ISBN 1-59201-028-8
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
http://www.booksunbound.com
Publication August, 2004
Cover Art by D. Lee
Mismatch
James C. Rogers
Copyright 2004
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and occurrences are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not the goal of the author or Books Unbound.
Prologue
Québécois, the time of deceptions is over.
Québécois, the English and French upper bourgeoisies have spoken; it is now time for us to act..
This communique is from the Liberation, Chenier, Viger and Dieppe cells
We shall overcome.
Front de libération du Québec.
*****
Soon after midnight on October 18, 1970, near Entry Number 2 at the St. Hubert Airbase, demolition experts of the 2nd Combat Group and the Sûreté du Québec squatted behind a metal shield and cautiously pried at the trunk of a green Chevrolet, license number 9J-2420. At every squeak of car metal the men winced, held their breath--and imagined what it would be like to be maimed for life.
Bombing had been all the rage in Montreal that year. Queen Mary's Veteran's Hospital, the General Electric plant, Le Club Canadien, IBM, the home of Jean-Louis Lévesque (a well-known financier), the Montreal Board of Trade building, McGill University, a post office in Longueuil, and the Domtar Research Centre--all had suffered the explosive attentions of the Front de libération du Québec, the militant separatists who demanded independence for Quebec. St. Jean Baptiste Day was celebrated with a detonation at the Department of National Defense "B" Building, killing one and injuring two. On May 31 the FLQ exploded five bombs in Westmount, a stronghold of wealthy English and French Quebecois. Many of the English speakers were descended from Loyalists who had fled America during the Revolution. It seemed that once again they were being made to pay for their conservatism, for their loyalty to the government in power.
It was understandable that the soldiers and policemen half expected the '68 Chevy Biscayne to explode in their faces. Why it was only in July that they discovered and defused 150 pounds of primed dynamite in a Volkswagen parked on St. James Street, right outside the Bank of Montreal. They had been lucky that time.
Would their luck hold?
When they finally succeeded in popping the lock, there was a collective sigh of relief. The car did not blow up.
Then came moans of disbelief.
Inside the trunk was a bullet-riddled corpse.
*****
Communiqué from the Front de libération du Québec:
In the face of the arrogance of the federal government and its lackey Bourassa, in the face of their obvious bad faith, the FLQ has decided to act.
Pierre Laporte, minister of "unemployment" and assimilation, was executed at 6:18 tonight by the Dieppe cell.
*****
"Execution." So said they. But the premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, as well as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and most members of his cabinet in Ottawa, saw it as pure, cold-blooded murder. Laporte's fate only strengthened their conviction that they had been fully justified in passing the War Measures Act two days earlier, spilling additional troops into Camp Bouchard, twenty-five miles away, from whence they were directed into the streets of Montreal. Naturally, the FLQ responded that they had executed Laporte in reaction to the implementation of martial law.
Many citizens found these debates, denotations and ultra-refined definitions (murder vs. execution, illegal rebellion vs. legitimate revolution, and on and on) utterly meaningless. With everybody shouting, who could hear?
There had been two kidnappings that season. The abduction of James Cross came first and set the tone for the following month. A British trade commissioner, his capture had failed to win a single one of the FLQ's demands: release of political prisoners, their transportation to Dorval (in the company of their families and lawyers) for flights to Cuba and/or Algeria, and $500,000 in gold bullion, to be shipped to the airport in a convoy of Brinks armored trucks (a form of political commentary, as well as being profitable, since many French Canadians considered Brinks an outstanding example of foreign capitalist domination).
For that reason, Pierre Laporte became the next target. Trudeau, up to now frequently portrayed in political cartoons wearing hippie regalia and spring blooms in his hair, reacted by supplanting flower power with the bayonet. And for that reason, the Chevy did not blow up when the demolition experts popped the trunk, but instead exposed a grisly corpse.
*****
Later that same morning, at a deli on St. Catherine's Street West, Sergeant Brian McNaught tilted his last sip of Molson to his lips and smiled. Robin's Delicatessen was a mere half block from Royal Canadian Mounted Police Headquarters and a favorite haunt of the legendary (and, some asserted, legendarily benighted) RCMP. Hearing the rumble of trucks from the army's Royal 22 outside caused plenty of smiles in the restaurant that morning. This was how he and many of his peers had imagined it should be. A national emergency. Martial law. Slam the fucking peppers in jail, where they belonged. Let them bugger their way to heaven or hell or wherever it was French Canadians ended up after their well-deserved finis.
It might be temporary, but while it lasted, it was the best of all possible worlds. McNaught tried to force himself to be realistic. They couldn't possibly imprison all the French Canadians. Hell, they outnumbered the English speakers by a wide margin. So, what then? Ship all the peppers back to France, with the Indians and Chinese and East Indians in steerage? No, that wasn't very realistic, either. But it made for pleasant dreams.
"Time for work." A Mountie grinned at McNaught as he paid his chit and stood. McNaught felt the heavy nudge of his armory under his jacket and strapped to his leg and forced a smile. Murder? Well, that was work, he supposed.
"Right. I'm headed over the river."
"Pepper Country. Good luck to you."
Good luck, indeed, Sergeant McNaught thought after leaving the restaurant and sliding his aging Torino into Montreal's manic traffic, made all the more hectic by the numerous military roadblocks. When a group of soldiers stopped him, his booming English (so ineradicably lower-class that it comprised a kind of immaculacy) made presenting his Mountie identification superfluous. He was never held up for long.
Still, one young trooper ventured to ask why, under the circumstances, McNaught was not in uniform.
"What? You mean where's my peaked Stetson and Sam Browne, eh? Try this." He held out his ID, and added, "D Section."
"Security Service?" the soldier asked, too overawed for his own good.
"Right. Countersubversion. Don't confuse us with the CIB, those criminal investigation boys who parade for the tourists on Parliament Hill. We don't wear uniforms unless they're playing the Maple Leaf Forever, eh?"
McNaught had an appointment to keep. That he was running late bothered him only a little. The meeting he had arranged would change his life. At the end of the day, McNaught would be a wealthy man.
Yet even for him, killing a man--two men, if the need arose--was hard to contemplate. It was an enormous comfort that the snub-nosed .38 that bucked his floating ribs as he shifted in the car seat had not been issued by Ottawa. Even if it was found, it could not be traced. The same could be said for the .25 strapped to his calf and the extra .38 in the glove compartment.
Every year Canadian citizens flocked to Florida even as Canadian geese flocked north, and McNaught was no exception. He had purchased a small arsenal while passing through the southern states, at a gun shop in Virginia. Christ, it was a wonder. No questions asked. They were happy to hand the guns over, so long as you paid cash. Since he bought them using a phony American ID, the guns were as anonymous as newborns.
He crossed the Jacques Cartier Bridge and turned into the narrow streets of Longueuil. He had barely pulled up before the familiar small house, its patchy pink paint announcing its need for renovation, when a man came out the front door and took four steps across the tiny lawn to the Torino.
"Take St. Helene down to Papineau," the man said as he got in.
"The railway tracks?" McNaught sneered. "Don't tell me, an abandoned warehouse."
"It's abandoned," the man said.
They headed south, away from downtown, away from the thick knots of perceived conspiracy. Still, they passed plenty of troop-packed military transports moving toward the river.
"I thought we'd be leaving them behind," McNaught's guide said uneasily.
"From St. Hubert. They're bringing them in by helicopter."
"Tabarnak."
"You'll see more, now that Laporte's...." McNaught made a switchblade click with his tongue. "By the way, who pulled the trigger, eh?"
"You must have seen the press release. The Dieppe cell."
"Naw, I mean who? You must know."
The guide shrugged, then slid lower in his seat as another army truck roared by. McNaught was annoyed when their shoulders rubbed. To share an instant's body heat somehow made his intended crime all the more inconceivable.
Fifteen minutes later, they turned onto Papineau. Traffic suddenly vanished. They came to a building that looked as tattered as an abandoned woodshed in spite of its being brick. It once, perhaps, had been painted yellow. Above the boarded door faded blue letters hand-painted in a strange kind of liquid Gothic style announced COIFFURE CHEZ JACQUES.
They entered and stood in the dingy light of the vacant building.
They talked for a while. The conversation irked McNaught. "Is he running late?" he asked, elaborately sweeping his watch up to his eyes. He already knew the answer, of course. The treasurer was not due for another ten minutes.
They waited. Finally, a car pulled up outside. There was a long silence.
The gun weighed as much as the earth. The prospect was even heavier. For the first time, he had doubts. Could he pull this off?
It wasn't long ago that recruits to the RCMP had to be single, and remain single for the first five years in the Service. Jesus, people thought someone had to be a saint to become a Mountie--probably a virgin, too. And here he was, ten years on the Force, as bad an egg as could be. Other Mounties might be heavy-handed in the performance of their duties, enough so to have stirred up more than one controversy over the last few years. But McNaught was very much aware that he was probably one of a kind. It was a little embarrassing, really. A little... conspicuous.
A car door shut. McNaught adjusted the weight of his gun, making sure the bulge did not show. He could not start blasting away directly. He didn't want to risk spilling blood on the passbook and identification papers.
These two men had no idea of the kind of creature they were dealing with. McNaught almost felt sorry for them. But he pushed his doubts aside.
Florida. Florida forever. He'd heard a giant new theme park was about to open near Orlando. Disneyland forever. No, wait. It was to be called Disney World. Even better.
Footsteps. Someone raised the loose boards over the door and entered.
At first, McNaught thought the light was playing tricks--that contemplating his own corrupt designs had translated into a momentary hallucination.
But no.
His eyes were already accustomed to the dingy surroundings.
He had come here ready to meet the leader of the Chenier cell, the financial arm of the FLQ.
What had he expected? A bookkeeper. A worm.
Instead, he found himself confronting a human monster.
Chapter One
Twenty-six years later in a small town southwest of Norfolk, Virginia, a body lay like a sprung orchid under Paul Racine's tired eyes. In a kind of eager daze, he awaited his turn to take his portion. But there was an unanticipated delay. Somewhere in the fog of exhaustion he had forgotten he was no longer first to feast on the dead.
The anesthesiologist sat silent and bored at the head of the body, looking for all the world like a barfly who'd exhausted his tab but was unwilling to let go the hope for something on the house. It was hard to summon much interest when overseeing a corpse. All the reckless energy that had propelled it here was drained. Running on empty. Less than empty. The EEG monitor had been turned off four hours ago, when the neurologist officially proclaimed the victim brain-dead, a legal prerequisite for chopping a minimally alive human being into its various parts.
The young man on the table was no more than a small square island of exposed skin surrounded by a green lake of disposable sheets and square napkin-like absorbents. While it was true the body must be kept as germ-free as possible, to prevent infection from spreading to the recipient, the surgical cerecloth was useful in another way. Even the dead posed discomfiting personalities. The face was completely covered, though the disfigurement caused by the head wound was reason enough to hide what was left. A motorcycle fatality, 100 miles per hour without a helmet on Route 258. He must have felt like the supreme Kawasaki godhead before making an inconvenient, Druidical stop at the bottom of an ancient oak tree. That transplant surgeons often called motorcycles "donorcycles" was no idle quip.
Anesthesiologists. It was Dr. Racine's private theory that they were all born of the same genetic strain. Even if not physically lean, they wore a look of sinewy, impenetrable indifference. As the young overseer of the dead glanced lazily in the direction of the EKG monitor, Racine found himself wondering at a philosophical air that seemed but one step short of the products they dispensed.
No. It was an unfair assessment. The general public thought of an anesthesiologist as the man with the mask, the guy who knocked you out and relieved you of the pain of reality. They did not realize how important these doctors were to keeping you alive (whether or not you were legally dead) while surgeons hacked at your heartstrings. With a secret flush of guilt, Dr. Racine sought forgiveness with a smile. But the young anesthesiologist, sublimely oblivious, had turned his unnatural, otherworldly attention on the fluorescent X-ray viewing screen against the wall.
Racine re-sorted his categories. An anesthesiologist was an anesthesiologist, a perfusionist a perfusionist, a surgeon a surgeon. One of many, each of a kind. There were those who ascribed to heart surgeons a kind of whimsical absent-mindedness. They were so intent on the human chest that they let slip daily necessities. That, too, was unfair. Still, Racine had to admit, tonight he had played to form.
In a heroic attempt to reduce ischemic time (when the donor's heart was stopped and not receiving blood), Racine had raced to Byrd Airport and the Piper Seneca II standing by to fly him and his assistant to the southeast part of the state. Now he found himself wondering if he could have saved the hospital (and, more critically, his department) half the expense of taking a plane by making the ninety-minute drive to Franklin, using the Piper only for the return trip. As a foreigner, he felt particularly victimized, and even a tad terrorized, by American cost-cutting measures. Recently, he had even berated his secretary for her profligacy with paper clips.
He decided the only thing that could have been saved was the experience of yet another hair-raising landing at a backwater airport. Round-trip fare was unavoidable. There would have been no Piper waiting at Franklin Municipal for the rush back to Richmond.
The delay was annoying, and dangerous. What was wrong with him? Barry Wolfe, the transplant coordinator, must have told him the donor's liver and kidneys had also been crossmatched. Yet Racine had somehow allowed that critical information to slip his mind.
When Racine entered the heart and heart-lung transplant program fifteen years ago, removal of a donor's heart had priority, followed by kidneys, corneas and bone marrow. Now that liver transplants verged on the commonplace, the order had been switched. Progress had kicked Racine from the front of the line.
Between the two doctors slowly dissecting the kidneys, the specialist inspecting the liver, the technicians and the anesthesiologist, there was very little room for the transplant team from University Hospital. Of course, they would all fit when the critical moment of removal came. There was a formal, scientifically prescribed protocol for this type of dining in the OR. Cannibal etiquette.
Money again preempted his thoughts. Racine flashed back to a time of more space and speed, and the possibility it had cost his department dearly in transportation costs. Perhaps they could have caught a ride on a plane from Norfolk International, a small hop on a scheduled one-way charter to Richmond. And since the small community hospital just west of Suffolk and the Great Dismal Swamp was little more than a hundred miles away, an even thriftier option would have been the transplant department's ambulance--in reality, a military-olive '84 station wagon with the hospital and the division name hand-stenciled in black on the door. A driver with a heavy foot could have made the trip back to Richmond within the four-hour ischemic time dictated by current method.
Financially strapped, with an HMO making overtures to buy the hospital, demonstrating fiscal viability had become as much a concern as the health of their patients.
"You look beat," someone murmured over the affectless shushing of the ventilator.
It took Racine a moment to discover who was speaking to him. The room was full of strangers whose voices he did not recognize. With their lower faces sheathed in surgical masks, identity was a problem. He caught the eye of the anesthesiologist.
"I'm sorry, Doctor...?" Racine paused for the name.
Several heads turned in his direction. A lot of foreign accents were to be heard in American ORs these days, but few were French, and even fewer so thick they sounded like a parody of a parody: the Marx Brothers doing Maurice Chevalier.
"Storer," the anesthesiologist said. "I was just thinking you could crash downstairs for a little while."
"Crash?" Racine inquired, a vision of alarms, failing body systems, crikes and screeching EKG monitors flashing through his mind. His tone provoked chuckles around the table. They pictured him thinking of interstate wrecks and scattered limbs. Of bring-out-the-shovel time.
"You can sleep in the room directly below us. We keep a cot near the radiology lab."
The vivid mental image of disaster was only slightly ameliorated. To Racine's thinking, the need for sleep was one of the greatest catastrophes to have befallen mankind. All that time frittered away when it could have been used to thrust life forward so much faster, certainly more efficiently. A third of humanity's existence, wasted. His eyes burned. He had not slept in... he was too tired to remember. Turning to the surgeons probing the lower abdomen, he inquired, "How long?"
The two doctors paired over the kidneys aspirated noncommittally. Racine understood their grunts, knew (after thirty years in North America) that what might be interpreted as a verbal slap in a Continental OR was merely a form of shorthand in Quebec and the States. In fact, he knew exactly what they were saying: "We're not sure. It shouldn't take too long. But don't count on it."
"Où est le docteur?" someone intoned at the other end of the room, then answered his own rhetorical question: "Le docteur est à l'hôpital."
In Montreal, legal fiat dictated that doctors could speak only French when making their consultations, unless the patient in question spoke only English. It was a law that, by virtue of his Parisian upbringing, Racine had found easy to obey during his years at the Royal Vic. After eight years in the States, however, he had found accommodating Americans wanting to try out their high school French on him increasingly tiresome. He did not have time to provide language lessons. French was a beautiful language, yes, and everyone should learn it. But the Americans had schools (of a sort) for that sort of thing.
"Où est le professeur? Le professeur est à l'université."
Racine probed gently about the heart, ventured to check the central venous and volume lines.
"Everything seems fine."
"Hale and hearty, sir."
The irony of asserting the good health of a dead man was an occupational commonplace. Within minutes after the flat EEG was verified, blood had been drawn and sent to the lab. The serologies confirmed the dead man was free of AIDS and hepatitis.
Racine was struck by the anesthesiologist's deferential "sir." American doctors were not renowned for their courtesy. He studied the face above the mask and with a shock realized the anesthesiologist looked hardly older than a subintern. Was it possible the attending had left this body and its precious perishable cargo in the hands of someone just out of medical school? From experience, Racine knew almost anything could happen in these small-town hospitals. Perhaps this was not a doctor at all, but an EMT yanked off a passing ambulance.
Offhand, Racine could think of a couple of reasons for what he considered a breach in medical etiquette. The donor was brain-dead, which to the logical, trained professional was enough to supply the final certificate. An unthinking lump of flesh not only lowered one's medical batting average, but laid severe stress on the attending's morale. Let someone else take the scut. That was what young men were for. The transplant prima donnas would be served well enough.
But it was more likely that no experienced anesthesiologists were available. Fewer and fewer young people were entering this field, which inflicted so much grief and offered so little in the way of compensating glamour. When a patient died the anesthesiologist was often held to blame, while surgeons gleaned all the glory for survivors. It was not an appealing prospect. With fewer students choosing the field, the shortage was beginning to show.
"How do you like Virginia?" asked the man who had tested his French on Racine.
"It's very much like France, in certain areas."
"Did you see the fields coming in?"
"It was dark."
"Too bad. Really lovely. This is peanut country."
"Ah," Racine said, as though he had missed seeing the Louvre.
"You can't beat Virginia. Cotton, peanuts, Virginia wine. All the best things in life."
"Ah," Racine said again, then turned to the head of the table. "Can you please tell me where's this place to lie down?"
"Out the hall to your right, you'll find the stairs," Storer said. "Go down one flight, then first room on your left."
"Thank you." Racine broke scrub, pulling off his gloves and handing them to the nurse. He pulled down his surgical mask, exposing the reddish bristles of a day-old beard.
In the equipment-cluttered hall Racine spotted Brent Sorensen talking to a hospital staff member. Once again, qualms squirmed like heartburn beneath his ribs.
For months now Racine had been perturbed by a situation in which mystery piled on mystery. Sorensen was the latest layer. A first year surgery resident, he had been foisted upon Racine as a last-minute replacement for the perfusionist who usually accompanied him on these trips. It had been Dr. Toney's idea. The head of the Department of Surgery had grown uncommonly interested in the patient for whom this heart was intended. And while the type and cross-match with the current donor looked very promising, Racine could not shake the idea of an unethical and possibly illegal abuse of medical prerogative. Usually, Racine was quick to dismiss unsubstantiated suspicions. But there were too many oddities surrounding this particular case.
Within a group notorious for flaunting their egos, Sorensen was a young doctor of outstanding gall. The only resident to snap his gum during Grand Rounds, who once ventured to correct a teacher in the middle of a lecture--in front of other residents, Sub-I's, Fellows and (worst of all) the patient being reviewed.
Talent sans tact spelled failure in Racine's eyes. One was pointless without the other. Had he been the lecturer that day, the resident would have found himself in very hot water indeed.
Racine was renowned not only for his knowledge and craftsmanship in the OR, but also for his equitable personality. Where other doctors raved, he reasoned; where others resigned, Racine pushed fate to the edge of the envelope. Most amazingly, he cheerfully volunteered his own time when other surgeons felt a crimp in their schedule. Even in a field heavy-laden with workaholics, he stood out.
On the obverse, pushed too far, he was known to sizzle unreasonable surgeons on his critical spit. At least one overly-egotistical doctor who had finished his Fellowship only a few years earlier resigned from the staff after a long but logical dressing down from Racine, who thoroughly convinced him that he was an untalented, even dangerous, practitioner of the medical art. The hapless individual in question did not quit medicine. But he did move somewhere else.
"You would never have finished your residency under my aegis," was Racine's ultimate cut. So far as anyone knew, he had only said it once. It was enough.
Low whispers.
The man to whom Sorensen was speaking saw Racine emerge from the OR and fell silent. Though in green scrubs and surgical cap, Racine knew he was not a doctor. On leaving the operating room a surgeon's first impulse was to pull down his or her surgical mask for an unobstructed breath of cool air. In the hall the stranger, mask up, looked like a bandit. Worse, a fool. It was one of the more ridiculous aspects of American hospitals. Many secretaries and members of the custodial staff wore scrubs to work. There was no rule against it. Surrounded by some of the largest egos of any profession, it was only natural that they would seek compensation for their presumed lowly status. Racine thought the habit annoying and unnecessary. Without good clerical and maintenance support any hospital would quickly plummet into the chaotic world of discards and missed appointments. But as in so many things in the commercial glut and moral vacuum that was the United States, appearance was everything. A cheap issue of scrubs could impart an aura of importance, not to mention the illusory drastic increase in salary and the subsequent esteem and mating value.
Still, Racine had never seen this behavior carried to the extent of wearing a surgical mask, let alone wearing it in the hall outside the OR, where the charade would be spotted instantly.
Sorensen followed the stranger's eyes and saw Racine looking at them. For a moment the resident from University Hospital seemed nonplussed. He pulled away from the stranger, as though to disassociate himself from him. Seeing his overreaction reflected in Racine's look of surprise, he reversed himself completely and shook the stranger's hand.
"Catch you later, buddy."
"Right." The stranger took one last glance in Racine's direction before ducking down the stairwell. In spite of the cap and mask, he looked vaguely familiar.
"Are you ready for me, doctor?" Sorensen asked, coming forward. Then, too quickly, added, "Sorry if I kept you waiting. I ran into an old friend--"
"There's a delay." Racine hesitated. He could focus extra-human concentration at the operating table. When he was this tired, however, the attendant details of day-by-day drudgery tended to slip. So many irregularities had accumulated around this case that the most recent had gone unnoticed. It was Dr. Toney, chairman of the Department of Surgery, who had spoken to the transplant coordinator. Not Racine. Toney had filled him in on the donor's status and contacted Sorensen. It was Toney who had contacted the OR nurse to reserve an operating room, Toney who had ordered the plane.
"Did Dr. Toney say anything to you about possible delays?"
"We have to wait?" Sorensen shook his head, the relief in his tone mocking the concern inherent in the observation. "That's rough." He let go a low whistle to signal he knew exactly what was on Racine's mind: the expensive Piper. Not that it mattered to him. In a few years he would be out. The HMOs might be gobbling up private hospitals as well as public, but anything was better than the University, understaffed, under-funded and overburdened by a niggling bureaucracy.
Still, the hospital, as a state-run institution, gave invaluable training in one thing that would hold him in good stead the rest of his professional life: denial.
"Toney didn't say anything to me." And then, employing a phrase that could have been the state motto, continued: "I don't know anything about it."
It was an attitudinal stance light years removed from Racine's youthful years at the Sorbonne's Hôpital Necker. He still found it incomprehensible--and insuperable.
For unknown reasons, Toney had chosen Sorensen as his pet. There was little doubt that, with the chief's support, the young man would win a Fellowship at one of the nation's more prestigious teaching institutions. Any reprimand from the transplant surgeon would slice badly, ending up in the bunker of Toney's parent-like tolerance for his chosen.
"There's a room downstairs, directly under the OR. I need to close my eyes for a little while. Please let me know when they're ready."
Sorensen snapped his gum. "OK."
This is a sample of
Mismatch by James C. Rogers
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Author's Biography
Born and raised in Virginia, J. Clayton Rogers lives in Richmond, where he indulges in his favorite pastimes: reading, writing and hiking; along with his library card and his 10,000 books, his favorite possession is his free pass to all of the state parks in Virginia, a benefit available to employees of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. His inglorious past has included jobs ranging from kitchen help (at Disney World) to golf tour lackey to convenience store clerk to insurance claims adjuster to homeowners property/casualty analyst. Mr. Rogers has made the rather bogus assertion that writing would be a snap if it weren't for all the cats leaping onto his notepad and keyboard. Along with his wife, Christiane, he cares for 22 stray felines that have found their way to his door. Mr. Rogers cannot lay claim to being a great linguist. In eleven years of marriage to his French wife, he has not gone much beyond "Bonjour" and "Je voudrais le cendrier, s'il vous plait." Productive if not prolific, he is the author of 15 novels, including Mean Spirit, which was published by Books Unbound in 2003. He is currently working on Passenger, the tale of a boy haunted by a mysterious entity from the future.
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