Duma Key(83)

"Bow- wave?"

His eyes lit up. "Exactly! Only the texture of brain-matter is more like calves' liver than water."

"Euuuu. Nice."

"I know. Wireman can be eloquent, he admits it. The slug created a downward bow-wave that caused edema and pressure on the optic chiasm. That's the brain's visual switching-point. Are you getting the richness of this? I shot myself in the temple and not only did I end up still alive, I ended up with the bullet causing problems in the equipment located back here." He tapped the ridge of bone above his right ear. "And the problems are getting worse because the slug's moving. It's at least a quarter-inch deeper in than two years ago. Probably more. I didn't need Hadlock or Principe to give me that information; I can see it in these pictures for myself."

"So let them operate on you, Wireman, and take it out. Jack and I will make sure Elizabeth's okay until you're back on your..." He was shaking his head. "No? Why no?"

"It's too deep for surgery, amigo. That's why I didn't let them admit me. Did you think it was because I've got a Marlboro Man complex? No way. My days of wanting to be dead are over. I still miss my wife and my daughter, but now I've got Miss Eastlake to take care of, and I've come to love the Key. And there's you, Edgar. I want to know how your story comes out. Do I regret what I did? Sometimes s , sometimes no. When it's s , I remind myself I wasn't the same man then that I am now, and that I have to cut the old me some slack. That man was so hurt and lost he really wasn't responsible. This is my other life, and I try to look at my problems in it as... well... birth defects."

"Wireman, that's bizarre."

"Is it? Think of your own situation."

I thought of my situation. I was a man who had choked his own wife and then forgot about it. A man who now slept with a doll in the other half of the bed. I decided to keep my opinions to myself.

"Dr. Principe only wants to admit me because I'm an interesting case."

"You don't know that."

"But I do!" Wireman spoke with suppressed passion. "I've met at least four Principes since I did this to myself. They're terrifyingly similar: brilliant but disassociative, incapable of empathy, really only one or two doors down from the sociopaths John D. MacDonald used to write about. Principe can't operate on me any more than he could on a patient who presents with a malignant tumor in that same location. With a tumor they could at least try radiation. A lead slug isn't amenable to that. Principe knows it, but he's fascinated. And sees nothing wrong with giving me a little false hope if it'll get me in a hospital bed where he can ask me if it hurts when he does... this. And later, when I'm dead, perhaps there'd be a paper in it for him. He can go to Canc n and drink wine coolers on the beach."

"That's harsh."

"Ain't in the same league as those Principe eyes those are harsh. I get one look at em and want to run the other way while I still can. Which is pretty much what I did."

I shook my head and let it go. "So what's the outlook?"

"Why don't you get rolling? This place is starting to give me the willies. I just realized it's where that freako grabbed the little girl."

"I could have told you that when we drove in."

"Probably just as well you kept it to yourself." He yawned. "God, I'm tired."

"It's stress." I looked both ways, then turned back onto the Tamiami Trail. I still couldn't believe I was driving, but I was starting to like it.

"The outlook is not exactly rosy. I'm taking enough Doxepin and Zonegran now to choke a horse those're anti-seizure drugs, and they've been working pretty well, but I knew I was in trouble that night we had dinner at Zoria's. I tried to deny it, but you know what they say: denial drowned Pharaoh and Moses led the Children of Israel free."

"Uh... I think that was the Red Sea. Are there other drugs you can take? Stronger ones?"

"Principe certainly waved his prescription pad at me, but he wanted to offer Neurontin, and I won't even chance that."

"Because of your job."

"Right."

"Wireman, you won't do Elizabeth any good if you go bat-blind."

He didn't reply for a minute or two. The road, now all but deserted, unrolled in front of my headlights. Then he said, "Blindness will soon be the least of my problems."

I risked a sideways glance at him. "You mean this could kill you?"

"Yes." He spoke with a lack of drama that was very convincing. "And Edgar?"

"What?"

"Before it does, and while I've still got one good eye left to see with, I'd like to look at some more of your work. Miss Eastlake wants to see some, too. She asked me to ask. You can use the car to haul em down to El Palacio you seem to be doing admirably."

The turn- off to Duma Key was ahead. I put on my blinker.

"I'll tell you what I think sometimes," he said. "I think that this run of fabulous luck I've been having has got to turn and run the other way. There's absolutely no statistical reason to think such a thing, but it's something to hold onto. You know?"

"I do," I said. "And Wireman?"

"Still here, muchacho. "