46
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
WAREHOUSE DISTRICT
FRIDAY MORNING
Justice Cummings woke up to humming—soft, soothing, close by. He opened an eye to see a man with a towel around his head sitting cross-legged next to him. He smelled ripe.
The man stopped humming, leaned in close to study Justice’s face. He said, “I’m Dougie.” He straightened his towel and smiled down at him. Justice saw the towel was more gray than white, MARRIOTT emblazoned on it. Justice eyed the grizzled man, who could have been fifty or eighty, impossible to tell. He wore a dirty Hawaiian shirt and pants once green, now more like stale guacamole. And that weathered Marriott towel. He had surprisingly beautiful white teeth.
“Hummer will be back with some more antibiotic cream for your leg and nose. If you don’t know, your nose is offline, but I’ll tell you, boy, when the swelling and bruising go down, it’ll make you look tougher, less like a nerd.”
“But I am a nerd,” Justice said, and sucked in his breath when a mountain of pain slammed into his leg.
“A nerd’s okay. I knew a nerd, a long time ago, maybe ten years, I dunno. Hummer left me aspirin to give you. All I got is Wild Turkey to wash it down. Here you go.”
Justice didn’t care if Dougie was giving him arsenic. He opened his mouth, felt his stomach lining burn off when the Wild Turkey hit it. He wheezed and coughed and Dougie laughed. “I guess you gotta get accustomed to it,” he said, and drank down the rest of the bottle without stopping. He wiped his hand over his mouth. “Oh yeah, Hummer’s going to bring you back some bottled water. I told him booze cures anything, but he said since you’re hurt, you need the water to keep you hy-drated.”
“Dougie?”
“That’s me.”
“My name is Justice. How did I get here?”
“You’ve been kind of out of it since Hummer found you huddled in on yourself in his doorway, and dragged you inside. Me, I prefer my box. It’s too dark for me in here. We’ve been taking care of you ever since.
“You offered Hummer a wad of cash to hide you, but he didn’t take it, so your money’s still in your wallet. Not much, though. Hummer said you had some fancy ID. You’re CIA and that’s sure enough interesting. That’s a real funny name. Why’d your folks name you that?”
“Wishful thinking on their part—they wanted me to be a judge, like my dad was. That, or a priest.”
Dougie placed a lone dirty finger on Justice’s forehead, tsk-tsked, then said, “Your daddy was a judge? Well, I guess everybody’s daddy’s gotta be something. A long time ago, my daddy was something, too, but I don’t remember what now. Don’t think you got a fever, but you did—maybe two days ago, but I don’t remember.”
“What day is it?”
“Day? Not important enough to know. You’re lucky. Hummer got back last week from the world out there, or maybe it was last month sometime, time is weird, you know? Anyways, Hummer was a major in the army but nobody cares about him now and Ruth left him a hundred dollars because she had to take a necklace she found in his nest, stolen, she said, and she had to return it. Anyways, that was a long time ago, too. Then there was his friend, he had a weird name, weirder than yours. Hummer called him Manta Ray. Hummer saved his bacon, too. He was all shot up, and you know what? Manta Ray came back flying in a helicopter all the way from Ireland, and he brought Hummer a buttload of money. Hummer bought us all blankets and pillows and a grill and charcoal and steaks and three bottles of vodka. Ireland’s a long way from here. It’s really green there. Here comes Hummer now.”
Justice’s brain was squirreling around trying to make sense of what Dougie was saying. Then he let it go. It hurt too much to worry about it. Oddly, he felt safe.
Dougie sat back cross-legged and began singing “Take Me Home, Country Road” in a sweet voice, true and soft as summer rain. Justice looked at the man striding toward him. He was military straight, tall, with buzz-cut hair. He looked fifty, maybe sixty, and he was clean. He was wearing green camouflage pants and shirt, a leather belt around his lean waist.
“I remember now, I made it here to the warehouse district,” Justice said.
“Yes, you did,” Hummer said. He set down a bag and stuck out his hand. “I’m Major Hummer, and this is Dougie, and you’re Justice Cummings. A good name, I like it. Here’s water, and more antibacterial cream for the cut on your leg and maybe it’ll help your nose, too. I splinted your leg, don’t know if it’s broken, but if it is, at least it won’t heal all crooked. Here, drink.”
Major Hummer twisted off the lid of a plastic bottle of water and handed it to Justice. Justice drank most of the bottle down in one long gulp, choked and started to cough.
No one bothered to thwack him on the back, Major Hummer and Dougie simply looked at him and waited. He realized when he finally caught his breath the aspirin must be kicking in. He was starting to feel better. “Thank you, Major.”
Dougie said, “I was telling him about Manta Ray. Too bad we ate all those steaks. Justice, you’re looking better, not like you’re going to croak it anymore.” Dougie straightened the listing towel on his head. “You hold still now and let Hummer rub in the cream. Did you kill anyone?”
“Me?” Justice’s voice was nearly a squeak. “Not me. I’d never kill anybody.”
“That’s good, but maybe not. There’s lots of folk in the world out there rotten clean through.”
Major Hummer’s hands were gentle, a surprise, as his big rough fingers massaged in the cream with a Kleenex he pulled out of a small packet.
“Isn’t bad,” Hummer said, sitting back on his haunches. “Healing good. Now, let me bandage you up again, I got some sterile pads and a roll of paper towels to wrap around the pads.”