Leaving the Comfort Cafe (30 page)

After steak and a potato covered in black pepper and butter, he returned to the laptop. Scanned the names until he got to Raoul Duras, his best bud in the world, longtime partner in the unit they'd both worked and retired from. His friendship with Duras went all the way back to Basic when some asshat coined the name Bing Cherry. Duras had never let that go.

Subject line: BING! CHERRY!

Duras was down in Panama, had lived there for years, coddled by a string of women young enough to be his daughters. He'd attached a photo of himself kicked back with no shirt on, stouter but still hard-bodied, big grin on his face, two girls in short skirts and bikini tops crawling all over him. He was coming state-side in two months, wanted to visit, could he count on time with Bingham.

Bingham wrote back yes and clicked send. They kept up enough so there was nothing new to say. Nothing to say about Bingham walking the land or making notes, bare bones style, in a little black notebook the size of his palm. Or the half-empty bottle of Scotch, the completely empty bed. The total lack of anything that might reveal a life.

Nothing but nights like this, alone, bottle of forty-year-old Scotch and a glass on the porch beside him. His legs hiked up on the table he'd made from rough-hewn logs, laptop balanced on the wide arm of the chair.

He had tried to do the right things. Retired Special Forces, reunited with the woman he'd married and divorced years before but barely knew, and after exactly one year of misery, left again to go back to the high speed life: private contract work, recovery, tracking sexual predators.

Finding lost girls.

Like that one on the table.

The past few months, he'd been on semi-permanent hiatus, besieged by the idea of telling a story he couldn't seem to begin.

The bottle was down to two fingers, and it was usually when it got to that point his fingers slid involuntarily to his chin, then left an inch, another half-inch. He traced the faint scar left there by Duras' fist. Shaped like a half-moon, shaped like a "c." That scar was all he had left. Claire's face passed full-blown into his mind, a possession, the woman he should have fought for. The girl he shouldn't have let get away.

Working his way through the inbox, there were two emails about a case he couldn't take. Snatch and go in a less-than-cooperative country. Not enough cash to get the job done. He read the second email three times. Twelve-year-old girl. He poured another shot of Scotch and then slammed the glass down so hard the bottom cracked. Goddamn sex offenders. He drank the Scotch and went inside to the bathroom. Stripped down for a shower.

Like a robot with a self-destruct switch that never tripped, he looked in the mirror at each scar and recalled where he'd gotten it. Last one in Colombia, knife to the groin. That place was bad, all the way bad.

Before that it was the four-year-old, had to bribe the judge, fucking fubar job. The boy's tooth had rammed half into Bingham's skull during the extraction.

He walked this shit off every day of his life, ignored the bad knee and went. Deep in the woods it peeled up in layers. Teenaged girls abducted by the Russian Mob and sold into prostitution. Young blondes paid for in handsome sums by rich Saudis. Governments knew and did nothing. Oil and politics.

From the Sudan desert to the Malacca jungle, from Cairo to Central America. Europe to Mexico. Back at home, he stopped watching TV, cut himself off from the news. He couldn't stay home as long as he was physically capable. He didn't know how. There would always be dirt in the world, and he was a cleaner.

Duras answered the phone on the third ring. "Bing Cherry! What's up?"

Bingham told him about the job.

"It's right up your alley. What's the problem?"

"I swore off this shit after the last one."

"So? You want to do it, go do it."

"I don't know why I would. My knee's fucked, I don't need the money. Why the hell do I do it?"

"You know why. Every one of these girls you rescue has the same name. Claire Caviness. You wanted to rescue her all those years ago."

"From who?"

"From that asshat she lived with. From me. Go get this girl, the one in the envelope. Get her because she's in trouble, and she needs getting. Then come home and find the real girl you want to rescue. Go find Claire. She's not mine anymore."

"You're nuts, Duras, you know that?"

"And you're a soldier with the heart of a poet, man. Always have been."

When they hung up, Bingham opened the desk drawer and took out the folder that held the paperwork on the house he still owned in Pineland. That old place where he'd lived alone, where Claire had stayed the times Duras had been out of control, where she'd shared Bingham's bed the one night after the mountain trip they all took together.

Later, it became Linda's home when they got married, his again when they divorced. Now it was empty. Too much trouble to rent it out.

It was about time he sold the place. He didn't know why he hung onto it, except it was the only connection left to that time in his life. Some of those years with Linda were not good exactly, but hopeful. That house was the link to a time when he still had the dream of a life other than the team, or himself alone. Well, the team was broke up now, all of them past that point, some doing training, others private contract work. Linda was gone, and there hadn't been anyone else, not really. He didn't count Erica, who lived over the mountain in Robbinsville and met him a few times a month for a night or a weekend.

Lest he sound like a jerk, she didn't count him either.

He picked up the phone again and dialed the number from the realtor's business card. Maybe he'd leave a message, see what she thought about listing the place. He let it ring once, twice, then disconnected. Besotted with the past as he was, selling that old house felt like slamming the door shut on something he couldn't quite say goodbye to.

Instead, he called Erica, who said "come on over," and he went out to the truck and hit the road to Robbinsville.

Erica told him stories of her day. How many heads of hair she'd cut. Which ones confessed what while she shampooed and snipped and blew them dry. There was nothing of substance to these conversations, but nevertheless, Erica told a good story. She kept him listening, made him smile, and in the end what it added up to was she mattered enough that they felt okay about doing what they did. Which was share a simple dinner, sometimes catch a movie, and then go back to her place to have sex.

Tonight, they'd gone for Mexican. Burrito and margaritas for her, fajitas and tequila shots for him. Erica was having trouble with one of the new girls in her shop, Chrissy, who apparently turned the tables and spilled her guts to the clients while she had them trapped in the shampoo sink with soap in close proximity to their eyes.

They'd been complaining to Erica, who had to speak to Chrissy, who broke down in tears and revealed she'd left home the month before with her family's flat screen TV, computer, and DVD collection and thus couldn't contact them. She was afraid they had a warrant out for her arrest.

"I'm sorry, Bingham, but I don't think I can take any more drama tonight." Erica shook her head and faked a silent scream. "We'd better skip the video store."

Back at her place, they did what they always did. He gave her a massage, mainly shoulders and feet, and she poured him a Scotch and rubbed his scalp. Every now and then, she tried out some fancy ointment or cream on various spots of his body. Anything that worked on his rough hide was bound to work on her female clients.

At the end of all this, they hustled down the hall to her bedroom, where she undressed first and then he did, and they lay down easy on her rickety queen-sized bed. She was a heavy girl, with long blond hair straight as arrows. It tickled his chest when she leaned down to kiss him.

Eyes closed, he waited for her directions. He meant no offense with the closed eyes, and she didn't take any. It was just easier that way. Gave him space to let loose a little bit with his musings, and for all he knew, Erica closed her eyes, too.

It was better than someone new every time. Her body had become familiar, and if not beloved or treasured, he regarded her with affection. They were kind to one another, they had the desire to give one another pleasure, and they said goodbye with a hug.

This was as much as he had, and most days he felt grateful for it.

Nights on his porch, with cricket noise and the rustlings of animals in the woods, he wanted more. The tingle of skin, racing heart, "forget time and place and everything but her eyes" kind of girl.

He had said this once to Duras, after things fell apart with Linda.

"Yeah, we all want that, Bing Cherry, and I'm here to tell you it's out there, you can find it. What it costs to keep it is the question."

He wasn't sure if Duras had meant Linda or Claire. He could have pushed on with Claire. A high price indeed: Duras would have exiled him, as would the team. You didn't bring that kind of shit to the unit. He considered it, exile. In the regular sense, but this way, too: exile, from Latin, exilis: scantily endowed; poor; (of soil) meager, barren.

What he was right now.

So, had he followed his heart, would she be here now? Because the team sure the hell wasn't. They had all ended up in different parts of the world, doing what made them happy.

Once in a blue moon, he launched himself down an otherwise forbidden path. What might have happened if he had met Claire first, years before Duras staked her out, before they enlisted. That this might not be mathematically possible given her age and his, he discounted. Him, say, twenty-four, and Claire, he'd put her around nineteen.

Or younger, even, him twenty-one, Claire seventeen. There was nothing real to base this on, only what he imagined of her as a girl that unformed. Not yet bruised by life, eager to sail forth. That's how he saw her, a lovely smart girl, quieter than most, but exuberant just the same, when she was among friends.

He would have protected her, kept her safe from the shit that came later. And she would have done the same for him. What kind of man would he be today if Claire Caviness had been his first and only love?