Brick House

by Daniel Nayeri

  “Oh, my,” said Angie, her eyes admiring Saul.

  “But then we finally track the real orphan to his foster home, and he turns out to be richie’s half-brother. Then Randy’s death wish shows up, and we grab it before it starts popping family members — guess he started with the furthest one out.”

  “What about the orphan’s wish?” said Angie.

  “Seems to be harmless, a hopeless cause kind of thing. The dad just doesn’t want him. So he’s hanging around the stepmom trying to be useful.”

  “We’ll pick him up after we book this one,” said Saul.

  “But —” said Angie.

  “Darling, we really gotta go,” said Ari.

  “But what if the orphan’s wish is the big case we just put out?”

  “Goodie and Alvarez are on that,” said Ari.

  “But that’s a murder case,” said Angie. “A big one, second tier, sila. They could all be dead already —”

  “You’re wearing makeup around your eyes, like a girl,” said Randy’s wish, a bratty sneer on his face just like Randy himself. “And you have fairy wings. And your ears look like Tinker Bell’s.”

  Goodie didn’t look up from her knitting. She said under her breath, “Tranquilo, baby. Don’t let the —”

  Alvarez lunged over the desk at the kid and shouted, “I ain’t no Tink! Say it, say it, ’fore I put holes in you. Say I ain’t no Tink.”

  Faster than a speeding Mexican pixie, Mack uncuffed Randy from the chair and scooped him away from Alvarez. Goodie looked up from her knitting for the first time since Mack had arrived at the 3-1. Maybe leprechauns could move like that — maybe, but she doubted it. Mack moved as smoothly as liquid fire — and even quicker than bad news. She nodded to Alvarez to sit back down. “Oh, that was very good, baby, very good,” she said. Alvarez relaxed a little. “You just found us a real case,” said Goodie.

  Mack yanked Randy’s wish down the hall by his ear, swung open a holding cell, and tossed him inside. “Jeez,” she said, “if I had one like you, I’d get my tubes tied.”

  When she turned around, Saul was standing in the jail cell door. He held her riding jacket.

  “We gotta go,” he said.

  THE SUN’S YOLK had broken on the sharp edge of the city and flowed down into another evening. The autumn was giving up, letting the bully winter take more months than it deserved. Some brothers just don’t know how to treat each other.

  When the lamppost flickered on in the residential block, it revealed the same dark figure as the night before. The tall man in a pea coat — and a skullcap his wife might have made for him centuries ago. When he breathed out, it looked like the stirring of a galaxy.

  The man reached back and rubbed the side of the lamp, but there was no magic in it and no home for a genie to find.

  Nothing had changed. The brownstones still huddled together and looked down their noses at the walkabouts. The tabby cat knocked over another garbage can leaping over the wrought-iron fence. Maybe that was the hard rub. If the Wish Police did their jobs right, nothing would change. It chafed.

  “Saul. Ay, Saul, listen, man, we break down the door right now, and I bet we catch Mustard’s wish playing Jenga or something with the little girl.”

  “No,” said Saul.

  Mack’s voice crackled over the comm unit. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew there was something off about the kid when he blew me the kiss and took off running the first time.” Saul and Ari didn’t need the comm units to hear Mack grinding the engine at the end of the block. She added, “And then later I thought if I had a kid like Randy, I’d never want another boy.”

  “So when Mustard’s wish figured it out, badda bing badda boom, new objective. Gotta shiv the kid before the Biemans would ever adopt another one,” said Ari. “But Randy ain’t home, so the wish is prolly playing UNO with Clara right now, while we freeze our fins off.”

  “Everybody holds position until Clara is secure,” warned Saul.

  “You spoil children, you know that, Saul? You spoil ’em. So what, she’s an unwitting hostage of a murderous ultra-powerful sila, and suddenly you want to play it safe? I say you take that big boot of yours . . .”

  Saul slipped his hand from the butt of his BB gun down to his coat pocket. With two fingers he pinched the opening . . .

  “Hey! All right, all right, ease up, will ya? Don’t forget that sweet little girl in there almost boiled me alive.”

  “I hear Princess Fashion Show likes chamomile tea,” said Saul. He felt Ari ramming him in the stomach, but it hurt about as much as a goldfish’s head butt.

  Even in dog years, the temperature wouldn’t have amounted to the driving age. The night was all anticipation. Maybe it would snow. Maybe the sun would never come back around.

  It felt like a theater hall, when the houselights have gone dark but the stage curtain hasn’t moved. An in-between and in-betwixt time, when maybe you’ll get what you want, or maybe what you want will get you. The folks in the seats are scared to check their watches. It might not be the classy thing to do. They’re holding their breath without knowing it.

  Mack whispered over the line, “Spotted the mark, heading east from my position.”

  Saul squinted down the sidewalk — it was Randy, all right, walking home two hours late. His hoodie obscured his face but also kept him from noticing Saul. Randy jumped onto the stoop of his house and pounded on the door. “Mom! I’m home from detention. MOM! Lemme in, I forgot my keys.”

  His fist got tired, so he turned around and mule-kicked with his heel. The decorative glass panes rattled in the loose joints. When the door swung open midway through a kick, Randy almost did the splits but caught himself on the frame.

  “What’re you doing? I almost fell —”

  Randy didn’t finish yelling, because it was Mustard standing in the foyer, not Mrs. Bieman.

  “Go, go, go!” whispered Saul, as he moved to approach from the blind side.

  “Who the heck are you?” said Randy.

  Face-to-face, it was easy to tell the boys shared a father. Mustard was a little taller, since he was older by about eighteen months. Randy had his mother’s jaw.

  “I’m their new son,” said Mustard. “They don’t want you anymore.”

  When Mustard’s wish swung his hand at Randy’s neck, it was a karate chop, and it was moving faster than an impulse. At that speed it would have lopped Randy’s head right off. But the sila’s hand slashed across something much tougher than a seventh-grader’s neck.

  Mustard’s hand had cut through Saul’s pea coat and sliced into his shoulder. Saul gritted his teeth as he reached out and pulled Randy down the porch steps, to the sidewalk below. Saul huddled over the shell-shocked boy, covering him until backup could arrive.

  The sila was made from a whole decade of birthday candles and Christmas lists. It was faster than a speeding hero. For ten everlasting seconds, Mustard’s wish was a blurry barrage. It jackhammered on Saul’s back, elbowed his ribs, and knuckled his shoulders.

  Saul’s spine cracked like a rusted bike chain. Under his eyelids, white bursts of light popped in a quick scattershot.

  It was only ten seconds. But it was a whole city of time for Mustard’s wish. Randy shivered in a rain puddle. Saul covered him, like the heavy comforter his mom tucked him into every night. In the insulated space, the fight only sounded like a distant drumming. Saul let out a groan. Randy jolted at the noise. The sila had found the bleeding cut on Saul’s shoulder and focused its attention. A thousand and one punches in a thousandth of a second — and a good chunk of the shoulder bone had crumbled into powder. Randy felt Saul’s weight getting heavier on top of him. From somewhere under the detective’s body, Randy could hear a voice screaming. “Angie! Angela, come in, for heaven’s sake,” shouted Ari. “This can’t be happening. We got an officer down.”

  The sila was the size and shape of a fourteen-year-old, but it lifted Saul’s limp body like a sleeping bag draped over Randy. Randy’s hair was wet
with the gray muck that the city’s newspapers made with rainwater. He said, “I can give you money. M-m-my dad’s rich.”

  Mustard’s wish said, “So’s mine.”

  It reached for Randy when the familiar growl of a ’57 Triumph Bonneville interrupted. Mustard’s wish looked up.

  “You didn’t think I’d back up my partner?” said Mack as she drove toward them on the sidewalk. “What’re you, simple?”

  The monster Mustard twitched when it saw Mack. And just like the night before, it hid the fear under a grin, a cocky pucker, and a nod.

  But this time when the wish darted over the wrought-iron fence, it didn’t have to keep up appearances. It hurdled the fence and rocketed past Mack in an instantaneous flash. A half a blink later, when the wish had really gotten itself up to a sprint, Mack felt a sonic boom slap her in the face and crack the center headlight of her bike. It had broken the sound barrier.

  The sila was three blocks away in a fraction of a second. It looked back over its shoulder as it ran. A mistake. It’s always a mistake. When it looked ahead again, Mack stood in front of him, her arm extended like a clothesline.

  It was too late to stop. Mustard’s wish clipped the arm at mach speed, upended, and hit the ground. Its head slammed into the pavement. The cracks that webbed out in the sidewalk would have broken every back in the PTA.

  “You’re under arrest,” said Mack, turning the sila over and cuffing its wrists. “And you owe me money for my bike.”

  In the distance, the sirens of half a dozen squad cars hiccuped toward the scene. Saul’s bleary voice came over the communication channel. “Did you get him?”

  Mack lifted the sila by the handcuffs and said, “Go back to sleep, tough guy.”

  A light snow began to fall, the first of the season. The Biemans’ house shimmered with cop lights. Neighbors peeped from their windows. Goodie stretched caution tape from a tree to a lamppost to cordon off the area. Alvarez got aggressive telling a civilian that he couldn’t get back to his house after walking his dog.

  Saul held his shoulder as he got up. Randy was tending a scrape on his knee. “You okay, kid?” Saul said.

  “Randy!” shouted Mrs. Bieman. She ran down the steps to cradle her son. Dr. Bieman wasn’t home yet. As usual, it was his family that had to clean up his mess. “What happened?” asked Mrs. Bieman. “Why are you shaking? What in the world happened?”

  Randy glanced up, his eyes begging Saul not to say anything. The brat knew how much of this had been his fault. And that maybe, if he’d gotten his way, his mom would be dead right then instead of coddling him. Saul didn’t say a word.

  Clara appeared in the doorway in her pink nightgown. She held her doll, Felicity, who sported a brand-new hairstyle. Clara had cut it just like Mack’s — short in the back, sharply getting longer as it came forward. And red, her mother’s lipstick red.

  Clara’s doey eyes stared first at her brother — whimpering on the ground, wet and muddy — then at Saul, then at Randy again. She smiled, real big, and she said, “Are they gonna arrest him now?”

  Saul shook his head. “No, doll, we aren’t.”

  “But you will if he punches my head again?”

  Saul had to turn away. Clara was the same age as his daughter, all those millennia ago. If Saul didn’t turn away, he might have broken up worse than his shoulder. As he left he said, “Yeah, sweetheart, we’ll put him away for good if he does that again.”

  Clara waved good-bye and helped Felicity wave good-bye, too. The detective slumped past the beat cops, under the cordon, and into the snowy evening. “Jeez,” said Ari on a private line to Saul. “Sorry, big guy, it’s a shabby thing.”

  BACK AT THE luncheonette, the dinner rush was a young couple nursing one order of home fries and the old gander in the back, reading the Times. Jon poured another round of chai for Saul. “How about some cream of turkey? On the house, eh!”

  Saul and Mack pushed the soups back across the counter. Ari swam manic circles in the water pitcher, to keep in fighting shape after being cooped up in the plastic bag all day. “I’m tired, Saul,” said Ari. “I’m dogfish tired, after stayin’ up all night. I might even be so tired I won’t be able to fall asleep, if you know what I’m sayin’. But two busts in one night and making Alvarez and Goodie look like chumps. Made them our algae eaters, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

  “I know what you’re saying,” said Saul, talking a drink of hot tea. His shoulder was getting stiff under all the bandages the med guys had wrapped it in.

  Mack swiveled around on her bar stool and leaned back on the counter. “Not bad for a new detail. They’ll have to let me stay in homicide.”

  “Heck, Captain’ll make us detectives first grade,” said Ari, jumping like a dolphin into the air.

  “No promotions,” said Saul. It wouldn’t be a promotion for Mack, just a reinstatement of her old rank. She didn’t mention it.

  “I know,” said Ari, “but a fish can dream, can’t he? All my life my nana tells me I won’t amount to a coral junkie, and this DT first-grade badge, I could shove that in the old nag’s face. But no, I got a best buddy who refuses to get promoted. Doesn’t ask me how I feel about it. But hey, it’s cool. I’ll keep his identity secret. I’ll go belly-up someday, a lowly second-grade DT, but it’s cool. What’re pals for? No problem. It’s cool.”

  Saul nodded at Jon, who was watching the Greek soccer team play in a snowstorm during an earthquake — or maybe it was the TV. Jon reached into the pastry display and sprinkled some crumbs over Ari’s pitcher.

  “Is this . . . croissants, Jon?” said Ari as he pecked at the surface of the water. “Mmm, oh yeah, that’s definitely fresh baked. It’s all about how flaky it is with croissants. This is good.”

  Saul hid a grin by taking another drink of tea. Mack said, “For what it’s worth, Alvarez is sure you’re a regular. You and the captain.”

  “The pixie’s half right,” said Ari. “Mmm, this is a good pastry. This one’s nicely done.”

  Saul had a look in his eye as far away as a sultan’s dinner party. He blew a typhoon over the surface of his tea and said, “I asked Cap about that once. He looked at me and said, ‘If I was regular, I wouldn’t be eating so many fiber bars all the time.’”

  Mack drained her chai and set it back down like a shot glass. She pushed off the counter and stood up. “I should get some sleep,” she said, zipping her riding jacket.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Saul. He poured some more tea into her cup. “Something I don’t get.”

  Mack slid some cash under the saucer. She put an elbow on the counter and waited. Saul traced a finger along the teapot. “I get how Randy wished his family would die. And Mustard had been wishing his parents would want him back. I get how the wishes crossed, and Randy goes to kill his half-brother, while Mustard figures his parents won’t ever want another son as long as Randy is around. I get all that. I even get why Mustard’s wish was sila — after all the kid’s been through, he wants it pretty bad. Fine. I get that . . .”

  Saul picked up the top of the teapot and looked inside. Nothing but dank tea leaves. The ex-genie closed one eye. Maybe he could read some kind of future in the shapes they made. Maybe he could see shadows of people he used to know. “But the thing I don’t get is how you managed to drop a wish that strong.”

  “You saw that? I thought your eyes were swollen shut,” said Mack, suddenly fascinated with a smudge on her shoe.

  “Honey, half the block saw that and decided to lay off the sleepin’ pills,” said Ari. “The biggest bust the precinct has seen in years.”

  Saul said, “You outran a sila. Took it straight on and went muscle for muscle. Him and the ghul panicked every time they saw you. All day you’ve been telling me you’re a gigantic leprechaun, but you can’t decide if you’re from Ireland or Brooklyn. You say you got more names than a directory, but Randy’s wish used the same line at Lady Cavanaugh’s place. And you couldn’t think of a wish to tell Mustard. On top of that
, Angie says she can’t find so much as a magazine subscription on you before you joined the force.”

  “Your story’s bogus, lady. Strictly fiction,” added Ari.

  Mack scraped the smudge on top of one shoe with the heel of the other. She made a tsk sound when it smeared and said, “What, is Angie scared ’cause I don’t run around with a pet and shoot a BB gun?”

  “Save it, lady. We know you’re a wish,” said Ari. “Nothing else is that strong.”

  “I’ve heard djinns are that strong,” said Mack.

  Saul didn’t take the bait. He said, “If you’re stronger than a sila, you’re either an ifrit or a marid.”

  A muted gasp. Ari held his breath. Nobody ever imagined a marid would come around in their lifetime. Crimes so rotten, they were black plagues of the imagination. “I’m not that,” said Mack, forgetting the shoe. She sat back down. “I think I’m an ifrit. I don’t really know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, either.”

  She wouldn’t look up. The shame hung around her neck like a millstone. Somebody somewhere had wanted something they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, or shouldn’t have. And that was her. A hopeless or hapless or hateful idea. Except she didn’t know which one. Or wouldn’t say. She couldn’t be trusted anymore.

  If he were smart, Saul would book her right then. So maybe he wasn’t smart.

  They sat on the gibbous bar stools and listened to exclamations of a Greek sportscaster and the sizzle of the fry-o-lator in the back kitchen. It was cooking lost potato chips, dregs of batter, and crumbs from a chicken patty.

  Then Ari said, “Well, if nobody’s gonna ask, I will. What can you do? My guess is you’re an ice ifrit, what with yer demeanor and how bad you are with kids. But you could also be fire ’cause of how hot-headed you are. That could also be ’cause you’re a woman. I dunno. Is bad attitude an element ifrits can control, Saul? Maybe she’s a snark ifrit.”

  Mack was smiling again, if only because she imagined dropping a few Alka-Seltzer tablets into Ari’s bag and swinging it around her head. “I like to ride. Maybe I’m a bike ifrit,” she said, then added, “I dunno. I never figured it out. I’m a good swimmer . . .”