Dead Man Below Deck

CHAPTER 19. CONCLUSION

When I woke up in the hospital, the nurse gave me some ice water and let me rest. My first visitor was Skip Cavanaugh. “It looks like you’re going to make it,” he said.

“Yep, ‘fraid so.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Most of it. But I don’t know who shot the biker. Whoever t was, I owe him a big favor.”

Skip smiled. “That would be me if it ever happened. But there is something you need to know before you start talking to people about it. We had to clean up the scene a little bit.”

“Clean it up? How much?”

“Well, we got rid of the two dead drug dealers. No one actually saw them except you. Officially, they were never there.”

“I don’t get it. Why was that necessary?”

Skip cleared his throat. “Speaking hypothetically, if a government agency was investigating a situation that involved national security, our new laws would permit a high level of discretion to be exercised by the relevant authorities.” He could see I was mystified. “It’s like this. Suppose a bunch of drug dealers killed a drug enforcement agent who was investigating them. The agency would be very eager to catch these guys. If the case involved a terrorist group, then the agency could skip all that stuff about warrants, keeping complete records, and reading people their rights. If we grab the terrorists, we can hold them until they get old and gray, especially if no one knows we have them.”

“Okay, I get that part. But what do drug dealers have to do with national security?”

“The case has to do with national security. The drug dealers are involved with the case, so we can do what we want.”

“You mean like moving in next to me, tapping into my computer, and listening through my walls?”

“Yes, just like that.” He grinned without any embarrassment whatsoever. “Look, Ed, at first we did not know your role in all this. We thought maybe you were with the bad guys. As soon as I figured out you were clean, I did what I could to keep the cops off of you.”

“And I appreciate it.” I hesitated, “Skip, were both the guy under my deck and Johnson DEA agents?”

“No, just the guy under the deck. Johnson was a genuine secret service agent following up on a potential threat from a suspected terrorist organization.”

“The Fist of God.”

“Right, the Fist of God.”

“Okay, this is the loose end that’s killing me. What is the story on the Fist of God?”

This made Skip chuckle. “One of the local bible churches is tied in with home schooling. Some of their teenagers must have had too much time on their hands, so they invented an on-line role playing game in which they were fighting the US government. They were religious revolutionaries. One of their scenarios was to assassinate John Kerry.”

“You mean it was all a game?”

“Yes. The National Security Agency picked up on their email discussions from monitoring the internet for key words and phrases. At first reading, they seemed to be quite real. So, NSA alerted the secret service which sent in Johnson. The drug dealers killed him on the false premise that he was investigating them. Since it was labeled a national security case, we were able to exercise extraordinary powers to get it cleaned up.”

“What happened to the kids?”

“We told their parents to make them quit. We also told them that the government is watching them very closely to see if they might be teaching their kids anti-American attitudes.”

“That will do a lot for their paranoia.”

He laughed. “Well, I don’t think they could get much more paranoid.”   

He got serious. “Ed, you won’t be seeing me again. In fact, you never saw me. I never lived behind your place.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “It was nice working with you. You did pretty well, considering how much we kept you in the dark.”

“Thanks. I wish I could say I enjoyed it.”

Skip turned to go, but I stopped him. “Skip. Good luck. And take care of yourself.”

“Thanks. I always do,” he said and quietly slipped away.

After he left, a couple of women in white coats came into my room. “Hi. I’m Dr. Baker, your surgeon. This is Sarah Spivey. She was helping in the operating room.”

“Hi. I behaved okay, I hope. I don’t remember anything about the surgery.”

The two women exchanged smiles. “You were one of our most memorable patients, Mr. Schumacher. We enjoyed working on you.”

At this point, Betty burst in. She was giving me hugs and kisses and asking if I was alright. Dr. Baker said I appeared to be mending well, so she moved on to the next patient. She said she would check on me later. So did Nurse Spivey.

“The staffs’ bedside manners are great,” I told Betty. “Who says the quality of health care in America is poor?”

Betty gave me a funny look. “Well, you are something of a celebrity.”

“How so?  Because of all the criminal activity that’s been going on around us?”  No, not that. My cousin Wendy tells me that you caused quite a stir in the OR. The whole hospital is talking about it.”

“What did I do?”

She sighed. “Anesthesia does funny things to people sometimes. For some reason, a certain part of your anatomy was rock hard all through the triple bypass. The nurses enjoyed that.”

“Oh. Sorry about that.”

“Not your fault. But it reminds me that there is something we have been forgetting to do lately.”

“You’re darn right. And we should start doing it more often.”

She took my hand. “That’s what I wanted to tell you before all these nurses start thinking you aren’t being taken care of at home. We are going to do that thing a lot more in the future.”

“Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today?” I asked.

“You aren’t suggesting…”

“Yes, I most certainly am. Come over here.”

“You dirty old man. You’re BAD.”