Wally found them in the break room of the bank, Ella’s mascara running with her tears, her face half-buried in Jake’s neck. Tevin sat alone, looking shell-shocked.
“What happened?” Wally asked, dreading more bad news.
The crew hesitated before saying anything.
“It’s not your fault, Wally,” Tevin said. “You’ll say it is, but it’s not. …”
“We went down to Washington Square to sell more phone cards,” Jake explained. “James was there. Greta and Stoney. They all knew about it. Some cop has been down there making the rounds.”
And Wally got it, even though the others couldn’t bring themselves to say it. They had heard about Sophie on their own.
“About Sophie … I heard too,” Wally said, and the crushing sadness of it came over her again, images flashing through her mind: Sophie broken and bloody. Sophie alone.
“I did this …” Wally began to confess, but before she could say any more, Tevin moved in and wrapped his arms around her. Wally cried at the instant of his touch, just as she knew she would.
“No,” Tevin said. “You were right, Wally. What you said before. It was Sophie who turned away from us.”
“I sent her away—”
“We know,” Ella said. “But you did all you could for her.”
It was almost as if the others needed to absolve Wally first so they could also forgive themselves for any way they might have let Sophie down. They cried together in the group embrace for a minute, and then slowly peeled away from each other.
“I loved how Sophie danced,” Wally said as she wiped tears away from her eyes, “even when it was embarrassing.”
“Which it usually was,” Tevin said, managing a little smile.
“I loved how Sophie would be real quiet,” Ella said, “then suddenly smile to herself out of nowhere. …”
“And never say what it was she was thinking about no matter how much you’d bug her,” Jake remembered.
“I loved that she was fierce,” Tevin said. “Even if she was wrong.” And Tevin thought about it some more. “I think that’s why she pushed us away.”
They all considered this, and Ella began to cry again, softly, and the others drew her into an embrace again, tightly, until the sound of her tears could barely be heard.
Much later, when the others had settled in for the night, Wally went outside into the narrow alleyway by the rear exit. She dug deep into her bag and found the business card Lois Chao had given her at Harmony House. She held the card up to the streetlight and read the name—Detective Atley Greer, 20th Precinct. With all that had been going on, she had forgotten about the cop’s message until she heard the news about Sophie.
What had put the cop on her in the first place? Wally remembered her missing ID. If Sophie had been found with Wally’s ID on her, Wally’s home address would have been on it. That’s how Claire had heard about the murder first. Wally dialed the cop’s number on her cell, determined to learn what she could about Sophie’s death.
“Yeah?” came the voice on the other end of the line, sounding busy and distracted.
“Detective Greer?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Wallis Stoneman.”
There was a pause. “Well. How are you, Wallis?”
“Fine.”
“You’re fine? Is that right?” In that cop voice, right from the jump. Always questioning, always challenging.
“You called me.”
“Over a week ago I called you,” Greer said. “Do you know what about?”
“I think I do, now. I just heard about Sophie.”
“Right. I’m very sorry about your friend. I’d like us to meet, Wallis. I’m doing my best to find who did this to Sophia, and I think you can help me. You could come in to the station—”
“Ha.”
“Right. You still have standing warrants in family court, don’t you? I can promise you that I won’t try to—”
“Forget it.”
“Okay, then. You name the place.”
Wally thought about it for a moment. Anything she had to tell the cop she could tell him over the phone, but she considered it an advantage to know what he looked like, for future reference. If Greer was out on the streets, there was a chance their paths would cross.
“Fine. I’ll meet you at this address in thirty minutes,” Wally said, and gave him a street address on 85th.
“Thirty minutes,” Greer said, and hung up.
Atley Greer parked his unit on Columbus and walked west on 85th Street, looking for the address Wallis Stoneman had given him. It was almost midnight and the residential street was quiet; no sign of Wally, no clue why the girl had picked this random location for their meet. Atley was passing by a small public garden—badly overgrown and untended—when a girl’s voice sounded his name.
“Greer?”
Atley was startled. He made a quick sideways step away from the garden fence and his hand was halfway to his holster when he made out a young girl’s face just behind the fence, almost hidden in the dense, overgrown garden. It was Wallis—an older version of the girl in the mother-daughter portrait hanging in Claire Stoneman’s apartment. Greer relaxed, and took a step closer to the garden fence.
“Wallis? You startled me there.”
Atley looked the girl over. She was average height with short, tousled blond hair and formidable dark gray eyes that fixed on Atley and did not shy away. She was dressed the way many streets did in dark, practical layers and trashy makeup suggestive of an emo dance-club vibe. The look seemed natural on her.
Atley also made a quick visual reconnaissance of the overgrown lot; it was one of those odd-shaped spaces that had been co-opted for use as a communal neighborhood garden—decades earlier, probably—but had been neglected and was now a wilderness so dark and dense that Atley couldn’t see through to its other side. The fence was high and overgrown with vines, and the gate was secured with a rusty padlock and chain. Atley had no intention of trying to grab up Wallis Stoneman on her family court warrants, but if he had, he would have been out of luck: even if he managed to scale the high fence, by the time he did so she would be long gone, presumably through a back entrance.
Atley smiled to himself. He was starting to understand why Social Services had no luck bringing Wallis in.
“You grew up around here,” Atley said, putting together how she knew about this spot. The Stoneman apartment was just a block away, on 84th.
“Yeah,” Wallis answered. “A friend of mine lived in one of these buildings, back in elementary. We used to sneak in here to smoke.”
Atley nodded. “I’m sorry about Sophia. You were close?”
“We were family.” The thought was sentimental, but Wally kept her emotions in check as she spoke to Atley. She would not allow herself to look weak in front of the cop.
“Family.” Atley ruminated on the word. “Right. But not so much lately, I hear.”
“Sophie had a problem with drugs. We have rules about that.”
Atley gave her a look.
“Is that right?” he said. “You have rules against dope?”
“That’s a surprise? Why? Do you allow crystal meth in your family?”
“Uh … well, I don’t have a family yet, but now that you mention it, Wallis, if and when I get one, I will definitely go for a strict no-meth policy, one hundred percent.”
“Are you going to catch who killed her?” Wally asked.
“Yes, we will,” he said. “Any thoughts about who that is?”
“Sophie bought from several dealers,” Wally answered, surprising Greer with her immediate cooperation. “One was down near Washington Square Park; he calls himself Bright Eyes.”
“Bright Eyes?” Atley rolled the name over. “Like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes?”
“Huh? No. Bright Eyes, like the band.”
“Oh.” Greer got out his notebook and started taking notes.
“There’s a guy up in Harlem, too,” Wally cont
inued, “calls himself Rage. I think Rage is actually Bright Eyes’s supplier. For a user, Sophie was actually pretty reliable, and from time to time she muled for both those guys. That’s pretty much all I know.”
Wally thought about giving up Panama’s name also, but as far as she knew, Sophie and Panama had been on the outs for months, their connection fucked over by one of Sophie’s rip-off schemes. Besides that, Wally’s own business at the smoke shop was important to the survival of her and the crew.
“Bright Eyes, Rage. This is helpful, Wallis,” Greer said. “So you think Sophia might have been moving drugs recently?”
“I don’t see why not,” Wally said. “She was using again, so … it would make sense.”
“If she was holding,” Greer said, following the line of reasoning, “that could be a likely cause of her getting attacked. Carrying a package could definitely bring some wolves to her door, so to speak.”
“Yeah,” said Wally. “That’s why we have the rule against dope. Who needs more wolves?”
“Ha.” Atley Greer gave a little punctuating chuckle. “Damn right. ‘Who needs more wolves?’ I’m gonna write that down. Maybe I’ll use that myself, if it’s okay with you.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Any other thoughts?”
“Honestly …” Wally paused here, and Atley could see now that she was struggling to keep her emotions out of her voice. “The thing is, there are just so many things that happen. On the street, I’m saying. I’d guess it had to do with dope, but who knows?”
“Yeah,” Greer agreed with a sigh.
There was a moment of silence between them. Atley studied the girl, and she stared right back at him.
“And you’re okay, Wallis?”
“Yes.”
“Huh,” Greer grunted, dubious. “Okay if I ask you one thing, just between us? I’m putting down my pen here.” He clicked his pen closed and stuck it in his pocket.
“Whatever.”
“What’s your plan?”
It was a moment before Wally answered, looking a bit defensive. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been learning about you, Wally. I’ve been studying Wallis Stoneman 101. People say good things about you, which is not always the case with runaway JDs. I hear how smart you are. How resourceful. From what I can tell, whatever you set your mind to, you can do.”
Wally sighed impatiently.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Atley continued, “someone as smart and capable as yourself, my guess would be that you have some sort of goal in mind. A plan for your near future.”
“Actually, yeah. I’m working on a project right now.”
“What about Tevin and Ella and Jake?”
Atley saw just a flash of annoyance in Wally’s eyes. She was unhappy that he had gathered even this small amount of intelligence on her.
“What about them?”
“Are they included in this project of yours?” Atley asked. “Because I gotta tell you, Wally, I’ve read their files too, and their stories aren’t like yours. They’re vulnerable, always have been. If we’re not careful with them, they’re gonna end up like Sophie.”
“Screw you. We can take care of each other.”
“I see,” he said. “Hey, here’s a question: what were you doing up on Shelter Island last week?”
The question obviously took the girl by surprise. Atley could see the wheels spinning in her head as she tried to figure out how he knew about her trip north. Her inability to fill in the blank really seemed to piss her off.
“Do your job, cop,” she said finally. “Find out who killed Sophie.”
She turned and stomped off into the dense thicket of brush and vines, vanishing from sight.
THIRTEEN
Tiger exited the package store on Jamaica Avenue and turned south onto a side street, passing through a low-income neighborhood. Some teenage Hispanic kids—with lots of ink on their necks and arms—gave Tiger territorial stares but otherwise let him pass. After three blocks of walking Tiger reached the cheap motel and climbed the outside stairs to the second floor, entering the room at the far end of the building. All the room lights were off and the heavy drapes were drawn closed; Tiger had to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room.
“What you get?” Alexei Klesko’s voice came from one of the two queen-sized beds—he insisted that the two of them speak English, even between themselves. Klesko was stretched out on the bed, a plastic bag of ice resting between his eyes.
“Pills,” said Tiger. “The whiskey you wanted. Some food.”
Klesko slid the ice bag off his face and sat up on the bed. Tiger passed him the small plastic envelope of Percocets that he had scored on a street corner. Klesko swilled three of them down with a heavy slug of Jack Daniels, then restored the ice to his forehead and lay back down. His headaches had started almost as soon as they had stepped off the fishing boat in Portland.
“This fucking light,” Klesko had raged that first day. “This fucking American light hurts into the eyes.”
Tiger pulled some bandages out of his shopping bag and started to work on Klesko’s leg wound, where the prison guard’s bullet had passed clear through. Klesko had been taking antibiotics, and they seemed to be working despite his daily intake of whiskey. Tiger cleaned both sides of the wound, dabbing them with peroxide before he put on the fresh bandages. Klesko never flinched.
It wasn’t Klesko’s physical condition that worried Tiger. Aside from the constant rants against the “American light,” there were mumbled curses aimed at nothing in particular and long, dark silences that sometimes took hours to pass. Tiger had started to worry that the years of captivity had warped the man’s brain; he could not imagine what Klesko had experienced during all that time in the old gulag. If his mind had been bent, though, the damage had done nothing to dull Klesko’s ruthless predatory skills; he had proved that during the escape from his Siberian prison.
And yet things were missing, signs of the bond that should have naturally existed between the two of them. Every year on his birthday, Tiger had received a letter from Klesko, awkward sentiments scrawled on a single page in the old man’s increasingly shaky handwriting. Those spare gestures had done their work—had kept Tiger hoping desperately for a reunion with his father and vigilant for the reappearance of the alexandrite stones—but the promise of a genuine connection with his father had gone unfulfilled.
In the days since the escape, Klesko had not asked for a single detail about Tiger’s life in Piter during the years of his father’s imprisonment. Tiger would have told him how he had moved from home to home among the lower echelon of the Dobrik mob, sleeping on floors and in attics, treated not as the son of the fabled Alexei Klesko but instead as a servant, and then, as he grew older, graduated into the role of enforcer, earning his keep on the streets of Piter, intimidating, maiming, and even killing in the name of the Dobriks.
Now, as he thought about the lost connection between himself and the old man, Tiger felt a painful emptiness inside, a sense of anger and resentment that caught him by surprise. Tiger wondered if redemption was still possible, if there was anything he could do to salvage the bond between himself and his father; he didn’t know how. Here in this strange country, thousands of miles from home, Tiger’s only choice was to keep faith, to hope that recovering the lost stones would somehow, in turn, restore the humanity that was now missing in his cold and distant father.
In the darkness of their motel room, Tiger could sense the painkillers working on Klesko—his breathing had slowed, and he had tossed aside the bag of ice. Tiger would let Klesko sleep for three or four more hours, and then they would be on the move again.
Their first stop in Manhattan—days earlier—had been 47th Street, where the side-by-side row of gem merchants stretched for blocks. Tiger’s own information had brought them here, information he had bought from a black market middleman in Prague. The Hamlisch Brothers shop was on the south side of the street, a
few doors east of Avenue of the Americas. A red sign hung over the door. By that point, Tiger and Klesko had outfitted themselves in appropriate enough clothing—leather coats, collared shirts, dark blue jeans, and new boots—that the old gem merchant inside buzzed them through the door with barely a hesitation.
The Hasidic merchant had a long gray beard and side curls flowing down his neck and chest. He silently welcomed his customers by spreading his arms to indicate the vast selection of merchandise under his glass counters.
“Alexandrite,” said Tiger. “You have a new stone.” The old merchant’s eyes flickered slightly at Tiger’s accent, out of interest but not alarm.
“Ah,” said the old man. “Yes. My nephew. He is not here.”
“Your nephew?”
“The stone—it is not mine,” said the old man. “My nephew Isaac manages his own stock. He is on a buying trip. Europe. He returns by the middle of next week. You come back for Isaac.”
Tiger and Klesko stood in silence for a moment, each one processing the man’s words.
“You saw who brought the stone?” Klesko asked. “You know who came here with the alexandrite?” Something in his voice—his accent, which was thicker and more parochial than Tiger’s—triggered a tremor of concern in the merchant.
“No,” said the merchant. “I was not here.”
Tiger fixed his eyes on the merchant, considering whether or not the old man was telling the truth. He noticed that Klesko’s attention was fixed on the shop’s video security cameras—two of them—one high in each corner of the shop’s far wall. His father turned his head and looked back through to the shop’s front windows: the street outside was busy with foot traffic. Tiger watched, knowingly, as his father’s mind performed the cold calculation that governed every action of his life: What did he want? How would he get it? Who would try to stop him?
“These cameras,” Klesko said to the merchant. “You have pictures for that day—”
“No,” Tiger cut his father off. Klesko was visibly startled as he felt Tiger take hold of his arm with a firm grip, silencing him. “Your nephew returns Wednesday of next week?” Tiger asked the merchant amiably.
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