The Inner Circle (44 page)

“Memorial’s twenty minutes from here!” Laurent shot back. “You see how he’s bleeding?”

Behind them, in the back of the van, Orson Wallace was down on his knees, cradling the head of the unconscious kid with the eight-ball tattoo, trying to stop the bleeding by tightly holding towels from the barbershop against his head.

An hour ago, Wallace threw the first punch. And the second. He would’ve thrown the third too, but Eightball got lucky, knocking the wind out of Wallace’s stomach. That’s when Palmiotti jumped in, gripping Eightball in a tight headlock and holding him still as Wallace showed him the real damage you can do when, in a moment of vengeful anger, you stuff your car keys between your knuckles and stab someone in the face.

Years later, Wallace would tell himself he used the keys because of what Eightball did to Minnie.

It wasn’t true.

Wallace was just pissed that Eightball hit him back.

“He’s not moving anymore,” Wallace’s sister whispered from the back corner of the van. She was down on her knees too, but just like in the barbershop, she wouldn’t get close to the body. “He was moving before and now he’s not.”

“He’s breathing! I see him breathing!” Wallace shouted. “Stewie, get us to Memorial!”

Palmiotti turned to the barber. His voice was slow and measured, giving each syllable its own punch. “My father. Works. At Memorial,” he growled. “Go. Left. Now.”

With a screech, the van hooked left, all five of them swayed to the right, and they followed Spinnaker Road, the longest and most poorly lit stretch of asphalt that ran out of town.

Passing field after field of pitch-black farmland, the barber used the silence to take a good look at Palmiotti in the passenger seat. New jeans. Nice Michigan Lacrosse sweatshirt. Frat boy hair.

“Can I ask one thing?” the barber said, finally breaking the silence. “What was wrong with your car?”

“What’s that?” Palmiotti asked.

“You got those nice clothes—the new Reeboks. Don’t tell me you don’t have a car. So what’s wrong with yours that we gotta be driving in mine?”

“What’d you want me to do? Run home and get it? My brother dropped us off downtown—then everything else exploded with the fight.”

It was a fast answer. And a good one, Laurent thought to himself. But as he looked over his shoulder and saw the pool of blood that was now in his van—in his carpet—and could be linked just to
him
, he couldn’t help but notice the look that Palmiotti shot to Wallace in the passenger-side mirror.

Or the look that Wallace shot back.

As a barber who spent every day watching clients in a mirror, Laurent was fluent in talking with just your eyes. He knew a
thankyou
when he saw one. And right there, in that moment, he also knew the hierarchy of loyalties that would drive their relationship for the next twenty-six years.

“There…
pull in there
!” Palmiotti said, eventually motioning to the putty-colored building in the distance with the backlit sign that read
Emergency Room
. “There’s parking spots in front.”

Even before the van bucked to a stop, Palmiotti was outside in the rain. With a tug, he whipped open the side door of the van, and in one quick motion, he and Wallace scooped up Eightball and—shouting the words “Wait here!”—carried him off like tandem lifeguards toward the sliding doors of the emergency room.

There was a hushed
whoosh
as they disappeared, leaving the barber breathing heavy in the driver’s seat, still buzzing with adrenaline. But as fast as reality settled in, all the mental avoidance of the past half hour faded with equal speed. To drive out here… to even take them at all… Laurent had said they should call an ambulance—but in the rush of chaos… the way Eightball was bleeding… and all that screaming… Wallace seemed so sure. And when Wallace was sure, it was hard to argue. They had to take him themselves. Otherwise, he would’ve died.

“You okay?” a soft female voice coughed from the back of the van.

Laurent nodded.

“I-I’m sorry for this—I really am,” she added.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Laurent insisted, staring out at the raindrops that slalomed down the front windshield. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not. They told me what happened when you came back—Eightball grabbing a baseball bat… It shouldn’t’ve escalated like that, but lemme tell you—”

“You weren’t there.”

“—if someone did that to my sister… and
I
was your brother—”

“You weren’t there,” Minnie insisted, her voice cracking. “You didn’t see what happened. Orson wasn’t the only one who made him bleed.”

The words hung in the van, which was battered by the metal pinging of raindrops from above. Laurent slowly twisted in his seat, turning to the chubby girl with the wet hair and the now dried train tracks of black mascara that ran down her face. She sat Indian-style, looking every bit her young age as she picked at nothing in the bloodstained carpet.

The barber hadn’t noticed it before. Hadn’t even registered it. But as he thought about it now, Orson’s clothes—just like Palmiotti’s—were mostly clean. But here, in the back of the van…

The front of Minnie’s leather jacket… her neck… even her English Beat T-shirt… were covered in a fine spray of blood.

Just like you’d get if you hit something soft. With a baseball bat.

Still picking at nothing in the blood-soaked carpet, Minnie didn’t say a word.

In fact, it took another ten minutes before her tears finally came—pained, soft whimpers that sounded like a wounded dog—set off when her brother exited from the sliding doors of the emergency room, stepped back into the rain, and told them the news: Eightball was dead.

92

You have no idea how hard this is,” the man with the razor says as he sits directly behind me in the backseat of the car.

“Listen,” I plead. “There’s no reason to—”

“Beecher, I’ve asked you two times now. Please put your phone down.”

“It’s down… I put it down,” I say, though I don’t tell him that I haven’t hung up. If I’m lucky, Dallas can hear every word we’re saying. “Just please… can you lower the razor?”

In the rearview, the man barely reacts, though the razor does disappear behind my headrest. Still, the way he manically keeps shifting in his seat—sitting up so close I hear him breathing through his nose—he’s panicking, still making his decision.

“I’m sorry you found him,” the man says, sounding genuine as he stares down at his lap. “That’s why you were running just now—all out of breath. You saw him, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was here picking up a notebook—”

“Please don’t do that to me. I was being honest with you,” he says, sounding wounded, his head still down. I feel a slight nudge in my lower back. From his knees. His feet tap furiously against the floor, making the whole car shake. Whatever he’s about to do, it’s weighing on him. “I know it’s over, Beecher. I know you saw Griffin.”

“If you think I’m the one doing this… with the blackmail… It’s not me,” I tell him. “I swear to you—Clementine’s—”

“They know the roles. They know who’s done this. And when it comes to the fight you’ve picked… the poor girl’s as dead as you are.”

It’s the second time in two days someone’s mentioned my death as if it’s inevitable. It’s starting to piss me off.

Behind me, the man with the razor continues to lean forward, elbows resting on his still bouncing knees. He again takes a heavy breath through his nose. It’s not getting any easier for him. “You’re a history guy, right, Beecher?” Before I can answer, he asks, “Y’ever hear of a guy named Tsutomu Yamaguchi?”

I shake my head, searching the parking lot and scanning the grounds for a guard… for an orderly… for anyone to help. There’s no one in sight.

“You never heard of him? Tsutomu Yamaguchi?” he repeats as I finally place his accent. Flat and midwestern. Just like the President’s. “In 1945, this man Yamaguchi was in the shipbuilding business. In Japan. Y’know what happened in 1945 in Japan?”

“Please… this—whatever this is about. You can let me go. No one’ll ever know. You can say I—”

“Hiroshima. Can you imagine? Of all the towns that this guy’s shipbuilding business sends him to, on August 6, 1945, Yamaguchi was visiting Hiroshima at the exact moment one of our B-29s dropped the atomic bomb,” he continues as if I’m not even there. “But ready for the twist? Yamaguchi actually
survives
. He suffers bad burns, spends the night in the city, and then quickly races to his hometown, which is guess where?”

I don’t answer.

“Nagasaki—which gets hit with the second bomb three days later. And God bless him, Yamaguchi
survives that too
! Blessed by God, right? A hundred and forty thousand are killed in Hiroshima. Seventy thousand die in Nagasaki. But to this day, this one man is the only person certified by the Japanese government to have survived
both
blasts. Two atomic bombs,” he says, shaking his head as he continues to stare down at the blade in his lap. “It may be on a smaller scale, but I can tell you, Beecher. In this life, there are days like that. For all of us.”

I nod politely, hoping it’ll keep him talking. On my phone, it says my call has been connected for four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. If Dallas and his Culper Ring are as good as I think they are, it won’t be long until the cavalry comes running.

In the small of my back, the man’s knees stop shaking.

“Mine was that night in the rain,” he adds as his voice picks up speed. “I knew it the instant they brought him in. Forget the blood and the bits of bone that they said she drove into his brain…”

She? Did he just say
she
?

“… I knew it from the split second I saw the looks on those boys’ faces. It was more than terror, more than remorse. The pain in their eyes was like… it was like they knew they’d never be able to face God Himself again.” He looks up from the blade. His eyes are red and bloodshot. “Y’ever been around a victim of crime—someone who’s been raped or beaten or even mugged? The depth of their horror—you feel that pain through the pores of your skin. I didn’t want to admit it, but that night… that was my own Hiroshima sitting right there in front of me.”

As he says the words, my own pores—my whole body—I feel the despair rising off him. He doesn’t have a choice. From here on in, there’s only one way to keep me from talking. Outside, I eye the service road that leads up from the front gate. Still no cavalry. If I run, the knife’s close enough that he can still do damage. My hands stay gripped to the steering wheel. I search between the seats… across the floor… looking anywhere for a weapon.

“The worst part was how easy it was to pretend otherwise and keep it all silent. Not just with Griffin. With her too. With the stroke…”

The stroke?
I think for a second. He said
her. Does he mean…?

“They blamed it on the Turner syndrome, but when someone takes the long accordion hose from her vacuum cleaner, hooks one end to the tailpipe of her family’s Honda Civic, and then loops the other end into the window of the driver’s seat? That’s not Turner syndrome. That’s
penance
,” he says. “Palmiotti didn’t find her for four hours. To this day, him pulling her out… it’s a miracle she even survived.”

My chest cavity feels hollow—all my organs gone—as I try to take a breath. All this time, we thought Wallace was protecting himself. But he was actually trying to protect…
her
. His sister. “You’re saying Minnie… that Minnie Wallace was the one who… and she tried to commit—?”

“You’re not listening!
I need you to listen to me!
” he explodes, his face contorting with pain. “I was just the driver! I didn’t do anything—I was just trying to help some… they were
kids
!”

“Then you need to listen to me now,” I interrupt, trying to make eye contact in the rearview. “If that’s the case, you need to tell your story. You have nothing to worry about. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t,” he agrees as the pain on his face only gets worse. “I just took them to the hospital. They told me Griffin was dead.”

“Then there you go. That’s what matters,” I say, knowing the benefits of agreeing. The sooner I win him over, the more I can buy myself more time. “All these years… you had no idea.”

“It’s true… I-I was just the driver. How am I supposed to know they gave him a fake name—or—or—or transferred him here once Wallace got his Senate seat? They told me he was dead.”

“Exactly—they told you he was dead. That’s all you knew, right?”

I wait for his answer, but this time there’s only silence from the backseat.

I glance again in the rearview. Our eyes lock.

“That’s all you knew, right?” I ask for the second time.

But as a watery glaze fills his bloodshot eyes, I quickly understand. The worst lies in life are the ones we tell ourselves.