Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series)

by Phillip Thomas Duck

  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.

  She smiled for the first time, told me, “Lemoyne-Owen.”

  I nodded, smiled, too. “Lemoyne-Owen, that’s Memphis right?”

  Lovely’s brown eyes regarded me differently. “You know it?”

  “HBCU,” I said, using the acronym for a historically black college or university.

  “True,” she said, smiling and nodding vigorously.

  It had taken a bit longer than I anticipated it would, but it came finally.

  A
strong hand gripped my shoulder, pulling at me, attempting to turn me around. I made it easy, followed the momentum, and completed the turn. The guy wearing the burgundy hospital scrubs and the backward Pontiac Firebird mesh hat. His forehead lined and nostrils flaring, ready for whatever I brought. After the night with Shepard, I admittedly didn’t have much reserve left in my tank. I raised my arms to signify as much.

  “Is there a problem here?” he asked.

  “None at all,” I assured him.

  “Explain something to me then, if you would?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why did it look as if you were giving my girlfriend a job interview?”

  “I think you’re mistaken.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “If I were,” I said, and smiled, “she seems highly qualified for the position.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I said.

  “That’s ironic, because you sure enough seem to.”

  “Be careful how you use that term.”

  “Pardon?” he said, frowning.

  “Irony,” I explained. “It’s often misused.”

  “A fucking MLA handbook,” he snarled. “That’s great. You want to conjugate my fucking verbs for me now, too?”

  That got a smile out of me. I liked these two.

  Lovely tried to pull him back, but he resisted, saying, “Back down, Monroe.”

  Monroe.

  I actually liked that even more than Lovely.

  “I’m Shell,” I told him, extending my hand at the same time. “What’s your name?”

  “This motherfucker,” was his incredulous response as he ignored my hand.

  “Chris,” Monroe said. “Be easy. He’s okay.”

  Chris listened to Monroe about as much as I listened to my conscience. In other words, not much at all. He took a hard step toward me, bad intentions in his movements. I noticed his balled fists and wished I had Cherie’s knife or Shepard’s sap. Make this easy.

  I put my hand in the middle of his chest, stopped him in his tracks. His eyes widened in surprise. I was surprised, as well. Didn’t think I had an ounce of strength left.

  “Chris,” I said calmly. “I just need to have a word with you.”

  “We have nothing to speak about,” he said.

  “Southaven, on the Mississippi side,” I said. “Close to Memphis.”

  “I need travel suggestions,” he said, “I’ll consult Fodor’s.”

  Again I smiled. “I’ve done some business with a car dealership in Southaven.”

  He tilted his head and frowned. “What?”

  “What do you drive?” I asked.

  “None of your business,” he said.

  “I had an Aston Martin once,” I said. “V8 Series III, flip tail model.”

  I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes.

  Monroe said, “Chris loves cars. Sounds like something you’d like, doesn’t it, baby? How much does a car like that cost? Thirty Gs?”

  Chris shook his head at Monroe, did not take his eyes off me. “Little more than double that probably,” he said.

  “Damn,” Monroe said.

  I asked again, “What do you drive?”

  Manipulation.

  Chris grimaced. “Piece of shit, nothing worth mentioning.”

  Monroe said, “He’s past due for an inspection, and scared to take it in. Surprised he hasn’t been pulled over.”

  Chris glared at her. “I’m not scared. It’ll pass.”

  “Only because of the five dollars I made you give to the Red Cross last month,” she said, “God returning the benevolence.”

  “You talk too much, Monroe.”

  “And your car is a piece of shit,” she replied.

  I smiled. “You two remind me of a couple I once knew. Lots of passion.”

  Smile to keep from crying. Call it passion instead of a misguided relationship.

  Chris turned his attention back on me. “About you…”

  I shook my head. “This is about you.”

  “Oh, yeah? I don’t know how you figure that.”

  “The way I figure it, you two have a long distance relationship. You work in a hospital and Monroe attends college. She’s headed back to Memphis and you’re here to see her off.”

  “What gave me away? The scrubs?”

  “Chill, Chris, this is interesting,” Monroe said. “Go on, Shell.”

  “You’re older and working hard, but Monroe’s forever telling you it isn’t too late to go back to school.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “But you don’t have the energy to even think about it,” I went on. “You work long hours and have little to show for the labor. You love cars but drive around in a piece of shit. Even though you’re smart, you have some insecurity about whether you could handle the coursework.”

  “You think you know it all,” he said weakly.

  Monroe chuckled.

  “You’re due a break. I have a business proposition for you, Chris.”

  He smirked, shook his head, and looked at Monroe. “I knew this was coming. Some bullshit.”

  “Hear me out, Chris.”

  He said, “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  I told him.

  A DULL SUN WAS POSITIONED at a distance above me without coloring the gray out of the sky. Figured. I’d gotten some rest, but my mouth tasted as though I’d eaten a dirty shoe for breakfast. I’d yet to make acquaintance with a toothbrush, and instead of washing my face with warm water I’d pumped a coin of lotion into my palm from a bottle I found in Chris’s glove box and used that to chase the sleep from my eyes and give my skin some life. I felt every pound of Shepard’s weight down in my bones and deep in my muscle tissue, but counted my blessings just the same. At least I was still among the living. That had to stay my focus.

  Several car horns competed with one another, and all around me blinking brake lights glimmered like Christmas in RockefellerCenter. I kept the window up so I wouldn’t choke on exhaust fumes.

  It took a good while but finally I was waved forward. I took Chris’s car out of PARK and let it coast forward about fifty feet before braking and putting it back in PARK.

  “Daley”—according to his name tag—reached a hand out expectantly. It was a rough hand, the nails bitten off at the ends, ragged cuticles, scarring on several knuckles. I handed him three legal documents to examine: license, registration, and insurance card.

  “Daley,” I said. “That’s an unusual name.”

  “Not in Ireland,” he replied. Unfortunately my conversation did not distract him from the documents.

  “You’re Irish?” I said. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  He looked at me for a beat. “If you had a word with my mother there’d be no mistaking. Her brogue’s pretty thick.”

  “Were you born in the US?”

  “Brooklyn,” he said, flipping over the insurance card, “for as long as it took them to cut the umbilical.”

  I nodded even though his eyes weren’t on me. “I’ve been meeting a lot of people with Irish names lately.” I thought of Siobhan, the call she’d placed to me days earlier, and something clicked in my mind. A smile flitted across my face. I shook my head and chuckled. Women were incredible. Siobhan definitely fit the bill. She’d gamed me. Here I was big and strong, yet I paled in comparison to the capacity of a woman.

  Daley glanced at me, then at my driver’s license. I held my breath just as I’d done the day before as the water rose above my shoulders in the Passaic.

  “’Kay. Here you go, Mr. Hall,” he said, and handed the documents back to me. I released the breath I’d been holding. “Press down on your brakes please, sir.”

  I did while he stepped behind the car with a clipboard in hand.

  In a second he was back at my window. “Said a ’94 right?”

  I nodded. “’94 Accord.”

  “How many miles?” he asked.

  “Just over one hundred and eigh
ty-nine thousand.”

  He whistled. “Six cylinders?”

  “Four.”

  “Okay, Mr. Hall. If you’d step out and over there”—he pointed to a narrow corridor off to the side crowded with four or five nervous looking people—“we’ll take your car down the line and get you out of here as quickly as possible.”

  I left the car running and stepped out, fell in line with the others. There was a young Caucasian girl who could send texts on her phone quicker than I could actually speak. A twenty-something stockbroker-type with a face lined by wrinkles premature by at least fifteen years. And three others that were too vanilla for me to even begin to describe.

  I reached in my pants’ pocket, pulled out a cell phone. Prepaid. I wasn’t yet familiar with its basic functions. I couldn’t tell for certain, but it didn’t appear as though I’d missed any calls. I gritted my teeth and put the phone back in my pocket. I wasn’t into music so I couldn’t think of an aggressive song to hum. Too bad. It was a moment built for a soundtrack.

  Ten minutes later, the line was down to just one in front of me.

  I took a moment to mentally map out the rest of my day. Now that I’d passed inspection with the ID I could make some plans. I’d passed inspection. The car was another story entirely.

  I watched the ’94 Accord as it reached the end of the inspection line. There were so many dents in the frame just looking at it made me wince. Chris Hall had aired on the side of extreme understatement by calling the Accord a piece of shit. It was down officially as having a black exterior, but the paint was so faded by the elements it looked closer to gray. Figured.

  I was waved over.

  “How did we do?” I asked.

  “Passed,” I was told.

  “Good old Red Cross.”

  “Come again?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I drove off with the new identity of Christopher John Hall, while my old sobriquet was on a flight to Memphis and a new car dealership.

  IT COULDN’T BE AVOIDED. I had to travel to Nevada’s home if I wanted to separate fact from fiction. It was quite possible that I’d find something useful in her personal items. Following my mandate of precaution, I waited until after nightfall to make the trip. Chris Hall’s Accord sat with the engine ticking, even after I’d slid the key out of the ignition, along the curb across from East SideHigh School. A few feet away loomed the entrance to IndependencePark. I got out, locked up, looked around to make sure no eyes were studying me, and started strolling. A derelict was engaged in an excited conversation on a payphone at the park’s entrance. The phone was spray painted yellow and black, its coiled cord sheared off and hanging uselessly. I passed quickly by him, my head down and turned away from view.