Frontline (43 page)

“So she’s looking for you to reciprocate . . .”

“Exactly.” Sean pounds his hand on the steering wheel like he’s dinging a game show bell to signal a correct answer. “Respectfully, of course, depending on the situation and the chick. Some will make it more obvious than others. But for the most part, she’s putting it out there and wants you to meet her halfway.”

“Or you could just be like Trent and swoop in for the kiss ten seconds after saying hello.”

The car shakes as both men break into laughter.

“That move I would not recommend,” Sean says when he catches his breath. “It leads to a lot of nasty red handprints across the cheeks. But if there’s one person who can get away with shit like that, it’s Trent.”

“Okay, fourth R, give it to me.”

“Now, keep in mind, all these things don’t always happen in the same night. I mean, relaxing should always be there, and relating will have to happen from the get-go, or what else is the point in talking? But sometimes, depending on just how smoothly the first three R’s guide you, the fourth R is inevitable: Rock n’ Roll.”

“Is this what I think it is?”

“You know it!” Sean taps his crotch like a cowboy taps his holster. “There are no two ways about it: the clothes are off, the game is on. Now, I know you’ve got your own methods when it comes down to it, so I’ll leave it up to you. Just remember that if you go down on her first, she’s yours for life.”

“That’s dirty.”

Sean chuckles. “In the best possible way.”

The theme from
Jaws
interrupts the conversation. Sean presses his finger to the screen of his cell phone and lifts it to his ear.

“You got eyes on him?” He slides his hand into the door release, pulls it, and pushes the door open with his elbow. “Skinny jeans, a dress shirt with a bow tie, and a woolen hat? Sounds like our guy.”

Chris pushes open the passenger side door and exits the car in time to see a tall, lanky man fitting that description appear from around the corner two blocks ahead, walking in their direction. He carries a canvas messenger bag over his left shoulder.

“Thanks, Ben. Stand down. We’ll apprehend.”

“He’s carrying a bag,” Chris says.

Sean raises his eyebrows at Chris over the hood of the car. “What do you figure
—a couple books by Chomsky? A bag of organic trail mix?”

“I take it you’re not anticipating a threat.”

They duck behind a navy minivan parked in front of their Town Car and peer up the street through its rear window.

“He’s headed for that house, number nineteen. He rents the basement unit,” Sean says.

A low, wrought-iron fence encloses a tiny front yard of potted plants sitting next to a steep staircase. The stairs lead up to a solid wood front door. Iron bars guard the ground floor and basement windows. Two strips of masking tape form an X over the basement windowpane.

“Figure it’s some kind of signal to his Deep Throat in the Pentagon?” Chris says, motioning to the X.

“Nothing that exciting. Probably just the signal to the mailman for where to drop off the issues of
Scenester Monthly
.”

Mike strides down the sidewalk, but suddenly freezes. He glares at the minivan Sean and Chris hide behind and reaches for his messenger bag.

“Oh shit,” Sean says. “Did he see us?”

“How could he?”

Mike pulls the snap on the top flap of the bag and shoves his hand inside.

Sean and Chris pull guns from the holsters inside their suit jackets and stay crouched behind the rear of the van.

“What the fuck? How could he have seen us?”

“Did he make Red Team on the other street?”

Sean cocks his gun as Mike retrieves a square black object from the bag and raises it to the side of his head.

“Hello?” he says into it.

Chris and Sean both sigh.

“Okay, so how do you wanna play this? Good cop-bad cop?” Sean’s voice barely rises above a whisper.

Chris shakes his head. “Something new. He might be wise to that.”

“Trent said just to scare him. We can’t go all Wild West.”

Chris frowns. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

Sean takes a seat on the fender of the minivan as Mike smiles and shifts his weight from his left fluorescent green sneaker to the right. He steps back and leans against the iron fence of the neighboring townhouse. The street is silent, but he speaks so softly into the phone, his voice is nothing but a murmur by the time it reaches Sean and Chris.

“It looks like he’s settling in for a couple minutes,” Sean says.

“We’ve got time, then. What’s the fifth R?”

“Ah, the fifth R. That one’s simple: Reset.”

“Reset?”

“Sure. You’ve done the work, you’ve claimed the prize. Time to move on. Clean the slate.”

“Aw, man,” Chris says. “You had me going this whole time. I thought it was going to be something way more profound.”

“Hey, if you wanna make it the Four R’s in your practice, go right ahead.”

“It’s just that I don’t think Kelly and Denim are the types to accept getting reset. Know what I mean?”

Sean nods thoughtfully. “I getcha. If you’re interested, there are a bunch more tips for escaping from the clutches of that pesky sort. But that’s for another stakeout.”

Mike’s voice rises as he wraps the conversation up. “All right, see you tonight then . . . yeah . . . yeah, for sure . . . for sure . . . okay . . .”

Sean glances at his cell phone screen once more before setting it to silent mode. “Shit, text from Trent.”

“What’s it say?”

“Office in fifteen.”

“Fuck, we gotta make this quick.”

“Let’s go.” Chris steps out from behind the minivan.

Mike reaches his front gate. His back faces Chris and he’s still distracted on the phone.

“Wait! What routine?”

“Just follow my lead,” Chris calls over his shoulder.

He’s not afraid of losing the element of surprise as he stalks up behind Mike. He and Sean have a job to do, and they have to do it quick. Something far more important is going on at Trent’s office, and they have fifteen minutes to take care of this amateur snoop and get over there.

Chris knows exactly what kind of smarmy dick he’s dealing with. He slams his hands against both of Mike’s shoulders from behind, sending Mike flying over the wrought-iron gate and his cell phone clattering to the sidewalk. This scrawny bag of bones poses no physical threat to Chris or Sean, and in a short time, he’ll be scared enough never to pose any kind of threat again
—not for money and not as a favor to a hot girl.

Trenton counts on Chris and Sean to help him with whatever problems he faces. This meeting he wants them to attend in fifteen minutes no doubt has something to do with Sara. She’s the lone thought that inhabits Trenton’s mind these days, and Trenton is a mono-tasker who focuses on one obsession at a time, like fencing, his knife collection, his company, and most recently, aid for Haiti.

It stands to reason that whatever plan Trenton is concocting, it will involve seeing Sara somehow, some way, and sometime soon. But the most exciting realization for Chris is that beautiful women like to band together, so wherever Trenton wants to meet up with Sara, there’s a good chance Denim will be there, too.

By the third day, no one needed search and rescue gear to locate the bodies. Their odor rose through piles of concrete, mortar, steel, plaster, and wood
—
the fetid smells of rotting flesh.

Trenton Merrick straps a dust mask around his face, nothing more than what a house painter might wear, and breathes through his mouth. The stink settles on his tongue and sticks inside his cheeks. He tastes it in every bite of his food ration, every swallow of bottled water, and the thick saliva that pools on the back of his tongue.

The landscape looks the same for miles in every direction: piles of rubble and crushed cinderblock, steel cables and twisted aluminum, smashed glass strewn through the streets like it all fell from the sky. A vibrant city street now reduced to a junkyard.

Dust. It drifts on the tropical breeze, billows behind the motorized vehicles trying to navigate their way through crumbled buildings, and rises from the boots of rescue workers and the sneakered, sandaled, or bare shuffling feet of the Haitians. The pores of Trenton’s sweaty arms, forehead and cheeks tingle. Layers form after hours in the sun, a dark crust leaving his skin cracked and bleeding. Two days ago, his white T-shirt gleamed. Now it’s as charcoal gray as the gloves covering his numb hands.

“Careful, Mr. Merrick!” shouts Kency, as the piece of plank board Trenton stands on shifts beneath him. He stumbles, but manages to heave the brick he carries onto a pile of clay roof shingles. It smashes the shingles into tiny pieces. Another dust cloud explodes.

“Better garbage than your foot,” Kency says. A thick sheen of sweat glows beneath the dusty coating on his young face. His New York Knicks jersey, at least three sizes too big, fits him like a dress, covering his spindly legs almost to his knees. A red baseball cap sits backward on his head and white teeth gleam between chapped lips. To Trenton’s amazement, Kency always smiles.

Trenton first noticed Kency in a crowd that gathered at the front of a building where Trenton and two Belgian aid workers rescued an elderly woman the day after the earthquake. They guided her down to the street on a hard plastic stretcher the Belgians brought with them, but when they laid her on the ground in front of the hospital amongst the rows of other wounded, the Belgians needed the stretcher back. Trenton stayed with the woman and held her hand until she fell asleep. He hadn’t seen the Belgians since and didn’t even know their names. They’d probably moved on to another part of the city or one of the surrounding villages.

Kency stepped from the crowd and followed Trenton when he left the hospital, his bright blue jersey glowing in Trenton’s periphery. When Trenton chose this building to work on, Kency started shifting bricks alongside him without a word.

Trenton steadies himself against a piece of wood lattice and catches his breath. He runs his right arm over his forehead and smears the dust into a streak of black film. He regrets telling Randall, Chris, and Sean to stay in New York and fill the plane with more supplies each time it returns. Kency had been good company over the last day, but Trenton could use his three best friends now more than ever.

“Help me with this last thing,” he says.

Kency crouches at the opposite end of a wood door that’s fully intact. Trenton bends his legs, straightens his back, and counts. On three, the two of them hoist the door and toss it a few feet away, where it crashes against a pile of jagged concrete and splits in half.

Late-afternoon sunlight beams into a small opening at Trenton’s feet. He drops to his knees and sticks his head inside.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

His voice muffles in the stillness.

“Hello?” Trenton shouts louder.

Kency clears his throat. “Mr. Merrick, perhaps we move on and join others up the street?”

Trenton pulls his head from the hole and slumps back, resting on his haunches. He feels a fresh trickle of sweat stream down his neck. Even in the humid, breathless air, a chill spreads from his aching muscles through the rest of his body.

“There may be someone in there,” he says. “We must make
sure before we go elsewhere.”

“All right, Mr. Merrick.” Kency pulls a small jar of menthol rub out of the Red Cross fanny pack on his waist that Trenton gave him, and twists the cap off.

Trenton yanks his dust mask down around his neck, runs his finger around the jar’s rim, collects a glob on the tip of his finger, and smears it beneath his nose. The vapor rises up his nostrils and clears the dust and mucus from his sinuses, but even better, blocks the choking stench.

“We have to make this opening bigger so I can fit inside.”

Kency’s eyes widen as he takes the jar back from Trenton.

“Very dangerous, Mr. Merrick, sir. What if the house collapses on you?”

“Kency, are you here to help me?”

Trenton tries to keep his tone civil as his frustration mounts. He remembers that Kency has seen enough heartbreak in the last three days than most people will experience in a lifetime. His mother and father were inside their house when the quake hit and made it as far as the front door before the roof fell in and crushed his father. His mother was buried up to her waist and lost feeling in her legs. She’s being treated in a military hospital, which is nothing more than a row of tents on the outskirts of the city. His younger brother, who was playing out in the street at the time and was clear of the house, is watching over her, but his sister is still missing.

The pounding from chisels and sledgehammers rings from neighboring buildings. More and more aid workers arrive each hour, charging into the city with medical and construction supplies, but they only get so far. Their momentum drains as they spend hours walking the streets, looking for someone in charge who can send them to the areas most in need.

After a while, they give up, pick the nearest building and the victims in the worst shape, and get to work. There is no organization, no coordinated command, no streamlined effort or purpose. It’s like trying to staunch the bleeding from a gaping wound with a handful of Q-tips.

Trenton swallows the last of the water from his bottle. At the peak of the afternoon sun’s strength, all aid workers are instructed to drink a minimum of a gallon to keep hydrated. That was five hours ago. It takes only minutes in the heat before the bottle sweats and the water inside warms to a temperature that’s beyond anything refreshing. It slips down Trenton’s throat, thick and warm like bathwater, and sweats out of his pores.

“I shall go get more?” Kency points to the bottle as Trenton tosses it aside.

“Not yet. Let’s make this hole bigger first.”

After ten minutes of taking turns driving a sledgehammer straight into the concrete, Trenton’s able to kneel and push his entire body through the hole.

“Hand me the flashlight,” he says to Kency.

The house looked bad from the outside, but the thin beam from the tiny flashlight shows an even more chaotic interior. The ceiling collapsed inward, splitting on its seam, and spilled chunks of plaster and cinderblock into the middle of the room. A plastic chair and overturned table are all Trenton can make out with the weak light. Dust drifts aimlessly on the air like snowflakes that can’t find the ground. There are no windows or openings for what’s left of the daylight to illuminate more of the room.

“Hello?” Trenton yells again. “Can anyone hear me? Hello?”

Trenton pulls himself back out of the hole, resigning to the fact that there is no one there. Kency has disappeared, but Trenton’s not surprised. He’s run off a couple of times in the past day, but always returns, sometimes with water and a chocolate bar or two. With the crowds behaving but growing more restless every hour, Trenton doesn’t know how Kency manages to grab what he does and make it back without getting mobbed.

Though a communal spirit settled over the city in the hours following the terror and panic, it likely won’t be long before tempers boil over and looting begins. Everyone’s only in this together until some people find food and others are left to starve. A crisis reveals the best and worst of humanity, and always to their extremes.

On a clear night, the moon and stars shine over Port au Prince with a soft, white glow. Residents amble along streets filled with music pouring from the front of candlelit buildings, their windows and doors open to the world.

Tonight, however, a thick, humid air of silence covers the city, interrupted every few moments by the shrieks of crying children and the ground-shaking rumble of more buildings collapsing. Small fires in the gutters throw orange and yellow light across the faces of the homeless families huddled together in the middle of the street.

The journalists refer to them as the survivors. True, they’re not buried beneath destroyed buildings or lying wounded in front of an aid camp, screaming for a doctor. But can someone really survive a catastrophe like this, walk away without so much as a scratch or bruise, and simply continue with life? Their bodies are intact but their minds are in pieces. They look to Trenton with pleading stares. After a few minutes, he learns to stop meeting them and keep his eyes firmly ahead.

Trenton’s steps carry him to the city’s outskirts where crumbled buildings give way to a village of low-slung tents. Sun-faded cotton sheets of all kinds of patterns and colors are tied together with string, elastic bands, and wire, wrapped around thin sticks picked up from the trail that stand in the mud. There is no waterproof coating on the sheets, no reinforced ties grounded with metal stakes to protect the shelters from high winds. If there’s a storm, this village will blow away as easily as sand grains on the beach, or be pelted into the ground under heavy rains.

The last time Trenton stayed awake this many hours in a row, he completed and presented his thesis entitled
Microfinance in the Third World: Hidden Profit in the Foreseeable Future
to a group of Wall Street bigwigs and venture capital gurus during the final week of his Master’s degree. The men concluded the Q&A by granting Trenton a standing ovation. One man, a senior partner at Lockhart and Turin, took Trenton aside after the presentation and told him it was this kind of thinking that might just make a difference in the world.

Trenton sneers at the memory while surrounded by citizens of the poorest country in the western hemisphere. “A lot of good that kind of thinking is doing this place now.”

Halfway up a grassy slope with a dirt path stomped into the side of it by years of wandering feet, Trenton enters a small area of dark blue tents donated by an American charity hours after the quake hit. He had the shipment loaded into the same plane he took down to Haiti three days ago. They’re sturdy, water resistant, and needed by every Haitian in the Port au Prince area, probably every Haitian in the country.

He unzips one of the tent’s entrances and is greeted by a dark, empty room
—
no sleeping bag, mattress, clothesline, or food. He yanks off his muddy boots and places them next to the opening, zips the entrance closed and spreads himself across the plastic floor. Pebbles and hardened tree roots dig into his back and hips from every position he tries.

Though fatigue seizes his body, Trenton can’t slow his mind. The enormity of what needs to be accomplished overwhelms him. What right does he have to rest when possibly thousands of people won’t survive to see the morning?

Trenton feels the earth’s rhythm pulse like his own beating heart. The tiniest tremble outside of that rhythm shakes him awake; a taunt of imaginary vibrations. He remembers an aftershock rumbling beneath the building he worked on through his first night. Screams erupted from the streets. People darted toward the nearest shelter, stopped, and backed away, knowing any opening, no matter how inviting, could become their death trap. Trenton pressed his back against the nearest wall and tucked his chin into his chest until the vibrations weakened and finally stopped. When a hurricane blows, you find shelter. When floods spill through the streets, you seek high ground. When bombs fall from the sky, you head underground. But when the earth beneath you splits open, there’s nowhere to hide.

He awakes to the sound of the tent’s door slowly unzipping. Adrenaline surges into his heart and he bolts upright, looking around for something to use to defend himself. All he feels is the small flashlight in his pocket. He aims the beam at the tent’s entrance to see the smiling face of Kency.

“Found ya!”

Trenton lets out a loud, relieved laugh. He wondered on the walk back if Kency knew how to find his tent. They spent the previous night here, but with the layout of the city and its surrounding area shifting by the hour, he worried Kency might lose his bearings. What a ridiculous thought. He doesn’t give this kid nearly enough credit.

“Where did you go? You just disappeared!”

“Went to find food, but there’s none.”

It’s only then that Trenton feels the burning emptiness of his stomach through the numbness of his arms, back, neck, and legs.

“Went to the doctors.” Kency points west down the mud slope back to Port au Prince. “Went to see
manman m’
.”

“How is she doing?”

“She sleeps.” Kency shrugs. “We sleep now, too.” He stretches out on the tent floor as if it’s a feather bed and doesn’t show the slightest hint of discomfort.

“Any sign of your sister?”