DROP DEAD BEAUTIFUL 28: Where In The World Is Amanda Madison?

July 12th, 2007 at 04:32am Michael Conniff 2

It didn’t matter how I felt but for the record I felt like dirt. Visiting hours were over. Permanently. If your name wasn’t Mike McGuff, Ozymandias Newcombe, or Katherine Hallaby, I wanted nothing to do with you, and I assumed most of the world and the media waiting for me outside my door knew it. We had a plan. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was all we had and I couldn’t wait any longer. All that I needed now was to be able to walk a block without keeling over.
The last person I expected to knock on my door was Eugene Koksher with a pillow-case full of something lumpy over his shoulder.
Ozzie let him in. He seemed even taller and thinner than before, like he had not been eating. His skin had a papery texture to it and the bones seemed to be ready to explode through the skin, like a computer-generated mummy in the movies. The cast was off and the broken arm looked about one-half the size of the good one. He took the pillow case and dumped out the contents on the coffee table. There were hundreds of them in all shapes and sizes, from plain postcards to oversized “Get Well” cards.
“Jesus,” I said.
“We’re all rooting for you,” Eugene Koksher said. “Some of them have been praying for you and for your girl. It takes all kinds to be an O’Kell.”
The look I gave him was not as cold and as hard as I wanted it to be. I knew the O’Kells in every way, shape, and form were never going to leave me alone. That was my fate, my destiny, and one day maybe I would accept it. But if it weren’t for the O’Kells maybe Amanda Madison would be with me right now. There was no way of knowing but somehow I knew that it would be a long time before it would be just her and me again.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bagdikian,” Eugene Koksher said. “We all are.”
“I know.”
He took the largest envelope off the table and opened it.
“What’s that?”
“Everything you ever wanted to know about Bighorn Ranch,” he said.
“How did you find out about that?”
“We’re not just a support group, Mr. Bagdikian. The O’Kell mutants are like a SWAT team, a private club with experts on all kinds of things. You really would be amazed.”
“The ‘X Men,’” McGuff said.
Eugene Koksher flattened a map of Telluride on top of the cards and letters on the coffee table. He had already put a big asterisk with a red Sharpie in the upper lefthand corner of the map.
“Right here,” he said. “The middle of nowhere. There’s no easy way in or out.”
He took out another, smaller map and laid it out on top of the map of Telluride. On the smaller map it said “Bighorn Ranch.”
“Hard to tell the elevation from this,” Eugene Koksher said. “But it’s way high, up in the nosebleeds, 12,000 feet. There’s a fourteener right next door.”
There was a huge pond in the middle big enough to be a lake where the map said there was boating and fly fishing. Next to the lake there was what looked like a gigantic lodge with restaurants and then lodges that looked like small children or random brick-a-brack, maybe two dozen in all, scattered at angles to make it look like they just happened to be there that way by happenstance. In one corner of the property the map showed a stable and trails for horses that went on for miles. In the other corner of the property there were a set of buildings and the words “Argyle Hunting and Shooting Club.”
“Aha,” I said.
“Who goes there?” Ozzie said.
“That’s the crazy part,” Eugene Koksher said. “Bighorn is a place where CEOs go to learn how to defend themselves against the bad guys, the terrorists. They’ve got some kind of training ground in here –” he pointed to one of the buildings on the map “— and they got simulations over there.”
“Simulations of what?”
“Terror, Mr. Bagdikian. “Terrorism. Terrorists. Like a fake house with a hostage. Dummies you can shoot at. Smoke machines to keep it real. And half a plane so you can play at hijacking. It’s no secret. They’ve had the press in there.”
“Do you know where she is?” I said. “In which building?”
“Not yet. But we have people working on it, Mr. Bagdikian. We have people ready to die for this if you need us. Mutants with guns.”
“Maybe we should go for a visit,” Ozzie said. “Take a little vacation. A little R and R for you noggin.”
“You think?” I said.
Ozzie put the last of the guns in the second SUV, one of two rented Caddies, and then he slammed the back door shut.
“Let’s go put on our war paint,” Dr. Melville said.
Dr. Melville had a shed out back that was nothing but floor-to-ceiling firepower – hand guns, automatic weapons, long-range rifles for snipers, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, 50-caliber machine guns – and we had our pick of the litter. Dr. Melville was already drunk and a little giddy through the whole thing, picking up guns and pointing them at us and sticking the gun in our faces and clicking the trigger and then howling even louder when we flinched. He was a riot, that one, and the room was choked with smoke from cigarettes he inhaled through a cigarette holder. Behind the tinted aviator glasses his eyes were wet and glassy, his skin the color of pale bourbon and the texture of cracked leather. For the life of me I could not figure out how such a pathetic old character had become an American icon when he seemed to be such a caricature of himself. But for us he was a means to an end.
“You got any music?” Ozzie said.
“Sure, sure, sure,” Dr. Melville said.
He went inside and in a minute we were hearing “Truckin’” by The Grateful Dead coming from inside the house. Ozzie just shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. I felt like we were inside a time warp and that we had traveled unwillingly if not unwittingly back to the moment in time when Nixon was President and Dr. Melville’s reputation was still ascending.
“Here,” Dr. Melville said to me.
The bong was going full-blast and he handed it to me.
“No thanks,” I said.
“The matter, man?” Dr. Melville said. “You a narc?”
“I’ll have me a pull,” Ozzie said.
Ozzie had the lungs of Rahssan Roland Kirk, and the great horn player had taught him how to get high using circular breathing. He sucked the bong dry till there was no weed left.
“Jesus, man!” Dr. Melville said. “You are a force of nature!”
“Just a black man,” Ozzie exhaled like he might never breathe again, “in a white world.”
Dr. Melville re-loaded and handed the bong to McGuff. McGuff took a pull, the water started to bubble, and he started to gag.
“Careful how you use it,” Ozzie said.
Dr. Melville was drinking Jim Beam on the rocks and after a while he went back inside for more ice. Ozzie took out a small white pouch and slipped a mickey into Dr. Melville’s glass with enough punch to keep him out cold for 48 hours and then flat on his back in neuromuscular shock for another 48. That would be all the time we needed.
“I put a little vodka in my ice,” Dr. Melville said when he came back with a fresh bucket. “Keeps the edge on.”
I had to admire him, in a weird way. He kept talking as he got drunk and what he said was still marginally coherent even though the words were melting together. Ozzie said it would take about five minutes for the stuff to kick in.
“Bastards,” Dr. Melville said. “Hoary, horrible, horrific bastards.”
He was trying to keep the buzz going but Dr. Melville was starting to notice something.
“Good weed,” Dr. Melville said. “Good hothouse weed. I’ve got pounds of it. I’ve got the best source of ganja in the Democratic National Committee.”
“Cool,” I said but he couldn’t tell I was kidding.
“Really cool,” Dr. Melville said. “People forget how cool pot is with Jim Beam and vodka ice. It’s the coolest thing in the world. Stone-cold cool. Hot cooooool.”
As the last sentence came out of his mouth Dr. Melville was starting to drooooool saliva from the corner of his lips and to slide off his deck chair like all the bones in his body had turned to silly putty.
“Say bye-bye, Dr. Melville,” McGuff said.
“Bye-bye Dr. Melville,” Dr. Melville said.