Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

by Sara Gran

  "I don't even remember when we met," Andray said. "I don't even remember not knowing them two. We didn't even live together. Terrell was always in one foster home and Trey in another and me in mine. But somehow it was like—like we always found each other. We were always running into each other. And then we started working together. Eleven, twelve, we started working for the same people together. And that—that was good." He smiled. "I mean, now it wouldn't seem like nothin'. Just a little bit of money. But shit, we bought CDs, sneakers. Trey, his mom was doing good, she was slinging too"—I thought that meant selling drugs, but I wasn't sure—"and she bought us a car. A beat-up piece-a-shit ole Mercury. But man, we thought it was the shit. We went all over in that car, playing music, taking out girls. Just doing stupid shit. Just having fun. We was like brothers. Always together. We knew everything going on with each other. Everything. We collected money for each other, we made deals for each other. Trust, you know? We got these together, eighth grade." He looked at his tattoo.

  "Trey a goofy mothafucka," Terrell said, laughing. "Like a fucking clown. Always, always, always with a joke. I remember once—"

  "Once," Andray picked up, now laughing himself, "he got in a thing with this kid Deuce—"

  "And Deuce comes up on him with a fucking nine in his back—"

  "A fucking nine—"

  "And Trey, he says, 'Deuce, man, you happy to see me or what?'"

  We laughed. It was an old Mae West line but still a good one.

  "Cold," Andray said, clearly meaning it as a compliment.

  "Stone cold," Terrell agreed.

  "But then," Andray went on, "it all changed. See, three, four years ago, we all started moving up. Making money. Meeting people. And soon we weren't working together no more. We was competition. At first it didn't matter. There was plenty for everyone. But, you know—it was little things. We each had kids working for us then, and sometimes the kids would fight. Then we had to settle it. But you know, we always did. Settle it."

  Terrell nodded glumly. "Until the storm," he said.

  "Yeah, the storm," Andray said, nodding. "It all changed. See, Trey and Terrell, they went to Houston. And me, I went from Houston to Dallas. We each stayed away like three months, and when we came back, it was all different. See, business-wise, everything changed. We all hooked up with new people in Texas. So we weren't even with the same people anymore. Now we was really, like, rivals. And there was hardly no one else back yet. Not just customers, but sellers. Most were stuck, you know, California, Wisconsin, shit like that. Wherever the storm took them, they was stuck. So it was pretty much just me and Terrell and Trey and a few other guys."

  "But mostly," Terrell said, "just us."

  Andray nodded. "Just us. And a chance to make a lot of money, fast, before the rest of the mothafuckas came back in town. I—well, I think I was a little fucked up in the head anyway. 'Cause of the storm and shit. You know, some of the shit I saw—I was angry all the time. It was like—"

  "Like a sickness," Terrell said. "Like a sickness, being angry all the time."

  Andray nodded. "So, Trey, he just one more thing to get angry about. He's taking half my fucking customers away. Every day, I'm getting angrier and angrier. Meanwhile Trey's making all my fucking money. But it wasn't just that. It was like—like something else. Shit, I can't explain it."

  We passed the long brown cigarette around. "Were you scared?" I asked.

  "No," Andray said indignantly, almost laughing. Then he thought about it for a minute. "Yeah, maybe," he conceded. "Not of Trey. Not of anything, really. I just was. Like, I was always thinking someone was coming up behind me and shit."

  "It's called post-traumatic stress disorder," I said. "It's like when something fucked up happens to you and you feel like it's happening again and again. You're scared even when there's nothing to be scared of."

  The boys nodded and looked at each other. They didn't need me to explain it to them.

  Andray frowned. "Yeah. That was pretty much it. Scared all the time, but not scared of anything. Angry for no reason. Anyway," he went on, "finally, one day I say, Okay. Enough. Any other mothafucka stepping on my profits like this, I would have taken care of him long ago. Now it's time for Trey to go. So I tell him, Meet me over by the Calliope at midnight. This was in January—last January, about a year ago. Just like normal, Meet me over at the Calliope." He pronounced the name of the housing project, named for the muse of music, KALI-ope. "So about eleven something, me and some of my boys, we get to Calliope. Trey, he already there. Alone. He didn't even look like he had a weapon. Nothing. He was just Trey. It was like he knew.

  "So there we was. Me and my boys down at one end of the block. Trey at the other. The projects was closed. No one else was around. Just us.

  "Trey, he ain't say a word when he saw me. Just stood there. Looked at me. And then he put his arms up, like he was gonna hug me from all the way away. Wide open. The easiest fucking target in the world.

  "And then Terrell comes up. Running up on the street between us like a fucking crazy person." Andray shook his head. Terrell didn't say anything. "But I had my mind made up. My stupid fucking mind. I got Terrell outta the way and got a bead on Trey.

  "I shot Trey.

  "I shot him.

  "I ain't see just where I'd hit him, but I knew I hit him somewhere. And Trey, he was still for a second. Less than a second, just a tiny little moment—he stood still and he just looked at me. He looked at me, like, Andray.

  "And right then, that look on his face, that tiny little second—I saw what I done. I killed my best friend. See, he wasn't dead yet, but he was dying. I saw that. I killed him—the only person who ever was good to me. The only one who ever loved me, for real. My brother. Just him and Terrell. I killed him. I didn't even know why anymore. Just anger. Just being fucking crazy. Just, you know, like you said. 'Cause I was thinking he was gonna do me first. I don't even know why. But I thought that mothafucka was gonna kill me.

  "So then Trey falls back, you know, like normal. Blood coming out of him all over the place—his chest, his mouth, his ears, his eyes. I just ran to him. I didn't give a shit who saw. I didn't care about nothing no more. Not nothing. Looking like a faggot—shit, that didn't mean nothing no more. I knew I'd just made the biggest fucking mistake of my life.

  "I told him I loved him. I told him I was so sorry. I started to cry—fuck, I ain't cried like that since I was a little kid. Just really let go. I felt all the blood pumping right out of him. His heart was beating and it was like it didn't know the blood was all just going out to the ground. I held him and his blood was all over me, in my face, in my eyes. And I said, I love you. I fucked up, and I know it, but I love you. I love you so much."

  Andray stopped and laughed a little to cover up that he was crying.

  "And then it was like—like time slowed down for a minute. Like time kind of stopped. And I felt this—like a—well, shit, I can't explain it. Something happened. Like a breeze, like it was hot and cold at the same time.

  "And then Trey, he sits right up and says, 'Why you cryin', Andray?'"

  Andray laughed again, but it worked less well now to cover up his crying. He leaned over Terrell and leaned out the window and spit.

  "I nearly jumped out my fucking skin," he went on. "Nearly passed right out. But he was fine. He just stood right up and he was fine. We was both covered in blood, but he was all healed up. Not a mark on his body. Not one scratch."

  I looked at Terrell. He looked at me and nodded solemnly. "God's truth," he said. "I seen the whole fucking thing myself. That mothafucka, he up and walking, just the same goofy fuck he always was."

  Both boys laughed nervously.

  "I started cryin' all over again," Andray said, shaking his head. "Trey, he told me to stop cryin'. He says to me, 'It's all over now. You ain't going nowhere. So stop crying and shut the fuck up.'

  "See, he knew. I decided—see, I couldn't live with that. If he died, I was gonna die too. Right next to him. He h
ugged me and we both just, like—we was so happy."

  "And then it start to rain," Terrell said, smiling.

  "Just like that," Andray said, snapping his fingers. "Just quick like that, a big storm, and all the blood was washed away. We was both just soaked, clean, like after a shower. And it wasn't no dirty water, like usual. It was real clean, like from a bottle. And then it stopped, just like it came." He snapped his fingers again.

  "But when it was over," Andray concluded, "it was over. Trey, he never would say a word about it. Never tell me how he did it. I seen a lot of fucked-up shit, but that, that's the real thing."

  "But Trey," Terrell said solemnly. "He ain't never the same."

  "Well, he'd been shot," I said.

  "No," Terrell said, shaking his head. "It ain't like that. In his body, he just the same. No scars, no nothing. But in his head—he changed."

  "Stopped hanging out with us," Andray said. "Saw him less and less."

  "He started ridin' trains," Terrell said. "Like some hobo shit."

  "With white kids," Andray said. "Those dirty kids, white kids with dreadlocks and shit like that. Punks. Went longer and longer each time."

  "Started making friends all over the place," Terrell said. "He went to the library, e-mailing some girl he met in Portland."

  "Oregon," Andray clarified, assuming I found Portland as mysterious as he did.

  "Portland, Los Angeles—shit, he went all over," Terrell said. "Ridin' trains. Then one time he just didn't come back."

  "That about six months ago now," Andray said.

  "About seven," Terrell said. "Seven months."

  "That's a long time," Andray said.

  We sat and I smoked the rest of the cigarette.

  Andray looked at me.

  "Why you breathing like that?"

  "That's just how I breathe," I said.

  I felt myself falling and I wondered if the truck had finally tipped over—it was, after all, at an impossible angle. I had as strong a grip on physics as anyone else.

  "Hey, lady," I heard from far away.

  As I fell I saw Trey making the girls laugh in Portland, marveling at the clean streets and whole houses. Trey in Los Angeles, taking meetings at the Brown Derby. Trey in Boston, exploring Harvard Yard. Trey in Miami, wrestling alligators. Trey in Alaska, teaching Yukon Jack to shoot nines and sling rock. Trey, laughing his way around the country, seeing everything, living in the sun.

  "Her name Miss Claire. Yo, Miss Claire."

  "Fuck. Hey, lady, wake up"

  "Hey, CLAIRE. Claire DeWhatever-the-fuck-your-name-is. WAKE UP."

  Suddenly someone's hands were on my shoulders. Trey?

  "Oh lady oh lady oh lady please wake up oh fuck oh fuck PLEASE wake up."

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  I felt my heart pound in my chest. My eyes popped open. I was high and very much alive. Terrell was leaning over me, eyes and mouth open. Andray was gone.

  "Oh, man," he said. "I thought you was gone, lady."

  He laughed, not because anything was funny, but because he was glad I wasn't dead.

  I realized I was slouched down low in the seat, my head near the bottom. I sat up.

  "Hey," I said. My throat was burnt and dry. "Can I have some more?"

  Terrell shook his head and ignored my request. He was used to idiots on drugs. "You really looked dead, lady. You was all white and your eyes was all up in your head like a movie."

  "That's just what I look like," I croaked.

  Terrell looked at me. Then he instructed me to drive to the all-night gas station on Magazine and Washington. He dashed in and came out with a corn-syrup-and-food-coloring orange drink in a little plastic tub.

  "Juice," he said, handing it to me. "You drink this. Good for you."

  I drank the sugar water and I did feel a little better. I understood why he and Andray were friends. He was a kind boy. We drove back toward his corner. About a block away I stopped to let Terrell out.

  "You sure you gonna be okay?" he asked. "You need help or something?"

  "I'll be okay," I said. "Thanks for the juice."

  He nodded, shook my hand, and got out of the car.

  His skin was leathery and tough, as if he'd been working hard.

  35

  IT WAS NIGHT. The bar was dark and smelled like beer and felt familiar. Maybe I'd been there before. Little Christmas lights lit up the bar. Tom Waits played on the jukebox. I was on lower Decatur in the Quarter, a strip of antique stores during the day and dive bars at night. I didn't remember when I'd gotten there. But there I was.

  Tracy and Andray sat at the bar, drinking together. Andray was drinking a martini in a big oversize glass and smoking a cigar. Tracy was drinking a glass of beer and smoking a cigarette. Andray must have come straight here from the truck where I last saw him.

  So that's where Tracy's been all these years, I thought. Here I was thinking she was dead. But she's been in New Orleans. It made a strange kind of sense. Tracy would love New Orleans—the murder, the music, the people. She was my age—her age—and she looked hard and bleached and a little bit scary. Just like I always knew she would. She wore a black fur coat that was falling apart at the seams and big cocktail rings on her fingers. Under her coat I could see the tattoos on her wrists: C, K. Around them were new tattoos: snakes, roses, names of boys she loved, however briefly.

  I wanted to talk to them but they couldn't hear me, even though I could hear them.

  "The thing is," Andray was saying, "people come down here thinking it's some kinda Damon Runyon story. Thinking they gonna see some parades—"

  "See some voodoo shit," Tracy said, in full agreement. "See some little black kids tap dancing in a puddle. Maybe see an old black guy playin' guitar down in the Quarter."

  Andray laughed. It made so much sense that they would like each other. Of course they would be friends.

  "But once they here," Andray said, "they gonna find out. This ain't no Damon Runyon shit."

  Tracy laughed.

  "More like Jim Thompson," she said.

  "Or Donald Goines," Andray said.

  "Maybe even like Chandler," Tracy said. "Like how things never make any sense."

  "Yeah," Andray said. "You got it. If anybody looking for that kind of story, the kind where every little thing gets tied up in the end, they best stay on the train and go right through to Texas."

  "Don't even get off," Tracy said. "Stay right on the train. I heard they got some good stories up in Oxford, Miss."

  Andray laughed.

  "Got some in Miami, what I hear," Andray said.

  "Got plenty in California," Tracy said. They laughed again.

  "The thing about this city," Andray said. "It knows how to tell a beautiful story. It truly does. But if you're looking for a happy ending, you better be lookin' somewhere else."

  Tracy cackled.

  "You got it, pal," she said, lighting a cigarette. "There's a lot to love about this place. But it ain't for the weak of heart. And it ain't no place for happy endings."

  36

  I WOKE UP and got my phone and called Kelly. I hadn't spoken to her in five years. I got her answering machine. Her voice was clipped and mean, just like the last time I heard it.

  "You've reached the McCallen detective agency. Leave a message."

  "It's me," I said. "I had a dream."

  I hung up.

  We started our careers as detectives by solving the mysteries in our own homes. Where was Kelly's mother going at quarter after one every afternoon? To the liquor store, as we found out. What did Tracy's dad keep in the mysterious box under his bed? Bondage porn, photographs I wished I'd never seen. And who was my mother making such mysterious calls to after my father fell asleep at night? We found out it was my father's brother.

  It wasn't long before we had proven Silette's first rule of solving mysteries: most people don't want their mysteries solved. Including us. But it was too late for us to stop.

  Next, we started solving
mysteries in the neighborhood. There was no shortage of crimes, but the solutions weren't very challenging. Everyone knew who'd shot Dwayne. Everyone knew about LaTisha's dad. The problem wasn't solving the crime. The problem was that no one cared.

  As we got older we spent hours on the subway. From the Cloisters to Coney Island, New York was ours. It cost seventy-five cents for a subway token, and a can of Krylon was two bucks. And turnstiles were easy to jump, and spray paint was easy to steal. We rode the trains and left our mark where we could. Some kids lived or died for graffiti. We just wanted to leave some evidence we'd been alive.

  New York was our own private mystery. Like children alone in the woods, we followed our trail of crumbs wherever it led us. No one looked for us. Nobody missed us. Our only encounter with adult authority was the cops, and all they ever said was Pour it out, Put it in a paper bag, or Put it out.

  Together we wrote graffiti, together we bought records, together we combed thrift shops for clothes and books, together we bought nickel bags of weed and pints of vodka on Myrtle Avenue, together we faked the age on our bus passes to sneak into shows, together we rode the subway to the end of the line, together we met other kids like us—a whole city of kids like us, from neighborhoods and houses they wanted to be away from as much as possible.

  But there was one difference between us and the other kids we met. We had read Détection. They hadn't.

  By 1985 we'd started reading the papers and watching the news and trying to solve the crimes we read about. That year more than a thousand people were murdered in New York City. There were one or two shootings a week in our neighborhood alone.

  But the city at large, we found, wasn't so different from our neighborhood. Sometimes the problem wasn't cracking the case. It was finding someone to care after you cracked it.

  "The clue that can be named is not the eternal clue," Silette wrote. "The mystery that can be named is not the eternal mystery."