James reached out and pulled the tortured hands away from the old man’s face. The fingers were freezing cold, still damp, swollen with ague. Even touching them made Tommy’s face twist with pain.
Slowly, holding the Tommy’s eyes with his own, James raised those hands to his mouth and kissed them.
“I still see you.” His whisper was hoarse and painful. “You still hear me?”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Tommy shook his head. “Damn. I can’t even cry. The old bastard’s got no tears--he’s dry as a popcorn fart.” He looked away. “Get dressed, hon.”
James went to the wardrobe. He found his clothing, wallet, watch and glasses in a burlap sack, along with the Green Book and the notebook and pencil he’d been keeping in his coat pocket. The socks and shirt were missing, but he put on his coat and stuffed his bare feet into his shoes with a grimace.
There was a cracked mirror on the inside of the door, and he looked into it warily. A short, muscular black man with gold-rimmed glasses, his throat wrapped in cotton bandages showing a tell-tale splotch of red. He buttoned up the coat as high as it would go, hoping it would look more as if he was wearing a turtleneck sweater, and then turned toward the door.
Tommy sat in the wheelchair, a massive pistol in his lap.
“I’m ready. Just push me into the hall before you go. When he comes back down the elevator…I’ll be waiting.”
James froze. “What?”
“I’ll take care of him.” Tommy patted the gun. “Like my Daddy should have done.”
“No.” James shook his head in slow disbelief. “You can’t…”
“I’m dying, hon.” He put his free hand to his sunken chest. “I can feel it. This body…it’s so weak I have to think to keep the heart beating. And the only reason I’m not already dead is money, most likely. He probably needs a lawyer to sign papers, make sure he keeps his property.”
James stepped forward. “Come with me. Forget him. Forget this.”
Tommy smiled with genuine tenderness. “Tried that before, hon. And look where that got us.” He shook his head. “Just go. Leave me here. Let me do…what I have left to do.”
James clenched his teeth and shook his head stubbornly.
“I love you.” The words were painful, and tasted of blood. “I won’t ever leave you.”
In the end, they waited in the dark for three hours before the Otis elevator returned to the basement. Dawn was just starting to break, the first lark singing in the woods behind the house, when the door swung open.
The report of the pistol was thunderous in the enclosed space. James held his head in his hands as it crashed three times, four…and looked up through the smoke to see a bleeding form still crawling in the hallway, dragging itself with a shattered spine toward the open lift door.
He took the pistol from Tommy’s shaking hand and walked into the hall, aimed the gun at the back of a familiar head, and pulled the trigger twice more. The spray of blood and bone formed a halo around the ruined skull—he pulled the trigger again to be sure, but there was no more thunder. Only a dry click.
James threw the gun away, turned his back on the mess, and walked back to Tommy’s side. The azure eyes looked up at him, warm and alive.
“I love you,” Tommy whispered.
James bent and gathered the frail limbs in his arms. He carried Tommy over the mess and into the study, settled him into the old wheelchair as gently as he could, and wrapped a sheet around his shoulders. Then he rolled the chair down the hall without looking back. He held the Dead Man’s switch as they rode up in the freight elevator to the ground floor, pushed Tommy out onto the front porch and down the ramp to the driveway.
Tommy’s Bel Air was parked in the grass behind the house, the keys still in the ignition. James opened the passenger door and settled Tommy unto the seat, got behind the wheel, and mouthed a silent prayer as he turned the key.
The car roared to life without hesitation. He put it in gear and drove through the grass and out into a rutted country road.
“Which way?” he asked.
“There.” Crushed by exhaustion, the bony hand twitched toward the left. James put an arm around Tommy’s shoulders and drew him close, pulling him into the warmth of his side as he drove.
He went as fast as he could without bottoming out the car, following the lane as it turned from dirt to gravel. The pink glow of sunrise in the east was getting stronger, filtering through pines and the golden beech that crowded the lane on either side. Around a final curve, James saw an intersection with a paved road. He looked down at Tommy for further directions, but the head was nodding now, the rheumy eyes closed.
“Tommy?” He squeezed a bit tighter. “Which way do we…?”
The sudden shriek of rubber was his only warning. He looked up at the last moment, in time to see the grille of the police car bearing down on them, coming at impossible speed down the highway. He reached for the gearshift just before impact, the crash and crunch and scream of two cars shattering.
Just a few feet away, through the storm of exploding glass, he saw the blazing blue gaze of the man in the uniform. His red face was lit up like a Jack-o’-lantern in the early morning light, on fire with a familiar madness, the mouth wide open and twisted ugly with rage.
James closed his eyes and turned his face away from his enemy as the car tumbled, clutching the man in his arms with all his strength.
Until the very last moment, he held love close.
The Immortician
Andre E. Harewood
I: Talitha Cumi
“Sorry. I thought an old woman died in here.”
The young doctor wandered back out of Room 11 and walked next door to watch an orderly cart out a human-sized blue box to the elevators.
With the minor interruption over, Anaea Robinson went back to the conversation the police detective and the hospital administrator were trying to have with her. The two women talked at her about what had happened to her grandfather a few hours before: Buchanan Robinson was murdered via lethal injection in this hospital room by a nurse at the age of one hundred and twenty years and seven months. Anaea had been at work when it happened, where she always was when all the important things in her life happened. Her daughter’s last three birthdays, her last three boyfriends breaking up with her, now her grandfather’s death all went by while she was running around being a good and overworked guest liaison manager at the most expensive hotel on the Caribbean island. Quay Way was frequented by anonymous billionaires, loud musicians, sloppy starlets, unfaithful footballers, incontinent Counts, and the occasional doomsday cult out for some fun in the sun before committing mass suicide in the hotel’s fifty room private villa. Cleaning up that mess took her staff the better part of last week and killed her latest boyfriend’s patience and interest.
The women continued to talk at her but Anaea just stared at and stroked the edge of the soiled blue sheet her Papa Buck died on.
“Your grandfather put up a fight and shouted for help, Ms. Robinson,” the detective said. “That’s how we found out about all this. The nurse… responsible is in custody. Doctor Greaves?”
“Thank you, detective Bosch. The hospital will be working closely with the police to…”
She paused, scoffed, and continued, “Fuck it. We’re going to make sure that sick bastard gets exactly what he deserves, Ms. Robinson. I’ve spoken with the police, the prosecutor’s office, and our board… and we have a unique proposition for you.”