wanted to hear most…so make ‘em wait for it, right? Hit ‘em when they’re all up on their feet and screaming! Yeah! And…that was the plan.

So Harry and Cathy had watched the concert unfold from their seats, while Elizabeth and Lloyd looked on from backstage – yet from the beginning even Cathy noticed that Todd Bright was a little too juiced that night. His playing was forcefully loud but too many times he was off the beat or he messed up a chord, and a lot of people out in the crowd noticed. The other members of the group noticed. And then Todd Bright noticed, too.

So, after one of their older anthems Todd called Lloyd out on stage and handed over his guitar.

“I’m gonna handle the vocals,” he said to the eleven year old boy standing there in the light. “You play lead.”

And Lloyd had simply nodded. “Got it,” he said, and when Bright launched into material from the new album Lloyd gave what every music reporter in attendance regarded as a virtuoso performance. By the time the second encore was finished everyone in the stadium knew who the best guitarist on stage was, and even Todd Bright was ecstatic.

Because that had been the plan all along. Lloyd was going to be a bridge. The bridge…to draw in a new generation…and it had worked. Bright’s Candlestick performance was news, and then the rest of the tour suddenly sold out, while album sales roared off the charts to triple platinum.

And suddenly Lloyd Callahan was a very wealthy young man – who just so happened now wanted to tour with Bright.

+++++

So Elizabeth had come up with a kind of compromise solution. After her high school graduation ceremony, or so she said, she and Lloyd would join the group in Seattle and tour with them over the summer. In August she would head to college and Lloyd would return home, and it would be the adventure of a lifetime. Harry had been against the whole thing but first Elizabeth, and then Cathy had gone to work on him and, in the end, he realized he’d never really had an even chance, because while he had faced the enemy to meet them head-on, those closest to him had simply moved-in and out-flanked him when he wasn’t even looking.

But the truth of the matter was stranger still, for Lloyd had already achieved a rare kind of celebrity: when he walked down a street in the city people knew who he was. Girls stopped him on sidewalks and asked for his autograph and soon enough even going to a restaurant became an impossible nightmare, yet classmates at the little Sea Ranch Lakes elementary school hadn’t quite figured out how to deal with Lloyd yet, because they all still regarded him as a real asshole. Still, fame is fame, but there was no fame quite like the status an emerging Rock-God had in California back in the day.

So late one May day Harry and Cathy put their kids on an airplane and then they looked at one another as the enormity of what had just happened hit them both.

+++++

The next afternoon Harry went back into the city to look over a new property DD had found, then he dropped by the Rosenthal Store to meet with the staff and go over some new tech just in from Yamaha. There were two new transfers from the Copenhagen store working there now, an older fellow, an accountant, and a woman in her twenties named Ida. Everyone gathered around Callahan and listened intently to his halting description of Lloyd’s bravura performance at Candlestick, then they stood back and in mute appreciation watched as he banged out a Gershwin tune on a new Clavinova.

“Better send one of these up to the studio,” he gushed as he worked the keys.

“The action is pretty good, isn’t it?” Ida said as she watched the way his fingers moved over the keyboard, though Harry seemed to ignore her, only nodding vaguely after the fact.

He turned to the current store manager, a brilliant jazz pianist named Aksel. “Have your delivery crew pick up the old unit when they come, would you?”

“Of course. And are you liking the new Korg?”

Callahan nodded. “It came in handy laying out tracks on the new album,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” Ida said. “What album is that?”

And Harry looked at the woman and sort of smiled. “The new one – by Bright.”

“Really?” the woman replied, her eyes sparkling with fresh interest. “So, this new album was a family affair…” Yet she remembered thinking in the moments after she said those words that it looked like Harry Callahan wanted to kill and dismember her.

“We all saw Lloyd at Candlestick, but you were involved, too?” Aksel stated – and then more than unnecessarily he added: “This is outstanding!”

Callahan’s glance was withering, but then he seemed to catch himself even as he retreated a little. “I’m meeting Cathy for dinner in an hour. Are any of you free to join us?”

It turned out everyone was, so, hiding a minor grin, he called Trader Vic’s and reserved a small room. This revenge, he reasoned, would be very sweet indeed, because he knew just what he wanted to do…

+++++

DD came up from behind and put her arm around his waist. “It’s only been an hour,” she sighed.

“I was hoping… Well, I was hoping they wouldn’t find anything. But I guess the longer they’re in there, the longer they have her open, that just means they’ve found more. Like more cancer they have to remove, right?”

“You don’t know that, Harry.”

“When does Elizabeth’s flight get in?”

DD looked at her watch. “Three hours and change. One of the guys will fly her up here.”

Harry nodded. “Thanks for taking care of all that.”

“What about Lloyd? Why didn’t he come?”

“Said he couldn’t handle it. He was balled up on the floor, hiding in a corner. Looked like he’d been crying all night.”

DD nodded. “When you get right down to it, Harry, Cathy has been the only real mother he’s ever had. This has got to be rough.”

“I keep thinking about Frank. Maybe she just wants to go be with him now, you know?”

“Maybe,” DD sighed, “yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen her happier than she has been the past few years.”

“I’m not sure I can go on without her, DD. And I’m not really sure I can handle the boy without her.”

“He needs you, Harry. And he’ll really need you now. More than ever. You’re going to have to step up and get the job done, because this may be the most important thing you ever do.”

Callahan sucked in a deep breath and straightened up when he realized he’d been slouching a little, but it struck DD as a little comical, too…like he was getting ready to shoulder the extra load.

A nurse came into the waiting room and walked over to the doc; he pointed at Callahan and the nurse came over. “Sorry,” she began, “but this is going to take longer than expected.”

Harry nodded and he tried to meet her eyes, but he turned away and resumed staring out the window – looking across Lasuen Grove toward the stadium – and if anything the smog looked worse now. Almost, he thought, like burnt oranges. He put his hand out and touched the glass, feeling the heat on the far side of this air conditioned cocoon, and his eye was drawn to a 747 departing SFO – spewing even more crap into the atmosphere – and he shook his head at the wonder of it all.

“What have we done?” he sighed

When he turned back to face the room DD was sitting with the doc again – and it struck him that this was his reality now. This room. These friends. Because he could feel it now…Cathy would be leaving him soon.

He turned back to his reflection in the window, but this time Frank was waiting for him…

+++++

The group from the store filed into Trader Vic’s and met Harry and Cathy in the bar; there were six of them so Harry had a huge corner booth set up and he was ready for them. Appetizers were already on the way, he said, and he recommended everyone start off the evening with a round of Suffering Bastards. Cathy had looked at him and rolled her eyes, but everyone followed Harry’s lead and ordered one – and then, being musicians one and all, the group got down to talking about the only common ground they shared…

Lloyd and the Bright concert at Candlestick.

Cathy cringed. Because she had seen the change that had come over Harry in the days after the concert. It wasn’t really jealousy, or so she’d thought at first, but now she really wasn’t all that sure that it wasn’t…yet the very idea that a man of Callahan’s broad accomplishments could be jealous of an eleven year old boy was frankly ludicrous.

Or…was it, really?

But then Cathy had focused on the blond Dane sitting across from Harry. Ida something. Cute as hell, incredible blue eyes more like huge, cobalt spheres that never seemed to focus on anyone but Harry. Was she smitten or just another opportunist out on the prowl?

But no…it turned out that she was a serious student of music and had long ago taken up the challenge of learning Imogen Schwarzwald’s body of work, so, Cathy thought, it was only natural the girl direct her attention on Imogen’s son.

But it didn’t take long to figure out that there was more in the girl’s eyes than pure intellectual curiosity, and why not? Harry had, she saw, matured in the way some men do, meaning he’d simply grown more sexy as he aged. Besides, he was still pretty good in the sack…

And as Cathy watched Harry and Ida over the course of the evening she grew convinced there was something there. Yet she wasn’t jealous, and the realization left her breathless and amused at the same time.

And as evenings so often do, conversations split quite naturally into various pockets of interest, with most of the Danes from the store wanting to talk with Cathy about the concert, and Ida wanting to talk with Harry about his mother’s recently recovered Third Piano Concerto – the so-called Theresienstadt Concerto. 

“There’s real power inside that work,” she said at one point, “something that seems to defy time and space.”

“Oh?” he replied. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a fool, but the first time I played through the second movement I felt as if I was drifting through time. That something within the music had carried me back…”

“Back? Where?”

“I’m not sure, but it almost felt as though I could see her, your mother, but at the time she was surrounded by children. By very little children, most of them starving to death.”

He nodded. “And do you know the origins of the piece?”

“No, not really. Only that she composed it during the war.”

He looked at her then, taking real care now to contain his emotions but aware that this girl might very well know a lot more than she was willing to say right now. “I am surprised you’ve never read about the origins of the piece,” he replied.

“I’m not aware there’s anything on the material, at least not publicly. Are you telling me there is?”

“Perhaps,” he said – maybe a trifle evasively.

“Ooh…I love a mystery. Which can only mean that there is.”

Yet Callahan had simply smiled at her parry, unwilling to trust this newcomer just yet. Still, she had that look, and he found her eyes hard to ignore now. Because she had the eyes of a serious musician seeking traces of an ephemeral wisp, grasping in the dark for that quiet space between notes on the page when eyes closed and time seemed to Come Alive with meaning – that had always been hiding in plain sight…

+++++

The nurse walked with him into the recovery room, yet she seemed to give this growling man a little extra space. There was something about him…latent, explosive…like a pyroclastic flow that seemed too far away to do any harm…until it was upon you and there was nowhere left to run.

And she stepped further away when the man came to the patient.

He gasped once then broke out in tears, and she thought she knew just what he was feeling in that moment. He was coming to the realization that this woman had come to the fight of her life just a little too late to make a difference. The damage was already done, her road ahead a short, simple way through the woods.

And then the nurse had helped him sit because for a moment it seemed as if he was going to pass out…

Yet she didn’t leave the man just yet. She stood behind him and watched as he took the woman’s hand. She listened as he held her hand to the side of his face and as he said the words all the husbands and wives said at times like this. “I love you.” “I don’t know if I can make it without you.” And the one that hurt the most: “Please, please dear God, don’t take her from me now.”

Yes, he said them all. They all did, didn’t they?

And through it all a pale green respirator pumped a mix of gases into Cathy Bullitt’s lungs.

+++++

“This drink is really strong,” the girl said, slurring a word or two along the way.

“But good, no?” Harry smiled.

“The first one was good. The second was very good, but I think this is my fourth…”

“Actually, I think that one is number five.”

“I am going to be sick, aren’t I?”

Callahan nodded, though he didn’t quite manage to contain his grin. “Yes, I think that’s in the cards tonight.”

“You did this to me on purpose?” she asked, her swimming eyes narrowing a little. “You want to take me to your bed?”

“Ya know, actually, I’m not at all sure Cathy would approve.”

“Would you like me to ask her,” Ida said, grinning a little too easily now. “Or did you want us both tonight?”

Harry smiled at her frontal assault but then turned to Aksel, the store manager. “I think she’s going to need help getting home tonight. Think you can handle that?”

“Oh dear,” Ida said, burping once then looking hurriedly for the nearest restroom.

“Maybe you’d better go with her?” Harry said to him after she stood and dashed towards the Ladies Room.

And she almost made it, too.

+++++

Elizabeth stood over her mother, holding her hand in the darkened room, not at all knowing what to think now that their lives were changing in so many unexpected ways. ‘Should I leave school now?’ she asked herself. ‘Should I come home and take care of her? And what about Harry? Will he be able to handle Lloyd – without mom’s steady hand guiding his own?’

‘And why isn’t Lloyd here?’

Was he, she wondered, going to abdicate even now and turn Lloyd over to DD and the doc? ‘That would almost fit, wouldn’t it? She does everything else for him…so he certainly doesn’t need me…’

Yet when she’d seen him standing by her mother’s bed all such thoughts had withered and died on the vine. He was a wreck. Totally lost, a broken man.

‘There’s no way he’ll be able to handle Lloyd. No way at all…’

+++++

He was driving a 911 these days, a ragtop, because, he said, he liked the drive out of the city in the fresh air. Now Cathy sat beside him wrapped in a heavy coat and with the little Porsche’s heater blasting away, leaning a little his way and staring at him with a smile on her face. He had taken her to the gynecologists office and had even sat in the waiting room, if a bit stoically, waiting out there with all the other women…

And she’d felt so happy to see him waiting for her there that she simply didn’t want to spoil the mood. So…they had gone to the Fog City Diner and held hands like teenagers – again – and still she hadn’t mentioned her conversation with the physician.

Until they were almost home.

“I wonder how many times we’ve made this drive together?” she said – out of the blue.

And he had turned and looked at her. Waiting. Patiently.

“The lab work was loaded with markers,” she said next, because she was ready now.

“And?”

“Friday morning at Stanford. The early morning slot.”

And Harry had nodded once then reached for her hand.

“I think I’m afraid, Harry. I can feel it, you know? Something inside me has changed.”

He felt his hand strengthen around hers.

“It’s hard to explain, really. Like an icy cold hand reaches into you, right into your gut, and you just know.”

“I was with Frank when he found out,” Harry said at last.

“I didn’t know that. I wonder why he didn’t tell me?”

“He was protecting you, I think. He never really came out and said it that way, but that’s what it felt like to me.”

“Could you call Elizabeth when we get home?” Cathy asked. “I’d like her to be here.”

“Of course.”

“And I think I’d like to tell Lloyd, if that’s okay with you.”

He’d looked away then, but in the end it was easy enough to see the wisdom of her decision.

+++++

Todd Bright came out to the studio a few weeks after Cathy returned from the hospital, saying he wanted to work on some new material while the group took a break from touring. Implying, in his way, that he wanted Lloyd to lend him a hand when the boy wasn’t in school. It was all very logical sounding, too. Especially after Elizabeth returned to school – now that Harry had his hands full taking care of both Cathy and Lloyd.

And Harry was hospitable enough after Todd came ‘round. He and the doc fired up the grill down on the patio and cooked dinner for everyone almost every night, and for a time the return to this vague semblance of normalcy seemed to lift Cathy’s spirits – but her health was a day-by-day thing by that point. The cancer was everywhere and spreading faster than the chemo could counter and her life had been reduced to this one simple, irreducible calculus. She was – they were – running out of time.

And through it all Lloyd was internalizing Cathy’s transformation, manifesting moods he had no way of understanding – let alone the wherewithal to deal with such a rapid collapse – yet maybe things really do happen for a reason.

At least, that’s what Todd Bright told the boy as they worked on their next single.

© 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 last 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.]

[Coming down to the home stretch now. And yes, music matters, a lot…so give a listen…]

Chapter 25.3

‘This isn’t so bad…’

He flexed his fingers, then his toes – before he took a deep breath.

‘Kind of cold here, though. Wherever the Hell here is.’

“Henry? Can you hear me?”

‘That’s a familiar voice.’

“Henry, can you open your eyes?”

He opened his eyes and for a moment thought he was looking at Doris Day again, but no, not this time. Yet the voice was familiar, way too familiar, and the woman’s eyes were as well.

“Do I know you?” he asked, and the old woman smiled at the question.

“I’m not sure that you do,” she replied.

“You look so familiar…”

“Do I? How peculiar…” the woman said, her voice lost somewhere between irony and sarcasm.

He looked around the room now…at ancient stone walls and flickering torchlight, then his senses picked up the blue tint enveloping everything and he knew he was back in the village. And if this was the village then this woman had to be either Britt or Eva, but whoever it was had to now be almost a hundred years old. “Who are you?” he finally asked.

“Your daughter. Sara, in case you managed to forget. Again.”

“What? So, your mother is…?”

“Yes. Years ago.”

“And Britt? Has she passed, too?”

The woman nodded, yet when he saw Eva’s gentle expression in the woman’s eyes his own filled with tears. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this,” he said sullenly, looking past the present into memory.

“Expecting what, exactly?”

“For them…for your mother to be gone.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“I thought with the other residents being, well, pretty much immortal – that they would be too.”

“Well, Henry, this is your dream so dream it any way you like…”

“What?”

His head bounced – hard – and he was in the back of the ambulance, a paramedic adjusting the flow rate on an IV running into his port. 

“Tracy?” he asked the medic. “La femme qui était avec moi? Où est-elle?”

“Avec le chien. Elle a dit qu’elle allait appeler votre oncologue.”

He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting away, and soon all sound had left as well. 

Yet now he was afraid to even open his eyes.

He was on his back now, eyes open and looking at the vast ringed planet overhead.

Only Pinky was with him now; he could see concern in her eyes and on her face, and he felt disoriented by the sudden change.

“Is this the dream again?” he asked her.

“No, not this time.”

“Am I dying?”

And when she smiled he relaxed. “No, not at all.”

“My daughter. Sara. She told me that Eva and Britt are gone.”

“Gone? Do you mean – death?”

He nodded.

“No, that is most certainly not the case.”

“Pinky, tell me something, would you? And the truth this time, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Has all this been a dream?”

“What?”

“The trip on the Bandits, Eva and Dina and everything. Was all that just a dream?”

“Of course not.”

“It really happened? I mean, it wasn’t some kind of psychotic delusion?”

“No, Henry. Everything happened – just as you remember it happening.”

He heard a door opening and then he was jerked out into the daylight, and now it really was very cold. Nurses surrounded him as his gurney was pushed inside an unseen hospital, then he was in a room with a huge domed light overhead. Someone spread his legs and began shaving the insides of his thighs, then an unseen hand had his penis and he felt an electric razor cutting away decades of hair. More leads were attached to his chest and a mask was placed over his nose and mouth.

“Henry?” a kindly voice said, interrupting his fear, “try to stay with me. We are going to go up through a vessel in your leg to your heart and try to open up an artery. You’re going to feel a little pressure now…”

But no, it wasn’t pressure, and it sure wasn’t little. He felt a cold splash of Betadine then the hot pinch of a lidocaine injection. Next, sharp pain, then hideously hot and never-ending.

“Jesus, what are you shoving up there? A hot poker?”

“I’m sorry, Henry, I don’t want to use so much pain medication now. Just hang in there.”

He tried to drift off but the pain was simply too insistent, and he was all too aware that there were at least five or six people moving all around his gurney. Then he lifted his head and saw the screen – just a little – and the little wire probe winding its way through his heart to what the physician said was a really nasty looking blockage.

He put his head down after that, feeling more light-headed than he thought possible. Then at some point he simply closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. No dream, no Pinky, just the black nothingness of pure, uninterrupted sleep. Kind of like…

+++++

He opened his eyes again and saw Tracy standing by a window in a spare little room. A hospital room all decked out in beige and brown. And his leg hurt now, though he couldn’t quite remember why…

“Hi there,” he said – then Tracy wheeled around and dashed to the side of his bed. She kissed his forehead, then again, this time on the lips, and he felt good all over.

“Welcome back,” she said, more than a little tearfully.

“What happened?”

“You had a vapor lock.”

“Ah, so an oil change and a tire rotation too, I suppose?”

“Naw, they just put a new set of Michelins on. It was past time, ya know…?”

“So?”

“You had a heart attack. Basically, the paramedics saved your ass this time.”

“I see. And Clyde? I remember something about blood in his stool?”

“The vet came by and she took him to her clinic. He should be home Tuesday afternoon.”

“What about chemo? Can they…?”

“They want to wait a few days before…”

“Did you hear anything about the trial?”

“No opening. In fact, the trial is just about over – which is good news. The results go to the FDA after that.”

“No word yet on how the results skew?”

She shook her head. “No way they’d talk about that yet.”

“So, when can I get out of this lovely place?”

“It’s not the Crillon, is it?”

He tried to change position and grimaced as another wave of pain crossed his face. “Well, I do love the decor. I had no idea the French could do 1960s Howard Johnson’s so well.”

“I think you’ll head home on Tuesday, if that’s any comfort.”

“But no chemo, right?”

“Not ’til the end of the week.”

He sighed and looked across the room and out a little sliver of window, and he could see the city out there. “I don’t want to waste any more time in here than I have to.”

“I understand.”

“Okay.”

“Can I bring you anything?”

“Escargot and a roast duck would be nice.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tracy said, grinning. “Anything else?”

“Let me know what Anton is up to, okay?”

“Yeah, will do. And, oh! – I brought your phone and laptop, and I found a charger. Want me to set it up while I’m here?”

“Sure. Have at it.”

“Henry? It’s going to get better…okay? Getting in a funk after a heart attack is pretty much the norm.”

He nodded. “Got it.”

“I’ll shut up now.”

“Don’t you dare. Just…don’t talk about me. There’s got to be a million more interesting things out there to talk about.”

“Not to me.”

“What about your mom. Still coming Tuesday?”

Tracy nodded, but she looked away this time. “Gonna be a rough day, Hank. You coming home, and Clyde too. Then her – on top of all that. I’m not sure I’ll be up for all the drama.”

“Well, she always was a decent drama queen. Glad some things haven’t changed.”

“Think you can handle her?”

“Edith? No problem.”

Tracy grinned. “You got kind of a shit-eatin’ grin thing going there, Hank. What are you going to do to her?”

“Do – to – her? Why…nothing, Tracy dearest.”

“Oh…God. What have I done?”

+++++

Tracy left a half hour later; Henry opened his laptop and waded through his email.

“Oh, crap-a-doodle-doo,” he moaned as he read through Dina’s missive concerning heart attacks and chemo outcomes. When he finished he replied with a curt ‘Thanks’ and then read through Rolf’s latest – asking yet again when he was going to be able to come down to Paris.

He left that one unanswered – for the time being – then read through letters from his lawyer and a short note from Hallberg-Rassy explaining what they wanted to do regarding possible hull damage after Rotterdam. He replied to that one, then saved a copy of the exchange in Rolf’s file.

A vampire came in and drew blood, then a nurse flitted in and checked his vitals – looking intensely cute as she pranced around his bed. ‘I guess when I stop looking at legs like that I’ll know I’m finally gone,’ he sighed as she jiggled and wiggled out the door.

Then his oncologist walked in – a dour frown etched in steel across her pale face.

“My, don’t we look happy today?” he said to her, smiling.

“Well, I am not, Mr. Taggart…but how are you feeling?”

“I’ve felt better.” She nodded – though he could tell something was distracting the woman. “So, is it good news or bad?”

“Bad, I’m afraid. The final report from the MRI is in and it shows metastases in the pancreas and liver.”

“That can’t be good.”

“No, it isn’t. We may be able to slow further spread but once in the pancreas our options narrow considerably.”

“So, we can stop all the miracle cure nonsense now?”

“Such an outcome looks unlikely now.”

And there is was, Henry thought. The point of no return. Beyond here there be dragons.

And he smiled. “Well, I’ve grown used to the idea of kicking the bucket soon, so the idea of changing all my plans knocked me for a loop. Guess I can go back to Plan One, eh?”

“You know, I was expecting tears, not a smile and a joke.”

“What good does crying do, Doc? I mean, really – I’m sixty-something years old!”

“Sometimes crying makes people feel better?”

Henry shook his head. “Nope. Not me. Any idea how long I’ve got?”

“I wouldn’t be making plans past New Years.”

“So, a month? Or thereabouts?”

She nodded. “About that. Give or take a few days.”

“And if a miracle mRNA cure comes along?”

“We start immediately and hope for the best.”

“What about chemo? Any need to try again?”

She shook her head. “No. Such a course of action is not really justified now. I would say, given your past history with such agents, you would fill your remaining time with serious discomfort with little chance of any gain.”

“Well then. That is, as they say, that.”

“I am so sorry, Mr. Taggart. I was hopeful…”

He nodded and smiled again. “C’est la vie, no?”

“I suppose so. May I pass this information along to Dina?”

“Please.”

“Very well. I will see you before discharge, if that’s alright with you.”

“Certainly.”

“I want to meet this dog of yours. His story seems most amazing.”

“Well then, you’ll have to drop by the marina. For dinner, perhaps?”

“Yes, perhaps. Well, I will talk with you tomorrow.”

After she was gone Henry called the nurse and asked if they could perhaps move his bed closer to the window. He wanted, he said, to look at the City of Lights spread out down there in the darkness.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.

A short section today. And of course music matters…but yeah, after you listened to that one you started to think about this one too, didn’t you? No? You didn’t? Well then, you’d better try this one asap.

Oh well, enjoy the ride.

Chapter 25.2

Henry carried the pup below and laid him out on the berth in his cabin, then he covered the old boy with a blanket and held him close. “Stay with him, would you?” he asked Tracy a while later. “I’ve got to get his medicine, and his pants.”

“He’s sick too, I take it?”

“Yup.”

“Cancer?”

“Yes. Found it in July,” he said as he worked the pants around Clyde’s legs, positioning a pad and fastening the velcro while he talked, “but he probably was sick long before that. I don’t know if I told you, but he’d been abandoned and I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion someone dumped him in the park rather than deal with the expense of taking care of a sick dog.”

“That’s awful, Henry.”

He shook his head. “It’s economics 101, Tracy. A lot of families have pets even though they can barely afford to keep food on the table. It’s a reckless choice, one that usually leads to bad outcomes, but that’s why animal shelters are so overwhelmed.”

“He was lucky to find you, I guess.”

“Here, would you load the syringe for me, please? Ten units.”

“Got it. Where?”

“In the thigh. Here’s a swab,” he added, handing over an alcohol pad. “I need to get him to the vet on Monday.”

“Do you have one in Paris?”

He nodded. “I got a recommendation from the vet’s office in Kiel. They’re on stand-by for next week sometime.”

“I can take him while you get ready for chemo.”

“Okay. I’ll call their office tomorrow and set it up.”

“I’m just asking, but what if they think it’s time to put him down?”

“Nope. He stays with me.”

“Henry, is that fair to Clyde?”

“He’ll tell me when he’s ready, Tracy.”

“You really think that’s true?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do. Some dogs can, some can’t. Clyde can.”

“What about that whale?”

“Hmm? The orca? What about him?”

“Yeah, him. Do you and he…?”

“We…communicate, and I’m afraid I don’t really know another word to describe what it is we do.”

“I was kind of wigged-out by all that, Hank. Bad enough the whale follows you around like that, but he really seemed happy to see you.”

“Maybe because I was happy to see him, too. Clyde took off for a few days with him last week; scared the shit out of me.”

“What do you mean, took off…?”

“He jumped off the stern and swam over to the pod, then they all swam off somewhere. I like to think he went ashore to take a dump, but really, I have no idea where they went.”

“So…your dog is all wrapped up in this clusterfuck, too? Weird, Hank, this is really, really weird.”

“Yeah? Well, when I bumped into you at the restaurant in Honfleur he had been gone for two days, but then he just runs up to me and sits on my feet like nothing had happened. So go ahead, you tell me all about weird.”

“I think he’s sleeping now, Hank.”

Henry checked Clyde’s breathing, then rubbed the pup’s head for a long time. “Funny how close they let us get.”

“It’s called trust, Henry.”

“Maybe.”

“Can you imagine what the world would be like if we trusted one another like dogs trust us?”

He had to smile at that one. “Then I think about the prick that abandoned Clyde in the park – and my faith in the order of the universe is restored.”

“How about some tea?” she asked, shaking her head at his cynicism.

He kept rubbing Clyde’s head, but he shook his head. “We really need to get some sleep. Very long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Could I stay here tonight?”

Henry looked up and smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

+++++

After transiting the locks at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, Henry tied-off near an old timbered building – that housed a very nice hotel and restaurant, according to his river pilot – and the group went off in search of a big breakfast before the final push. About an hour later they cast off their lines and began the trip again, then Henry cut up some very fresh salmon for Clyde – and they both smiled for a while. 

The pup seemed a little tired, his eyes a little too glassy and red-rimmed that morning, and Henry assumed he’d had a rough night – despite the medicine. Still, after a few minutes on deck and with some sunlight and fresh air streaming through his golden ears, the pup picked up a bit and even wagged his tail a little. 

As their little convoy approached CDG, the big airport northeast of the city, they began to see a few commercial aircraft taking off and lining up to land – and that was a good sign, or at least Henry thought so. With air travel restored things would start to feel a little like normal once again, and Henry was feeling desperate for normal that morning. He was, he knew, so close…yet Christmas had never felt so far away.

They passed the Eiffel Tower late that afternoon on their way to the Isle St Louis, and he called the marina and confirmed their slips were ready and got the procedure to enter the marina proper under the railway bridge. Once they had an ETA, the attendant told him, he was to call again and someone would help them into their slips. He then called the animal hospital, as requested, and the vet there said she’d meet him at the boat later that evening. He thanked her more than once.

But once Notre Dame came into view that was it. Journey over. What had started as a daydream two years before had as suddenly come to an end, yet as these things so often tend to, every little detail became lost in a jagged blur as events sped by with nauseating speed…and it felt like one minute he was out on the river and the next he was tied off a few hundred meters from the where the old Bastille had once stood. He was shaken by the way this last day had unfolded, by the sheer speed of events, if only because time had felt so unexpectedly elastic…so easily compressed and twisted to shape an uncertain outcome…

Then there was nothing else to do. Clyde saw a wide expanse of green grass and howled – twice – and Henry almost managed to hook up his leash, too. But Clyde soared off the stern and landed at a gallop, making a beeline for a huge clump of barren bushes. Henry grabbed a pile of poop-bags and took off running, but after a few steps he was reminded of his once own limitations. Yet Tracy was there to save the day…and she trotted over to Clyde and hooked him up, then bent to pick up his salmon laced turds.

“Still a little blood,” she said as Henry walked up. “But not as much as last night.”

He nodded as he bent to look, but he stood up quickly – then simply passed out.

He came to for a moment and heard more than saw he was in the back of an ambulance rushing through traffic, then a blinding light came for him – pushing aside everything left – until not even memory could hold back the night.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.

Chapter 25.1

He found her staring at the ancient ‘Egyptian’ obelisk in the center of the Place de la Concorde, and he came up from behind and gently placed his hands on her shoulders – yet he said not a word, if only because he knew he had to wait for her this time.

“I suppose you had a reason?” she said a few minutes later.

He pulled her a bit closer and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m not sure anything has happened that they haven’t orchestrated to the Nth degree – except perhaps you. You were the random variable, Tracy, the fly in their ointment, the thing they just couldn’t see coming…”

She turned and faced him, her eyes like the stars – full of a million unquestioned answers.

“The thing is,” he continued, “I didn’t expect you, either. In fact, I think I there was a point when I almost welcomed death – until you came, that is. Death was the only thing that made any sense to me, because death seemed like the only way out of the trap they’d set for me.”

“And now?”

“You’re the only thing that makes sense now.”

“Because I’m the fly in their ointment?”

He shook his head. “No. Because without you there’s no love, and without love everything else is meaningless.”

“But…you’re going to have children, Henry…”

He laughed a little as other images came and went, even as he shook his head. “They were born fifteen years ago, Tracy. And they were raised by others I’ll never know.”

“What are you talking about? I thought you said you met these girls six months ago?”

“I did, yes. That’s true enough.”

“Then you’ve lost me, Hank.”

“They are in a place where time is…different. At least, that’s the way it was explained to me. Eva and Britt are very old now.”

“What does that mean? Are you talking about a parallel universe, or some kind of multiverse?”

“I couldn’t say, Tracy. Not with any certainty. Yet they were alive when I saw them just a few days ago, the children and their mothers, living in a sort of village. Maybe a village of the damned, yet…they were alive.”

“You said they, the children, were raised by others. Do you know who raised them?”

He nodded. “Crito. He was their father.”

“Who?”

“Crito. He held Socrates as he passed from this life to the next.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Buddha is there, Tracy. Jesus too.”

“You’ve met them, I take it?”

He nodded, but he looked away from the memory, still afraid of the things he’d seen there.

“You do know how absolutely stark raving mad this sounds, right?” she said gently.

He shrugged.

“And all this is a part of some plan?” she added.

“We should get a room. It’ll be getting cold out soon.”

She smiled. “I love the way you change subjects. So – easily, I think. It’s exhilarating, really.”

“Would you like to go see it for yourself?”

“What? There?” she said, pointing at the sky.

“Would you?”

She shook her head. “No, I think all-in-all I’d rather like to stay on this side of crazy-town for a little bit longer.”

“I hope you have a say in the matter, Tracy. I really do.”

“Okay, me too. Now. Hotel? You know anything close?”

He pointed to the colonnaded place behind them and grinned. “The Crillon. I hear it’s decent.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be like the best place in the world?”

He nodded. “That’s the rumor.”

“Who’s paying?”

“Me,” he grinned.

“Then Hell yes, I’m in.”

+++++

The train pulled into the station in Rouen on time, and Milos, the taxi driver from their first snowy night, met them trackside and helped Henry back into the old Mercedes.

“How are you doing today?” Henry asked his new friend. “The children are well?”

“Well enough. Their mother is due to arrive late tonight, so all we be good soon enough.”

“Excellent.”

“You are looking better, Henry. Like a care has been lifted from your heart.”

“It feels that way, Milos, and thank you for saying so.”

“To the boat? Or do you need to make any stops on the way?”

“Did you take the boys out grocery shopping yesterday?”

“Yes, and that crazy Russian brought his girlfriend along. She’s mad as a hatter, like something right out of the looking glass. You have been warned, Henry.”

“Oh?” Tracy said, interested now. “How so?”

“I think all pilots are crazy,” Milos said, grinning, “but you will see for yourself. This one is beyond nuts, yet I think the whipped cream in the hair was the real giveaway…”

+++++

Henry was at the chart-plotter studying the weather overlay with Anton and Sophie, his friend; they were in the cockpit sitting on either side of him staring intently at the display while he flipped through various forecast models. “It looks like the storm has stalled-out up north,” Henry sighed.

“The Baron can’t fly into such heavy icing conditions,” Sophie said. “I am sorry, but it is too dangerous, and as it is not my airplane I can not take a chance like this.”

“I understand,” Henry said wistfully. “And anyway, I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“Need Antonov,” Anton said. “Could do in a -32. Easy.”

“If the storm has moved out by next weekend I think can arrange to get the Baron again,” Sophie added.

“I probably won’t be able to go with you next weekend,” Henry said, scowling a bit.

“I go with Sophie. Boy know me. Dina know me. She let him come with me.”

“I’m not so sure, Anton, and I don’t want you to make the trip for nothing.”

“Can I talk Dina?” Anton added. “Might change mind.”

Henry smiled, but in his heart he already knew the answer to that question. Dina wasn’t going to let go of the boy…not now…not after losing her daughter. And he couldn’t blame her, not really, yet he needed time with Rolf – in case things turned pear-shaped before he could write things down. “No. This is a problem that I will have to solve…”

‘And I know just how to do it, too.’

+++++

Mike cast off the lines early the next morning and Time Bandits backed out into the river, the current grabbing hold quickly, pushing the stern downriver; Henry engaged the throttle and nosed into the current, simply making way until Karma made it out into the main body of the Seine, then they both began the long slog up-current towards Paris…yet today was the day, the big day. Tracy’s first lock. Anton’s second, for that matter. They had eight miles to go to the Amfreville locks, and there was, as yet, still almost no barge traffic on the river so the passage looked to be an easy one.

Yet Mike seemed troubled. “What’s bugging you?” Henry asked when the intelligence officer appeared content to simply mope around as the little convoy passed charming little castles and imposing churches.

“You. You’re bugging me, Taggart.”

“Me…how so?”

“A lot of actions have been taken, or not taken – if you get my drift – based on the apparent assumption that you’d be out of the picture later this month. Now I’m a little worried what the seat-polishers in D.C. will do once they figure out that ain’t the operant condition any longer.”

Henry smiled. “Oh. That. Well, let’s just consider that me making it to the new year is still a long shot – at best…”

“You still think so? Really?”

Henry nodded. “Look, Tracy needed something to hang onto, a sense of hope, and it won’t cost me that much in the way of discomfort. To put it another way, I simply wasn’t willing to take that sense of a future away from her.”

“You two have grown really close, haven’t you? I mean, I know there’s a history, but even so this feels different.”

“It is, Mike, yet I’m not really sure I could point to the exact reason why. Still, the whole ‘future’ thing is seductive as Hell. What I wouldn’t do for a few more years.”

“Careful, Henry. Mephistopheles will hear you and he just might come calling. Feel like making a bargain for your soul?”

“Now there’s a thought. But no, Mike, I don’t think I’d do that, not even now. When I think back on my life and on the things I’ve done I have a few regrets, but certainly no regrets I’d bargain away with evil intent.”

“So, if you went into remission what would you do?”

“I want to get Rolf settled and on his way. Next, I’d like to start a new life – with Tracy.”

“What about Dina? Eva and Britt? All that wasn’t enough?”

“Nothing is ever enough, Mike.”

“So…Tracy isn’t enough…is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know how else to say it, Mike. Nothing will ever satisfy you when the only thing waiting for you out there is a pine box six feet under. It’s like we learn to walk on solid ground – yet the older we get we find we’re walking on quicksand.” He pointed to a little chapel on a hillside and nodded: “They’ve been selling an elegant solution to the problem for eons, and it works, too…as long as you don’t pay too much attention to the man behind the curtain pulling all the levers…”

“Okay…suppose all this doesn’t work. Suppose you die. What happens to Dina and the boy? And what happens to Tracy? For that matter, what happens to Anton?”

“That’s what lawyers are for, Mike.”

“So, you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“I’ll tell everyone, Mike.”

“Okay.”

“So, tell me…when this is all over and done with what are you going to do? Back to D.C., get back into intelligence work?”

Lacy shook his head. “I know you don’t believe me, but I really did submit my papers. When this assignment is over I’m officially retired, out of the Navy and on my pension at that point.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t answer the question, does it? What are you going to do then.”

“If I had my druthers I’d stay with the boy.”

“With Rolf? Seriously? Now that I did not see coming.”

“Yeah. Funny, huh?”

“Interesting. Tell me more…”

+++++

There were no other boats waiting outside the locks; indeed, there wasn’t even a lock keeper waiting there, either. Henry called the various numbers posted on the office door – yet no one answered, and he felt a little miffed at that point. 

Then he heard a toilet flush in a nearby WC and the grizzled old lock keeper came out into the sun – wiping his hands on his trousers and almost startled to find two boats waiting to transit.

“Merde! You are the first boats I’ve seen in days!” the old man said as he ambled over. “There are two of you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve paid your transit fees and have your license?”

“Yes, both skippers. Would you like to see them?”

“Not really, but I think I am supposed to so what the Hell…”

Henry smiled and led the old man over to Time Bandits, and he waited up on the quay while Henry and Tracy ducked below and got their papers. They went with the old man to his office and watched as he stamped various papers and returned them, and after all that was out of the way he guided Karma into the lock. When Anton had the lines sorted out and ready the old man signaled Henry, who motored in – slowly – until he was just astern of Karma. Mike was an old hand at all this by now, so he went forward and double checked Anton’s work. Henry signaled the lock keeper when they were ready and the lock chamber began flooding, the boats rising to the next level inside a rushing maelstrom of water – then it was over. Just like that. 

Tracy motored out of the lock chamber and waited for Time Bandits; Henry waved at the lock keeper as he motored out then quickly caught up with Tracy. 

“That was easy!” she shouted. “Why do people make such a big deal about that?”

“Wait til you’re in a small chamber that has a really big rise. You’ll know then.”

“So…this was an easy one? Is that what you’re tellin’ me?”

“Yup.”

“Figures.”

“You both did well, so don’t sweat it.”

“How far to the next one?” she added.

“Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

“How far lunch!” Anton snarled.

“About noon,” Henry smiled. “Hope you like oysters, Amigo.”

“Good. Very much.”

“I can hear your stomach from here, Anton,” Henry called across the gap between the two boats.

“No eat breakfast, Genry. Big mistake.”

“Maybe you had too much whipped cream?”

+++++

“I eat too much,” Anton groaned. “Need sleep now.”

“That’s what happens when you eat two dozen raw oysters, buddy,” Mike sighed.

“Don’t sit upwind of him,” Henry added. “It could get gruesome in a hurry.”

Anton stepped up on Karma’s deck and the first one sounded a little like ripping paper; Tracy pinched off her nose and pointed to the bow-sprit. “You. Go. Sit up there,” she said as she cast off her lines and fell into the main channel.

Anton stood on one leg and raised the other a few inches off the deck and shook it a little; that one was a sneaky bastard and started out as a high-pitched squealer before working its way down to a fluttering crescendo.

“Goddam!” Mike screeched – as the breeze had carried this one right over to Time Bandits. “What the Hell is that smell?”

“Man,” Henry sighed, “we all ate the same thing. This is going to be an afternoon to remember.”

“Assuming, that is, we all don’t die of food poisoning.”

“How many crayfish did you eat, Mike?”

“I lost count.”

“I didn’t,” Henry said. “This should be epic.”

Mike cast off the lines and Henry goosed the throttle, quickly catching up to Karma, and they both watched as Tracy began fanning in front of her face – with Anton grinning like a madman as he raised his leg again and again, firing off one right after another.

“Get upwind of him, would you?” Mike begged. “The air behind his ass is turning green.”

Then Tracy stood and began fanning the space behind her trousers.

“Come on, Taggart! We’re gonna get it in stereo if you don’t pass ‘em soon!”

Then Mike’s eyes went wide as the first spasm hit…

“Thar she blows!” Henry shouted, pinching off his nose as Anton fired off another…followed by Mike’s first…

He turned to Clyde and shook his head. “Hurts to finally have some real competition, don’t it, boy?”

Clyde turned away and fired one off in disgust.

+++++

They tied-off for the evening at an impressive old chateau that was now a hotel and restaurant, and as it was only a mile or so downstream from the locks at Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne they would be well positioned to transit early the next morning. And there was some traffic out on the water now, too. Commercial traffic, barges laden with grain headed to the port at LeHavre, so life was coming back – slowly but surely. 

And tomorrow they would make it into Paris.

‘So, this is it,’ Henry sighed as he shut down the engine and helped Mike with the lines. ‘The end of the day. And Rolf didn’t make the trip.’

More than anything, he blamed Dina for that – and it struck him then that he’d never really known what motivated her. Protect Britt? Sure, that was understandable, but why, when Rolf had so much to gain, had she stepped in to interfere? And…why had Pinky allowed her to?

Now…would she resist when he did what he knew he had to do? Would she contest a divorce? Still, he’d known he’d need to see to her financial needs, if not as a husband then as a friend. A friend, of sorts.

Then Anton came aboard and crawled down the companionway.

“Not having dinner tonight, old top?” Henry grinned.

Anton answered by firing off one more good one on his way to the head.

“Mike? Dinner?”

But Mike simply hoisted a one finger salute as he followed Anton below, so Henry hopped down to the dock and walked over to Karma. “Dinner?” he asked Tracy.

“You know, yes, but only because this place is supposed to be something special.”

“Thatagirl.”

“Do we need to change first?”

“I called. No need tonight. I think we’re the only guests on the docket.”

“Good. Not sure I have the strength for that BS tonight.”

+++++

“I’ve never eaten so many snails,” she said, groaning.

“Quite a day, I’ll give you that,” Henry said, smiling at the memory of their noxious green passage. 

“You know, I grew up on simple food. The Crab Cooker, maybe Five Crowns every now and then…”

“Remember that Del Taco up by the airport? Talk about fart-food…”

“Oh God, yes, I do. We used to run up there when pulling all-nighters during exams.”

“Some things never change, I guess,” he sighed.

“Chocolate covered frozen bananas on Balboa Island,” she added. “Remember those?”

“Yup. Those were the best. Get two and walk around the island…” he remembered.

“In January, when the bay is fogged-in.”

He tried to push back the memory but it was just too much. “Claire and I,” he said gently. “We did that every weekend, usually Saturday nights…”

“What?”

“We walked the island. Some nights we’d take the little ferry over to the peninsula and walk over to the beach.”

“Mom and I…we did too. We’d walk all the way down to the breakwater on the beach.”

“I know. Your mom used to follow us,” he said, smiling. “Claire thought she was spying on us, but I think I knew the score even then.”

“She had it bad, Henry. She always did where you were concerned.”

“I guess that’s why it just couldn’t work. Too many unrealistic expectations.”

“She called me this afternoon.”

“I see,” he sighed, rolling his eyes just a little. “When does her flight get in?”

“Tuesday morning.”

He shook his head even as he tried to deny this was really going to happen. “She’s remorseless, you know? Have you told her anything about what’s going on between us?”

“No way.”

“So, she’s coming here expecting the big, grand reunion, the final coming together, and…?”

“I don’t think so, Henry, not really. I think maybe what she wants is closure.”

He shook his head again. “You know you are way off base, don’t you?”

“Maybe I’m just hoping…?”

“And my first round of chemo is Monday. This is going to be fun. Real fun.”

“Do you want me to call her? Postpone this to later?”

“What? And miss all the mirth and merriment that only your mother can bring to Christmas? Just think, Tracy! She’ll nail a Christmas tree to the foredeck and deck the halls with balls of sugar-coated guilt! Who wouldn’t want all that for their Christmas in gay Par-ee!”

“You make her sound like some kind of psychopath, Henry.”

He looked down at his hands, and he could see those same fingers running through Edith’s hair once upon a time. “I know she’s not, Tracy. I know I’m projecting a lot of anxiety onto her, on the idea of meeting up with her one more time…”

“One more time? What’s this? Have you lost your optimism already?”

“I’m just trying not to get my hopes up, you know? Especially where something so new is involved.”

“I’m just curious, but why don’t your alien buddies take care of this?”

He looked at her, trying to see if she was pulling his leg, but no… “Well, for one, they haven’t offered. And I have to assume that’s because medicine is not something they’re especially good at.”

“But…you haven’t asked?”

“No, and I won’t. And no, Tracy, I don’t want someone else to ask for me. I’m not put together that way.”

“Alright. I’m not going to fight you, Hank, no matter what you decide. But promise me one thing, okay?”

“If I can, sure.”

“When you decide to do something, makes sure it’s what you want to do and not what you think I want you to do.”

He looked away for a moment, then he nodded understanding. “Yeah. I can do that.”

“Good. Now…you got room for dessert?”

+++++

They took Clyde for a long walk on a bicycle path along the river’s edge, and he managed to stink up the countryside here and there. The sun had long since slipped away and the night had grown cold; after two days with temps in the 70s now all of a sudden a humid 40 degrees F seemed almost arctic, and even Clyde seemed put out by the cold grass on his paws.

His phone chirped once and he ignored it, but when it chirped again he found it in a coat pocket and looked at the text. It was from Dina, but not in CAPS this time.

“Just got divorce papers from lawyers. I’ve signed them, not contesting. Thanks for your generosity; I do not deserve it.”

“You’re welcome. If possible, I’d like Rolf to come for Christmas.”

“I’ll see what the options are.”

“Thanks, Dina.”

“Would you mind if I came along with him?”

“No, not at all.”

“I’ll see what the airlines are offering now and let you know.”

“Okay. Later.”

He put the phone away and shook his head. “Well, it seems I’m a free man once again. Or at least I will be as soon as the ink is dry.”

She looked at him for a moment, almost like she was waiting for him to say something, but he had stopped and now he was looking at Clyde…

Who was hunched over trying to make poop…

Only a steady stream of blood was dribbling out onto the grass…

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.

And a little music to sooth the savage beasties, because music matters. Oh…yes it does.

[A very short snippet today, just setting the stage for what comes next, the final dash to the end of Harry’s story.]

Chapter 57.3

She was different from the beginning, as different from Lloyd Callahan as two people could possibly be. Her life simply had not been framed by free-range alcoholics or important others possessed by overtly self-destructive impulses; rather, her life had been unbounded by music though still loosely contained by parents who were there, simply always there. And parents who cared intensely enough to let go when the time was right. 

After her father’s passing, Elizabeth Bullitt leaned heavily on Harry Callahan, yet more than a few people sensed that perhaps in an even quieter way Harry Callahan began leaning on the little girl too, and at about the same time. Perhaps because Elizabeth was, or so Cathy liked to say every now and then, an old soul. Elizabeth always seemed quietly wise beyond her years, an “old lady by the time she was on her way to kindergarten,” as Herry liked to say. It was frankly silly to think of her that way, Callahan thought every time the matter came up, yet even so it was manifestly true. She talked like an old lady, and she even held her hands in her lap as an old lady might. Yes, she was odd.

The most immediate consequence of Elizabeth’s preternatural wisdom – aside from the almost comical certitude she exuded – was the way she glommed onto Lloyd after the boy’s mother left. Or was it the other way around? To put it simply, the two might as well have been twins – aside from that troublesome seven year age difference, not to mention their diametrically opposed world-views. When they weren’t apart during school hours they were otherwise together, and this worked out well enough as the two simply never fought. They never disagreed. No arguments, ever. They looked each other too much for that.

And perhaps because the two were bound by another sort of covenant. Music. And as she was further along in her studies she became, naturally enough, a sort of teacher. The most important consequence of this covenant was an almost doting possessiveness that developed between them, because Lloyd passed through his early years worshipping Elizabeth. He was never jealous, rather he was simply an attentive student bound to his teacher through the most unusual bonds of attachment. For her part, Elizabeth seemed to understand the role she had assumed in his life was crucial to them both.

So, through music…and over the years, Elizabeth and Lloyd understood one another better than anyone else possibly could have. He experienced a rich emotional life through the filter of her musical interpretations of the world around them, and he learned this complex language as naturally as others picked up a native tongue. And she understood his rapidly shifting moods, and she did so because she cared not simply about him as a kind of brother, but about what he thought as a developing interpreter of this language. Yet she watched Lloyd constantly, almost fearfully, for she could hear in his music a grotesque impulsiveness that lay dormant just beneath the calm surface of his quiet genius. And never far from her thoughts was how she might protect her mother and Harry from the inevitable explosive eruption she knew was about to come.

+++++

Which was why she watched the transformation that occurred when Lloyd was around Todd Bright with quiet intensity. This was something different, she soon understood. Lloyd was stepping away from her her, gingerly at first but with no real hesitation – like the long dormant self-destructive impulses within had suddenly come alive. She watched him, then she watched the way Harry reacted to the change and she knew the real trouble was here.

When she was accepted at a college on the east coast she knew the world they had known together would come undone. That, too, was inevitable. Yet Harry was drifting away from his son, as if he had seen forces coming into play he knew he would never be able to control, and it made her wonder. Was he doing the right thing? Letting go – at exactly the time his boy would need the steady hand of a caring father the most?

She had no way of knowing this was Harry Callahan’s modus operandi, that the man she loved above all others was nothing more or less than the patron saint of lost causes. She knew nothing of Looney Junes or of his mother’s consumptive madness. Nothing of all the other women Harry Callahan had loved – women who had simply failed to understand the man before they discarded him – so she knew nothing at all of the fatalism that prowled deep within his heart.

She thought about college, about not going, but in the end it was Harry who insisted she leave home and step out into the world. And as is so often the case nothing would ever be the same ever again.

Within a year, life out on the cliffs would become totally unrecognizable – and for the rest of her life the little girl would hold it as a simple truth that she was to blame for everything that happened next.

© 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 last 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 until 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.]

(Of course it does.)

Chapter 24.3

“Do you have a snow shovel?” Tracy asked as she watched snow accumulating on the deck of her Westsail.

“I do, but only one. I think we’d better go grab a couple more,” Henry replied as he picked up a handful of the white stuff, rolling it over in his hands.

“It wet, heavy,” Anton added. “Heavy enough to hurt boat?” he wondered aloud.

“It won’t help anything, Anton,” Henry said as he went to the garage and got his shovel out from behind the Zodiac. “Keeping the decks clear will keep hundreds of pounds off the waterline, and keep deck fittings from getting ice under them.”

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Tracy sighed. “Somehow sailing and shoveling snow don’t go together.”

“Yeah, well,” Henry smirked as he handed the shovel to Tracy, “whipped cream and sex don’t really go together either, but that doesn’t stop some people from trying.”

“Leave it to you,” Mike snarked, “to think of that at a time like this.”

“Whipped cream? Really?” Anton said dreamily.

+++++

They found three sturdy plastic shovels at a BP station, and after that the group took a taxi into Rouen for dinner.

The city was empty, the streets looked like something out of a ghost town in an old western, but their taxi driver knew a place that was open and desperate for cash paying customers. The food was actually pretty good, too, and Henry asked their driver to join them when he said he hadn’t eaten in two days.

“What’s going on?” Tracy asked. “Why haven’t you eaten?”

“When the power went out everything closed; businesses, stores…everything. People and markets without ice lost all their meat, and even generators didn’t work so no one was spared. And of course nobody is getting paid now, which is just one part of the larger problem, because there’s also still no food in the markets, and the water treatment plant isn’t working so there’s no water. People are taking water from the river but they’re getting sick, and farmers are watching over their herds to keep people from poaching, but already several people have been hurt.”

“Jesus…” she sighed.

“The owner of this place is an old friend. His family has a farm near the coast so at least he has a supply of fresh food. And thank you so much for inviting me to join you. It is very much appreciated.”

“Do you have family here?” Nodding and his eyes now full of concern, Henry asked the driver while they looked over the meager, handwritten menus.

“My son and daughter, yes, they are at home. My wife was on business in Italy when the electricity went out. I finally talked to her today.”

“Have your kids eaten?”

The driver shook his head, then looked away.

“Order something for them,” Henry said. “We’ll drop it off on the way back to the boat.”

The driver, a man fast growing old before his time, wiped away a tear. “It is strange how fast things have come apart, at how inept our governments have been in their response to these things.”

“People like low taxes,” Mike said. “You can’t have low taxes and effective government.”

“Maybe not,” the Frenchman sighed. “Empty promises, I suppose.”

Dinner was a success with roast goose featured, served with a soufflé redolent of mushrooms and spinach. Everyone agreed the chocolate tart and coffee was the best they’d ever had.

Anton helped the driver carry meals up to a small apartment, and while standing there on the street a good three inches of snow coated the old Mercedes; by the time they made it back out to the marina several feet of snow had piled-up on both decks, and Henry just shook his head when he found Time Bandits’ cockpit literally awash with deep, sloppy slush.

“Let’s do Karma first, all of us together, then we can hit Bandit,” Henry said.

“You go take medicine,” Anton grinned. “Don’t worry. We wait for you before start.”

“Thanks,” Henry said. “I think.”

It took an hour to clear both boats, yet by the time they finished clearing off Time Bandits, Tracy’s Westsail already had another foot piled up. “That no good, Genry,” Anton sighed.

Henry looked at the adjacent parking lot and did a double take when he realized that the few cars still parked out there had disappeared – now buried under what looked like two meters of the heavy snow – then everyone flinched when what sounded like a rifle shot pierced the night.

Everyone turned toward the sound just in time to see an old oak falling into the river, and the rest of night was punctuated by an endless volley of falling trees. And the worst of the storm wasn’t supposed to hit until mid-morning.

+++++

Exhausted after two days – and nights – shoveling snow, Henry turned to the BBC World Service to see if there was any good news on the horizon.

There wasn’t.

The storm had pulverized the Iberian peninsula before winding up for the main event. Now most of central and northern France were buried, literally buried under meters of snow, but not content to simply inundate France, the storm had meandered slowly over Belgium and Holland, wrecking relief efforts underway in Amsterdam and Rotterdam before heading north and east towards Norway and the Baltic. Even southeast England had been hit, and hard, with London seeing over two meters of snow falling in two days. No one, the BBC announcer stated, had any records of a similar storm on file.

Yet the worst was, apparently, yet to come – because the forecast for the next several days included daytime temperatures reaching into the high-70sF, so the likelihood of life-threatening floods happening was increasing by the hour.

“So,” Henry said to everyone gathered in the cockpit, “the water level will most likely rise significantly, and with that the current will increase exponentially. Also, there will be a ton of debris in the water.”

“What you thinking, Genry?”

“Anton, I’d like you and Mike to stay here for a few days and let Tracy take me into Paris, to the oncologist Dina has lined up for me. I’ve called and she’ll see me the day after tomorrow, early in the morning. There’s a train running tomorrow morning, and a return train the day after the appointment, and I don’t want to put this off any longer.”

“What about airplane and Bergen,” Anton asked.

“Let me think about that,” Henry sighed. “Maybe by early next week the weather will cooperate?”

Anton nodded. “Pilot friend can come here while gone?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not…?”

“Okay, I stay. Anyway, she bring whipping cream.”

+++++

The oncologist, a woman about Tracy’s age, quickly ran through the latest lab reports with Henry, but they contained little in the way of good news. She wanted to put him in a room overnight and start him up on chemo again, but he simply refused.

“Can’t we just do another transfusion?” he asked. “I’m not looking for a cure.”

“You do know that with these new mRNA therapies, a cure is not out of reach?”

“What?”

“Yes. The same technology that enabled the rapid response to the pandemic is being used to make new therapies for oncology. It is a very hopeful development, but we may not see an agent for a year. Putting you on chemo now could buy enough time to get you there. Interested?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Henry sighed. “Maybe this, maybe that, and maybe I could go through extended chemo and perhaps nothing would come of all the waiting.”

“But,” Tracy said, “what if it does? How does twenty years of extra life added to the clock sound?”

“Mr. Taggart,” the oncologist said, “everyone understands there are no guarantees where these things are concerned, but at least there is a chance. Why not take it?”

“Because I tried a brief course of chemo in Norway and I was not responding well. My counts went crazy…”

“I have seen these reports,” Dr. Montard replied. “I would not use the same agents, and with you here in the city I could very closely monitor your progress. I see this as a win-win situation, and I hope you do too.”

Henry Taggart knew this was one of those moments. A split second when the universe kind of stopped and all kinds of unexpected impulses might run through his mind, so he took a deep breath and stood, then walked over to a window with an impressive view of the city beyond the glass. He had never seen her with so much snow…

“God, I love this city,” he sighed as he scanned the streets below.  ‘Maybe this is what drew me here,’ he thought as he struggled to understand the moment. “Maybe all along I was meant to come here, right to this office, to this moment…’

He turned and looked at Tracy, at all the possibilities waiting out there on the far side of the torture this new physician proposed. Tracy and Rolf, making a run for the South Pacific on Time Bandits? Isn’t that what he’d do with time like that? With Dina writing herself out of the equation, didn’t coming full circle mean the way ahead would include a journey with Tracy and Rolf by his side? 

He turned to look at Montard. At her eyes, her face, and at her soul.

“Realistically, doctor, what are the chances this mRNA technology will come to the rescue?”

“Realistically? There is a trial underway at Philadelphia Children’s and the initial results are so far very promising. So, and I hate to say this, but we may be able to answer this question within weeks. If their results…”

“Dr. Montard,” Tracy said, “what about getting Henry into the trial? Is it too late?”

Montard looked at her laptop, then she shrugged. “I can see. At least I can try…”

Something swelled in Henry’s soul, something akin to hope, something he hadn’t felt in months, and he turned back to the glass. And there was the snow covered city again, only this time his reflection was there too, and he could see the hope in the stranger’s eyes.

“I have to move the boat from Rouen to the Arsenal,” Henry said. “I’ll also need to go to Norway for a few hours, but I’ll start chemo after I return.”

Tracy burst into tears and ran to him, fell into his arms.

“I didn’t expect tears,” he whispered into her ear, “but…”

“No buts, Henry. I love you, and that’s all I can say right now.”

Montard let them have their moment, then she interrupted Henry. “Before you go, I think we should give you some platelets.”

“Alright.”

“Come with me, please.”

+++++

The power was back in Paris, lights were on and businesses open for customers, and as it was Friday crowds were surging in the late afternoon – life returning to normal once again.

“I feel alive, Tracy. Maybe for the first time in months. Like when spring comes and trees start to bud…that kind of alive.”

“I can’t even imagine what you must be feeling.”

“Tahiti. That was the first thing I thought of. With you and Rolf, maybe even with Anton. Sailing from here to Tahiti.”

“Okay.”

“What do mean you, okay?”

“Okay. Sounds fun. Let’s do it. How about that?”

He took her hand in his. He felt like skipping down the sidewalk. He was hungry – and he was in Paris!

His first night back, and it was the first of December. He had made it, he thought, and despite the odds, too. 

“You feel light,” Tracy said, beaming.

“I feel like light,” he sighed. “Like photons unbound, free to race across the universe!”

“And where would you go, Henry?”

“To that patisserie across the street! For something sweet!”

“I’m sweet, aren’t I?”

“You are indeed, but I have a feeling some people might not understand if I eat you out here on the street.”

“True.”

He charged into the pastry shop and picked out a few random bits of goodness, and he asked for a couple of cups of coffee too, then they sat by a window and waited while people strolled by in the pink afternoon sunlight.

“If I’d just come from the sun,” he said…

“Speaking as a photon, you mean?”

“Yes, of course. If I’d just arrived I’d want it to be right here, right here in the heart of Paris. I can’t imagine traveling all that way and landing in the sea or, heaven forbid, Iowa.”

Their coffee came and he picked at something loaded with chocolate, then he sipped coffee lost in thought. “Why does everything taste better here?” he asked, looking about the place and at the people queuing up to buy their daily bread.

“Maybe it’s the light!” she said, smiling.

“Exactly!”

“I hate to bring this up, but we’re going to need to find a room.”

“Yeah,” Henry said, grinning, “I reckon so.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t already booked one.”

“What makes you so sure I haven’t?”

She nodded – slowly. “One room, or two?”

“I’ll never tell.”

His phone chirped and he fished the thing out of his pocket and looked at the display: an incoming text from Dina – again in ALL CAPS.

“JUST HEARD FROM MONTARD. GOOD NEWS!”

He put the phone back in his pocket, involuntarily shivering as he did.

“You feeling cold?” Tracy asked.

“Suddenly, yes. Like a stalker just reappeared. Holding a pair of scissors overhead, about to strike.”

“Dina?” Tracy asked with a sigh, and when he nodded she shrugged. “Well, so much for privacy laws in France.”

“Dina was my original oncologist.”

“What?”

He nodded. “I think she moved in on me once she figured out I was screwing her daughter.”

“What?”

“Things really got weird after her daughter turned out to be pregnant.”

“What?”

“Which really made things ticklish when I knocked up another girl a few weeks later.”

Tracy said not a word; she simply stood and walked out of the shop. Once out on the sidewalk she looked towards les Invalides and stomped off in that direction, yet for some reason Taggart thought of Napoleon’s tomb – and he smiled at the thought, like he had smiled at the idea of the sun’s photons striking Paris. Then he burst out laughing before he noticed clouds moving in again.

“And now it looks like rain,” he sighed, then he stood and walked off after her.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, pure and simple; the next element will drop as soon as the muse cooperates.

(…and you know its true, too…)

Chapter 57.2

“You come here at peril, young man.”

“Only you would think I’m young.”

“Nevertheless.”

“She was young then, wasn’t she?” Callahan said as he watched his mother walking home in the snow.

“Not then, Harald. Now. There she is, there, in the streetlight.”

“Where’s Avi?”

“Just now? At the university, crafting his alibi, putting the finishing touches on all his little betrayals.”

“Why? Why did he do it? Why did he betray his friends?”

The old man shrugged and looked away. “Perhaps you will ask him one day.”

“What? Avi’s dead.”

The Old Man turned and looked roughly at Callahan, and then, in the next instant, he was gone – leaving only a trail of laughter…and tears.

+++++

A week later he was sitting over the cliffs at his Bösendorfer, absent-mindedly working his way through a new composition even then taking shape in his mind, when he thought of the Old Man once again.

“Perhaps you will ask him one day.”

‘Can I do that? Can I go back and interact with people? But…what happens if I do…?’

The implications of the Old Man’s words were staggering, because if true there really were no barriers left in all the universe. Death was an absolute, a barrier beyond which no one could be reached – but not now.

‘But…what about the so-called Paradox of Time. How can I account for that? Or…is the past an absolute in and of itself…resolute and unalterable? Or maybe the past is structured more like a lightning bolt. If I go back and alter an element, what if a new branch forms – leading to a new outcome, yet leaving the original intact? How many layers of time could I create? How many outcomes could I construct from just one set of interactions? But – just how much chaos can the universe absorb before it implodes under the weight of so many inherent contradictions?’

Maybe time had some kind of safety mechanism, but his mind snapped shut and he was aware of something or someone reshaping his memory, almost as if some force was wiping strands of code from his mind…as he sat there. Could it be…?

Then he shook his head as an unwanted memory came for him.

“What if I just came back and wiped a memory away?”

“What was I just thinking about?”

He bent over the keyboard and played a chord, and in his mind he saw lightning.

+++++

Some guys were coming up from L.A.

Musicians of course, working on a new album and they had a track they wanted to lay down at the CliffHouse, as Callahan’s studio was being called these days, and because they wanted Callahan to play keyboards for the piece they’d asked him to get involved.

It was a fusion kind of thing, too. Jazz and metal, incongruous lifeforms, incompatible from the beginning, yet these guys were going to give it a try. They’d sent Harry a few tapes with their ideas laid down but so far Harry simply couldn’t see any way out…they were constructing a dead-end…music without purpose or form, or even meaning. Or…could he simply not see what it was they were trying for? Metheny had tried to go down this road and retreated, so why were these guys so willing to hang it all out there and risk everything?

“Am I too set in my ways?” he wondered aloud.

“Damn straight you are,” Lloyd said from the kitchen.

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, of course. Dad, you’re stuck in fifties jazz, and that’s when you break free of Gershwin. Things are moving on, getting rad…”

“Rad?”

“Radical, Dad. As in…not everything is all wrapped up in Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington.”

“Oh? That’s news to me.”

“No shit.”

“Do you really enjoy talking to me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like a scrote.”

“Man, if it yanks your chain I’m all in.”

“Swell.”

“I suppose you’re gonna make me go to school today?”

“Like Dude…can you think of any reasonable alternatives?”

“Robbie and I want to catch some waves.”

“That can wait til school’s out.”

“Crap!”

“Lloyd, please?”

“Ass-wipe!”

A grinning Callahan got up from the piano and started after the boy – but he was out the door and bolting for Cathy’s car before Harry could intercept and resume their ongoing tickle-fight. He watched, smiling, as Elizabeth climbed in beside his boy, and he shook his head – still grinning – as he watched them drive up the hill towards the Coast Highway.

And not long after two limos pulled up and parked in front of the CliffHouse Studio. Four musicians and a covey of roadies stumbled out of the cars, followed by huge wafts of blue smoke – and then an equipment van pulled up a few minutes behind the limos. Callahan was already in the studio, sitting within the confines of a u-shaped arrangement of keyboards and synthesizers, waiting for them as they entered.

He still wasn’t exactly comfortable with the new tech, but after fiddling with Yamaha’s latest pianos he had finally relented and made the effort. Now he was surrounded by Yamahas and Korgs – and even a Mini-Moog – because that was what the musicians who came up to the studio expected these days. If you were an accomplished keyboardist in the 90s, you had to be more than that – because while few were paying attention Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman had redefined the paradigm. Callahan had given in and grown into a full-fledged convert after he discovered how fun the new technology really was, yet another happy by-product soon emerged: with all the new tech in-house his studio became even more popular.

But the group of kids filing into the studio this morning was something else entirely. One guy made directly for a chair and pulled out a wallet full of syringes and shot up while the roadies hauled the group’s instruments in from the van. A ‘rode hard put away wet’ kind of girl was on her knees in the next instant, taking care of the guy’s main vein while the heroin got to work – and on seeing that Callahan got up and walked back to the main house for some coffee. He had seen a lot since he opened up the studio…maybe too much…but the studio was a business. One that catered to musicians of every persuasion. DD had cautioned him to keep his police officer’s frame of reference checked at the front door, and he tried.

But today felt different.

Still, the man with the golden arm was a gifted musician, maybe even a brilliant one and Callahan listened to his ideas and smiled. He got it then, and over the next week, the heroin addict and the detective grew to respect one another. Then to really like one another. When this new group finally began laying tracks down in earnest even the producer, a jaded Londoner who’d handled more than a few super-groups during the 60s and 70s, sat up and began paying attention. Something new was taking shape out there on the cliffs, and the old producer understood that “new” was something very rare indeed. This was a big deal, and he smelled money in the water.

When the album was released a few months after these sessions it rocketed up the charts in both the UK and the US, and for a while the CliffHouse became The Place to see and be seen – and Harry Callahan joined an elite fraternity of keyboardists.

But as interesting as that might have been, that’s not the point. And it never was.

+++++

The name of the group was Bright. Named after the group’s lead singer-songwriter, they were New York’s answer to British Punk, for a while, anyway. Then the group started down all kinds of different roads; they dabbled in Prog then drifted to Metal – but the one constant in the group’s odyssey seemed to be heroin. More to the point, the group’s tortured path followed Todd Bright’s addiction – and, in the end, wherever the needles in his arm took them. Still, no one doubted Todd’s inherent genius.

He was well educated, and that came as a surprise to many. He went to a posh boarding school in New Hampshire then went on to Princeton, and somewhere along the way, he discovered the poppy.  His music consumed more and more of his time, at first performing in local pubs but then soon enough in larger venues. His academic pursuits fell by the wayside as he grew in stature until at last he quit school and took his band on the road and into the big-time. Yet the ever-curious Bright read Castaneda and off they went to northern Mexico in search of magic mushrooms. He met with one of the Beatles and after that became convinced the only way to move his music to the next level was to drop acid, so all of them went down that rabbit hole too, but through it all heroin remained the one constant in his life.

So, in all their lives.

Callahan was warming up that very first day, sitting at the Yamaha and working through some of the more off-the-beaten-path chords that had become jazz staples over the years, but then Bright came over and listened for a while. And all the while he never took his eyes off Callahan’s hands.

“You know,” he said after a while, “technically you’re pretty good, but something’s missing. Maybe your music’s got no heart.”

“No heart?” Callahan said, his eyes never leaving the keyboard and no feeling more than a little annoyed. 

“Look at you, man. Sitting ramrod straight and like with your eyes are all wide shut, and you playin’ but you ain’t feelin’ shit. You’re like cold, man. You be all stone-cold perfection but your music ain’t got no heart. You got to get into the zone, Callahan. You got to feel the music, and to do that you got to let go, just let it all go and let the music talk to you, let it tell you where it wants to go. You got to listen to the music, Callahan, and you got to trust what you feel.”

Harry looked up at the addict through squinted eyes, the eyes that came from too many years on the street. “I do, huh?”

Bright looked into those black eyes and naked fear ran up his spine. He turned from the sudden darkness that had found him and went off in search of a safe place; once he’d recovered his sense of the moment he shot up again then went off to find his belle du jour, as he took quick comfort in the playtime he always found there. But soon he had to go back into Callahan’s darkness, and that scared him. Maybe, he thought, we ought to just pack up and leave.

But no, he ignored Callahan the rest of that first day, though even his mates in the band knew something heavy had gone down. Maybe Todd had seen something they hadn’t?

The next morning Bright took a different tack. He’d worked up vocals and an interesting bass line for their first piece, but he wanted a long, almost meandering piano intro to set a contrapuntal mood, so he walked over to Callahan and laid out the ideas he’d worked on through the night.

Callahan looked it over then worked through the bass lines, getting a sense of them and where the kid was headed – and in a flash, lost in the lyrics, he saw the kid’s genius. These weren’t just lyrics, Harry thought, the kid was writing poetry. And the bass line was pulling at his emotions, bringing the words into sharp relief.

He closed his eyes and his head fell until his chin was resting on his chest, his face canted a little to the left. He took the bass line and dropped an octave, then two, then he fell into a slower place. The kid on bass fell into the zone and Bright, now standing beside Callahan, smiled a little before he started in.

This first little snippet was hardly a minute long but when he heard the playback Bright smiled, then he walked over and mussed Callahan’s hair.

And Callahan grinned. After that everything was good. Maybe even cool.

It took three days to finish that first track but when it was in the can the producer called L.A. and asked one of the studio execs to come up for a listen. After that visit a photographer showed up and started documenting the sessions, then a hotshot director dropped by with ideas for the group’s next music video, and even Callahan could feel it then. Something big was happening, right out there on the cliffs.

+++++

Lloyd started showing up in the studio after school, and while Harry saw no reason not to let the boy get a taste of what it was like to be in on the creative process, perhaps in retrospect that was a little naive. Maybe if he’d never left his son alone in there with Todd Bright?

But Bright wasn’t a monster. He curtailed his use of heroin when the boy was around, though to take the edge off he wasn’t at all reluctant about lighting up a doob when Harry wasn’t around. Maybe pot wasn’t considered a so-called gateway drug, but maybe when all was said and done, in the end it was for Lloyd. Even though Todd never let the boy near his weed, eleven years old is an impressionable time in a boy’s life, and Todd Bright made a big impression on Lloyd Callahan.

But then an even more important event happened, something that changed all their lives in unexpected ways.

Todd was working on his latest piece, writing down ideas, then as words came to him he scribbled them down…occasionally plucking at an acoustic guitar to work through the melody. And on this day Lloyd happened along and, sitting at his father’s station he flipped on the Yamaha. Listening to Todd he heard him struggle with a passage that seemed all too obvious to the boy…

“What about this?” Lloyd said, then he fingered the passage he had in mind.

Todd Bright wasn’t an idiot, and he recognized talent when he saw it. He picked up his notebook and went over to the Yamaha and pulled over a small rolling desk.

“Again,” Todd said, and Lloyd played the line. “I like it. Where are you going with this?”

And Lloyd closed his eyes, his hands poised over the keys, and Todd looked on in awe as the kid knocked out one of the most gorgeous pieces of music he’d ever heard. New ideas came to him and he scribbled notes in his notebook, then he asked Lloyd to go back and replay a segment. In three hours the group had their newest single, a track that would go on to chart number one around the world. And Todd Bright listed Lloyd Callahan as the song’s writer, though he took credit for the lyrics.

When Harry learned of the episode he felt justifiable pride, yet at the same time he saw that something quite indefinable had changed in the boy’s outlook. Not conceit, nor even simple pride of accomplishment, Harry found a new sense of resolve in the boy, as if everything he did now had some kind of purpose.

Yet actually, it was Elizabeth Bullitt who first recognized the more important change. And she was the first to realize the danger that waited just ahead.

+++++

© 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 last 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 until 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.]