“I need to see Pop. Where’s Pop?”
“He’s at the stable,” said Willa.
Warren turned toward the door. “Then I’m going there.”
Regina was still beside him. She gazed up at him and began to speak, but her lips did not move. His eyes widened as he heard the voice in his mind, the words resounding as if echoing in a cave: “Warren, tell us what happened to Terry.” The tone was not that of the trembling young girl he saw in front of him. It was the voice of a Southern woman—older, mature, strong.
“Regina?” Warren asked, cocking his head to the side, “are you doing that? How…?”
“It doesn’t matter how,” said Willa. She could hear the voice too. “Tell us what happened.”
He wanted to explain everything—how Akins had threatened the family, how Warren had lost control and murdered him in the street, burned him alive—but he couldn’t allow them to know about his heinous act. He could tell them only of the aftermath: “I know where Terry makes his last delivery every Monday. Sometimes I meet him there and walk him home. I got there tonight and…there was this car…Some guys grabbed him…I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t do anything…”
“Was there a pale man?” asked Willa. Warren could only stare. “A pale white man?” she asked again.
Warren nodded, perplexed that Willa could know. He looked from her to Regina, still mystified that Regina had some sort of odd power. “I couldn’t do anything. They took him. They took Terry into their car…”
“Who took Terry?” came a booming voice from outside.
Warren spun to see his father just outside the doorway. He, too, looked older, smaller somehow, but his anger was as vivid as ever. He grabbed his son by the collar of his coat. “What have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything, Pop. It wasn’t my fault…” He struggled in his father’s grip.
“Regina,” Carl ordered, “help your grandmother back to her room. I need to talk to...this man alone.” Regina obeyed, racing up the stairs and taking Willa by her arm.
Once they were out of view, Carl shoved Warren out of the house, sending his eldest son stumbling to the wet concrete. “What have you done?” he barked over the sound of the pelting rain, his hands trembling.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I just didn’t want him to hurt Jerome or any of them. He said he was gonna shoot them.”
“Who did?”
“Akins.” Warren lowered his head. “He’s a dealer.”
His father scowled. “I knew you must still be using. That’s why I didn’t want you ever coming around here, polluting your brothers, dragging them down with you. Now tell me what happened to Terry?”
Warren described his altercation with Akins. He pulled himself up to his knees as he spoke but kept his eyes to the ground. “I lost control. He said he was gonna hurt Jerome and Terry and Regina. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just couldn’t stop…”
Carl gritted his teeth and shook his head back and forth. “You killed him? You killed a boy?”
Warren nodded, crying.
“And then what?”
Warren recounted what had happened outside Marco’s apartment: the car, the men, Van Owen climbing from the back seat.
“Dear God,” said his father. His arms dropped to his sides. He could barely feel the rain.
“I couldn’t fight him,” Warren went on. “I was all worn out from Akins,” he lied, avoiding mention of the drug he had injected to calm himself, the drug that had left him weak and unable to fight. He thought of the blue light, of hiding under the stairs and then suddenly finding himself blocks away. Had he imagined it? Had the heroin high fooled him? But there was no time to dwell on it now. “I had to run. The punks with him, though—I’ve seen them before. They work for this guy named Dominus. They work out of this hansom cab stable on Thirty-seventh and Eleventh. That’s who Akins worked for, too.” He started to say more, but he couldn’t force the words out.
“What aren’t you telling me?” his father demanded.
Warren took closed his eyes and took a breathed. “I think that Dominus and Van Owen might be the same person.”
Carl glared at him, his eyes widening. When he finally spoke, his voice was so full of anger that Warren thought his father might burst. “So you’ve been buying your drugs from Hendrik Van Owen?”
“I didn’t know,” Warren cried, his throat aching. “I swear I didn’t know. All I knew is Akins and some others worked for some pale white dude named Dominus. I’d never seen him before tonight. I didn’t know…”
“And now you’ve led Van Owen right to your brother, who can’t protect himself…”
“No! I wanted to do something, but I couldn’t...”
His father seemed not to hear him. He was lost in thought, nodding his head back and forth. “But why does Van Owen want Terry?”
“I don’t know—that’s what I keep trying to figure out—but we can go after him together. “I can help…”
“You want to go with me? Why? Haven’t you already caused enough damage to this family?”
“I can help, Pop!”
“How?” Carl’s voice was even louder now. “How? You’re probably so stoned that you can’t even control yourself. Everything bad that ever happened to this family is because of you. Your mother’s dead. Your brother’s taken. What else is there left for you to destroy?”
Warren shuddered. “You’ve got to let me help…”
Carl hesitated. “Tell me one thing. Are you high now?”
Warren grew silent.
“Look me in the eye, and tell me you’re not high.”
Warren raised his eyes and tried to open his mouth. Then he returned his gaze to the ground. “It doesn’t matter what I am. I can still fight. I can…”
“Go! Just go, and don’t ever come back. Don’t ever come near this family again! We're not your family anymore.”
His limbs heavy, Warren pulled himself up and staggered off. Once he was sure that his father wasn’t watching, he ducked behind a parked car and turned back to watch.
His father hadn’t moved. His arms were tense at his sides, his hands molded into fists. He lifted his head to the night sky as if looking for inspiration. Then he seemed to catch sight of the light in Willa’s window. Warren looked there too. The window was wide open.
Warren knew that Willa and Regina must have heard the argument below. But how much, he wondered, could they possibly understand about preternatural powers and an enemy who lives forever? Such matters had always been kept secret by the men in the family. Then he heard his father’s voice.
“I’m coming, Terry,” Carl Kelly said to himself as he moved toward his car. “I’m coming for you, son.” And with each step he took, the wind swirled around his feet.
Part II
The Convergence
Nineteen
An elevator door opened onto a carpeted hotel hallway. The walls were painted silver gray; the doors were a dark gray; the rugs were a deeper gray. Even the scene itself seemed gray, as if from an old movie. From the elevator, a lean, olive-skinned man in his thirties craned his head out into the hallway. “Okay,” he whispered, still scanning for onlookers, “I think it’s clear. Come on.”
An attractive dark-skinned woman, younger than he, glided from the elevator, laughing. She wore a light-colored dress with a matching scarf around her neck. “You’re so suspicious. You’re worse than my grandmother. Nobody followed us here.”
The man caught up and made sure to stay one pace in front of her. He was only slightly taller than she, but his pinstripe charcoal suit elongated his slender form. Under his left arm, he carried a black hat with a gray band around it. In his right hand was a small suitcase.
“What’s our room number?” the woman asked.
“Here,” he said, unlocking Room 714. He flipped on the light and led her in before angling his neck out to check the hallway once more. Seeing no one, he set the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle and locked the door.
“They care. Trust me, they care.”
She kissed him hard, pressing him against the door. He held her tightly, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the bed. He tried to lower her down gently, but she pulled him on top of her, giggling.
“After eleven months,” she said, “I can’t even believe we’re actually alone.”
The man seemed to relax. He rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head, his suit jacket opening to reveal a large handgun in a shoulder holster.
“My god,” she gasped, “every time I see that, I want to scream. I wish you didn’t have to wear it all the time.”
“Maybe soon I won’t have to.” He stood and removed his jacket. The Times Square neon flashed in the window, dimly lighting the room, and she watched him in silhouette as he unstrapped the holster and placed it in the bedside drawer next to the Bible and slid the drawer closed. He unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a white, tank top undershirt. He was thin, but his muscles were taut and defined. There was an easy grace to his movement, almost catlike. He slipped through the room like a lightweight boxer.
He stopped and looked at her staring up at him from the bed, and he smiled. “You are so beautiful.”
“I’m not,” she said, suddenly shy.
He sat beside her and stroked her face with the back of his hand. “You are.”
“Then why aren’t you kissing me, Marco?”
He leaned in toward her. “I love you, Willa.”
The telephone rang, pulling Willa from her reminiscence. She stared at the bedside phone for a moment, listening to it ring a second time, a third time, before lifting the receiver.
“Hello? Yes. That’s right—we’re going to Thirty-seventh and Eleventh. Please hurry.” She hung up the phone and looked over to see Regina standing in the doorway of the bedroom. “That was the taxi service. The car will be here in seven minutes.” Regina nodded but kept her eyes to the ground; she looked uncomfortable. “You were watching the memory, weren’t you, Regina? You saw what I was thinking about.”
Regina raised her eyes and then lowered them again. Her expression didn’t change, but her response was clear: she had broken the rule. She had been looking inside Willa’s mind. She had seen the memory.
“It’s okay, dear. You should see it. I knew you might. I’ve been guarding my thoughts around you for too long.” Regina still didn’t look up. “It’s all ancient history now. I should have told you about Marco a long time ago. I should have told all of you. He’s your grandfather after all.”
Regina seemed to have already figured that out. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked, her thick Southern voice rolling telepathically through Willa’s mind. Regina had been speaking with Amara’s voice for two years now, but Willa still hadn’t grown accustomed to it. She knew that voice so well—Amara had raised Willa after all—so Willa knew the cadence, the pace, the tone, the accent. It was a voice from another time. It was antebellum. There was no one else alive who spoke with that accent. No, Willa remembered, there was one other. And she would see him again this night.
She thought of how difficult these last two years must have been for Regina—forced to silence her voice, to endure ridicule at school, to worry her family—all because Willa had told her to avoid being noticed. What a thing to do to a child. But how would the world have reacted to a little girl from Upstate New York who overnight started speaking like an older Southern woman?
Perhaps just as bad, Willa had pressed Regina to use her ability sparingly—not to reach out with her mind. But she had to make Regina hide her ability. For decades, Van Owen had been able to track Amara—to find her—whenever Amara used her ability too forcefully. And Regina’s ability and now her voice were the same as Amara’s.
Willa felt the guilt closing in on herself. So many secrets. So many lies. So many half-truths. So much hidden. She thought of Terry. Regina and Terry had such a fierce connection. He knew about Regina’s ability. The two children were linked in so many ways. Their love and trust for one another was palpable. But Willa had forced Regina not to tell Terry anything about the family’s past. Secrets and buried pasts had become a way of life.
And now Regina wanted to know why Willa hadn’t told her about Marco being her grandfather. “Why didn’t I tell you?” she finally answered. “Why did I tell everyone that your grandfather was a musician who left me? A million reasons, none of which seems worth anything right now. Sometimes, once you keep a secret long enough—or tell a lie long enough—it just gets harder and harder to let go of it.” She sighed. “Terry has known Marco for more than a year now. There were times I wished that Marco would just break down and tell Terry everything, or that Terry would just figure it out on his own. Just put it all out in the open. But it’s too late now to…”
Regina’s voice was severe now in Willa’s mind. “I want to know more. Show me more. Show me the rest of it.”
Willa closed her eyes.
The room was dark. Neon flashed through the hotel window, lighting the room in staccato bursts. It was an hour before dawn, and even midtown Manhattan was quiet. Then the silence was broken by a loud thump.
“Marco, what’s that?” asked Willa.
A second noise followed, this one even louder. Marco turned on the light and flew from the bed, fastening his belt as he raced across the room. “Get your clothes on,” he whispered. His body was tense and ready. His green eyes were alert and active. He was already preparing for a dozen scenarios.
“Get down,” he told Willa.
The lock shattered, and the door fluttered open, and two men in dark suits stumbled in, guns drawn, but Marco was already upon them. He was waiting just behind the door, and, as soon as the men entered, Marco sprung at the smaller of the two, knocked the gun from the man’s hand, and pressed the barrel of his own gun against the man’s jaw. “Don’t make me do it,” Marco hissed. “Don’t make me do it.”
The second assailant did not seem phased. He raised his gun fearlessly, but it dropped from his hand as if pulled to the floor by a magnet. All eyes went to the gun as it struck the carpet. The man almost dove for it, but Marco shoved the smaller man at him, and the two intruders fell to the floor in a heap.
Marco flipped the door shut. “Don’t even think about moving,” he told them, his gun pointed at them. “Who are you, and why are you here?”
The men glanced at each other and then back at Marco. Behind him, Willa was pulling on her clothes. One of the men turned to watch.
“Don’t look at her,” said Marco. “I’ve got the gun. Look at me.” He tipped the table lamp toward them. He didn’t recognize the larger man, but he knew the other one. He was in his mid-twenties with the hairless, smooth skin of a boy. “I know you. You’re Leo, Jr.—Leo Moretti’s kid. Why are you here?”
“It’s just a job,” said Leo Moretti, Jr. “It’s nothing personal.”
“That’s not what I asked. Why are you here? What does your father want with me?”
“My father doesn’t want anything. Your father does. He didn’t want to send his own guys after you, so he asked my father to do it for him.”
Marco squinted his eyes. “My father sent you after me?”
“Not after you,” said the larger man, who hadn’t spoken yet. The message was clear to everyone in the room. The men were there for Willa.
Marco trained the gun on the man and almost stuttered as he asked “Why?”
“You know why,” said Moretti. “You’re a capo’s son. You can’t run around with…with someone like her.”
“Say it,” said Marco. “With someone like what? Say it.”
“With a Negro.”
Marco gazed at Willa, who was livid, her arms crossed over her chest as if she were fighting off a chill. “I want to have a word with
these boys,” he old her. “Will you go in the bathroom for a bit, honey?”
“No,” she said, her voice flat as she lowered her hands to her sides. I want to hear this.”
Marco knew it was useless to argue with her. He turned back to the men. “So my father sent you here to kill my girl?”
“Not to kill her,” said Moretti. “We’re supposed to take her somewhere.”
Marco stared for a time, waiting for the man to elaborate. Finally he murmured “Where?”
“To Dominus,” said Moretti.
Marco stared, confused. “Dominus? Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what I was told to do. Dominus wants her; that’s all I know. He’s the one who told your father that you were dating a colored girl.”
Marco kept the gun pointed at the two men, but nobody moved for some time until Marco finally spoke. “I’m gonna do you a favor, Moretti—I’m not going to kill you or your friend here.” The two men began to rise. “No, I didn’t say you could leave. I’m not done talking. As I said, I’m gonna do you a favor. I’m gonna let you live, but that’s a big favor, so you’re going to owe me one in return.” He eyed the second man. What’s your name?”
“Jimmy Falcone.”
“Well, Jimmy Falcone—first, you and Leo, Jr. are going back to Daddy Moretti and telling him you found me but that she wasn’t with me.” He stopped for a moment and then turned to look at Willa and then back at the two men. “No, scratch that. You’re going to tell him you caught up with us too late—that we were already leaving the hotel, that you saw me take her to Penn Station, that you saw me put her on a train. You’re gonna say that she got on a train heading…to…Minnesota… and that she was crying. And I got on another one heading west. You’re gonna say that you followed me onto the train and roughed me up to find out where I was going. I told you California—Los Angeles—and that I wasn’t ever coming back here.”
Chains of Time Page 15
