The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [130]
With a screech, the van hooked left, all five of them swayed to the right, and they followed Spinnaker Road, the longest and most poorly lit stretch of asphalt that ran out of town.
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