Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (18 page)

“I’ve been very lax,” I said in a hiss. “But my senses are returning. You were planning to cut me and take my soggy wallet perhaps?”

“Your watch was a lot more attractive to me to be honest,” Dutty said in a pained voice. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

I head-butted the center mass of his face. His nose went soft and flat; blood gushed as he dropped like a popped balloon.

I leaned down and took the knife from the sparse grass, wiped it and placed it in my largest pocket.

Walked away.

Angry.

I ACHED FOR A hydrogen peroxide shower and an Ambien sleep.
Brittle
,
bruised
, and
tender
were but a few of the words that could be used to describe my state of being.
Sore
,
stiff
, and
achy
were at least a few days away. I looked forward to the moment my body transitioned. It had been a rough night, for sure, but even lemons had the potential for sweetness. I chose that viewpoint. Rough night, but it hadn’t ended with me in the Acura’s trunk wrapped in cheap carpet or drop cloth. It hadn’t ended with me rotting at the bottom of the PassaicRiver, either. In addition, I had taught a vagrant a valuable lesson about serendipity. You never could tell who and what life would drop in your lap.

Day had broken, and with it came new opportunity. Opportunity I could not afford to lose while I convalesced. I had to keep going. With that focus I managed to flag down a taxi and have him take me to the first place I could think of. Sometimes you have to go backward in order to move forward.

I had last been here right before the mess with Roger Coke.

The banner sign by the entrance of the yard read simply SALVAGE. Burnt-out cars were displayed in surprisingly neat rows, a few stacked atop one another, most missing windows, all but a few with their trunk lids lifted open. A garden of dead grass planted off to the side served as a graveyard for a few pieces of farm equipment: tractors the color of communion wine, broken riding lawn mowers with tires as flat as four-day-old Coca-Cola. A few rusted motorcycles completed the picture. The yard offered a bounty of riches: headlights, blinkers, taillights, car seats with tiny slits bleeding foam stuffing, mirrors, windshields, parts of exhaust systems.

I walked forty yards into the area, came to a five-by-ten booth missing shingles on its slanted roof. Last time I’d been here there was a gaping hole where the entrance door should’ve been. That had been fixed. The new door was already scuffed and peeling paint, but it was a sturdy steel impediment to unwanted entry.

Old school Motown soul blared inside. The yard supervisor had his back to the door, thumbing through a stack of papers on a metal shelving unit bolted to the wall. As always he wore a grungy pair of size ten Timberland boots and an equally filthy pair of jeans. A smudged wife-beater top completed the picture.

I knocked on the door.

He turned.

I didn’t hear a groan through the glass but his expression told me he’d done so. Despite that, he moved to the door and opened it for me.

“Rum,” I said.

“Shell,” he replied, and examining me further, added, “Shit. What happened to you?”

I ignored that and asked, “How’ve you been?”

“Okay, I guess. You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Leave it alone, Rum.”

“Okay.” He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay.”

“I need a change of clothes,” I said.

“I don’t think mine will fit you.”

“You like to shop?”

“As often as possible,” he said.

I frowned. “Really?”

“Not at all,” he said with a straight face. “But I have a feeling you’re about to send me to a store.”

“Clairvoyance.”

“Not sure where that’s at,” he said, “but I hope they don’t have long lines.”

I smiled for the first time in awhile and asked, “How’s Cara doing?”

We said, “Who?” in unison.

A familiar dance.

“You’ve almost gotten me killed twice, Rum,” I said.

He took a step back.

“When I settled the situation with your sister’s abusive boyfriend,” I said. “And with that piece of shit Glock I got from you that time.”

“Shell, I—”

I put my hand up. He swallowed his thought. “But in a strange twist of fate that piece of shit Glock saved me,” I admitted. “I can’t forget that.”

His chest fell. “I’m glad, Shell.”

“Don’t be so hard on Cara,” I said. “You two should speak again. Blood is thicker than water.”

“She’s working for a marketing firm in the city,” he confessed. “Thinks she might be pregnant. I like this guy better than…”

I smiled once more. “You’ve been holding out on me?”

“Blood is thicker than water, like you said.”

I nodded. “Clothes aren’t the only thing I need. I have some more trouble, Rum.”

“Whatever you need, just ask.”

“What I need,” I said, “is for the trouble to never have hit my doorstep.”

“A burner would help?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll make sure this one isn’t a piece of shit.”

“Sure you will.”

“Anything else, Shell?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” he said, incredulous.

“No. I don’t.”

“This must be some mighty steep trouble. I’ve never known you to be baffled by anything.”

“Very steep,” I said.

“Wish I could give you wings, you could fly over it.”

“Wings?” I said, smiling at the idea.

He smiled as well. At ease finally. “You know what I mean, Shell? I could use some myself.”

“I do know what you mean,” I said. “More than you’ll ever know. On further thought, we can skip the burner. But there’s something else you can do for me.”

“Name it.”

“Wings,” I said. “Get me wings.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“After you’ve gotten my clothes, I could use a ride to the airport.”

SHE WAS VERY LOVELY. So much so, that’s the name I assigned to her.
Lovely.
Short black hair styled into a slick female comb over, almond-shaped eyes highlighted with bronze eye shadow, light-colored lipstick. A good figure: thin waist, reasonable hips, and smallish breasts. Height that tested the boundaries of something. Too short to be a model, yet too tall to not at least flirt with the idea. Her skin was the rich brown of roasted cashews.

I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were.

She took to the escalator, headed for Midlevel, with me on her heels.

NewarkLibertyInternationalAirport is organized into three distinct terminals. Terminal A has twenty-seven gates, and branches out into several circular buildings. Terminal B has fifteen international arrival gates, and is capable of processing three thousand arriving passengers per hour. Terminal C is three levels, two of those levels devoted for departures, with nineteen gates, a huge retail space, and Customs facilities.

We were making our way through Terminal C.

Lovely walked at a nice leisurely pace. I matched it and thought about Rad and Shepard and JW and Veronica and Ericka and Nevada and things that had been said and things that had been done. Dark thoughts that made shadows fall on my mood. Bad, after the night I’d had.

 9/11 changed travel forever, and there were ubiquitous reminders, from the pen of the TSA, articulating what I and the other passengers could do to help smooth our travels. Pack our luggage in layers. Be ready with our boarding passes and ID. Take all of our outer garments and shoes off. I wore a utilitarian shirt and shorts from Kohl’s and had no luggage.

I continued following Lovely.

Déjà vu all over again.

She made her way to Midlevel, Check-In, Door 3, a pre-security area of Newark Liberty. Perfect. Security was my plague; security was to be avoided at all costs.

I spotted a newsstand-type store, watched as it swallowed her.

The store sold a bit of everything: snacks, bottled beverages, film, batteries, health and beauty aids, tobacco products, candy, souvenir apparel, the magazines and newspapers and books that one would expect. The banner over the entrance advertised
Hudson News
in an impressive blue cursive design. The interior was antiseptic clean, well-lit. I walked in. The clerk on the register didn’t greet me, too busy working down a line that snaked around the counter. I didn’t count her lack of greeting as an indignity.

My shorts were slightly wrinkled, but dry at least, and my shirt was tight across the shoulders. Blood flowed through my veins, though. My medulla oblongata correctly regulated my breathing. My fingers and toes had their feeling. Everything was fine, clothes be damned.

Lovely made her way to the magazine section. In a moment, she was carefully flipping through the pages of a celebrity glossy, just the slightest of a smile on her face. She had cartoon lips, the heart-shaped kind that usually required a vivid imagination and a pen to create. Full, thanks to genetics and not Botox. The sheen of her lipstick and the thoughts they inspired caused an erection in my shorts. I still couldn’t see the color of her eyes, though.

I moved in Lovely’s direction, accidentally bumped against a college-age kid wearing a flannel checkerboard shirt, khaki pants turned into shorts that were cut off just above his knees, what looked suspiciously like one of those studded dog collars holding them up. I studied him for a moment, unable to suppress a frown. He didn’t stop thumbing through the skater magazine in his hands, didn’t check to see who’d bumped him or to insure his wallet hadn’t been lifted.

I inched forward some more.

The aisle grew cluttered with displays. I turned sideways to wend my way through. My shoulder brushed against a guy wearing burgundy hospital scrubs, a black and white mesh hat with a ’68 Pontiac Firebird on the front, the hat turned backward. Time warp, I thought. Who wore hats in that manner anymore? Despite the fashion misstep, he was a solidly built guy. Thick neck and strong arms. Some would mistake us for one another. Some. He ran a couple inches shorter than I run, was several years younger from what I could tell, but none of that mattered unless you looked close. Very few, if any, would. He yawned, blew out a breath of air, then yawned a second time as he searched through a bin of Car-Freshner trees, just as oblivious as Skater Dude that I’d bumped him, too.

I passed him, eased into a spot beside Lovely. Still couldn’t make out the color of her eyes, but a closer look revealed her to be much younger than I’d realized. Twenty-five was a stretch. Twenty or twenty-one, thereabout. Her age would likely work to my favor.

She glanced at me briefly, turned her attention back to her magazine. A beloved pop diva had taken a movie role, had dressed down and gone without makeup for the part. There was talk of an Oscar. Lovely seemed to hang on to every word of the article, lips pursed, forehead creased. Her enthusiasm warmed me. Or maybe it was her eyes that did it for me. Brown, I noticed, when she’d glanced my way. I was thankful for their color. They could’ve easily been gray. Déjà vu all over again. That would have been too much.

Nevada was an anomaly. I’m usually not one for striking up conversations with strangers, even beautiful women. But my time was short and I couldn’t waste a second.

I asked, “Where you traveling to?”      

Lovely turned, frowned. “What was that?”

“Flying?”

“Flying out of an airport?” She paused, a sarcastic finger at her temple. “Gee, I don’t know. That’s a novel concept.”

I nodded, asked, “Where to?”

“Why in the world would I tell you?”

“Making conversation,” I said.

She looked all around us with flair, and then focused back on me. “I signed up for a speed date and forgot?”

I smiled, offered my hand. “Shell.”

She shook her head, scrunched her nose, and did not offer her hand. “H1N1 is for real, I’m good.”

“There’s always hand sanitizer,” I said.

“That your transition to start talking about condoms next?”

I ignored that. “What college do you attend?”

The key to manipulation is finding the interest point of the one you wish to manipulate. I’d found Lovely’s.