Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Twenty-Two

I wake up alone, not by my alarm clock but rather the sun shining through my windows, searing my eyelids.

That's right. Dinner went well, and Turner was wowed by and accepted my reassurances of not poaching stories from her, but sparks did not fly.

Worse than being alone, though, is the string of messages awaiting me on my mobile.

Four text messages from Calibretti, six from Allah, two from Watson, and a voicemail from Bessie Stone.

Another kid, this one a day shy of his eighteenth birthday, was shot overnight. And his homeboy, who had been strolling down the sidewalk with him at the time, was apparently kidnapped by the shooter. Once again, the victim was found with no weapon and no contraband. And already, Allah and his team have it on pretty good sourcing that the deceased was generally trouble-free. He wasn't a known banger.

The pace has ticked up. The inexplicable war is underway, and still, the most apparent casualties seem to be innocent bystanders.

After setting a kettle to boil for tea and a single egg, which I plan to slice and spread across toast slathered in crushed avocado, I turn the water in my shower to full blast.

My apartment building is grand but old and sometimes it takes a few minutes for the pipes to heat up.

My mind races. Call Bessie Stone. Check-in with Allah. Gage Watson's anger and the temperature of newsroom management. Find more sources. Get a name. Just make progress!

I try to reorder my thoughts by priority, but a raspy, scratchy sound breaks my concentration, and I immediately yell at the cat.

That heifer trained this beast to destroy my apartment before she moved!

But nope, Tiffany apparently wasn't as sinister as I've given her credit for. Rather than scratching the security deposit out of the white oak door, Lucius is about two feet in front of it, in an attack-ready crouch, back fur raised, and an angry, gurgling purr seeping from his whiskered lips.

The subject of his ire is a wrinkled letter-sized envelope that was likely messed up when shoved under my door.

I bolt through the door looking for the unorthodox mail carrier but find no one on the landing by the elevator bank and hear no footfalls on the stairwell, so I return home.

Inside the letter envelope is a thank you card-sized white envelope. Tear that one, and there's a floral note card-sized envelope. Finally, a blank business card.

No, wait. There's writing on the other side. Handwriting in pen.

Lucius doesn't understand the gravity or weirdness and has commandeered the envelopes as his newest playthings, wrestling and imagining them to be helpless mice or something, while I stare at the perfect scrawl on the card.

The North Pole is beautiful this time of year!

Assuming the mystery writer means "pleasant" by "beautiful," what kind of BS is this?!?!

From everything I've ever read in Ranger Rick or watched on the Discovery Channel, the North Pole is cold as hell all times of the year, including this one.

I don't get it, but it just cements what I already knew. This city has lost its mind. And, unfortunately, a little bit of that nuttiness has now found its way to my home.

I've gotta tell someone. You don't keep this sort of thing to yourself unless you live in South Florida. And then you keep it to yourself, because weirdness isn't unusual.

"Hello!"

Freeman seems shocked to be getting a call from me. Maybe 'cause it's six A.M. And by any normal person's standards, that's early to phone anyone outside of a medical emergency.

"Yo!"

"Dude, you alright?"

"Yo!"

"You just said that."

"Yo! Someone just slid a mysterious envelope under my door! Know what was inside?"

"Um, an ear with an angry note?"

"What? No! Also, you stole that from Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box!"

I explain the layers of envelopes like Russian stacking dolls and how I sprinted down the hallway to see if I might catch a glimpse of the letter carrier, and how my elder neighbor Lothar, coming back in from his sunrise walk, tsk-tsked me.

"So you, a large black man with weird tattoos, ran wet, wearing nothing but a bath towel, out of your front door and down the hallway of a high-end apartment building. Bro, are you crazy? We ain't allowed to do things like that. It doesn't fall under 'quirky' for us. For us, that falls under fifty-one fifty!"

Freeman's right, of course, but I ignore his reference to the standard law enforcement code for a seventy-two-hour involuntary psychiatric hold.

"That's not the wildest part, though! After all those envelopes, all that was inside was a business card - blank on one side, but on the other?"

I read the scribble aloud and awaited his response. I figure something like, "Wow!" or "That is crazy!" or "How strange!" or "My bad, you were right!" will do nicely.

Instead, my best friend, with the bedside manner of a freshly cut tree stump, bursts into laughter and blurts, "you dumbass!" before abruptly disconnecting the call.