Aurora(16)
“Maybe I should talk to him. If shit gets weird, could be some good opportunities coming up, you know what I mean? I could help him.”
“It ain’t your help he wants, Rusty. I’m not coming for you, fam. We go back. But you know what you gotta do. Can you please just take care of it?”
“It is at the top of my list, I promise you.”
“Yeah, well, take care of it faster. Keep him off your back. Feel me?”
The passenger door of the pickup truck opened abruptly, and a man in a pressed white dress shirt and straw hat stepped out. The word that came to mind most readily to describe Zielinski was “dense.” Not dumb, far from it, but thick, stout, compactly built. He gave the impression you could punch him in the gut and do more damage to your hand than to him. He resembled no one so much as Nikita Khrushchev. Maybe he’d seen old news clips, and that was why he favored the crisp white dress shirts and hat. He didn’t notice Rusty at first, as he was wiping his hands on some kind of kerchief, just out of Rusty’s line of sight, behind the cab of the truck.
Espinoza moved right away, meeting his boss before he came around the corner of the truck and taking a small, red-smeared pliers from him. He muttered as he approached, but Zielinski had already noticed Rusty. His face darkened into a frown.
“Hey, Z, what’s up?”
“I left something in there for you,” Zielinski said.
No idea what that meant, Rusty managed only an “Oh, OK. Thanks, man.”
Zielinski muttered again to Espinoza, who went around the front of the truck, opened the driver’s door, and pulled the Hispanic guy out. There was gentleness in the big man’s gesture, the way an undertaker is cautious with a body that no longer needs caution.
Rusty looked at the guy as Espinoza helped him past. He was moaning in pain, his left cheek swollen, a long, ropy string of bloody tissue running out in a perfect line down his neck and across the front of his shirt. The Hispanic guy looked up at Rusty, his left eye nearly swollen shut and his right asking for help. But he kept his mouth shut.
Rusty watched as Espinoza led the guy out of the alley. A jingling sound drew his attention back to Zielinski, who was holding his car keys out to him.
“See you soon, Rusty.”
Rusty took the keys, grateful to be nearly out of there. “You got it. Be safe, Z. Crazy times.”
Rusty turned, hurried around to the driver’s side, and got in the truck, slamming the door behind him. He looked up into the rearview mirror, but Zielinski was gone, around the corner of the alley already. Rusty turned, shoved the key in the ignition, and stopped, his eyes focusing on an object perched on the dashboard, directly in his line of sight.
The tooth was a molar, maybe the one from all the way in the back, judging by the tripod of thick roots on which it stood. The gooey strand of red tissue from the Hispanic guy’s shirt made more sense now, as it had once been connected to the biggest of the three roots. Two clusters of periodontal ligaments were splayed out on the dashboard on either side of the tooth, visible in the space just over the steering wheel. Rusty let out a long breath and took a moment to compose himself.
How had it all come to this? He’d had everything, once. A decent job, a strong body and handsome face that women went nuts for, a house, a kid. It seemed booze and coke expected a lot from a person in return. Now everything he’d had was gone, all of it. Now he was a scared, beaten dog.
Worse, he was a dog that owed money.
He started the truck, opened the window, and found an old Starbucks napkin on the floor. He used it to pick up the tooth and chucked it into the alley, hearing it click across the pavement in two or three skips. So, Z did teeth now. God knew what the fuck would be next, and ten grand was a lot of money.
He leaned forward and looked up at the sky as he pulled out of the alley, wondering when or if you’d ever be able to see the thing everybody said was coming.
6.
Half-Moon Bay Airfield
Brady muttered into his cell phone when they were half a mile from the airfield’s driveway, and the chain-link gate was swinging open before they pulled up to it. From the back seat, Thom could see the Gulfstream 650 parked just ahead, beyond the doors to the aviation center. The other custom Suburban was parked in front of it, and Ann-Sophie, a tall, anxious woman whose overwhelming blondness made Eva Braun look swarthy, stood beside the open rear door, fidgeting with an Hermes overnight bag. Thom admired her, even now. Oh, hell, especially now, but his admiration was really a way of appreciating himself: here he was, whisking his Swedish-model wife away to safety moments ahead of an impending apocalypse. What, exactly, was there not to like about him and his situation at this moment? Who on planet earth occupied a place higher on the food chain than he did, even in comparison with his exalted peers who had just as much money, had done just as much planning, and were possessed of a plane with the same number of seats, covered in the same creamy Italian leather upholstery? They may have made plans, but they hadn’t made Plans. Not the way Thom had.
These thoughts, Thom knew, were perfectly normal. To be pleased with one’s station, if it is advantageous, to feel possessive and desirous of one’s wife, to take honest stock of one’s fortune, if it happens to be outrageous, and think that all this is a positive thing, and to take a private moment, every now and then, to consider oneself truly hot shit—this is common fucking gratitude.