WYWH, Chapter 8: Medley of Mad Men
"Stop a minute, moron. Give me the gag. I'll do it." Marshall smiled sickeningly at Charlie, "You know what they say. 'If you want something done right, do it yourself.'"
Charlie figured he didn't have long to speak, and things weren't looking too good for him, anyway. Might as well say what he thought, He raised an eyebrow. "Huh," he began, feigning innocence. "And here all this time, I thought your goal in life was just to get me to do it for you."
Penfield's face became a mask of fury. He ripped the dirty cloth out of the hired gun's hand, pushed him aside and took a step toward Charlie. He raised the filthy would-be gag up and shook it. "You. Had to have all the attention. I was a 17-year-old sophomore at Princeton, the best minds in America grooming me for a flawless future, and what happens? A damn 14-year-old freshman, that's what happens. Couldn't even stay a freshman for a whole year! By spring you had caught up with me, already, and everyone's attention had turned to you. I would never have had to stoop to the tactics I did, if you hadn't taken away my resources, my shot at academic fame…"
Charlie snorted. "It's true you're a man of unusual talent, Marshall. I always thought that if you worked on the legitimate side of academia half as hard as you've always worked at finding the easy way out, your star would outshine us all."
Marshall had stopped directly in front of Charlie. Almost casually, he raised a hand to backhand him across the face. Charlie's head whipped to the side and he felt the sting where Penfield's ring had split his lip. "I was willing to work, Eppes! I needed some direction, that's all. I was 17 years old! But as soon as you showed up, I was old news. No-one had time for me, anymore."
Charlie knew it was probably a mistake, but he leaned over as far as he could in the chair and spit a mouthful of blood onto Marshall's polished shoe. He raised his head, and turned the other cheek. "My God, Marshall, even if you believe that was true -- even if you could convince me that your truly impressive, almost complete failure to make any kind of mark on the academic world, is somehow all traceable back to me, and our years as Princeton undergrads….Is that how you want to be defined, almost 18 years later? What kind of man is that?"
Charlie almost winced at the look that crossed Marshall's face. He forced himself to keep staring at him, told himself over and over that the man was a wimp in college, and a wimp now. He just needed to be put in his place. Charlie was convinced that was what Don would do, if he was here.
"I almost stopped you then. I almost stopped you again last year, when I was touring campuses and pointing out the discrepancies in the famous Eppes Theory that got you that first doctorate. Now you have three, and you couldn't even let me have that. You had to show me up as a complete fool to a roomful of my peers."
Charlie grinned, even though stretching his split lip brought tears to the back of his eyes. "Couldn't get my girl then, either, could you Penfield? I told you that she was a gifted mathematician, and that you would never be able to convince her that two inches was really six!"
Marshall raised his hand to hit Charlie again, then froze it in mid-air. "Moron!", he growled over his shoulder, "Let's forget the damn gag. Just give me your gun."
Charlie called his bluff – he hoped. "Kill me now, and you'll never get whatever it is you want this time, Marshall. I swear – has your IQ actually decreased?"
He saw the beefy hand of the shorter, stockier gunman from the motel slip a gun into Marshall's hand. Charlie watched with surprise and dismay as Penfield "racked" the slide mechanism on the semi-automatic handgun to chamber a round, as if he actually knew what he was doing. His face was somehow calmly sinister as he stared at Charlie.
He aimed the weapon at Charlie's left knee. "Oh, there are ways to shoot you without killing you. At least not right away. Ways to leave you capable of delivering to me all of your cognitive emergence research. In fact, since you're here now anyway, this could work even better. I can draft a confession, about how you stole the idea for this theory, and most of the research, from me. You can sign it before you commit suicide."
Charlie didn't know where his voice came from. "If I'm here to commit suicide, why am I shooting myself in the knee first?", he challenged, and Marshall's face darkened.
"Perhaps you're right," he said. "Leave it to Eppsie to point out the error of my calculations, again." He turned to hand the gun back to his hired hand. "Here," Marshall said, as he began to walk away. "I've already been gone from the conference for too long. I'll be back later tonight. In the meantime, find some other way to break both of his legs."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don and Oswald faced each other in silence.
"Well, shit," Don finally managed. He rubbed his chin, then reached almost abstractly into his pocket and brought out his cell. He saw three missed messages from his father. He sighed deeply and sat back in the seat. "Shit," he repeated. "Guess I'd better do this. Hang tight a minute, Oswald."
Oswald Kittner was not a young man who had grown up with the Eppes style of love. He sat quietly in his chair, listening to Don tell his father that Charlie was missing and he was in Chicago to help the police whether they asked for it or not, and he marveled once again at the commitment between brothers. He was thinking about times he had seen them together, and the way they took each other for granted sometimes. He could hear Don stuttering occasional "Dad…"s, and half-sentences: "You should…", "But it's not…", "I really think…". By the time Don flipped the phone shut, Oswald knew that Alan was going to fly out here, too. At once he felt joy, and sorrow. How could someone have that kind of love around him all the time, and ever, ever, have a bad day? Don immediately opened the phone again and called his father back. He growled in pure frustration when there was no answer, and slammed the cell shut again.
"He's coming," Don confirmed, standing. He looked back at the phone, which was receiving a text message. At first he recognized Megan's number and almost didn't read it, but at the last second he waited for the message to display. He shook his head and smiled a little. "Son of a bitch. Colby is coming with him. We'll take a cab out to the airport and meet them in about four hours, okay?"
Oswald stood awkwardly and uncertainly. He felt totally unnecessary. "Listen, I'll help if you want, man, but you don't need me. You got Colby and your Dad, and all…. You guys will work faster without dragging me around. Charlie needs you."
Don took a moment to study the young man before him. It was obvious Charlie thought the world of this kid. His brother had delusions of grandeur – he wanted to be Oswald's "Larry". Don also knew, from things he had learned during the case Oswald had been involved with a few months ago, that he had not had much, growing up. Oswald grew up believing "not much" was all he deserved, and Charlie was having a rough time trying to motivate him.
Don gave him a genuine smile, and spoke gently. "Hey. I want your help; I need it. And I'm not going to have you disappearing on me too, so you're my shadow for a while, got it?"
Oswald grinned and ducked his head. "Sure, man, anything that will help Dr. Eppes."
Don injected a little more force into his voice. "Okay. We've got time to try and track down Penfield. Let's move."