Book 3: Dobie’s Dilemma

Episode 1

© by William Arthur Holmes

Starting Over

Riva – the spy who loved me – and I were living happily ever after until that never-ending-credit card stopped working and we had to get jobs. She knew she could find work as a covert operative. They’re always hiring.

It was difficult leaving her, but I wasn’t going to follow her around like a military spouse. Maybe we would meet again. Maybe not.

I went back to LA and hung out a few weeks. I bought a used Hyundai – SUV in case I had to sleep in it – but managed to stay with friends. Then I remembered that “staying with friends” was how Riva and Venelia’s old boss/guru Serge/Elroy had found me last time.

With that in mind, not telling anyone where I was going, I hopped into my Hyundai and drove east… for hours. The CHECK ENGINE light came on just outside of Barstow, but it had been flickering off and on since I bought the thing, so I ignored it.

Past Las Vegas – surrounded by pavement or sand since leaving Southeast Asia – I decided I needed more greenery. I’m from Louisville, Kentucky originally – where it’s nice and green – but my father and sister have since moved to Lexington. My mother died several years ago, and I have no idea what my brother is up to these days, if he’s even alive.

In Missouri, I missed the connection to I-44 and so continued on I-40 to Nashville, Music City USA. That’s where the car broke down. I guess that warning light wasn’t joking this time.

The mechanic said something about the timing belt, transmission and something else. I left it with him, asked which neighborhoods to avoid, and took the next bus in the opposite direction.

Days turned to weeks, weeks became months… well, you know the progression. I decided Nashville was as good a destination as any, and I stayed. It was green enough.

Lehavre

I managed to go several years in Nashville without anything particularly stupid happening. But, my luck eventually ran out, and I had to leave everyone and everything behind... again.

I found a job in IT a few years ago at Lehavre NA, headquartered in Brentwood, just south of Nashville. It was the North American arm of a Belgian conglomerate that had been gobbling up bioresearch firms on this side of the pond. They bought and renamed Hemsley Research shortly after I started.

Everything changed when I stumbled upon what they were doing in one of their labs. I had a clearance level of “secret,” but only those with “I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you” clearance knew what really went on at that lab.

They listed their own whistleblower number, but I never trusted corporations. The larger ones don’t mess around. Government security pales in comparison to that of corporations involved in certain kinds of research.

They’re not openly called hit men, but they designate a few of their security team as proactive and, voila, you’ve got yourself a hit team. I assumed Lehavre’s whistleblower number was that team’s direct line. Their only question would be, “Where are you right now?”

Paranoid, yes, but better safe than sorry.

When the lab director’s assistant Darla – a full-figured blue-eyed blonde, and the only good thing about that place – called one day, it was nice to hear her sweet southern drawl. My wife Cori and I had another argument that morning and it reverberated all the way to work. Our marriage was running on fumes.

Oh yeah, I got married. A lovely hazel-eyed brunette woman named Cori. She was honest in a way that felt refreshing at first. A welcome contrast to what I usually run into. Honesty cuts both ways, but I could take it... usually.

I used to think I married her because of that honesty, but now think it was only because she reminded me so much of Riva. They had the same build, same dark hair, same way of looking at you – both with captivating eyes – like they’ve got you all figured out.

Cori is all-American, with a midwestern twang, while Riva had that sexy Eastern European accent. Other than that, they could’ve been twins.

Darla and I always enjoyed a lively banter – usually over the phone. We’d only met in person a few times at company functions, but you wouldn’t know it to hear us talk. There was an instant spark, but we kept it platonic.

~ ~ ~

Tim sat in the cubicle behind me. He was a couple years older and shorter than me, but with a handsome face framed in thick brown hair. He’d been with the company longer and enjoyed a regular stream of co-workers, mostly women, stopping by just to say hello.

We had an unspoken competition to come up with the best one-liners. On a good day, we were the second coming of Abbott & Costello. We couldn’t come up with a more recent comedy duo at the time.

Tim suggested Sonny & Cher, but with me as Cher because I was taller, it didn’t work for me. That duo where one of the guys doesn’t speak didn’t work, either. We were just Tim and Dobie until further notice.

On a bad day, Tim and I were called into the principal’s office – our boss, Griffin – and given a talking to about professional decorum in the workplace, blah blah blah.

We regularly overheard each other’s phone conversations and, after one of my calls from Darla, he would say something like, “Phone sex again?” or “Get a room!” or “Have you told your wife about her?” My responses were equally juvenile and not worth repeating.

On this latest call from Darla, she said the lab’s production line was “messed up.”

“The term you’re looking for,” I said, “is ‘hosed.’ Probably caused by a Windows update.”

I laughed. She did not. She was under duress. Boss breathing down her neck, probably staring down her blouse.

The software controlling the hardware was not working. And that’s as technical as I’m going to get. Nobody wants technical details.

She said Jimmy, the handyman down there, couldn’t fix it.

“Jimmy couldn’t jimmy it?” I offered with a laugh and smile in Tim’s direction, but he wasn’t there. He would have drummed out a ba-dum-bump with his hands for that one.

There was silence on her end, but if you listened closely you could almost hear her rolling her eyes.

“No one can fix it,” she sounded defeated.

“Are they holding their mouth right?” I asked.

I knew things were bad when she didn’t even scoff at that. Even at my stupidest jokes, she would at least scoff.

The idea that it matters how you hold your mouth while fixing something is a joke from Tennessee, I think. I’d never heard the phrase until moving there, at least. I’ll give the middle Tennessee IT community credit until someone else claims it... which seems unlikely.

She was in no mood for jokes, though, so I stopped.

Griffin

My boss Griffin usually dealt with that place when someone had to be on-site, but he was on extended medical leave. Brain cancer, poor guy. Glioblastoma. They weren’t sure he would survive, let alone return to work any time soon.

He had been spending quite a bit of time at one of Lehavre’s nuclear medicine facilities lately. The building was new, with a lot of empty office space, leaving room for expansion. He set up shop in an unused office next to one of the CT scanners.

He was an old hippie-turned-IT-guy, keeping a guitar within reach next to his desk. “You never know when a song idea might hit you,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. From “everywhere and nowhere” as he put it, he settled in Nashville a couple decades earlier hoping, like so many others, to make it in the country music business.

I once asked why he preferred this facility over the corporate office, and he said, “Home is where I hang my guitar. Besides, it’s cool being in a brand-new building. Gives me a fresh perspective.”

“Uh-huh,” I smiled knowingly. “I’m sure the former swimsuit model receptionist out front has nothing to do with it.”

“Hadn’t noticed her,” he laughed. “But here I don’t have to babysit you and Tim, and there’s no name on my door. It’s my little hideaway.”

The building manager assured him that his office was perfectly safe, but a routine inspection months later discovered that the CT scanner had been leaking radiation. The design of those rooms includes lead-lined drywall, doors, and observation windows to absorb radiation and ensure the safety of adjacent spaces. However, several sections of ordinary drywall were used instead of the lead-lined variety. Whether this was deliberate cost-cutting or simple human error remained unclear. What was clear was that Griffin had been soaking it in for months.

~ ~ ~

Tim would have been next man up to take care of Darla’s lab, but he was in a serious car accident a couple days prior and still recovering. That’s when the conspiracy theories began. What happened to Tim was no accident, they said. And by “they” I mean Tim.

It was a warning. He knew too much.

I’m not quite the conspiracy theorist that Tim is, but don’t dismiss them out of hand, either. Coincidence and conspiracies happen all the time. Some people don’t believe in coincidence, but I do. Up to a point. As to conspiracies, I assume they’re happening all around me. But, unless it’s personally affecting me, I don’t care enough to come up with a theory about it.

There’s a traffic light at the entrance to our corporate office, and that’s where Tim’s accident occurred. Someone t-boned his car as he turned into the lot. Tim had the green light, but that was a moot point to everyone but the insurance company.

I drove past the wreckage as I entered the parking lot that morning, gawking like everyone else as I squeezed past the emergency vehicles, not knowing Tim was in the middle of all that. I should have recognized the gold Firebird artwork on the hood, but it didn’t register at the time.

Tim’s theory had it that someone in a fake Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) uniform and vehicle – we’ll call him T-Boner – had placed orange traffic cones in the right lane in front of our building to keep it clear. He then pulled his truck in behind those cones and waited. As Tim passed through the intersection, T-Boner punched the accelerator, plowed through the cones, and rammed Tim’s car.

The official story was that the TDOT man had a heart-attack and reflexively slammed the accelerator, but the conspiracy theory was more fun and, as it turned out, the truth.

~ ~ ~

I visited Griffin and Tim – on different floors of the same hospital – and the latter filled me in on the former’s leaking CT scanner. Before I could make it clear to Tim that I didn’t want to know anything – after what I’ve been through, I want plausible deniability on everything that ever happened to anyone anywhere – he dragged me into their little secret.

He considered himself a witness and said I was one now, too. Any decent lawyer would quash our testimony as hearsay, but Tim insisted that was not true in this case because Griffin had told him in person. In bed as he was, hooked to an IV drip with one leg elevated, I wasn’t going to argue with him.

On my way out, he said, “Give Darla a kiss for me.”

“You can do it yourself soon enough,” I tried to cheer him up, “when they let you out of here.”

~ ~ ~

Griffin’s wife and sister were in Griffin’s room as I made my rounds. The sister, Rachel, said they had grounds for a massive lawsuit. The wife – Dina, or something, I’ve already created a mental block – was on the phone the entire time, talking to lawyers, glaring at me like an uninvited guest.

I timed it right and caught Griffin while he was awake. Lying in bed, looking like hell – as people generally do when deathly ill – Griffin was pleasantly surprised to see me.

He gestured for me to come close. He could barely talk but felt the need to confide in me.

“I was hoping after all that radiation,” he said between gasps, “I would have superpowers. You know, like Spiderman?”

He then laughed so hard that his monitors began to shriek and nurses came rushing into the room.

“What did you do!?” the wife out-shrieked the alarms.

“Nothing,” I shrugged. “He told a joke, started laughing, and you saw the rest.”

She gave me an evil look, turned away and resumed her phone conversation.

Rachel had driven all the way from Colorado to be with her brother in his final moments. She said a line from one of his songs kept popping into her head: “Scatter my ashes where the road meets the sky.”

She hoped to quote several such lines when the time came. I agreed it was a great line, and said I wanted to participate, if possible.

The wife turned back and glared at me. I could feel her staring holes through me but never looked up to acknowledge it. Now, every time her image or voice creeps unwanted into my thoughts, I imagine her surrounded by flying monkeys, and finishing every sentence with “and your little dog, too!”

Rachel and I exchanged numbers. I said it was a pleasure to meet her. His wife and I pretended each other didn’t exist.