I decided to change the subject before I was unable to stop myself from shaking him. I’ve never been particularly good at dealing with crazy people. Henry was relatively harmless-once you took the explosives out of his hands-but that didn’t mean I had any real idea how to deal with him.
“How do you get in and out of the house?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s very simple,” he said. “I only leave in the middle of the night. The satellites can’t track me. I’m invisible at night.”
“Literally invisible?” Sam said.
“Is there any other kind of invisible?” Henry asked.
“No,” Sam said, “I guess there isn’t.”
The nice thing about the people looking for Henry was that they weren’t professionals, which meant their dedication was likely far from monastic. They were bookies, so they tended to keep daylight hours and they weren’t very sophisticated. They survived on intimidation, but they didn’t like to actually work. It’s why they didn’t have real jobs. They probably didn’t have night-vision goggles, either, so he probably was, literally, invisible.
“Henry,” I said, “why don’t you lie down in your own bed for once? Sam and I will keep the house guarded while you nap.”
Henry looked around his room as if he hadn’t seen it before. “This is my room?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you’ll be just outside the door?”
“Yes.”
“Should we cover the windows with tinfoil?”
“I don’t think we need to do that,” I said.
“I brought an extra force field with me today,” Sam said.
“Oh, okay,” Henry said. “I guess I could take a nap. I haven’t been sleeping very much. I’d feel more comfortable if you both stayed with me until I fell asleep. It’s usually right before REM when the transmissions begin.”
“No problem,” Sam said. “We’ll be right here to intercept them.”
Within five minutes of getting underneath his covers, Henry Grayson was snoring, so Sam and I crept back into the living room.
“I’ve decided Henry Grayson is crazy,” Sam said.
“Yeah, he might be,” I said.
“He did build himself his own secret hideaway,” Sam said. “Can’t say the man isn’t industrious. What are we going to do with him?”
“He needs to be hospitalized,” I said. “Possibly forever.”
“Not even loan sharks are going to try to take a pound of flesh from a crazy guy, right?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I have a feeling Big Lumpy might be sensitive to it, if we can get Drubich to pay him.”
“But that doesn’t get rid of Drubich,” Sam said.
“I know,” I said. “And Fiona snapping his wrist probably didn’t put him in a charitable mood.”
“She was a little cranky today,” Sam said.
“Forced captivity does that to her.”
“And then there’s Sugar,” Sam said.
“I want to thank you for that,” I said.
“Boy Scout oath forced me into this situation, Mikey. Mentally awake and all that.”
“I don’t think you’re living up to the spirit of the oath in agreeing to help Sugar with anything.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said.
“We need to get Henry out of this house,” I said.
“And into a safe facility. And I’m not talking about my mother’s garage.”
“I’ve got a buddy does a little work with unstable types for the VA,” Sam said.
“What kind of work?”
“Well, it’s not really the VA as it’s legally constituted,” Sam said. “More like she helps with secret prisons and that sort of thing. But her business card says VA on it.”
“She owe you any favors?”
“Mikey, everyone owes me a favor.”
“Henry needs help,” I said. “Not confinement.”
“You mind if the help is mobile?”
“Mobile?” I said.
“Let me talk to my buddy,” Sam said.
A thought occurred to me. “Your friend,” I said. “She be willing to sign an official death certificate?”
“Mikey,” Sam said, “that’s a federal crime.”
“I know,” I said. “But so is being a Russian national with a rocket launcher on American soil. They call that terrorism now. We have a witness who had a psychotic break after a horrific terrorist attack on his business and now fears for his very life.”
“Henry’s not exactly a viable witness, Mikey.”
“When has that ever mattered in matters of national security?”
Sam pondered this for a moment. “That’s asking my buddy to extend herself pretty far.”
“You’re a persuasive guy,” I said.
“I do have my charms,” Sam said.
“First thing,” I said, “is we need to get Henry out of this house and into some kind of care. And maybe keep him away from anything explosive. He had this place wired pretty well.”
“What do we tell Brent?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Not until we know he’s safe from all of this. He gets compromised and he’ll spill everything.”
Sam agreed. He took out his cell phone and made a call. “Marci? Marci, this Sam Axe. Sweetheart, I have a small favor I need to ask.. .. No, no, not that again. Unless you want to do that again. I’m not opposed to that, just let me adjust my insurance coverage again… Now that- that’s not even legal on a Sunday in Florida, sweetheart.. ..”
A high-pitched squeal erupted from Sam’s phone-loud enough that Sam had to pull the phone away from his ear-which was my cue to move to another part of the house while he convinced his buddy to acquiesce to his demands. I didn’t want to ruin my dinner.
Two hours later, a yellow Econoline van pulled up in front of Henry’s house. According to the sign on the side of it, the van belonged to ALL-AMERICAN INSULATION amp; AIR-CONDITIONING REPAIR. According to the bulletproof tires, I had a sneaking suspicion that the van actually belonged to Sam’s friend Marci and her cohorts. It’s not every air-conditioning service that can afford Teflon-honeycombed antigun, antiexplosion, extreme-terrain experimental tires that I’d only previously seen in Iraq.
From the living room window I could see the van’s passenger door open and a woman of no less than six full feet of height step out. She wore a tan jumpsuit with a utility belt and held a clipboard, the universal uniform of anyone who wants to look nonthreatening. Though I had a slight twinge of fear that Henry might think it was also the universal uniform of the New World Order. Fortunately, I could still hear Henry snoring away. Well, snoring and intermittently shouting in his sleep.
Sam came up behind me and looked out the living room window. “That’s my girl,” Sam said.
“That’s a woman,” I said.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Sam said.
“She’s a doctor?”
“Among other things.”
“What other things?”
“Geneva Convention prevents me from saying,” Sam said. He stepped away to open the front door and in walked Marci. She greeted Sam with a hug that practically lifted him off his feet and then she gave him a firm slap on his backside. It was… awkward. But Sam seemed to like it.
“What do we have here?” she asked. She walked into the living room, regarded me with nary a mention, and then sat down in the recliner and stared directly at her clipboard, as if she didn’t want to take in too much information other than what she was asking for. That or plausible deniability was big in her world.
“Big favor, Marci,” Sam said. “We’ve got a subject in the bedroom that we need to get off the grid.”
“Enemy?”
“No,” Sam said.
Marci wrote something on her clipboard. “Client?”
“Not in the traditional sense,” Sam said. He looked over my way. “Maybe you noticed another person in the room?”
“I don’t see anyone,” she said.
“Well, the person you don’t see, he’s a friend of mine named Michael,” Sam said. “We sort of-how should I say this-help people occasionally.”
“I’ve never heard of Michael Westen,” she said, which was interesting since Sam hadn’t said my full name.