Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (8 page)

It was more of a statement than a question. So I didn’t respond.

“When are you going?” she asked, her eyes glistening.

“As soon as your melancholy fades,” I said.

“It may never.”

“Five minutes, then.”

I hate the sight of a woman crying. I’ve never quite figured out how to respond. And I’ve had plenty of opportunities. The naked woman with the hearts-and-vines tattoo dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips, same fingers she’d run over every surface in the room just minutes earlier. Then she took a deep breath, then another, then another. I noticed a trend at that moment: she seemingly moved in threes. It was a strange time to focus on such minutiae, but then again my mind was in a strange and dark place.

I stood silent as she cried softly.

“Thought you hated her,” she whispered after a moment.

“I do.”

“Did,” she corrected. “
Did
. She’s gone, Shell, past tense. You can’t possibly believe she’s going to turn up alive.”

She was speaking of Nevada. I hated
her
for it.

“You’re going back to Jersey aren’t you?” she asked.

Another statement, not a real question. So I didn’t answer that one, either.

“I’m not insensitive to it all,” she said. “It’s a terrible tragedy.” She hugged herself again. She’d do it once more, for a total of three, before I exited. That’s the only thought I had at that moment. Minutiae. “But I don’t understand how it’s any of your concern, Shell. Let it go. Let Nevada go. You can’t save her. It’s too late.”

Her words made me want to crumple paper. “I might be able to find out what’s happened,” I said. “It might have something to do with me.”

“It has nothing to do with you,” she said. “Wouldn’t you know by now if it did?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Either way I intend to figure out what happened.”

“Figure out what happened?” she said, a smirk in her voice. “They should have kept you out of the 200-level courses in college, I swear. You take
Current Issues in Policing
and now you think you’re Monk or Gil Grissom?”

It did sound foolish.

I redirected. “I need to make sure there’s nothing in her place that connects to me.”

“Hate to have the cocoon upset,” she said.

I ignored the dig. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

She crossed the room, came to rest directly in front of me, looked up and smiled. Brave woman. “Nevada. Taj. Veronica and Ericka. Fill in the name, Shell, but your downfall is always some woman.”

 “You left your name off the list,” I said.

“You think I belong on it? Or you on
mine
?”

I didn’t respond.

“There’s nothing in her place that connects to you, Shell.” She smiled. “There’s nothing in it that connects to Nevada, either. That’s the way you would have it. And I’m sure she learned from you, as all the women do. Right, Mr. Precaution?”

She tried to touch me then. I backed up a step, a move that made her sigh.

“Again…Taj. Veronica. Ericka. Now Nevada. You haven’t been able to let go of any of them,” she said. “Maybe now is the time. I believe this is greater than just Nevada. This is about letting go, period.”

“You certainly do that well.”

“You too,” she said, smiling. “It’s May first and all you’re thinking about is Nevada.”

I shook off those words and reached in the front pocket of my slacks, pulled out a thick stack of plastic cards bound tightly together with a single rubber band. I held the stack of cards in my hand, trying to find the words to proceed. None seemed to come.

She saved me, asked, “What do you have there?”

“Amex gift cards,” I said. “Each one is loaded with two hundred and fifty dollars. They’re for you.”

“Tell me you’re kidding, Shell?”

“What?” I frowned. “There’s plenty here.”

“Do I look like Air Force Amy?”

“Who?”

“Prostitute,” she whispered. “Put those away before I scratch your eyes out.”

I studied her face to see if she were serious, then nodded, placed the cards back in my pocket.

“I gave the hotel credit authorization for all charges,” I said. “Hope that doesn’t make you feel bought and paid for, as well. I want you to stay here and enjoy yourself. Don’t spare yourself any luxury.”

Hate bloomed in her eyes. “I’ll order the most expensive thing for all of my meals. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” she said. “And use the spa services morning, noon, and night.”

I cracked an odd smile. “
Three
times a day?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“I don’t want to hate you, Shell. I really don’t.”

“It’s okay if you do. I understand.”

We locked eyes. Hers were not gray, but brown. The most prevalent eye color in the world. Eyes are the key to the soul. I saw love. I saw hurt, too. Saw all of that in her eyes. In their reflections. Her eyes were a mirror to my own emotions. The love and hurt that I saw was in me. All over my face. If I were a better man, the love and hurt would have been for the naked woman with the hearts-and-vines tattoo. If I were a better man I’d have worked harder to get closure with Nevada. With Taj.

With Veronica and Ericka.

It
was
too late for that.

“I want you to stay, Shell. Stay here with me.”

“I know you do.”

“I love you, Shell. I love you so much.”

“I know you do.”

“Please don’t hurt me like this,” she said. “Please don’t do this to us.”

“I’m not emotionless. This hurts me as well. But there is no us,” I said.

A frown creased her forehead. She said, “You could have fooled me, Shell,” spitting the words out like spoiled food. “How could you say there is no us? This past month we’ve been practically inseparable. I’ve neglected everything in my world for you. Came down here to Miami like some schoolgirl on spring break. I’ve shirked all of my responsibilities. Took time off from work I shouldn’t have.” She paused, thinking that’d have an affect on me. When it didn’t she added, “You’ve neglected everything in your world for me.”

I nodded. “One day I’ll make peace with that and not regret it as much as I do right now.”

She backed away from me and plopped down on the bed, her eyes void, like someone who’d just been given a death sentence and didn’t know how to cope with the fatal news. I crossed the room to her. She didn’t respond to my nearness in any discernible way. Lifeless, the best way I can describe her. I bent down and gripped her face as tenderly as I ever had. She didn’t look at me as I kissed her forehead. I stood upright, brushed myself off, and turned to leave. I was at the door, my hand on the knob, when her voice drifted over to me. I hesitated just a moment.

“Will I ever see you again, Shell?”

It wasn’t a question.

I didn’t answer.

I left.

MIAMI INTERNATIONAL TO NEWARK, Delta Airlines, a five hour and eight minute trip. Forty-five minute layover in Atlanta, most of which I spent at a newsstand, avoiding any newspapers or paperback novels that spoke of death, or its distant cousin, love. My original flight had left at 12:17 P.M. I’d arrive back in New Jersey at 5:27 P.M. according to the itinerary. The timing ended up close to spot-on. I found myself deboarding at 5:33 P.M., with very little recollection of the flight, the layover, or the people whose paths I’d crossed in my travels. By 5:46 P.M., I was curbside at NewarkLibertyInternationalAirport, black shoulder bag in hand, looking for the driver I’d hired to pick me up. Back in Jersey, intent on facing down a ghost. No idea how I would prosper in that task.

“Sir?”

My driver, cardboard placard in hand with my name scrawled on it.

I gripped him by the shoulder but didn’t squeeze. He smiled.

“That is all, sir?” he asked, nodding at my black shoulder bag. His diction was precise, very little inflection from his home on the western shores of Africa. His skin was the exaggerated dark black of temporary hair dye, his teeth straight and near white. He’d told me his name, but I hadn’t really processed it. Didn’t want, or need, friends.

“I have to get myself a vehicle,” I said, once we were in his car, traveling.

“Rental, sir?”

“Probably,” I said. “Hope I won’t be here long.”

“Visiting family, sir?”

“I know of a place to rent vehicles from. I’ll direct you there,” I told him.

I caught the glow of his smile reflected in his rearview mirror. “You have something sporty in mind, sir?”

“Anything,” I said, my gaze falling along with my voice, “but a Yukon.”

SIX

“THAT ARROZ CON POLLO I smell?”

I said it with a rare smile on my face. The smile did me little good. She still looked at me as though gas fumes were overtaking her foyer. I would have knocked at her door in the middle of night, preferring the cover of darkness myself, but considering her reaction now, even with a bloodred sun lighting my back, this day visit was the better bet.

Not by much, though.

“How long has it been, Mrs. Rubalcaba?” I asked.

I already knew the answer: almost a year.

She didn’t respond.

We stood there on her porch, Narciso Lopez’s flag of Cuba extended above us on a flagpole bracketed to the frame of the house, the five blue and white stripes, the five-pointed star, the equilateral red triangle of the flag all remaining still in the breezeless sky.

Mrs. Rubalcaba had a squat frame, porcelain white skin with swirls of pink in it, especially around her cheeks. Her legs turned to ankles of the same thickness. Curls of hair as white as camera flash peeked out from under a forest green knit hat. Her eyes were dark. Her mouth made angry by the age lines above and at the corners of her lips. Those age lines were the only ones on her face. Her skin was unblemished otherwise, smooth, and yet she still looked her age because of that angry mouth. I tried to picture her thirty years earlier. Imagined her thinner, attractive, pleasant. As in the sepia-toned pictures I’d been told lined the walls in her living room. It was a hopeless exercise for me. She wasn’t thin, wasn’t attractive any longer. Wasn’t pleasant, and had never been to me. I suppose I was someone to fear and hate. And she’d always let me know it.

She was dressed in a faded print dress, an overdone apron with its tie straps barely able to reach around her ample waist. The apron had a deep pocket sewed in the front. The neck of a bottle of Cuban rum peeked over the pocket’s edge.
Ron Santiago de Cuba.
I looked at Mrs. Rubalcaba’s eyes, searched to see if they were marred by broken blood vessels or glazed over like a child’s new marbles. Surprisingly, she didn’t look away from my appraisal. My hand was a Royal Flush but she held her five junk cards without losing a bit of her edge. After a beat of us staring wordlessly at one another she said something I didn’t understand but knew was harsh.

“Mrs. Rubalcaba, I—”

“You leave please.”

Her tone made me swallow. I was at the top of her porch steps, terra cotta flower pots crowded all around me, stains from soil overflow painted into the gray steps. Gray.

I gave up trying to reach her. “Mr. Rubalcaba home? Let me speak with your husband. Your esposo.”

Her husband, an old ally.

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “No Armando.”

“I have some things I’d like to leave with him,” I explained. I turned toward my rental car, a shiny black Acura TL parked curbside, as if Mrs. Rubalcaba could see the items placed carefully on the backseat. Several seven-pound bags of dry dog food, Purina Beneful. Twenty-two ounce buckets of Buddy “Luv” dog treats, Chocolit Chip Cookie flavor. Three cases of 48-pack Poland Spring water bottles, eight ounces each. The brands and serving sizes very precise and exact.

“No Armando,” she barked.

My battered relationship with the Ironbound continued, despite it being one of Newark’s more comfortable neighborhoods. Death wasn’t present on every corner here as it was in some other parts of the city. The Ironbound measured four square miles, working class, and multi-ethnic. Some called the area
Down Neck
because of the neck-like curve of the PassaicRiver at its doorstep. Others, because of the heavy Latin influence of its residents, particularly Portuguese, called it Little Portugal. That fit.
Ironbound
was the hardest nickname to narrow down. Forges and foundries dotted the landscape in the latter half of the 19
^th
Century. Some claimed that as the name origin. Others noted the rail tracks built in the 1830’s. I suppose none of that actually mattered. I’d found my way back to the 100 block of Elm Street, and, just as when I’d left almost a year prior, it treated me with the detached distance of a stranger. Worse, actually. Treated me with disdain.

“Mrs. Rubalcaba—”

She cut me off again with harsh words I still couldn’t make out.

So I found myself at an impasse.

I usually handled an enemy’s aggression with my own superior aggression. Even I knew I couldn’t do that in this instance.

I was considering that conundrum when I noticed Mrs. Rubalcaba’s gaze shift to over my shoulder. The old Cuban woman started gesturing excitedly. I turned to see a young woman moving calmly up the cobbled path toward us. I held my breath, without at first realizing it, as the young woman inched closer and closer. In slow motion it seemed.