Chapter 68
CHAPTER
A MONTH AFTER LEARNING OF HIS daughter’s death, Nash looked down at his hands.
When he had been hired at Sybaritic, FINRA regulations required a fingerprint-based background check.
Now whatever he touched with his hands could leave behind a trace that could then be compared to his fingerprints in a database.
And his real identity would be revealed regardless of how much the rest of him had changed.
He could not bench-press his fingerprints into a different mass of arches, loops, and whorls.
To counteract that he had used first a brick and then a pumice stone on the finger pads of his hands.
Shock had told him that his prints probably would be no good for the authorities to take for up to two weeks, because the pumice and brick rubbings temporarily reduced or even erased the ridges necessary for adhesion of the printing ink.
It was painful, but far less painful than being in prison.
However, the skin would grow back, requiring him to keep doing it.
If he were caught he would have to explain about the condition of his fingertips, and his ready explanation was that he was a bricklayer.
He had learned how to do that at Shock’s direction.
Apparently, there was little that the man had not done in his long life.
However, the better strategy obviously was not to be caught at all.
The days were growing shorter, and gloomier.
And his daughter’s meager remains were long since buried.
He had watched on TV as a local station covered the funeral service.
He saw Judith walk into and out of the church, the same one where his father’s service had taken place, then watched her at the cemetery.
She looked heavier and older, like a ghost of herself.
He also saw many people from Sybaritic Investments.
Including Rhett Temple. He was right next to Judith, his hand on the small of her back, guiding her where she needed to go. A staunch friend, the news anchor said, since her husband—the cause of all this misery—had gone on the run.
Yes, staunch friend. And lover. And criminal. And all-around piece of shit.
Then Shock had walked in and turned the TV off.
“Enough,” he had said to Nash. “Enough, Walter.” And Nash had not disagreed. It was enough, all of it.
Nash now had a new driver’s license, an American passport, a Social Security card, a checking account, and credit and debit cards Shock had made up for him, all under the name Dillon Hope.
“These are as solid as they come, Walter. You can fly with these babies, even international, no lie.”
“How were you able to do that?”
“You think folks in the right places can’t be bribed?
They make government wage, man. Not much left over in the kitty for fun.
Some computer clicks on the old databases and, presto, you got Dillon Hope, a living, breathin’ man with a past. Don’t matter the background checks they do, whatever level, you will be good to go.
Cost a packet. That’s why I asked for some of the money the government paid you, so I could get the best stuff out there. ”
“Speaking of, I need to pay you for all this.”
“No, Walter. I ain’t lookin’ to profit off this. And hell, your daddy already left me a quarter million bucks. I was already set for retirement. Now I’m more than set. And Byron’s got himself a nice federal pension. We good, man, but thanks for the thought.”
“Where’d you get the name Dillon Hope?”
“Knew a dude named Dillon back in Mississippi. Good man.”
“You still in touch?”
“Naw, some assholes killed him when we was in high school ’cause he was gay.”
“And the surname, Hope?”
“I thought that would be self-evident.”
Shock gave him a flash drive with his full background from birth to present.
“You got a personal security employment background with all the certifications, clearances, bells and whistles. And, hell, with all I taught you, Walter, you can do that job no problem. Now, anybody calls or emails to verify anythin’, you are good to go.
Don’t ask how, but let me just say that AI has been a boon to those lookin’ to jack up fake CVs and backgrounds.
Just memorize what you need to and then get rid of the flash drive.
Your old man once told me you got a photographic memory, so it should be no problem. ”
“Thanks, Shock. And speaking of photographs…”
He took out one from his wallet. It was the picture he’d found in the safe, of his father and Shock in Vietnam.
He handed it to Shock, who grinned and said, “Damn, I remember that day. We’d taken back a pile of high dirt the North Vietnamese had grabbed from us the day before.
And they’d take it back the next day, and on and on it would go.
But right when this picture was taken, for just those few minutes, life was good.
Life was sweet, man.” He turned the photo over and read off the words written there.
“Woodstock.” His expression bittersweet, he added, “We heard all ’bout that festival, man. Hendrix playin’ his white Fender Stratocaster, upside down, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, the Grateful Dead, the goddamn Who. We woulda loved to have been there instead of Nam.”
He handed the photo back, but his eyes told Nash that Shock was still back in 1969, for better or worse.
“I want you to keep the picture, Shock,” he said, passing it back.
“What? Why?”
“It’s part of your history. And Dad would have wanted you to have it.”
Shock nodded. “You know who you look like now?” He tapped the image of Tiberius Q. Nash on the photo.
“I don’t think anyone can really be him,” replied Nash.
“You don’t have to be him, Walter. You just got to be you. But havin’ some of your old man in you ain’t a bad thing, especially where you headed now.”
Nash then decided to broach a subject that had perplexed him for decades. “I heard him call you the N-word, Shock. More than once. Didn’t that… bother you?”
Shock looked off for a moment, then drew a breath, straightened up to his full height, and looked at Nash.
“Let me tell you somethin’ ’bout your daddy.
My second Purple I caught a round from a Vietcong sniper.
In and out, but it hit somethin’ bad and I was bleedin’ out like a muther.
Your father covered me with his body and still managed to shoot the dude out the tree.
On the chopper ride to the field hospital he was right there next to me.
Keepin’ me alive as much as the medics were.
They only had one bag ’a plasma on the chopper to put in me and that wasn’t nearly enough.
I was dyin’, but your daddy said not to worry, that he was gonna give me his blood when we got to the field hospital, even though he’d recently taken a round in his leg and still wasn’t all the way healed yet.
So’s we got to the hospital. And let me tell you, the U.S.
Army back then was not known for its progressive stance on race.
The doc on duty, I found out later, was some KKK asshole from Arkansas.
He flat-out refused to let a white man donate blood to a colored, and they had no colored blood to give me, he said.
And without that, yours truly was leavin’ this world. And you know what your daddy did?”
“What?”
“He pulled his .45, held it against the doc’s head, took out a fucken grenade and held it in his other hand, and said we was both niggas with nigga blood in our veins and that if they didn’t put his blood in me, he was gonna spill white blood all over the floor, startin’ with the Klan doc.”
“My God, what happened?” asked Nash.
“Never got a transfusion faster in my whole damn life.” He suddenly shivered, like Shock was actually reliving the memory rather than simply recalling it. “Your daddy’s blood saved me, Walter. And because of what he done, I will always have a part of your father in me. And that is a damn honor.”
“Was he written up for that? Or court-martialed even? But, wait, he couldn’t have been. He stayed in the military and got an honorable discharge.”
“He probably woulda ended up in the stockade, but everybody in that place was too damn scared to report him.”
“God, Shock.”
“Your daddy risked jackin’ his military career and losin’ his liberty by doin’ what he done for me. Man walked the talk so’s this here colored boy could live.”
“But to not give blood to a wounded soldier regardless of their race?”
“Nam was one messed-up place, Walter. All the grunts were on drugs—shit, the Army gave ’em to us to keep us fightin’ harder and longer.
And mor’n half the docs and nurses was takin’ ’em, too.
See, when you get dropped into a world that ain’t really a world, but just shit and chaos every minute of every day with violent death tacked on?
You need crap to get you through it, and the pills and the powder and the juice did the trick, at least for a little bit.
But then if you ain’t in reality to begin with, what’s the fucken difference?
” Shock paused and closed and then opened his eyes and let out a long breath.
“But I always knew where your daddy was comin’ from.
And he the only white man I truly felt that ’bout.
And it wasn’t just Nam. You think where we grew up in Mississippi was some hotbed of racial equality?
By the time I was sixteen your daddy had saved my ass probably half a dozen times from crazy, liquored-up white boys with guns who figgered I’d breathed long enough on this earth.
And he almost got hisself killed in the process.
So after all that, I didn’t care what he called me.
And it was a two-way street, ’cause I saved his butt in Nam.
So I called him anythin’ I wanted to and I damn sure did, includin’ a fucken idiot for how he dealt with you. ”
His eyes glistening, Nash said, “Thank you for telling me, Shock.”