THE PRIVATE STASH
The Final Page
I returned to the city with the taste of sand in my mouth and a cold knot in my stomach. But it wasn’t the taste of defeat. It was the taste of irony, and it was heavier than anything I’d ever felt. The case was closed, and I had the truth. A truth that was a tragedy, but also a triumph. A ghost from my past had made his final play, and he’d won, but he’d lost everything in the process. He had done what he’d always promised: he’d cut off his own slice of meat, and it was a slice of an endless, dreamless sleep.
I sat at my desk, the single lamp throwing a circle of light on the worn wood, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the stale air. The phone sat there, a direct line to more grief. I knew what I had to do. Evelyn was waiting. She was probably still in that penthouse, staring out at the city lights, hoping for a miracle that wasn’t coming. I picked up the receiver and my fingers moved without thought, dialing the number. The phone rang once, twice, a third time, each ring a hammer blow to my conscience. And when I heard her voice, soft and expectant on the other end, I almost hung up.
“I found him,” I said.
A breath of relief, sharp and fragile, came through the wire. “Is he… is he all right?”
“He’s alive,” I told her, and the words felt like a lie and a truth at the same time. “But he’s not with us, Evelyn. He’s in a coma, a deep one.”
I told her everything, leaving out no detail. I explained the fortress, the doctors, the drugs. I told her about the endless sleep he’d bought for himself. There was a long silence on her end of the line, and I could hear her tears, soft and distant. Then she spoke, her voice laced with a strange, new hope.
“But he’s alive,” she repeated, the words clinging to the last shred of a dream. “That means there’s a chance, right? That means there’s still hope?”
That was the rub. The twist that only a man like Amos, and a city like this, could dream up. I took a deep breath. “The doctors told me something else,” I said. “The concoction he made… the one that put him under… they learned that minus the single ingredient that sent him into a coma, it’s a cure. They’ve found the answer for his cancer.”
There was no sound on the other end of the line, just silence, a silence filled with a tragic, beautiful understanding. He had lost everything, but in his final, desperate hustle, he had won. He hadn’t saved himself, but he had saved countless others. He had become a ghost, but not the kind that haunts. The kind that leaves a legacy. The report was finished. But the case wasn’t closed. Amos had left a bright new chapter just waiting to be written.
