Collegial Conspiracy
By Clabe Polk
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About this ebook
Harry Morgan is a happy active retiree living on the Gulf Coast, owns a sailboat, has a grown family and a wife of thirty-five years named Jean. Harry loves adventure, enjoys good times with friends and family, and sailing his boat along the Florida coast.
Wiley Middleton, an old friend, calls Harry out of the blue inviting him for lunch. Wiley has a request; the last request of a dying man. “Please help me rob a bank.”
Harry is sure Wiley’s gone nuts. But Wiley is dead serious, has a terminal illness and there’s a method in his madness. Compassion forces Harry to consider Wiley’s proposal. Naturally, Harry wants to help his friend, but helping Wiley risks everything Harry stands for; his values, his life, his liberty, and his marriage to Jean.
Forced out of his comfort zone, Harry must make a choice; between risking life as he knows it and helping fulfill the obsession of a dying man. How far should he go to help a friend?
Clabe Polk
CLABE POLK is into a second career as a writer of fiction. So far, he has written four novels, three novellas, several short stories, and has a couple of other novels in process. He is a lifelong reader with a great variety of life experience.With a background in biology and natural sciences, Mr. Polk has more than thirty-seven years in professional environmental protection program management and law enforcement.He lives in Powder Springs, Georgia with his wife, two daughters, and the family’s Cockapoo named Annie.
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Collegial Conspiracy - Clabe Polk
Collegial Conspiracy
Books by Clabe Polk
The Detective Mike Eiser Series:
Backslide
Hot Summer Nights
Schism
Angelica
Fire on the Mountain
The Adventures of Harry Morgan Series:
The Adventures of Harry Morgan, Book 1 (A collection of the following three novellas:)
Collegial Conspiracy
Emilio
The Pirates of Cayo Pelau
Christian fiction:
The Road to Armageddon
Short stories:
Short Fuse
Devolution
Collegial Conspiracy
A Harry Morgan Adventure
By
Clabe Polk
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1979683371
Copyright © 2017 by Clabe Polk all rights reserved
Edited by Felicia Sullivan, http://indie-editor.webs.com/
Published by:
Clabe Polk
Powder Springs, GA
CPolk625@gmail.com
Dedication
Here’s to all of our bucket lists…
whatever is to be found there.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 Meet Wiley Middleton
CHAPTER 2 The Bucket List
CHAPTER 3 Milk, Bread and Dog Food
CHAPTER 4 Honor Among Thieves
CHAPTER 5 The Call To Arms
CHAPTER 6 Where is Wiley
CHAPTER 7 Needle’s Point
CHAPTER 8 Tightening the Noose
CHAPTER 9 Banker’s Hours
CHAPTER 10 Break Point
CHAPTER 11 Killing the Pain
CHAPTER 12 Tony’s Ghosts
CHAPTER 13 Planning FUBAR
CHAPTER 14 Telling Tales
CHAPTER 15 The Plan
CHAPTER 16 The Heist
CHAPTER 17 The Getaway
CHAPTER 18 Auld Lang Syne
FROM THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Meet Wiley Middleton
Wiley Middleton downed the last of his beer and dug in his pocket for a credit card. There was no use putting off the inevitable. He had traveled more than a thousand miles, from St. Petersburg, Florida to Houston, Texas, for a second opinion. Now it was time to face the music.
When the headaches first started, he and Amanda were at a Tampa Bay Rays game at Tropicana Field. At the beginning of the second inning, he’d asked Amanda if she had any aspirin or ibuprofen. His head was pounding; he’d felt as though his head would split open like a cantaloupe on a cutting board. The ibuprofen hadn’t helped. By the end of the game, Amanda had to lead him by the hand to the parking lot, and then fought other drivers as she maneuvered to a place where she could pick him up. He couldn’t walk to the car.
That headache had passed, and life moved past the weekend and into the following week. The headaches recurred. Not every day, but a couple of times a week, and they were disabling. He didn’t tell Amanda about them, however, and in his third week of misery he went to the doctor, got a prescription for a strong painkiller, and endured for another two weeks. The painkillers weren’t helping, and he was becoming addicted to them. This time the doctor sent him for CT and MRI scans; the scans that clenched the rest of his life into a knot of fear and pain. The doctor was empathetic. He delivered the bad news professionally and with feeling, although no amount of regret would minimize it, no amount of vacillating would avoid it. It simply was what it was.
There was a recommendation for a course of radiation and chemotherapy that should begin at once, but Wiley didn’t hear it. He was already making plans for a second opinion. Amanda still didn’t know.
A waiter appeared. Paying his lunch tab with a casualness he didn’t feel inside, he walked out of the Irish pub and down the street toward the cancer center. If his life was going to turn into hell on wheels, he may as well not be late for the starting gun. More accurately, he felt like he was blindfolded, tied to a post facing the gun. At least, that’s what he dreamed about at night as he tossed and turned.
Amanda was irritated with his tossing and turning. He hadn’t told her, couldn’t tell her, about the diagnosis facing him. How could he condemn the woman he loved unconditionally to watch him waste away into oblivion a little more every day, until he faded away like a washed-out watercolor painting? Amanda’s father had died of cancer when she was a little girl. She had vivid memories of his sickness, his weakness, and the toll that radiation and chemotherapy had taken on his body. She was too young then to understand why, and it had left her with deep psychological scars and an ingrained fear of illness that Wiley had spent a large part of their thirty-year marriage trying to quiet. It’s not fair that she has to relive that with me, he thought.
***
So he’d asked for a second opinion to be sure whether his demons could be quieted, or whether they would eventually arise screaming, condemning him to death and Amanda to widowhood. Now, two days before New Year’s Eve when much of the rest of the working world was on vacation, as far as Amanda knew, he was in Houston on business instead of facing the inevitable alone. Two days until New Year’s Eve. Just fuckin’ wonderful. It was going to be a hell of a New Year’s celebration.
***
Thankfully, the doctor did not keep him waiting. With human concern but professional detachment, the doctor summarized the MRI and CT findings in light of his recurring symptoms. He concluded with one word—inoperable—and then launched into treatment recommendations.
***
Wiley, lost from the word chemotherapy,
didn’t hear any of the treatment recommendations. Vaguely, he was aware of the doctor talking about a lifespan measured in months to a year or so. He didn’t want to be sick. The headaches were bad enough, but the chemo? The nausea? The hair-loss? He had a real fear of the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. While he understood that his life expectancy was probably less if he refused treatment, he couldn’t stand the thought of being sick all the time.
Was he being selfish? A few extra months was more time with Amanda.
Amanda can’t watch me die.
A few extra months would only make it worse on her.
Oh, God! Not only am I dying, but I’m going to have to leave my wife to protect her sanity…and that’s definitely not fair!
With a sinking heart, Wiley realized he needed a plan: a bucket list of things to do before he died. He didn’t know where to start. Maybe with his medical and life insurance; cancer was expensive and his medical insurance didn’t cover everything. Even if he left Amanda, he wouldn’t divorce her. He couldn’t. And he certainly wouldn’t leave her with his leftover medical bills. There wasn’t enough life insurance to cover everything if there were medical bills left.
The doctor was holding out his right hand. "I’m sorry, Mr. Middleton. It has been a pleasure to meet you. If there’s anything I can do for you