October 20, 2003
Ike & Ng
The first time you lose one, it is a surprise. Then you get used to it, and develop a routine as far as reanimation goes. Flat-line, get out the defibrillator, et cetera.
When a client went into cardiac arrest, it was usually the combination of Shooting, Stabbing or Sharp (few made it to Splitting) with Fearful or Punishing-Cruel, and it usually happened around Distressing or Horrible. Stress and fear seemed to play as great a role in cardiac arrest among clients as did the actual intensity of pain. Most clients hit the panic button before they even made it that far.
So the first time someone actually died the entire situation was so atypical that we weren’t expecting it at all.
Klaus was a drummer for the German metal band PainGarten. Imagine a black CD cover with a picture of your average contorted guy screaming and the band name in the usual flaming Blackletter script. That was Klaus on the cover.
Like most clients, Klaus heard about the DQI 1999 in some basement and the question, How Much Can I Really Take? wouldn’t leave him alone after that.
Turns out he could take a whole lot. The Seattle sky was caked shut with low clouds the color of a salmon belly when Klaus showed up for his session. It was drizzling. He took off his boots et cetera, showered, depilated and was helped into his discomfort suit. He received the usual briefing from Veronica. He was strapped to the bed and went through the initial tuning procedures with me.
The session lasted longer than most, a lot longer. As much as some of us liked to make fun of rock star poseurs and phony Goth pain gurus, Klaus took a lot. He didn’t even scream much, although there was some impressive contorting going on towards the end.
Splitting-punishing/cruel-horrible finally killed him.
When I say “killed him” I don’t mean he just went into the typical cardiac arrest. I mean his heart stopped and wouldn’t start up again. You can imagine the flurry of activity there for a few minutes until his death became obvious.
Electric shocks from the defibrillator did not help, nor did heart massage, the hitting him on the breastbone stuff, nor adrenaline injections.
Prof. K. finally had to admit it. “Klaus is dead,” he said. "As in doornail."
Maybe Klaus’s soul left his body and watched us standing around the bed and looked at a dead German guy for a while. See, look: our big problem, it turns out, was not that Klaus was dead, but that he was German. Or, more precisely, the combination of “German” and “dead under unusual circumstances”. Whereas the DQI had solid waivers and releases, it was not entirely clear whether the German government would be too enthusiastic about them.
“There could be consular repercussions,” Prof. K. said. While an international incident would be excellent advertisement, he pointed out the danger of Germany pressuring the US authorities to close down the DQI.
Prof. K. turned to Veronica. “Get Ike and Ng.”
Ike and Ng.
Of course, I thought. I’d always wondered what those two really did for the Institute. They were listed as “drivers” in the organigram, but there wasn’t enough driving done in the course of the day to justify those two on our payroll just for that. Of course. They were who we turned to when the attorneys raised their hands above shoulder level, flapping them while shaking their heads in resignation.
Ike and Ng were our average-looking ethnic males of last resort. The Disposal Team.
“Greg,” Prof. K. turned to me after Ike and Ng showed up and began stripping the suit off Klaus and carefully putting him back into his clothes. “You’ll be driving the van for Ike and Ng.”
I was naturally totally enthusiastic about driving two shady criminal types through King County in a van with a dead German rock drummer in the back, but Prof. K. insisted.
Ike, I couldn’t tell you how old Ike was. Ng either. That was one reason they’d been hired – it was really hard to give a good description of them. Ike could have been between thirty-five and fifty-five, Ng might have been slightly younger, or maybe it was just he was more or less Asian instead of more or less Black. Hair dark. Average build. Up close, like sitting next to you in the front seat of a white van lumbering down I-5, they both looked stronger than you’d think at first glance.
Ike calmly explained things to me. “When Prof. K. has a situation he thinks the legal stuff might not get him out of, we drop the client in a park somewhere, in a mall, whatever. The scenario is different enough each time that no one notices a pattern. One time Ng tells a lady in a parking lot outside Nordstrom’s, ‘excuse me, this woman just collapsed, would you please get help?’ and when the ambulance arrives, and the police, it’s just the one witness, the lady, who tells cops about an unidentified Asian man helping a woman who clearly died of heart failure. Another time, they find a man outside a Starbucks, Latte Grande still warm in his hand, tipped off by an unidentified black gentleman. Cardiac arrest.”
“So where’s a good place to find a German rock star?” I asked.
“I was thinking Ivar’s down on the waterfront. They have tables outside, we can park the van to block the view from the restaurant so no one sees us unloading him. Someone can find him later, beer flat, clams gone cold, you know? They’ll vaguely remember him talking to someone. Rock stars, their hearts stop ticking all the time.”
I never knew whether Ike and Ng had known each other before they started working for the Institute, nor how the Professor found them in the first place. Ng didn’t talk much, but Ike spoke with such candor he may have well as been holding a gun to my head. He was friendly and polite, but deep in his expression, somewhere in his eyes, was something that made it clear I was expected to keep this information to myself. It was like in the movies where the bad guy has Batman or James Bond tied up and is telling him everything because he expects the sharks or the lasers to get him in a couple minutes; the difference was that I didn’t see myself eluding these two.
When we got to Ivar’s, though, it was closed. There was a big sign in the window, big black letters reading "CLOSED" and smaller type beneath that, too small to read from where we parked, something else, and medium sized type beneath that reading, "King County Department of Public Health".
“Ivar’s is closed,” Ng said. In time, I noticed that although Ng was a man of few words, he could in fact have gotten by with even fewer, because whenever he did talk, it was usually to say something totally obvious.
Ng looked at the digital clock stuck to the dashboard of the van. We all followed his gaze. “Almost four o’clock,” Ng said.
“Seattle Center,” Ike said. So I turned the van around and drove to Seattle Center. We parked, loaded Klaus into a wheelchair and rode the elevator up to the top of the Space Needle. It was the perfect day for it – cold and drizzly, we had the platform all to ourselves, and there was hardly anyone eating at the restaurant inside either, it being such a crappy day and too early for dinner besides.
Ng ordered a couple hamburgers at the restaurant inside while I took pictures of Ike and Klaus standing at the fence around the platform. Klaus was looking towards the camera, more or less, while Ike turned his head away to look off towards the water and the mountains in the distance. He was good at this – in that position, you couldn’t tell anything about him – race, age or even gender.
It was at this point that the large family appeared. Ike's quick reaction really impressed me. My pulse accelerated, and my blood pressure must have also because I could hear my blood rushing through my head, but Ike stayed totally calm while two harried parents tried to keep five small children from climbing over the railing and falling many feet to their deaths, or at least getting entangled in the safety net below. He inclined his head slightly, signaling me to come over to him and Klaus.
We stood like that, three guys looking out at the water. Three guys having a tremendous argument.
“You crazy motherfucker,” Ike said loudly. “I never fucking said her pussy was worth a goddamn.”
“Oh fuck you,” I said. “Klaus here told me different. What a fucking liar.”
“Eat shit and die white boy. What does he know. Fuck you.”
We went on like that, arguing about fucking and pussy and ass and cock and fuck this and fuck that, getting louder and louder until the parents finally rounded their kids up and ushered them into the most remote corner of the restaurant for hotdogs or something.
Then we wiped prints off everything, hung the camera back around Klaus’s neck, propped him up in a corner and got out of there, me pushing Ike in the wheelchair. “One nice thing about the Space Needle,” Ike said, “is that there are no security cameras here yet. But I’ll never understand people who want to eat food in a revolving restaurant. Makes me seasick.”
Ng was already in the van when we got back to the lot. “Finished,” he said.
I dropped Ng off at Pioneer Square, where he caught a bus, then let Ike out in the University District before driving back to the Institute, where I parked the van out of sight in the basement parking garage.
Veronica was just leaving the building. She talked to me in the lobby for a few minutes.
“They’re good at what they do, aren’t they?” she said.
I agreed that they were. “Do you know anything about those two? Do they like live in houses with pets and celebrate Thanksgiving and stuff?”
“Do you? I think K. knows them from some previous study he did. That’s how they met. That seems to be how he meets all of us, isn’t it? Doesn’t trust anyone whose brain he hasn’t picked first.”
“I think trust is the wrong word to use with Prof. K,” I said.
I went back to my office, showered, changed into some fresh clothes. Found a bagel on my desk and ate that while reading e-mail. Drank something pink from a big-mouthed glass bottle. In terms of my preferences, the only difference between sleeping in my office and going home to sleep was that going home involved going out into the rain, starting my car and driving home, so I stretched out on the sofa.
