Strangled - Brian McGrory [96]
The girl got off the swing set, gripped my hand, and out of nowhere asked, “Daddy, why do people have to die?”
“It’s a natural part of life,” I replied. “It’s what happens after you’ve done everything you wanted to do in life.”
She looked up at me as she walked along, her big blue eyes boring into mine, and she asked, “But what happens if you didn’t get the chance to do everything you wanted to do?”
I thought about that for a moment as we arrived at my car and I buckled her into the backseat with a kiss on her temple. I said, “It’s why you should live your life as hard and as well as you can, every single day. Everybody has to die sometime. It’s completely natural. But you want to make sure you did everything you wanted to do first.”
At that moment, I felt someone’s hand on the back of my neck. A voice called out, “It’s Jack Flynn. He’s unconscious. Hold the door. We’ve got to get him out of here.”
I was boiling hot and limp as a leaf of lettuce at a Texas barbecue. I mumbled something that no one heard. I suddenly felt myself being moved in someone’s arms, carried, then another voice called out, “I’m a doctor. Get him under some cool water.”
And then I felt the chilling spray of a shower. As I gained my bearings, I saw three guys looming over me, and one guy in a suit kneeling down in the shower beside me, taking my pulse, getting soaked in the process.
“I’m Bill Dennis. I’m an MD,” he said. “You’re going to be fine. You just had a little scare in there.”
I half recognized him around the gym as another member, but never knew him well enough to say anything beyond a hello. I mumbled, “I thought you were a plumber.”
“That’s my wealthier brother, Bob,” he said.
I was regaining more and more of my faculties, enough, anyway, to realize that the tranquil feeling in my chest was a figment of my imagination, or the stuff of a very good dream.
Dr. Dennis asked, “Did you black out in there?”
I said, “The door was stuck.”
Another member, standing off to the side in a sweat suit, said, “I found a mop wedged against the door, so it couldn’t be opened from inside. When I looked in, I found you there.”
I said, “I think Mike or Angel might have dropped it there by mistake.”
Mike, who was in the background, said, “I’ve been on break for the last half hour. Angel’s not in yet. None of us put that mop there.”
I asked, “Why didn’t the steam valve shut off?” The thing is supposed to go off automatically when the temperature in the room goes above 116 degrees.
Mike walked over to the wall where the On/Off button is for the bath. He called out, “This is weird. It looks like there’s a glob of glue or something holding the button in.”
I stood up and leaned against the tile wall. I knew then precisely what had happened, but it wouldn’t do any good for anyone else to know — not that they’d believe it, anyway. Sure, Jack, someone tried roasting you to death, like you’re a fucking hot dog, a Fenway frank. Good one.
Dennis said, “Listen, you’ll be back to normal by morning. Take some aspirin. Prepare yourself for a headache. Get to bed early. And most important, drink lots of fluids tonight to rehydrate.”
“Does beer count?”
“Ah, no.”
Dennis walked away, as did everyone else, leaving me in the privacy of a cooling shower.
“Yes, little girl,” I whispered, mostly to myself, “it’s pretty bad when you die before you’re ready to go.”
I had just gotten my clothes on and downed a second two-liter bottle of water when a faint buzzing sound made its way up the back staircase and into the locker room. When I first heard it, I didn’t think I heard anything at all; I told myself it was in my head. But then I saw Mike, the attendant, grab for the phone, and I yelled over to him, “What’s that?”
“Sounds like someone went out the emergency exit in the back,” he said.
I bolted. I descended the back staircase three at a time, my hand on the railing to balance me. I shot across the short first-floor landing and crashed against the bar that would open the fire exit, finding myself in the small rear parking lot of the club.
A Latino kitchen