My girls and I were at Barker’s house. Almost everyone was naked and in the spa except for me. Group sex was imminent. I was nervous about that.
My iPhone beeped. I pulled it out of my pocket and read the message. I read it again. I had a hard time just breathing. I put the phone back in my pocket, stood up, and headed for the sliding glass door.
“Johnny,” Dawn said. “Johnny, where are you going?”
I stopped and turned to her. Naked, outlined by the spa light, her breasts sitting just above the water, she was beautiful. Mary Beth was next to her, different but just as lovely. Thomas’ women were all around them, ready to cavort. I wished that I wanted to be in there with them. I wanted things to be okay and easy. It made me feel like an ass.
“Meyer’s been shot,” I said. “He’s at Cedars-Sinai. They don’t think he’s going to make it. Apparently he found the asshole that killed Chelsea Jansen.” I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. “Fuck. And here I am, doing this. I gotta go.”
“No!” Jay bolted up over the side of the spa and ran to me. “Give me two minutes. I’m driving you.”
I looked and behind her I saw Dawn and Mary Beth wrapping towels around themselves.
“I have to go now,” I said, moving towards the door. My girls ran after me.
Which was why I was in the passenger seat of a Crown Vic doing 75 miles an hour on surface streets with a naked girl driving and two girls wrapped in towels in the back seat. I held my head in my hands and thought of all the things I owed Meyer. It was a long list.
“Johnny, he’s going to make it,” Jay said. “He’s going to be all right. Trust me, okay? I can feel these things.
“Okay,” I said.
We screeched to a stop in ambulance parking outside the emergency room. An orderly ran out and his eyes bulged as he looked through my open door at Jay. I badged him and pointed to the girls and said, “Three sets of scrubs?” He nodded and went back inside. Good boy.
I ran in and badged the woman at the window. “Meyer,” I said. “Cop. Shot.”
She picked up a phone and dialed and said a few words I couldn’t hear, then listened, then spoke again and put the phone down.
“ICU,” she said. “Second floor.”
That was the best news ever. Meyer was out of surgery and well enough to be moved to intensive care. I ran for the elevator.
Meyer had always been a larger than life character to me. Always on top of everything; always knowing more than I did about everything. He was the father figure and mentor I had never had growing up. The pale unconscious body I saw in the bed when I pushed past the floor nurse and the cop outside the door wasn’t Meyer. Couldn’t be.
I sat down next to his bed and ignored the nurse’s squawking. I reached out and held Meyer’s hand. The squawking got louder when my girls arrived, dressed in surgical scrubs. That confused the nurse for a while. Meyer would have enjoyed this moment. I just held his hand. His eyes opened.
“Johnny,” he said. “Notebook.”
I got up and went to the mini closet and found the notebook in his suit coat pocket. I took it and sat back down and grabbed his hand again.
“Assassin,” he said. “Don’t go after him…”
“Bullshit,” I said. “I’m going to kill this motherfucker.”
“Don’t go after him… alone. Backup.” And he was out again.
Jay held me. Dawn and Mary Beth held Meyer’s hands.
I read.
Meyer had stumbled onto a crazed perp who liked to fuck little girls and who also happened to work for the federal government of the United States of America as a covert operative. How Meyer had figured out this last part, I couldn’t guess. I reviewed his notes again and saw that after he had conferred with someone named “Georgia” the focus of his investigation had changed and moved him towards the spy.
The squawking nurse had found Meyer’s doctor and brought him into the room, probably hoping for justice to be meted out upon me.
The doctor said, “Are you immediate family?”
“I’m his partner,” I said.
“That’s family,” he said. I shook his hand. The nurse looked disgusted and left.
“Your partner has been shot in the liver,” he said. “Not a good place to be shot. He’s very lucky to be alive. And thanks to my mad surgical skills he’s going to stay that way.” He glanced at Meyer’s chart and then suddenly seemed to become aware of the three women in the room.
“Hello there, ladies,” he said. “Nice scrubs.”
I liked this guy.
One by one my girls approached the doctor and demonstrated with long kisses just how appreciative they were that he had saved Meyer’s life. Jay was last and when she grabbed his ass for the kiss he grabbed her right back. It was a good thing the nurse was gone. When Jay backed away from the doc the pants of his scrubs were bulging out obscenely. He followed her gaze downward and his face went bright red.
“My wife is going to get me for this,” he said.
“She’s not going to find out from us,” Dawn said.
“She always knows,” the doc said. “She always knows everything. I’m not quite sure how that works, but it always does.”
*****
I called Buddy Megellas and Jen answered the phone on the first ring. “Hello, Stud,” she said. “Are you calling to tell me that you’ve finally come to your senses and you want to get into my pants?”
“I’ve always wanted to get into your pants, Jen,” I said. “It would have happened, too, if you hadn’t gotten distracted by that Neanderthal you’ve been hanging with.”
“I heard that, dickwad,” her husband said from a distance.
“‘Mister Dickwad’ to you. In bed yet again, I’m guessing,” I said. “You guys are totally disgusting.”
“Hey, I can’t help it that he’s good at sex. What’s a girl to do?” She paused. “What’s up, Johnny?”
I took a breath.
“I need backup,” I said.
Silence. Then Buddy was on the phone. “Talk to me,” he said.
“Meyer. He was on the Jansen case. He found the guy that raped and killed that little Jansen girl and the guy took him out. A government operative. Some kind of assassin. I’m going after him.”
More silence. Then, “You could bring in everyone. You could bring in SWAT.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Fuck, bro, I’m in,” he said.
I heard “I’m in too” from Jen and then a long debate about skills and training and experience. Buddy was an Army Ranger bro that I’d been in combat with. We had been taught how to kill with brutal efficiency and we had done that together. Jen had only been through police academy training and although she was quite good at her job her martial skills were all defensively oriented. This was going to be a kill mission.
“Can I at least cover your back?” Jen said.
Buddy was on the same page as me.
“Nope,” he said. “If we get caught we’re going down as criminals. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”
I heard a rustling sound and then Jen had the phone again. “You bring him back. You bring him back to me, you fucker. Both of you, alive and well. You understand me? Or I’ll kick both your asses.”