"Excuse me..." he said, into the phone.
"Sorry sir, I am trying to find Mr. Johnson for you." She cupped her hand over the phone. "Anybody seen Willy Johnson?"
And he heard a muffled voice yell back, "Willy Johnson is a dick!"
Sitting there at the entrance to the emergency room, weak and in pain, his jaw aching like hell, Brad did not feel good about what he was hearing. "Did you find Mr. Johnson?"
"One moment sir, we're looking..."
He hung up.
He felt like crying.
He went outto get breakfast, but it hurt too much to eat, and people in the coffee shop looked at him oddly. He saw his reflection in the glass and realized his whole jaw was blue and puffy. Still it was better than last night. He wasn't worried about anything except this attorney Johnson. All his initial suspicions about the man were confirmed. Why had they met at a restaurant, instead of his law firm? Because Johnson didn't belong to a law firm.
There was nothing to do but call his uncle Jack.
"John B. Watson Investment Group."
"Mr. Watson, please."
They put him through to the secretary, who put him through to his uncle.
"Hey, Uncle Jack."
"Where the fuck are you?" Watson said. He sounded distinctly unfriendly.
"I'm in Wyoming."
"Staying out of trouble, I hope."
"Actually, my attorney sent me here," he said, "and that's why I am calling you. I'm a little worried, I mean this guy - "
"Look," Watson said, "you're up on a molestation charge, and you've got a molestation expert to handle your case. You don't have to like him. Personally I hear he's a prick."
"Well - "
"But he wins cases. Do what he says. Why are you talking funny?"
"Nothing..."
"I'm busy, Brad. And you were told never to call."
Click.
Brad was feeling worsethan ever. Back at his motel room, the guy at the desk said someone from the police had come looking for him. Something about a hate crime. Brad decided it was time to leave beautiful Jackson Hole.
He went to his room to pack, watching some true-crime show where the police caught a dangerous fugitive by pretending to put him on television. They staged a fake TV interview setup, and as soon as the guy relaxed, they slapped cuffs on him. And now the guy was on death row.
Police were getting tricky. Brad hastily finished packing, paid his bill, and hurried out to his car.
CHapter 074
The self-proclaimedenvironmental artist Mark Sanger, recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica, looked up from his computer in astonishment as four men broke down the door and burst into his Berkeley apartment. The men were dressed head to foot in blue rubber hazmat suits, with big rubber helmets and big faceplates, rubber gloves, and boots, and they carried evil-looking rifles and big pistols.
He had hardly reacted to the shock when they were on him, grabbing him with their rubber hands and wrestling him away from the keyboard.
"Pigs! Fascists!" Sanger yelled, but suddenly it seemed like everybody was shouting and screaming in the room. "This is an outrage! Fascist pigs!" he shouted as they cuffed him, but he could see their faces behind the masks, and they were afraid. "Jesus, what do you think I'm doing here?" he said, and one of them answered, "We know what you're doing, Mr. Sanger," and spun him away.
"Hey! Hey!" They pulled him - roughly - down the steps from his apartment to the street. Sanger could only hope media would be waiting, cameras ready to film this outrage in broad daylight.
The press, however, was cordoned off across the street. They could hear Sanger as he shouted, and they were filming him, but their distance prevented the up-close, in-your-face confrontation he hoped for. In fact, Sanger suddenly realized how this scene must look through their lenses - policemen dressed in frightening hazmat suits escorting a thirtyish bearded man in jeans and a Che Guevara T-shirt, who struggled in their arms, cursing and shouting.
Sanger knew he must look like a madman. Like one of the Teds: Ted Bundy, Ted Kaczynski, one of those guys. The cops would say that he had microbiology equipment in his apartment, that he had tools for genetic engineering, and he was making a plague, making a virus, making a disease - something horrible. A madman.
"Put me down," he said, forcing himself to be calm. "I can walk. Let me walk."
"All right, sir," one of them said. They let him stand on his feet, and walk.
Sanger walked with as much dignity as he could muster, straightening his shoulders, shaking his long hair, as they led him to a waiting car. Of course it was an unmarked car. He should have expected that. Fucking FBI or CIA or whatever. Secret government organizations, the shadow government. Black helicopters. Unaccountable, the crypto Nazis among us.
Fuming, he wasn't prepared to see Mrs. Malouf, the black lady who lived on the second floor of his building, standing outside with her two young kids. As he passed her, she leaned forward and started yelling at him. "You bastard! You risk my family! You risk my children's lives! You Frankenstein! Frankenstein!"
Sanger was intensely aware of how that moment would play on the evening news. A black mother shouts at him, calls him Frankenstein. And the kids at her side were crying, frightened by everything that was happening around them.
Then the cops shoved Sanger into the unmarked car, with one rubber-gloved hand on his head, easing him into the backseat. And as the door slammed shut, he thought,I am fucking screwed .
Sitting in his jail cell,watching the television in the hallway, trying to hear the commentary over the arguments of the other guys in the cell, trying to ignore the faint smell of vomit and the deep sense of despair that settled over him as he watched.