James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

“So you’re an artist now?”

“I suppose that I always have been,” he told me. “I’m just getting better at it, that’s all. It would be foolish to quit while I’m in my prime. But I will tell you one thing, my friend.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“When the end comes – trust me – we’ll both know it.”

LEAVING DC in the old white Suburban that morning, Denny had seen in the side mirror vapor trails coming out of the exhaust, but he didn’t think too much about it. With a rig as old as this one, he couldn’t bother himself over every mechanical hiccup.

Now, three and a half hours from home, the hiccup had turned into something more like a death rattle. There was a familiar dry clank coming from the engine.

As they pulled over to the side of Route 70, Mitch looked up from the Penthouse he’d nabbed off the rack at their last pit stop. “What’s going on, Denny? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Can’t you hear the head gasket going?” Denny said. It was amazing how observant Mitch could be with a rifle in his hand, considering how dim he was about most of the rest of his life.

A quick check under the hood told Denny what he already knew, but he waited until they were limping back up the highway to say anything more about it to Mitch.

“Now, don’t freak out or anything, buddy, but the old magic bus ain’t going to make it back to DC. I think we’re going to have to ditch it.”

Mitch’s face lit up like a little kid’s. “I know where we can do it!” he said. “I used to go hunting around here all the time. It’s the perfect place, Denny. Nobody ever goes back there.”

“I’m thinking we stick it in long-term parking at the airport and walk away,” Denny said. “By the time anybody figures out we ain’t coming back…”

But Mitch wasn’t having it.

“Come on, Denny. Please?” He was sitting sideways on the seat now and pulling at Denny’s sleeve like some kind of little punk. “Let’s just… drown this thing, man. Get rid of it once and for all.”

Denny shouldn’t have been surprised. Mitch had been getting more and more paranoid about the Suburban ever since their traffic stop on the last road trip. It was all getting real old, real fast.

At the same time, though, this might be a chance to calm Mitch the fuck down, Denny realized. He needed his boy focused, and that could be worth a lot in the long run.

“Yeah, all right,” Denny said finally. “We can dump most of this stuff. It’s garbage anyway. The rest, we can pack out. Then we’ll do what any other self-respecting American patriot would do.”

Mitch was grinning at him, ear to ear. “What’s that, Denny?”

“Trade up, my man. You ever hot-wire a vehicle before?”

WHEN IT WAS done, they stopped to wash up in a Mobil bathroom and stole a cone of tulips from a bucket outside the convenience store. Denny would have liked for them to be wearing ties, too, but it was getting late.

In fact, it was after dark when they finally pulled up to the tidy little Cape on Central Boulevard in Brick Township. It was a quiet street, with big trees arching over from both sides to meet in the middle, and you could smell the salt of the ocean in the breeze.

“You grew up here?” Denny said, looking around. “Man, why’d you ever want to leave?”

Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know, Denny. I just did.”

When they got to the front door, Denny unscrewed the porch lightbulb and then rang the bell. A middle-aged woman came to answer. She had Mitch’s same girth and round face, and she squinted out into the dark to see who it was.

“Is that… Mitchell?”

“Hey, Mom.”

The dish towel dropped out of her hand. “Mitchell!” The next second, she was pulling him inside and wrapping her saggy sausage arms around him. “Lord, Lord, you brought my boy home for a visit, and I thank you!”

“Quit it, Mom.” Mitch squirmed under the kisses, but he was smiling as he detached himself, the tulips half crushed in his hand. “This is Denny,” he announced.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Denny said. “I’m real sorry about just dropping in like this. We should have called first. I know we should have.”

Bernice Talley waved it away like so many flies in the air. “Don’t you give it a second thought. Come in, come in.”

As she reached past Denny to close the door, her eyes lingered on the Lexus ES parked at the curb.

“I’ll bet you boys are hungry” was all she said, though.

“Yes’m,” Mitch answered.

“Mitch is always hungry,” Denny said, and Bernice laughed like she knew it was true. Her right hip rode up badly when she walked, but she limped right on past the cane hooked over a doorknob in the hall.

“Mitchell, offer your friend something to drink. I’ll see what I can shake out of this fridge.”

Denny hung back as they passed through the living room. It was all matching furniture in here, but old stuff. “Grandma on a budget” stuff. It was the kind of place where he could imagine his old man trying to sell his vacuums, or knives, or whatever had been paying for the whiskey bottles back then. He couldn’t have been too good at it, though. The son of a bitch never drank anything better than Old Crow.

On a side table, Mrs. Talley had three gold-framed pictures arranged in a perfect little arc. One was of Jesus, with his eyes raised up to God. One was of Mitch, looking young and doofy in a suit and tie. And the third was a military portrait of a middle-aged black man, in full uniform with a decent show of ribbons on his chest.

Denny stepped into the kitchen, where Mrs. Talley was busying herself while Mitch sat at the old Formica table with a couple of open Heinekens in front of him.

“Hey, is that Mr. Talley in the picture out here?” he asked.

The old woman stopped short. Her hand floated halfway to her bad hip before she reached over and opened the fridge instead.

“We lost Mr. Talley two years ago,” she said without looking around. “God rest his soul.”

“I’m real sorry to hear that,” Denny told her. “So it’s just you here by yourself, huh?” He knew he was being a shit, but it couldn’t be helped.

She mistook it for concern. “Oh, I’m fine. There’s a boy who mows the lawn and shovels the snow, and my neighbor Samuel comes over if I got something heavy needs moving.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have brought it up, Mrs. Talley. I didn’t mean to–”

“No, no.” She waved away more of the invisible flies. “It’s perfectly all right. He was a good man.”

“A good man who left behind a fine son,” Denny added.

Mrs. Talley’s face eased into a smile. “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said, and ran a hand over Mitch’s broad shoulder as she passed from fridge to counter with a bag of onions.

Denny could see that, under the table, Mitch’s knee was just starting to bounce up a storm.

EVEN WITHOUT ADVANCE NOTICE, Bernice Talley managed to pull together a fast New England-style clam chowder, some good bread, a salad, and a couple of microwaved potatoes with everything on them, from butter to sour cream to Canadian bacon. It was the best dinner Denny had eaten since he’d started this whole mess, living in the shelters and that godforsaken Suburban, which he was glad to be rid of now. He contentedly filled himself while Mrs. Talley chattered on about people he’d never heard of. Mitch mostly listened.

Finally, after seconds of Edy’s French Vanilla with gobs of chocolate sauce, Denny pushed back and stretched his arms and legs.