FIGHT (8 page)

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Dr. Cathy Sandefur, a colorectal surgeon at St. Knox’s Memorial Hospital, had written three letters over the past two years to the National Gastroenterology Association, seeking funds for Bruce’s operation.  All three letters were answered with “Increasing requests and insufficient funds blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” So when a nurse that Dr. Sandefur didn’t recognize walked in her office (without the decency to either knock or introduce himself) and said, “This is for you,” handing her an envelope containing a cashier’s check from Greater New England Bank for $44,000 signed by Boston Monetary Management with a bottom left-hand memo reading “For Bruce Hudson’s Colectomy,” she nearly shit the kind of brick that she treated patients for.  Dr. Sandefur held the check with enough shocked disbelief that she didn’t have time to question the disappearing nurse.  Who, how, and why questions exploded like fireworks in her brain.  It was too good to be true, and she didn’t dare call Bruce with the good news until she confirmed that this check was legit.  She called her lawyer.

“You’ve reached Larry Buntmore.”

“Larry, who the hell is Boston Monetary Management?”

“Well, hello to you, too, Cathy, and I have no idea,” Larry, her attorney, replied.

“Listen, Lar, this Boston Monetary Management just sent me a check for $44G’s to pay for an expensive operation for a patient of mine.  I want to know that this isn’t a joke and that these funds are real, before I contact this guy and tell him the surgery he’s been waiting for is now paid for.”

“Alright, can do.  Give me a couple of days to track this outfit down, and I’ll bring you up to speed as soon as I know something.”

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It hadn’t seemed like a good idea.  Far from it, actually.  He knew he’d be recognized, and he was right.  When Gabe showed up at her door, Gina recognized him from local stations’ coverage of his trial, and she immediately recalled Sara having warned her that the mob had taken a dangerous interest in August. The knock on her door had come a couple days ago, and, despite Sara’s heads-up, she hadn’t expected it.  He knew the risk he was running: another crime, another indictment, another trial.  But he wouldn’t leave August with the Ringers a single day longer. He’d heard too much from Luke…

“They don’t seem to like the kid,” Luke had told him.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they’re constantly yelling at him, usually over bullshit.”

“Like what?”

“Like the other day, this Ringer lady’s out grocery shopping, and she tells the kid to bring her a jar of mayo.  The kid drops it, and what does she do?  She goes ballistic.  Full-blown banshee wailing bitch.  You’ve never heard worse.  Poor kid just stood there in tears.”

Gabe didn’t like what he was hearing, but he was reluctant to assume the worst. 

“Maybe she was just in a pissy mood,” Gabe suggested.

“Don’t think so.  Seems like a typical mood for her.  She yells at the kid constantly.  ‘You’re too slow!  Your shoe’s untied!  You’re too stupid to pass kindergarten!’  That sorta thing.  I’m telling you, she’s constantly yelling at the kid.”

“What about her husband?”

“He doesn’t seem to give a damn.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because he doesn’t seem to know his name. He just calls him ‘that kid,’ even in front of the kid.”

“So?  You call him kid, but that doesn’t mean you don’t know his name.”

“Yeah, but I don’t call him ‘that kid’ in front of him.  There’s a difference.”

Gabe had been hard pressed to argue, and he’d decided to check things out for himself. 

Gabe sat parked across the street in a rental car (one he was sure no one would recognize) and used a set of headphones to listen in on the conversation inside the Ringers’ home, courtesy of Luke’s handiwork with some well hidden bugs.

“August, dinner!” Gina called out.

“Don’t call that kid in yet,” Bill objected.  “I want to relax for a while.”

“Okay.  I’ll send him back.” 

When August appeared, Gabe heard:

“Go clean your room!  You aren’t eating until your room’s clean.”

He couldn’t make out August’s response: it was too quiet.  He turned up the headset’s volume as high as he could.

“I didn’t ask you when you cleaned your room last!” Gina screamed. 

Gabe’s eardrums nearly burst from the increased volume.

“I said clean your room, and I don’t care if you already cleaned it today.  Clean it again!  Clean it now!  Go!”

Gabe heard what he thought to be a very timid, “Yes, ma’am.”  After that:

“Let me know when you’re done, Bill, so I can feed the little twerp.”

The sliding whoosh of a patio door muffled Bill’s response.

Gabe had heard enough.  He shut the headset off, pulled it off his ears, and clutched it in his hands… stretching the two ear pieces so far apart that he eventually snapped the plastic casing holding them together.  He didn’t have a plan, but he had enough anger to compensate.  He got out of the car, no longer caring about trying to hide behind the tinted windows of a rental car.  No, it hadn’t seemed like a good idea.  But that was before he’d heard Gina scream at August.

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“No, you listen to me!” Judge Conner barked at the defendant from his television stage that doubled as a courtroom.  “The law of the state of New York is clear.  You have to give a landlord 30 days notice, minimum, to vacate the premises, if you expect your security deposit returned!”

Watching from her living room, Gina loved it.  The defendant, a single mom of two with pink highlights and a nose ring, was getting her ass handed to her in front of countless Americans, and Gina thought it served the little floozy right. 

Probably on welfare
, Gina grumbled to herself.  She loathed people who benefited from the state, and, thanks to a heaping dose of willful ignorance, the irony that the state cut her a check for taking care of August was lost on her. 
Give it to her
. She cheered on reality TV’s Judge Conner.

“Not only did you fail to give the required notice, but you also left the place in a complete mess.  Ron,” Judge Conner said, speaking to the actor who played his bailiff, “take these photos to the defendant.  I want to jog her memory about the condition that she left the apartment in.”

This is getting good!
Gina thought. The floozy was about to be presented with evidence of her trashy lifestyle, and the camera would pan to the photos of the mess that she’d made, for onlookers around America to gawk at with scorn and wonder.  Gina couldn’t wait to be offended at the trash, clutter, and mold that were sure to flash across her screen.  That was when the damn knocking occurred.  Not wanting to miss a second of the lynching that the defendant was about to receive when Judge Conner slammed his gavel and declared, “Judgment for the plaintiff!” she muted the set, hoping whoever was at the door would scram if she didn’t make a sound.  She’d enjoy the defendant’s misery in silence by watching the pained expression on her face, and that’d be entertainment enough.

The knocking continued.  It sounded authoritative.  It consisted of three loud raps, a brief pause, and two more loud raps.  Gina rolled her eyes.  She wasn’t expecting company (and for good reason, as what few friends she had almost never visited). 
It’s got to be a salesman.  Or a Mormon
.  She tried to wait out the knocking so she could get back to her evening of Judge Conner.  A pause.  The knocking seemed to be over, but she hadn’t heard footsteps walking away.  She wondered if the loiterer was still hanging around.  She decided to try a quick peep out of the living rooms blinds, confident that she could lift one of the plastic bars just high enough to look through her window without being caught.  She put both knees on the couch that backed up to the window, and, very slowly, barely raised one of the blinds’ rails. 

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Gina screamed and fell off the couch, banging her head against the coffee table.  A fist had pounded the exact spot on the window that Gina was spying through, as Gabe had seen the blinds shift. 

“Goddamn!” She yelled, holding her head and getting off the floor.  In an ill tempered voice she announced that she was coming to answer the door.  When she opened it, she forgot all about the pain in her head, Judge Conner slipped her mind all together, and her aggravation at being interrupted now seemed trivial. 

He wore khakis, a collared shirt tucked into his pants, and a spiffy set of brown shoes.  The man himself.  The man that she’d rooted against for months, as she’d followed the developing story on her evening news, hoping that a real judge would give this defendant very real punishment.  Gabriel Adelaide.  He smiled, as every muscle in her surprised face went lame with paralysis.  She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t begin to comprehend the reality that a man she believed to be as guilty as a convicted felon was standing at her door… looking at her oh-so-casually, as if he made these sorts of house calls all the time. 

“Hey, I’m Gabriel Adelaide.  How’s it going?”

She said nothing, unwilling to process what she was seeing on her doorstep.  Gabe was used to being stared at, he was accustomed to people pointing and talking about him in front of him, and he didn’t object to locals snapping photos of him.  The fame pleased him, but nothing pleased him more than someone too intimidated to speak when they saw him up close.  The power of this moment surged through him, and, after the fright she’d inflicted on August with her constant screaming, he enjoyed her look of fear.

“I said
my name’s Gabriel Adelaide
.”  He chuckled. 

She still couldn’t speak.

Seconds went by, and she called out in a trembling voice, “Bill…”

Her husband had moved into the backyard’s hammock with an open case of beer. He would’ve ignored her even if he’d heard her call. 

“Mind if I come in?”  Gabe asked, friendly enough. 

Pleading like a little lamb, she whispered Bill’s name again.

“That’s okay.  I don’t have to come in.  I’ll get to the point.  I want to take your foster kid out for a few days.  Show him the city, drive him around, that sorta thing.  I trust that’s cool with you.”

“Bill…”

“I see you’re a little nervous, but no worries.  I’m a free man, I’m not a criminal, and, since I’m guessing you’ve seen me on TV, let me remind you that the jury acquitted me of all charges.”

He mentioned the jury’s acquittal with the pride of a man who’d just been knighted. 

“Bill…”

“Would this help?” he asked, reaching in his khakis’ right pocket. 

“Oh, please, don’t!” she pleaded, falling to her knees, shutting her eyes, and extending both arms above her head with palms out and fingers spread, like she was doing obeisance to her Lord and Savior. 

“Well,” he laughed with amusement, “I was just going to give you a little something.  Here.”  He tossed three $100 bills on the ground in front of her, while she knelt expecting the worst.  She kept her eyes tightly shut, and she didn’t see the money in front of her. 

“Ma’am, if I may,” he said in a comforting tone, placing his hands under her arms and righting her on her feet.  He then softly tilted her chin down towards the cash below her. 

“That’s for you,” he said, still enjoying her fear.

She was too scared to care about the money.  She made no move for it.  He shrugged.  He didn’t care if she kept it, or if the wind blew it into the street.  It would be his only attempt at a peace offering in this situation, and it was one more than he usually gave.

“Like I said, I was hoping to take August out for a few days.”

“Okay,” she replied in a voice that was nearly inaudible. 

He took her by the hand and led her to her own sofa, gently seating her on it.  He saw the TV was on and caught sight of the remote on the coffee table.  He unmuted the set, and Judge Conner’s righteous voice boomed back into the Ringers’ house:

“And how many applications have you submitted in the past week?” Judge Conner asked a new defendant, this one an unemployed guy with tattoo sleeves who was late repaying his neighbor a loan he’d borrowed for car repairs. 

“You just sit here and watch TV,” Gabe said.  “And don’t mind me while I look around.”

He showed himself to the Ringers’ hallway, and he opened several doors without knocking, before he found August’s room.

Propped up on his knees and making engine sounds, August was playing with the fire truck that Luke had brought him, turning the truck in small circles in front of him.  He didn’t look up when he heard his bedroom door open.  He’d tried to find something to clean when Gina had sent him back, but everything looked in order.  He feared she’d come into his room to yell at to him to keep it down because his playing was interrupting her program.  He kept both eyes planted on his truck, waiting for the onslaught of verbal chastisement.

“You look like you’re having fun.”

August stiffened at the sound of a strange man’s voice.  He forced himself to look up, and he stared at Gabe with fright.  August was too young to be an evening news junkie, so he didn’t recognize Gabe.  But he didn’t need a newscaster to tell him to be afraid.  He knew enough about adults from his short stay with his pop to know that fear was the only appropriate response when a man came looking for you.