Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (29 page)

Black and white.

“I see your search for Nevada is going quite well,” Trina said, looking not at me but at the door Siobhan had just eased closed behind her. “OJ should’ve hired you to find his ex-wife’s killer.”

When I didn’t respond she said, “Why don’t you give me a quick tour of the place? I only recall seeing the one room the time you snuck me in behind Nevada’s back. Is your armoire still in the bedroom?”

I still didn’t respond.

“Say something,” she said, grabbing two handfuls of my shirt in her fists.

I took my thoughts from outside and looked at her. “What is there to say?”

“Who is she?”

“You are a one-trick pony, Trina.”

“I believe you’re confusing me with yourself,” she said bitterly. “And I won’t complain because your one trick has brought me great pleasure.”

I smirked.

“Who is she?” she repeated.

“A neighbor,” I said. “She and Nevada are friendly.”

“And now you and she have continued that tradition of neighborly love.”

“Your words, not mine.”

She looked around, her eyes lighting, ironically, on a candle burning softly from across the room. I watched as she moved to the candle, lifted it to her nose for a whiff, and then blew upon it until the flame’s spark was lost. She dropped it to the floor and contemplated crushing it under her shoe.

“Feel better?” I asked.

“You make me crazy, Shell.”

She closed her eyes and turned her face away. I noticed the tremble around her mouth, stood there mesmerized by that for some time, then made my way to her. She turned the other way and began to sob.

“From the start I recognized how toxic this could be, Trina.”

She managed to choke her words out. “You’ve been a willing participant in this relationship.”

“Is that what’s it been? A relationship? My name was the name on your marriage license?”

“If I had something sharp—”

“Enough with the threats,” I cut her off. “Or I’ll have to start taking them seriously.”

She looked at me, her eyes rimmed with tears. “How about words? I hate you.”

“Okay.”

“You’re a disloyal friend and a miserable lover.”

I licked my lips.

“A hack that was paid to kill and lost the heart for even that, the one thing you could do reasonably well.”

Inhale and exhale, I told myself.

“You’re a stupid fool. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were a woman. You get drunk off the possibility of love and put all your business out there. But you’re emotionally retarded, so eventually the love ideas start to fade and you leave behind a witness in your wake. How many women know about the things you’ve done?”

I bit my lip…

“Let’s make an account,” she said. “I’d bet your little friend in the Neighborhood Watch already knows the sordid tale of Veronica and Ericka.”

…and flared my nostrils.

“Does she know that whole experience made your penis go forever flaccid?” She batted her eyes and smiled. “Figuratively, of course.”

I let her talk, didn’t take the bait.

“I’m here because I was worried about you,” she said. “And this is what I walk in on. A dinner date? I feel like such a fool.”

“Thought I was the fool,” I said, ending my moratorium on speech.

“You are. Taj knows things about your former life. Nevada does, too. You haven’t denied that Neighborhood Nancy knows things by now. You touch a woman’s skin and smell her scent and get diarrhea of the mouth. Then you discard her and move on to the next one. Meanwhile, she holds on to your dirty little secrets because she’s convinced herself she loves you and that the feeling is mutual, but you can’t follow through because you’re a man of mystery, not to mention emotionally crippled.” She paused to catch her breath. “She feels sorry for you, in a way. Big and tough, and yet undoubtedly you’ll die in a gutter somewhere, literally, with two bullets to the back of the head and not so much as one person who cares other than to see if you’re laying in such a way they can slide the expensive shoes off your feet. And you’re too dumb to recognize any of this. So arrogant you don’t realize the potential rat traps you’ve set for yourself. What if any of us decided to talk? What if we decided to divulge the things you’ve done to one of the agencies? You’d be sitting right next to OJ. You could give him that advice, then.”

I churned my jaw, grinded my molars.

“Right now you should be thinking about triage,” she said. “You know triage, right? The system they use in ERs to determine which injuries should take precedence. You should be doing triage to determine which one of us is most threatening to your personal freedom.”

“At the moment,” I said, “that would be you.”

She looked at me. The swell of her breasts rose and fell as her breathing intensified. “I’m hurt,” she said after a moment. “I’m just talking, Shell. I wouldn’t harm you.”

“I want to believe that.”

“Believe it,” she said, moving to me, offering up a tiny smile, taking my hands and guiding them around her waist, resting her head on my chest. “You make me crazy, Shell.”

I heard myself say, “I have a fever for you, too.”

“Do you? Really?”

“I do.”

“May I stay the night with you?”

“You’re comfortable with that?”

“I shouldn’t be,” she said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but being with you has taught me the depths of my own morality.”

“I understand what you’re saying.” And I did. Morality was often a zero-sum game, full of gross inequities. What I considered moral could injure another. What someone else considered moral could injure me. Rarely did the scales balance.

“Do you care about her?” she asked.

Almost as an underscore for her principle argument, I said, “Who?”

She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. You want to be with me, for the night at least.”

“Black and white,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I WOKE UP IN the tangle of Nevada’s sheets, Trina’s leg rested across my body. I looked to see if she was awake, but she was sleeping peacefully. It was still dark outside. The devil’s hour. Improbably, my thoughts had returned to Nevada. And I had Trina to thank for the newest revelation. She’d helped me in more ways than one. I fingered a strand of hair from her face and kissed her warm skin.

Nev, this is Dev.

I had a feeling that Siobhan and I had assumed too much from those few words.

What had felt like another dead end might actually be the most promising lead yet.

TWENTY-ONE

I IDLED IN CHRIS Hall’s Accord, at the curb across the street from a one-story ranch. Trina’s scent was trapped in my clothes, the lilt of Siobhan’s voice rang in my ears, and Nevada’s uncertain condition was a constant loop playing through my mind. I was worse than a man without a country. I was a man with split allegiances. Trina could never be The Woman in my life, but nor could I seem to leave her alone. The hurt in Siobhan’s eyes when she left me after Trina’s intrusion was an open wound that wouldn’t heal until I apologized—and she accepted the apology. Sadly my confidence that either would happen wasn’t very high. And Nevada…what could I say about Nevada?

Rather than dwell on any of the women, I turned my attention back to the one-story ranch. I spotted at least two ways I could enter the house; neither involved the front door. In my past life I would’ve flipped a coin to choose one point of ingress. Now, I settled on ringing the doorbell.

I yawned the Accord’s driver’s-side door open, the rusted hinges crying out, and stepped out into the warmth of midday. It was a bucolic setting in a quiet suburban town in North Jersey whose name isn’t important. I was greeted by the sight of rolling green lawns, the
thtick thtick thtick thtick
sound of oscillating water sprinklers, and the fragrant smell of flowers and clean air.

I spotted a third way I could enter the house as I managed the Accord’s door shut and shook off the desire for illegal entry.

The house included a garage with an impossibly high door, and a smooth concrete path leading directly to the front door. No step entry. I rang the bell and listened to the cascading notes of a classical song.

He opened the door with a smile and flecks of paint on his nose. I took a quick inventory of him: several inches shorter than me; thin, with the build of a weekend tennis player; balding, what hair he had shot through with gray; cornflower blue eyes; pale, hairy forearms but a healthy tan face. Paint was not only on his nose and face and hands but speckled on his jeans and Rutgers T-shirt as well. He extended a hand, still smiling. “Chris?”

I nodded. “Professor Devlin?”

Nev, this is Dev.

Siobhan and I had assumed a reference to his first name. A morning of acrobatic sex with Trina had opened my mind to other possibilities.

“Pardon my appearance,” he said. “Doing a little spring freshening up. The walls in this old place seem to pick up every unwanted stain there is.”

“I understand,” I said. “I appreciate you agreeing to see me. I won’t take up too much of your time.”

“I needed the break, and long live the Crimson
Aitch
,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “And an art major at that. I have a civic duty to welcome art alum with open arms.”

“I apologize for the unsolicited call, Professor Devlin.”

“Wallace, please. And don’t be silly. Our phone number is listed for a reason. The call energized me. Come in.”

I crossed the flat threshold of his front door thinking,
Wallace, not Dev
.

I guess some things were reserved for Nevada only.

“Something to drink?” he asked, leading me down a wide entry hall.

“What do you have?”

“No alcohol,” he said. “I should’ve mentioned that. We have a dry home.”

Another definition for insanity: employing the same unsuccessful strategy repeatedly, and yet expecting a different result. In hindsight, I hadn’t been aggressive enough with either Uncle John or Cole Enger. And though my appearance had caught them both off guard, I hadn’t confronted them where they’d be most vulnerable. Home is where the heart is. It’s also where we are our most private, where the darkest secrets of our lives are locked away in closets to which only we have the keys.

We have a dry home.

Nevada’s lover—and there was no doubt in my mind that’s what Professor Devlin was—happened to be forever vowed to someone else.

“Cold water?” I said.

“Be adventurous, Chris. How about punch made with cranberry-apple juice and Sprite?”

“Sounds good.”

“Excellent.”

The house had what architects refer to as an open floor plan, copious space leading, unbroken by walls or other encumbrances, from one room to the next. The kitchen and living room were separated only by a waist-high counter. Very little furniture. The pieces they had were expensive and well-appointed. I noticed all of the doors had levers instead of door knobs.

“Your mention of Jan Van Eyck really sparked my interest,” Professor Devlin said, opening a low cabinet with pull-out shelves, and producing two squat drinking glasses. “The Renaissance is one of my favorite periods. I can’t wait to read your thesis.”

“I plan on giving some mention to Dürer as well,” I said. “And Donatello.”

He rinsed the glasses in the sink. There was a recessed space underneath the sink instead of a cabinet. An elevated dish washer next to it.

“And da Vinci, of course,” he said, pouring punch in the two glasses.

“Actually I’m not certain I’ll give much space to da Vinci.”

“Dan Brown ruined him for you?” he said, a twinkle in his cornflower blue eyes.

I tried to match his smile. “I have a complex relationship with the Mona Lisa, Professor Devlin.”

“Wallace,” he said again. “How about we retire to the sunroom? We have it facing south so we can take full advantage of the sunlight.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

We walked across laminate wood floors, seamless transitions from room to room, no threshold bumps. Understanding passed through me. Suddenly I didn’t feel well about blowing the professor’s life apart.

“Are you going to at least speak of Michelangelo and El Greco?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said, and clearing my throat, repeated the words.

“I teach baroque and rococo as well,” he said. We’d reached the sunroom. It was starved for furniture as were the other rooms. He sat on the arm of a plush reading chair. I took the small couch. “Rembrandt, Rubens, and the like.”

“Caravaggio, Bernini,” I said.

He nodded. “Velazquez.”

I cleared my throat once more. “Is that how you met Nevada? One of your classes?”

He barely finished a sip of punch, and managed to set his glass on the floor without spilling it. I’d aged him ten years in a moment. His voice and body trembled slightly. “You’re not working on a thesis?” he said.

“No,” I said. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Are you at Harvard, at least?”

“Sorry to disappoint you. I know the Crimson
Aitch
is estimable.”