Kem Nunn - Chance

“And no leads?”

“Not that they’re sharing. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” Chance said. “Not a thing. Just curious.”

“Well…” Janice said after a somewhat lengthy pause. “Now you know at least. You may hear from her yet.”

“It’s possible. If so I will keep you posted.”

“Please do,” Janice said. “I know we’ve gone round some about her, but I’d like to know what happens. My offer to help locate someone willing to take her on still stands.”

Chance thanked her, extricated the Oldsmobile from his garage, and drove straightway to the old warehouse, as had been his intent on rising. Raymond Blackstone had said that he was going to handle things, that he knew what to do. Chance had yet to pass this on to Big D and in this he was no doubt remiss. It seemed to him quite possible that Blackstone’s words were no more than bluff meant to rattle her cage. It seemed equally possible that sloth and poor judgment had already made him late for the dance. It was then, to his great dismay, that he arrived to find the place in an uncharacteristic state of disarray.

The front door was open to the sidewalk as usual but something was off. He sensed it walking in, even before finding Carl at the rear of the building where the door to D’s quarters had been left ajar and the normally implacable old man pacing to and fro before it as if searching for something he’d lost. The old man looked as if he had not slept at any point in the recent past or if he had it was in the clothes he was wearing. There was gray stubble upon his cheeks, a haunted look in his deep-set black eyes. The nearby desk, normally so neat in its arrangement, was littered with paperwork. Peering through the doorway to D’s room, Chance could see that one of the Eames chairs had been overturned. The bed was unmade and a number of books lay strewn across the floor. Even more disturbing was the plastic pill bottle at the foot of the bed, its cap fallen away, its contents scattered. “My God,” Chance said, the starch draining from his legs. The old man himself appeared to sway, as though about to lose balance.

Chance led him to a chair from which Carl sat looking up, as might some cornered animal facing certain death. “Where have you been?” he asked. The old man’s voice was thin and wavering.

“Yes… I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been out of touch…”

“I tried calling.”

To which Chance could only nod. First the deposition, then Jaclyn, then sleep, his cell off the entire time. He could see how it had been.

“He’s in the hospital. There was some kind of seizure…”

“The diabetes.”

Carl looked to the room. “He was in there when I came. I always hear him at work on something.” The old man paused, seeking to control his voice, fighting off tears. “If there’s no work to be done for the studio, he’ll be at work on his blades or his tomahawks. He doesn’t sleep, you know. I’ve tried to tell him that’s not good.” He looked to Chance. “Why, each day they find out something new about how much we need sleep to stay healthy. You’re not a superman, I tell him.” He paused once more to shake his head. “He thinks he is you know. It’s what he thinks. It’s what he had to think, I suppose, when you stop to consider it.”

Chance was not altogether clear about what exactly he was being asked to consider but the old man went on without waiting comment. “In the morning though… when I came in… I couldn’t hear a thing. I gave it just a bit then knocked. Nothing, so I went inside. I found him on that bed in there but he was lying in a strange way and one arm was hanging off and on the floor…” The old man’s voice cracked. He sought once more to collect himself. “I couldn’t get him to wake up,” he said. “He was turning blue. I called the emergency.”

Fearing some impending medical crisis of his own, Chance found support upon the edge of the cluttered desk. He was very clear about what had happened. Having bested the massage parlor muscle and Detective Blackstone, having survived a stun gun, pepper spray, and a car accident, the big man had been undone by the great ice-cream hunt. “What was his condition?” Chance asked. “When the paramedics left with him, I mean. Was he awake?”

The old man moved his head. “They took blood…”

“They would have to see if the coma was hypoglycemic or hyperglycemic. Did they give him a shot of something?”

“The needle was grotesque.”

“Hyperglycemic would be my guess. He was moving, though? Lucid at all?”

“I don’t know,” Carl said. “It was hard for me to see but they were talking to him when they carried him out.”

“That’s good,” Chance said. “Means the drug was working, that it hadn’t been too long. Sounds to me as if it was a very good thing that you found him when you did.” He could see that the old man was verging once more on tears. “I almost didn’t,” Carl said. “He likes his doughnuts in the mornings. Normally I bring some in from Bob’s but the car was low on gas and I came straight here.” He wiped at an eye with the heel of his hand and shook his head. “I’ve told him he ought to cut back. He doesn’t always listen.”

“No,” Chance said. He was thinking of D’s theory on the medicinal uses of salt. “And that would have been what, two mornings ago?… Do you know where they’ve taken him?” He was surprised to find that the old man did not, which fact seemed only to distress him further. “That’s okay,” Chance said. “I’ll make some calls. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out. My car is on the street. We’ll go together, see how he’s doing.”

Carl remained as he was.

“We’ve every reason to hope,” Chance said. “What you’ve told me so far sounds promising. So long as there was no damage to the heart.” He took his cell phone from his pocket. “I’m sure it’s UCSF but we can call on the way. I know a good many of the doctors and nurses on staff.” He was already turning for the door but Carl seemed intent on holding his ground, the look of the cornered animal returning to his face. “Is there a problem?” Chance asked.

“Certainly not on my end,” Carl told him, the sudden victim of as yet unspecified crimes.

Chance just looked at him. Carl exacted a wait. “I am assuming they will be there,” he said at last.

“They?” Chance asked.

He had been envisioning the city’s finest, the flash of golden shields amid a sea of blue but the old man was quick to set him straight. “What passes for the poor boy’s family,” he said, his voice having steadied to the point that he was able at last to abandon panic in favor of moral outrage. “Monsters,” he added by way of clarification. “Absolute monsters. More than one of them in one place at one time and it’s a regular monster’s ball.” He drew himself to his full height and took the measure of Chance by looking him squarely in the eye. “And of course, they do not, as you might imagine, approve of yours truly. You’ll have to go it alone.”

Chance was back outside and about to enter his car when the day’s most striking omission occurred to him. So accustomed had he become to thinking of D as D, or Big D, or on occasion as Heavy D, it had, till just now, never occurred to him that even after all they had been through together, he did not actually know Big D’s proper name, neither his first nor his last, salient information if he were to inquire after the big man’s health and whereabouts from what might only be thought of as the proper authorities, an outfit from whom he had, over the course of the past weeks, become increasingly distant.