Prologue - Wherein Teddy Gets Whacked

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I had a great life before the bastards killed me.  Two thumps in the chest.  What they say is true, I never heard the shots.  I’d been digging up dirt in a corporate fraud case, and I guess somebody had taken exception.  The freakin’ cold started in my left big toe, just under the nail.  Slow moving and chilling like nor’easters comin’ off Chesapeake Bay.  I felt the bounce of the gurney being shoved into the ambulance and heard the slam of the doors, the chill now into my thighs.

I thought I heard a woman’s voice, fuzzy and distorted – I thought of Marianne Faithfull on a cheap sixties pocket transistor – “Nopreshure.”

Huh?  I forced the tiny bones in my ears to focus.

“I can’t get a pressure.  We’re losing him.”

Next thing I know, the bitch is pounding on me with a fist that’s hiding in a blue rubber glove.

“Hey You!”  She stuck her milk chocolate face an inch away from my schnozz.  “Don’t you freakin’ die on me.”

“Go ‘way.” My throat sounded scratchy to my pounding ears.

“What’s your name?”

I struggled to push air from my damaged lungs.  I felt the hot stickiness of my own blood.

“Teddy.  Teddy, uh...” But like the Nixon tapes, I just couldn’t freakin’ remember.

“Teddy, hunh.”

Thump! She pounded again and I could see her mentally counting the seconds.

“Mrs. Teddy’s gonna be waiting for you at the hospital.”

I felt myself drifting away.  The lightness in my legs had spread to my gut.  She pushed her nose and inch from mine.

“You stay alive, dammit.  So’s I don’t have to hit you again.”

When we burst through the emergency room doors, a familiar smile reflected the overhead fluorescents before morphing into a tight grimace.  The tears on my wife’s cheeks glistened for an instant before they dried on taut skin.  Her eyes were immense.  Wider and whiter than I’d ever seen them.  The air left my body and her silent scream penetrated nothing.  I wanted to sleep.  For a long, long time.