Stephen White - Warning Signs

"Who'd do what?" Her terror was infectious. Naomi's message was still echoing in my ears. I was beginning to become aware of pressure building in my chest, my pulse pounding at the veins in my neck.

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

Marin shook her head, exasperated. "Does she park here? In front? Or do you have a parking lot?"

I stared at her, stammering in an effort to start a sentence.

"When she comes to visit you, goddamn it, where the hell does she park her damn car?"

"Patients usually park on the street. But I've never watched where your mother parks her car."

She looked up. "Is that a siren? Oh my God, oh my God. Do you hear that? In the distance. Is that a siren?"

I listened. I didn't hear a siren. I said so.

"What time is it?" she demanded. She seemed to have totally forgotten about the phantom siren.

I looked at my watch. Employing a voice that tried to reflect a pretense that I wasn't talking to a histrionic stranger, I said, "Four twenty-five. A little after."

"Is she late?"

"No. She's not due here for a few more minutes." I had no right to share that information, but I didn't even consider the possibility of not answering Marin Bigg's question.

Marin pointed outside and screamed, "There she is! There's her car. See it? That's it!"

I looked through the glass and saw the BMW that Naomi had been driving when she'd pulled up next to Lauren and me at the stoplight the day before. She was right out front of my building, backing expertly into a parking space that was only a few feet longer than her car. A cigarette dangled from her lips. Even from this distance I could tell that the ash was precariously long.

Marin ran out the door, waving her arms as though she were intent on bringing a runaway train to a halt. She started yelling, "Mom! Mom! Don't stop the car! Don't stop the car! Get out and leave it running. Mom! Mom!"

I was totally perplexed. I followed her outside.

Marin leapt off the little porch, still waving her arms. "Mom! Mom! Here! Don't stop the car! Mom ! Don't-"

Naomi stopped the car. The reassuring BMW purr clicked off.

Marin covered her ears.

I exhaled.

Marin had stopped screaming as suddenly as if someone had pulled the plug on her power source.

Her voice now hollow, she said, "It didn't… He didn't… Mom, Mom. You're okay, Mom."

She may have actually finished those first two sentences, but I was still on the porch, fifteen or twenty feet behind her, and I couldn't hear her well.

Naomi climbed out of the BMW and stood on the street right beside the still-open door of her car. She took a moment to straighten her clothes, tugging down the bottom of a short-sleeved jacket. Her shoulders were stiff. I thought that she wasn't happy to see her daughter. Shaking her head emphatically, she said, "Not now, Marin. We'll talk later. Go on back home-wait for me there. I'm serious about this-wait there."

Marin held her hands out, palms to the sky. "Mom, I… I came to warn you…" Her tone grew plaintive.

"About what? About him?" Naomi's tone was derisive, cutting. I recognized it instantly; she'd certainly used the same tone often enough with me. "It's a little late for that, isn't it? I just talked to him. He came by the office to plead with me, called upstairs and waited outside by my car. I just left him in the parking lot five minutes ago. So I already know what's going on. All of it. The party the two of you have planned is over as of right now, do you understand? I'll do what I can to help you both, I promise. Now go on home. I can't believe you did this. I just can't believe it."

Marin was frozen in place, standing on the sidewalk ten feet from her mother's car. I couldn't see Marin's face, though I could tell from her posture that the tension wasn't quite gone. She said nothing; she didn't seem to have a response for her mother's words.

Naomi leaned back down and reached into the car, grabbed the big Vuitton bag she always carried with her, and slung it over her shoulder. She slammed the car door. The noise it made was a solid, Bavarian thud. "Go home," she told her daughter. "I'll be there in an hour. We'll decide what to do then."

Either Naomi had not seen me eavesdropping on the porch or she was ignoring me. Either way, I was grateful not to have much of a role in this new act of the Bigg family drama.

For a moment, neither woman took a step. When Naomi finally walked with determined strides toward the sidewalk, I decided that the time had come for me to go back into my office and let this scenario between mother and daughter develop however it was going to develop.

I think Iturned my head first.

But I'm not sure.

Maybe I'd even completed turning all the way around so that I was facing the door. But the ragged piece of metal that I caught on the outside of my right thigh argued against that.

Regardless, I remember seeing the flash in the periphery of my vision, and I think I heard the boom. Maybe it was the other way around. I know I felt the concussion. The evidence of that was irrefutable. It threw me against the front door of the old brick house with enough force to crack oak.

W hen I wokeup, or cleared my head, or whatever it was that I did, I could finally hear the sirens. I wanted to tell Marin Bigg that I could finally hear the sirens.

I tried to stand up to go find Marin and Naomi, but a young man with a ring between his nostrils and a tattoo of a black flower on his throat kept a firm grip on my shoulders.

He said, "I don't think you should get up, man. Someone's coming to help you. I don't think you should get up, man. I'm serious, here. Come on, now. Cooperate with me."

"Where's Marin? Tell her I hear the sirens."

"Hey, whatever. I'll tell her. I'll tell her."

Up close, his nasal ring captivated me. I wanted to ask him what it had felt like to get that part of his nose pierced. Did they go through the cartilage with the needle or did they slide the metal in front of it in that soft skin that always got so sore when I had a cold? But it didn't seem like an appropriate question to a stranger, so I kept my musings to myself.

Then I recalled Naomi's message.

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

I tried to sit up. I said, "There's another bomb. That lawyer."

He kept his hands on my shoulders. "What? I don't think you should get up, man. You're not real stable."

That understatement was the last thing I recalled until the ambulance ride.

T here's another bomb. That lawyer.

I spilled the beans about the wouldn't-it-be-cool games about five minutes after I arrived at the hospital. It took that long for me to collect my wits. Lauren had been called but she wasn't yet at my side, so Sam Purdy was my first confessor. For some reason, he'd been the one elected by the medical staff to inform me that what little was left of Naomi Bigg was dead.

Come to think of it, it was more likely that Sam's position as town crier was self-appointed. At that moment he'd be more concerned with bomb facts than with my feelings.

I asked him about Marin. The nurses and doctors who'd been treating me had been unwilling to tell me her condition.

Sam, on the other hand, didn't blink at my question. Marin Bigg was on her way to surgery. Her condition wasn't critical, though he didn't know the details. He'd let me know when things changed.

I proceeded to tell Sam about Naomi's message. There's another bomb. That lawyer . I tried to put it all in context by telling him everything I remembered about Paul and Ramp and the wouldn't-it-be-cool games. When I got around to mentioning Ella Ramp and Jason Ramp Bass and shaped charges and the explosives vault near Limon, he barked, "What?"