Read Online The Pain Scale by Tyler Dilts - Free Book Online

asked.
    “Not necessarily.” I unwrapped my sandwich. The grease from the meat had seeped through the paper along the edges.The hunger didn’t really hit me until the smell did, and the first bite tasted every bit as good as I had expected. “But we don’t want to rule anything out.”
    “A political conspiracy?” Marty said. “You do know that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, right?”
    “Not according to James Ellroy and Oliver Stone,” I said.
    “I stand corrected,” Marty said. Then he tore into his sandwich.
    “How’s the trial going?” I asked Jen.
    “It’s not. Not yet, anyway,” she said. “They didn’t even get to me. Sat around all morning. Waiting.”
    I didn’t know much about the case. Only that it was another Asian Boyz gang murder. It occurred to me that it was sad that I felt like I didn’t need to know any more about it.

    Late that afternoon, I had an appointment with my physical therapist. Her name is Brookes Little, which I always find amusing because she stands an even six feet tall. I’ve never mentioned it, though, because I’m afraid she would hurt me.
    “How are you, Danny?”
    I like answering that question for her because she is one of the very few people who seems like she is hoping for an honest answer when she asks it.
    “Better, a bit.” I wasn’t sure how much to share with her. “I think going back to work is going to be good for the pain.”
    “Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
    I spent forty-five minutes on her table, and she stretched and contorted my arms, shoulders, and neck in ways that still surprised me, even after nine months. Then she had me demonstrate several of the daily exercises she’d prescribed for me to check my form.
    “Have you thought any more about getting a guitar?”
    “I suppose I could get one.”
    She’d first made the suggestion several weeks earlier, and it was becoming clear that she wouldn’t be letting up. I knew her husband was a musician of some kind. Maybe that had something to do with her enthusiasm. “I just can’t imagine myself playing. I’m not very musical.”
    “You’ll play it.”
    “What makes you so confident?”
    “Because you always do what I tell you to. You’re good that way. Get the guitar. It’ll improve your hand strength and dexterity.”
    “Okay.”
    “Don’t just say okay and then not do it again.”
    “Okay.”

    After my appointment, I took a drive to the congressman’s neighborhood. Was Bradley really as homebound as Campos kept telling us he was? I didn’t have any illusions about how much I might be able to see. But I thought I might be able to get a glimpse of Bradley’s car. Even that wouldn’t be definitive, but I wanted to see it parked there with my own eyes. That wasn’t exactly true. I wanted to see it
not
parked there. I wanted to confirm my suspicions that Bradley was in much better shape than we’d been led to believe. I wanted to be able to call Campos a liar to his face.
    I drove up and down the street twice. The gate and the wall obstructed the view from the street completely. There was a chance that if I got out and walked up to the gate I’d be able to get a look inside, but I knew there was a camera on the gate; I’d have no chance at seeing what I wanted to see without someone inside having a chance to see me.
    The alley was my best chance. I circled around the block in my Camry and drove up the small lane behind the estate. Therewas no mistaking the rear of the congressman’s property. The wall matched that in the front, down to the swirl pattern in the stucco. The garage actually had its main entrance off the front drive, but its back wall stood only a few yards away from the rear wall of the property. As I had hoped, just past the garage was a service gate. Of course. It just would not do to have caterers and plumbers and other riffraff coming in up the main drive. At the edge of the gate, facing back the way I had come, was a single hooded video camera. It looked