He pissed his pants and felt his stomach muscles going loose.
“I’m gonna ask you some questions,” one of them said. “And you’re gonna give me some real fine answers. Capisce?”
Sounded like one of the dudes on The Sopranos.
Shit.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I TOOK A THIRTY minute shower just before midnight, the water turned up as hot as I could tolerate. The hot spray rained down on me as I imagined what was happening in a rent-by-the-week room in the Central Ward. Afterward, I settled down in one of the hard chairs in the kitchen to wait. At 3:21 a.m., my cell phone rang.
“Did I wake you?” a voice said.
“No.”
“I wanted to call and personally thank you for the opportunity to meet your friend. He was great fun. I haven’t enjoyed myself that much in a while.”
“How did he take the surprise?” I asked.
“Not very well, at first. He eventually came around. I usually have that affect on people.”
“I’ll have to apologize to him for springing you on him unannounced.”
“Don’t bother. We came to a quick understanding. He’s past complaining at this point.”
“You sure? I could give him a call now.”
“It’s late, or early depending on your perspective, I suppose. He’s dead tired. Let him rest.”
We were talking in code. September eleventh had completely changed the world we lived in. If I were a better man, I would have paused to reflect on the waste of all of this. Instead, I said, “Did he at least have a message for me?”
“He did actually.”
“And…”
“You have something to write this down?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“Shy guy, your friend. Didn’t really want to talk. I really had to pull conversation out of him.”
“What do you have?” I asked, impatient.
He told me and I wrote the information down, repeating it back for verification. Then, after a hesitation, he said, “He’d been on a bit of a shopping spree, so your money estimate was off. Not by much though, I have to be honest about that.”
“Well good.”
“I have to tell you, he was a polite guy once we set a few boundaries.”
“His mother raised him well.”
“I could tell. He actually mentioned her a few times at the end.”
“I’m glad we were able to help one another out,” I said.
“What can I say? You made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he said without humor.
“Are we square now?”
“As square as we’ll ever be, probably.”
“Fair enough.”
Before you go,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Sounds serious.”
“I believe you’ll think so.”
“Tell me.”
Rad told me.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I COULD BECOME NOTHING after the phone call but an automaton—a disconnected, robotic something enabled by some power to accomplish that which had taken so much of my recent energies. I spent cash for a thick plaid shirt, cardboard-stiff pants, and cheap Timbaland-style boots. I recruited a high-on-something teen girl outside 7-Eleven to then go and recruit the first willing person she could find to purchase a prepaid cell phone from a different convenience store. Another string of cash transactions.
Then I waited.
I chose the hour before sunset—the sky beginning to darken but not so much that it impaired visibility—to make the move.
The information Rad had given me led to a wooded area without any hidden trails whatsoever. It was rough terrain and I had to move fast, the fading sun a ticking stopwatch above my head. Rad had told me if I went in a mile and a half that I would find my way to the other side, where I would discover a row of houses with swing sets and basketball hoops in their backyards.
He’d also told me if I went that far I would miss her.
I found her a little more than ten minutes into the ragged mouth of the woods. Her clothes had not been disturbed but some felicitous animals had pecked and gnawed and chewed at her remains. Only someone that knew her as well as I did could have identified her by what lay in the tangle of weeds and dirt at my feet. I gagged from the smell a few times but did not allow myself to vomit—DNA can be picked up from the most unbelievable sources.
I wanted to lift Nevada, hold her in the cradle of my arms, and whisper words that would make it all better, words that would bring her and the unborn child in her womb back to life. But the fog that had trapped my soul was not so dense that I believed any of that possible.
I retreated the way I’d come in wearing clothes and footwear I would burn and discard. I hustled back toward the car I had parked on dry pavement far from the woods. Before I reached the car, I paused long enough to dial 911 with the new prepaid cell.
And a moment later I tossed the cell phone as far as I could.
I did not have to see it land to know that it exploded into pieces upon hitting the ground way off in the distance.
THIRTY-NINE
CONNECTICUT HAS THE MOST multi-million dollar homes in the Northeast, and the second most in the nation after California. It is the home of YaleUniversity and the United States’ first law school. It is the birthplace of George W. Bush. It is where Mark Twain settled to write his two most enduring classics. It is the current home of celebrities as diverse as Meryl Streep and 50 Cent. Numbed by the experience in the woods, I took a drive, fifty-two miles from Newark, just over an hour on the road, Interstate 95 mostly, to a little two-bedroom ranch home in Stamford.
I sat idling in the car for a bit, collecting my thoughts, sorting through my feelings, before I could summon the strength to do what had to be done. Still, even as I moved from the car toward the ranch’s front door, I wasn’t sure how the next few minutes would play out.
The sun had been chased from the sky and all around me was a quiet, unsettling darkness. Deep quiet. No birdsong. No music. No quarrels between lovers or enemies. The only sounds to be heard were my nearly silent footfalls as I crossed soft grass and then the paved path that led to the front door.
I didn’t pause to think once I reached the door. I rang the bell and followed that with a hard rap of my knuckles.
Trina answered right away, took a moment for surprise, and another to read my face in the wash of porch light. “You found her,” she said, and reached forward to guide me by the arm. “Come on inside.”
She wore spandex shorts and a halter-top spotted with a butterfly of sweat. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that was on the verge of falling loose.
“Just got back from the gym,” she explained. “I was about to fix myself something to eat. Are you hungry?”
I’d closed and locked the door behind me and followed her down the entry hall. The hardwood floors carried the shine of a recent polish.
I said, “I’m fine, Kat.”
She stopped midstride and turned to face me. “I know you’re in a dark, emotional place right now but don’t…”
“Call you what your dead husband used to call you?”
“Dredge up the past,” she said. Words eerily similar to those Bishop Donald Theodore Holliday had spoken when this thing with Nevada first started its momentum toward an end.
“Katrina,” I said. “A lovely name, really. It lends itself to other possibilities. Kat. Trina. Funny that JW and I would choose opposite sides.”
“You’re a fool, Shell.”
I nodded. “Agreed. JW was my closest friend in the world. My only friend. A brother. And I allowed you to lead me to betray him.”
“I led?” She shook her head and smiled. “You’re like a cable news network, Shell, I swear. You always have your own slant on the facts. You saw something you liked and even though it belonged to your brother, you didn’t hide your approval.”
“I’ll accept that. First time I met you, I thought, well, JW has done well f
or himself. You were absolutely a prize.”
“Were?”
I ignored that. “But what stirred the pot of jealousy was how certain he was about you. He couldn’t wait to marry you. I envied that. My life just didn’t lend itself to that kind of certainty and stability where a woman was involved.”
“I would have liked to have seen you and I married,” she whispered.
“As would I have.”
Her eyes softened. “It’s not too late.”
“It is, Kat.”
And that quickly the softness left her eyes. “I completely forgot. Siobhan,” she said, sneering. “The lay of the moment. It will not last. Not how you and I have lasted.”
“Answer me something.”
“What?” she barked.
“The day JW…the day he died…he was reflecting on the job that went bad and…caused his paralysis.”
“He ate his gun. He didn’t die. Get it right, CNN.”
“You have a propensity for hatefulness I’ve often overlooked. I think of myself as hateful but I’m realizing you give as well as you get.”
“Wonderful, FOX.”
“I recall you begging me to tell you the details of JW’s next job,” I said. “You claimed you were worried about him.”
“I’m not doing this,” she said, and turned to walk away.
I caught her by the waist of her spandex and pulled her into me. She struggled with me for a brief moment before giving up. I wrapped my arms around her, my left up around her neck, my right around her waist, and leaned down with my chin biting into her shoulder to speak harshly in her ear. “You weren’t worried,” I said. “You set him up for a fall.”
It took a moment. Then she began to tremble in my grip. Warm tears dripped down on the forearm I had up near her throat. “I loved you. JW wasn’t…you. He didn’t communicate. He wasn’t sophisticated. He was a rough lover. All brawn and no brains. He wasn’t…you. I tried to talk things through with him. I let him know I was unhappy. Nothing changed, except his pride was damaged and he retreated further and further into himself. It got to a point where I would close my eyes and grind my teeth whenever he even spoke. He wasn’t you, which was the biggest problem.”
“You set him up. He could’ve gotten killed instead of just paralyzed.”
“I was hoping he would.”
“You’re evil.”
“I’ve paid for my evil, too. You still haven’t come around to understanding how vital we are to each other’s lives. And have you ever had to clean up a grown man’s shit?”
I released her. “I despise you.”
She turned to face me, a smile on her face as she touched my chest. “Baby, don’t be like this. You’re being emotional. What we share is precious. Do you really want to see it messed up?”
I narrowed my eyes and said, “Rad and Shepard ambushed me once I got to Newark. I wondered who turned them on to me so quickly. Rad told me he received a call from you, letting him know he should keep a close eye on Taj because I was back in Jersey and looking to find out about Nevada’s…” I couldn’t finish, on any level. I pushed Trina’s hand away from my chest and turned my back on her.
“I was upset with you,” she said. “I’m impulsive when I get upset. I told him not to harm you. Shake you up, maybe, and then send you back to me.”
I laughed but did not turn back to face her. She was smart enough to keep her distance.
“I get crazy when it comes to love,” she said.
“You’ve never loved a soul.”
“And you have?”
I started walking for the front door.
“Sure,” she called. “Run away. We both know you will be back, though. You always come back.”
My hand at the deadbolt.
“As intelligent and worldly as you are, you’ve got canine sensibilities, MSNBC. You run away but you always traipse back home. I’m home, sweetie. Go chase your bones, but you’ll be back.”
Turning the knob.
“Siobhan can’t hold your interest,” the last thing I heard before the door thudded closed behind me.
AN HOUR LATER I was back in Newark. Siobhan and I talked about everything and nothing into the deep morning. We made love and talked some more and made love again. I couldn’t sleep but eventually she drifted off into that momentary death. I watched the rise and fall of her chest until she opened her eyes on the new day. She spotted me and smiled.
I smiled back.
EPILOGUE
I HAVE LONG BELIEVED that the dead are often in a far better place than the living, that their souls find peace that proved all too elusive in life. Maybe that belief comes from all of the death I have experienced. Those I have ushered into that better place and did not mourn, as well as those I would have shed a tear over if I were a different man. Nevada once told me I would someday regret the animus I allowed to divide us. The animus I somehow thought it prudent to actually foster. As was the case with many things, she was correct. Regret is a stinging slap to the face, a hateful word between friends or lovers for which there is no retort. Sometimes in my dreams, I still see Nevada, and more often than not, I tell her I am sorry, that she was right, and that I have a healthy dose of regret. Even in my dreams, she never does respond.
“What are you thinking about?”
I turned at the sound of the soft voice. She was naked except for one of my dress shirts, the buttons undone and the shirt opened to offer a full view of the delights beneath.
“Nevada?” she said, walking out on the balcony to join me, placing her arms around my waist. Above us, the obsidian sky was sprinkled with a few stars I dared not wish upon.
“Regret,” I said.
I heard her sniff out a laugh. “You? Regretful? What date is it today? I must mark this box on my calendar.”
When I did not join in with her banter, she tightened her grip and laid her head against my back. We remained that way for a long while, silent, the sounds of the city below us a song I wished would end.
“It’ll get easier in time,” she offered.
I turned even though she didn’t release her grip and looked down at her, stared for a moment, taking in her beauty, the light in her eyes, and then I eased from her embrace.
I made it as far as the glass doors that led from the balcony to the hotel room before she called my name. The bigger part of me screamed that I should ignore her and continue inside. Yet somehow, miraculously, I paused and turned back.
“Your cell phone rang while you were out here,” she said. “It woke me up.”
I said nothing.
“Don’t you wonder who it was, this early in the morning?”
Still, no words would come.
“Siobhan,” she said, a wicked smile spreading across her face. “She left a message.”
And so we stood there, staring silently at one another, both of us much too comfortable in our regrets. Later when I made love to her, trailing kisses around the hearts-and-vines tattoo on her sweat-soaked skin I experienced a glimpse of a moment without any regret.
The moment did not last.
Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) Page 30