The boys had a hockey tournament in Madison over last weekend. I must say that I’m visiting places that I have never been before. I suppose that’s a good thing. I wasn’t able to go to the Michael Feldman radio show that is on NPR on Saturdays because the boys were playing. I don’t even now if the show was in Madison Saturday. Didn’t check because of the game situation.
The boys’ team won two games, which was a surprise, according to the coach, one game despite the fact that my sweet goon, Kevin, picked up 32 minutes in penalties, none of which, of course, were the least bit legitimate. That’s 32 minutes in a game that has three 12-minute periods. He scored in the first 16 seconds of the game on a slap shot from just inside the blue line, but retaliated against the guy who slashed him after the shot was away. That was two minutes for the slash back and 10 for the punch. Then he picked up two when he went back onto the ice. Took a face-off and took a roughing when he knocked the other kid on his ass – I think it was the size differential there. Oh, you're hearing the hockey father in me coming out? Damn it. Don't want to be one of those.
I won’t recount the entire unsavory affair of the rest of that game. Sam played a few shifts over the weekend, which was nice. It’s nice to see his improvement each week.
And this week … I decided I better get some work done. I did an estimate for a deck … get this, he wanted to know if I could get it done in the next month – he’s paying for the heater. I started it Wednesday.
I promised myself that I’d keep going with this story – that’s how I have to look at it now. It can’t be fact. It must be a fantasy because what happened after Frank Morton, vampire, left the office was more bizarre than what Morton was laying on me, whioch was a bunch of crap as far as I was concerned.
I was supposed to see Walker Wallace the Fourth, who was sent by Morton. If this was not a set-up by Morton, I don’t know what is. At the time, who knew what was going down and how crazy reality would become?
I opened the conference room door, and his back was to me. In the far corner of the room, a thin white plastic pole was taped together about three-quarters of the way up with gray duct tape. An orange flag hung limply from the top of the white pole, and the same kind of tape held the white pole to the top of a white construction helmet, the name "TURNER" emblazoned in blue across the abbreviated brim of the hat. He wore a blue-and-gray madras sport jacket and didn't turn around as I closed the door behind me.
I walked around the table to face Walker Wallace IV, leaving smudged fingerprints at the corners of the polished conference room table. Hi spindly fingers drummed the table. Now, the annual art show & crafts fair at the high school brought artists and artisans from all over Ohio, western Pennsylvania, southern Michigan, and eastern Indiana. Jerry Newfield from Fly, Ohio, brought his dolls dressed in the garb of various Indian tribes that populated southern Ohio in the 1700's. The faces were carved apples, sun-dried brown, with deep wrinkles, crooked, hooked noses, and exaggerated chins. I was face-to-face with Walker Wallace IV, a human-Jerry-Newfield doll, sparkling-brown eyes in deep-set sockets within a rugged, wrinkled, weathered face and a chin that hurt like hell if he dug it into your back during a childhood fight. I stuck out my right hand, which he ignored. I was left standing stupidly across the table with my hand extended. He remained sitting.
Good start. I pulled out the burgundy-leather-seated arm chair and sat down across the table from the wizened old man and asked him what I could do for him. He stared at me, sizing me up apparently. I poured a glass of water from the silver-plated insulated pitcher into one of the cut-glass goblets. He declined my offer to pour him a glass, and I asked him what he wanted more bluntly this time. I took a sip of water and waited for him to talk. He smiled, his lips seeming to curl around to touch his long, hooked nose. His right forefinger uncurled to its full length. It looked like it stretched halfway across the table. The fingernail was dull black and ground to a point.
He finally spoke, telling me I needed some information, except that he had a lisp so that he said I needed “thumb informa-thin." Then he told me that Frank Morton was a vampire. Then he looked at me, shiny brown marbles set deep in his tunnel eye sockets, waiting for me to say something. I could sit and wait, or I could say something. Of course, this is what Morton would have done – to set me up. Whatever. I wasn’t in to playing the game. This guy gave me the creeps, and a shiver ran up my spine. It was the kind you shake off, but I couldn't with Wallace sitting there, staring at me. Then he said that he knew a lot more about Morton that could be useful to me. His finger, pointed at my heart, seemed to stretch a little more over to my half of the table.
So, I told him that I wasn’t playing games. I had a client charged with first-degree murder and I couldn’t play any games. He blinked for the first time and told me again that Morton was a vampire. And then he asked me if I knew how Morton got his supply of blood. Wallace didn’t wait for me to tell him I didn’t want to know and lisped that Morton was a phlebotomist, explaining to me that Morton drew blood from people for testing, like I didn’t know what a phlebotomist did for a living.
Wallace went on a soliloquy, explaining that Morton worked at Charity Hospital three times a week for about four hours a day. How did he know this stuff, he asked me. Because Wallace worked there, too, in the toxicology lab. Morton brought the blood he drew for testing into the toxicology lab. Wallace saw him drinking blood from test tubes, like someone at a bar drinking shots of whiskey. Wallace’s right hand curled into a loose fist and he brought it to his lips. He threw his head back like he was knocking back a shot of whiskey at the local bar. His lips curled into a handlebar smile once more, and there couldn’t be one more crease in that already-infinitely-lined face.
So, that, Wallace said, was that – proof positive that Morton was a vampire. I considered that for a moment and then decided to tap my vast reserve of vampire knowledge, asking the shriveled, old lab technician that Morton couldn’t be a vampire because he was working in the middle of the day
"It's B.S.," he lisped at me, the pitch of his voice rising. He pointed that long twig of a finger with the sharpened, blackened nail at my face. "It’s all B.S. A vampire can be out during daylight. No problem at all. This is real life, not the movies. I’m surprised a man of your education would fall for the B.S. put out by Hollywood propagandists. I believe that one or two of them were vampires."
I started laughing. Morton. Morton put him up to it, I was sure of that. Planted. The headlines in several papers called the murder a "vampire killing." There were a number of articles on the history of vampirism. Lunatics came out of the woodwork to talk about their experiences. So, he had an outlet now for his lunacy; and it was time to cut the interview short. After all, the mental hospitals couldn't hold everyone in need. Then he told me he was a vampire tracker, from a long line of vampire trackers. Oh, yeah, he was quite mad.
I called him on it. I pointed out that he lied to the receptionist, telling her that Morton sent him to see me. He said he saw my client drinking blood, and I told him that I was inclined to believe that was a lie, also. Now, the vampire hunter thing, like a Japanese cartoon.
He exploded, "Vampire tracker, there's a difference, you know!" He babbled on about how he didn’t make the kill; that the hunter, not the tracker, made the kill. His job was to find the vampires, to track them down. The smile curled on his face, the wrinkles becoming deeper.
I had enough right there. I picked up the telephone handset and punched a couple numbers. He started to go on about how much danger I was in and about some kind of catalogue he kept and how I was in over my head. I should have listened, I guess, but that was then and I really didn’t care what this lunatic was driveling on about. His long forefinger quivered and stretched to within inches of my nose.
I got Mitch Hilliard on the phone an asked him to come down to the conference room. Mitchell Hilliard, a second-year law student at Cleveland State University law school, was the newest clerk at Goldman & Epstein. He spent seven years on the defensive line of the San Francisco 49'ers and called it quits while he was still able to walk. The 49'ers didn't appreciate that at all. He called the firm and asked if there were any law clerk positions open. There weren't; but the partners hired him anyway without an interview, testimony not to their appraisal of legal talent, but to their desire to rub elbows with professional athletes. Ironically, it turned out to be a good acquisition, legal-talent-wise.
Wallace tried to tell me what was in store for me. I can’t argue with that. He told me I couldn’t ignore what he was telling me. He tried to convince me that the danger was all around me and that I just did not want to see the truth. Yeah, the truth – what that is, who knows?
Mitchell poured into the doorway, filling it with his light gray suit. He wore that suit once a week, and nobody had the nerve to tell him to lose the black shirt and white tie -- the partners talked about it every time Mitchell wore the ensemble. And I’m sure they complained every time I wore blue jeans and a T-shirt. Mitchell extended his meaty right hand to Wallace, which Wallace ignored. I started to walk out and Wallace tried to convince me that he wasn’t crazy and that he was telling the truth and that I was in great danger and that these people were ruthless and would stop at nothing to “perpetuate their race” and that I was making a huge mistake and that there was “death in the air.”
Choices. Every time you turn around, there are choices to make. Which ones will affect you for the rest of your life? Which ones aren’t important? Only time tells.
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