Cold Sweat

I liked to watch my wife ,Sepia wash my ..I mean our car....She was wearing a pair of tight denim shorts that showed off her very shapely legs and a nice white blouse with no sleeves...She dipped the brush into the soapy water and began to gently soap and scrub the sides of the car...While I playfully pretended to lose control of the hose and squirt her gently....

"Kevin, stop it...okay...keep it up, you're going to pay for my next hair appointment" laughed Sepia.

"So what else is new ?" I laughed...

"Kevin !!! Look!!! Don't we know that guy?" said Sepia as she pointed to a guy across the street
from us.

He was tall, six foot four to be exact, but very guant.....almost as though he hadn't eaten in years.
Patches of his hair had fallen out and his face and legs were ashy....His clothes were hanging off of
him , yet..he was sweating profusely. It was a 90 degree day, but he was sweating far more profusely than he ought to be....I looked into the face...that sunken face and realized that this man I was looking at was none other than Football player and Number one draft pick of the New York Giants...Eric Derricote!!!

Just a few weeks before , he had been on a cruise with Sepia and myself... He had pretty well kept wavy black hair...He was built like Adonis with muscles rippling off of muscles and he was well kept and healthy...a far cry from this disheveled man I was looking at with patches of hair falling out of his head at a rapid pace , with sweat just running down his body like a faucet and with an incredible weight loss...

Sepia put her hand over her mouth.....She looked horrified , as did I. Eric saw me and walked across the street towards us....

"Hey man...Kevin....I am so glad to see you....I had to find you man, you're the only one who can help me." he said. I wondered why he needed my help. I forgot for a minute that I had despised this arrogant, egotistical weasal from the time that Sean and I had interviewed him for our magazine in New York. I didn't like the way he had taunted a good man, Dr.Leonard Culpepper into a murderous rage by humiliating him in front of the woman he loved and how that rage had led to Dr. Culpepper's suicide upon the ship ,after we discovered that he had murdered an innocent man....a man who had thought was Eric Derricote....A man who perhaps should have been Eric Derricote!

"Eric...what in God's name happened to you man? " I said...Not trying to hide my shock at his appearence.

"That's why I come here to see you Kevin...On the ship, I didn't recognize you at first...but then it come to me...you're the dude that did ther story on me when I was a first round draft pick..and you're the cat that solves all those murders on his spare time...Once I realized who you were..I knew I had to come to Philly and find you." he said.

"Eric, sit down over here...can I get you an aspirin or something?" said Sepia weakly...


"Uhh no...aspirin aint gonna help me now.....Look Kevin, long story short...I'm dying man...I've been poisoned...I don't know who did it or why...but I've been poisoned...My hair started falling out, I started losing weight and strength and then I started sweating, sweating profusely, all the time and everywhere...man....Somebody put something in my food.....Ever since I've been back from that cruise..I aint been the same...The New York Giants got me the best doctors money could buy and they said that they've never seen anything like this kind of poisoning...and they said that day by day..I'm just withering away...." explained Eric.

"So what do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Kevin, here is a key....I've got a locker at the Bus station downtown....Locker 99...In it, I've got
a book with a list of people you might want to talk to....two women I was seeing..One's name is as Odessa Mason and the other's name is Kathy Oh...she's Asian....I don't know if either of them had anything to do with this.....Ah don't think they knew about each other, but you might want to talk to them...Kev....find out who done this to me...make em pay...nobody deserves this...and look after Lolita for me....she's here in Philly." he said.

"What? I thought she was from North Jersey?" I said.

"She was...but she moved here after the cruise...I don't know why..I came to see her a few times,
but she wouldn't talk to me...Tell her..tell her I'm...I'm so sorry , for everything.." he said as he began to weep...

I couldn't believe he was such a drama queen...but indeed he was....I called 911 and an ambulance came and got Eric and took him to a nearby hospital..

'Well, what are you gonna do ?" asked Sepia.

"What should I do? I don't exactly like that guy and you saw on the ship,I didn't get too involved
in that case..." I said.

Sepia breathed heavily and gave me a look. I looked at her, hung my head, then said-

"Well, he is a human being and he's very sick and down on his luck and like he said...nobody should die like that..." I said.

Sepia took the hose and sprayed the soap off of the car....

"Come on hero...let's go check out that locker." she said.

"You know...Sepia...I was just getting ready to suggest that." I said.

Sepia frowned, then looked at me, then opened the passenger side of the door and got in!


(To be continued.....)