The Inner Circle

91

Twenty-six years ago

Journey, Ohio

"Up here… left up here!” the kid with the tight curly hair-the one called Palmiotti-insisted, sitting in the passenger seat and pointing out the front windshield of the young barber’s white van.

“The hospital’s to the right!” Laurent shouted, refusing to turn the wheel.

“No… go to the other hospital-Memorial. Stay left!” Palmiotti yelled.

“Memorial’s twenty minutes from here!” Laurent shot back. “You see how he’s bleeding?”

Behind them, in the back of the van, Orson Wallace was down on his knees, cradling the head of the unconscious kid with the eight-ball tattoo, trying to stop the bleeding by tightly holding towels from the barbershop against his head.

An hour ago, Wallace threw the first punch. And the second. He would’ve thrown the third too, but Eightball got lucky, knocking the wind out of Wallace’s stomach. That’s when Palmiotti jumped in, gripping Eightball in a tight headlock and holding him still as Wallace showed him the real damage you can do when, in a moment of vengeful anger, you stuff your car keys between your knuckles and stab someone in the face.

Years later, Wallace would tell himself he used the keys because of what Eightball did to Minnie.

It wasn’t true.

Wallace was just pissed that Eightball hit him back.

“He’s not moving anymore,” Wallace’s sister whispered from the back corner of the van. She was down on her knees too, but just like in the barbershop, she wouldn’t get close to the body. “He was moving before and now he’s not.”

“He’s breathing! I see him breathing!” Wallace shouted. “Stewie, get us to Memorial!”

Palmiotti turned to the barber. His voice was slow and measured, giving each syllable its own punch. “My father. Works. At Memorial,” he growled. “Go. Left. Now.”

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 came-pained, soft whimpers that sounded like a wounded dog-set off when her brother exited from the sliding doors of the emergency room, stepped back into the rain, and told them the news: Eightball was dead.