W
hen Web left Claire’s office and saw the two people conversing in low voices in the waiting area, he blanked for a second,
because the context was wrong. O’Bannon was standing there, and that fit, for the man worked here, after all. The woman he
was there with, though, she shouldn’t be here. When she glanced over and saw Web standing there, Debbie Riner actually gasped.
O’Bannon saw Web too and came over to him, his hand extended.
“Web, I didn’t know you were going to be in today. I guess there was no way I would know, Claire and I don’t exactly share
calendars, bit of an ethical nightmare if we did.”
Web didn’t take the doctor’s hand; he kept staring at Debbie, who seemed frozen, like she had just been caught in a tryst
with O’Bannon.
O’Bannon looked between them. “Do you two know each other?” Then he smacked his forehead and answered his own question. “HRT.”
Web moved over to Debbie, who was pulling a tissue out of her purse.
“Deb? You’re seeing O’Bannon?”
“Web,” O’Bannon said, “that’s really confidential.”
Web waved the little man off. “Yeah, I know, top secret.”
“I never liked this common waiting area—it’s not good for patient privacy, but there’s no other configuration possible,” O’Bannon
said, though the two were clearly not listening to his complaint. Finally, he said, “See you, Debbie.” To Web he said, “Take
it easy, Web. I’m sure Claire’s doing wonders for you.” He looked at Web inquiringly.
She is, Doc,
Web wanted to say.
The woman’s doing such wonders for me, she’s driving me nuts.
Web held the door for Debbie and they walked to the elevators. She wouldn’t look at him and Web felt himself growing red in
the face, with anger, embarrassment, he wasn’t quite sure what.
He finally said, “I’m seeing a shrink to help me through what happened. I guess you are too.”
She blew her nose and finally looked at him. “I’ve been seeing Dr. O’Bannon for well over a year, Web.”
Again he stared blankly at her, and didn’t even hear the elevator doors open.
“Are you going down?” Debbie wanted to know.
They got out on the street and were about to go off in different directions when Web swallowed his confusion and said, “You
got time for a cup of coffee, Deb?” He was absolutely certain that she wouldn’t have any time at all for the likes of him.
“There’s a Starbucks around the corner. I know the lay of the land quite well around here.”
They sat with their Grande cups in a lonely corner while shiny machines whirred, slurped and sputtered for their thirsty customers.
“Over a year, you say? You’ve been seeing a shrink all that time?”
Debbie stirred sprinkles of cinnamon deep into her cup. “Some people are in therapy their whole lives, Web.”
“Yeah, other people. Not people like you.”
She looked at him in a way she never had before. “Let me tell you about people like me, Web. When Teddy and me were first
married he was regular military. I knew what I was in store for, assignments overseas where no one spoke your language, or
else in swampy backwater USA where you had to drive a hundred miles to go to the movies. But I loved Teddy and I went, eyes
wide open. Then he went Delta. And the kids started coming, and while we mostly stayed in one place, Teddy never was in that
place. Half the time I didn’t know where he was. Dead or alive. I’d read about it in the newspaper or see it on CNN like everybody
else. But we got through that. Then he joins HRT, and I thought it might actually be better. My God, nobody told me HRT was
even crazier than Delta, Web, or that my husband would be gone more than he ever was before. I could take it when I was twenty
with no kids. I’m not twenty anymore, Web. And I’ve got three kids that I raised pretty much on my own, on Teddy’s paycheck,
which, after all those years of serving his damn country, was about what a cashier at Kmart earns. I was there every day for
my children and all my youngest wants to know is, why did Daddy have to go away? Why can’t Daddy come home? And I have absolutely
no answer to give her.”
“He died fighting the good fight, Deb. He died for his country.”
Her fist came down so hard on the table, the slurping customers all turned and stared. “That’s a bunch of bullshit and you
know it.” With a monumental effort, she gathered herself.
To Web, the woman seemed like an erupting volcano desperately trying to recall its lava.
She said, “He made his choice. He wanted to be with his buddies and his guns and his adventures.” Her voice grew calmer, sadder.
“He loved you guys. He loved
you,
Web. God, you have no idea how much he did. Far more than he cared about me, or even his own kids, because he didn’t know
them half as well as he knew you. You guys fought together, you saved each other’s lives, each day you walked in harm’s way
and were good enough and trained hard enough to make it through. As a team. The greatest damn team there ever was. He talked
to you about things he never would with me. He had this whole other life I could never be a part of. And it was more exciting,
more of a rush than anything else he had.” She spread her arms wide. “How can a mere wife and family compete with all that?
Teddy would only tell me things here and there about what he was doing, just little tidbits to keep peace in the family.”
She shook her head. “There were so many days I hated all of you for taking him away from us.” She put a tissue to her eyes
to catch the tears.
Web wanted to put his hand out and touch her, but he didn’t know if that would be welcome. He felt guilty of grand and awful
crimes, and he never realized he’d even been indicted.
“Did Teddy go to therapy too?” he asked quietly.
Debbie wiped her eyes clear and took a sip of her coffee. “No. He said if anyone at HRT found out he was seeing a shrink they’d
throw him off the team, that there was no room for guys with weaknesses on HRT. And, besides, he said, he had no reason to
go to a shrink. There wasn’t anything wrong with
him,
even if I had some crazy problem. He didn’t want me to go, but I put my foot down for once in my life. I had to, Web, I had
to talk to somebody. And I’m not the only HRT wife who’s seeing a psychiatrist. There are others, like Angie Romano.”
Angie Romano! Web wondered if she came to talk about Paulie. Maybe he beat her. No, more likely
she
beat Paulie. “I’m sorry you weren’t happy, Deb. You deserve to be.” At his house Web had a hundred pictures of himself and
his Charlie buddies doing fun things together. And not one wife appeared in any of those photos because they had never been
invited to come. Web had judged others without walking in their shoes. It was not a mistake he cared ever to repeat, for the
exposure of one’s ignorance could be so devastating and complete.
She looked at him, reached out and touched his hand, even attempted a smile. “So, now that I’ve unloaded on you like a ton
of bricks, how’s your therapy going?”
Web shrugged. “It’s going. I’m not sure where. I know it doesn’t come close to what you lost, but it suddenly occurred to
me that those guys were all I had in my life. And they’re gone and I’m still here and I’m not sure why. I don’t think I’ll
ever be sure why.”
“I’m sorry what Julie Patterson did to you. She’s totally screwed up. She was never that stable to begin with. She resented
you guys, I think, most of all.”
“Julie could do it to me again and I’d take it again,” he said flatly.
“You should get out now, Web. You’ve paid your dues. You’ve damn well served your country. You’ve given enough. They can’t
ask for any more of you.”
“I figure after about thirty years of psychobabble, I’ll be as good as new.”
“It does work, Web. O’Bannon’s even hypnotized me; got me to think about things I never thought I could. I guess they were
hidden really deep inside.” Debbie gripped his hand more tightly. “I know the dinner at my house was awful. We didn’t know
what to say to you. We wanted to make you feel comfortable, but I know we didn’t. I’m surprised you didn’t run out screaming
before dessert.”
“It wasn’t your job to make me feel comfortable.”
“You’ve been so good with everybody’s kids over the years. I want you to know how much we all appreciated that. And there’s
not one of us who isn’t glad you survived. We all know how you’ve risked your life over the years to keep our husbands alive.”
She reached across and touched the damaged side of his face, sliding her soft fingers up and down the rough, jerry-rigged
surface and Web did not pull away.
“We all know the price you’ve paid, Web.”
“Right now it seems worth it.”
T
oona popped back into the driver’s seat and closed and locked the door. He stretched out a long arm and handed the envelope
back to Francis, who was sitting in the rear section of seats in the jet-black Lincoln Navigator. Macy sat in the middle section,
a pair of sunglasses on, though the vehicle’s glass was tinted. He wore an ear radio and a holstered gun. Peebles was not
with them.
Francis looked at the envelope but didn’t take it. “Where’d you get this, Toona? Don’t be handing me shit you ain’t know where
it comes from. I taught you better’n that.”
“It’s clean. They already checked it out, boss. Don’t know where it come from, but it ain’t no letter bomb or nuthin’.”
Francis snatched the letter away and told Toona to drive on. As soon as his hand touched the object in the envelope, Francis
knew what the letter was. He opened it and took out the ring. It was small and gold and wouldn’t have even fit over his pinky,
but it had fit Kevin’s middle finger just fine when Francis had bought it for him. On the inside of the ring was engraved
the names Kevin and Francis. Actually, it read, FRANCIS AND KEVIN. FOR LIFE.
Francis felt his hands begin to shake and he quickly glanced up and saw Toona staring at him the rearview mirror. “Drive the
damn car, Toona, or you’re gonna find your sorry ass in a Dumpster with my whole pistol mag in your damn head.”
The Navigator pulled away from the curb and sped up.
Francis looked down at the envelope and carefully slipped the letter out. It was all block print, something you might see
in some mystery show. Whoever had Kevin was asking—no, telling Francis to do something if he wanted to see the boy alive again.
What they were telling him to do was odd. Francis would have expected a demand for money or for him to give up all or part
of his territory and he would have done it, gotten Kevin back and then tracked down his abductors and killed all of them,
probably with his bare hands. But there was no such demands, and thus Francis was confused and suddenly more afraid for Kevin
than he already had been, because he had no clue as to what these people were up to. He had seen first-hand the motivations
that made people do everything from taking someone’s money to taking someone’s life. He thought he’d seen it all. And from
the contents of the letter these people were obviously aware of something that Francis was too, something special about the
location of the building where all the Feds had gotten shot up.
“Where’d this letter come from, Toona?”
Toona’s gaze in the rearview mirror caught his. “Twan said it was at the downtown place. Somebody slipped it under the door.”
The downtown place was a condo that was one of the few places that Francis used more than a couple times. It was held in the
name of a corporation whose sole purpose was to allow Francis the drug lord to actually own something legally without the
police knocking his door down. He had fixed it up nicely, with original artwork of some ghetto brothers he admired and who
were trying to do almost the impossible and live life straight. That’s right, Francis Westbrook was a patron of the arts of
sorts. And the condo was also filled with custom-made furniture that was big enough and sturdy enough to allow him to lounge
on it without breaking it. The address of the condo had been one of his most jealously guarded secrets and it was the one
place where he could actually relax. Now someone had discovered the location, had violated the place, and Francis knew he
could never go back there.
He folded up the letter and put it away in his pocket, but he held the tiny ring in his big hand and looked at it. Then he
slipped the photo out of his shirt pocket and looked at it. It had been taken on Kevin’s ninth birthday. Francis had the boy
on his shoulders. They had gone to a Redskins game and had on matching jerseys. Francis was so big that most people at the
stadium thought he was a Redskin. That’s right, big and black, must be good for nothing except playing ball for outrageous
bucks. He remembered, though, that Kevin had thought that very cool. Better than your old man being a drug dealer, he supposed.
And what did his son really think of him, the man he believed was his big brother yet who was really his daddy? What did he
think when he got caught in a cross-fire intended to kill Francis? Francis remembered holding Kevin with one arm, shielding
him from more harm, while his other hand held a gun and he was firing at the sons of bitches who had turned a birthday party
into a kill zone. Couldn’t even take him to the damn hospital, had to give him to Jerome. And Kevin screaming that he wanted
his brother and Francis not being able to do anything about that, because the cops were all over D.C. General after the shootout.
They were just waiting for men with bullets in them to show up, and on would go the cuffs. The cops had been looking for a
long time for some excuse to put his butt away. And Francis would’ve left on a nice lengthy visit to some super-max prison
for the benign act of dropping his wounded son off so doctors could save his life.
He felt tears welling up in his eyes and he tried hard to push them away. He could only recall crying twice in his life. When
Kevin was born, and when Kevin had been shot and almost killed. His plan had always been to make enough money to last him
two lifetimes, his and Kevin’s. Because when Francis retired from the “bizness” and left for his little island somewhere,
his son was coming with him, away from the drugs and the guns and the premature deaths happening all around them. Maybe he
would even summon the courage to tell Kevin the truth: that he was his father. He wasn’t really sure why he had created this
lie about being his big brother. Was he afraid of fatherhood? Or were lies just an essential part of Francis Westbrook’s life?