That, and the hills of St. Thomas, smothered under dark-green rainforests.
Halfway up the hills, I saw a scattering of homes spaced far enough apart to be considered “private,” but not so far, they were remote. Big decks and windows and white roofs seemed to push through the thick canopy, as if the houses were gasping their last breaths before being smothered by foliage. Here and there, blue FEMA tarps replaced the white rooves on several homes.
I took out my phone and looked up the VA’s address, then copied and pasted it into my GPS app.
Crown Bay Marina was close to the VA office. Less than a mile. I could make it without breaking a sweat, even as the sun rose overhead.
“My phone says we’ve got a little over half a mile from here to the VA.” My eyes darted from DJ’s titanium leg to his face. “Want me to call a cab?”
“What do you need something like that for? Bone spurs?”
“I’m trying to have a little compassion for my fellow man, DJ. That’s all. I just thought you might prefer riding in a car to walking in the heat with your leg thumping around.”
“Save your compassion for somebody who needs it. Just point at the VA.”
I jabbed my arm northwest like a spear.
“Then let’s get going,” he said, walking past me. “We don’t want our lead getting cold, right?”
We crossed the side street leading to the marina, made our way through a parking lot and hit Moravian Highway just beyond it.
Ahead of DJ, and having already crossed the highway, I stepped into a narrow parking lot attached to a blocky structure. The lot was big enough for one row of parked cars and space to drive around them but not much else.
The building looked like some of the cheaper apartment complexes I’d go past whenever I had to drive up to LAX to fly somewhere. No detail to it, no frills, nothing but four white walls, a roof, and however many windows it took to keep the place from looking like a prison.
A half dozen sets of doors punctuated the walls every twenty feet or so. I spotted one set that displayed a pair of window stickers of bald eagles holding American flags in their talons, soaring over the Rockies, and knew it was the VA without even seeing the small print on the door.
Going straight for the entrance, I walked between a Jeep and a Kia, then stopped to see where DJ was. He’d crossed the highway and was hobbling up the narrow strip of grass between the road and the parking lot.
An intense guilt swelled in me. I shouldn’t have been pissed at him. Not for anything he’d done. Life was hard enough for him without me holding a stupid grudge or being thin-skinned about every prickly word he had for me. For God’s sake, I used to jump out of airplanes in full scuba gear, then swim to shore and ruck a half dozen miles through the Florida swamp. I should have been able to handle a ribbing.
When he moved between the Jeep and Kia, I pulled open the VA’s front door. A blast of chilly air rolled out, feeling like heaven on my bare skin. I soaked in the AC while DJ shuffled to the front door. When I followed him in, I found myself in a small waiting room. Ahead, beyond DJ, was an empty receptionist’s desk. A hallway branched off to the left of the desk, then led to the back of the building. “We should wait for somebody to come up front,” I said.
“Why?” DJ set himself in the direction of the hallway. “We’re both vets.”
Before I could argue the point, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket, my eyes on the back of DJ’s head, swiped my thumb across the screen without looking and brought the phone to my ear.
“This is Jerry.”
“Jerry,” a man’s low, silky voice said, “it’s good to hear your voice again.”
A chill sank through my gut.
“Arlen.”
I smashed the heel of my palm against the door frame as I stomped outside, where the Caribbean sunshine gnawed at my forehead with a deeper bite than it had just seconds ago. Arlen Burkhart was the last person I wanted in my ear. Especially now.
“You’ve got some real balls, calling me,” I said. “How’d you get this number?”
“I only called to talk to you briefly,” Arlen said calmly. “I don’t mean to freak you out, Jerry, but that’s unavoidable sometimes. That being said, I think it’s important that the two of us say some words to each other. All I’m asking for is thirty seconds of your time.”
“I’m not giving you anything,” I said. “The last time we spoke, I made it crystal clear that you don’t get a single second of my time ever again. Then I moved across the country, which I assumed would get my point across. Apparently, I assumed wrong, because here you are, calling me.”
“That’s exactly why I’m calling,” he said. “I thought I owed you a warning that the distance between us is going to shrink. Considerably.”
“No, you stay away from us. You have your part of the country, I have mine.”
“I understand why you’d feel that way,” Arlen said. “And in a perfect world, I’d be able to honor your wish to stay away. But, Jerry, this is reality. And the reality is I’m a businessman. I have business interests across the world that need my presence from time to time. In this particular instance, there’s a pharmaceutical company in Puerto Rico that has asked for my guiding hand. Maybe you’ve heard of Hildon Pharmaceuticals? I own a two percent share, so our personal enmity has to take a backseat—as uncomfortable as it may be.”
Puerto Rico? How did he know we were in the northern Caribbean?
“I don’t want to, but I have to invade the neutral zone to see to my financial interests.” he said. “I’m genuinely sorry for the problems that might cause you.”
I barely heard him over the boiling rage between my ears. That whole spiel about being a businessman who had to see to his financial interests was all a lie.
Arlen could have zipped to Puerto Rico and back without me noticing. Wasn’t like he needed a place to stay. He’d only called because he wanted to get close to me.
He wanted to try drawing me in again.
“Since when?” I barked at him.
“Since when, what?”
“Since when did you become a two percent owner in a Puerto Rican company? Was it after Alicia and I decided to move here? Or did you do it years ago, and this is another of those weird accidents that always seem to happen in the way you want them to?”
“You are free to look at events through whatever lens you prefer—it’s not my place to convince you about what’s chance and what’s intent, Jerry. And really, why would I try? You’d never give me the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “Things happen as they happen. That’s all.”
How typical of Arlen to try and twist this around on me by implying I was being paranoid about him. Shirking off all responsibility and projecting his misdeeds onto other people was his go-to defense. What a funny coincidence that all these unconnected things were coming together right here, right now, putting him closer to me.
I ground my teeth and spat on the sidewalk.
“It drove you crazy that I walked away,” I said. “From the minute I looked you in the eye in your office and said I was exiting Snyder & Burkhart, you’ve been scheming up ways to pull me back in and put my whole family under your thumb to make sure I stay for good. You couldn’t handle that I chose to walk away from you. You still can’t. Now that I’ve moved out of Orange County, you’re trying harder to bring me back.”
“I remember what I said in the heat of the moment,” Arlen allowed. “You don’t have to remind me. It wasn’t my finest hour, and I’ve lived with that guilt for the year you’ve been gone. Truth be told, yes, I would like you back home, Jerry—I want you back where you belong. You know you’d be happiest here.
“But you’re a man who’s made the choice to walk his own path. I respect that now. I respect that more than you’ll understand. But my coming to Puerto Rico has nothing to do with my personal life.
“Hildon is expanding aggressively, and they’ve requested help from experienced, steady hands—from people who know how t
o make deals.”
“You’ve sure made a couple doozies,” I said, and heard the breath being snatched out of his throat. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to say something like that to him, maybe it was. I didn’t care.
“Just stay the hell away from me,” I said. I punched the End button on my phone’s screen.
From the sidewalk in front of the VA office, I looked south, out to Crown Bay. White ships milled through the shallow waves, glinting under the Caribbean sun. My mind’s eye saw Arlen, standing near the bow of a mega yacht, binoculars pressed up to his eyes, his dark gray hair tucked behind his ears as the wind tousled the ends, his mouth puckered at the center of his goatee. He wore a pair of loose-fitting, white linen pants that flapped against his legs as he stared at me.
But, no, that was delusional. Arlen would never watch me. Not himself. He’d hire someone else to do it.
“Whoever Arlen is, I think I might like him,” DJ said, startling me. “Think you could give him my number? I think he and I might have a lot to chat about.”
He leaned halfway out of the VA’s front door, a toothy grin on his face.
“Leave it alone,” I said.
DJ cocked the edge of his smile as he held the door open and let me back inside.
“Did you check out the hallway?” I asked.
“I did.”
“And?” I asked.
“It’s a pharmacy. Some folks back there,” he said. “Lady behind a sliding glass window. Probably a nurse or something—but she was on the phone, so I didn’t talk to her. I decided to come check on you instead.”
“Let’s go talk to her.” I looked over my shoulder, scouting the bay one more time. I didn’t see anything new.
Past the small foyer at the front doors, a hallway led further into the suite, where it ended at a T-intersection with a waiting room on one side, and a big, open, darkened assembly area on the other. It looked like some kind of ballroom or empty mess hall.
From the smaller room, I heard a man’s voice spinning up intensely. DJ and I stepped in, then I turned right and saw a tired-looking woman in scrubs on the other side of a sliding window with filing cabinets arranged behind her. A guy in a wheelchair stopped in front of the window, the back of his neck as red as burning coals. A meandering scar in the shape of a question mark twisted around his ear.
“Sir, I’ve told you, that’s an off-label use for that prescription,” the woman behind the counter said. “The VA doesn’t cover it. What do you want me to do? Call up Congress and get it fixed?”
Her words were like a trigger for the guy in the wheelchair. As soon as she’d said it, he swung one meaty hand upward like a hook, latching it onto the bottom guide of the sliding window.
“I served my country!” he howled, as he hoisted himself out of his chair, pulling closer to the woman behind the counter. She appeared more annoyed than scared. “This is how you repay me? This is what my government does? I want what was promised to me when I served!”
I jumped in before the guy did something he’d regret. My arms went around his waist. He didn’t let go of the bottom of the window. Not at first. I shook him once or twice, then DJ came up beside me, grabbing the guy’s hands and unhooking him. We guided him back to his wheelchair.
All the while, he barked and carried on about honor and service and hanging his ass out of a tank hatch. Even as I sat him down in the chair and clamped my hands on his shoulders to keep him in place, he continued to jaw at the woman behind the counter.
Then, I heard the glass glide shut behind me.
His head snapped around to me.
“What’d you go and do that for, you stupid son of a bitch? You think Bernice needs your help? She’s the one screwing me out of my damned meds!” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the closed window. “Medicine prescribed to me by a Veterans’ Administration doctor!”
“You can yell as loud as you please, pal,” DJ said with a chuckle. “She ain’t opening that window again anytime soon.”
The guy shot a mean look at DJ.
“She’s just working the counter,” I said. “I don’t think she’s here to screw you out of anything.”
“Then why is she telling me I gotta pay eight grand for my new meds?” he asked me.
“Eight thousand a year?” DJ asked.
“A month!” the man roared.
I understood why he was pissed.
“That can’t be right,” I said. “They probably bungled some paperwork somewhere.”
“Yeah, this is all just a big, bungled mess of paperwork—not a system designed to screw guys like me out of stuff I was promised.” The man inclined his head at me and grinned. “You sound just as naïve as I was when it was my turn to pull some other ranting bastard out of that window a year or so back. Make no mistake: this ain’t no bungled paperwork. They’re doing this on purpose.”
He rubbed the top of his head. His hair was buzzed close to the scalp and the tips of his fingers sounded like kitchen matches being struck.
“Guess I shouldn’t be so mad at Bernice,” he admitted. “Sorry, Bernice!” he shouted at the frosted glass window. Nobody answered. He shrugged and turned his wheelchair toward the doorway DJ and I had come through. “Not like she’s behind the counter pulling my benefits away from me. Hell, she probably has to deal with the same crap as me, just with some other poor grunt having to put their face on it.
“It’s a helluva thing.” He started to wheel out of the room and down the hall. “Get a piece of shrapnel stuck in my head, and that somehow still ain’t good enough.”
DJ and I followed behind him. Something told me this guy probably knew the man Nels told us to find.
“Ain’t nothing good enough when there’s taxpayer money going into it—that’s what I learned from serving,” DJ agreed. “They tell you up front that if you put your body on the line for them—if you fight hard for two years, or four years, or whatever—they’ll take care of everything else. Turns out ‘taking care of everything’ means doing the bare minimum, according to whatever some bunch of politicians think.”
“Hooah.” Wheelchair Man nodded.
“Hooah,” DJ answered. Then, without prompting, “Hundred-and-First Airborne.”
Wheelchair Man continued to glide forward, pulling up a sleeve to reveal the black and yellow shield and horsehead tattoo on his arm. “Cavalry.”
DJ hobbled a step quicker as we hit the dog leg left, leading into the foyer by the front doors. He reached in front of Wheelchair Man, then shook his hand.
“How about this one here?” Wheelchair Man’s thumb gestured over his shoulder at me. “Looks like he’s still got all his parts and pieces. Does that mean he was dumb and lucky, or does that mean he was smart enough not to sign up like the rest of us?”
DJ opened the door.
“Air Force,” I said.
“Chair Force,” Wheelchair Man repeated.
“Pararescue,” I fired back.
His hands clamped the wheels of his chair. He came to a stop, then rotated to look me in the eye.
“A PJ? And you’re not missing a single piece of you? Wait. Pull your jeans up,” he said.
I did, showing my bare ankles above the tops of my sneakers. I knew what he was looking for: a prosthesis. He wanted to see if I’d been wounded in combat.
“Dumb and lucky,” I answered.
“Some of the stories I heard about you PJs makes me think you might be the dumbest, luckiest guy I ever met.” He laughed, then resumed rolling through the foyer and out the front door. He cut left, then stopped on the sidewalk next to an ashtray pushed up close to the wall.
The sun was higher and brighter than seemed possible. I shielded my eyes and gave the bay another glance.
“How come I’ve never seen the two of y’all around here before?” He reached over the side of his wheelchair and pulled the ashtray next to his left wheel.
“Never cared to show up,” DJ said. “My social obligations got me too busy.”
I kept my answer to myself. This place wasn’t for me. I hadn’t been wounded—profoundly or otherwise. The worst injury I’d had during my enlistment was a high-ankle sprain from a rough landing during a night jump; my foot clipped a stump just outside the designated LZ when I was doing drills at Hurlburt Field.
“Well, I’m glad you came by today.” A cigarette bounced between the man’s lips as he spoke. He lit it, then held his hand out to DJ. They shook again.
“My name’s Andy,” he said.
“DJ Martin,” DJ answered.
Andy held his hand out to me. I hadn’t noticed the black, fingerless gloves he wore. The palms were padded and had been smoothed against the wheels of his chair. His fingers were covered in thick calluses.
I took his hand firmly and shook. “Jerry Snyder.”
“We’ve got a meeting coming up pretty shortly here,” Andy said. “If you two wanna stick around, I’m sure the boys wouldn’t mind since you both had respectable jobs. We’ve had a few POGs try to boohoo their way through stories about papercuts and carpal tunnel. They get froze out pretty quick.” He shrugged. “Sucks, but that’s how it goes.”
I grinned at his use of the acronym POG. I hadn’t heard it in a long time. It was a derogatory term for military personnel who worked in clerical jobs. Although, by definition, I was one of those “People Other than Grunts” myself. Pararescue was tough, but we weren’t ground pounders. We almost always flew to where we were going.
“Actually,” I said, “DJ and I are looking for someone. We heard we might find him here.”
Andy raised his eyebrows. “Oh yeah? One of you got a battle buddy you’re trying to find?”
“Not exactly. His name is Marc. He was a combat engineer. An Iraq veteran.”
Andy took a drag of his cigarette. I could almost see the thoughts rumbling around behind his eyes.
“You two cops or something?” he asked, eyeing the Newport Beach PD shield on my shirt.
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