emptying bedpans. A couple of days later, these other guys show up—Secutores—and everyone's asshole puckers even more.”
“Why does Prime Earth send in independent security consultants if they've already gotten everyone running scared with lawyers?”
“Oh, these guys aren't with Prime Earth.” He shakes his head. “No, no. Prime Earth takes off as soon as these guys arrive. They're still dumping paperwork on the hospital, but it's all hands-off now. Secutores is in charge.”
“And then?”
“A week ago, I manage to get one of the nurses to talk to me. She won't tell me anything useful, but she tells me the ward has gotten really quiet. Like ‘no one there' sort of quiet.”
“They released them?”
“How? And where did they go?”
“They moved them, then.”
“Again: How? And where?”
“I don't know, Ralph. That's why I'm asking you.”
He fidgets in his chair, one of his legs bouncing up and down. Arguing with himself. “Ah, fuck,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Look—” he starts.
I pick up my mug and take a swallow of tea. “I'm almost done with my tea,” I say. “When I finish, I'm leaving.” He needs a push.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “There's this guy. I don't know what happened, but somehow he got lost in the shuffle when everyone was being brought in. He says he just got up and walked out of the ER. Came back the next day with some story about an accident in his garage.” He shakes his head. “I don't know how he got away with it, but they didn't make the connection. Old dude. Veteran of some kind. Vietnam, I think.”
I know who he's referring to, but I let him continue. Gus had been one of the engineers on the boat, a retired Navy enlisted man. As a young man, he had been a Riverine in Vietnam, running the engines on one of the converted monitors that harried the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta. His boat had been overrun one night, and he and three other Navy men disappeared into the jungle for five years as POWs. A lot of the crew thought Gus was the craggiest bad-ass that had ever lived, and he certainly leaned into the part, but I knew from the tremor in his hands and the way he pressed himself against the bulkhead, eyes downcast, the few times I had passed him in the ship that his bad-ass days were far behind him.
“I was looking for anything, any sort of lead that I could use to convince my editor this story was worth following up. That there was more going on than some bullshit US company getting all squirrelly about getting sued. I got in and found this guy. Talked to him one night. He was going to be my source to blow the whole thing wide open…”
“They figure it out and disappear him too?”
Ralph shakes his head. “He died. In his sleep, I guess. His room was just empty one morning.”
Death. It comes quickly to some. I suppress a shudder. “What was he going to tell you?” I ask. “He give you any hint?”
“You read my last story,” Ralph snorts. “What do you think?”
I had, and knowing about Gus's death, I understood the underlying bitterness that ran through the story. No reporter likes losing a source, especially when the story they know is there suddenly slips away from them. However, I know how to reel him back in.
“I was there too,” I tell him. “On the Cetacean Liberty.”
“Bullshit,” he says, but his disbelief doesn't reach his eyes.
“That man's name was Gus,” I tell him, and I go on to describe the scars on Gus's hands and the tattoo he had on his right shoulder. Ralph eats it up, that hardened nugget of hope that he hadn't been able to let go of suddenly softening in his hands, threatening to become malleable again. Something that he could shape into that story he dreamed about.
“Holy shit,” he whispers when I finish.
“Now,” I say, putting my hands on the table. “let's talk about those two guys at the hospital right now. How many more of them are there? What's their routine?”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to ask them some questions.”
“I… I don't think that's a very good idea,” he blanches.
“Why, Ralph? Don't you want some answers? I know I do.”
I can tell he is not a fan of the direct approach, and I concede there's some prudence there. He's not entirely sure why they are there at all if everyone has been moved