by Weston Ochse
McQueen shrugged again. “Same as any poem, I guess. Who knows? You ready to talk to Lore? Think you can stand?”
Starling put weight on his feet and managed to pull himself upright. He was a little dizzy, but otherwise felt strong enough to move. He started to pull out the IV, but McQueen stopped him.
“Let’s leave that in until the bag is gone. You need the fluids.”
Starling assented but felt like a patient as he shuffled out the door of the room they were in, hand gripping the pole that held the saline bag rolling beside him. Once in the hall, he glanced down to where the elevators were. He could end all the bullshit right now. All he had to do was rip free the needle in his arm and make a break for it. McQueen wouldn’t chase after him and, with any luck, Starling would find a package store where he could pick up a pint of anything… even drain cleaner. He was so thirsty for some booze. He had that twenty-seven dollars plus change he’d begged for in Koreatown. He could really do it. He paused and closed his eyes.
“You okay, man?” McQueen asked.
Starling could feel the man’s hand on his arm, the flesh and blood connection of a friend and fellow soldier. They’d shared time together, doing things that no two men should ever have to do. Starling had stood by McQueen when others wouldn’t because of his personal tastes. McQueen had stood by Starling even in the darkest of times, especially those moments of obsidian clarity when Starling had understood the totality of his actions against the Afghan colonel. That there’d been a moment, however fleeting, he’d thought of leaving his friend and Lore, sent a sick shiver through his chest that would have released as a sob had his jaws not been clenched. He held it there and tasted the grimy bile that was his addiction, then swallowed.
“Yeah,” he managed to say. “I’ll be fine.” Which wasn’t the same as being okay, but it showed an optimism he was just beginning to feel. Alone he was nothing; he’d proven that to himself and the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. Together, as a team, he was everything. A single moment of lucidity laid out what had to be done before him… for Lore… for McQueen and the rest, wherever they were. It was time to get the team back together.
They moved down the antiseptic hall to the open door to the room were Lore was lying, awake, her face a mix of anger and confusion.
The nurses had succeeded in wiping off most of the symbols on her face, but there were still enough there that she’d draw looks if she were to go out in public. Starling wondered what they stood for. McQueen had been smart enough to record her voice. Starling hoped he’d also photographed the symbols so that they could go to the oracle of Google later and see what they meant.
He stood in the doorway staring at her, trying to divine what had happened to the once proud and professional woman.
Fifteen seconds passed until her head turned toward the doorway. When she saw him, her eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you? The fat version of Boy Scout?”
He couldn’t help laugh and entered the room.
McQueen came behind him.
“In the flesh, Lore. And what about you? I loved your new outfit. You looked ravishing in your tinfoil.”
“And your makeup,” McQueen said. “I haven’t seen that sort of creativity since the last Satyr Motorcycle Club rave in Tahoe.”
Both Lore and Starling turned to McQueen.
“What? The Satyrs. They’re an actual MC. A gay MC.”
“I don’t think it’s the same thing,” Starling said.
“Definitely not the same thing,” Lore added. “Can I guess what happens at these raves?”
McQueen blinked, then grinned. “Okay, fine. Not the same thing.” Changing the subject, he asked, “How you feeling, Laurie?”
“Like I was rolled hard and put away wet.”
Starling loved that about her. She was tough as nails, cursed like a Navy chief, but could easily be found wearing a dress and makeup at a niece’s cotillion.
“Care to tell us what happened?” Starling asked.
He could see her working through a possible answer, her eyes widening, then going to slits. Finally a tear fell from her left eye. “We need to go back.”
As she said it, Starling knew it was true. Still, he wanted to hear her words, so he asked, “Where? Afghanistan?”
She nodded. “For weeks now, I’ve been fighting it. It started as a dream of us back in Afghanistan waiting for something, then it changed and I saw a girl and she had a—”
“Goat. She had a goat,” Starling said. “Was its mouth sewn shut?”
“Yes, a goat,” she said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “But in my dream its mouth was just a mouth. So you dreamed it too?”
Starling nodded.
She turned to McQueen. “And you?”
McQueen glanced at Starling, then nodded.
“I knew it!” Starling said. “I knew you dreamed about that goat.”
“Was he playing tough guy?” Lore asked.
“When isn’t he?” Starling responded.
“There was that time in Herat when he found that waif of an Italian major. What was his name?”
“Antonio something. Wasn’t it Antonio?” Starling asked.
“I think that’s right,” Lore said. “Maltefano was the last name. Antonio Maltefano. He was a hot guy, if you liked them in miniature.”
“He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall,” Starling said. “He literally disappeared in McQueen’s shadow.”
McQueen cleared his throat and said, “You know I’m in the room, right?”
“Just making sure you know your place,” Lore said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re not a roadie. You’re with the band. Part of the team. You like to play this aloof gay ninja warrior, and it probably works in some circles, but not here. We’ve seen you without your makeup and in curlers.”
“I’m not a ninja.”
“And I’m not as crazy as I look.”
McQueen smiled. “I see Lore is back to her old self. Good girl. I think I’ll go check on Joon and her son, though,” he said.
After he left, Lore asked, “Joon and her son?”
“Long story. Weird story.” He noted that the saline bag was empty and pulled out the needle. He let it fall, hanging from the bag, then pushed the contraption against the wall. He approached the bed as he held a piece of tissue against the place where the needle had been. “So what happened? Why are you quoting thirteenth century poetry in Persian?” He touched her cheek. “Why the marks?”
Her brown eyes burrowed into his. “Oh, Boy Scout. How I’ve missed you. I was hoping you’d come to my rescue.”
“You’ve never seemed like the rescuing type.”
“That was then, this is now.” She lowered her gaze. “Things have been… difficult for me.”
“It’s been weird for me too. I have these dreams and then Joon—this Korean woman I was sent to—well, anyway she thinks we’ve met before.”
“When you saw me, I was at wit’s end,” she said. “I had these words stuck in my brain. Persian you said? Who the fuck knows Persian?”
“Uh, Iranians?”
“Whatever. I had these words and I didn’t know what they meant, but they were everywhere. I’d go to Starbucks and I’d ask for a Triple Chocolate Latte—don’t judge—and instead of my order, I’d speak those words. What the fuck, Boy Scout? How does that happen? I’d be at the checkout line at Von’s and try and say a simple thank you and, blam, those damned words. I lost my job with UPS because every interaction was apparently a practice in thirteenth century Persian poetry and my boss thought I was crazy. It got to the point that I stopped talking entirely. I’d write things down like I was a mute. I had a whole stack of stickies back in my trailer. Things like thank you for a Starbucks order or can you pass me a carton of Newport 100s. Shit like that.
“Oh,” she added, sitting fully upright. “I even had one that said Fuck You Very Much, which I reserved for this one ass hat clerk at
the last working video store in Riverside, who took it upon himself to decide which videos someone could watch like he was the king of video or something. Bottom line was I had these words stuck in me so, I cleared my trailer and got ready, then had my own fucking mystical rave.”
Starling’s eyes narrowed. “That was all you? You set that up? And the tinfoil?”
She grinned. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Then she laughed, full and throaty. “How many times have we said that? Huh, Boy Scout?”
“Stop calling me that,” he said.
“What? Boy Scout?”
“Yeah.”
“But that’s who you are.”
He shook his head. “Was.”
She paused a moment, then asked, “So there’s a weight limit to being a Boy Scout? That why you don’t want to go by your call sign?”
“We don’t call you Preacher’s Daughter except in the box.”
Her eyes narrowed. “No, you don’t. Say, you’re not feeling all right are you, Boy Sc—I mean, Starling.”
“I’ve been better. I’ve had my own crazy shit to deal with.”
“Crazy like tinfoil, Saran Wrap, and the entire encyclopedia of religious icons drawn on your skin?”
“Crazy like eight balls of coke, X, Special K, and the old fall back, Windowpane, along with a shitload of pizza and vitamin V.”
“Oh,” she said, drawing out the word like everyone’s mother. “You were self-medicating. Yeah, I tried that, but it didn’t work for me. I’d pass out and get stuck in dreams about the girl and the goat. Fucking weird, right?”
“Totally fucking weird,” Starling said, suddenly impossibly happy to have Lore back in his life.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
“Why you asking me?”
“You’re team lead. If you want to get back to being Boy Scout you need to start making decisions. So what’s next, El Jefe?”
Starling sighed and looked inward. “We seem to be having the same dream. We both have this idea that something’s been left undone. I can’t explain this feeling I have… this need that’s been gnawing at me. I have no rational explanation for saying this, but I feel… I feel that if we go back, we’ll figure out what all of this means.”
After a moment to take it in, Lore said, “I’ve been feeling the same.” Then she laughed self-consciously. “Didn’t you see my fashion statement?” Then she got serious. “But we can’t just go back to Afghanistan. It’s not like we can take a cruise or anything. We need a contract. Think you can get us one?”
“I think so. Maybe. Depends. If we’re going to get the team back together, we need to make a stop in Phoenix first.”
“Oh yeah? What’s there?”
“Narco.”
“And you think he can help?”
“We need his connections.”
Suddenly a commotion erupted from the hall. A loud voice, punctuated by an “I don’t think so” by McQueen, followed by a scuffle, then the sound of a body hitting the floor.
Chapter Eight
STARLING SAID TO Lore, “Get your things. I think we’re about to move, and fast.”
By the time Lore swung her feet off the side of the bed and was ripping her IV out, Starling was at the door, watching as two stunned nurses and a doctor stared down at a rent-a-cop unconscious on the floor. McQueen stood over him, violence coloring his cheeks.
The downed security guard was Asian. Probably Korean. Starling lunged forward and knelt beside the unconscious man. He fumbled through the pockets of the guy’s padded jacket until he came out with a cell phone. He swiped it on and checked the last numbers called. He recognized it immediately, then stood.
“McQueen, report.”
“Mall cop here said he recognized me from an APB that was just posted.”
Starling shook his head. “That’s bullshit. Larrson was the last number called.”
And there were probably more on the way. Starling glanced worriedly at the elevator, which showed that the car was on the first floor. “You know what this means, right?”
“GTFO,” McQueen said.
“GTFO,” Starling repeated.
Starling stood and began addressing doctors, nurses, techs, other patients, and his friends. “Here’s the situation. A criminal gang is after us. They are bad, we are good. This man alerted them to our presence, which makes him bad. Very soon the criminals are going to come here. They are not after any of you. They are after us.”
A doctor stepped forward, gesturing towards Starling. “What sort of horseshit is this? You’re in a hospital, not a—”
The doctor fell to his knees as McQueen grabbed his fingers and ground them together.
“Let the nice man talk,” McQueen said in a gentle voice. “He has a plan. Don’t you, Boy Scout?”
Starling jerked at the use of his old call sign, then shook his head. “See if the doctor has a cell phone.”
McQueen let go of the doctor’s hand and held out his own.
The doctor whimpered as he pulled out a phone and handed it to McQueen.
“What’s your number?”
As soon as the doctor said it, Starling typed it into the security guard’s phone, then made a call. The doctor’s phone buzzed in McQueen’s hand.
“Now we have coms. Go and get us transport. And not what we drove in here with,” he added, thumbing the logo on his shirt. He glanced down the hall. “Make sure we can fit the boy too.”
McQueen broke into a run. He ignored the elevator and headed further down the hall.
As soon as the big man left, the doctor stood and said, “I’m going to sue him for this.”
“Do what you need to do,” Starling said.
“I’m going to call the police is what I’m going to do,” the doctor said.
Starling nodded. “Do that. In fact, do it now and do it quick. Remember what I said? The bad guys are coming.” When he saw the doctor hesitate, Starling yelled, “I said call them. There are worse people than us out there and they’ll be here soon.” Starling called over his shoulder, “Lore, you ready to go?”
“All set, boss,” she said.
“Then let’s get going. On me,” he said, and began moving toward Joon and her son at a brisk walk. When he was close, he said, “Follow me, Joon.”
Lore was following but using the wall to steady herself.
Starling considered helping her, but she saw him and shook her head.
Starling knew that it would be the police who would probably get there first. Possibly several were in the hospital already. Hospital security would also be notified. Larrson couldn’t have co-opted all of them. Whatever was going on, Starling had little doubt they were being tracked by the hospital security cameras.
They rushed down the hall. When Starling saw the room he wanted, they all ducked inside the staff lounge. Once the door was closed, he whirled on Joon.
“Why’d you call him?” he asked Joon.
“I didn’t,” she said, backing away.
“You had to have.”
She shook her head as tears burst at the corners of frightened eyes. “But I didn’t.”
He turned to the kid and snatched free the iPad from its holder. He closed the game being played, then checked and noted that the WiFi was on.
“You been talking to anyone?”
The kid swallowed.
“Who? Who have you been talking to?”
“I—I wasn’t ta—talking. It was my dad. He messaged me.”
“Did you tell him where we were?”
The kid shook his head. “He asked, but I told him I wasn’t allowed to say. He got mad.”
“Who bought this?” Lore asked, stepping forward.
“I did,” Joon answered.
“With whose money?”
“His father gave me a credit card to use. And no, I haven’t used it in days.”
Lore thought hard. “Did you also use it to open the iTunes account?”
Joon nodded.
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��Then he has access.” Lore turned to Starling. “It’s not enough to get rid of the Find My Phone Apps or their like. You can search for a connected Apple device through iTunes.” To the kid, she asked, “Did he ask for your iTunes password?”
“Yes, but I didn’t—” Tears burst from Freddie’s eyes.
“There you have it.” She turned off the WiFi and handed to Joon. “He can keep it but the WiFi has to be turned off.”
Joon took the pad and put it back into the clips on the chair.
“What is it about him?” Starling asked softly. “Why does he want the kid so much? What aren’t you telling me?”
Joon glanced nervously at him but wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m leaving the both of you here.”
Lore peeked out the door. She was still wearing her hospital gown and her butt slipped free of the ties. “Starling, we need to go.”
“You really need to tell me,” Starling said.
But Joon stood her ground, staring at the floor. The only sign of her nervousness were her fingers working furtively at her sides.
“Then that’s it. I’m going.”
He turned and strode to the door.
“Coast clear?” he asked.
“Hardly. Security is down the hall.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Can you take them?”
She snorted, then removed her hospital gown and strode into the hall stark raving naked, her gown draped around one arm.
Starling let the door close, but put his ear to it to listen.
“Can someone help me with the ties?” she asked in the sweetest voice. “They’re just so hard to get to.”
“Miss, put your clothes on,” said a deep voice.
Another voice, the doctor’s, said, “She’s one of them.”
Joon approached Starling with her hands out. “Please. You can’t leave us.”
Starling eyed her but said nothing.
“One of who?” Lore asked. “Who am I one of?”
“Ma’am, put your clothes on,” said the deep voice, now closer.
“He’ll kill me and lock up the boy,” Joon said.
But Starling remained silent.
“Ma’am, you really should—”