CHARLIE HEART

CHAPTER ELEVEN: WITH LOVE ~ G.J.

WITH LOVE ~ G.J.

         I tell Ginger that I forget about a dentist appointment this morning and I have to go. She says that it’s okay, she should probably get to work anyway. She says to be safe. I tell her I’ll call her tonight and she tells me she is excited to see me again.
         Thirty two minutes later and I’m pounding on Cassie’s door. The door I gave her, attached to the apartment I got her, filled with stuff I let her have.
         How did she come up with that twenty thousand?
         I kick in one of the windows and glass fills the front room. Good thing it was on ground level. A guy across the street holding a bag of chips and licking his fingers watches me with no expression. Like a desensitized young punk watching a boring movie.
         The place was empty, gone, dead.
         “Cassie?”
         Nothing.
         “Cassie, are you here?”
         I check the kitchen, bedroom, closets. nothing.
         I look out the back window, nothing.
         As I walk out the front door defeated, I stop in my tracks. The guy with the chips looks at me and smiles. I have to do a double take because he look familiar.
         Is that the red head from the seminar. The blinking kid with a copy of Ginger’s book?
         He pulls out a small metal device from his bag. He waves and blows me a kiss then pushes a button. There is a loud boom behind me and the next thing I know I’m flying over Cassie’s little patch of grass she has in her front yard. Fire, smoke and pieces of wood spit out all over me as my face slams into cement.
         Cut up, burnt, and extremely confused, I sit up. My ears are ringing like wedding bells, instant migraine.
         the door was blown off and the kitchen sink was two feet in front of me on the lawn.
         By the time I could get on my feet that guy was gone. I stumble around for a moment then fall to my knees and hang my head.
         The porch light falls and spray glass at me.
         Then I notice something, something very curious sitting next to me. A burnt up book, a very familiar, burnt up.
         My eyebrows raise, I’m shaking a little bit as I pick it up.
         ‘Project Punchline.’ It was a copy of Gingers book. What was this doing here? Half conscious, I flip it open, the title page has a hand written note on it.
         To: Cassie, revenge is a beautiful thing, we will be made whole again. Please follow my instructions on the next page and good luck.
         With love ~ G.J.
         Instructions? Instructions for what?
         I turn to the next page but it’s completely burnt out.
         Now is the point where I lie on my back and stare at the sky. I feel like a question box being stuffed with thoughts I don’t want to think about. Pieces to a puzzle I don’t want to put together.
         I hold the book close and I just can’t help it, I just laugh, a bloody twisted laugh. The healed up cut under my eye split open again from hitting the cement and I have to reach deep in my mouth to tear out my back molar that had broken up. I throw it across the lawn as the fire truck comes speeding in. Sirens, sirens, sirens.
         A group of girls scouts take my picture, I smile a bloody smile and someone says ‘say cheese.’
         Someone wants me dead, and as of right now the prime candidate is...
         I don’t let them take the book out of my arms as they stuff me into an ambulance. I can’t help but look around for the red head, I even look for Cassie, or Ginger.
         Nothing, no one but smoke and shrapnel.
         They throw a plastic jock strap over my face that shoots oxygen into my skull. I don’t need this but it makes me feel relaxed. I think better relaxed.
         Good luck with him, signed, ‘G.J?’
         What did that mean?
         G.J.
         G.J.
         I say the initials over and over again. There is no way that could be a coincidence. Did Cassie and Ginger know each other?
         Ginger Jainkins.
         Ginger Jainkins.
         I don’t need to go to the hospital but the people driving to ambulance think I do. I guess I don’t have much of a choice. Someone asks me if there is someone they can call for me. I just laugh. It takes four hours to get the doctors out of my face. Eventually Bruce shows up in his uniform with his short little cop partner, It’s Bob from the seminar. I want to laugh my head off but I can’t in a normal situation I’d be on the floor. Bruce makes him wait out in the hall.
         “Are you okay, Charlie?” He comes running over to me.
         “I’m fine, Bruce, thanks.”
         “When I heard your name announced by my dispatcher I thought you were dead.” He swings his big man arms around and gives me his big man hug. My bruises and open wounds take the painful embrace. I hate those hugs. “Got to turn off those stoves.”
         “Stoves?”
         “Accidents happen, Charlie. You have to be more carful.”
         “No, Bruce, this wasn’t an accident. I didn’t even have a gas stove in that unit.”
         “Charlie, what are you...
         “Someone is trying to kill me, Bruce.”
         He gives me that look. That look he gave me when we were flipping steaks. My gay melodrama.
         “Charlie, you always think someone is trying to kill you.” he sits down next to me, I put my face in my hands and rub the bruises.
         I nod then stand up. “Where are you going? You can’t leave.”
         I grab my torn apart Armani suit coat and the brunt up book of the end table and turn to head out the door.
         “What’s that book?” asks Bruce.
         “Nothing, just a boo...
         “Don’t be gay, Charlie, I’ve seen that before.”
         I stop and turn around.
         “Where?”
         Bruce looks at me with a confused look.
         “We busted this guy about a week ago constructing a bomb in his garage. That book and ten grand were stuffed in a briefcase. It was all folded weird and chemical note were written all over it.”
         “Who?” I ask firmly. “Where is he?”
         We look at each other for a moment.
         “Is there something you need to tell me, Charlie?
         I smile a vindicated grin.
         “I found this in the house that exploded, Bruce.”
         Bruce’s eyes went to slits.
         I whisper, “Coincidence?”
         Bruce puts on his thinking face that looks like a mixture of a monkey and prune.
         “Maybe,” he says.
         “What’s his name, Bruce?”
         “Charlie, you shouldn’t be...”
         “Bruce, we can have this conversation when I’m dead. You owe me one, Bruce.”
         “For what?”
         “For marriage counseling. Did you forget?”
         He looks offended, but he knows I have him. He looks out the window.
         “Thomas Lamar,” he says. “He’s in the county jail, he goes by Tommy.”
         My mouth drops to the floor.
         “Tommy?”
         He nods.
         My Tommy, the inventor? What was Tommy doing building bombs? What was Tommy doing with Ginger’s book? This was getting way to twisted to handle.
         I thank Bruce and close the door behind me. I hear him say be careful as it shuts. Bruce’s short partner is snoring in a plastic wall chair. I have a strong urge to slap him, but I hesitate.
         I need to pay the jail a visit.