Pain Killers Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mengele blunder.
    Rincin kicked the door open hard and jumped back, as if expecting gunfire from within. It seemed as ludicrous as waving a hat on a stick. But then, this was his job.
    Before we stepped inside he turned to me. “What did you mean before, about the doctor being the real thing?”
    “I mean,” I said, making it up as I went along, “I heard the doctor might still be using. See, I really want to work with people who are serious.”
    “You’re the serious type, is that it?”
    When I’d taken this job, I’d figured the big problem would be not spooking Mengele: trying to ID the old man without getting him nervous and without getting anybody who might be after him nervous. What I did not anticipate was having to bivouac in a tin-can petri dish barely bigger than a handicapped stall.
    On the plus side, I didn’t have a cell mate. And the ceiling was high enough so that I only had to lean slightly sideways to keep from scraping my scalp. The real challenge would be breathing. That smell. This wasn’t just a trailer, it was a biosphere. The site of what appeared to be an extended experiment on the interplay of mold and mammal discharge, with shag carpet, fold-down bed and kitchenette.
    I knew certain spores could alter brain function.
    “Excuse me,” said Officer Rincin, and squeezed past me close enough for his Taser to brush my genitals. It was an odd sensation. Odder when he reached toward me, arms extended. I was about to tell him I was a virgin when I realized he wasn’t going for a man clench but reaching for the two exposed screws above my head.
    “Beg pardon. Handles are missing. Bed folds out like so.”
    He pulled the single bunk down to eye level, then yanked down the built-in particleboard ladder. They say particleboard gives off peroxide, but they don’t say when. We both admired the efficient design. On impulse, I reached up and touched the sagging foam mattress. It was damp. Before this, I’d never even thought the word “soilage.” But there was something else. Teeth marks.
    “Hang on,” I blurted. “The guy before me was a biter?”
    “Good eyes.” Rincin nodded, lapsing back to canned tour guide delivery. “Now, if a citizen sees this, his first thought is,
What made a man sink his teeth into rotting foam?
But a CO? First thing
he’s
thinking is,
Nobody just bites. Not to judge a fellow officer, what
else
did this perv do on Nibble Nights?
”
    “Whatever it was, I can’t say I like the idea of sleeping in it.”
    But smiling Corrections Officer Rincin was ready for that.
    “Rubber sheets. Right now there’s a foam shortage. Good news is, we wrap her in rubber, you’ll be fine,” he said. “And we’ll get these handles fixed for you ASAP.”
    I was impressed. He seemed unfazed by the eye-burning stench.
    “Guy before you, name of Turk. Big fella. He drank a little…. His wife left him after he started as a guard. That happens. Administration got him this snailback. Then he drank a little more. Big Boy kept keeling over, grabbing the handles. Ripped ’em right out of the wood every time he fell. The investigators said that’s how it happened.”
    “How what happened?”
    I focused on keeping the fingers that had touched foam away from my face. That’s how you get staph infections.
    “The accident.” Rincin kneeled and yanked up a chocolate-colored splotch of carpet, revealing a bloodstain beneath. “They cleaned ’er up pretty good.”
    I didn’t ask any questions. The splotch, the bite marks, they pretty much explained it. The stench didn’t come from simple fungus. Or out of a cat. It was desperation. Left to ferment. Man fungus.
    Rincin checked his watch. “What say you take fifteen to get squared away. Then we’ll meet the warden. I’ll be right outside.”
    After he left, I thought I heard muffled heaving, but I wasn’t sure. The smell was so bad it affected my hearing.
     
     
    I’d moved into a lot of places. It’s weird. The first thing I