About an hour after I woke up the next morning my phone rang. It was Abercrombie. “I need to see you,” he said.
“You have something for me?”
“Of course I have something for you, Nevada. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“You can’t just tell me what it is over the phone?” I asked. I smirked, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “Let me guess. Krystal was a spy. Do we need to meet in a darkened parking garage somewhere and flash our headlights at each other? I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“Stop being a smartass,” he said. “I have something to tell you, and some things need to be said face to face.”
That threw me for a loop. Abercrombie and I enjoyed a sarcastic banter most of the time. At least, I enjoyed it, and I was pretty sure he did, too. He sounded serious now. “Okay.”
“The Jiffy Lube on El Camino. Twenty minutes.”
“Are you getting your oil changed?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh,” I said. I honestly wasn’t sure what answer I’d expected him to give me.
“You’re getting your oil changed, too. We’ll talk in the lobby.”
“I don’t need to get my oil changed.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “You need a reason to be there. They don’t let people just come in to enjoy their shitty free coffee.”
I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “Twenty minutes.” I hung up on him.
It didn’t take me twenty minutes to reach the Jiffy Lube, but I loitered in my car until that much time had passed and then drove it into a bay to be serviced. Abercrombie was waiting for me in the otherwise deserted lobby. He wore a sport coat and khakis. As always, he looked like a model from a catalog.
I pointed at the chair next to him. “Pardon me, person I have never met before. Is that seat taken?”
Abercrombie made a face at me. “Sit down already.”
I sat. Abercrombie stood, to my surprise. He crossed over to a television mounted on the wall that was showing a local news show and used the button on the front to turn the volume up a few notches. I supposed he thought that would drown out our voices if anyone happened to walk in and be in a position to overhear us. Or maybe he was worried about recording devices. I doubted anyone was bugging the Jiffy Lube, but I guess a person couldn’t be too careful.
When that was done he came over and sat down. “Are you getting a little paranoid?” I asked. “What was it you couldn’t tell me on the phone?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then held up his left hand. A diamond ring was on his finger. It hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him. I’d have remembered a rock that size. It probably cost more than my car.
“Oh,” I said. “Fitch proposed.”
“He did.”
I was terrible with social niceties and had to struggle to think of something to say. “Congratulations, Abercrombie. I’m happy for you. I mean, I don’t actually know you, or Fitch, but I’m still happy for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. He looked at the ring. “I wear this thing pretty well, don’t I?”
I shrugged. “It’s a little big for my taste.”
He smirked. “You strike me as someone who’d want something…well, not so much exotic as unusual. Unconventional. Like a rock you found on the beach.”
“If it was a really special rock, I guess. I don’t want just any old rock.”
This was easily the most personal conversation Abercrombie and I had ever really had. Did getting engaged make people sentimental? Was he supposed to talk next, or was it me? I decided to go ahead. “I never thought about it much,” I said. “It’s hard for me to imagine me getting married. Not with the life I have. I’ll be lucky to be alive a year from now. I’m sure as hell never going to reach 40.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Was I supposed to talk again? But then he said, “What if you did, though?”
“What?”
“Live. What if you lived, Nevada? Would you still want to be living this life?”
What the hell was going on right now? “Are you having some kind of existential crisis on me, Abercrombie?”
He turned the ring back and forth on his finger. “This thing has been making me think,” he said. “About my future. About family. About how I can’t still be doing this in ten years. I mean, not when I’m a father. My entire life is a doing string of things that the government would put me away for forever if they caught me. I’m going to have to stop. Fitch, too. We’ll have to live normal lives.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. What he was saying made sense, but I was nowhere near qualified to give an opinion about somebody else’s lifestyle. I was a train wreck.
“Anyway, Nevada, I think you have to stop, too. Stop with all this Laughing Man shit.”
I blinked. “Did you know about the card?” Was Abercrombie monitoring my mail now?
He looked at me, confused. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “But…are you being serious right now? Every time I see you all I get are questions about what I’m doing to catch the Laughing Man. You aren’t always polite about it.”
“Scott wants him,” Abercrombie said. “I understand that. I want to see justice for Scott and his brother. But I also wonder if you’re doing some Don Quixote thing here.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best analogy,” I said.
“You understood it.”
“Well, yeah, but…” I shook my head. “What else am I going to do?”
He went silent again. “That’s the thing, isn’t it?” he finally said. He looked around, and then scratched his nose. “If you ever wanted it, I could get you out,” he said. He kept scratching his nose while he talked. I realized he was doing it so his hand kept his mouth covered. He was concerned about being recorded by security cameras and then somebody reading his lips later. “New identification, new passport, an entire exit package. You already have money. I can do the rest.” He put his hand back down in his lap.
I couldn’t have honestly said I’d never had that thought before. But I’d never had someone else say it to me. “You mean just…just run away?”
“Yes,” he said. “Go and be someone else for a while.”
This conversation had gone to such a strange place I was starting to wonder if I was dreaming. Should I ask him to pinch me? He might take that the wrong way. “What on Earth has gotten into you, Abercrombie?” I asked.
He smiled weakly. “I guess I’ve been thinking a lot,” he said. “Being engaged will do that to a person.”
“I guess so,” I said. I looked around. “Is that why we’re doing the spy routine with the television and everything?”
He nodded. “This one nobody can know about. Not even Fitch.”
“Well, I’ll think about it, I guess. I don’t know. It sounds tempting, I’ll admit that much. Odds are I’ll still be dead in a year, though. The Laughing Man isn’t the only thing out there stalking me. My own liver…well, what I’ve done to myself is going to catch up with me someday.”
“Maybe it’s a question of how you live until it does, then.”
“Maybe.” I sighed. “Was that why you had to see me in person?”
“Partially,” he said, “but that wasn’t why I wanted to be face to face with you. The big thing is…” He shook his head. “I can’t invite you to the wedding, Nevada. I’m sorry, but I can’t.” He looked genuinely sad. I didn’t think I’d ever seen this side of him before.
That may have been the last thing I’d expected him to say. I’d been waiting for a bombshell. “What?”
“I’m sorry. Fitch is sorry, too, actually. He likes you more than he’ll admit. But officially, we don’t know you. You understand? You and I right now are two strangers having a friendly conversation in a lobby while greasy men work on our cars. That’s all we’ve ever been. That’s all we’ll ever be.”
I’d never expected a wedding invitation; it had never even occurred to me. It was just as well. I
wasn’t a fan of large public gatherings. I had nearly no ability to make small talk, and I’d be looking at every stranger there as a potential threat. But I saw his point. Every contact I’d had with Abercrombie and Fitch over the last year involved committing a crime. Usually a serious one. If any of what we’d done ever made it to court, none of us wanted it to be easy for a prosecutor to prove a connection between us.
“I understand,” I said. “I didn’t really think you’d invite me, honestly. I don’t even know your real name.”
“No,” he said. “But I know your name, Nevada James. You’ve always meant more to me than you know.” He smiled gently. “Anyway, that was what had to be said face to face. You didn’t deserve to hear it in a phone call.”
I wasn’t sure it would have made any difference to me, but then again, maybe it would have. You never knew. “Okay,” I said. “I appreciate it. You know, maybe one of these days, when all of this Laughing Man shit is over…”
“No,” he said.
Of course he was right. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess not.”
There was a leather satchel at Abercrombie’s feet and he reached into it now, removing a thin stack of papers. “This is for you,” he said, handing it to me.
“What did you get?”
“Every call on that phone you gave me,” he said “Numbers of calls made and received, names if they were listed, duration of calls. Her texts are all printed out, too, but those were all to other burners and they were drug buys.”
I looked through the stack. “How do you know that?”
“Because I doubt she decided to order six sausage pizzas and nine pepperoni pizzas at the same time.” He shook his head. “You’d think junkies would figure out their codes aren’t fooling anyone. Besides, Pizza Hut lists their number in the phone book. They don’t go buy burners at 7-11.”
“Fair point,” I said. I turned my attention back to the papers. There wasn’t a great deal to go on, but one of the names printed next to a number stood out immediately. It was Second Star, the crisis center I’d visited earlier yesterday. I’d left before I could actually talk to anyone besides the receptionist, but Krystal had called them. It looked like they’d called her, too. More than once. That couldn’t possibly be the norm, could it? Why would they have reached out to her? “Thanks for this,” I said.
“You’re welcome. And think about what I said, will you?”
“About taking your exit package and running away?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’m not sure I can…I don’t know, Abercrombie. It’s not like I’d be any less crazy if I changed my name and lived somewhere else. What I am isn’t something that’s easy to turn off.”
“But you’d be away from the police department and all the shit that seems to follow you around. Not to mention the Laughing Man. If I do your package, I guarantee he’ll never find you.”
What would a world be like where I didn’t get greeting cards from a serial killer who had vowed to kill me someday? I had no idea. “What do you think that life would be like?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But there’s only one way to find out.”
Chapter 13
Abercrombie’s car was done before mine. I had a few minutes alone in the lobby to think. So Krystal had been in touch with Second Star. Looking at the sheets Abercrombie had given me, I saw that one of the calls had lasted for nearly sixteen minutes. That call had been just over a week ago. I definitely needed to go back there and ask some questions.
It was nearly afternoon now. I thought about stopping to get some lunch before I headed over to Second Star, but I wasn’t that hungry yet. I might as well go over there first and then maybe pick up something for an early dinner. My stitches had started to itch again, though. I scratched at the one in my cheek until I felt a sudden sharp pain. When I pulled my fingers away I saw blood on them. A quick look in the rear view mirror confirmed that I’d managed to rip one of the stitches open. It wasn’t bleeding much, but it was enough that I needed to do something about it. Talking to people when you were visibly bleeding tended to make them uncomfortable. I knew that from experience.
An hour later I was back in the ER. I’d gone to an urgent care clinic first, thinking it should just be a matter of fixing what I’d torn open. The doctor there took one look at me and sent me on my way. Stitches weren’t supposed to come apart, he’d said. It could be a sign of infection. I took it as a sign that I needed to put some Neosporin on it so it wouldn’t itch so much, but that wasn’t going to stop the bleeding.
Being a somewhat infamous ex-cop means you don’t spend a lot of time in waiting rooms at hospitals. They took me to an exam room almost immediately. A surgeon was just finishing up my new stitches when a doctor I recognized from my trip to the ER back when I’d been going through withdrawals drew back the curtain and stepped in. I’d forgotten his name. I tended to have a short-term memory when it came to things I didn’t really care about.
“Doctor,” I said to him. “You missed all the fun stuff. We’re about done here.”
He was tall, dark-skinned, and had a shaved head and goatee that would have probably made him a movie star if his career had gone in that direction rather than medicine. He took a look at my new stitches. “I have an idea for you,” he said. “Why don’t you try taking it easy this time around? No more jumping through windows. Or do you just have something against glass?”
“I didn’t jump through a window this time,” I said. He gave me a skeptical look. “I didn’t! The most strenuous thing I’ve done in the last week is talk to people. And that’s a strain, believe me.”
“I imagine. How’s your ankle?”
I hadn’t thought about the ankle in a while. It still hurt, but not enough that it kept me from getting around. Then again, it wasn’t like I’d tried to run anywhere. That was probably not going to happen for a while. “Better,” I said.
“Good.” He waited until the surgeon was done and then closed the curtain behind him when he left. That seemed ominous. He was either going to ask me out, or…
“I want to talk about your blood work,” he said. That had been the option I’d been less enthusiastic about. Not that I’d wanted him to ask me out, either, but this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have right now. Or ever.
“How about we talk about literally anything else?” I asked. “Hey, you like any of those local sports teams? Go sports!”
“Nah.” He smirked at me.
I cocked my head at him. He was being awfully familiar with me. “Okay,” I said. “I’m just going to say it. I don’t remember your name. Sorry. I’m an asshole. So what is it?”
“Ray Slatkin.”
“Okay, Ray.” That hadn’t rung any bells, but I wasn’t really surprised. “You seem really amused right now, Ray. I’d expect someone delivering bad news to have at least a little gravitas. Did I wrong you in a former life or something?”
His smirk didn’t go away. “You don’t remember me at all, do you?”
“I’ve seen you before. I was here a year ago. I crashed pretty hard when I quit drinking.”
He nodded. “That’s right. I was the one on duty when Captain Evans carried you in here. Did you really think you were going to quit cold turkey and nothing would happen to you?”
“That was more or less the idea.”
“You could have died,” he said. “I thought we were going to lose you for a while there, honestly. It was close.”
“Yeah. I’ve heard it wasn’t so good.”
“It wasn’t.” He narrowed his eyes. “You really don’t remember it, do you?”
The truth was I remembered very little of what happened after my first seizure. The first clear memories I had didn’t start again until three days later. “Just flashes,” I said. “And to be honest I don’t know which of those were real and which were hallucinations.”
“Well, you may not remember it, but we did a full blood panel for
you. Had to. Your liver was a mess.”
“I’m sure.”
“Your enzymes were ten times higher than the maximum range we normally see. Ten times. That’s not an exaggeration.”
“I’m sure it isn’t.”
“I mean…” he started.
“Look, just give me the bad news and get out of here, all right?” I glared at him. “How long do I have?”
“Until what?”
I glared at him harder. “Until I’m dead, you stupid asshole. What do you think?”
I swear to god the bastard was grinning at me now. “I don’t know,” he said. “If you don’t get hit by a car or something like that…maybe another fifty years at the outside.”
I’d been bracing myself for bad news, but now I wondered if I’d heard him wrong. He hadn’t actually just said… “What?”
“You’re not dying, Nevada,” he said. “You’re fine.”
To tell the truth, he may as well have just told me that aliens had landed their spaceship in the parking lot outside and were asking for me. There wasn’t a single smartass response I could think of. It was a good thirty seconds before I came up with anything at all. “That can’t be right.”
“It’s right. Your liver enzymes are back to normal. They’re right in the middle of the healthy range now.”
I shook my head. “You’ve gotten me mixed up with another patient,” I said. “There’s no way…” Was this a weird dream I was having? Another weird dream, after that surreal conversation with Abercrombie?
“I’ll admit I did double-check,” he said. “They’re definitely your results.”
“But…” I said. “I don’t…” This didn’t make any sense. “I have to be dying.”
“And yet here we are.” He kept smirking. I might have punched him if he was standing closer to me, but at the moment I was too stunned to move. “You’re fine,” he continued. Your panel was clean. Liver, kidneys, glucose levels…all fine. Your blood pressure is a little high, but if you stop eating fast food every day that should work itself out.”
Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) Page 9