She picked up her menu with both hands. Chewing on her words, I followed suit. “Now, look happy,” she said, already cheesing into her menu, as two tables to my right I heard the snaps of a photographer.
“Is this planned?”
“Why do you ask these things?” she said, angling her ring finger to capture the light. At least she wanted to be seen with me again, I reasoned. We ordered and got more water with lemon. As they brought out my club sandwich, I got a call from Ari at the school. I took it quietly at the table.
“Is he doing it again? We almost made it ten days,” I sighed. Tristan had taken to sitting in a corner not speaking when he got upset. Five or ten minutes would be fine, but he refused to move until I picked him at the end of the school day. “I can come by after I finish lunch,” I said feeling frustrated and parentally impotent.
“It’s not that,” Ari said. “He’s being transported to the ER.”
My heart nearly stopped. Ari filled me in quickly. I left Jill at lunch and told her to go and not miss her flight with Ian. When I arrived at the children’s hospital Tristan was tucked in a room with a hospital nurse and a woman I knew as Candy, the school nurse. I rushed to him and thanked her for riding with him, which she brusquely accepted. Candy was a tough cookie.
“I didn’t know I was allergic!” Tristan announced, excited for the discovery. “I’m allergic to bees, mom. Did you know that? But you’re not allergic. Is my dad?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered vaguely. “We’ll have to avoid them from now on.”
“It’s the sting he’s allergic to. It is a minor allergy,” said the nurse in periwinkle scrubs who sounded more New Jersey than New York. Her nurse badge read ‘Flo’. “Still, don’t take it lightly. Allergies change. We’ll give you training on how to use an epinephrine pen. You’ll need to keep one on you at all times. Your son in good health, but we can’t release him until we do that and the doctor makes his rounds back to sign him out.”
“I can’t spend the night?” Tristan asked.
“No, dear. You’re as good as new. No need for you to stay here in this boring hospital,” she jested. Candy stayed with me for the lesson with Flo. It went smoothly and they both left, while Tristan and I remained, me sitting on his bedside. I was assuring him it wouldn’t be long before we could leave when he interrupted.
“I don’t want to leave,” he broke in. He looked frustrated from me to the clock and back again. Tears welling in his eyes, but his chin stiffened to hold them back.
“What’s wrong?” I soothed him.
“I told Ari to call dad,” he admitted. “I told him to when I left for the hospital. I know he did, because I asked him. Why isn’t he here? I could have been really sick! Why wouldn’t he come see me in a hospital?”
“Honey,” I said sadly, “he isn’t around right now. He’s probably out of the city.” I paused. “Things may go back to the way used to be. Back to how they were before we found him.”
It was difficult to mislead him—there was no “may” about it. The look in his eyes shredded me. He proceeded to say some things that salted those shreds. He didn’t want to ever go back to the way things were. After he got it all out and the tears had stopped, Flo stopped back in with another lollipop.
“I can get you a meal sent up if you’re hungry.” Flo offered. Her hair was tight in a bun, streaked with brown and gray. “We’re busy. No point starving you both while you’re here.”
“If you would point me to the vending machines and stay with Tristan for a minute, I’ll be back in a jiffy with some snacks,” I offered. He nodded vigorously. After some direction, I went down the hall as Flo instructed. Somewhere after the third left turn I was lost. I stopped an orderly and got new directions, which turned me around completely. I found the bank of vending machines by accident after having decided to give up and head back to the room. Ordering pizza would have been quicker. I managed to find my way back to Tristan’s hall with relative ease thanks to his room number, my messenger bag stuffed with snacks. As I walked towards it I spotted a man standing outside his hospital door, flipping through the chart.
“Hunter?” I asked, approaching him. His Army coat and tethered hair giving him away from a distance. I rarely saw him without that coat on now.
“Hola,” he greeted casually. He finished reading the chart and settled it back in the clear plastic bin attached to the wall with a clink. “I heard there was trouble for your little fella.”
“Yes,” I said, running my free hand through my hair, glancing in the room. “He’s allergic to bees, but he’s okay now. That was awfully kind of you to come by. Violet is around somewhere, I presume?”
“Got it from his daddy, I’ll bet. All that fine breedin’ leads to genetic quirks,” he said, slightly smug, as if the jab was wasted without Daniel here to hear it. “A real liability, that daddy of his, mm?”
“You said it not me,” I agreed. “Where’s Violet?”
He pulled something out of his coat. A small teddy bear holding a heart. “She’s not here. Give this to the kid from his daddy, will ya?” he drawled. “Don’t have to say who it’s from. He just wanted him to have it. He knows you don’t want him here, so he sucked me into running it over. He also knows I have superior knowledge of medicine, and he wanted me to check your doctor’s scribbles. You know in Cuba they woulda had y’all doctored up and outta here. They’d taken the kid’s tonsils in less time.”
“Daniel sent him a bear?” I said, reaching out for the small stuffed animal and holding it in my hands.
“He’s original like that. Timing worked out fine. It got me outta a frilly party with your nymphomaniac sister. Don’t tell her you saw me. And if you see me walking bow-legged now, you know why.” I scrunched my nose up and looked up from the bear.
“I can never tell when you’re being serious or just taking the piss.” Hunt actually was ever-so-slightly bow-legged. I tried remembering if he’d always been like that.
“Now, a Virginia girl slick-talking me like a redcoat after I deliver her an adorable elegant teddy bear. Look at that bear. Bronze metal bear. Take care of that thing. Don’t get it wet.”
“It’s great. Thank you for bringing it by. I won’t say anything to Violet either, in exchange for a favor.”
“If it’s about epinephrine that’s not a favor. I can get it. Half the mark-up and you don’t have wait till next year for Dr. Lollygag to get back with a script.”
“Not drugs. And that’s not how you make a deal. You know what, never mind,” I held up a hand, gesturing stop. “Just answer the question.”
“You’re the one dilly dallying askin’,” he replied.
“Where is he? Tell me where Daniel is.”
He smiled crookedly. “No one goes off the radar like Danny,” he said relishingly. “He’s in New York. You’ll find him at that dump he bought,” Hunt said plainly. Before turning to go, he halted. “I’d say take care, but your penchant for precarious situations renders the platitude benign, even as a social toss away. Try not to stick any butter knives in sockets. Or do. Figure out what your aim is first.”
“A pleasure as always, Hunt.” He was expecting me to turn away first, but I waited and instead he did. I watched his descent towards the elevators.
I walked quickly in the opposite direction, heading for a view of the street level from the windows. All buildings in the city have a pretty entrance and a less pretty one. I turned down the windowed hall that ran against the radiology center. I stopped midway and caught sight of a dolly unloading a food service truck disappear beneath me many floors down. The back way in. I checked my watch, glancing up in time to see Hunt’s ponytailed head emerge. He walked towards a slick black SUV with a chrome grille, idling in the emergency lane. Hunt got in.
I went back to the room and Flo left. Tristan took the bear from me on sight. Excited and intent, he rolled it over in his hands and opened up the bottom. It was Velcro at the seam, with a hidden pocket. He withdrew a gleam
ing watch and snuggled the bear.
“Dad said jewelry insurance is a racket,” Tristan said mischievously. “This was my bear in my room. See, mom? I knew he didn’t forget me!” He beamed up at me with his eyes shining, resetting the Breitling watch Daniel had on the first day we went to his house.
Chapter 26 - The Confederate/Hunter McBride
Hunter
I kicked my boot against the black carpet floor board until a chunk of caked New York City pavement chum flaked off. I updated my driver and rested my sole on top of the dirt.
“Your boy is fine. I saw your gal. Gave her the bear.” It was better he hadn’t gone up himself, after all. She woulda hit the fire alarm on Danny on sight, seemed to me. “She’s got about the strongest cognitive fortitude I’ve encountered.”
“I sent you because I haven’t been concerned about you, Hunter. Should I be? That almost sounds like interest.”
“Pass,” I replied. “You are on your period when it comes to that gal. So in that entirely hypothetical scenario, the outcomes become you hackin’ off something I’d miss, or she puts her voodoo spell on me, too, and we end up with synchronized cycles. Not fuckin’ with either of those outcomes today, brother.”
“It feels like a spell,” Danny commented.
“In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“The denominations at stake are greater,” Danny said seriously.
That much was true. I’d just come in from a morning surf when I got a ping for an article from The New York Times about Danny in a custody battle, of all things. I had a list of contacts on alerts through hacker software. People I needed to keep abreast of their comings and goings. Say Pedro in Guadalajara was popped running something across the border, well that’s the type of thing I like to be aware of before a cooperating Pedro calls from an ATF bugged burner asking illicit questions. I didn’t play in that sandbox anymore, but you can’t be too careful. People indebted to me are on the list also.
A kid, I thought to myself after finishing the article, leaning back in my chair. Danny was looking fancy in the photo attached. That didn’t surprise me. I’d seen the direction Danny had taken since he’d sprung himself from the private facility in Iceland four years ago.
When Danny had gone off the radar nearly two years before that, he’d shown up in my basement getaway in NYC in an inner fire of torment and with a plan. I didn’t believe Danny realized he didn’t one hundred percent want to go through with it, but that was natural. Decision made, nothing could break it. Danny was incapable of reconsideration. Maybe all this tug and pull was a productive thing. A forced reconsideration of a foregone conclusion that he’d expended a mighty mound of force.
“Don’t see the point in dullin’ my last good razor,” I’d spoken down at the blueprint unfurled on my coffee table.
“I’m going out. I met an angel last night,” Danny had said. I didn’t look up.
“What do you mean? The tunnel of light, little white kind?” I asked, mildly curious to hear a near-death experience.
“No, not that kind. The kind that feels like you’re where you belong,” he corrected. “Like home.”
A home for his peter, I’d thought to myself. It never lost notability that Danny could get laid under insurmountable circumstances. Even being Danny, the man was in rough shape, however. He’d gone off the radar for a while, flying himself around in a single prop plane with false papers. He arrived at my abode about two weeks prior and had been shedding pieces of himself off him ever since. It was to punish his father. Hawk had done a shady thing. Said his daddy had killed a woman. His mother. It was a nasty kind of deed. He killed a helpless individual with preordained social power, a construct I neither recognize nor valued. Who could condone that brand of cowardice? Danny’s retribution was to crash the Baird family for good and all. Ownership interest of the massive family company had just inherited straight to Danny through his grandfather Baird. Granddaddy skipped right over his daddy. Probably knew he’d raised a scrote. Daniel intended to smash that company to bits, too. I’d miss him but held him in some esteem for arriving at that decision. Creating that moment of irreversible action was an incredible move. Ultimate and final. The pureness of a merited deconstruction. Opportunities like this don’t come around often. I would miss him.
He looked like Daniel Baird, still. I glanced at him. Danny maybe after sweating in a desert yurt on ketamine guarded by a feral cat herd for a few weeks. The shower and anti-seizure booster Ahmed shuttled here quickly got him standing upright but he must not be lucid yet, I diagnosed, thumping a round squat can of burgundy tobacco. “Okay, there, Danny. You sure you want to go out again so soon? You look like roadkill,” I said, tucking a dip in my lip.
“I witnessed beauty, Hunter. We don’t understand what that meant. Now I do, of all nights,” he said.
“Mm,” I replied. “Was she the one who took all the extra dope you left with? You know it probably would have worked if you’d taken that first. You obviously didn’t.”
“I did. And, no. She cursed me for having it.”
She may actually be real, I considered for the first time. “Sounds like a 5th Avenue posh.”
“She could pass as one. But not. She’s not a raging hillbilly, like your lot, but maybe something. I don’t know and don’t care. It’s a moving puzzle. She preferred bloody Wings over the Beatles.”
I drew my spit cup up to my mouth. Spitting, I set it back down. “That’s fucked up.”
“Not more so than you and I.”
“Is this some new phase of self-loathing? I’m not taking that trip.”
“Nor am I.” He walked over to a drawer and pulled out a banded wad of cash, peeling off the top layers. Then strode to the recliner chair opposite mine where my grandfather’s Army coat lay draped across. Danny pulled it on in a quick jerk.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I said sitting forward.
“I need to borrow your coat.” Danny explained. “It’s freezing and since I don’t plan on dying tonight, and there’s no other apparel in this stabbin’ cabin, I’d like to borrow this.”
There were clothes hanging in the small closet, but I only ever needed one coat. That’s possible with the practice of never leaving it behind or loaning out. “No,” I said, shaking my head. Danny’s eyebrow lifted and he went back to the desk. He clicked a pen and pulled out the document sitting on top in the long drawer, center of the desk. He made a few quick marks with the pen.
“All right,” I agreed. “For another half a percent of Barclay you have until three am.”
“Curious. Where were you going to you leave the rest?”
“A portfolio of distributions. Primarily a Cancer Research Center in Ireland,” Danny replied.
“Remarkable,” I recalled uttering in dry response, but it didn’t sit right with me now.
“Fortunate, you receive your portion whether I live or die. Don’t spend it all in one place,” Danny said in parting. “Get some roach traps with it. And a new razor.” Danny suggested, rubbing the plane of his jaw line with the backside of his hand. “Keep your gun close tonight,” he added off-handedly.
“Expecting trouble?” I asked, spitting out a long stream of tobacco spit into my raised cup.
“I didn’t mess up your formula last night, Hunter. It was divided. Half the black widow went into my veins but half went into my father’s first.”
I hadn’t let it show, but my heart rate increased. “You can’t half try to kill a man, Danny. You should have waited until there was more.”
“You said the single batch was enough to effectively euthanize an elephant. You’d seen it yourself, correct? He was leaving—it couldn’t have been coincidence he had a conference in the city on the same night as my own plans. It was meant to be. I did take quite a bit of your stock variety from your stash and used double your instruction first on us both.”
I shook my head at the blueprints. “That dope was to get your heart rate right, first. You don’t tweak reci
pes and expect them to work. Choking him woulda been a better decision. You survived it and he may have, too. Which means, first, he knows you’re in this city. And second, a pissed off father of yours is about to turn it upside down like my granny searching for a cigarette light in her pocketbook.”
“As I said. Keep protection close, Hunter. I don’t believe his security has my associates marked as shoot to kill. However, it is Hawk.”
“If I was you, I’d get in that puddle-jumper of yours and fly the fuck outta dodge.”
“I will. Tomorrow. Tonight I have an engagement to keep.”
“You’re gonna risk Hawk catching up to you who is surely in the most murderous kind of mood to meet with a gal, let’s be honest, you met on a night your judgement was shot. This is a macabre way to do it, because I estimate you are setting foot out that door to play footsie with a parricidal reaping.”
“A commitment is a commitment. If I die, so be it. The only way he can contest my will is if he proves suicide. Any other and he is out. I’ll be at the park,” Danny said sounding restored as he crossed the threshold, touched the white scarf he’d stuffed in the coat pocket. “Besides, Hawk is likely dead. He had nothing to fight it for.”
Danny never made it back. Last time I saw my jacket, before I found it hanging in a spare bedroom Violet used for a closet. Months later I invested in the software program I’d purchased through a hacker friend. That’s how I found Danny. He’d been locked away in isolation at a sleek “voluntary” facility outside Reykjavik, Iceland. Someone made a mistake and wrote a script there in his real name. The alert appeared and disappeared from the system so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. But I don’t imagine things. Ahmed, hacked their admittance system with a great deal of trial. When I saw a patient listed as Paolo McCartney, I booked my passage. I infiltrated by spending all night at the closest bar outside the facility. With some extensive persuasion and bribery of the head guard, I was able to gain access an’ see him. The head guard seemed open to it straight off, he musta liked Danny, or pitied him. More likely, he hated Hawk.
In the Land of Milk and Honey Page 33