THE FOURTH WATCH (50 page)

They say that if you are ever lucky enough to
come out of it, when you do, you gasp life back into yourself, as
if you had been under water too long and burst into the oxygen
filled air only seconds before you would have drowned. As if you
had been given one final chance to find satisfaction in your
Creators gifts to you.

It was like that coming out of what I was to
learn was the coma that had swallowed me for almost ten
weeks.

I remember feeling like I was inside a balloon.
I was afraid to go to the top of the it. I was suspended in a
liquid that had a warm viscosity to it. I was rolling in it,
trembling, terrified and comforted all at once as it seemed to suck
at me, clench at me. But outside the balloon is where I wanted to
be. Annie was there, peering in at me as I turned in the warm
sludge. She was speaking to me but I could not hear the words she
spoke, only sense the hum that her voice made against the thick
walls of my enclosure. She was trying to grab onto the sphere but
her feet and hands and clenching thighs could gain no purchase, and
she would drift away.

Beyond Annie was a vastness diffused in green
light. I could only imagine what her voice must have sounded like,
echoing there, in that rolling, endless space. Watching her, I
suddenly realized that she was gesturing to me urgently, pointing
up. And suddenly I understood two things with utter clarity: that
the viscous liquid in which I turned had a surface, and that I
couldn't breathe.

I kicked my legs and stroked with my arms
toward the surface, but my movement was agonizingly slow. The
gentle sucking that I felt all over me was no longer comforting. It
had become harsh and aggressive, a terrifying undercurrent trying
to pull me back down. I kicked and stroked, but my progress was
only incremental. My lungs were burning and I felt panic. Yet at
the same time I hoped that I'd fail to reach the surface, believing
for some reason that if I failed, I'd descend back to the place
where Annie waited outside my cocoon. But an even more powerful
force urged me up, willed me to fight for the surface, as if
something incredible were waiting for me there, and so I fought on,
and at the moment when I was sure I had failed, that the surface
was just too impossible a goal for me to attain, I burst through
into a place throbbing with blinding light and suffocating
air.

*****

WALTER HACKED INTO
CORI
, the Massachusetts Criminal Offender
Record Information system. When he entered the name Helena Carlais,
he hit the jackpot. He checked the other information - Social
Security number, date of birth, etc., methodically against that
listed in his notebook. It was the same. Ellen Whorley had spent
her youth, it seemed, as a crack whore. There were eight entries on
her record: three 'possession of a controlled substance' busts
mixed in among five for 'offering sex for a fee' and 'being a
common night-walker'. All eight occurred over a five year period
between her eighteenth and twenty third birthdays. None had
resulted in jail time. And then it stopped. She simply vanished
from the system. Must have been when she went to New York to get
into films, Walter thought. He made a note to call Paulson and find
out the dates that the films were made. Porn films didn't have
dates on them. The producers wanted them to be timeless, so that
the profits could be too. He also made a note to go to the court
house and pull the files on Helena's arrests. He wanted to read the
police reports. He jumped over to NYCIS (New York Criminal
Information System) the equivalent of the Massachusetts CORI
system, to try and pick up Helena Carlais' career. But, if she was
in New York, then she had either abandoned her criminal ways, or
stopped getting caught, because she was not in the
system.

Walter sat back in his chair and thought about
it. This was getting weirder by the minute. So Ellen Whorley had a
past. Lots of people did. What did it have to do with murder and
smuggling? He was puzzling it over when the phone rang. He picked
it up on the second ring.

"Walter, Its Jack."

"Oh, yes, Father," Walter said, recognizing the
Priest's voice right away and sitting up in his chair without
thinking about it.

"Listen, I'm up here at the hospital," Father
Jack told him, "and I guess Kato just woke

up."

Walter paused. "How's that?"

"I don't know," Jack said, "he just kind of
jerked awake. Tried to sit up and then went back out."

"I'm on my way," Walter said.

"Well, he's back down again," Jack said. "The
doctors said, he could do this - come out of it, then go back
in."

"I'm gonna come up anyway, Father."

"Of course," Jack said. "I'll see you when you
get here."

Walter hung up the phone and grabbed his
jacket.

*****

IT WAS PRETTY CREEPY
because when Mike Knight suddenly sat up in his
bed... his blue eyes milky and vacant and rolling around without
focus, his eyelashes strung with yellow mucus, his cracked lips
open, displaying a tongue in the well of his mouth that looked like
burnt sausage, his face the color of a ripe banana ... Father Jack
Healy was reading from Chapter Eight of Matthew. It was just as
Jesus called the demons out of the Gadarenes that Mike sat up, and
Father Jack Healy nearly jumped out of his skin.

He barely had time to stare at Kato slack-jawed
and sputter something unintelligible, before Knight crashed back
down on the bed and emergency personal swarmed into the room and
drove him out. There were lights and buzzers going on, and general
mayhem as Jack watched through the glass. Medical personnel
repositioned cables and gestured at monitors, shook their heads and
flipped through charts. A doctor came out and told him the good
news - he came out of his coma, and the bad news - he went back
down into it, and the other good news - that this is not unusual
for patients on their way back. Jack called Walter, and then Alex
Andreason.

*****

MIKE KNIGHT HAD
not come back again by the next morning, but the doctors
remained optimistic. Walter had spent the night dozing with Father
Jack in the hospital waiting room, but with Kato still out, he was
getting antsy. He told Jack he was going over to the courthouse,
promising to return before lunch.

The early morning throng at the courthouse
outside the Criminal Clerks office was right out of a horror movie.
Zombies huddling with lawyers who were trying to manipulate them
into taking bad pleas that would only delay jail time until they
violated their probation. Victims listened helplessly to Assistant
DA's explaining how their tormentors were going to be released that
very day. Zonked out hookers, unable to focus their eyes, listened
to their lawyers explain the unfathomable to them. Walter shoved
his way through into the Clerk's office and quickly caught the eye
of a square, squat woman approaching middle age, with the
unfortunate name of Bertha Waldo.

Bertie, as she was known, was a blunt,
fire-hydrant of woman with reddish-brown hair out of a bottle and a
faint tangle of soft white down on the hinges of her jaws. She had
green eyes, a pug nose and a slight double chin. She had wide
shoulders, truncated limbs and a square frame stuffed into a busy,
lavender colored blouse and tan slacks with an elastic waist. She
and Walter had a history. The history was that Walter had asked her
out on a date, and she had turned him down. But Bertie's heart had
not been in turning him down. Fact was, she wished she hadn't. It
was the pressure of everyone thinking Walter was an asshole, and a
loud mouthed dork. But Bertie kind of liked him. It wasn't like she
was a catch. Truth to tell, she was a bit of a loud mouthed dork
herself, and she enjoyed his crude directness in conversation.
Standing behind the counter now, Bertie had pink rough on her jowls
and tangerine lipstick leeching onto her teeth. She smiled at
Walter as he approached.

"Hey, look", she yelled to no one in particular
over the din in the room as Walter worked his way through the scrum
in front of the Clerks counter, "it's a real live private
eye!"

"Yeah, bite me, Bertie," Walter told her,
smiling.

"Wow, that's almost as romantic as the last
time you asked me out!"

Walter grunted. "Well, don't worry, it won't
happen again."

Berta pouted. "Don't be like that, a girl has
to play hard to get don't she."

''Not if the girl is as hard up as you, mud
pie."

They laughed together.

"So, to what do I owe this ... what? .
.'pleasure' would be a little strong, don't you think?"

Walter wasn't sure that Bertha Waldo liked him.
He didn't get many dates that he didn't have to pay for. But he
thought she might ... kind of ... like him. He was betting that the
men weren't beating a path to her door, but you never knew. "I need
a favor," he said.

"What a surprise."

"Yeah, well, if you ever want another shot at
getting into my pants ... "

"And what girl wouldn't ... "

"Then you better put out."

"How could I resist that advance? It's like
having someone read French poetry to you in bed."

Walter nodded. "Well, it's gonna be a little
tricky because you're gonna have to get off your ass and go dig
some old files out of the archives, and that means you're gonna
have to use math to follow the old file numbers which means
engaging your brain and ... "

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what is it?" Bertie said,
unable to stop a grin forming at the corners of her
mouth.

Walter slid a slip of paper across the table
with the docket numbers written on it.

Bertie turned the paper around and pinched a
pair of reading glasses down on her nose. She looked at the
numbers, looked up at Walter, and took the glasses off. The first
numbers of a docket were the last two digits of the year the case
was heard. "These things are seventeen years old."

"Some of them," Walter agreed, "I told you it
would require effort beyond those of mortal clerk's office
personnel.

"Ummm," said Bertie. "I'm not sure this stuff
is still here."

"Yeah, I know," Walter said, "probably been
shipped up to that new imaginary courthouse."

Bertie laughed. "You might be right," she said,
"but I'll look anyway. When do you need them?"

Walter was smiling. "Would now be
inconvenient?"

Bertie looked around at criminals and lawyers
and victims and court officers, all engaged in hand to hand combat
trying to get to the counter. "A little," she said, "why don't you
give me a couple of hours?"

Walter rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Did
you know that statistically it takes government employees twice as
long to do anything than average people."

"Well, then, you understand," said
Bertie.

"Yeah," Walter said, looking at his watch.
"Well, I'll see ya at, what? Eleven? I'll just go bang me one of
the hookers out in the hall while I wait."

"Okay. Tell her to make sure she has her
rabbis' shots."

They laughed together again and Walter waved
over his shoulder as he went out.

*****

AT QUARTER AFTER
eleven Walter had one corner of a table in the Clerk
Magistrates traffic hearing room and the eight folders Bertie Waldo
had unearthed for him. Most of it was the same old-same old: cops
pullover a car for a non-existent tail light problem and brace
everyone in the car for their ID's, Helena Carlais has a warrant
out for failure to appear in court, they bust her and find a crack
pipe in her bra at the station; cops following a john off Piedmont
Street as he picks up Helena Carlais and takes her out behind St
Peter's Church, sneak up on the car and flash their long light in
on her with the john's dong clamped tightly in her jaws; cops raid
a party in Main South and find Helena Carlais, who is on probation,
wasted and strung out, half nude in the bathroom with a john ...
yadee yadah yadah. He read all eight files and it was just the
usual story of a life in collapse, except for one thing - Helena
Carlais had been busted the last three times by the same cop -
Patrolmen - now Deputy Chief - Matte Genetassio.

*****

WHEN WALTER GOT
back to the hospital Alex Andreason was sitting in a chair
next to Kato's bed. Knight was gaunt, his eyelids closed and
twitching, his skin the color of wall-paper paste, breathing on his
own.

"Hello Walter," Alex said, he was immaculate, a
light blue weave in his charcoal suit, a charcoal weave in his
light blue tie and show hankie. His hair was perfect - a werewolf a
Trader Vic's.

"What?" Walter said, "He's breathing on his own
now?"

Alex nodded, smiling, saying
nothing.

They looked at him a while in silence. Walter
finally said, "So what are they saying ... the doctors?"

"He's coming back," Alex told him. "There may -
probably will - be complications: confusion, memory loss, atrophy
of the limbs," Alex shrugged, "We'll see."

Walter was nodding, looking at the bed. More
silence.