Mick Farren - NECROM

"You're not in anyone's files, either. We've run you through both local and federal. You don't show up anywhere. You care to comment on that?"

Gibson shook his head. "Not really."

"Have you ever been fingerprinted?"

"Dozens of times."

"So why is it that they aren't on record anywhere? Do you have a driver's license?"

"Haven't had a driver's license in years. I used to be driven everywhere."

"That must have been nice."

"You get used to it."

"So life was good for you?"

Gibson nodded. "Sure, life was good. I was a big-ass fucking rock star."

"So how come no one has ever heard of you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"I went off to another dimension and when I came back things were different. Not very different, but different enough that I didn't exist."

The detective's face didn't even flicker. "And what did you do in this other dimension, Joe? It is Joe, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's Joe."

"You want to tell me what you did there?"

Gibson's voice was flat. "I shot the president, narrowly avoided a nuclear war, and talked to a god."

"It's sounds like you had quite a time."

"It was actually very stressful."

"You take drugs, Joe?"

Gibson nodded. "Sure, all the time."

"What kind of drugs, Joe?"

"What've you got?"

"You want to tell me about the money you had on you?"

"It's legit, my money."

"Where did you get it?"

"A friend gave it to me."

"This friend have a name?"

"Her name's Nephredana. She's an idimmu, a minor demon."

She looked at him long and hard. "You're a weird one, Joe. You ever kill anyone?"

Gibson shook his head. "Not in this dimension. Not yet."

He threw in the "not yet" as bait. He was quite ready to go to Bellevue. They'd knock him out there and he'd be able to sleep. The detective didn't rise to it, however, and just kept on asking routine questions, mainly about the money and what drugs he'd been taking.

Finally she stood up. "You're lucky you have rich friends."

"I don't have any friends, rich or otherwise."

"You may not know it but you do. They're paying to put you in this private clinic."

Alarms went off in Gibson's head. "I'm not going to any private clinic. I want to go to Bellevue."

"You don't have any choice in the matter. Your friends went in front of a judge and got a temporary order on you."

She tapped on the inside of the cell door for it to be opened. When it swung back, she beckoned to two burly men in hospital whites. "Okay, guys, he's all yours."

Gibson didn't resist as the two male nurses put white canvas restraints on him and led him through the precinct house and out to a private ambulance. He didn't resist because he was through. All the fight had gone out of him. He was burned-out. The drive was a short one, and inside of a half hour Nurse Lopez was shooting him up with his first cocktail of tranquilizers.

HIS FIRST SESSION with Kooning after the escape bid was a wretched hour of recrimination.

"I'm very disappointed in you, Joe."

"I only wanted to try it on the outside. I would have thought that you'd be pleased with my progress toward recovery."

"I'm not pleased at all, Joe. I think your behavior was willful and childish. Did you really think that you could survive out there?"

"I was going to give it a shot."

"What did you think you were going to do?"

"I was going to be a wino on Forty-second Street."

"Please don't be flippant."

"Is it flippant to want to be free?"

"Here at the clinic, we have a responsibility to keep you from doing yourself harm."

"So freedom's harmful?"

"You are a very sick man, Joe, sicker than you realize. Your freedom was only removed from you because you were a danger to yourself."

"So freedom is dangerous?"

"Freedom is an idea that you shouldn't dwell on. It's largely an illusion at the best of times."

"Perhaps I like the illusion."

"That's hardly the point. Recovery can only come when you recognize your illusions for what they are."

"I always thought that freedom was reality, or maybe nothing else to lose."

"Don't paraphrase pop songs at me."

"They're my business."

"Your business is getting well."

"I got well when I stopped taking the medicine."

Kooning rubbed her chin.

"Perhaps we should talk about the way that you attempted to deceive those who were looking after you regarding your medication."

"I felt better than I do now. I'm so fucked up I can hardly count my legs."

"You can't be an objective judge of that."

"I can't? I thought how one felt was a pretty subjective thing."

"You decided to exercise your free will regarding your medication and all you succeeded in doing was to throw the whole regimen out of balance and precipitate this ridiculous display of defiance."

The conversation went on and on like this for more than forty-five minutes, and then, just as Gibson was thinking that it hid to be over, there was a knocking on the door. Kooning looked up and frowned. Therapy sessions were never interrupted.

"What is it?"

" Urgent call for Doctor Kooning."

As she opened the door to the cubicle, two men pushed their way inside. They were dirty, unshaven men wearing stained duster coats and wide-brimmed hats. They smelled bad and had guns in their hands, grins on their faces, and Errol Flynn attitudes. Gibson's jaw dropped. The clinic had finally gone over the line with the medication and he was in total hallucination.

"How the fuck did you guys get here?"

Yancey Slide and Gideon Windemere were crowded into the small cubicle. The only thing that convinced Gibson he wasn't losing his mind was Kooning bleating with fury. "I'm going to call the police."

Slide laughed and pushed Kooning back down into her chair. "Can it, lady. We're having a reunion." He winked at Gibson. "We figured that we ought to get you out of here, particularly when we found that some associates of Rampton were picking up the tab."

"What took you so long?"

"We've both been kept a little busy."

Kooning looked as though she was about to explode. "You men are in very serious trouble."

Slide pointed his pistol at her and thumbed back the hammer. "You keep your mouth shut, Doc, or I'll do a job on your head, show you what trouble really is."

He turned to Gibson. "Are you ready to get up and go?"

Gibson nodded. "I've been trying to get up and go for months."

Gibson was so medicated that the race through the clinic and out through the front entrance took on an air of pure fantasy. On the final landing, a bunch of male nurses came at them but quickly backed away when they saw the guns. Undoubtedly they were straight on the phone to the cops, but this didn't seem to worry Slide in the slightest,

"We'll be long gone by the time the cops get organized."

The black Hudson was waiting at the curb. Gibson noticed with a smile that it was illegally parked. The three of them quickly ducked inside, Slide and Windemere in the front and Gibson in the back.

"Where's Nephredana? Is she okay?"

Slide glanced back and nodded. "Sure. She'll be where we're going by the time we get there."

Windemere turned and grinned at Gibson. "Christobelle will be there, too, so you may have a little sorting out to do."

Slide laughed. "Or they will."

"Where are we going?"

"Some secluded spot where we can get you dried out of all the crap that fucking place has been pumping into you."

"My dimension or yours?"

"Do you care?"

Gibson shook his head. "No."

They were now in the Midtown Tunnel running out to Queens. Gibson lay sprawled in the backseat. "So who are we all working for now? The God with No Name?"