He said his work for the ACLU was “mostly pro bono.” Ghulpa didn’t know what that meant but this time didn’t ask. His main practice was libel and defamation and he taught at Loyola one night a week. Ray wanted to make sure the lawyer was aware that he hadn’t yet agreed to sue the police. He said that he was. And he knew Ray liked cops. He told the couple “the action” wasn’t personal, everyone made mistakes, he wasn’t an enemy of the men in blue, on the contrary, he was a big supporter (Who does he think he’s kidding?) but in this case a lawsuit could very well make another wrong-door break-in less likely to happen. He made it sound like suing the police was Ray’s civic duty. The next time, there might be kids in there, he said. Children could get killed. It was all about forcing cops to be more “fastidious” with their intelligence. Ray wasn’t the 1st person to have his door busted in by mistake. It happened mostly to inner-city families — to moms and babies — and was often “racial.” Again, he looked toward Ghulpa. The police (in this case, “the LAPD, with an assist from the Sheriff’s Department, Industry Station”) needed to be held accountable. With an increasing sense that the Indian wore the pants and was on the money trail, he was careful to remain inclusive as he spoke, head oscillating between the 2 like a space heater. The attorney clearly couldn’t have cared less about the details of their living arrangement but intuition told him that the woman in the sari would be his best advocate.
BY the time they got home, it was 9 o’clock. Ray said he was “toast.” Ghulpa made sure he took his vitamins and medication; he’d inadvertently skipped the afternoon dose. She fed him dal soup and tea with basil and cloves, then “pressed” his feet. A cultural thing. Boy, it felt good. She rubbed cinnamon oil on his calluses and gave him powdered seed of bastard teak with gooseberry juice. It will make you young again.
The landlord knocked, apologizing for the lateness of the hour. A man in a suit had stopped by earlier with a note; she didn’t feel safe leaving it at their door. BG grabbed the envelope and smiled, waving the woman away. After the landlord left, she accused her of intercepting a private “communiqué.” She held it to the light to see if it had been “tampered with.” Watching her, he smiled. “That’s a busy body,” said Ghulpa, carefully separating the words.
Ray settled into the easy chair and opened the handwritten letter. It was from Detective Lake, who said he was “at the scene” shortly after the “incident” occurred. He was sorry for everything that happened, and he’d dropped by the hospital a few times to visit, but Ray was with his doctor or asleep, and he “didn’t want to disturb you any more than we already have.” A business card with a gold shield was stapled to the watermarked stationery — classy. He wrote that Ray should call any of the numbers if he wanted to talk, including the cell (he’d used a pen to add his home phone). The old man thought it a kind gesture; nothing suggested ulterior motive. Strictly mano a mano. The detective added that he was a dog lover, and even asked after the Friar.
“If there’s anything I can do for you,” he reiterated, “please don’t hesitate to call.”
XIX.Chester
THE chiropractor said he might very well have nerve damage and referred him to an orthopedist. Which freaked him out because he’d never had pain like this, pain that migrated and stabbed, pulsed and tingled, and didn’t relent. It actually kept him up at night—definitely not a good sign. Plus he was narco-constipated.
The entire culture was geared toward intractable pain: every magazine, every paper and electronic news show featured chronicles of incurable, idiopathic, undiagnosable agony. There was a lot Chess was suddenly learning about, and none of it was wonderfuclass="underline" like how a body in constant anguish somehow rewired itself neurologically, becoming addicted to the pain itself, which made the cycle nearly impossible to break. The field of pain management had become sexy, like software in the early 90s. Tekkies and pharmacologists were all over it — the eroticized iPain index was riding high. Paintients were being treated with off-label potpourris of antidepressants, antipsychos, and antiseizure meds, which alchemized to fake out the nervous system, convincing it that everything was copacetic. Now here he was, one of the gang. The gang that couldn’t shit straight. That’s how fucked up his karma was.
For now, Chess was in Hydrocodone World — the muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories didn’t really count. It was Vicodin Nation: you could download Vike (swoosh!) RAPsodies to your Nano or have the dope FedEx’d with Vi@gr
and V@1ium from weirdass gray zone Internet pharmacies impossible to call back — impenetrably virtual. Flip on the tube and watch real-life addicts score Vs off dying cancer dads on Intervention, or firemen boosting Vs on Rescue Me, or a chick who feeds her habit by multiple pharmacy/doctor-shopping for Vs on DVDs of Six Feet Under. It bled from cable to network: a cancelled NBC meller featured a pill-popping priest (Episcopal — Vicodin, 500 mg), and Fox had an Emmy juggernaut about a cranky, genius MD (Brit playing American — Vicodin ES, 750 mg), each with backstories justifying their reasons to indulge. Like you needed one. It was enough that the key grips, writers, producers, and directors were users, making 10s of millions, buzzed out of their skulls! Well, maybe the grips weren’t making millions but they sure were fuckin happy. Just like the good old coke days. Only now it was legal.
Chronic pain was a serious mindfuck. Chess had panic attacks during the day and broke sweat, claustrophobic in his own body. It’d been less than 2 weeks but already he understood why people killed themselves — nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Weed didn’t even help (maybe a little) and that spooked him because he’d always heard that maryjane killed pain, that’s what the old-time lymphoma Brigadoon hospice brigade was into. It made sense that people turned to magnets and biofeedback and guided-imagery and all manner of fool’s gold voodootoxins but he definitely didn’t want to die like Coretta Scott King in some beachy New Age Tijuana hellhole. Chester Scott King! He watched a segment on 60 Minutes about a lawyer — an attorney! — in New Jersey, an affable dude who’d undergone futile back surgery. The guy wound up moving to Florida and was so wigged about keeping an emergency stash that he took extraordinary measures (who wouldn’t?) but the Feds accused him of hoarding pills with counterfeit subscriptions — and gave him 20 years for trafficking! Where’s Limbaugh’s lawyer when you need him! He refused to plea bargain because it would have been tantamount to a criminal confession plus it’d be harder for him to get meds on the street. The motherfucker was already in a wheelchair, aside from additionally being diagnosed with MS! The irony was that upon incarceration the state had been forced to provide the martyred, hapless junkie with a morphine patch. At least now he was chill, though Chess wondered why the street docs hadn’t done that in the 1st place. (The report didn’t touch on that.) The new prisoner could not believe he had been taken away from his family; his old lady couldn’t even bear to tell their kids that Daddy’d been jailed. 60 Minutes interviewed one of the men who locked him up and it was so scarily obvious the guy didn’t have a clue—he seriously thought that the fucker was dealing! He said there was no way a person could be taking 25 painkillers a day, and Chess knew that was total bullshit. The more he thought about it, the more pissed he became at his “friend.” He was in a hallucinatorture tailspin, all because of Maurice the Jew’s fucked up little stunt.