Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

“No,” Aaron said, blinking back his tears. “He’s just scared.”

  Ian reached over and took his phone. Read the email himself. Sighed heavily. “Scared enough to dump you. Douchebag.”

  “He’s not. Don’t call him that.”

  Ian sighed again. “I guess you gotta do denial before you get to anger. Fair enough. I ran the gamut with Nadia, back when she fucked me over.”

  “Shel’s nothing like Nadia—”

  “Except for being a human being, and human beings have sucked and done shitty things to one another since the beginning of time. You’re not the first, and you sure as hell won’t be the last. Look, we’ll go get something to eat, then head to Tampa. I know a coupla guys in the recruiting office—”

  “No, I’m not going to do that,” Aaron said. “Enlist? No way. No, I’m going up to Boston. Cambridge, actually. Next fall, Shel’s going to MIT—”

  “Aaron,” Ian said.

  “I’ll get a job,” he said. “We figured it all out. I’ll work while he goes to school, then when he graduates, I’ll get my degree. I don’t mind waiting, I really don’t.”

  “Aaron.”

  “I know that apartments in Cambridge are expensive, but we could maybe find a place in Somerville, take the T. Public transportation up in Boston is really good. We did research.”

  “Aarie. There’s no we. Your boyfriend bailed.” Ian held up his phone. “This kid wishes he never met you.”

  “Tough shit,” Aaron said as he fought another wave of tears. “Because he did meet me.” He took a deep breath, exhaled hard. “I’m going north anyway.”

  “And what? Hope to bump into him when school starts? Ten to one, he’ll be with his new girlfriend from Harvard. That’ll suck.”

  Jesus, the thought of that made him sick. “I don’t have anywhere else to go!”

  “Which is why enlisting is the only option. You’ll get an education—”

  “Newsflash, Eee! I’m gay. They don’t want me.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ian said. “They do—they just don’t know it. You’re strong, you’re smart, you’re a natural leader—”

  “So I’m just supposed to lie.”

  “It’s not a real lie if the rules are bullshit. What if someone put a gun to your head and told you they would pull the trigger unless you told them that your favorite color was red? Even if you were into blue, you’d say red. It’s the exact same fucking thing.” He got quiet. “We don’t have a choice. I have less than forty hours left—”

  That was more than Aaron had expected. “That’s enough time to drive to Boston, find an apartment—”

  “And pay for it with what? The cost of gas, alone, for a thousand-mile trip is over a hundred dollars. How much do you have saved, because this rental car is gonna bleed me dry.”

  Aaron stared at his brother. “They seriously pay you that little …?”

  “I was paying for you to go to school.”

  What? “I had a scholarship.”

  “For your tuition. It didn’t include your room and board. Or your books. Or athletic fees and equipment. School uniforms. I’ve been paying for all that shit. It costs nearly everything I earn. I have nothing saved and I won’t be paid again for a while.”

  Aaron was aghast. “I didn’t ask you for any of that.”

  Ian sighed. “I know.”

  “I’ll get a job,” Aaron said. “In Tampa, then. I’ll earn enough to be able to move north by August.”

  “And where will you stay between now and then?” Ian asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll get an apartment.”

  “With what down payment?” Ian asked. “You think you just walk into an apartment building and they give you a key because you say you scored a job working the night shift at the Seven-Eleven? No. You give them first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a security deposit—after you’ve proven to them that you have a steady job that’ll pay you enough to spend a chunk of it on their overpriced bullshit rent.”

  Jesus. “Okay, so what? I didn’t know that. I’ll get a job, then, somewhere where I can camp out for a while.”

  “Gee, Skippy, maybe you could be a cowboy,” Ian said. “Better yet, find a time machine so you can be a cowboy in the wild, wild west. That’ll be fun—”

  “I’m doing my best here!” Aaron shouted at his brother. “I’m trying to find a solution to a fucking no-win scenario!”

  Ian jerked the wheel hard and pulled off the road into a gas station, where he slammed them to a stop far from the other parked cars.

  “You already lost, D.A.,” he said, his voice both gruff and oddly gentle as a cloud of dust from the gravel rose around the car. “That’s what no-win means. It’s over and done. The only solution is to accept it and move on.”

  “I can’t. I love him. And he loves me.”

  “Maybe he does,” Ian gave him that. “But he doesn’t love you enough.”

  It was then that Aaron felt himself break, and try as he might, he couldn’t keep from crying. And once he started, he couldn’t stop.

  Ian pulled him into a rough embrace. “It’s okay, buddy. Let it out. Let it go. One of these days, I promise you, you’re going to find someone who loves you, too.”

  Aaron cried and cried and cried, until he had no tears left inside of him.

  I wish to God I never met you.

  He sat there—exhausted, anguished, heartbroken, and completely and utterly defeated.

  But grateful—and he would be, always and forever—for the time, although fleeting, that Sheldon Dellarosa had been part of his life.

  He sat up to wipe his face with the bottom of his T-shirt, and Ian finally let him go and sat back, too.

  “Marines,” Aaron said, after he cleared his throat, when he could finally meet his older brother’s steady gaze. Ian’s eyes were filled with kindness and even sympathy, but not pity, thank God. “Fuck the Navy. Screw the SEALs. I’m going to be a Marine.”

  * * *

  “Let me out here,” Ian said, and Yashi pulled into the parking lot of a tired-looking strip mall.

  They were in the world of cheap motels, pawnshops, palm readers, massage parlors, and storefronts advertising Cash for Gold! Phoebe could see the signs stretching down the busy road.

  “Henrietta’s is down a few blocks,” Ian continued, “on this side of the street.”

  “Deb and Martell hit traffic,” the FBI agent reported. “They’re still twenty minutes away.”

  “That’s okay. It’s going to take some time,” Ian pointed out, “for you to find the best vantage point for the van. There’s limited parking out front, and a bigger lot in the back—at least according to the bar’s website. I’ll go in, sit down as centrally as I can, and open the hand warmer—he held up the little orange packet—“so you can find me. I’ll sing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ and you can track me with the mics.”

  “A classic,” Yashi said with approval. “And unlikely to show up on the club’s playlist or as someone’s cell phone ringtone.”

  “If, for whatever reason, I can’t sing or hum it, I’ll tap it,” Ian said as he opened the door and got out.

  “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,” Yashi responded, even as he nodded to Phoebe’s quiet May I? “A pattern of four triplets’ll stand out in a world filled with shave-and-a-haircuts—intentional or accidental.”

  But as Phoebe climbed up into the front, Ian said, “Shit,” and then opened the door. “Did I leave my …?” He checked the floor and around the seat before tapping the side of her leg with the back of his hand. “Lift up for a sec.”

  She pressed her shoulders against the seat back and raised her butt, but there was nothing beneath her. “What did you lose?” She checked the floor on the far side of the passenger seat, but it was clear.

  “I must’ve left it at the house,” Ian said. “My cell phone.” He sighed his exasperation. “While I was in prison, I got a little too used to traveling light.”

  Phoebe looked at Yashi. “Is
there an extra one in here?” She opened the glove box, but the only thing inside was the owner’s manual for the van, and a temporary registration card.

  “Maybe Shel left an extra phone in the back?” Yashi suggested, and Phoebe went to look.

  Shelves of impressive equipment were bolted down along both sides of the windowless van, including two separate wide-screen computer monitors, and the hardware and batteries necessary to run everything.

  There was a tool kit that was strapped in, along with a container marked with a red cross that, indeed, held medical supplies. The only other bag held an assortment of wires—USBs, quarter inches, RCA plugs, and some that Phoebe couldn’t identify. She found an unopened packet of thumb drives at the bottom of that bag, but no spare cell phone.

  “Nothing here,” she announced.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” Ian was saying. “I’ve been on plenty of assignments without one.”

  Including, according to Phoebe’s theory, his most recent assignment at Northport prison. He’d been up to something in there, besides simply serving out the sentence for a crime he didn’t do. He’d been in far more danger there than he’d be in a Western-saloon-themed strip club in Miami, in the middle of a sunny weekday afternoon.

  Yashi was not happy. “We should do this another time. Or at least wait until Deb and Martell get here.” He touched his earpiece. “Yes, Deb says wait. She says you can go in with Martell’s phone.”

  “Tell them when they finally catch up that Martell can bring it inside to me.” Ian backed away from the van as Phoebe returned to the front seat.

  “Oh, fine,” she said. “He can go in, but I can’t.” As she was speaking, she realized that, of course, Ian’s decision had nothing to do with discrimination based on gender. So she added, “Which makes sense, seeing that he’s a former police detective, and I was a Girl Scout for about fifteen minutes in sixth grade.”

  Ian actually smiled at her. “And that’s how we work in a team,” he said.

  “We need any cookies sold, I’m on point,” she told him.

  That one he actually laughed at—before he remembered that he wasn’t letting himself laugh at her jokes anymore. At least not with a genuine smile like that one, with his teeth flashing, complete with an almost unbearably attractive crinkling around his too-blue eyes.

  He sobered up much too quickly. “Tell Martell no cloak and dagger. I want this to be an overt drop and go. Hi, how are you, shake my hand, You left your phone on my desk or whatever, and then back out, but not to the van. Have him go get coffee or lunch and plan to pick him up later.”

  Phoebe nodded, but then realized he was talking to Yashi.

  When Ian looked back at her, something shifted in his eyes and she knew that having her there worried him.

  “I’ll stay in the van,” she promised, as Yashi put it in gear and they rolled past him.

  Ian didn’t respond, and as they pulled out into the traffic, she could see him in the side mirror, watching her, until he vanished from sight.

  * * *

  “Will you let me at least try to explain why I did what I did?”

  Aaron opened his eyes to see Shel, fresh from the shower, his hair dripping onto his bare shoulders, towel wrapped around his waist.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “You’re not going to fix this with sex. Not this time.”

  Shel’s smile was wan as he came further into the room, where his go-bag was on a chair, unzipped. “That’s not what I was doing. I’m sorry.” He grabbed a clean pair of briefs and did something Aaron had never before seen him do. He pulled them on underneath his towel.

  “I owe her, Aarie,” Shel said as he put on cargo shorts, too—still doing the summer camp beneath-the-towel thing. “Francine.” He yanked a clean T-shirt over his head, and used the towel to mop the rest of the wet from his hair. Only then did he meet Aaron’s eyes. “We both owe her. Too much to ever really repay.”

  “I want to kill him,” Aaron said. “Davio. I just want to …” He couldn’t keep tears from filling his eyes as he thought—again—about that email Sheldon had sent him all those years ago—in an attempt to keep Aaron far away from Shel’s father, to keep him alive and safe.

  An attempt that had worked a little too well, since it had succeeded at separating them for too many years.

  I wish to God I never met you.

  “It happened on June eighteenth,” Sheldon said. “My finding out that Ian was in prison. It was twelve minutes after eight in the morning—in case you were thinking I didn’t mark it as momentous. I went to pick Rory up from Francie’s after we took that night off. Remember?”

  Aaron did. It was the first night in months that one of them hadn’t been on call for Rory 24/7. They were supposed to go out, to the movies, have dinner …

  But instead, they’d stayed home. Made love. Slept. Together. For the first time in what felt like forever.

  Yes, Aaron remembered. And because Aaron had been Rory’s primary caregiver throughout the worst of the baby’s detox and recovery, Shel had gifted him with those extra few moments of blessed alone time, and had gone to Francie’s to pick up the baby and bring him back home.

  “So I’m in France’s apartment. I let myself in with the key, and she’s asleep on the sofa, with the baby on top of her and … There’s this cell phone on the table, and it’s set on silent, but it starts to vibrate and buzz, and I’m afraid it’s going to wake them both, so I answer it. But there’s this weird silence, and suddenly the connection is cut. And I look at it, and there’s a number there, so I hit redial, and I get this odd message. From Northport prison. And everything suddenly jelled. And I just knew. Where Ian had gone. And when Francine woke up, I held up that phone and I said, Ian called, and I knew I was right, just from the look on her face.

  “When she knew she was busted, she asked me not to tell you. She begged me.”

  “Francine?” Aaron asked. “Begged you.”

  “I know. It was intense. She said she didn’t know what was going on—only that Eee spoke to her by phone, every other week, to make sure that we were all right. She didn’t say it, and I sure as hell didn’t ask, but I pretty much assumed that it had something to do with Davio. And after that, I swear to you, we never spoke of it again. It wasn’t like, every time we were together we whispered about Ian when you were out of the room,” Sheldon said, shaking his head. “I know that’s what you think, but it was just that one time. That one conversation.”

  “Is that supposed to make it better?” Aaron asked. “You shouldn’t have lied to me, and Francine sure as hell should not have asked you to.”

  “I know,” Shel said, tears in his eyes. “But she did. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Tell me anyway,” Aaron said. “That’s what you were supposed to do.”

  It was the perfect exit line, but Sheldon blocked the door. “It’s always so black and white for you, isn’t it?” he said, his voice shaking; he was that upset. “Francine died for us, Aaron. Maybe you can’t possibly understand this, because you never knew her before. You don’t know what she was like, who she was. She was happy. She was … goofy. She was nothing like she is now, so hard and cold and angry.”

  Shel had told him all of that many times before—that his beloved older sister had changed on that terrible day when Berto believed she’d betrayed him. But he’d never used those words: She died for us.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sheldon said now, “that I lied to you. And you’re right. Omission is still lying, and I remember each awful time I did it, and I hated myself. But Francie saved my life that day. And your life. Davio would’ve killed you, too. Or maybe he would’ve only killed you. Maybe he would’ve spared me. But a world without you in it is not a world I could live in.”

  Sheldon left the room with that, closing the door behind him.

  As far as exit lines went, he won.

  But then he blew it, by coming right back in. Except he now had Rory in his arms, and Francine was with him.

>   “I just got another email from Berto,” she said. “I was online, thank God, and it popped up onscreen. Apparently, Davio’s put a million-dollar bounty out on Ian, so everyone and their stripper girlfriend is looking for him, all across the state. And someone just saw him walking into Henrietta’s, out by the airport. Berto said Davio’s called in a team of shooters from Oakland Park—they’re heading over there to take him out.”

  “Where the hell’s Oakland Park?” Aaron asked.

  “Just north of Fort Lauderdale,” Francie said. “About twenty minutes from Henrietta’s. Depending on traffic.”

  Please God, let there be traffic.

  “I just tried calling Eee, and then Deb, and then Yashi,” Francie continued. “No one’s picking up.”

  Ian had never particularly liked strip clubs. There was something inherently unpleasant about watching desperate women take off their clothes for money. And even if they weren’t desperate, even in the unlikely scenario that they wanted to be there, it still seemed distasteful to watch.

  Like paying for sex.

  Or agreeing with someone’s bullshit opinions about politics or crappy movies or badly written books only to get laid.

  It was really not Ian’s style.

  Henrietta’s was doubly unpleasant—a vast, cavernous room decorated as if the management couldn’t decide whether they wanted to own a strip club version of a Cracker Barrel or an 1880s wild west whorehouse. There were lots of red and black velvet curtains with gold braided trim combined with quirky period signs and pictures and antique farm implements hanging on the walls.

  The bar was rustic with a brass kickbar. Ian approached and ordered an Arnold Palmer from a tired-looking woman wearing bikini bottoms and blue-sequined, star-shaped pasties.

  He’d opened the hand warmer out in the parking lot and had slipped the packet into the pocket of his T-shirt, where it was acting like a beacon. It was also making him wish that the club had a more powerful air-conditioning system.

  He swiveled in his seat, elbows back on the bar, to give the place a more detailed look-see as he hummed his first verse and chorus. Row, row, row your boat … The big room had a main stage, which was currently dark. But there were a half a dozen smaller stages off to the sides, where pole dancers were unenthusiastically phoning it in.