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just because you got burned once by letting your guard down doesn’t mean it’ll be the same here. Not everyone you care about will eventually screw you.”
    Back during my leap from grace, every newspaper reporter, community leader, and government colleague took me
out
of their Rolodex. Roosevelt, when he heard the story, invited me in. For that alone, I love him like a brother. And while he knows what it’s like to be excommunicated from your kingdom, unlike Roosevelt, I’m no longer waiting for someone to bring me back inside.
    Within a minute, I’ve combed through my dad’s shirt and pants pockets. All it gives me is some spare change and a few tabs of nicotine gum. No secrets. Nothing revealing. That is, until I toss the shirt and pants into the plastic chair on my left and get my first good look inside his other shoe. I notice a tiny yellow triangle peeking out from inside. It’s no bigger than the corner of a stamp, but the way it’s tucked in there catches my eye, as if it’s hidden under the leather.
    I yank the insole. It comes right out, revealing what’s tucked underneath—
    “What? Is it bad?” Roosevelt asks as I pull out a folded-up yellow sheet of paper. As I go to unfold it, a small laminated card drops and clicks against the floor. He hid this here instead of in his missing wallet. It’s got a photo of my dad on it. A commercial driver’s license.
    “Says here he’s a truck driver—double and triple trailers, plus hazardous materials,” I say, reading from the back of the license.
    Clumsily, rushing, I unfold the yellow sheet. At first, it looks like an invoice, but when I spot the familiar letterhead up top— Aw, crap.
    He’s lucky they took away my gun.

7
    I don’t get it. He’s bringing in a shipment?”
    “Not just a shipment. A four-ton metal container—y’know, like those ones you see on the backs of trucks.”
    “And that’s bad because . . . ?”
    “Have you
read
this?” I say to Roosevelt, waving the yellow sheet of paper that—
    Roosevelt grabs my wrist and shoots me a look, which is when I notice that half the emergency waiting room is staring our way. A cop in the corner, the teenager on crutches . . . and a creepy older man with a moon chin, who’s holding his arm like it’s broken but showing no signs of pain.
    Roosevelt quickly stands up, and I follow him outside, under the overhang of the emergency room’s main entrance. The sky’s still black, and the December wind whips under the overhang, sending the yellow sheet fluttering back and forth in my hand like a dragonfly’s wings.
    “We call them
hold notices
,” I explain, reading from the first paragraph. “ ‘. . . wish to inform you that your shipment may experience a short delay. This doesn’t indicate there are any problems with your shipment . . .’ ”
    “Doesn’t sound so bad—they’re just saying it’s delayed.”
    “That’s only because if they say the word
hold
, all the drug dealers will run away. That’s also why they say
there are no problems.
”
    “But there are problems?”
    “Look at the letterhead on top—U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”
    “That’s where you used to work, right?”
    “Roosevelt, I’m trying hard to not be paranoid. I really am. But now my long-lost father just
happens
to be bleeding in the one park that just
happens
to be on the homeless route of his long abandoned son, who just
happens
to’ve worked at the one place that just
happens
to be holding on to the one package that he just
happens
to be trying to pick up? Forget the designer shoes—that’s a helluva lotta happenstance, with an extra-large order of coincidence.”
    “I don’t know. Separated all those years, then bringing you together—sometimes the clichés get it right: The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
    “Not for me. And not with my—”
    “Cal?” a deep voice calls out behind me as the emergency room’s glass doors slide open.
    I turn around just as Dr. Paulo Pollack