by J. Calamy
Graves stared at Nick for a beat before clearing his throat.
“Of course,” he said and pulled out his radio.
“D-d-david, the c-c, damn! The Range Rover. Take Nick back t-to Jeanne’s p-p-p-please.”
They stood in silence for a moment. Graves’s face was still impassive. A wood carving. But his eyes were desperate.
“N-N-Nick,” he began, but Nick shook his head. He couldn’t. The plea in his voice was clear. Nick couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t. Part of him knew if Graves said anything, then Nick would sink into something he could never get out of.
They were saved by Bishop’s call on the radio.
“Ready whenever he is, Boss,” he said.
“Thank you D-d-david,” Graves said.
“I’m going,” Nicholas said. He turned and walked forward toward the gangplank without looking back, his heart thudding in his chest. The desire to turn back was so acute he dug his nails into his palm to clear his head.
In the car, Bishop was blessedly silent. His gaze caught Nick’s in the mirror but Nick looked away. They came around the public side of the dock and Nicholas caught a sudden glimpse of the back end of the yacht. Graves was there, face in his hands, shoulders slumped. Then the side of another ship blocked the view.
*
Jeanne was silent, looking hard at Nick as he told her the whole story. His words trailed off at the look on her face. She was seated at her vanity, braiding her hair for bed.
“Nicholas,” she said, turning on her chair. He caught her tone and frowned.
“What?”
She threw up her arms.
“What on earth did you think he did, Nicholas? My God, the man carries a gun the size of my arm! Did you think he was importing carpets?”
Nick flinched. It was exactly what Graves had asked. And they were right. Had he been so stupid? He was always so stupid! He had fallen for someone who promised to take care of him, who had offered him a life of safety and care, and he had just…ignored what that meant.
“He told me,” Nick said. “That’s the worst part. He told me who he was, and I still slept with him. I didn’t think… I mean, God, it was different seeing it, Jeanne.”
He can’t go to Hong Kong. Not because of some jealous ex-wife. He can’t go because he bombed a police station and killed forty-six people.
“How?” Nicholas whispered. “Why is he here?”
“This is what I do not understand,” Jeanne said briskly. “He and I are very old friends. But he has never spent more than two days in Singapore at once—and he is never in Hong Kong at all—the Chinese would love to snatch him from under the police.” She paced angrily.
“He took me racing.”
“Nicholas, focus,” she snapped. “The point is he is doing this because of you. It is pure idiocy! And I am becoming afraid for you both.”
“Afraid?”
Jeanne slapped him. He had never even heard her raise her voice. And she slapped him, a brisk snap across his cheek, more sound than force but still… There were two hectic spots of color high in her cheeks.
“Don’t be stupid, Nicholas!” she cried. “What would the CIA do if they knew you could pick the head of Red Sky out of a lineup? Do you know the kinds of places they would take you? What they would do to you there?” Her voice trembled at the end.
Nick’s blood went cold. He had seen two Malaysian men with bags shoved over their heads taken away in a helicopter with no marking and no lights—all in his first week at the embassy. If anyone found out Nick knew anything at all about Red Sky, they wouldn’t even ask him. They wouldn’t even let him confess—they would take every single word out of him by hand. Morris would take me to the Office himself. I’d never see the light of day…Jesus. Oh, Jesus.
Jeanne was talking while these terrible thoughts spun in Nicholas’s head. And what would they do to Graves? Nothing. They would shoot him like a dog. They wouldn’t even risk a trial. Bishop, Rook, the rest? No, nothing but a shoot-out and blood in the street. Graves falling back, choking on his own blood, the big gun falling loose from his hand. Oh God, I have to get out of here! They’ll kill him.
“So you see, the risk to his own safety is ridiculous! I don’t know why he is being so stupid!” From there she descended into French, faster than Nick could track. She was angry. Worse: she was afraid. And Nick couldn’t even tell who she was more afraid for.
“Do you love him?” Nick asked abruptly. A tired smile crossed her face.
“Yes, always,” she said simply. “What about you?”
Nick was opening his mouth to deny it when suddenly he saw Graves clearly in his mind. He was laughing, hands over his face at something Nick was saying. Other images followed, Graves standing between him and the drunk at the party. Graves calling him beautiful, coming in him, kissing him, touching him…the night Graves had pulled him away from the party where Roger had outed him. He saw Graves driving his car, the joyful calculation on his face as he pushed the Bugatti. Playing the piano. Laughing…
“I make him laugh…” Nick said, half to himself.
Jeanne frowned. Her eyes seemed to bore into him, and so he turned away. The image of Graves laughing was stuck on a kind of autoloop.
“Oh God, what am I going to do? I want to see him again, Jeanne.”
“Do you love him?” she asked again, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“Who cares what I feel? He is the head of Red Sky, Jeanne!”
“And?”
“You’re kidding! He’s a murderer! You should have heard him! He hit that guy! He hit him and hit him and hit him—like a steak being pounded Jeanne! And then he just—” Nicholas mimed a gun being fired.
“I know perfectly well what he is capable of. He saved my life with his fists once,” she said, looking away. “You are in very big trouble Nicholas—whatever you do. But you must decide.”
“What—you think he will kidnap me or something?” Nick asked, alarmed.
“Heavens, no. For that—it is the others you need to worry about. Those men at the embassy,” she said. “Graves would never hurt a hair on your head. But you will have to leave Singapore if you don’t want him. We’ll go to Hong Kong tomorrow morning. Start by getting out of the city.”
“Why?”
“Don’t be stupid!” she shouted. He drew back at the anger in her voice. “You have both been incredibly stupid! Why don’t you understand? At some point, someone will want to ask you questions—and when that happens, he won’t be able to protect you, Nicholas. I won’t. No one will.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Jeanne?”
“Graves.”
“Is he all right?” he asked. His voice sounded dull and tired.
“Yes. You gave him a nasty scare, mon cher.”
“Jeanne—I’m dying over here,” he said.
“What do you want me to tell you, Graves?” she asked, exasperated with both of them.
“That I haven’t ruined everything?”
“Oh darling…”
“I don’t know what to do, Jeanne.”
“He wants you, Graves,” Jeanne sighed, rubbing her eyes. “But he doesn’t know what to do now.”
“Is he going to turn me in?” Graves asked.
“No,” Jeanne said. And if I said yes? What would you do? Kill him?
“Why not?”
“I don’t know! Why don’t any of us turn you in? Why don’t I? Why doesn’t anyone?”
“Jeanne, his face. He was closed off. He didn’t want anything to do with me,” Graves said. “I need to see him again.”
“You cannot go to Hong Kong, Graves.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Jeanne,” Graves snapped.
“You are being such a fool! Hong Kong is not safe for you! That police station bombing saw to that. You cannot go there!”
“I know, I know— Where will you go after Hong Kong?”
“I will put that boy on a plane back to the US. That is how it has to be,” Jeanne said.
“I don’t think I can stand it. Will he let me see him?”
“We are leaving today, Graves.”
“How could I have been so stupid?” Graves asked quietly.
“I have been asking that for weeks,” Jeanne snapped.
“I have to go back up the mountain,” he said.
“That is an understatement,” she replied. “You needed to be gone ages ago.”
“I have to see him,” Graves said softly. Jeanne’s heart sank. He is going to do something stupid. He always has to get his way. What will it cost us this time?
*
In Hong Kong, Nick was totally alone. Jeanne dragged him to meetings, introduced him everywhere they went, but Hong Kong was not Singapore. It was a closed community, not interested in the random American trailing behind Sang Soe Jeanne Kyaw. Slowly, Nick slid into the background, becoming more and more withdrawn. He could see Jeanne was worried. But there was nothing else that could be done.
Almost nothing. Nick took the little tram that snaked up the mountain behind Hong Kong to the top of Victoria Peak. He was numb, as numb as he had been in the months after the accident. It was better than the pain in his sternum, somewhere in his gut… He rubbed the spot absently. It was time to make some changes.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” he said. At the top, he leaned against one of the red pillars of the little gazebo below the visitor center. It had been raining, and he had the place to himself. The city swirled in and out of view below him, the clouds obscuring all but the tallest buildings. They appeared and disappeared in the fog, looking otherworldly and strange.
“It’s a big world,” Nick said. He glanced around. There was no one to see him talking to himself. He snorted. And who cared if there was? Who cared?
“I killed three people. I tried to hide it and couldn’t. I got run out of my hometown, run out of the States. I got run out of Singapore. Talking to myself is not a big deal.”
He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes a moment.
“I’m not a murderer,” he said. He kept his eyes closed, let the words hang in the wet air. “I’m not a murderer. But the world doesn’t care about the distinction.”
He waited a moment, to see if the world would have anything to say about that.
“And that isn’t my fault.” His words were muffled by the fog. “That isn’t my fault.”
It was time to change. It was time to stop trying to hide. The world was vast and wide and most of it didn’t care about Nicholas Erickson’s past. It was time to stop hoping someone would rescue him. He had no power over how other people saw him. And it didn’t matter.
“There is a place for me,” he said. “I can go where I want. I don’t need to make some big crazy change. I can just…go live. Maybe I won’t have him. But I can live. I think that’s good enough.”
He heard the high-pitched chatter of children. A school group. Their voices came and went in the mist and Nick shivered. Suddenly, it felt like one of his dreams. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. He turned and the boy in the red jacket was looking at him. Nick’s heart stopped, fear seizing up his spine. But the boy grinned and waved, shouting something in Cantonese. He laughed and ran back into the fog. Nick sank down until he was sitting on the wet stone, hand clenched over his heart.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, making him jump. He fumbled it out eagerly.
“Graves? I saw—” But then he remembered. He saw the number. The embassy. He pushed End and stood, making his way slowly back to the tram.
It wasn’t him. Why does that hurt so badly? That does remind me though. I am still a federal employee. As the little tram wound its way down he wrote an email to Peterson, to Lena and Morris, to the HR department and everyone else. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
I quit. Effective immediately.
He sent it without bothering to elaborate or write anything else.
*
He told Jeanne about it that night. They were eating while seated on the floor of her lavish suite, surrounded by photos of art and yards of red fabric, planning the room for New Year’s.
“What Roger did…” she said. She rubbed her face and let out a string of what Nick assumed were curses in Malay. “What Roger did was so… I do not know the word in English, but it was cruel and stupid and has likely cost him any chance of working in Singapore.”
Nick hung his head. Even with Jeanne firmly on his side, he was still ashamed of the scandal.
“It doesn’t affect me,” Jeanne said, intuiting his worry and putting a hand on his knee. “If anything, it adds to my reputation as an eccentric.” Nick snorted. He could see that. Jeanne Kyaw was her own force of nature.
“I will settle you either here in Hong Kong or perhaps at home in Mandalay,” she said.
“You make me sound like a puppy you need to find a home for,” Nick muttered. He didn’t like how that made him feel. “I want to make my own way. Take care of my own life.”
“Like what?” she asked. And here it was. Time to tell her.
“I was thinking I’d go somewhere cheap,” Nick said slowly. “Like Thailand or Vietnam. Get a job tending bar and live a quiet little beach bum life.” Jeanne looked at him like he had suggested jumping off a cliff. He shook his head before she could say anything.
“Jeanne, listen. I can’t just be your pet American,” he said. She gasped and shoved at his shoulder. “No, seriously!” Nick continued. “I’m twenty-eight, and the whole world is out there. People won’t care if the bartender at their beach bar is a murderer.”
“You are not a murderer,” Jeanne snapped. “Did being with Graves teach you nothing?”
She meant well, and Nick nodded, taking it the way she intended.
“I learned…a lot with Graves,” Nick said, ignoring how that name twisted his heart. It hurt. It hurt, dammit. He shook himself. “But it doesn’t matter.” He saw she was getting angry and took her hand.
“Listen to me,” Nick said and waited until she settled back. “It really doesn’t matter. When the world treats you…like a murderer…you might as well be.” He felt the old flare of anger immediately followed by the wash of guilt. Those two emotions were so tied now, their rise and fall through his body followed a path he could recite by heart. But they didn’t have the power they did. A murderer loved him. A real one.
“That family,” Nick said quietly. “They’re dead. They. Are. Dead. They were alive and then I came along and now they are dead. If I didn’t murder them, then who did? There is nothing I can do to change that. My point is that I can’t live in terror of people finding out. Like somehow people knowing is worse than what actually happened. I have to live a life where…I dunno…where there is room for people like me. And that isn’t up here.” He gestured to the suite.
Jeanne hung her head and brought his hand up to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. A tear slipped free and splashed on his wrist.
“I understand,” she said. “I hate it. It makes me sad, but I understand.”
“You shouldn’t be sad,” Nick said. “You gave me so much confidence in myself, Jeanne. You made me feel like I had something to offer again. You showed me a whole world I didn’t even know existed. I’ll be having art shows in my tiki bar in no time.”
She wiped her face on a piece of fabric and Nick laughed.
*
They had converted Graves’s bedroom on the owner’s deck into a hospital room and once the surgical suite had been dismantled it was quite cozy if you ignored the hospital bed and the mound of bandages covering Graves’s hip and groin. They left him doped to the gills and as comfortable as possible.
Nick was there when Graves woke up.
Graves eyes fluttered open, and he stared at Nick a moment before a slow smile touched his face.
“Hello there,” he said, his voice barely audible. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Hey, big guy,” Nick said. He held out a clear glass with a nasty piece of twisted metal in it. It was bla
ck and about the size of the end of Nick’s thumb. “Here is your friend. Bishop says you have a collection of them.”
Graves gestured vaguely.
“I have thirty, thirty-f-four, I think,” he said. His words were slurred and distant. “Thatssa b-big one though. Big…bigger than…I thought.”
His eyes closed.
“Nick, you’re here. That is kind of you. Such a good man,” he said, his voice still thick with sleep. “Such a good man. I wanted you so badly. Too bad…”
“I’m not really here, you know,” Nick said. It was true. Nick was gone. All the way in Hong Kong already. Gone away.
“I miss you, Nick,” Graves said to the version of Nick in the room: sweet, smiling Nick. “Should marry you maybe.”
See Sir Ian’s face. His son, the drug dealer, marrying a man, ha. Bastard. Well he never wanted me, anyway. Maybe he wouldn’t care.
He held still, not wanting to break the illusion. A sure sign that he had been smoking too much opium. Hallucinations, no matter how handsome, were never a good sign. But, oh, this one was so sweet.
“He didn’t want me,” Graves slurred to Nick. He gestured vaguely at his face. “Threw me away. I’m not really Lord Graves, you know, he is. I use it—just to make him angry.” This version of Nick understood. A sympathetic illusion.
“He stole me—you see? He was a judge in New Zealand. My mother…lost custody. We were three boys. Too big, too hungry. I don’t remember this—but Sir Ian took me away. Left my brothers. Left them. Made me—a proper little English gentleman…”
Nick faded. Graves groaned.
“Stay,” he said. “Stay, Nick. I don’t want to be by myself. I hate hospitals. Spent…so much time…in hospitals. Please…”
“Graves,” Nick said, fading, fading…
“Lord Graves?”
Simpson. Bloody hell. Graves rolled to his good side, away from them. His face was wet with tears.
“Get out,” he rasped.
“Just to tell you it went well, my lord. We pulled out a few extra pieces as we came across them. We put them in a jar by your bed. We’ll be back next week to take the—”
“Out!” Graves snapped, squeezing his eyes closed. “Get out, you bastards. Leave me alone.”
