John Locke - Bad Doctor

I’m more embarrassed than disappointed.

Humiliated, actually, and pissed.

The image of a beaten, but not defeated Daffy Duck floats through my mind, saying, “Of courth you know, thith means war!”

“You’re on my list!” I yell.

“Goodnight,” he says, then punches the side of my head.

Everything goes black.

When I regain consciousness I hear Bobby talking to a guy named Chuckie, who’s clearly a drug dealer.

That’s what I need, Bobby Mitchell on drugs.

We’re parked somewhere, all three of us in the car, except they’re in the front seat and I’m in the trunk. Their voices are reasonably clear, which gives me reassurance my ear drums may not be damaged after all. Unfortunately, my pain receptors are in great shape, which means I’m hurting.

Good thing I’m a doctor who knows better than to leave his medical bag out in the open on the car seat, where some hoodlum could get it.

The Mercedes I’m trapped in has a compartment you can lift up to access the spare tire. It’s a square compartment enclosing a round tire, which means each of the corners have spaces large enough to store my medical bag. All I have to do is lift myself high enough to get my arm in the compartment beneath me and pull the bag out. It won’t be easy because I need to work quietly, and any movement could make me gasp or cry out in pain.

I take a few deep breaths, then lift myself up while hearing Chuckie explain the incredible rush Bobby will get after injecting a mixture of cocaine and heroin into his blood stream.

A speedball.

Bobby says he doesn’t trust needles in his vein.

Chuckie says, “What’re you, a skin-popper?”

Skin-popping’s a method addicts use to inject heroin into their fatty tissue after they’ve given up trying to find usable veins. Most inject themselves directly through their clothing.

“Will it still work if I don’t mainline?” Bobby says.

“Oh, hell yeah! And it’s safer. Trust me, you’re gonna love this shit!”

I doubt Bobby will love it for long.

Speedballing is the deadliest route to a high. It combines two highly addictive drugs that potentiate each other, meaning they’re stronger together than on their own. But they have opposite effects. Cocaine raises the heart rate, heroin slows it down. It’s the lethal mix that killed John Belushi and River Phoenix, among others.

And worse, who knows what sort of crap Chuckie’s cocaine providers used to cut the drug? I mean, I’ve still got Willow’s cocaine and nutmeg in my pocket, but even if I didn’t have morphine in my medical bag I wouldn’t snort the coke. Not that I could do so with a broken nose in the first place. My point, our lab guys have isolated insecticides, anti-itch powder, and even pet tranquilizers in street cocaine samples that were sold as “100 % pure.”

When Bobby and Chuckie become engrossed in a discussion about Black Toad Powder, I work my bag out of the compartment, retrieve my penlight, and load a syringe with a dose of morphine. I take another deep breath and let it out slowly before injecting the drug. Afterward, I raise my body and ease the bag back in the compartment and wait for the drug to take effect.

Chuckie’s still trying to sell Bobby what he calls Black Toad, which I know to be Black Stone powder, a substance made from toad poison.

He says, “When you rub this shit on your dick you’ll get a raging hard-on! You’ll be able to knock a grown man to the ground with your pecker!”

“No shit?”

“I swear!”

Chuckie’s full of shit. Black Stone powder may or may not make Bobby’s dick hard, depending on what else is mixed in it. But Black Stone is made from toad venom or secretions, both of which contain cardioactive steroids. The main ingredient is bufotenin, a psychedelic that can cause reactions from severe diarrhea to death, if ingested. If applied to Bobby’s skin, it could cause serious penis pain, possible chest pain, and anaphylactic shock, if he happens to be allergic to the ingredients.

Suddenly the trunk opens.

I’m blinded, so I can’t see the woman who just let out a blood-curdling scream, but I think it was Cameron. Then she or someone else tosses bedding and pillows on top of me before slamming the trunk shut again.

I’m groggy, but lucid enough to hear Willow and Bobby’s voices. Then Cameron’s.

Obviously some time has passed since Chuckie and Bobby were talking about Black Stone powder.

Willow and Cameron have discovered my name from the rental agreement, and think I’m dead. Bobby knows better. His slurred speech and maniacal laughter tells me he’s flying high. No telling what might happen when he crashes.

My guess? He’ll shoot another speedball.

There’s some sort of fight taking place regarding a vacuum cleaner. Or maybe the morphine has got me confused. A lot of yelling and door slamming, and finally the car begins moving, presumably heading to a party at Bobby’s grandmother’s farm.

Or maybe not.

I could be hallucinating.

It’s cramped in here, and I don’t want my legs to form blood clots, so I reposition myself before closing my eyes. I don’t know if I’m sleeping or dreaming, but I think I hear my cell phone ringing. If I remember correctly, it’s in my luggage in the back seat.

It’s not a dream.

Bobby shouts, “Don’t answer it! Throw it out the window!”

There goes my chance to call Security Joe to come save me. But right now I’m so damn comfortable I couldn’t care less. I’ll get some rest and see what happens when we get to Maggie’s Farm.

Carlos and Charlie.

Present Time.

Carlos and Charlie are confused.

They parked their white panel van a block away and cut through the tree line to the back of Chris Fowler’s house just as they’d been told. They looked through the back window of the garage and saw Kathy Fowler’s Lexus, which meant she was home. The spare key was where it was supposed to be, under the flower pot on the deck behind the den. Carlos and Charlie had come at the precise time they were told, during the half hour window when both neighboring moms would be fetching their kids from separate schools.

But when they opened the back door and crept quietly through the den, Charlie tripped on Carlos’s foot, knocking a lamp to the floor, and Kathy didn’t shout. If you were alone in your home and something crashed loudly in the den, wouldn’t you shout something like, “Hello? Is anyone there?” Or yell, “Go away! I’ve got a gun!”

Wouldn’t you?

Kathy Fowler did none of these things, so Carlos and Charlie are confused.

“Clumsy oaf!” Carlos whispers. “Get your gun out. Pray she doesn’t shoot us first.”

“Your fault,” Charlie whispers back. “You stopped short.”

“You’ve always been clumsy.”

“I’m light on my feet,” Charlie says. “Everyone says so.”

“What they say is you’re light in the loafers.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Give it a rest, okay? Now turn so I can cover the bedroom door.”

Carlos whispers, “What if she comes from the kitchen?”

“Then she’ll have a knife, not a gun. If you see her, give a shout, and we’ll turn that way. I’ll have time to shoot her.”

“If she comes from the kitchen, just pass me the gun, dick breath.”

“ You? Are you kidding me? You’re the worst shooter on earth! You couldn’t hit her if her tit was stuck in your gun barrel!”

“Fine. If she comes from the kitchen, we’ll spin clockwise.”

“I’m faster counter-clockwise.”

“You’re also clumsier. Note the lamp on the floor.”

See? This is the problem with being Siamese twin killers for hire. Carlos and Charlie are conjoined at the hip, shoulder, and neck, possessing two heads, two arms, and four legs between them.