“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“We’ve got an hour before my lower G.I. lets loose, so let’s go.”
Miguel sat next to the pilot on the six-passenger plane but the excitement of his first flight couldn’t overcome his worry for Mercer, who sat in the rearmost seat with his face buried in a plastic trash bag. Very soon the smell made him sick too, leaving Lauren to care for two patients, one of whom was dehydrating before her eyes as his body fought the bacterial infection. Mercer shook as if palsied, his skin already appearing desiccated and his eyes haunted.
For him, the flight was both instantaneous and longer than a nonstop from L.A. to Sydney. His misery was like a black hole that warped time. In the moments between his wrenching heaves and the spikes in abdominal agony, he did manage to tell Lauren about Harry White’s arrival in Panama. Other than that the trip was a blur.
The pilot stopped his grumbling about ruined upholstery long enough to radio ahead so an ambulance was parked at the General Aviation ramp when they landed.
Mercer’s struggle to keep his bowels from voiding ended as a pair of orderlies maneuvered him onto the waiting gurney. Too wasted to care he’d fouled himself, he wasn’t even aware that Lauren and Miguel climbed into the ambulance with him, nor did he realize a saline drip was inserted to replace the fluids his body evacuated at an alarming rate. The only thing he held on to as he slid toward the darkness was that a previous bout of dysentery had taught him the worst was yet to come.
Panama City, Panama
It was the alien feeling of crisp sheets that Mercer first noticed when he regained consciousness. He hadn’t lain on a bed since ... he thought it was Utah ... no, Paris ... but how many days ago? The question remained unanswered as sensations overloaded his body again. He slept.
The next time he came awake, he felt a presence nearby but couldn’t turn his head or even open his eyes. He smelled something pleasant, a combination of flowers and a sweet odor like mint, before the darkness overwhelmed him.
It wasn’t until the third time he remembered coming awake that he could crank open his eyes. From the fog, he saw a square of light to his left. He thought it might be a window, but he couldn’t make out details. A noise drew his attention to his right. A shape. A figure. He tried to wet his mouth with his tongue.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling weaker than he could ever remember. When he opened them again, the shape had moved closer and resolved into a man wearing a dazzling white suit, with a solid red tie and elegant straw Panama hat. The eyes were kindly blue and his skin glowed from the light streaming into the room. Mercer’s vision was too blurry for him to tell if he knew the man. It was only when the mysterious person spoke that Mercer felt the jolt of recognition.
“How’s it going, Mercer?” Normally the voice was like gravel pouring through a rusted steel chute, but Harry White asked the question so gently that Mercer wasn’t sure it was him.
“That you, Harry?”
“In the flesh, so to speak,” Harry replied, lighting a cigarette from the tip of the one he was just finishing.
“You aren’t supposed to smoke in a hospital,” Mercer said after Harry gave him a sip of water through a straw. In the dim background, he could hear the sound of harps being played.
“We’re not in a hospital, but I’ll put it out.” Harry nonchalantly ground his Chesterfield into the palm of his hand.
“Jesus,” Mercer rasped when White dropped the crushed cigarette on the floor.
Harry looked at his watch. “Not for a few minutes.”
Confused by that statement, Mercer tried to shake the fuzziness from his mind. His body seemed to be floating freely under the sheets. “Did you use my credit card to buy the suit? You look like a million bucks.”
At eighty years old, Harry White was in better shape than he had any right to expect considering his daily alcohol and nicotine intake. He held himself ramrod straight and Mercer saw no sign of the walnut sword cane he’d given his friend for his last birthday. Regarding him through eyes that refused to focus, it appeared to Mercer that Harry’s face was unlined and the silver razor stubble that normally blurred his strong jawline had been shaved clean. Harry took off his hat and the backlighting looked like a halo around his head.
“This place tends to make you look good.” Harry took a long breath, then reached for his cigarette pack before remembering where he was.
“This place? Where are we?”
“Oh, God. Listen, pal, there’s no easy way to do this so I’ll come right out and say it.” Harry fiddled with his hat, procrastinating for another second. “On the cab ride to the airport to come meet you, an eighteen-wheeler jackknifed on the Dulles access road. My taxi hit the truck doing about seventy miles an hour. The cabbie just couldn’t avoid it. He, ah, he made it out okay, but I didn’t.”
Muzzily, Mercer said, “What the hell are you talking about? Are you trying to tell me you’re dead?”
“I’m trying to tell you we’re both dead, Mercer. Whatever you picked up in the Paris sewer was a lot worse than dysentery. The doctors did everything they could for you, but they just couldn’t save you. It’s funny. Considering all the crap you’ve faced in your life I thought you’d go before me. Now I’m glad I could be here for you. When I woke up from the car crash and realized where I was, my guide was a twenty-year-old kid who blamed me for getting him killed in World War Two.”
Mercer couldn’t comprehend what Harry was telling him. He heard the words, but they made no sense. Dead? He was dead. He felt like shit. Wasn’t pain a sign that he was very much alive? His confusion was written across his face and Harry spoke again as if he could read Mercer’s mind. “It doesn’t work the way you think it does. You’ll feel woozy for a while longer. Jesus or Saint Peter will be here in a while to explain everything. I’ll let you get some rest.”
Harry opened a door at the head of Mercer’s bed. A dark streak brushed by him and leapt onto the bed. It was Miguel. He hugged Mercer fiercely. What the ... ?
Harry’s saintly demeanor changed in an instant and his voice thundered, “Goddamnit, you little pipsqueak! You were supposed to wait for a few minutes.”
“But he is awake, Mr. Harry!” Miguel squealed, burrowing into Mercer’s arms. “You said I could come in when he was awake.”
“I said you could come in after I was finished talking to him. Oh, well, it’s blown now.” Harry used a handkerchief to wipe pancake makeup from his face. The skin below showed his eight decades of hard living. He moved to the window to open the gauzy curtain that had given the hospital room its heavenly glow. He also shut off a portable tape player that had provided the harp music. Lauren Vanik entered a second later wearing baggy shorts and an oversized Oxford shirt.
“What the hell’s going on?” Mercer looked from one to the other.
“Your friend Harry conned us into letting him pull a practical joke. He said if I didn’t help he’d burn that journal he brought.”
Mercer’s stare fell on Harry, noting the flash of merriment in his old friend’s eyes. “How did you do that thing with the cigarette?”
Harry suddenly looked hurt. “I pull the best joke of my life and you ask me about that old gag? I snubbed the cigarette against a coin I’d palmed.”
“I should have known this was a scam from the very beginning,” Mercer said as the full force of what Harry had just done struck home. This indeed was a caper to beat them all. “If I’d come to in a pool of fire with snakes on my bed and you were wearing a red cape and horns, then I would have believed we were both dead.”