The Mentor by Pat Connid

Author:Pat Connid
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-08-13T23:00:00+00:00

AFTER I'D MET DOC on the street that first night, I’d found him a job as a stunt guy for a local radio show, something between gigs. I’d talked with a disk jockey one night at some shitkicker bar, and the guy lamented over an eleventh gin and tonic about how he didn’t have a suitable street guy. You know, somebody to run out and get celebrity gotcha interviews, or test the airbag on an ’84 Corsica, hit a dry water slide buck naked, whatever. Doc needed the dough and, it seemed to me, just the guy for the gig.

He lasted about fifteen months with the show, the tour ended when the show got fired.

Doc’s Q score was markedly higher than the regular cast members and subsequently he was able to perpetuate his “artist” business off the success for a while. During the lean times, he stretched canvasses for other artists. It was a living and didn’t require a tie, so he was in good shape.

The one thing about Doc that would concern most people is that he’s crazy. I don’t mean, “Hey, that dude is so bananas, he just stripped down to skivvies and jumped in the hotel fountain! What a wacky guy!” I mean CMF. Crazy Mother Fucker.

But being that high for most of life, floating up there in the atmosphere by yourself, all that time... well, if you stared down at the world too long, you’d be crazy, too.

After I’d pulled my white Ford Econoline into his “Quiet Room,” he walked around its shell for a full two minutes, as if he may be able to pick up on the signals himself without the RF detector. Goggles on top of his head, he scratched the parts where the black rubber met his skin.

“Why do you think you’re bugged, man?”

I said, “Do you think they need a reason why?”

“Absofuckinglutely right, man!” he said as he walked the length of the cargo van. The vehicle wasn’t terribly large, about seventeen and a half feet long, but you could hide a tracker or listening device in gumball, if the magazines I’d borrowed from the dentist’s office next to Lester’s were any guide.

He pulled the room’s heavy bay door closed, stepped on the kick-plate putting his entire 140 pounds on it, and pulled the handle of the latch downward. And after it locked into place, Doc reached up beside it and dragged a bolt across a metal slat that made it look like he was loading a round into a rifle that had been built into the wall.

A series of low thwop-thwop pops circled the entire room until every wall glimmered with the flickering light of the gas lamps. No electricity in the lead-lined room-- just more waves to Doc-- except a faint sound of an exhaust fan.

Standing there in a grubby t-shirt and paint-plastered cargo pants, I’d never seen him wear anything else; he put his hands on his hips, took a deep breath, and said, “This is freedom, man. No invisible demons running through your pores right now.

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