Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  I shrug. Everything else can fuck off. And the less I say the better. We wind along, past a pier and into a corridor between more brightly painted shipping crates. “My brother, I don’t know what the Council told you about him, but he is . . . special.”

  I try not to laugh, and it comes out a grunt instead. Caitlin ignores me.

  “He was always on some deeper stuff, you know?” She squints, remembering the Jeremy that Giovanni once fell so hard for. “Other kids had their after-school activities or little Magic card games, whatever. Jeremy was reading all the apocryphal books of the Bible by the sixth grade. He loved to dance. That was his one indulgence, I think, but besides that he approached even his childhood like he was training for something.”

  Back out in the open now, we stroll along some abandoned train tracks. A seagull caws at us from its perch on a tire heap. “When they took him, when he disappeared, I think I was the only one who felt it coming. I had my own gifts—not unlike yours, although I didn’t have to die to get them—and even though I didn’t know how to use them yet, the whispering universe had given me some clouded sense that Jeremy had more to him than just a quiet, overachieving life in suburban Queens.

  “So while my parents mourned, I prepared. That’s a whole other story, but I began learning how to use my talents and honed them. Why? Because I knew Jeremy’d come back to us, and when he did, he’d need my help.”

  “And he did.”

  When she nods, her frown deepens like she’s holding back a sob, and I wonder if she’s putting on that same Oscar-worthy show she gave the Council earlier. “About a year later. You have to understand, Jeremy has tapped into a kind of power that’s deeper than anything humanity has fathomed yet. I mean . . . I know that sounds ludicrous, but it’s true. We humans are so wrapped up in this idea that the magic of the universe revolves around us, our needs and desires, and it’s so much deeper. You think Christianity is old? Buddhism? Just babies. The shit Jeremy’s wrapped up in—the magic flowing through him—that shit predates humans, predates monkeys, predates the supremacy of these ridiculous hairy bipeds. It’s deeper.”

  She stops walking, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. It looks like a trick she might’ve learned in therapy. When she opens her eyes again, they’re sharp, unapologetic. “What do you think power means, Carlos?”

  I shake my head. “How ’bout you just tell me what you have to tell me. I don’t like riddles.”

  “Power is survival. Against all odds. Power is the ability to maintain, through any circumstances, whatever may come: nuclear holocaust, arctic freeze, flood, and fire. We think we’re powerful because we can bring that storm, but power isn’t in destruction. It’s not even in creation. That’s kid’s stuff. Tonka Toys. I’m talking about power that outlasts all that.”

  Roaches. I hate everything.

  “Those powers, they function in a kind of collective consciousness that’s way deeper than anything we could understand, right? And through those millions of minds functioning as one, they chose Jeremy. Jeremy is the one destined to bring about the dawn of this new power, this global power.”

  She’s proud of him. Proud of her one and only psychopath roach master brother. Family is an amazing thing.

  We stand at the edge of the docks. The fog has swept in fully, wrapping Manhattan in a cloak of gray. A light drizzle begins.

  Caitlin turns to me, looks me dead in the eye. “You want to get a drink?”

  “Absolutely.”

  • • •

  “Man!” Caitlin yells. “It’s good to be able to talk about this shit without having to explain everything and coddle a man!” She slaps the bar. “And take his little hand and walk his stupid little ass through each!”—slap—“and every!”—slap—“step! Jesus!”

  She’s four martinis deep and Quiñones the bartender is shooting death rays out of his one eye at her.

  “This the spot you Council goons frequent, right?”

  I nod and swish my rum and Coke around. It’s the same one I’ve been nursing for the past hour, staying meticulously sober while Caitlin rambles on about everything except what exactly the fuck is going the fuck on. I haven’t been drinking that much this year, not since everything went down with Sasha, but hearing the nonspooky half of Caitlin’s autobiography has made me want to empty this place into my liver. Still, I gotta stay on point, especially if Caitlin plans on drinking herself into an oversharing stupor.

  “Where are all the ghosts, then?”

  “Must be a busy day,” I mutter. Truth is, they all ducked out pretty soon after we walked in. Caitlin seems to have a reputation among the dead.

  “Anyway, yeah, I dated this guy Rex for a few months. I mean . . . his name was fucking Rex, right? How much should I really have expected? Ugh. He worked at a different nonprofit, did fieldwork actually, which was you know, sexy? I guess. In theory more than practice, but yeah . . . at some point, you know, it got more serious, and he met my . . .” Her voice trails off.

  I wait.

  “And the truth is, and I know you know this as well as I do, Carlos. Can I call you Carlos? I mean, I have been, but . . . I mean, it’s your name!” She spits a laugh out and I catch some in my eye. “Ha! Anyway, as we both know, at some point, no matter how fucked up your”—she shoves a finger into my chest, then hers—“or my nighttime activities may be, at some point, you gotta let people into your life. You can’t keep living in your . . . in your parents’ you know . . . basement! Forever. Right?”

  She might cry. The sob hovers in wait. Then she bursts out laughing. “Shit! I tried to explain to Rex about stuff. About you know, ghosts . . . and Jeremy. Shit. I walked him through it slowly, Carlos. I was really . . . I was careful. Didn’t spring it on him. And I’d been dropping little hints along the way, right? I can be subtle when I want to be. Caitlin can be subtle.”

  Caitlin has reached the speak-about-yourself-in-the-third-person stage of wrecked.

  “So what does he do? Loses. His. Shit. Carlos. Carlos! How did he lose his shit?”

  I just stare at her, because I think it’s a rhetorical question. She stares back.

  “How did he lose his shit?” she says again, quietly this time.

  “I . . . I don’t know?”

  She gets real close to my face and whispers: “Like a little bitch.”

  We both lean back and stare at each other for a few seconds. I have lost all patience. I’d been operating on a What Would Reza Do principle for the past hour—not asking her too many questions so I don’t seem overly eager, letting her say what she has to say so she can ramble around to giving me whatever information I need. I’ve been patient, balanced. But I’m fucking done. I down the rest of my rum and Coke and order another. Quiñones grunts.

  “Caitlin.”

  “Eh?”

  “What happened with your brother? Why do you think he’s trying to—?”

  “I’ve been cleaning up that little motherfucker’s messes for a long time, Carlos. You know about cleaning up messes. You’re a cleanup man. You are to the Council what I am to Jeremy. Understand? When he gets sloppy, when one of his . . . when someone gets out. Or there’s a witness, or whatever . . . I’m the one that tidies up. Why? Because he’s family, and that’s what family does. We do our part. And Mom and Dad, they’ve been doi—they did their part, for years. Years, Carlos. They never even saw him, all those years, but they knew. They knew everything, because I told them. I held their fragile little hands while they cried and shook and carried on and then calmed down, because eventually, Carlos, everyone calms down. The shock is a performance. We’re supposed to be horrified by the weird shit our family does. It’s expected. So they went through their motions, and I waited by their side, and when they calmed down and were ready to help their son step into his destiny and become what he was meant to be, well, I was there to transfer the funds and keep everything on
the level. Do you understand?”

  Very slowly, I nod.

  “So they gave. And gave and gave and gave. And me, I did what I do, closed all the open doors, so to speak.” Open doors like Shelly and Angie. Kia . . . Sasha. I suppress a shudder. “And fulfilled my contracts with the Council on the side. And worked at the agency, which is no easy work either. But he always wanted more. It was never enough. They . . . the thousands and thousands of them, all thinking as one, all manifesting through Jeremy and the weird underground universe he created around him . . . They want and want and need and it was never enough.

  “They were always, always arguing. The back-and-forth was incessant and it happened through me, always. Why? Because they could never see him, never see what he’d become. He was ashamed, even through all his heightened sense of self, all his big talk about channeling these primordial energies, and he is, he is, but still . . . it’s made him a monster and he knows it. Somewhere deep down, he still feels shame, and he loved and hated our parents for that shame, because he knew if he looked at them face-to-face he’d see the horror reflected back at him, of everything he once was and everything he had become.”

  Quiñones drops off my rum and Coke and then Caitlin and I sit side by side in silence for a few seconds.

  “So yes, I’m sure. The police found no bodies in the ruins of my house, Carlos. None. They found the tunnel, of course, but the tunnel just goes into the sewer system. It’s weird, but nothing they could do much with. Jeremy finally got fed up with the back-and-forth and he killed them and took their bodies out and burned down the place. He’s threatened to do it before.” She looks up at me, her eyes wide and wild. “Sick fuck,” she whispers.

  “You don’t want my help keeping you safe, do you?” I say.

  Caitlin shakes her head. “I want you to help me find my brother and fucking kill that piece of shit, Carlos.”

  Very slowly, I nod. “I can do that.”

  “Great. Eleven p.m., here.” She puts a scrap of paper on the bar. The Bushwick address we followed the ghostling to is scrawled on it in neat handwriting. “Bring your sword.”

  And she’s gone.

  • • •

  Twenty minutes later I’m alone and on my third rum and Coke, putting all the pieces together, when I feel the prickly awareness of a small presence by my side. I turn and then stumble backward, groping for my blade. The . . . the thing . . . The killer child ghost sits on the barstool next to mine. He’s staring at me, expression calm, if not a little lopsided.

  “The fuck . . .” I stammer, reaching for my blade.

  “Easy, Carlos.” It’s Riley, his shimmery ass chuckling as he long-steps across Burgundy Bar with his hands up. “It’s cool, man.”

  I resheathe but don’t sit back down. The ghostling just stares at me. “You . . . It’s . . . What the fuck?”

  “It’s uh . . . reformed? Whatever, it’s okay now.” Riley sits on the other side of the ghostling, and I warily take my own seat and signal Quiñones to bring two drinks.

  “How, man?”

  Quiñones is used to creepy motherfuckers like myself ordering more drinks than necessary and carrying on whole conversations with folks that ain’t there. If anything, he was probably more surprised to see me walk in with an actual person earlier.

  “Sylvia figured it out,” Riley says. “Said she used to teach private school when she was alive and so reforming the homicidal deep programming of some wee errant soul was no big deal. I think she got some secret powers she’s not telling me ’bout though, to be honest.”

  “If I told you, they wouldn’t be secret.” Sylvia Bell takes the stool beside Riley and nods at me. I signal Quiñones for another drink as he puts the first two down, and he growls. The Burgundy is filling back up. I recognize most of Sylvia’s crew from Squad 9 taking up an entire corner. They’re carrying on about some inside joke, glancing at us every now and then to make sure everything’s alright.

  The child ghost hasn’t stopped staring at me. “Is he . . . Is he okay though?”

  “We don’t really know,” Sylvia says. “Probably not, considering all he’s been through. But he’s not trying to murder everybody, so that’s a step in the right direction.”

  “Word,” I say, and clink my glass against Riley’s and Sylvia’s. We drink, the two ghosts leaning forward to sip so as not to freak out Quiñones any more than necessary.

  “What’s the play, C? I heard you were in here having an interesting conversation.”

  I shake my head. “To say the least. I mean, it was boring as fuck for ninety percent of the time, but yeah, I think I found out what I needed to.”

  “Listen,” Sylvia says. “If Caitlin is the one behind this situation.” She throws a curt nod at the child ghost. “She has to die. I’ll do it. I don’t give a fuck. But she has to die.”

  “She is,” I say. “And believe me—there’s already a long line for that job. Took all I had not to end her right quick just now, but not yet. She wants me to help her make a move on her brother—thinks he’s the one that took out their parents the other night.”

  “He’s not though, is he?” Riley asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Got it.”

  “Reza and Kia are trying to bring in the Survivors to help us too.”

  “The Survivors as in the group outlawed by the Council?” Sylvia says.

  Riley and I both nod and then stare at her.

  “I’m in,” Sylvia says. “Council’s out here trying to protect the complete failure of a human being that tortured these children into being murderers—they’re dead to me.”

  “No pun,” Riley says.

  “Shut up, Riley,” Sylvia says.

  I like her.

  • • •

  “So I said to Botus, ‘No, mothafucka, you’re gonna pick up the dog.’” It’s two hours later and I’m standing in the far corner of the Burgundy Bar, surrounded by the shimmering shrouds and laughing faces of Squad 9. We’re all utterly wrecked.

  “You ain’t really call Botus a mothafucka, C,” Riley says.

  “I’m paraphrasing, mothafucka.” More riotous laughter.

  “I did actually call Bart Arsten a dickhole one time,” Sylvia says. She’s less outwardly sloppy than Riley or me, but her eyes are narrowed and teary.

  “Get the fuck outta here,” Gordon scoffs. He’s the tallest Squad 9 ’catcher, and the loudest.

  Sylvia glares at him for a solid four seconds, just long enough to quiet the room. Then she blurts out a laugh. “I really did though.” Everyone relaxes and chuckles. “It was right after I got out of the academy. He wanted to send me on some runaround to get back this ghost of a teacher I knew.”

  Angry, incredulous noises from the crowd. Sylvia shakes her head. “Like . . . I knew this man. I worked with him. Arthur, his name was. We were friends even, in that easy sort of not-too-deep way you have with coworkers. Taught eighth-grade earth science. He, you know, he made sense, in a way that most teachers at that ragged fuckhole of a school didn’t. He was kind. Got hit by a car the night before his wedding.”

  The whole bar’s quiet now. Quiñones wipes down the counter, muttering to himself. We all shake our heads, taking in Sylvia’s story.

  “Took him a day or two to actually die, so the shit wasn’t sudden, didn’t wipe out his memory. No offense, Riley.” Riley shakes his head. “So of course the guy’s gonna come back over. If nothing else to try and comfort his mourning fiancée or whatever. Shit. And Bartholomew McFuckshit wants me, still fairly recently dead myself—heart attack, by the way,” she adds. “Anyway, this piece of shit wants me to go drag him back down to Hell? Two days after he was supposed to get married? Um, no.”

  “You didn’t go?” Andrea asks. She’s long and thin, and from what I hear, the fiercest of the new batch of fresh-out-the-academy ’catchers.

&nbs
p; “Oh, I went,” Sylvia says. “And I stood beside him the whole time while he did what he had to do, said his good-byes, handled his business. Then I let him know what was what with the Council, how to stay under the radar, whatever, and sent him on his way.”

  Squad 9 lets out a cheer for their commander. Riley slides into the seat next to Sylvia and throws an arm around her. “Proud of you, babe,” he says, smiling drunkenly into her shoulder.

  Babe? I’m too drunk to think too hard about it. All I know is, it’s an overcast afternoon and I’ve just met with the woman that wants to kill most of my favorite people in the world and now I’m surrounded by outrageous, happy souls that I barely know but somehow love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Kia

  At the botánica, NY1 blares news about the Ferns’ house blowing up. A reporter with a young face and receding hairline explains that no bodies were found and the elder Ferns are still unaccounted for. He sounds genuinely upset about it, and then it’s time for Traffic on the Ones. I mute the TV—you have to stand up and turn the remote at some hypotenuse-ass angle while pressing the button eighteen million times to get it to work—and then slump back into my swively stool and cross my arms over my chest.

  I’m sick of this, all this. Sick of feeling the icy sensation that some dead eyes linger on the back of my neck, sick of flinching at every passing shadow, glancing at corners to see if some skittering, six-legged pale agent of death is there, sick of checking the skin on strangers’ faces in case it tries to crawl away. Sick of ghosts and guns. Sick of death. Sick of myself. Sick of being sick of shit. After the standoff in the park, I headed to Carlos’s, tacked a note on his door about meeting Sasha, and then came here, tired and irritable and over it all.

  I put on my headphones, which I never do when I’m behind the counter, and at first, even King Impervious’s words feel faraway and useless. It’s one of her slow joints—slow by Impervious standards anyway—and she got some dude that sounds like he’s a day away from dying of throat cancer to sing the hook. Yes, I am the riot son / the king of chaos come, and in the back a chorus of sexy girls—you can tell they sexy; it’s not a debate—chants, I am the riot, the riot, the mothafuckin’ riot, and then the King comes in, spittin’ machine-gun thunder: Come chaos, come from the barrel of the gun / Fuck the path fuck the way fuck the method fuck the sun. She just said “fuck the sun.” I know it’s coming; I still smile every time. Find me in the fire line / Floatin’ like a satellite / Fucking mothafuckas in the face with a Cadillac. Like . . . How does one go about fucking a mothafucka in the face with a Cadillac? I don’t care. She doesn’t care. We don’t care together. Anyone who cares can fuck off.