Passing field after field of pitch-black farmland, the barber used the silence to take a good look at Palmiotti in the passenger seat. New jeans. Nice Michigan Lacrosse sweatshirt. Frat boy hair.
“Can I ask one thing?” the barber said, finally breaking the silence. “What was wrong with your car?”
“What’s that?” Palmiotti asked.
“You got those nice clothes-the new Reeboks. Don’t tell me you don’t have a car. So what’s wrong with yours that we gotta be driving in mine?”
“What’d you want me to do? Run home and get it? My brother dropped us off downtown-then everything else exploded with the fight.”
It was a fast answer. And a good one, Laurent thought to himself. But as he looked over his shoulder and saw the pool of blood that was now in his van-in his carpet-and could be linked just to him, he couldn’t help but notice the look that Palmiotti shot to Wallace in the passenger-side mirror.
Or the look that Wallace shot back.
As a barber who spent every day watching clients in a mirror, Laurent was fluent in talking with just your eyes. He knew a thankyou when he saw one. And right there, in that moment, he also knew the hierarchy of loyalties that would drive their relationship for the next twenty-six years.
“There… pull in there!” Palmiotti said, eventually motioning to the putty-colored building in the distance with the backlit sign that read Emergency Room. “There’s parking spots in front.”
Even before the van bucked to a stop, Palmiotti was outside in the rain. With a tug, he whipped open the side door of the van, and in one quick motion, he and Wallace scooped up Eightball and-shouting the words “Wait here!”-carried him off like tandem lifeguards toward the sliding doors of the emergency room.
There was a hushed whoosh as they disappeared, leaving the barber breathing heavy in the driver’s seat, still buzzing with adrenaline. But as fast as reality settled in, all the mental avoidance of the past half hour faded with equal speed. To drive out here… to even take them at all… Laurent had said they should call an ambulance-but in the rush of chaos… the way Eightball was bleeding… and all that screaming… Wallace seemed so sure. And when Wallace was sure, it was hard to argue. They had to take him themselves. Otherwise, he would’ve died.
“You okay?” a soft female voice coughed from the back of the van.
Laurent nodded.
“I–I’m sorry for this-I really am,” she added.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Laurent insisted, staring out at the raindrops that slalomed down the front windshield. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. They told me what happened when you came back-Eightball grabbing a baseball bat… It shouldn’t’ve escalated like that, but lemme tell you-”
“You weren’t there.”
“-if someone did that to my sister… and I was your brother-”
“You weren’t there,” Minnie insisted, her voice cracking. “You didn’t see what happened. Orson wasn’t the only one who made him bleed.”
The words hung in the van, which was battered by the metal pinging of raindrops from above. Laurent slowly twisted in his seat, turning to the chubby girl with the wet hair and the now dried train tracks of black mascara that ran down her face. She sat Indian-style, looking every bit her young age as she picked at nothing in the bloodstained carpet.
The barber hadn’t noticed it before. Hadn’t even registered it. But as he thought about it now, Orson’s clothes-just like Palmiotti’s-were mostly clean. But here, in the back of the van…
The front of Minnie’s leather jacket… her neck… even her English Beat T-shirt… were covered in a fine spray of blood.
Just like you’d get if you hit something soft. With a baseball bat.
Still picking at nothing in the blood-soaked carpet, Minnie didn’t say a word.
In fact, it took another ten minutes before her tears finally came-pained, soft whimpers that sounded like a wounded dog-set off when her brother exited from the sliding doors of the emergency room, stepped back into the rain, and told them the news: Eightball was dead.
92
"You have no idea how hard this is,” the man with the razor says as he sits directly behind me in the backseat of the car.
“Listen,” I plead. “There’s no reason to-”
“Beecher, I’ve asked you two times now. Please put your phone down.”
“It’s down… I put it down,” I say, though I don’t tell him that I haven’t hung up. If I’m lucky, Dallas can hear every word we’re saying. “Just please… can you lower the razor?”
In the rearview, the man barely reacts, though the razor does disappear behind my headrest. Still, the way he manically keeps shifting in his seat-sitting up so close I hear him breathing through his nose-he’s panicking, still making his decision.
“I’m sorry you found him,” the man says, sounding genuine as he stares down at his lap. “That’s why you were running just now-all out of breath. You saw him, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was here picking up a notebook-”
“Please don’t do that to me. I was being honest with you,” he says, sounding wounded, his head still down. I feel a slight nudge in my lower back. From his knees. His feet tap furiously against the floor, making the whole car shake. Whatever he’s about to do, it’s weighing on him. “I know it’s over, Beecher. I know you saw Griffin.”
“If you think I’m the one doing this… with the blackmail… It’s not me,” I tell him. “I swear to you-Clementine’s-”
“They know the roles. They know who’s done this. And when it comes to the fight you’ve picked… the poor girl’s as dead as you are.”
It’s the second time in two days someone’s mentioned my death as if it’s inevitable. It’s starting to piss me off.
Behind me, the man with the razor continues to lean forward, elbows resting on his still bouncing knees. He again takes a heavy breath through his nose. It’s not getting any easier for him. “You’re a history guy, right, Beecher?” Before I can answer, he asks, “Y’ever hear of a guy named Tsutomu Yamaguchi?”
I shake my head, searching the parking lot and scanning the grounds for a guard… for an orderly… for anyone to help. There’s no one in sight.
“You never heard of him? Tsutomu Yamaguchi?” he repeats as I finally place his accent. Flat and midwestern. Just like the President’s. “In 1945, this man Yamaguchi was in the shipbuilding business. In Japan. Y’know what happened in 1945 in Japan?”
“Please… this-whatever this is about. You can let me go. No one’ll ever know. You can say I-”
“Hiroshima. Can you imagine? Of all the towns that this guy’s shipbuilding business sends him to, on August 6, 1945, Yamaguchi was visiting Hiroshima at the exact moment one of our B-29s dropped the atomic bomb,” he continues as if I’m not even there. “But ready for the twist? Yamaguchi actually survives. He suffers bad burns, spends the night in the city, and then quickly races to his hometown, which is guess where?”
I don’t answer.
“Nagasaki-which gets hit with the second bomb three days later. And God bless him, Yamaguchi survives that too! Blessed by God, right? A hundred and forty thousand are killed in Hiroshima. Seventy thousand die in Nagasaki. But to this day, this one man is the only person certified by the Japanese government to have survived both blasts. Two atomic bombs,” he says, shaking his head as he continues to stare down at the blade in his lap. “It may be on a smaller scale, but I can tell you, Beecher. In this life, there are days like that. For all of us.”
I nod politely, hoping it’ll keep him talking. On my phone, it says my call has been connected for four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. If Dallas and his Culper Ring are as good as I think they are, it won’t be long until the cavalry comes running.