Gone 'Til November

EIGHT

When the knock came at the door, Morgan got the Beretta from the nightstand, looked through the peephole. C-Love and Mikey were outside.

“Come on, man,” C-Love said. “It’s freezing out here.”

Morgan undid the lock and night latch, opened the door, the Beretta at his side. As they came in, he looked past them into the parking lot. The Suburban was parked in the shadows near a Dumpster.

“The twins out there?” he said. He shut the door, locked it.

“Yeah, why you ask?” C-Love said. He was carrying a black plastic grocery bag. Mikey walked around the room, poked the bathroom door open.

“What are you looking for?” Morgan said.

“Nothing.”

“You bring what I asked?”

C-Love hefted the bag, dropped it on the bed.

“We need to talk about some shit,” Mikey said. There was a table and chair under the front window. He pulled the chair out, straddled it.

“That boy you murked in the alley,” he said. “That was Philly Joe from around the way.”

“So?” He set the Beretta on the nightstand.

“His people gonna be looking for you.”

Morgan went to the bed, opened the bag. Inside was a ziplock plastic bag filled with greenish-gold marijuana. C-Love stood near the door, watching him.

A plane came in low overhead. The lamp on the nightstand rattled.

“That’s good shit,” C-Love said. “Best hydro around right now.”

Underneath, two brown plastic prescription bottles without labels. He twisted the top off one, saw the Vicodin inside.

“What you need that shit for, dawg?” Mikey said. “You never told me.”

The tablets were five milligrams each. Morgan broke one in half, put it on his tongue. He dropped the other half back in the bottle, put the cap on. He went into the bathroom, palmed water, swallowed it.

“That shit will fuck you up,” Mikey said.

Morgan drank more water, came out of the bathroom.

“You scarfing down those pills so quick,” Mikey said, “you don’t even see what else is in the bag.”

Morgan looked. There was a black plastic bundle at the bottom, ends taped shut with duct tape. He drew it out, knew what it was. “This for my trouble?”

“That’s an advance,” Mikey said. “I need you to take that little trip for me. Shit I told you about.”

“How much is in here?”

“Five Gs.”

“Not much.”

“For expenses, for now. Traveling money. Good timing, too, since Philly’s boys looking for you. There’s that thing with Rohan, too. Gonna be a while before all that shit quiets down.”

“You talk to them?”

“That Trey Dog crew? Can’t do that just now. They’re screaming for blood, and they know you with me. I can get messages back and forth, with an intermediary. But I gotta watch my back on this, too.”

Morgan sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me about this trip.”

“Told you some of it. Pipeline’s been dry since the Colombians went down. Even if they beat the case, they ain’t gonna be up and running anytime soon, if ever. Now I got this RICO shit hanging over my head, and these lawyers, man, they keep wanting more.”

“Go on.”

“Word was some Haitians down in Florida had a good line on powder, shit coming in through the islands. They the new power down there now. Making mad money. We set up a meeting, place called Belle Glade. Curtis went down there.” He nodded at C-Love. “It looked good. They had their shit together, steady source, but they don’t know me well enough to want to do business. And those voodoo motherfuckers don’t trust anyone didn’t grow up poor and barefoot like them.”

“So you sweetened the deal?” Morgan said.

“You know my cousin Leon? He in Rahway now, longtime, but he used to run those corners down near Baxter Terrace. His son Derek was wanting to get ahead, put some work in. Smart boy, too. Going to Rutgers, wanted to be a teacher or some shit. But he got a little one now, a baby mama, too. He needed cash, you know? He came to me, wanted me to help him out, bring him along a little. So I gave him a shot.”

“You sent him down there?”

“Set him up good. Route, expenses, every damn thing. He had a cash advance for the first shipment, prove we were serious.”

“How much money?”

Mikey twisted a thick gold ring on one finger. “A lot, man. More than I could afford.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred fifty K. I threw in some iron, too; as a gift. Island boys love their guns.”

“Why didn’t you send the twins?”

“With their jackets? Some cop pull them over, think he hit the lottery. Derek was clean. No sheet on him.”

“What happened?”

“Some shit I still ain’t figured out. He got pulled over in some cracker town down there. They say he drew on a deputy, but that’s bullshit. They capped his ass and took my money.”

“You know this?”

“Much as I need to. I ain’t known Derek to ever carry, but he might have been, I don’t know. Might have got nervous, cash in the car, dealing with some niggas he didn’t know. But shoot it out with a cop? Nah. He ain’t got the stones.”

“Maybe he got scared.”

“Maybe he did. Maybe it happened exactly like they said. But ain’t nobody said shit about the money yet. And it was in all the papers down there. They impounded the car, probably ripped the thing apart. If they found the money, some motherfucker took it.”

“Or they’re holding it and not telling anybody. Waiting to see who comes looking for it.”

Mikey shook his head. “There ain’t no DEA, no FBI involved in this. If there was, I’d have heard. This is a bunch of redneck Confederate-flag-flying small-town motherfuckers. Whether it was one motherfucker or two, or the whole goddamn town, fact remains. Somebody stole my money.”

“Hard to believe you sent that boy down there on his own like that.”

“Best way to do it. Down there, two niggas in a car get pulled over for sure. Cash was in a panel under the trunk. All he had to do was leave the car where we told him, then rent another, drive back. Didn’t have to deal with them any more than that.”

“So it went bad. Nothing you can do about it. Walk away.”

“Can’t take that kind of loss. Not now. Too much shit going on. I need that money or I need that powder so I can sell it and make that money back. Now I ain’t getting any product out of those Haitians, because that money never got to them, and they not gonna believe me when I tell them what happened. Or care, even if they did. So I need that money.”

Morgan got up. The Vicodin was kicking in, easing the tension in his stomach, taking the edge off the pain. He went to the window, bent the blinds, looked out. It was raining lightly, the parking lot shiny with it. The Suburban hadn’t moved.

“If the cops do have that money,” he said, “they’re using it to build a case. No way you’re going to get it back. And if someone stole it, they stole it. Either way, it’s gone.”

“If some nigga broke into my house and stole three hundred fifty K of my money, you think I’d let it go? Say, ‘what the fuck, it’s gone, forget about it’? Just because that shit happened in Florida doesn’t mean it’s any less fucked up. If I start letting people steal from me, I might as well pack this shit up right now. Or let some motherfucker put a bullet in my head, get it over with.”

“I still say walk away.”

“I can’t, dawg. I need that money. I need you to go get it for me.”

Morgan looked at him, then at C-Love.

“This shit can’t stand,” Mikey said. “I need that money. That’s my money and I’m going to get it back, whatever I need to do. I don’t have no choice.”

“I do,” Morgan said.

“You do. But you ain’t even asked me the terms yet.”

“Terms?”

“Three hundred and fifty K,” Mikey said. “No way whoever took it could have spent it yet. All the shit in the news down there, they’d be laying low. So somebody dug a hole and buried it till things calm down. You find it, keep a third. You find the whole three fifty, you keep an even hundred twenty. That fair?”

A hundred and twenty thousand, Morgan thought. Combined with what was in the safe deposit, it might be enough for the treatment, maybe enough to get him started in another town. More money than he’d ever had at one time before. Might ever have again.

“Well?” Mikey said.

“I don’t know anything about the South. D.C.’s the farthest I’ve ever been.”

“You don’t need to know shit about the South. Like I said, that’s a backwater cracker town, man. They still burning crosses and fucking their sisters. I’ve already got someone looking into things down there.”

“Who?”

“Derek’s shorty. She went down there to bring the body back. She ain’t too happy with the way things played out, but there it is. He took the chances. She don’t want shit to do with me, but she’s looking into things, seeing who’s who, what they say happened, all that shit. Maybe she gets us some names, too.”

“And then?”

“You go down there, straighten that shit out, get my money, and bring it back here. Take your cut. Then we clear.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It ain’t nothing you haven’t seen before, dealt with. It’s the same thieving bullshit, man. That’s all it is.”

Morgan scratched his elbow, looked at C-Love.

“You’re the only one I can trust with this,” Mikey said. “If you get down there and it don’t work out, then it don’t work out. I’ll pay you for your time.”

“How much?”

“Twenty K.”

“I’ll need to think on this.”

“All right. But one other thing. If you do find the motherfucker that got my money?”

“Yeah?”

“You need to put him in the ground. Cop, sheriff, judge, mayor, whatever. I don’t give a fuck. Put him in the ground.”

The machinery clicked, hummed, and Morgan slid into darkness. The plastic table was cold through the thin hospital gown. Wraparound safety glasses blocked his view, but he could sense the walls of the tunnel closing in around him. A steady hum grew louder, then faded. The table buzzed, slid him farther into the tunnel, stopped. Then the hum again, rising and falling like something in a science fiction movie.

He tried to slow his breathing, fight the gathering fear. He counted his breaths as the table juddered, moved, and the hum rose again. Four more times and then the last hum faded and the table slid back out of the tunnel. He was slick with sweat.

“Take your time getting up,” a voice said. “You might be a little dizzy.”

He blinked as the glasses were drawn away. A black woman in flowered hospital scrubs stood beside the table.

“All done,” she said. “How do you feel?”

He sat up. The room was dim, light coming through a window in the far wall. He could see two technicians behind the glass, neither of them looking at him.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You can get dressed now.”

He went into the small anteroom, the tiles cold under his bare feet, pulled on his clothes. Soft music was being piped in, some white girl singing about rain on her wedding day.

When he was dressed, he went out to the main desk, stood at the counter. The woman in flowered scrubs was typing on a computer.

“You’re all set, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Dr. Kinzler will get the results this afternoon.”

“How do I pay?”

“We’ll bill you,” she said. She peered at the screen. “Are you still at this same address?” She gave the name of the hotel.

“I may be moving,” he said.

“I’m sure we’ll catch up to you,” she said without looking up. “We always do.”

Outside the hospital, he used his cell to call a cab. He hadn’t wanted to drive the Monte Carlo around Newark in daylight. Around him, a half-dozen people, some in scrubs with no coats, smoked cigarettes, shuffled in the cold. None of them seemed to notice him.

It was nine o’clock, and he was watching cable news with the sound low, stretched out on the motel bed, the Beretta beside him. On the nightstand, his cell began to buzz. He reached for it.

“Mr. Morgan? Dr. Kinzler.”

Morgan sat up, used the remote to mute the TV.

“Sorry to call so late, but the MRI results got back quicker than I expected. I’m tied up here in the office anyway, so I thought I’d give you a call.”

“What did you find?”

“I know Dr. Rosman probably explained to you how goblet cell manifests itself. It’s a slow grower. If we diagnose early and get all the tumors out, we have a pretty high curability rate.”

“What are you saying?”

“That pain you’re having in the abdomen. The MRI shows a series of tumors in your small intestine. They’re confined to that area, though, from what we can see. That’s good.”

On the TV, a woman anchor mouthed words, stock market prices crawling along the bottom of the screen.

“Mr. Morgan, are you there?”

“How many?”

“What?”

“Tumors.”

“Maybe seven in all, from what I can see. They’re small. I wouldn’t say any are more than one centimeter in diameter, though we won’t know for sure until we get them under a microscope. At that size, there’s a good chance they haven’t metastasized yet.”

He laid a hand on his stomach, thought about what was there, beneath the skin, beneath the muscle. His body betraying him.

“What do we do?” he said.

“We go in there as soon as we can. Take them out, have a closer look. If we get them all and there’s no immediate recurrence, you’ll be in good shape. However, there’s always the chance of undetected microscopic cells remaining, though they might not show up for a number of years. We’ll keep you on a steady program of surveillance, testing.”

“Then what?”

“If they occur again, we’ll go to the chemo. But Mr. Morgan, all this is speculation until we get in there and have a look. Have you been having issues with diarrhea or difficulty breathing? A flushing of the skin maybe?”

“No.”

“If you do, let me know. We need to move on this as soon as possible. Until I can examine the tumors, we can’t decide the best route to go with treatment. I can’t overestimate how important time is here.”

Morgan heard a warning tone. The phone was nearly out of minutes.

“I need to leave town for a little while,” he said. “Do some business. Couple, maybe three weeks.”

“Can you postpone it?”

Morgan took a breath. “No.”

“Then that puts us into mid-November, and, as I said, we don’t want to hesitate too long here. There are other things that need to be handled as well. Pre-op testing, paperwork-”

“I know. Do what you need to get it started.”

“Have you looked into any of the things I mentioned, as far as insurance is concerned?”

“No.”

“You should. This could turn into a long and costly process.”

Another tone, only a few seconds left.

“Set it up,” Morgan said. “When I get back I’ll call you, and we’ll do this thing. I’ll have the money.”

“Call my office as soon as you get back, Mr. Morgan. And I mean that day.”

“I will,” Morgan said, and then there was a final tone and the phone was silent.