The Shibboleth (17 page)

But I won't. In some ways, I like having someone, someone
unaffiliated
, impervious to mind tinkering. It means we can just be friends.

I peek at a picture of a brunette woman, easily fifteen years Jerry's junior, smiling and holding a tennis racket, gripping Jerry's arm.

“How 'bout something to drink?” Jerry says, still holding the picture.

“Go ahead and ask.”

“Ask what?”

“What you've been waiting to ask since I knocked.”

Jerry's smile falters, and he runs a mottled-brown hand through his white, curly hair. He sits in a chair, tugging up his pants like old folks do when they sit. He tosses the picture on the glass coffee table.

“Honestly, Shreve, I don't know where to start. How did you get here?”

“I drove.”

“You have a car?”

“Stole it.”

He stares at me for a long while. “I can't tell if you're lying to me or not.”

“Jerry, I've never lied to you. Not once. You're the only person I can say that of.”

“So you stole a car? Just stole it?”

“I had to escape.”

“From juvie?”

“No. Psych ward in Arkansas.”

He stands, totters off to a dry bar by the kitchen. Hardwood floors, glowing in the light. Recessed lighting. More modern art. Jerry's got a sweet pad for an old dude.

He says, “I think I'll have a drink.”

“It's five o'clock somewhere.”

Glass tumbler in hand, he pours dark amber liquid from a bottle, sips. “You sure you don't want anything?”

“Water?”

He disappears into the kitchen for a moment and returns with a bottle of fancy water. Four-dollar water. Nothing but the best for Jerry and the missus.

I twist off the top and take a big gulp.

He regains his seat and looks at me again. “So, you stole a car?” He perks up a tad. “From a psych ward? Why were you in a psychiatric ward?”

“Psychotic break.”

He downs his drink in a gulp. Stands, gets another. Returns and sits, tugging up his pants legs at the crotch.

“Are you going to … I don't know. Do something crazy to me?”

“I don't think so. Little hurt you even asked that.”

“I don't know, Shreve. You stole a car from an asylum? After escaping? And I'm not supposed to worry you're going to stab me or something?”

I sigh and sit opposite from him. The chair is comfy, plush. I sink in. Tired of running. Tired of driving. Tired of being on my own. Being alone. I need to rest. Regroup. And find Jack.

He points a finger at the photo. “They both have six fingers to a hand.”

“Yeah. Jack and his girlfriend.”

“Jack is the boy you were always looking for when we were in the hospital together in North Carolina?”

“I didn't tell you about him.”

He puts his finger against his nose and winks. “I am not so old as to be blind, my friend. I see. He was with you at the Dubrovniks'?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Then why did you have this sent here?”

“Because I couldn't get back into Casimir to get it.”

He puts his glass on the table with a heavy
clink
! and frowns at me. “I think, Shreve, I should ask you to leave if you are not going to give me more answers.”

I sigh. Roll my eyes. I realize it's the action of a punk kid, but I do it anyway. Maybe to remind myself who I am. Maybe because after everything, I
am
still a punk kid.

I've got to spill.

I leave nothing out. He stops me when I get to Quincrux at the motel, when Quincrux took control of the clerk and shot the trucker.

“Shreve, I can check this easily online. Where did you say you were?”

“Chattahoochee.”

“Is that a real place?”

“Yeah. We were at the Stay Inn! Motel. Quincrux took the clerk and killed the trucker.”

He's silent for a while. I remember the big man's surprised expression as Jack and I blew past him. And his big silver belt buckle with a bucking bronco. And the million particles of his blood hung like baubles in the air.

“Okay, boychick. Let me get my computer.”

“Hey, can I have a drink? You know, a real one?”

He purses his lips and shakes his head like it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard.

I might've fallen asleep sprawled out there in the chair as Jerry researched what I told him. When I open my eyes, I hear him murmuring in the kitchen to someone. Either the house is haunted, or he's made a call.

Later, I open my eyes as he sits across from me, a silver laptop with a glowing apple in his lap, clicking away.

“His name was Jason Crenshaw. The trucker. The clerk, Herschel Tidwell, died later from a massive stroke.”

The weight of that sinks me farther in the chair, gravity growing stronger. But I push myself up. I'm so tired, but I need to go. I don't want Jerry to end up like the trucker.

He had a name. Jason.

I move forward and reach for the photo. He places a liver-marked hand on it before I can.

“This stays with me until you tell me it all.”

“So you believe me?”

“I didn't say that, did I, Shreve?”

“You always answer a question with a question?”

“You always run from your problems?”

Screw this guy. He's prodding me now. Jabbing a stick
wherever he thinks I'm vulnerable. And I'm vulnerable
everywhere
.

“People get hurt when I'm around, Jer. I just need the photo.”

He ignores that like I never even said it. Instead, he says, “So you're telling me you can read minds. Can you read mine?”

I shake my head.

“Why not? Should be easy, no? Old man sitting here asking for it?”

“It's not like that.” I sit back down. “Most folks, getting in their head is as easy as sticking a knife in an open jelly jar. But other folks, it's harder. Sometimes because they're disturbed. Sometimes because they've had hard things happen to them and lived with it.”

“You're talking abuse. Sexual?”

“Use your imagination. Humans are bizarre and terrible things.”

“You say that like you're not one.”

I don't reply.

Jerry shuts his laptop, places it on the coffee table.

“Will you finish your story, Shreve?”

I only hesitate a moment and then begin talking once more.

When I come to the end, he sucks his teeth. Shakes his head. His brow furrows, crags and crevices and crevasses.

I've told him everything. All of it. The theft of memories, the possessions. Rollie. I held nothing back. It felt like a confession.

“You stole those poor souls' happy memories? Like some
junkie?” He points to the window. “We have junkies here. More every day with the insomnia. Pitiful creatures.”

“So you believe me?”

“I don't yet know. But if what you say is true and you've done these things … these things have been done to you. This man, this Quincrux …”

“Do I need to prove it to you?”

“I think that might be necessary.”

“Okay.”

“We'll need to go out. I'm hungry anyway.”

Even though it's gorgeous outside, sun lowering into the golden hour, Jerry puts on a light tan jacket and a white straw hat. Very slowly, he changes his shoes, from the comfy running shoes to leather loafers. From a closet at the front door he gets a cane. Wooden, with a simple metal knob.

“Aren't you the clotheshorse?”

Jerry raises his considerably furry eyebrows. Possibly in amusement. Maybe outrage.

“I prefer ‘clothes thoroughbred.'”

He does look quite dapper. We leave the apartment, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Despite the cane, Jerry moves pretty well for an old dude.

On the street, he says, “You like pizza? We'll get you a New York slice.”

The air smells of sewage and smoke and is filled with the sound of furious honking and the scream of sirens in the air. Men and women hustle past us, heads down. The crazies at the park have gone, maybe moved on to some more populous area. Multiple sirens. An NYPD cruiser whizzes by us as we walk south on Irving a couple of blocks away.

“Oh, no,” Jerry says. He's limping a little, just a touch, and using his cane—
clack clack clack
—but he picks up the pace.

Pizza D'Resistance has been husked out by some sort of fire, and recently, judging by the char and melted-plastic smell, along with the two stores nearby, one selling shoes and the other a nail and pedi spa. The upper floors of the building have broken windows, tarred black by smoke.

“It's like a war zone or something,” I say as another NYPD cruiser blasts past, sirens blazing. Despite the noise and confusion, there aren't many cars on the streets. Maybe it's too dangerous to drive now that everyone is working on zero hours' sleep.

Jerry's cane pops across my chest. Not hard. It's like he's getting my attention, stopping my forward movement, both physically and conversationally.

“Shreve. There are places in the world that this—” He pulls the cane away from my chest and jabs it at the burnt husk of a building. “This is far better than their everyday life. And war? What do you know of it?”

The smell of burning human waste and the percussive chuffing of the helicopter rotors as we unloaded the body bags to the LZ in the middle of the moisture-drenched Cambodian air. The chatter of rifle fire in the bush.

But I say, “Nothing. Living off the fat of the land, Jer-bear.”

He frowns, either at the nickname or the pained expression on my face as I say it. “I do not like that.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“Always with the mocking.” He sighs. “Maybe you can't help yourself. And maybe you know more of war than I might have thought. Come on, I see Herschel's is still open.”

The door chimes as we enter, and at the deli counter Jerry orders a “half-and-half” sandwich with extra rye and two bags of chips and two sodas.

“Just one sandwich?”

“Just you wait.”

At the register, I whip out my wallet, since I'm flush and don't want Jerry to think that I'm a mooch to top it all off, but he looks at me so furiously, furry eyebrows waggling like outraged caterpillars, that I relent. He pays.

“Jerome!” The cashier's name tag reads DEBBI. “Such a shame about the fire, yes? Things getting terrible. No sleep and people getting careless,” she says, almost gleefully. Some people thrive on tragedy.

Jerry nods his head sagely and tsks. “A terrible thing. No one was hurt, I gather?”

“In that, they were lucky. Everyone was awake when the fire started,” Debbi says, taking Jerry's money and giving him a numbered ticket. “This your nephew?”

Jerry's old enough to be my grandfather, but I don't correct her.

Jerry says, “No. An old friend.”

We take our chips and drinks and find a table in the near-empty deli. There's a couple eating furtively in the rear, heads close together. A tremendously fat man drinking coffee near the front window. And us.