Marker of Faith

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 27

They all piled into the car, moody and agitated, reluctant to leave the safety of the cottage to venture out into madness again. John picked a direction at random, hoping to sort of feel his way through all of this. Each man was nursing his own set of questions. There was much to say, but how to say it?

John looked in the rearview mirror at Rattle. What did Dave mean about him already being marked? As he drove, John kept stealing glances at the old man in the back seat. When they first met, Rattle had looked tired and worn out -- a homeless bum that was booze-soaked and drug-addled, but he wasn't that man anymore. Now Rattle looked stronger, more vital with a steely determination in his eyes. Maybe the old man had been that way all along and John just couldn't see past the facade of the street life. John realized that his own job had made him bitter. No, maybe it was just his solitary life that made good old reliable and acerbic Detective John Bergenson the way he was.

Who is Rattle? Who is he? John wondered, stealing another glance in the mirror.

Rattle caught him and asked, "What's up Five-oh?"

John looked away quickly. "Just thinking things through."

Rattle reached into his pocket and pulled out the bag with the bottle of street wine he had secreted there. He set the bag on his lap and stared at it wistfully.

"We're all comin' to terms," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "You know, I have been consistently wine hazed for the last thirty-five years straight." Rattle shook his head sadly and started rolling down his window. "Don't even know how I'm still alive. So much wasted time."

John watched as Rattle picked up the bag-wrapped bottle, kissed it tenderly, and then tossed it out the window. The wind grabbed the bag, inflating and animating it momentarily, before it whipped away and smashed down on the asphalt; glass exploded in vengeful shards on the side of the road.

"That felt good." Rattle sat up straighter in the back seat, running a hand through his grizzled beard. "I don't need that crutch no more," he said to John in the mirror. Rattle nodded, giving a little self-satisfied smile as he rolled up his window again.

"I'm not tossing my smokes out the window," Roddy said airily, lighting up a cigarette and taking a series of dramatic puffs for emphasis. He turned and gave Rattle a big smile.

"Good for you, Rattle. No disrespect, but you see me and Ms. Nicotine here," Roddy gestured with the cigarette, "just got acquainted and I don't want to hurt her feelings."

"Cancer sticks...like thumbing your nose at God," Rattle said ominously through a smirk.

Roddy held his cigarette up in front of his face and made a few soothing coos at the smoldering tip. "Oh, baby, ignore him. Cancer shmancer. Papi still loves you." He drew a deep lung full of the smoke and laughed, which made John laugh in turn.

Leave it up to Roddy to make the jokes that eased the tension, lightened the mood. John looked in the mirror, and catching Rattle's eye, he winked. He looked over at Roddy again, falling back into his former train of thought, and realized that he didn't know the M.E. that well, either. There was the occasional beer in the local cop bar in town after shifts -- John would see Roddy with a group of people and join in. Always the outsider, John would sit and enjoy the conversations around him, the laughter, but he never got to know Manuel Rodriguez. There were casual hellos and jokes at crime scenes, but now here they were, thrown together in a mad dash for the finish line in a race for their lives. It seemed like it was the way it should be, though, with a hazy familiarity to it all.

"Guys." John broke the silence. "We need to fill each other in on everything. Fill in the gaps."

"I'm a Virgo, stereotypically I love piña coladas, and I have a weakness for Chinese food." Roddy wiggled his eyebrows as he spoke. "Baseball is my second religion, God bless my miracle Red Sox!"