Brick House

by Daniel Nayeri

  Mrs. Bieman couldn’t figure out what to do with her other hand while the phone rang. She jolted when it picked up on the other side. She whispered, “Hello? Yeah, can you hear me? He’s gone now. You can come over in an hour.” Then she hung up the phone and shoved it back into her purse. She found a few more hairpins on the bed stand and put them in as she left the room.

  “Bingo,” said Mack on the channel.

  “Hey, I’m the one that’s undercover,” said Ari. “So I’m the one that gets to say bingo.”

  “All right, so say bingo,” said Saul.

  “Fuhgeddaboutit,” said Ari. “She friggin’ ruined it.”

  MACK WOVE AROUND the early commuter traffic. The splashes of puddle water made a kilted arc every time she zigged in one direction and zagged in another. With Saul weighing down the back, the bike was riding on its rear tire the whole way. Taxis and town cars honked at them, just because it was supposed to be gridlock and she came off like a showboat. A bike messenger stared at Mack’s boots, whistled, got a look at Saul towering behind her, gulped, then looked where he was going just in time to swerve away from a homeless lady’s shopping cart.

  They had Mrs. Bieman’s secret visitor to check on and Ari to pick up. But first they had to talk to Randy again. They pulled up to Gramercy Middle School before the morning bell, when all the kids were either huddled under the front entry or across the street in the deli. A few older kids stood on the bleachers of the baseball field, shrugging off the sprinkling rain, just so they wouldn’t have to hang out with the younger grades.

  Wasn’t hard to make out Randy Bieman’s group of seventh-graders. They were standing around the baseball diamond, just within earshot of the girls sitting on the bleachers. A few of them kicked the muddy water at each other. The rest told them to quit being so immature, while glancing awkwardly at the girls. Randy wore a poncho designed like Batman’s cape and cowl, completely oblivious of the situation. He chased an Asian kid, screaming, “Splash tag!” Then he reared back and booted the other kid in the shins. The kid yowled in pain and hopped on one leg while Randy smiled. He had smug, overstuffed dimples. He said, “You’re It.”

  “I’m not even playing, Randy!” shouted the injured kid.

  “No splash-backs,” said Randy.

  Randy noticed Mack and Saul watching from the other side of the chain-link fence behind home plate. He put his hands on his hips like a superhero. Mack motioned, “Come here,” with a finger, and Randy trotted over.

  “Didya see me tag Jared Chen?” said Randy.

  “Saw your cheap shot,” said Saul. His hands stayed in his pea coat. It was a habit to keep Ari’s mouth shut.

  “Yep, undefeated splash-tag champion,” said Randy. “All-world, all-universe, all Randy.” The kid watched too much pro wrestling. He flexed his twigs.

  “Sweet,” said Mack. “Listen, we need you to start telling us what you know about your parents.”

  “What you mean is that you guys still don’t have a clue,” said Randy, crossing his arms.

  Out in broad daylight, with the fence between them, Randy felt much braver. Mack rolled her eyes. “Seriously, what do you know about your dad’s job?”

  “Nothing. It’s a science institute,” said Randy.

  “So you wouldn’t know where it was,” said Saul, “say, if you wanted to go over there and tag him to death?”

  “Nope,” said Randy. “Somewhere uptown, I think.” He wanted to go back and kick Jared some more.

  Mack turned and looked up at Saul. She said, “You think the Wish would wait the whole day?”

  “A one-time impulse from an ADHD kid,” said Saul, shaking his head. “I had money on a breakfast shootout.”

  Mack turned back to Randy and said, “Man, how hard did you wish?”

  Randy was watching the other kids strike up a conversation with the girls. He said, “Huh?”

  “How hard did you wish that your family would die?” said Mack. “Like, with all your heart, or what?”

  “You guys are terrible cops,” said Randy. “You should read The Punisher.”

  Randy walked back toward the diamond. “Wait a second,” said Saul. “Come here.” Randy stepped closer. Saul kneeled down so his face was level with Randy’s. “You wanna see something?” Saul didn’t wait for Randy to respond. He grabbed the chain link with two fingers and pinched it shut, as easy as bending a couple of Twizzlers. Then Saul whispered in a measured tone, “I want you to stop being so smart with us, okay?”

  Randy stared at the twisted metal.

  “I need you to say okay, Randy. So I know you’re listening.”

  Randy nodded okay.

  “Good,” said Saul. “Now, I’ll tell you what Detective Mack meant, and then you’ll answer her question, okay?”

  Randy nodded okay again.

  “There are four kinds of wishes,” said Saul. “By that I mean the technical term for WISH. The kind we catch and put in the brick house.”

  “I wish you guys would just go away,” Randy whispered.

  “And you’ll get that wish,” said Mack, “as soon as we finish cleaning up your last one.”

  “The first kind are your everyday wishes,” said Saul, “the ideas that pop into your head.”

  “That’s what happened to me,” said Randy. “Just popped into my head.”

  “That’s good,” said Saul, encouraging the kid. “Those are nightshades, shape-changers. We call them ghul.”

  The mention of shape-shifters got Randy’s attention. “They have real superpowers?” he said.

  “But they’re the weakest. Wishes people make on a whim.”

  Randy imagined a version of himself out there, with all the abilities he had always dreamed of. In a way, it was like he was the one with all the powers in the comic books.

  Mack added, “The harder you want something, the stronger it is.”

  “The second type is a sila,” Saul continued.

  “What can they do?”

  “They’re fast, and some can fly.”

  Mack interrupted. “The question is whether yours is a sila. Frankly, it’d be disturbing if you hated your parents that much, but this wish of yours is taking its time, acting on strategy. Ghuls are typically all instinct.”

  Randy tried to look thoughtful. He was too busy imagining cool stuff you could do if you could run at the speed of light (steal homework, join the NFL, beat up Jared Chen). He scratched his smooth chin and said, “So what you’re saying is the other me is either Beast Boy or the Flash?”

  “And he’s trying to kill your parents,” said Mack.

  “I’d rather be the Flash,” said Randy.

  Mack grabbed the fence and shook it. “You ever been slapped in the face, Randy?”

  Randy took a step back.

  “Think,” said Mack. “You have to be sure. How strong was your wish?”

  “Okay, okay, what’s the third kind?”

  “You don’t need to know the third kind,” said Mack.

  “They’re for obsessions,” said Saul. He put a hand on Mack’s shoulder and let the weight of it press her like a blanket. He said, “The third kind is the ifrit. They can bend elements. Fire ifrit, dark ifrit, that kind of thing. But that doesn’t matter in this case. They’re so strong, a whole town has to be wishing the same thing, like inquisitions or revolutions.”

  “Are they omnipotent?” said Randy, then clarified in case they didn’t know. “That means all-powerful godlike status.”

  “Not omnipotent,” said Saul, “but definitely magnipotent.”

  “Like you?”

  “No, I’m just potent,” said Saul, smiling. Mack elbowed him in his ribs.

  Kids were usually beglamoured by the whole ugly idea, but Mack had seen too many wishes come true to encourage it. The worst crimes never committed. Saul said “magnipotent” with precise distinction, as though it were a job class or a power-up. Randy was probably imagining video games. Mack wanted him to imagine funerals.

  “
Well, have you ever beaten up an ifrit?” asked Randy.

  “Not me, kid,” said Saul. “Out of my pay grade.”

  Randy’s mouth hung open. Most people who met him couldn’t imagine anything stronger than Saul.

  “If my wish was a sila, could you beat it up, then?” asked Randy.

  “Probably not,” said Saul. Randy was deflated.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” said Mack. “How bad did you want them dead?”

  Randy dug his galoshes into the wet dirt. It’s hard to weigh how badly you wanted something, especially when you don’t want it anymore. It’s like asking the feeling of a feeling. His secret — that he hated his parents — wasn’t even true by the time his mom asked if he wanted another waffle. Randy looked up. “It was my first time. I’m sure.”

  Mack let go of the fence. Her arms dropped to her side. Saul looked at his watch. The morning bell rattled in its cage. Kids from all over the block pooled toward the entrance.

  “Can I go now?” said Randy.

  The detectives stepped off the curb and got back on the bike.

  Mack said, “Thanks, Randy.”

  Randy called after them, “Hey, what about the strongest wishes?”

  “They’re the marid,” said Saul. “Let’s not talk about them.”

  “Are they omnipotent?”

  Mack lifted the kickstand and put on her helmet. As Saul pulled down his skully, he said, “Yeah. Probably.”

  Unlike the regulars, ICU cops started with the criminal and worked backward to the crime. If you work the case right, then you catch the wish before it comes true. Lock it up in the brick house. Nothing happens but an evil thought. A dirty impulse. And the crook gets away with it. The guilty go free.

  Maybe it was nothing but another sanitation job, thought Mack as she cornered the bike on the inside track of a delivery van. Maybe all they were doing was scurrying around the sewage mains, tightening leaky pipes full of bad dreams. But it could be only a matter of time before a flange blew, spilled over, and burst the canal. And then a whole deluge of our deepest desires would crash over us. Every appetite would be satisfied, every fancy become fact — for every itch, a long and lusty scratch. The face in the mirror would be a self we never thought possible. Next to our list of favorite movies will be our list of jealousies and insults we’ve hurled. A new constellation of meannesses we’ll have no choice but to add to our public profiles. Our civilized postures will be laid waste. And the waste will be the biggest shame of it — waste of a pretty decent shot at getting away clean.

  Maybe it was that Sludgment Day that all the Wish Police in the ICU could see coming. Saul’s shoulders were as wide as a ram’s horns either because he was carrying the same burden or because he didn’t have to. Maybe it was only Mack who felt the weight of it.

  The second time they entered the Bieman residence, they knocked.

  Maybe Mrs. Bieman was stepping out on her husband. Or maybe she was having his gift delivered and wanted to keep it secret till Christmas. Maybe a lot of things. None of them mattered so much to the investigation. The job was how, not who. To project and to swerve what would otherwise come to pass. What maybe may be.

  Mrs. Bieman answered with one hand patting her hair, which was still battened down by enough pins to clog a toilet. Her royal-blue sweater had three red poinsettias across the front and made her look like a music teacher. She wore blush in two perfect circles, a shade of pink you only find in 1952. She had an indistinct twitchiness about her, like she kept realizing something was burning in the oven or, in her case, some online auction was expiring.

  “Sandra Bieman?” said Mack. With her sunglasses on, she looked like highway patrol. She pressed her badge up to the screen door.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Detective Djinn. I’m Detective McClintock. Can we come in, ma’am?”

  Both Saul and Mack noticed Mrs. Bieman’s glance outside as they walked in. The visitor hadn’t arrived yet. The house was just as classy in the daylight. Nothing prefab, a TV you could pull off the wall and sleep on. Neither the front door nor the screen outside made a squeak on its hinges. Anyone could sneak in without stirring a louse. Saul didn’t step farther than the foyer. Mrs. Bieman shut the door and scooted around him.

  Saul said, “Should we take off our shoes, ma’am?”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Bieman. “Uh, don’t worry about it.”

  Mack looked back at Saul. “Wood flooring,” she said.

  “We could scuff, and there’re nice carpets.” Saul went ahead and pulled off his size-fourteen shoes and propped them up on the front door, leaning on the jam so they’d plop over if the door moved. “It’s polite,” he said.

  “You really don’t have to,” said Mrs. Bieman.

  “It’s no trouble, ma’am.”

  Mack waited, bemused, as Saul also took off each sock and wadded it up into his coat pockets. His feet were the size of barbari bread, the same brown color, with a ridge of black hair instead of black sesame. Mack kept her boots on. She said, “Hey, Emily Post, you ready?”

  They followed Mrs. Bieman past the staircase they had snuck up last night and into the kitchen. Clara was seated at the round table with Felicity in the seat next to her. “This is my daughter, Clara.”

  “I don’t have to go to school today. Are you here to arrest my brother?” said Clara. She couldn’t decide which one of them to stare at. The policeman was much bigger than her dad and had hair on his face, even though her dad said that kind of hair was for “jobless illiterates.” The girl was unlike any girl Clara had ever seen. Her hair was redder than Felicity’s and jagged and short. She didn’t look like she’d be scared of Randy.

  “Are you in kindergarten?” said Mack, extending her hand. Clara shook it.

  “Yeah, but I got scareded of my goldfish,” said Clara, as she chewed a piece of pumpernickel toast, “and I might be exhibiting abnormal psycho behavior.”

  Her mother said, “Close your mouth, dear.”

  Mrs. Bieman stood by the sink, pretending to wash out coffee grinds from the espresso scoop. She had checked her watch three times already. Mack took her glasses off. “Ma’am, do you have any reason to believe you’re in danger?”

  Mrs. Bieman sprang an arm’s length away from the sink and repressed a burp of acid reflux. She had all the poise of a hamster. “What? What do you mean, danger?”

  “You seem anxious. Are you waiting for someone?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “For example, you haven’t asked us what this is all about.”

  Mrs. Bieman dried her hands on a dish towel, then pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off a migraine. “Okay, what is this about?”

  “We’re with ICU, ma’am.”

  “Intensive Care Unit?”

  “Imaginary Crime Unit,” said Mack.

  “I’ve never heard of that,” said Mrs. Bieman.

  “Let’s stay on task, ma’am.” Mack had a small beauty mark up and to the right of her lips, and when she smirked, it pushed up to the crown of her cheek. She smirked when she was getting a kick out of being a hard case. “Is there any way you can think of that your son”— she looked at her notepad just for the effect —“one, Randy L. Bieman, could get access to a gun?”

  “Oh, my — a what?”

  “Calm down, ma’am.”

  Clara was riveted by her mother’s agitation until Saul hunkered into the seat next to her. “Is that black tea?” he said, picking up the demitasse in front of the doll. “I didn’t know Felicity drank black tea.”

  Clara turned to him, toast and marmalade jam still in her mouth, agape. “How did you know her name?”

  “Felicity?” said Saul. He took a sip of the tea. It was cold. He winced. “Why wouldn’t I know her name?”

  Clara didn’t have an answer for this. She closed her mouth to think better. “It’s rude not to introduce yourself to a lady in the room,” expounded Saul, scratching his stubble. He leaned over and whispered, “I have two daug
hters.”

  Clara couldn’t have friends over because of Randy. “Do they like American Girl dolls?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Saul. “But I keep up, just in case. Do you guys have any sugar cubes?”

  Clara shook her head. “We only brew tea for Felicity.”

  “Makes sense,” said Saul. He picked up the mini ceramic teapot and lifted the lid. Dregs. He rubbed the side of the pot. Nothing. He poured the dregs into a used mug on the table.

  They all heard the unmistakable clomp of Saul’s size-fourteens falling to the wood floor. They fell silent. Someone had entered the house.

  Mack pulled her firearm and took two long steps to the kitchen door. Mrs. Bieman suppressed her astonishment with the dish towel. Clara hadn’t blinked since they’d arrived. Mack winked at her. Saul put his mug down and rose from the table. He pushed open the kitchen door, and Mack slipped under his arm to cover the hallway. Slowly, she reached with her thumb and pulled back the hammer of her firearm. In tight quarters like this, she could have blown a slug through the Sheetrock two rooms over. Barefoot, Saul jogged down the corridor as quietly as if his lower half was nothing but smoke. He hugged the corner and waited for Mack to sneak up.

  She could hear the clumsy sounds of a thirteen-year-old, the inadvertent tics of having too much sugar in your system . . . and maybe a Bronx-made rocket launcher. Mack butted up next to Saul. He reached into his pea coat and pulled out a gun roughly the size of a cigarette lighter. It had embroidered lettering along the barrel that said Sweetheart. Mack raised an eyebrow at Saul. She mouthed, “A BB gun? Are you serious?” Saul blew on the barrel of his BB gun like a Bond girl, only more stubbly. Mack rolled her eyes and counted a silent “one, two, three.” Both detectives turned the corner and yelled, “Hands up, Randy.”

  Except it wasn’t Randy. Or Randy’s wish — they usually responded to the same name. It was Mustard, bent over on the landing, trying to prop up Saul’s shoes. He still had on the hand-me-down pajamas and the hangdog droop of his lower lip. Just as pathetic were the half-dozen corner-deli roses, the kind they dye blue with food coloring for no reason at all. Both the roses and the boy looked like they’d wilt if you gave them a nice hard glare.