Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (11 page)

I was fortunate enough to find a parking space near the restaurant, right on the street out front. I killed my engine, got out, and locked the Acura. I planned on being gone long enough for care and security to be necessary, which was anything over five seconds in this part of Newark. As I said, the South Ward was a world removed from the Ironbound. And Mona Lisa. I had it in my mind that distance was just what I needed.

I shouldered my way through the huddle of boys in front of the restaurant. One of them held an iPod in his smallish hands, pink ear buds dangling from his ears, and was bopping hard to the music. The others were engaged in a friendly conversation about a girl they were all familiar with. I didn’t expect the conversation to stay friendly for much longer. I could hear a proprietary edge in the tone of one of the boys.

I stepped inside without incident.

Panda House was an altogether inappropriate name for the place. Panda
Closet
would’ve been better. The entirety of the space was smaller than most rooms in a moderate size house. There were two booths to my left, three tables to my right. I calculated a comfortable seating of no more than twenty before the Newark Fire Department would come threatening fines.

I walked across checkerboard floor tiles, most of them chipped. The odor of overused grease hit me as I neared the order counter. The walls were bare except for a frame holding the first dollar the business had earned, a large slice of cracked glass visually splitting the bill in half, and several business licenses Scotch-taped in a grouping on a peg board. A square discoloration in another spot hinted at something that was no longer there. I didn’t want to think of things that were no longer around. That spot needed cleaning until it blended in with the rest of the wall.

The order counter was cluttered, but neat. Plastic bins for condiments took up most of the space, soy sauce in every single bin. Next to the bins were neat stacks of paper menus held together with rubber bands. A cash register and a Coca-Cola 4-head fountain soda machine took up the rest of the counter. A Coca-Cola standup cooler occupied the wall to the right of that. The ventilation grate at the bottom of the cooler was scrunched in on itself by a big dent that kept it from staying firmly in place. Half scraped off stickers marred its glass door. As with the frame that held the first dollar, the glass of the cooler door was cracked. The bottom of the cooler was loaded with stacks of Coca-Cola 12 oz. can cases. Above those was a shelf with two-liter bottles. And above that, the final two shelves held an assortment of 20 oz. bottles. The cooler, like the counter, was cluttered but neat.

A wisp of an Asian girl, in black pants and a stiff white shirt, waited patiently for me to reach the counter. She had a smile on her face. It’d been there from the moment I’d walked inside. In a few years she’d be of legal age, focused on boys and college and the myriad possibilities of both. I remembered her as a little girl, shy and charged with entertaining her own self, playing with dolls that didn’t have any clothes and often were missing limbs as well. Some real progress had been made by the need for her labor at the Chinese restaurant’s counter. She’d given up on those pitiful dolls and learned to smile.

I don’t believe she remembered me.

Behind her, in the little cooking prep area, was an older man. He was small too, unassuming. Almost invisible if not for his left eye and a purplish birthmark shaped like a continent that took up most of his left cheek. The eye was motionless in its socket and had a dulled gray pigment. The older man was busy chopping vegetables or some such thing, and did not even look in my direction. But I had the feeling he was very aware of my presence.

“Hello,” the young Asian girl said. “May I help you please?”

I ordered a no. 12 special, Beef Egg Foo Young, white rice and gravy on the side.

“And a Pepsi,” I added as an afterthought that was actually well planned out.

She became the little girl version of herself again. The smile fell from her face. She looked over her shoulder at the man with the dead eye and Australia on his left cheek. He kept about his task, still seemingly unaware of me. The girl returned her attention to me, forced her earlier smile to reappear. She definitely didn’t remember me. She wouldn’t have smiled if she did.

“Coca-Cola,” she said.

“Pepsi,” I insisted.

She pointed a slender brown hand at the cooler with the dented ventilation grate. When that garnered no response, she sidestepped and tapped the 4-head fountain soda machine. Shrugged, smiled.

I mechanically moved my head from side-to-side and said, “Pepsi.”

She turned again and machine-gunned her language to the man with the dead eye and birthmark. He stopped chopping, finally looked up. A deep frown creased his forehead. He hesitated for a beat, then wiped his hands on his apron and moved beside the girl. He put his hand on her shoulder, his good right eye carefully trained on me. There was a slight tremble in his body but he did an admirable job of masking it. I had to give him credit for that. Not many could have feigned calm with me standing there looking agitated.

“Almost year,” he said.

I nodded. “You have a good memory, Jiang.”

“You good customer,” he said, smiling. The smile a doctor gives a sick patient with little to no prospect of recovery.

“How’ve you been?” I asked him.

“Ah, busy,” he said. “Very busy.”

I nodded. “I’d like a Pepsi, Jiang.”

The young Asian girl, his daughter, was still at his side, her eyes averted from me.

“Coca-Cola,” Jiang said, pointing at the cooler with the dented ventilation grate, then moving over and tapping the 4-head fountain soda machine. The exact same gestures as his daughter a moment earlier. Didn’t work for her, wouldn’t for him, either. And I’d hold him more accountable than I did with her. She was just a child still. He knew better.

“Pepsi, Jiang.”

“Cold. Coca-Cola. Cold as witch tit. No Pepsi, please.”

“Pepsi.”

“No. You wait,” he said, and hurriedly backed away. He disappeared deep into the cooking area, obscured from my sight behind machinery and other cookery knickknacks. He came back out a moment later, a white container with a thin metal handle in his hand. He dropped the container in a plastic bag. Threw in a couple packets of soy sauce. Fortune cookies, several bags of the dry noodles he normally guarded like FortKnox. He handed the bag to me with two hands as though it were a live grenade.

“Free,” he said, gesturing with his hand. “Take, take.”

I took it, but stood and watched him for a moment. Watched his daughter as well. She still refused to look at me. Jiang somehow managed to hold my glare, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat all the while. I moved away finally, stopped by the cooler with the busted ventilation grate, opened it, took out a can of Coca-Cola, and lifted it for Jiang to see. He waved me on.
Free. Take, take.

I took it and left.

I DROVE TO THE end of the block, turned right and coasted about fifty feet, braking at the mouth of an alley. My rearview was clear so I turned in. The narrow path was an artery that fed past the back of Panda House and a Laundromat and a nail place. I eased past the gray door of the Chinese restaurant. Gray. Eased past similarly colored doors for Panda’s neighbor merchants. I parked, but left my engine running, got out with my bag of Chinese food and soda in hand, settled myself on the Acura’s trunk, my right foot propped on the bumper. I set down the can of Coca-Cola next to me and ripped open the bag and ate the food with a plastic spoon.

The alley was like most of its kind, strewn with trash, and ripe with competing smells, none of them pleasant. Teeming with stray cats. None of that bothered me, though.

I ate my Egg Foo Young and watched a gray door. Watched it for twenty minutes. When it finally opened, the man with one dead eye and a purplish birthmark stepped out. He had a large trash bag hefted over his right shoulder. It looked like an impressive feat. But it wasn’t nearly so. The bag wasn’t very heavy. Less than ten pounds, I estimated.

I picked up my can of Coca-Cola. It was filmed with cold sweat. A whoosh sounded when I popped the tab. Ice cold, but it did nothing to douse the fire in my chest as I guzzled it dry. I crushed the can with one hand and started to stroll.

Jiang was bent over his trash bag, working the tails of it into a knot. I’m big, but I move quietly if need be. At that moment I needed to. He didn’t hear my approach.

Ten feet from him, I dropped the Coca-Cola can and kicked it over by his feet. He froze, looked down at the crumpled soda can, a puzzled expression on his face. Then realization formed and he looked up and spotted me. He stood up bolt straight and contemplated the gray door. It loomed five feet away. By then I had closed the distance between us to three feet.

“Pick up the can,” I said. “No littering.”

He didn’t take his eyes off of me.

“Pick it up. The
Coca-Cola
can,” I said.

He closed his good eye and groaned like an undernourished stomach.

“I won’t tell you again, Jiang.”

Another glance at the Coca-Cola can. Then back to me. He raised his arms in surrender. A yelping sound rose from his throat, a fevered cry of fear. Most men would have been embarrassed by the sound. Unless they had me staring them down in an alley.

“Pick it up, Jiang. Last time I’ll tell you.”

He sighed and made a move to do as I directed. I kicked the can a foot behind him before he could get his fingertips on it. It clattered across the asphalt like sunburned leaves. He turned to his right and refocused on the can. Left his back exposed. A huge mistake.

I kicked him hard in the seat of his pants. Adam Vinitieri would’ve smiled and sought a high-five.

Jiang landed in a heads-first heap a full horse length beyond the Coca-Cola can. I have to give him credit, though. He’d rolled over on his back and had his hands up to ward off my blows by the time I reached him. Still, I picked him up roughly by the collar of his shirt, pulled back my arm to deliver a blow that was certain to extinguish his flame.

I aimed it for his good eye.

But I heard him say something.

I dropped my arm, nodded.

Jiang had saved himself with one word.

Pepsi.

EIGHT

I’M NOT CERTAIN OF the correct definition for irony. I struggled with the concept in both high school and college. Most use the term incorrectly, that much I recall. Something regarding the incongruity of what is expected and what actually occurs. Well, bad luck and trouble had followed me all the days of my life. It’s irony, to my thinking, that I would choose the dilapidated building diagonally across from Panda House as a respite from that lifetime of bad luck and trouble.

The building had an expansive history, much of it stained. Just six stories tall, the second floor windows on the east side of the structure had yet to be replaced after a serious gunfight that actually made the news a few years back. The windows were absent of glass and covered by plywood. The lobby carpet smelled of mildew and death. Gurneys, black body bags, and harried emergency medical workers weren’t strangers to the dark lobby. Yet Jiang had looked from his storefront at Panda House to just across the street and seen profit in the building. Bought it, I’m told, the same week he had the epiphany. Smart.

I pushed the elevator button for UP. The stairwell wasn’t safe, even for me. When the elevator car arrived, I stepped on and pushed another button for the third floor. On the ride up, I read most of the promotional stickers plastered to the elevator walls. Mostly rappers I hadn’t ever heard of. I considered a trip back to the lobby and out of the building without finalizing my intentions. That didn’t happen, though. I exited at the third floor. Unlike the stairwell, the third floor corridor did not smell of piss and body odor. The strong aroma of cinnamon from inside someone’s unit drifted out into the hall.  Baking. A suburban concept in a building a galaxy away from a world of manicured lawns and white picket fences. Another irony?

I didn’t knock as I reached the fourth door to the left of the elevator.

I opened up, walked in, turned and clicked all the locks in place behind me.

Small apartment, living room and kitchen bisected by a waist-high counter. Living room furnished with a tattered brown couch and a Salvation Army chair I’ll charitably describe as green. The tan carpet seasoned by drink stains and cigarette burns. Then further marred by cheap stitch work. No television. No stereo. A bare kitchen, except for a few cold drinks in the throbbing refrigerator, an old off-brand model that probably hadn’t worked particularly well even when it was new.

Although it had been close to a year since I’d last been here, I knew all of this without having to take an inventory. Some things never change.

A film of light leaked through the small crack at the bottom of the bathroom door.

I heard the sink running, a woman’s soft melodic voice humming a tune.

I made my way to the doorway.

She stood by the sink, naked from the waist down, with soap on her fingers and using them to massage clean the lips of her vagina. No bath cloth, but a big towel lay next to her on the sink. Resting on the towel was a folding pocket knife with a serrated blade sharp enough to filet any man foolish enough to test it. She rinsed her fingers under the tap, then cupped a handful of water and thoroughly cleansed the residual soap from her genitals. Done with that, she carefully picked up the knife, pulled the towel out from under it, set the knife on the counter like a trusted friend. Patted herself dry with the towel, humming a song the entire time. Her movements so careful and thought out.