a sleepwalker. Thirty of the damned things a day. Costing a fortune, not that that bothers him.”
“Are we agreed, then, that we need to get him off it?”
“I guess so. I don’t think it’s going to be easy.”
“I don’t guess it is, but I’ve got an idea. You ever been to Hot Springs?”
“Down in Arkansas? Nope.”
“I talked to a man at the Arlington Hotel about a suite. Place’s got an interior bedroom that’s practically soundproofed so he can yell all he wants.”
“How come you can’t take somebody else along? What about that crazy man you got a job down on the floor?”
“You’re the driver, Park. We can’t take the train, God only knows what kind of messes he’d get into in public. And you’re the bodyguard, too, don’t forget.”
“I don’t know. What if he dies? I think they do sometimes, coming down off morphine.”
“It’s not morphine, Park, you know that.”
He was eating a grilled cheese sandwich, picking at the fries that came with it and dunking them in his coffee, a habit I found so distracting that I wouldn’t have hired him had he tried it during our first interview.
“Whatever you call it, we better talk to that doctor before he tries kicking it.”
PARK WAS RIGHT. A couple of laymen like us might have killed a man going through withdrawal, especially a man of Collins’s years. I spent the afternoon finalizing the plans for the trip to Hot Springs and phoned Ezra Groff, who disapproved of the plan.
“You ought to just gradually reduce his dose,” he said with some irritation at my failure to heed his advice. “I told you at the start, this stuff isn’t as addictive as morphine or heroin. It’s my belief that the man could get down to a reasonable daily dosage and do just fine.”
PARK POINTED OUT to me that a departure from Collins Field, or even Wichita Municipal, might spark rumors. Add to that neither one of us knew a pilot we could trust, so we started out on US 160 eastward two mornings later in the company Olds with Collins in the back seat, looking out the window at nothing and nearly catatonic. He didn’t even know where we were going or why; so passive had the old geezer become in his dependence on his medicine it was enough to tell him that if he wanted his dose he’d have to go on a ride to get it.
We stopped in my Dad’s hometown of Cottonwood and had a late lunch at the Jayhawk diner on Lincoln. The counterman was a chubby fellow with a shiny red face, and when he recommended the hash, Park and I ordered it. Collins refused to speak a word and got nothing, which seemed to suit him fine. I asked him if he was sure he didn’t want some coffee, and he half-growled, half-muttered something unintelligible but seemingly heartfelt. When I asked him to repeat it he shouted loud and clear: “I don’t drink coffee any more because it makes me want to piss and I can’t. Satisfied?”
The only other customers in the diner at that hour, a pair of old ladies, laughed furtively behind their hands, and the counterman worked his toothpick around in his teeth and looked like he wasn’t quite sure whether to throw us out.
“Sorry, Mister,” I said. “Our Dad’s a little bit confused these days.”
He nodded and forgave us. “My father-in-law’s getting that way.”
DESPITE ANOTHER DOSE of his medicine the boss was irascible and combative on the late afternoon leg of the trip, and he went berserk when Park accidentally let slip that the purpose of the trip was the narcotics version of a drying-out cure.
“I’ll be dipped in shit if I’ll let my employees dictate to me when and whether I’ll be taking one goddamn medicine or another! By all that’s fucking holy, you will stop this vehicle right now and surrender the wheel!”
“Sorry, Mr. Collins, I can’t do that,” Park said.
“All right, goddamn it, I’ll get a ride with somebody else,” he said, and with that he grabbed the door handle and tried to exit the Olds, which at that moment was hurtling down the road at about sixty per. I reached over the seat and grabbed Collins by his arm while Park pulled over to the shoulder.
“What do we do now?” Park asked as Collins thrashed in a fruitless effort to free himself from my grasp.
“Get the trunk open.”
DESPITE COLLINS’S SELF-INFLICTED infirmity, getting him into the trunk wasn’t easy, and