Five Uneasy Pieces

“I didn’t know what to do.” With her fingers, she raked her hair out of her face, now mottled from crying. “I figured I’d head for our usual place. I figured, maybe my friend got held up or something. Maybe he’s there.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, fine.”

Mendez was held up on a runway, swearing at her smokeless lot in life. She’d said something about meeting our contact tomorrow morning. What was I going to do until then? Go back to an empty motel room and watch HBO until I fell asleep, probably. The girl was making futile attempts to stem the flow of liquid snot from her nose. Hell, I was halfway to the state line already.

“All right. I’ll take you to Delaware. But no more funny stuff, right? I mean it. No guns, no throwing things.”

She nodded. “Everything’s all fucked up. I don’t know what’s going on. I hope he’s there.”

“Right.” I hoped like hell he was there, too.

Up Ocean Highway we went, past the towering condos at the north end of town, across the state line, and into Fenwick Island, Delaware. After Fenwick, development became sparse, then dwindled to nothing as we drove past the state park. At sixty miles an hour, the wet ocean breeze blasted through the car, taking the edge off the heat. Sand dunes undulated to our right, providing occasional glimpses of a golden full moon against a velvety black sky.

She had turned pensive now, and it had been a quiet ride. I tried to coax some information, like a name or a home town or something, out of her. But she wasn’t talking. I had no idea what I would do if the friend wasn’t there. I figured we could cross that bridge when we got to it.

Eventually, she had me turn onto a road leading through a section of tall cattails toward the beach. We crawled up to the foot of a terraced, wooden house on stilts, gray with age and exposure to the elements. Waves pounded on the surf in a soothing, if incessant, roar.

She looked around. “I don’t see his car.”

“Maybe he’s not here yet,” I said. Or maybe he’s not coming, I thought. My heart sank.

We got out of the car. I followed her up a flight of steep, rickety steps to a small landing in front of a weather-beaten green door. It was unlocked and we strolled right in.

“Travis!” she called. The room, dimly lit with a bare-bulb ceiling light, featured an old sofa that looked like it was upholstered in burlap and a table with three plain wooden chairs. No one answered. A short, dark hallway led to another room.

“Damn.” She began pacing, chewing on her thumbnail.

I sighed and crossed the room to the shadeless window. “What now?”

She didn’t answer. I glanced outside. From our vantage point, I could see the black waters of the ocean lapping at the beach, thin lines of foam delineating the waves. The moon was higher now, casting a bright irregular stripe onto the water’s surface.

Time for a reality check, I thought.

“I’ll be straight with you. If it weren’t for your condition, I probably wouldn’t even be here,” I said. “But I’m here now. And he’s not. So maybe we should think about other options?”

She said nothing.

“I can give you a lift to the bus station,” I said. “Or, if you live a reasonable distance from here, a ride to that place.”

“I can’t go home,” she said. “I’ve got no home to go to.”

Great, I thought.

“Well, I’ve got work to do,” I said. “I’ll give you a lift back to town.”

“He’ll be here,” she said. She affected a cool look. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you kidding? In your condition?”

“I wish you’d quit going on about that.”

I would have to talk her into going back to Ocean City, I thought. Some place where she could get help, if she needed it. As I gazed out the window, something caught my eye, in the cattails.

“Hey, I see a car,” I said. “A jeep, I think.”

She made a stifled cry. I turned and got a brief glimpse of a man and a raised gun. Felt the shock of the gun connecting with my head. My knees buckled and, as they say in the old detective movies, everything went black.

*****