by Carter
“So,” the swastika skinhead said, “you joined any gangs yet?”
“Gangs?” I said.
“You gotta have friends.”
“What, like you?”
The skinhead with the baby smiled his toothless smile. “You could a lot worse than us, man. We could protect you from, um, certain elements.”
“I think I’ll be all right,” I said.
Their glassy stares turned more hostile. Instinctively, I shifted a little, moving my hand so it could easily slip into my coat and get to my Glock, but then I realized how fruitless that would be. While we all stared at each other, another airplane roared overhead. When the whine of the jet engines passed, the baby’s cry was louder than ever—a real ear-splitting shriek. Neither of the skinheads paid it much mind.
“You really should reconsider,” the swastika skinhead said in a low, menacing tone.
“Nah. Where’d you get the baby?”
“What?”
“You deaf? I asked where you got the baby?”
They stared at me blankly for a few seconds, exchanged a confused glance, then stared at me again with even more defiance.
“Found it,” the one carrying the baby said.
“Uh huh. Where?”
“Some slut left it. She just put it on the grass out front.”
“Or you took it from her. Where does she live?”
“I don’t like all these questions, man.”
“Too bad. Where does she live?”
“Fuck you, asshole. Let’s go, Jake.”
“Wait a minute,” I said.
They were turning to go, their tough-guy gangbanger act suddenly revealed for the false bravado it was, their scowls quickly melting into a jittery panic, and I reached for the guy with the baby. I did it without thinking, forgetting again who I was dealing with, trying to grab his arm before he could descend the staircase. My hand passed right through him, of course, and because I wasn’t expecting it, I stumbled in his direction. I fell two steps and only saved myself from rolling all the way down by throwing my arm between the rails, catching myself in a painful jolt.
My surprise was nothing compared to the reaction of the skinheads. The one holding the baby screamed like a topless woman in a horror movie and scrambled down the rest of the stairs. Swastika guy’s response was even better, staring in horror at me and pissing a dark spot in his jeans for a second or two, before snapping out of his paralysis and barreling after his friend—who dropped the baby at the bottom of the stairs and ran full tilt for the other end of the parking lot.
The baby hit the pavement first with a sickening thud as its bare back banged against the concrete, then a wet fleshy smack as the back of its head hit next. They were the kind of sounds that would stick with me for years, revisited in both quiet moments of reflection and in heart-pounding nightmares, one of those fringe benefits of the job that was part of the day-to-day life of every cop—and was only worse now. Images burned into the brain. Sounds seared into the psyche.
The baby didn’t move for a second, and I thought, ridiculously, that it was dead, then it spasmed with all its limbs at once, letting loose with another wail. If I’d thought the baby was loud before, it was nothing like this. It was a baby scream that put all other baby screams to shame, a wailing wall of sound filled with blame and anguish and a dozen other primal emotions all mixed into one.
I was there next to the baby without even realizing I’d moved. There was blood behind its head, pooling on the cracked white sidewalk, and I thought there was blood on its face too until I realized that the redness was from all the screaming.
I reached to scoop up the baby and despaired when my hands passed right through it.
The screaming went on endlessly. I’d never felt so helpless. I caught movement to my right, under one of the carports, and saw a woman in a white bonnet and long blue dress, the kind of dress a woman wore in the frontier days. She dashed toward me and scooped up the crying baby. Up close, I saw that the woman wasn’t really a woman at all but a girl, sixteen, tops, her face tearstained and free of even the slightest bit of makeup. Cradling the baby against her chest, she glanced down at me with her watery eyes. When she spoke, I could barely hear the sound over the baby’s screams.
“Thank you, kind sir!” she said. “I been lost without my Anna since the Injuns took her.”
“Myron, look out!”
This time it was Alesha, shouting at me from the balcony above, her voice barely penetrating the screaming. I turned and just barely had time to see our suspect, Larry Elton, shirtless, barefoot, dressed only in a pair of dirty jeans, as if he’d read a casting call for an episode of Cops, looming over me like a great white hairy whale, before he plowed into me.
It was like being hit by a refrigerator, one that reeked of beer and chips. He was one big sweaty mess of a man. I went down like a bowling pin, his fleshy foot smashed into my shoulder, then he was pounding across the parking lot.
The amount of time that elapsed since he hit me and when I staggered back to my feet felt like only a split second, but he was already rounding the corner. For a big man, he could really move. The woman with the baby, still wailing, rose and started to flee, blocking my path momentarily, and the delay cost me another second.
Worse, when I took a few steps in his direction, my head started to spin, forcing me to stop and steady myself. By then, he was surely long gone, but I started after him anyway.
“Myron, don’t bother,” Alesha said.
I turned. She was coming down the steps, one hand pressed to her forehead over her right eye. Blood was trickling around her hand, dark rivulets on dark skin.
“Jesus!” I said, reaching for her.
“It’s okay,” she said. She flashed me a smile and there was blood on her teeth, too. “Looks worse than it is. Sucker got me with a bottle to the head, can you believe it? But it didn’t knock me out—just hurt like hell. Another thing the movies got wrong.”
“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” I said, taking her by the elbow and guiding her toward the car.
“Not before you call this in,” she said.
“You’re bleeding like crazy.”
“Call it in, Myron.”
“All right, all right.”
As we hustled back to the car, I took out my cell phone and called dispatch. Fortunately, a beat cop was only a few blocks away, responding to a domestic disturbance, and by the time I put the phone back in my jacket, I already heard the sirens—a sound that got us both shaking our heads, because the sirens would only alert the suspect to the cop’s presence. A rookie mistake.
“Never a good idea to let them know you’re coming,” I said.
I opened the car door and helped her inside, then fetched the first-aid kit from the back. When I handed her some gauze, she was glaring. I knew what it was about and I already felt terrible.
“Speaking of that,” she said.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you hear me? Why didn’t you hear him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were bent on the ground weird. Hunched over. Moving your hands and stuff. What was that about?”
It was hard to reckon with the guilt I was already feeling, failing my partner when she needed me most, and looking Alesha in the eyes made it even worse. I looked over the top of the car, my gaze settling on the stretch of threadbare lawn in front of the complex. The skinheads were gone, but the pioneer woman was there, cradling her baby against her blue dress. I couldn’t tell if the baby was cooing or making any other sounds, but at least it wasn’t crying. At least it was back with its mother.
“Myron?” Alesha said. “It’s okay, you can tell me. Were you going to throw up or something?”
I looked at her. I knew then that things were going to have to change for me. I didn’t know how, but I knew I couldn’t go back to my life the way it was. That life was gone forever.
“Or something,” I said.
&nbs
p; Chapter 11
On my way back from the always-fulfilling visit with my parents, I got a text from Alesha asking if I wanted to grab some lunch. She had information for me. I messaged her back that I’d pick up a couple of sandwiches from Subway and meet her at my office. The November weather, always fickle, showed a brief glimpse of sunshine before dissolving into a dreary drizzle all in the span of twenty minutes. When I got to the office, Alesha was waiting for me, lounging with her iPhone in one of my chairs. There was also a copy of the Bible on my desk.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I said to her.
“You’ll find all the answers you’re looking for inside,” she said.
She was smirking. Her sleek black hair glistened from the rain, and her leather jacket and her boots were pebbled with water droplets. I set the bag of sandwiches on the desk and took a good look at the Bible. It was faux brown leather, badly worn, frayed at the edges. Someone had gotten a lot of use out of it. I doubted it was Alesha.
“You remember I’m an atheist, right?” I said.
“Just open it,” she said, with barely suppressed zeal.
I opened the cover. It was no ordinary Bible. Inside, placed in a cut-out rectangle where the paper had been removed, was a police badge. My badge, no doubt. Now it was me who was smirking.
“I can’t believe you defaced the good book,” I said.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn’t. I found it in the evidence room. Some druggie used to hide his stuff in it.”
“You lifted it from evidence?”
“Long, long dead case. Like ten years back.”
“Still,” I said.
“Well, see the kind of trouble I get into when you’re not around? Now you have to come back, Myron. Without you, nobody keeps me in line.”
This was a little game we played. She’d probably tried to give me my badge twenty times over the past five years, getting increasingly more creative. The last time it had popped out of a jack-in-the-box. The time before that she’d put it in the smallest doll in an oversized nesting doll. The bottom of a box of Lucky Charms. In a bag of what appeared to be never-opened men’s underwear. I figured one of these days she’d run out of ideas, but so far it hadn’t happened.
“What about Jarret?” I asked. “Hasn’t he been a good partner for you?”
She snorted. “That little jack-off? He couldn’t find his own navel with Google Maps and a guide dog.”
“He’s young. He’ll learn.”
“I doubt it. He’s pretty much useless.”
“Careful. You were young once, too.”
“I was never that young. I need somebody smart, somebody I can count on. I’ve been asking the chief to give me a new partner, but she hasn’t listened.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the number of partners you’ve gone through in the past five years. What is it, six?”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t count on any of them. I need you, Myron.”
She’d said the last part so emphatically that it caught us both off guard. The words hung in the air, the double meaning obvious, our gazes locked in one of those intense stares that seemed unavoidable when we were together. Finally, she looked away.
“I guess that’s a no again, huh?”
“Alesha—”
“I just don’t get it,” she said, turning to me again. “I know you had a bit of trouble when you came back before, but you seem to be okay now. Why would you rather spend your days in this little rat hole than hanging out with me?”
“Hey now,” I protested, “I decorated this place myself. Try not to hurt my feelings.”
“You can barely keep the lights on. You spend your days peeping on cheaters and chasing down phony worker’s comp claims. How is that any fun? You gave up a good salary, a pension, and everything else—for this?”
“Had to be done,” I said.
“Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“Alesha, I’ve told you a million times—”
“I know, I know, it wasn’t me. So you say. Then what was it? And don’t give me any of that shrink crap about post-traumatic stress. I talked to my astrologer about you and she said it’s none of those things. She said everything you’re doing is your own choice.”
I clenched my jaw. Here was Alesha with the crystals and the palm readers and the meaning in the stars. I wanted to snap back at her that the words of wisdom she’d gotten from her so-called astrologer was the kind of generalized nonsense that could apply to anyone. Of course I was making my own choices. In the end, we all made our own choices and lived with the consequences. We couldn’t always dictate the hand the universe dealt us, but we had at least some control over how we played our cards.
What answer could I give her? After the shooting, I debated long and hard about telling her about my condition. If anyone would most likely believe me, it would be Alesha, but for some reason I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know why. Maybe it’s because I just didn’t want to be that person to her. I wanted to be the old me, the guy who’d been her partner, the Myron who’d never believed in ghosts or any of that nonsense. I didn’t tell many living people about the way I saw the world, and only when circumstances dictated that I must, but the number was growing. I’d just told Bernie Thorne, hadn’t I? One of these days Alesha was bound to find out, I knew it, and she’d be pissed when she did.
But for now, I wasn’t ready. The truth was, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to come back to the bureau. I didn’t think I’d ever trust myself to be in a situation again where she was counting on me. I could afford to let myself down, but not her. Not Alesha.
I took her sandwich out of the bag and handed it to her. “Hungry?” I asked.
“You’re trying to change the subject.”
“It’s Philly cheesesteak, your favorite.”
She took the sandwich, trying to keep the glare in her eyes, but I saw the smile creeping into her face.
“Fine,” she said, “you win this time. But I’m not giving up.”
“I’d expect no less. So you said you had information?”
“I do.”
“I assume it’s about Tony Neuman?”
“Yep.”
She unwrapped the sandwich, a full foot long because she always complained if I bought her anything smaller, and bit into the end. For someone so lean, she really could wolf down the food. She made me wait while she took three more bites before she finally spoke.
“Funny thing,” she said, the words garbled by her mouthful of food. “Tony Neuman is dead.”
“What?”
“Got a napkin?”
Impatiently, I handed her a paper napkin from the bag, and she took her time dabbing her face with it.
“This is great sandwich,” she said.
“Alesha—”
“So anyway, I don’t mean your guy is dead. I mean your guy lifted the name and Social Security number and all that. The real Anthony Neuman died in the first Gulf War. Kid was an orphan, bounced around foster care, joined the Army right out of high school. Nobody around to care when he died. The strange thing is, I really had to dig to get this info. Your guy, he paid the right people to scrub the records … So what’s that look for?”
“Huh?”
“You look kind of relieved.”
“Oh, I don’t know. My client really doesn’t want him to be dead.”
“Well, you don’t know that he’s not dead. You just know that he’s not the real Anthony Neuman.”
“Fair point.”
“So who’s your client anyway?”
I debated about what to tell her. I hadn’t told her anything so far, not that my client was dead, and certainly not that I thought this was the guy who’d shot me. I’d only told her it was a missing-person case. The problem was, if I didn’t have at least a somewhat plausible answer to her question, she would see through me, and if she saw through me, she’d start nosing around a lot on her own. While I was thinking, a lone baritone down the hall in th
e Church of Spiritual Transcendence started up with a Gregorian chant.
Alesha, between mouthfuls of what was left of her sandwich, mumbled, “Nice voice.”
“One of the many fringe benefits of this place. But at least they don’t discriminate in their choice of hymns. They’re willing to use just about any religion’s music.”
“Hmm. Don’t change the subject. I asked about your client.”
“And I was debating what I can tell you. He’s a bit squeamish about confidentiality. Let’s just say it’s a relative who has a vested interest in finding him.”
“The father?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny …”
“Because he thinks Neuman killed his daughter?”
“Alesha, don’t you have your own detecting to do?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She devoured the last third of her sandwich in a single bite, wrinkled her wrapper and napkins into a tight ball, and shot it into the trash can in the corner. “She shoots, she scores, she lands a shoe contract. Another black athlete gets out of the ghetto.”
“You know, if I made that last comment, you’d call me a racist pig.”
“That’s because you would be a racist pig. I gotta get back to work. We still on for pool Sunday night?”
“Sure. And Mike can come, too.”
“Ah,” she said. “Alas, I must admit that me and Mikey are no longer an item. Was a little too, I don’t know, black for my taste … Why are you smiling?”
“Perhaps because you fail to see the irony contained in your past couple of statements.”
She flipped the bird. For Alesha, it was just as good as a hug. When she turned to go, I cleared my throat.
“What?” she said.
I held the badge out to her.
“Ah,” she said, a lot of disappointment wrapped up in that one little word. She forced out a smile, but she didn’t do anything to hide that it was forced. She took it from me, our fingers brushing a little, and slipped it into the pocket of her trench coat. “You know I’m not giving up on this?”
