Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

“Di-dinner?”

She raised a perfect eyebrow at me and waggled it once. “You don’t want to take me to dinner? I’ll take my Band-aid back—”

I managed to stammer out that I’d love to take her to dinner. We settled on Friday night and a few moments later I was out on the sidewalk with my head spinning in two directions at once. I must have looked kind of scary with the big knot pounding on my forehead and the big grin on my face, because two young black women made a wide arc around me as they passed me and went into the clinic.

It was just five blocks to the mini-mall where I had left my car, so I managed it in only about an hour. I had to stop a lot and wait for my head to catch up with me, but by the time I got there I was feeling better—better enough to drive, anyway.

As I pulled out into traffic I thought I saw something move in the window of Park Honest Good Food Grocery, but with all the junk hanging and the glare off the glass, I couldn’t be sure.

By the time I got back to the hotel the throbbing had faded to the background. As long as I didn’t make any sudden movement or try to sing “You Light Up My Life” it wasn’t bad. Anyway, it was no worse than brain surgery without anesthetic.

In my room I pulled off my shoes and stretched out on the sagging bed, just breathing deeply for a while. I remembered hearing that it’s bad to fall asleep if you might have a concussion because you can slip into a coma and not wake up, so I fought against sleep, just lying with my eyes closed, just breathing. I would just relax for fifteen minutes, soothe myself a little, try to get the pain to ease off, not fall asleep, definitely not…

Chapter Thirteen

The sun was down when I woke up. I guess I don’t have a concussion, I thought. Either that or I’m dead and this is heaven. I sat up carefully and glanced out the window. It was dark. A row of lights gleamed dully through a thick blanket of smog.

Not heaven—not even close: Los Angeles.

I put a finger on my forehead. The swelling was down a little but it still felt like I was wearing a rhinoceros costume. The pain was a lot less, and I was hungry as hell.

As I swung my feet onto the floor, the telephone rang.

“Well, Billy,” Ed Beasley’s voice purred at me, “I’m surprised you’re not out sampling our night life. Too much excitement for you after sleepy Key West?”

“What time is it?” I ask

ed him. He chuckled.

“Still right on top of things, huh? Well, truth is, it’s dinnertime. And I got something for you.”

It took me a few seconds to figure out what he meant—the case files. Like I said, a whack on the head slows you down for a few days.

“Oh. Well, how about Mama Siam?” It was a Thai place near the Greyhound station, and Ed loved Thai food—the hotter the better. I’d seen him eat things a circus fire-eater wouldn’t touch and grin while the sweat rolled off him in buckets.

But he hesitated just a moment, so I prodded him a little. “Hey. I know you’re saving up for those lieutenant’s uniforms, Ed, but it’s on me.”

He chuckled again, a little strained this time, and said, “Okay, Billy. Mama Siam’s, twenty minutes.” He hung up.

It took me a while to get myself together, but I was surprised at how much better I felt. Now the problem was not so much the pain as it was that the circuits weren’t quite connecting properly. I would look for my shoe, see it, and have to hesitate just a moment and think, yes, shoe, before I could reach for it.

This had happened to me once before, back when I was in the Rangers. I had mouthed off to a drill instructor before breakfast and woke up after lunch. For the next day or so reality had been a slightly grainy movie running on a projector with bad sprockets. But at least I had learned how much punishment my head could take. I had also learned not to talk back to people with black belts in more than one discipline.

I figured out my shoes. It wasn’t so hard if I just took my time.

Exactly twenty-six minutes later I walked in the door of Mama Siam’s. Ed Beasley was in a booth, already working on a pair of egg rolls accompanied by a few dozen slices of Thai pepper.

Most Thai places have small pots of them on the table, thin slices of green pepper about as big around as a pencil. Each piece is about the size of a thumbtack’s head and if you eat a whole slice you will pass out from the pain.

Ed was shoveling in five or six slices with each bite of eggroll. Sweat was pouring off him, and he was smiling like a kid with an all-day sucker.

“Billy,” he said as I slid into the booth across from him. His grin was so big I could almost count his teeth. But I’d have needed a team of MIT researchers and a Cray computer to count the drops of sweat. “You walk into a door?”

“Some kids beat me up,” I told him. He nodded like he was expecting something like that.

“Right,” he said. “They do that here.” I guess he thought I was being funny, so he didn’t smile.

“Well,” he said, after looking at me for a minute. “You really been working on that tan, huh?” He took a big bite with a half-dozen of those terrifying peppers clinging to it, and shook his head slightly as he swallowed. “Damn, that’s good.”