Lunatics Read online

  “I’ll call you right back from a landline,” I whispered into the phone.

  “Why?”

  “Because the cops and probably the FBI are looking for me, and they can trace my whereabouts from my cell phone.”

  “Okie dokie.”

  I hung up and walked a few steps down the hall, where I tried the knob on a door labeled “Doctors’ Lounge.” It was unlocked. I entered and was relieved to see it was devoid of lounging doctors. So I picked up the wall phone, dialed “9” for an outside line and called home.

  “Too bad you missed the finale,” she answered the phone saying. “All the kids got onstage, in costume, and danced to the Scott Joplin music from The Sting.”

  “Daisy . . .”

  “Sort of a ragtime number. It was wonderful.”

  “Daisy, I’m in big trouble.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, with only a slight hint of concern.

  “Haven’t you heard? Everyone thinks I tried to blow up the George Washington Bridge.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard,” she responded, that slight hint of concern now nowhere to be found.

  That she didn’t know what was going on was not totally surprising. Daisy is not what you’d call a news junkie. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not uninformed. She knows what’s going on in the world and can hold her own in any conversation. But she’s prone to seeking out current events on her own terms. As an option. When she’s in the mood to be updated about what’s happening in the world, as opposed to an addiction to the “all the news all the time” credo of certain media sources.

  So it was very possible that after the recital, she drove home listening to a CD instead of the radio, then put the kids to bed, and then drifted off while watching an old movie on cable or a TiVoed episode of Oprah instead of CNN, MSNBC or any other commercial station that featured me and that moron Peckerman in bulletins that were now interrupting regular programming.

  What was surprising, though, was how casually she was taking this whole thing as I was explaining it to her. As if she was merely humoring me when I told her about these absurd charges being levied against me.

  “Okay, so the bullet hit him in the scrotum, and then what? Was it a particularly large scrotum or is your aim really that good?”

  “Daisy . . . ?”

  “You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?”

  “Drinking? Again?” I don’t drink.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t remember,” she snapped.

  “Remember what, Daisy?”

  “Then again, if you really don’t remember, that proves you have been drinking, because that was an episode a sober person would never forget.”

  I racked my brain.

  “Oh my God, Daisy. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

  Okay, here goes. Many years before, I was the best man at my brother’s wedding. Outdoors. An incredibly hot August night. To cool off, I had four gin and tonics during the cocktail hour that preceded the ceremony. Funny how I didn’t feel its effects walking down the aisle. Or when I took my place of honor under the canopy. Or even during the rabbi’s sermon about the sanctity of matrimony when I peered outward and noticed a gorgeous teenage cousin from the bride’s family sitting in the audience with her legs spread a little too far apart. Wearing mesh underwear. So my best guess is that this was about the time the alcohol kicked in because never, under sober circumstances, when I was supposed to hand the groom the wedding ring, would I have shouted at the top of my lungs, “Beaver! Third row! First seat!” My brother hasn’t spoken to me since. That was also the last time I had a drink.

  “Daisy, that was nineteen years ago!”

  “And you sound just as idiotic right now as you did that night. So my suggestion to you, Philip, is to have a few cups of coffee and don’t get back into the car until you’re in control of yourself, because the last thing you need is for a cop to pull you over and have a DUI on your driving record. It will send our auto insurance rates soaring.”

  And then she hung up. And then I heard voices in the hallway on the other side of the door. And though I couldn’t tell if they came from doctors or nurses or even the police at this point, one thing was now certain. Thanks to the media, I was now recognizable and needed to become incognito.

  So I opened one of the lockers in the Doctors’ Lounge and found a lab coat. It was full-length and covered the clothes I was wearing when I put it on. It also had an ID badge pinned to its breast pocket that could possibly help me pass for a physician as long as I was in this hospital. That was the good news. The not-so-good news was that the badge had the name Jahangir Shahrestaani, M.D. printed on it, with the picture of a man who looked a lot more like a Jahangir Shahrestaani than I do. So I scanned the lounge and saw a scalpel lying on a counter next to an apple that a surgeon apparently cored it with. I picked it up and carefully cut Jahangir Shahrestaani’s headshot out of his ID and then replaced it with the picture of me that I removed from my New Jersey driver’s license, making it adhere with cellophane tape I found on an unattended reception desk outside the lounge.

  I picked up a clipboard, pretending they were my patients’ charts, and started smiling and nodding to my “colleagues” as I passed them in the halls, and worked my way to the nearest exit door.

  CHAPTER 14

  Jeffrey

  The swarthy dudes had my arms and were pulling me toward the door.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “To see Fook,” said the bartender.

  At least it sounded like he said Fook.

  “Fook?” I said.

  “No, Fook.”

  “That’s what I said, Fook.”

  “No, is Fook.”

  “Okay, whatever,” I said. “Is Fook in charge? Because I need to talk to somebody who . . .”

  “You will not talk to Fook. You will listen to Fook, and then you will tell him answers about this.” He waved toward the TV set, which was showing pictures of me and Horkman over a headline that said BRIDGE TO TERROR. There was also a logo, like a silhouette of the GW Bridge with a bomb in front of it. Say what you want about TV news, they move fast. A gas explosion wipes out a preschool, five minutes later they have a logo for it.

  “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know anything about that. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. This is a big misunderstanding.”

  “Do not be misunderstanding this.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. “If you try to run away, I will shoot you in balls, like you did to police,” he said.

  “I didn’t shoot the police in the balls!”

  “Well, somebody shooted police in balls, and this is how I am shooting you if you run away.”

  If you think about it, there’s no way he could hit me in the balls if I was running away, but I didn’t point this out. I was getting the feeling these guys were not criminal geniuses. Another clue was, before they took me outside, they put a bag over my head. I guess the idea was to keep me from seeing where we were going, but they used a cheapo plastic bag from a Duane Reade drugstore, and I could pretty much see through it. Plus, even in Manhattan you’re going to attract more attention with a guy who has a bag over his head than a guy who doesn’t have a bag over his head, right?

  Morons.

  They took me outside and put me in the back of a van. The bartender told me to lie on the floor.

  “If you try to get up,” he said, “I shoot your balls.”

  He must have heard that in a movie.

  The van started moving. I could hear the bartender talking to somebody in some weird language on his cell phone. I admit I was worried. I was thinking, whoever the fuck Fook is, I hope he has more brains than these cretins.

  We drove for maybe fifteen minutes, then parked. T
hey pulled me out of the van, and right away the Duane Reade bag blew off. So much for that. We were on a busy street, next to some kind of restaurant, but I didn’t get a good look, because they hustled me into an alley, where they opened a door and pushed me inside. We were in a back office—computer, phone, crappy little TV in the corner showing the Bridge to Terror logo, Dilbert cartoon on the wall next to a sign showing how to give the Heimlich maneuver. The bartender pushed me into a chair and told me to stay there and don’t move. He said something to the other two dudes, handed one of them his gun, then left. When he opened the door, I heard beeping sounds, like from video games, coming from down the hall.

  He was gone awhile. On the TV they showed my picture again, and Horkman’s; underneath it said TERROR SUSPECTS.

  Finally the door opened. The bartender walked in first. He turned and looked back at the doorway. We were all looking at the doorway, waiting for Fook.

  And then Fook walked in.

  Fook was Chuck E. Cheese.

  I swear to God. He was wearing a furry costume with a big plastic smiling rat head. Or mouse head. Whatever the fuck kind of rodent Chuck E. Cheese is. The bartender pointed to me and said something. Fook E. Cheese came over and stood in front of me, looking down.

  “Mempheeoooroofuh,” he said. Or something like that. Between his accent and the rodent head, I couldn’t make it out.

  “What?” I said.

  The bartender said, “He asks who are you working for.”

  “I’m not working for anybody,” I said. “I’m self-employed. I’m a forensic plumber.”

  Fook smacked me across the face. It didn’t really hurt, because he had these big soft paws. But I wasn’t expecting it.

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Buhuiniodod!” said Fook.

  The bartender said, “He wants to know, do you think he is idiot.”

  “No!”

  “Henheemoinooinfh,” said Fook.

  “Then why do you telling him lies?” said the bartender.

  “I’m not lying!”

  “Gighihnggmghfiioongh? Mhhoongnhhon?”

  “If you are plumber, why are you blowing up bridge? Do you think bridge is broken toilet that you are fixing?”

  “Okay, first, I don’t fix toilets. I’m a forensic plumber. I know a lot about toilets, from an engineering standpoint, but my work is . . .”

  “Giinoommaagh!” said Fook, raising his paw again. I admit I flinched.

  “He says you are wasting time,” said the bartender.

  Fook said something to one of the lieutenant swarthies, who left the room. I was getting a bad feeling about this.

  “Listen,” I said. “If you give me a minute here, I can explain this whole thing.”

  “This explanation,” the bartender said. “Is it the one you tell me before, about the monkey?”

  “It’s a lemur.”

  A snorting sound came from inside the Chuck E. Cheese head.

  “I would not tell this explanation to Fook,” said the bartender.

  “But I swear, the . . .”

  I was interrupted by the door opening. The lieutenant came in holding two things. One was a foot-long stick of pepperoni.

  The other was a pizza slicer. It was one of those wheel things, with a wood handle. The blade looked sharp.

  The lieutenant handed the pepperoni and the slicer to Fook. He took them in his paws and set the pepperoni on the desk next to me. He held the slicer in front of my face.

  “Magnnhhnnn,” he said.

  “He says look,” said the bartender.

  Fook put the edge of the slicer blade on the desk and ran it across the middle of the pepperoni. It sliced it clean in two.

  I thought, Oh shit, he’s going to cut off my dick.

  “Fghnnnghghgm,” said Fook.

  “Tell him who you are working for,” said the bartender.

  “I don’t work for anybody!” I said. “I had nothing to do with any of this! I swear to God!”

  Fook said something, and the two lieutenant swarthies grabbed me, pinned my right arm on the desktop and pressed my hand flat, fingers out. So the good news was, he wasn’t going to cut off my dick.

  Fook put the blade on the desk, right next to my hand. He rolled it right up to my pinkie, so I could feel the edge. That’s when I pissed my pants. If you think you wouldn’t, you’re a fucking liar.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Ghmminnggh,” said Fook.

  “Tell him who you are working for,” said the bartender.

  Before you judge me for what I did next, put yourself in my shoes, which at the moment were filling up with urine.

  I pointed to the TV screen. It was showing a close-up of Horkman, the prick who got me into all of this in the first place.

  “Him,” I said. “I work for him.”

  Fook pointed his rodent snout at the screen for a few seconds, then turned back to me.

  “Ghammeagghnr,” he said.

  I looked at the bartender.

  “Fook says you will take us to this man,” he said. “Now.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Philip

  I eventually walked through the emergency room and had one foot out the sliding doors when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a commanding voice say, “Gnoofnggh!” I spun around and saw that the hand was actually a big furry paw worn by a person dressed in a costume with the head of a grinning, big-eared character that was the spitting image, I’m sorry to say, of my son Trace—who, for reasons that still baffle every dentist we’ve ever taken him to, has only one front tooth, which is very wide and has a line down its middle making it look like he has two front teeth. Like Chuck E. Cheese.

  So whether it was because this character resembled my son or because I reminded myself that I was posing as a doctor and there were sickly children in the emergency room who I was sure needed a good laugh, I grabbed this creature’s paws and started dancing with him around the emergency room. And though the children did indeed laugh (I do this funny high kick that always makes my own children giggle and never fails to delight adults as well), I sensed resistance on the part of my partner. As if a jaunty cha-cha-cha was not what he had in mind despite his jolly getup. And my hunch that he may have had a different agenda was confirmed when I spun the two of us around and saw two mean-looking men nonchalantly opening their sport jackets, revealing guns tucked in their waistbands, standing next to that idiot Peckerman, who was pointing at me, saying, “That’s him! That’s him! That’s my boss!”

  And though I was curious what this was all about, I had a sneaky feeling that a post-dance Q&A session was probably not in the offing. So when I completed our revolution around the emergency room and was once again about a step away from the automatic sliding doors, I released Chuck E.’s grip (his faux paws absolutely no match for my mightier pet shop owner thumbs), dashed out of the hospital shouting “Help me!” opened the back doors to an EMS vehicle as it was slowly pulling away, and rode in it for a half block while a paramedic asked, “Is something wrong, Doctor?” to which I cried, “Yes, something is horribly wrong!” prompting the driver (who believed I was talking about “medically” wrong as opposed to “in danger of being killed by a foreign man dressed like a restaurant logo” wrong) turned on the siren, shifted into reverse, and sped backward to the emergency room entrance and into the awaiting arms of my captors.

  “Why weren’t we told about this attack?”

  I was now sitting on a rock. A real big rock in the middle of a fenced-in area of the Central Park Zoo. I knew it was the Central Park Zoo because after the EMS guys were gone, the two mean-looking men put a bag over my head, threw me into the back of a van, drove crosstown, and removed the bag just in time for me to see the sign that said WELCOME TO THE CENTRAL PARK ZOO. Then after th
e goons forced me onto the top of the rock, one of them kept his gun trained on me while the other acted as interpreter for the Chuck E. Cheese guy, who was grunting words devoid of both vowels and consonants.

  “I don’t know anything about any attacks,” I said.

  “He’s lying! He’s the one who told me about it!” shouted Peckerman, who was now tied to a tree. “Now, let me go! Come on, I did what you asked! I took you to him! So let me go!”

  “How did he know where I was?” I asked.

  “You wife telled him,” said the gun-toting goon.

  “My wife?”

  “He borrowed my phone and you wife said you just called from the hospital and that we should also go there because we sounded as drunk as you.”

  “That’s my boss’s wife,” said Peckerman, shaking his head, laughing. “Always with the jokes!”

  “I am not his boss,” I pleaded. “And I am also not a terrorist.”

  “Of course he is!” yelled Peckerman. “Just look at his fucking ID! If that isn’t a ragheaded jihad name, I don’t know what is!”

  The interpreter goon looked at my doctor’s badge and read the name on it.

  “Jahangir Shahrestaani,” he pronounced with frightening ease.

  “That’s not my name,” I told him.

  “Sure it is,” Peckerman shouted. “That’s what I always call him!”

  “He doesn’t call me anything! I didn’t even know this guy existed until a few regrettable days ago!”

  “Are you related to the Shahrestaanis in Habbaniya?” the goon asked in a whisper.

  “I’m not related to any Shahrestaanis anywhere! That’s not my name!”

  “This picture is you,” said the goon.