Lean on Me (11 page)

“
I’ll ask them to deliver
to the room,” Rebecca said. “If not, there’s always some young man
or woman who’d like to make a generous tip.”

Elizabeth stood from her seat. She was about
to leave the table when she picked up the cream pitcher.

“
I think I’ll need this,”
Elizabeth said.

Smiling, Rebecca escorted Elizabeth to where
Patrick waited for them.

FFFFFF

Sunday morning

October 25 – 8:45 a.m. EDT

Harkers Island, North Carolina

Alex’s attention was so focused on her
excellent coffee that she didn’t notice Mammy’s youngest son until
he was standing next to her. He smiled and nodded. She got up from
the table and he took her place. Mammy set a clean plate and cup in
front of him. Alex grabbed her back pack and picked up her plate
and cup. When Trece tried to follow, Mammy said:

“
Settle down, boy. We’re
just getting acquainted.”

“
But…” Trece
started.

Mammy passed her son a plate of
biscuits.

“
She’s in good hands,”
Steve Pershing appeared from the kitchen. “Sorry I’m
late.”

He bent to kiss Mammy’s cheek.

“
Did you bring them?” Mammy
asked.

“
French cream from the
store in Léon,” Steve said. “Fresh crumpets from San Francisco.
Baked this morning.”

“
Oh, Mr. Steve,” Mammy
smiled a bright toothy smile. “You spoil Mammy. I bet my new
friend, Clifford, will cream Mammy some fresh butter.”

“
Yes ma’am,” Cliff said.
“It would be my pleasure.”

“
Nice boy,” Mammy said.
“Now move over and make room for Mr. Pershing’s skinny ass. He
don’t take up but an inch or two.”

Laughing, Steve sat next to Mammy’s youngest
son. With a nod to Mammy, Alex went into the kitchen. She waited
another moment before he arrived.

The man was at least fifty years old and
about her height. He wore his white-grey hair in a tight crew cut.
His body was rock solid under his gray T-shirt and worn jeans. His
eyes were not quite blue and not quite green. His skin was more
white than not. He nodded to Alex and she followed him through the
house to the back porch. Stepping out the door, he lit a
cigarette.

“
I thought you gave those
up,” Alex said.

“
Poor henpecked Benjamin
gave them up,” he said. “Not me.”

“
Henpecked?” Alex smiled.
“Ben told me you talked him into it.”

“
Always the detective,” he
laughed. “You’re right. I don’t smoke out in the world. Too
inconvenient. But at home? I can smoke anywhere but in Mammy’s
house. Mammy’s nephew grows the tobacco on the mainland. I’d hate
to disappoint her. Would you like a bushel of tobacco or maybe
seven?”

“
Never had the taste for
it,” Alex said.

“
All that clean Colorado
living,” he said.

“
Military,” Alex said. “You
can’t advance and smoke or chew.”

The man laughed as if he’d just heard the
funniest joke. They started across the small grass yard toward a
garage.

“
Is that sparkling around
you Jesse?” he asked.

“
If it is?” Alex
said.

“
You told Cap he didn’t
make it,” he said.

In the way of practiced smokers, he let the
cigarette dangle from his mouth. He dug an ancient key out of his
pocket and opened the wooden accordion doors to the garage. The
doors and the garage were original to the property. For all their
obvious disrepair, the hinges swung with silent ease. Alex stepped
from the warm sun into the cool, dark garage to find a cherry red
1958 Chrysler 300D convertible.

“
You fixed the body,” Alex
said. “Nice.”

“
Did you bring
it?”

“
Yes sir,” Alex
said.

“
Kill anyone to get it?” he
asked.

“
Not that I’d care to
mention,” Alex said.

He laughed.

“
I hear your father and
Stevie talk about Jesse,” he said. “Benjamin says he heard him in
the Paris tunnels. But I don’t believe in ghosts.”

She shook her head at him. Every time they
ran into him, the Mister egged Jesse into doing something he didn’t
want to do.

“
Come on Abreu,” he said.
“If you exist, show yourself.”

There was a sound near the 300D and he
glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back, Jesse was standing
next to Alex. The man’s face broke into a broad smile. His eyes
welled with tears.

“
Good Lord, it’s good to
see you,” he said. “Will you send me a…”

Jesse tossed a tiny electric ball at him. He
crumpled over with pain.

“
My God that hurts,” he
said.

“
It’s hard for Jesse to
hold this form,” Alex said. “Is it all right if he…?”

“
Your dad called, you know,
when you were in that room,” he said. “The General said to me,
‘Alex sees Abreu.’ I said, ‘Of course she does. They have a soul
connection. He’d stay for her.’ ‘So you think it’s real,’ he said.
I told your dad he was an idiot if he didn’t.”

He laughed.

“
The General can be such a
dick. Thanks Jesse. You can fade.” Without missing a beat, he said,
“So, where is it?”

His face held all the longing and lust an
alcoholic feels seeing his first drink after a long dry spell. She
unzipped her backpack to pull out a heavy metal object wrapped in a
red cotton cloth. He took a pull on the cigarette and held out his
hand. She placed the package into it. With his eyes on Alex, his
cigarette hand opened the cloth. He looked down and gasped.

He held a Bentix “Electroinjector.”
Originally installed on the Chrysler 300D, the Bentix
“Electroinjector” malfunctioned. The majority were replaced within
a year of manufacture. Only fifteen Bentix “Electroinjectors” were
known to have survived. This was number sixteen.

“
Be still my trembling
heart,” he said. “Does it work?”

“
She spent a year with a
mechanic friend who cleaned and repaired her,” Alex
said.

“
She?” he asked.

“
Something so rare and
beautiful can only be a she,” Alex said.

Nodding, his eyes filled with unadulterated
love.

“
You mind?” He nodded to
the vehicle. “We can talk while I put this in.”

“
I don’t mind,” Alex
said.

She found a lawn chair leaning against the
garage. Finding a sunbeam, she opened the chair and took a seat. In
almost every major city around the world, this man had a secret
compound with an Oldsmobile Delta 88 in the garage. The Delta 88
engine parts were easy to come by, and cheap. He spent his downtime
assembling new engines with new parts to the factory
specifications. He unraveled the world’s most complex and difficult
problems while rebuilding these engines.

On rare occasions, he’d work on other
vehicles. Alex’s CJ held one of his engines. Ben had an ancient
Oldsmobile with one of his engines in it. But mostly, he worked on
one Delta 88 after another. He’d sell them on Craig’s List for the
cost of parts when he was done. The next day, he’d buy a new junker
and start over.

This Chrysler 300D was a work of love. One
night, after too much whiskey and death, he’d told her that his
father bought the car on the mainland after winning big at the
track. His father loved the car more than his children. The Mister
had only taken it to impress a girl in town. But at sixteen, he
couldn’t handle the power. He’d wrecked it on the way to town. His
father never said a word, but had the tow truck deposit it in this
garage and then locked the door. The Mister started restoring the
vehicle the day after his father was lost at sea.

“
You heard anything from
the IRA?” the man’s voice came from under the vehicle.

“
No,” Alex said. “Seems
like my old friends are politicians or business men
now.”

“
Since the economy tanked,
there is a new surge of interest in the old ways,” he said. “I’ve
heard they’re looking for funding like everyone else.”

“
My brother-in-law Cian’s
been particularly pissy lately,” Alex said. “But he’s often like
that in the fall. Some kind of PTSD about the light.”

“
Dark in Belfast almost
twenty-four hours in the winter. Lots of crazy shit goes down in
the dark.” The man’s head popped out from under the car. He lit
another cigarette and looked up at her. “You have people on the
ground in Shankill.”

“
Most of John’s family is
still in Belfast proper,” Alex said. “You?”

“
Bankers and politicians,”
he said. “You’ll let me know?”

“
Sure,” Alex
said.

He slipped out from under the car and took a
pull on his cigarette. He opened his mouth as if he was going to
say something else. Instead, he got up and put the cigarette on the
radiator of the car with the burning side pointed toward the
bumper. He went to the bench where he’d set the Electroinjector.
Peering at the part, he sighed with joy.

“
Where did you get this?”
the man asked.

“
Disabled vet; friendly
fire.” Alex said. “Used his settlement money to buy an old
junkyard. He and his kids make a killing by parting out the rusters
on eBay. Every time I talk to him, his ten-year-old has found
something cool. The lot had more than a few rusting 300Ds in
various conditions. He knew I was in the market for an
Electroinjector and owed me a favor.”

“
Who doesn’t?” He lit
another cigarette and leaned against the bench. “I owe you big for
this.”

“
Where’s Ben?” Alex
asked.

F

CHAPTER seven

“
Benjamin is with a group
of people who want to lure you to him,” he said. “Last I heard, he
told them you would kill every one of them.”

“
How do you
know?”

“
He called me,” the man
laughed. “The idiots gave him a phone, thinking he’d call you. He
left me a voicemail in Gullah. Then he called Claire to chat in
French about details of Gerald’s christening. I called him back and
we had a lazy conversation in French about the christening. Are you
going?”

“
To the christening? I hope
so. Depends on this mess,” Alex said. “You?”

“
If I can make it,” he
said. “I’m definitely going to your father’s retirement party in
January. That’s going to be a wild weekend.”

“
Ben left you a message in
Gullah?” Alex asked. “Original or modern?”

“
Original. What the hell is
‘modern’ Gullah?” he laughed. “Do they really not know how this
game is played?”

“
It’s all computer codes,
facts – whatever that means at any given moment – and details,”
Alex said. “They’re probably working themselves into a lather
trying to decode the Gullah right now.”

“
They’d have to find some
government-friendly old slave,” he looked around. “I don’t think
they exist.”

“
You heard about our
funding issues?”

“
Who hasn’t had funding
issues?” he asked.

“
They tell me the game has
changed.” Alex indicated to her lawn chair. “From where I sit, it’s
the same old game with a lot of fluffy technology layers on top
like a Cool Whip stain on a homemade ice cream sundae.”

“
I never had a taste for
Cool Whip,” he said. “Nothing beats Mammy’s whipped
cream.”

“
Or her Gullah,” Alex
laughed. “I keep thinking I should introduce her to Cian. That’s a
match made in heaven.”

“
I doubt the world would
survive such a monumental match,” he laughed. “Maybe next time
we’re in Denver, we’ll stop by.”

“
Is Ben in trouble?” Alex
asked.

“
Nah,” he said. “I’d have
gotten him if he was.”

He set the Bentix down and tossed his
cigarette butt into a rusting coffee can in the corner. He began to
whistle a nameless tune and bent over the engine. For the next ten
minutes the odor of grease combined with the cigarette smoke to
create a backdrop for the rhythm of his socket wrench and tune. He
lit another cigarette.

“
Glad I still have that
rolling machine.” He looked at the end of his cigarette and
squinted at Alex. “You’ll have to bring some to Ben.”

“
He quit,” Alex
said.

“
Uh huh,” he laughed.
Setting the cigarette down again, he leaned over the car engine.
“You remember the little twerp that was hocking computers to JFCOM
maybe fifteen years ago?”

“
Joint Forces Command?
Twerp?” Alex blinked her eyes. “Well I’ve never heard of such
treasonous blasphemy.”

He laughed.

“
Oh come on,” he said.
“You’ve got to remember. They asked you to go head-to-head with his
fancy computer program. You whooped his ass. He did an ‘upgrade’ to
‘fix his oversight.’ They asked Max to come in; he finished the
problem two hours before the computer.”

“
Max and I went in
together; separate rooms about a year later,” Alex said. “We both
beat the computer by more than an hour.”

“
Ninety-six minutes,” he
laughed. “It’s one of your father’s favorite stories.”

“
They went ahead and bought
the computer systems, programs, and a fleet of programmers to go
with it,” Alex said. “Spent a fortune. Bought everything the little
twerp suggested and set him up as the head of their program. I’d
have to ask the last time Max went in to test it. I refused to go
after that.”