Pain Killers by Jerry Stahl Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t listen.”
    “You don’t listen?”
    “Nope.” His voice dropped an octave by way of transmitting some bit of arcane and dangerous wisdom. “I watch the hands.”
    “The hands?”
    I raised my own palms in front of my eyes and stared at them. Who were these dangerous strangers? Then we both leaned forward again. Had either of us gone further we’d have bumped foreheads.
    “So,” I said, “say somebody’s across the table pointing their fingers at your solar plexus like a .357; how would you read it?”
    “That’s easy. My read would be they’re letting me know they’re armed. In every sense of the word. I’d say they were saying, ‘Don’t try anything, fella, ’cause I’ve got your number before you even start counting.’”
    I put my hands up and sat back in my chair. “Point taken. Don’t shoot.”
    The warden checked his watch, snapped his fingers and pointed to the door. Which was apparently Officer Colfax’s signal to step behind me again. Colfax took a car-crusher grip on my shoulder, holding me down. Was the warden afraid I was going to attack him? Or did his bodyguard just like me? In prison, everything was something else. Which was true on the outside, too. Just not as vividly.
    The warden moved smoothly to the door, where he stopped and faced me. “Might want to study those files. See who you’re dealing with. They’re all very excited.”
    “And the German?”
    “You’ll meet him. Then you can tell me. He’s supposed to be
who-sis
again?”
    “A doctor,” I said.
    Zell had implied the warden was in on it. But here he was playing ignorant. Which meant either Zell was lying or the warden was testing me again. Retesting. To see if I’d be on the level with him.
    “Dr. Josef Mengele,” I said.
    “Right right right!”
    The warden snapped his fingers again, causing Colfax to tighten his pincer grip on my trapezoids. I resolved not to cry out. I was an easy crier as a boy.
    “The Doctor of Death,” he continued, heading for the door. “I saw a thing, on the History Channel.”
    It was obvious he wanted to leave. I didn’t take it personally. There were important chow hall trazor incidents to adjudicate. Funding to nudge out of Sacramento. But I couldn’t just let him go without asking—even if it made me look desperate.
    “Do
you
think it’s him?”
    He stopped in the doorway, eyes narrowing as he made a snap decision to give up real information. “He’s a ninety-seven-year-old man who talks German to himself. You ever listen to German? It sounds like when you get glass in your garbage disposal. Even when he talks American, the old guy’s accent is so thick it sounds like he’s farting out of his mouth.”
    “Nice. He say anything you remember?”
    For one bad second I was sure he was going to order Colfax to go supermax on me. Leave me sobbing on the curb with a bus ticket in my mouth and a broken collarbone.
    “Wernher von Braun. That’s the only thing comes to mind.”
    “Wernher von Braun?”
    “Do I have to repeat that for you? I have a penitentiary to run.”
    He started out again, and before I could consider the consequences I heard myself plead,
“Wait!”
It came out more shrieky than I’d have liked.
    The warden thrust his jaw back through the door. Even if he was under control, I was pretty sure his jaw wanted to kill me. “Did you have abandonment issues, son?”
    “I just wanted to know, what is he in for?”
    “Who?”
    “The old man—I guess we don’t really know if he’s a doctor.”
    “I’d say he was a man of science.”
    “Why? What did he do?”
    “Hit-and-run.”
    “Hit-and-run? How’s that make him a scientist?”
    “When they picked him up, he had his own little lab going. They don’t know what he was making, but he was making something. Any more questions, I suggest you ask Officer Rincin, and he’ll refer you to the proper individual.”
    This time he didn’t say good-bye. Before he followed, Colfax unclenched my