Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (20 page)

“Laurel lost the baby.”

The ugly statement just hangs there while he searches for words that won’t come and she blinks back tears. He mumbles a standard blasphemy and offers her a crumpled handkerchief. “When . . . how did you find out?” he says.

“After I read your note saying you’d dashed off to meet with Brownie, I called Laurel to feel her out or maybe to warn her—I really hadn’t made up my mind—and when Colin’s mom answered the phone I knew right away something was wrong—I could hear it in her voice, that British stiff upper lip thing notwithstanding—but I never would have guessed what was wrong until she told me that Laurel started cramping in the night and although they rushed her to the hospital it was already too late and Colin’s already beside himself with blame, so if he’d been hit with something else to feel responsible for, who knows what . . .”

“Have you talked with Colin?”

“No, just with his mom. He’s still at the hospital with Laurel. She has to have a . . . a procedure, then they’ll want to keep her there overnight for observation.”

He squeezes in next to her on the small settee, holds her close. After a while she looks up at him, her eyes agleam with unshed tears. “This is
so
unfair. I mean, haven’t they suffered enough? And why should they have to suffer anyway? Colin at his wretched excess wicked rock star worst couldn’t have done anything that deserves all this grief. And . . . and Laurel. What on earth did she ever do except obey her evil grandmother and look after her family? Like
she
deserves more grief after what she’s just been through.”

“You’re talking as though you believe in divine retribution or some kind of ultimate payback.”

“I almost do and I could almost believe in plagues—the Biblical kind—a plague on both their houses—no, that’s Shakespeare, but whatever it is they don’t deserve it.”

“Life’s not fair, shit happens to the best of people. You ought to know that by now.”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t have to like it, do I?” She tapers off, apparently lost in thought, giving him time to examine his own.

“Amanda . . . honey . . .” he begins. “This is gonna come off insensitive as hell, but I have to ask . . . Did Rachel happen to say if Colin drove Laurel to the hospital himself? Alone, without bodyguards?”

“She didn’t say, but I’ll say he did. I mean, would
you
wait around for a driver and bodyguards when your wife was miscarrying and you were half out of your mind wondering what else could go wrong and—”

“No, I wouldn’t and that’s why I’m reverting to my previous style of management.” Nursemaiding is only implied when he snatches up the nearest phone and calls downstairs for the leased Bentley to be brought around, then calls Emmet to brief him on what the day is apt to bring.

“Cancel whatever you had scheduled and be ready to leave in thirty minutes,” he instructs Amanda on his way to the shower.

“Shit,” he mutters when he enters the shower. Now the hideous vision of a severed head submerged in a fishbowl of embalming fluid is joined by an even more worrisome one—a mental image of paparazzi pointing the way to a hospital in Kent.

Hoop follows the crowd getting off the train at the High Street Kensington Station of the London Underground. This time he’s double-positive it’s the right Kensington station; this time he’s double-checked that all the signs say “High Street Kensington” and not some other kind of Kensington like the other stop that lured him off ahead of time and left him feeling like a jackassed-fool because none of the landmarks were where the travelers-aid people at the airport said they would be.

But if getting off the subway train at the wrong stop is the worst thing that happens on this trip, he can believe the luck that got him through all the checkpoints along the way is still holding. And he can believe the sheer grit that got him across the Atlantic Ocean on his dreaded first-ever airplane ride is still working.

The crowd leads him up to the street, where he see the stores the aid people told him to use as landmarks, and spots other folks either carrying or wheeling luggage, so he doesn’t feel like a standout. The walk to Wrights Lane and the hotel they recommended is no distance at all.

On the way to the hotel he says his new name to himself a few times to keep it fresh in his mind the way he did any time he had to surrender to one of those checkpoints. This time he needn’t have bothered because, inside the hotel, there’s no hassle at the check-in desk other than when he forks over cash instead of the credit card they ask for. This does get him a second glance, but not the kind that questions who he really is.

The room they give him is smaller than he would have expected at a big hotel in a nice neighborhood. It’s maybe half the size of the one he abandoned in New Jersey, but it’s clean and has a working television, a clock radio, and a phone.

Of old habit he looks around for a place to store food or plug in a coffee-pot, saying he had one. Then he reminds himself that the person he is now eats regular meals in restaurants and his stomach reminds him he hasn’t had anything to eat since way before he got on the plane. Refusing the strange-looking fare offered on the plane now seems silly, but going without was the best protection against puking whenever fear tried to best him. Even so, there were a couple of times when he almost puked up emptiness—those times when the whopping-big airplane shook and rattled like a flat-tired bus on a potholed road, and gongs sounded and lights flashed warning all to remain seated with seatbelts buckled—as if he needed to be told.

A notice on the small desk brags that the hotel has restaurants and bars. Another notice says that they have a concierge—con-sir-gay?—in the lobby to help with theatre tickets, transportation needs, tours of London and the like. The leatherette folder on the desk contains writing paper and postcards, instructions to follow in case of fire, a list of nearby churches, shops, chemists—another term to wonder at—and the names of banks and currency exchanges in the area.

None but the restaurant listings hold any interest at the moment. His stomach is now growling; he hasn’t been this hungry since the morning he arrived in Los Angeles and happened onto the Farmers Market, where he had the best breakfast of his life. If he can find anything half as good here, he’ll consider himself well off.

Rather than have to choose what to leave behind and what to take with him, he carries the valise and all its contents when he leaves the room. In the elevator, he runs a hand over his hairless skull estimating how soon he’ll need to shave it again in order to stay in agreement with his passport and driver’s license pictures. He runs the same hand over the pocket holding the queer money he paid extra for when he traded dollars for it at the airport. Chances are he’ll need more of these bills with the woman’s picture on them before he has to shave his head again.

In the hotel restaurant they call a carvery, he finds out he’s too late for breakfast and that starts him calculating the time difference he hadn’t paid any attention to till now. When he realizes he’s been on the go for almost twenty straight hours—counting from when he left the Chink restaurant on Route 22—weariness slumps him in his chair.

This must be the jet lag thing he’s heard about because it’s different from the kind of tired he could always brush off when he had to. But there’s no brushing this off. This bad feeling makes eating a duty instead of an enjoyment and makes him want to scowl annoyance at the other diners instead of showing the good-natured expression of the businessman he’s supposed to be.

He finishes off an egg salad sandwich and a bowl of vegetable soup, annoyed that they’re called by fancier names on the menu and cost more than he would have laid out for three times that much food in New Jersey. He settles the bill, doubly annoyed with something called value-added tax—VAT—that he doesn’t understand at all and leaves such a small tip it’s a wonder the waitress doesn’t chase after him.

Craving sleep and whatever relief he can find from the bad temper that rode in on the coattails of weariness, he returns to his room, turns the TV on to low volume for background noise. He flops down on the bed fully clothed and wearing the eyeglasses he’s still getting used to.

A whole afternoon later he half-wakes because he’s too warm and the unaccustomed clothing is cutting into him like a set of restraints. While he groggily removes the askew eyeglasses and strips down to his underwear, he hears snatches of talk from the TV.

“In other news . . . Middlestone . . . Kent . . . Yet another misfortune for resident celebrity . . .”

Hoop gropes for the remote control and kills the talk before it wakes him up altogether.

A whole night later, Hoop awakens feeling like the new man they boast about in those dumb newspaper advertisements and television commercials for sleeping potions. Only the expression doesn’t seem so dumb in light of present goings-on.

In the bathroom that’s roomier than the sleeping quarters, he plays the new man part to the extent of taking a shower bath instead of the tub bath he’d rather have. Back in the bedroom, he dresses in the other set of clothes bought when he bought the suit. The khakis and loose-fitting camp shirt feel as foreign as the suit did, but they’re a lot more comfortable. So are the new Reebok brand shoes he laces into before he puts on the eyeglasses and figures out how to call room service for the coffee he needs. The call to room service is a first for the man he used to be.

While he waits for the coffee, he switches on the TV and clicks through the channels. They’re mostly giving out local news at this early hour and one’s as good as another when all he’s after is the same thing he was after last night—background noise to keep him company.

To use up more waiting time, he gathers his travel clothes and stuffs everything into the laundry bag provided. That’s another first, so he has to read the directions twice before he knows which boxes to check off on the form provided.

The coffee still hasn’t arrived, so he looks through the contents of the valise the way he’s looked through one carrybag or another nearly every day since leaving Michigan. But there’s no longer any thought of lightening the load. The plan now is to keep everything with him at all times; no deciding has to be done, just an accounting.

He lifts out jeans, jean jacket, and a few t-shirts left from the first New Jersey buying trip. Next, he brings out mostly new underwear and socks, the well-worn New York Yankees baseball cap, and the sunglasses salvaged from the motel supply room. At the bottom of the bag, the dirty money is still hidden inside hollowed-out paperback books the way the Chink contact told him to carry it—the way it was when none of the inspectors on either side of the ocean bothered to discover it. Why carrying fifty thousand dollars in cash out of one country and into another could bring trouble is not a question Hoop asked anybody. Including the Chink advice giver. And now that the chance-taking is over with, the reason doesn’t matter, does it?

He removes the heavy-duty rubber band binding the three paperbacks to the diary and the photo case brought along for whatever good they might do. He opens one of the paperbacks, takes out a thick stack of bills he’d like to toss in the air like outsized confetti celebrating a win. He fights off the temptation. It would take too long to pick up a large number of scattered bills and it’s too soon to celebrate a win. He shouldn’t even think about it, same as he shouldn’t think overmuch about the way his luck has changed for the better. That could get him believing the money he’s repacking in the hollow paperback isn’t dirty anymore. But maybe it isn’t. If it really was as luck-destroying and filthy as once thought, the many inspectors would have homed right in on it, wouldn’t they?

The rock star’s photo case gets away from him and drops to the floor as he’s rubberbanding everything back together again. He bends to pick it up, sees that the case hasn’t fared all that well after rattling around loose in plastic grocery sacks, tool boxes, gym bags, and whatnot. The closer tab is about to fall off, and the hinge part is so loose the front and back covers are out of square. When he tries to line them up, one of the photos edges out of its soft leather frame along with something Hoop’s never seen before.

He opens the case all the way and removes a small card that was hidden till now behind the picture of Audrey’s older boy. The card contains handwritten words and numbers that are sealed over with plastic by one of those machines that preserve newspaper clippings and the like for all eternity. While he puzzles over why these words and numbers are important enough to have been preserved and hidden behind a photograph, something coming from the TV in an undertone makes him lunge for the remote control and turn up the sound. Then, right at the moment when he can hear beyond question what the TV woman is saying—right at the moment when she’s naming the latest misfortune to befall rock superstar, Colin Elliot and his wife of only one month—there’s a sharp rap on the outside door that means the coffee has arrived.

Clutching the mysterious card, straining to hear the TV, he opens the door to the hall and shoves a thick English coin at the room service waiter, then grabs the tray of coffee things and slams the door shut like he does this kind of thing everyday.