Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (40 page)

The blade glinted as I raised my arm. He struggled with the bonds, rocking the chair, mewling like a wounded cat. I reached my hand forward and…

Started cutting him loose.

He stopped rocking and looked at me curiously.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” I said. “But I’m done with all of this.”

“What is this bullshit?”

“Setting you free.”

“I don’t believe it.”

I placed the switchblade on his lap and literally wiped my hands. Siobhan was weighing heavily on my mind. The killing had to end at some point.

“You’ve gone soft,” Rad said.

“You know better than that,” I said. “Something just crossed my mind. We can help each other.”

“Why would I help you with anything?”

“There’s about two hundred thousand dollars waiting for you if you help me.”

“Bullshit.”

I nodded and turned to leave him to do as he pleased.

“Hey,” he called.

I turned back.

“What kind of help did you need?” he asked.

I told him.

THIRTY-SIX

 
THE ROOM WAS WINDOWLESS and bare except for the cot he slept on, a nightstand, and a rickety chair. He had none of the pleasures of young men his age: no music CDs or movie DVDs, no television, no nudie calendar, not even an open pack of condoms in the nightstand. He wore dark jeans, white athletic socks with holes in the toes, a sleeveless T-shirt. His hair was unkempt and matted with lint, his face unshaved, a sour smell rising from his skin like heat from a sewer grate in mid-August. His snore made a sound like a disconnected engine hose, so vigorous it woke him up.

Even in the dark, he realized he was not alone, and as if to confirm the knowledge one of them said, “Moses.”

One of them.

He counted two figures in the dark. One of the figures shined the beam of a flashlight in his eyes.

“The hell,” he said, covering his face and turning away from the light. When he turned back a beat later the flashlight was dead and so was any hope that he would survive this.

“Fuck you,” he said for no reason other than it sounded hard.

They snatched the thin cover off him and dragged him from the bed. It happened so quickly he was unable to put up any resistance. He landed on the floor with a thump, turned to see a pair of rain galoshes by his face. Rolling the other way he spotted another pair of the same basic black galoshes. Looking up—the rain suits. And he’d miscalculated. Four of ‘em, not two.

The first kick cracked one of his ribs. The second split his lip and tore several teeth right out of the comfort of his gums. The third ruined any chance he had, however minute, of ever having children. Again, he had no fight as they lifted him and sat him up on the one chair the room offered.

“Say something,” he screamed after a while. Their silence was maddening. You gonna mess somebody up the least you can do is tell ‘em why.

The flashlight beam exploded in his face again. One of the men had him quickly by his right shoulder. Another by his left. A third holding his head so he couldn’t turn away. The punch came from behind the light and splattered his nose like balsa wood. The one holding his head forced his mouth open. He tried to bite down on the guy’s fingers but was no match for the man’s inhuman strength. If his nose had not been broken he would have smelled the gun oil and wood chips; as it was, he tasted the coldness of the .38 they eased into his mouth.

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 for 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.