Dead Heat with the Reaper Read online

  Standing, Frank thoroughly wiped the glasses he had been drinking from with another bar napkin, then turned and walked out of the place, leaving them on the counter.

  As he left, he thought there was one good thing about ridding the world of a pair of shitbirds like Eddie and Raheem: nobody was going to spend much time looking for their killer.

  ***

  “Mr. Trask?”

  Frank snapped back to the present. He looked at Dr. Johnson. “What?”

  “When was the last time you talked to a doctor?” she asked.

  “I think about ten years ago,” he answered finally. “Maybe a year before the steel mill closed.”

  The doctor stared at him. “You’re a veteran, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Trask said. “Marine Corps. I got a round in the thigh at Khe Sanh in ’68. They shipped me to the Army hospital in Japan to work on it, then to a Navy hospital in Hawaii. Took ’em nearly eight months to get me fixed up and by the time they did, my hitch was up and I mustered out.” He grinned at the memory. “The docs said the bullet had missed my female artery by about an inch. I didn’t even know I had a female artery.”

  “Femoral artery,” Johnson said.

  “What?”

  “Your femoral artery, not female,” Johnson repeated. “It’s a major blood vessel in your leg. If you’d been shot there, you probably would have bled to death in a minute or so. You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Trask.”

  Trask shrugged. “Yeah, that’s what the docs at Camp Zama said,” he replied. “But I ended up with one leg an inch shorter than the other, so maybe I wasn’t that lucky after all. Could have saved a hell of a lot of money if I didn’t have to get one leg of every pair of pants I ever bought altered. But I also limp when I walk, which gets me a partial disability from social security. So I guess there’s an upside to every downside.”

  She heaved an impatient sigh. “Whatever,” she said. “The point I’m trying to make is, you’re a vet with a service-related health condition. Why aren’t you getting treatment from the VA or from Medicare, for that matter?”

  “I was on Kaiser ’til the mill closed in 2002,” he said. “My doctor quit Kaiser about a year before to move to Montana. They sent me a letter to sign up with a new doc, but I never got around to it. Then the mill shut down and I lost my medical.”

  “Look, Mr. Trask, I’m really not interested in the history of your HMO memberships. Why didn’t you go to the VA when you lost your Kaiser coverage? Why didn’t you sign up for Medicare when you became eligible two years ago?”

  Trask frowned. He was beginning to wonder if this doctor was ever going to let him in on what had made him pass out on the street.

  “I figured I would sign up for Medicare when I started drawing social security,” he explained. “I just turned 67 so I was planning to sign up this week. As for the VA, I didn’t go to them after the plant closed because I wasn’t sick.”

  The doctor glanced up from Trask’s chart. “Actually you were sick, Mr. Trask,” she corrected him. “And you still are. You have an advanced case of cirrhosis. End-stage liver disease.”

  Trask laughed involuntarily. “Jesus, kid,” he said with a nervous grin. “You must have aced the unit on bedside manner. You make it sound like I’m dying.”

  The young doctor didn’t blink. “You are, Mr. Trask,” she said, a trace of sadness in her voice.

  ***

  “Sorry for being so blunt, but it is what it is,” Dr. Johnson said. “When they brought you in, your skin and the whites of your eyes had a slightly yellow cast, a sign of jaundice caused by improper liver function. You also had extensive spider veining and puffy nipples, a condition called gynecomastia. Both can be associated with cirrhosis.

  “So we ran a bunch of blood tests and a liver panel on you and the results were unmistakable: you had elevated AST and ALT and your bilirubin count was way up, 5-6 milligrams per deciliter. Your ALP levels were off the chart. All are symptoms of decreased liver function. We did an ultrasound and found enlargement of the spleen and shrinkage of the liver.”

  Trask had no idea what all the alphabet soup was about, but he understood cirrhosis and improper liver function. He knew what it meant when she said he was dying.

  “Every test we ran, the results were worse,” she said. “Your liver biopsy showed advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, a relatively rare type of cancer, at least in this country. It’s invariably fatal. You’ve apparently had cirrhosis several years, probably before you lost your medical coverage. If you had seen your doctors at Kaiser more frequently, they might have been able to at least slow the deterioration of your liver. But that was then and this is now. As we sit here, your liver is practically gone.”

  For the first time in his life he could remember, Trask was speechless. But it didn’t take him long to recover. “Can you do anything for me?” he asked in a shaky voice.

  The young doctor inhaled before shaking her head slowly. “For a severely damaged liver, the only realistic option is a transplant. But your cancer is too far advanced. To be brutally honest, when we got back all these results, we weren’t surprised you’d passed out on the street. What we couldn’t figure out was why you were still breathing.”

  “What kind of time do I have left?”

  “I can’t tell you,” she said. “You’re day-to-day. With end-stage liver disease, we use something called MELD to determine a patient’s chances of surviving longer than 90 days. If I were a betting woman, I’d wager you don’t make it that long.”

  Trask shook his head. “What a pisser,” he said, his voice shaky. “Cirrhosis and liver cancer. And I don’t even drink that much. I can only remember getting really shitfaced a few times in my life.”

  “How much alcohol do you usually consume?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “Maybe five, six drinks a night. That’s over the course of four or five hours of socializing. A lot of times I don’t even feel like I’m getting high.”

  “Even four drinks a day can be ruinous to your liver, Mr. Trask,” she said, closing her eyes briefly to calculate. “Let me see: five or six drinks a day with an ounce of liquor in each one, seven days a week. That’s between fourteen and seventeen gallons of alcohol a year.”

  “You missed your calling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re good enough with numbers to be an accountant,” he said with an attempt at a smile. “But I get the point. I thought I was doing better than my old man who was a really heavy drinker, but I guess you don’t have to drink a quart a day to kill yourself.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “He died of cirrhosis when I was 19.”

  “Well, there you go,” she said. “You’re too healthy to stay in the hospital, I’m afraid. The next time you have another attack like the one that put you in here it will probably be fatal. It could be weeks—maybe even months. I don’t know.”

  Trask sagged back in the bed. It was a hell of a piece of news to get right after your 67th birthday.

  “So, what do I do?” he asked.

  The doctor’s expression was sad and earnest. “There’s no medication you can take for this. There’s no cure. It would be stupid for us to even tell you to stop drinking, frankly. You’re past the point of recovering or even substantially prolonging your life. The simple fact is, sooner or later, all of us die. For you, it’s just going to be sooner.” She locked eyes with him. “Mr. Trask—Frank: I’ll be really blunt,” she said, so quietly Trask could hear a patient coughing in a ward down the hall. “If I were you, I’d get my affairs in order and take care of any business you need to handle before you die.” She put her hand on his and gave it a pat. “I’d get the most out of every day you have left because the fact of the matter is, it could be your last.”

  ***

  Trask walked up Beaumont to MacArthur to catch the bus, then got off at 34th Street to hike back to the hotel where he lived. The bus was nearly empty and the trip took almost a half
hour, plenty of time for him to think about the crab eating away inside him.

  He was still shaken by the news. He’d thought of himself as an old bastard for years already, but he wasn’t really. A magazine article he’d read in the barber shop a few months earlier said the average American man was a little over 77 when he croaked. He’d never make it that far, he thought.

  Trask’s old man had been 70 when he bought the farm. Frank had been just finishing up boot camp in San Diego at the time.

  “We’ll give you leave so you can go home for the funeral,” his D.I. had told him.

  “What for?” Frank asked.

  “It’s called bereavement leave, private. It’s a chance to take care of any personal business your old man left behind.”

  Frank shrugged. “He didn’t leave any business that my older sister can’t take care of,” he said. “He’s got a deal with some outfit to be cremated. She’ll hold onto his ashes until I get out of the corps. And if I don’t make it, she’ll take care of them herself.”

  And that was that. His old man had died at 70 and Trask hadn’t even gone to his funeral. It was almost certain Frank would die younger than his dad. Didn’t seem fair, somehow. Wasn’t each generation supposed to live a little longer than the last one?

  He’d liked his father—he didn’t throw the word “love” around lightly, but he had to admit he loved the old guy. Still, the thought that his old man had lived three more years than he would pissed him off a little.

  He mulled over what Doctor Johnson had said about getting the most out of what time he had left.

  Trask wasn’t sure how to go about it. His life revolved around reading the morning paper, walking from the hotel to the corner store and bullshitting with a few old buddies who used to work at the plant.

  He ate a soft-boiled egg and half a toasted English muffin every day and had canned soup or chili for dinner most nights. Sometimes he picked up a snack from the store, a mom and pop operation run by some Palestinian folks who always seemed glad to see him, probably because they knew he wouldn’t try to light-finger their merchandise.

  A few times a week he broke bread with one or two of his friends at the soul food joint next to Pete’s Tavern. The bar was where he spent most of his time. Pete’s was really the center of his social life and it had been for nearly 30 years.

  It wasn’t much of a life, really. He had no idea how to get the most out of it. It seemed to him he already was.

  “If Glad was still alive, she’d be able to tell me what to do,” he muttered to himself.

  His sister was always the kid with more sense in the family. After Frank’s old man croaked, Glad was the adult of the pair—the person he talked to when he had a big decision to make and didn’t know what to do; the one he went to when he was having trouble of some sort. They weren’t remotely alike, but they were close anyway.

  ***

  The two knuckleheads that hung out on the corner were sitting on the stoop of the building next to the Carlson when Frank got off the bus.

  “Hey, old timer,” the one called Lenny shouted. “We missed you while you were gone. You take a vacation or something?”

  Frank didn’t feel like talking about his impending doom. “Something,” he shouted back. “I better not find out you two shitbirds caused any trouble while I was gone or I’ll come back and kick your asses.”

  The two street guys laughed good naturedly. “You would, too, I bet,” Lenny said. “Tell you what—you want to kick somebody’s ass, pick on Bob here. I’ll hold his coat.”

  They laughed again.

  “Don’t piss me off or you’ll need somebody to hold both of your coats,” Frank said gruffly, shooting a grin at the pair.

  Not a pair of bad guys, really, he thought as he climbed the steps. They just dress like they’re heading out to rob a 7-Eleven. Actually, they’re pretty nice people, all things considered.

  He entered the Carlson. As he did, he noticed his legs were a little shaky. He wondered if it was because of the cancer or just because the walk and bus trip had tired him after he’d spent a couple days on his back.

  That was another thing that pissed him off: the thought that he would spend whatever time he had left worrying whether it was some kind of new symptom every time he sneezed or cut a fart.

  “Jesus Christ, try to get a grip,” he muttered to himself as he unlocked the door. “You start panicking every time your head aches or you get constipated, you really will make yourself sick.”

  Inside, the residence hotel was as gloomy as ever, lit only by sun through the windows that ran from entry to eaves. Trask sighed as he climbed to the third floor, taking it slowly and using the handrail on the wall. The banister was still loose on the landing outside his flat and it was a long way down to the tile floor at the bottom, so he moved to the other side out of caution.

  I may be dying, but there’s no reason to hurry things along.

  As he was unlocking his door, Natalie Hatfield emerged from the next flat, her little shopping satchel on her arm and her six-month-old baby in a pack on her back. She gave Frank her usual shy, frightened smile and darted past, scared to talk with him because her psycho husband, Cliff, might hear about it and slap her around out of sheer jealousy. She had a shiner around her left eye turning greenish-brown as it faded.

  “Watch the handrail, Natalie,” he said. “It’s about ready to collapse. Somebody’s going to grab it someday and fall all the way down into the lobby. I’d hate for it to be you and Lucy.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Trask,” she whispered as she rushed by. “I’ll mention it to Mrs. Hung.”

  He watched her hurry down the stairs, knowing she wasn’t going to say anything to the landlady; she wouldn’t dare. He heard Cliff scream at her almost every night through the wall between their flats, calling her a slut and cunt, and warning her he’d kill her if she spoke to any of the people in the Carlson Inn, even Mrs. Hung. He backed up his threats by beating her for no good reason. Frank would bet his next retirement check her black eye was a present from Cliff.

  Trask thought the fucker should be in jail; better yet, dead.

  The half cup of coffee Frank had left on the counter next to the sink had grown a little green jungle of moldy stuff on its top during the time he was in the hospital. Reminded him of what Vietnam looked like from the helicopter taking him to Khe Sanh. He flushed the green stuff down the toilet and rinsed the cup in the sink before putting it aside to wash later.

  Sitting down at the little built-in breakfast nook he took stock of what he called home: a toilet, kitchenette, and another room mostly filled with a twin bed. He had a little portable TV he rarely watched, a single melamine place setting, a toaster, fry pan, an aluminum pot with a plastic handle, and a mug and a filter top he used to brew coffee one cup at a time.

  All the rest of the furniture came with the apartment: the bed, the little coffee table, the chest of drawers, the cook-top in the kitchenette and the refrigerator right next to it. His only clothes filled two of the four drawers in the dresser and a couple hangers in the tiny closet. His bathroom towels had come from St. Vincent DePaul.

  Trask sighed. His life was simple, all right; if he’d gotten married and raised kids, there wouldn’t be much for them to fight over when he croaked.

  It’s not much of a legacy. Good thing I saved my kids from disappointment by never having them in the first place.

  The thought reminded Trask that he had no idea what kind of financial shape he was in. It had been years since he had actually looked at his statements from the credit union where his money was. When they came each month, he tossed the old one out and put the new one in the “go to hell” drawer in his dresser.

  He went to the chest and slid the drawer open. Inside was his most recent Social Security statement, a pair of reading glasses with a missing lens, a couple of clean handkerchiefs he never used, and some correspondence from the bank in L.A. that sent him his retirement check each month.

  He found hi
s credit union statement at the bottom in a bundle of open envelopes with a rubber band around them. He’d never even opened the damned thing. He left the envelopes and band on his dresser and took the statement back to the breakfast nook.

  Frank was 58 when the steel mill had closed, so he got an early retirement from the union’s Taft-Hartley trust, $2,100 a month. The check covered his rent and left him with $900 for any other expenses he might have. He rarely spent more than $800 a month on food, his bar bill, and incidentals, so over the last nine years he had managed to salt away nearly $11,000 in his savings account.

  His leg qualified him for veteran’s disability when he first got out of the service, but he got the job at the mill about a year after he started receiving VA checks. Although that should have ended his eligibility, for some reason, the $400-a-month checks had never stopped. Trask deposited the VA money into a separate savings account at the credit union. He’d figured someday the feds might realize their mistake and come knocking on his door. He wanted to be able to return all the cash if they did.

  At the same time, he’d stuck $600 each month from his steel mill paychecks into a separate credit union account through an allotment. He’d left both accounts alone all these years, never even bothered to check the balances.

  He opened the envelope with his credit union statement and pored over it until he found the bottom line for each account. The VA money totaled roughly $200,000 including interest; the payroll savings came to another $230,000.

  He gave a low whistle. He had more than $400,000 to work with; if he’d had kids, maybe they wouldn’t have been disappointed after all.

  He put the bundle of envelopes away, hiding it down under the other junk as if it contained the actual cash. Now is as good a day as any to use that money. The question is: what am I going to do with it?

  Gladys would know. Hell, if she were still here, I’d just leave it all to her in the first place.

  He felt a pang of loneliness. He’d missed his sister since the day she died, but he’d never missed her as much as he did now.