by Lisa Unger
• • •
WHERE IS IT?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
The money you took. A million. We know you took it.
No. You’ve got bad information, man. Look at where I live. You think I have a million dollars?
When they lifted the bag from his face, and my father saw me, all the color drained from his cheeks. He struggled against the bindings that kept him lashed to the chair, knocking the chair against the floor. My mother was motionless on the ground, but she was staring, her eyes blinking furiously.
You’ve got this wrong. I swear to God. I swear there’s nothing. You think I would let you hurt my family for money. The last word was a roar.
That’s when the stranger cut me the first time, drawing the blade along the side of my face, just under my jawline. It left a scar you can’t see but from a certain angle. My fingers find it often. I’m sure I screamed, but I don’t remember anything except the warm sluicing of blood down my neck.
How much is your daughter worth to you?
• • •
CRASHING, BANGING OUTSIDE PAUL’S DOOR right now.
“Where are his meds?” The EMT. He had dark skin and a bald head, earnest, alert eyes, looking at me. His crisp white shirt strained against the big muscles in his arms and across his chest. The name on his tag read: Carter. “Miss, did you hear? His meds?”
“Yes.”
I listed them off.
“Emphysema?”
“That’s right.”
“Where’s his tank?”
I looked around. Where was it? Why didn’t I look for it right away and put his mask on? But it wasn’t there. Not by or under the bed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s always right here.”
They lifted him off of me and onto the stretcher. “I’ll get the medications,” I said moving over to the bedside table.
“Bring everything with you. Are you coming in the bus?”
“The bus.”
“The ambulance?”
“Yes.”
Paul was grabbing for me, panicked. He was trying to say something. But they had already put an oxygen mask on him.
“It’s better not to talk right now, sir,” said the other EMT. “Just try to relax.” Carter. Bedroom eyes and a full, pouty mouth, a nice lilt to his voice, an accent I couldn’t place.
Paul reached for the oxygen mask and pulled it off.
“Zoey,” he said. “They’re coming for it.”
“Who?” I asked. He was staring at me, lucid, aware. He wasn’t just rambling. “For what?”
But then Carter was pushing the mask back on and wheeling him away. I chased after, clutching all his pills to my chest. On the way out, I saw the oxygen tank in the kitchen, the cannula hanging over the chair in which he usually sat. Why had he walked away from it?
• • •
BY LATE AFTERNOON, DR. BURNS had come and they’d run a bunch of tests. Paul was settled in a semiprivate room at NYU Medical Center, the hospital with which his doctor is affiliated. The room was dim, and he was a cyborg, hooked to a web of tubes and monitors, an oxygen mask over his face. I sat in a vinyl chair and watched the rise and fall of his chest. I’d had to call in sick for my shift, and my boss didn’t sound happy. More attention drawn. I’d have to quit.
“Paul,” I whispered, leaning in close. “What did you mean?”
I can’t stop thinking about what he said. But he’s out.
My father stood in the corner of the room, looking rakish and thin.
“We both started smoking in the sixth grade,” he said. “Stupid.”
I didn’t answer him.
“I could say we didn’t know,” he went on. “But we did know. Everyone knows that smoking will kill you. We just didn’t care, or really believe it. Your mom used to get so mad when she caught me smoking behind the barn.”
He was not really there, and I knew this. My shrink and I have discussed it at length. He thinks it’s a way I have of parenting myself, something related to the trauma of losing them so violently. Part of my mind can’t accept their passing, so it confabulates for me. Crazy, sure. But harmless, according to my doctor, as long as I don’t start believing he’s really there.
“What do the doctors say?” my not-dad asked.
“His lung function has dropped below fifty percent,” I whispered, looking around to see if anyone could hear me. I wanted him to be there. I wanted not to be alone.
“How much time?”
“They don’t know.” My throat is tight, and I feel like there is a weight on my chest. But I won’t cry again.
“What happened?” My dad moved over to the bed, looked down at Paul.
“It looks like he walked away from his oxygen tank and couldn’t make it back.”
“Why would he do that?”
I’d been giving this some thought. He must have walked to the kitchen with the tank to make coffee, but then something caused him to walk back to the bedroom without it.
“Maybe the phone rang,” said my dad.
There’s only one extension in the apartment and it’s by his bed where he is most of the time. I can’t imagine him rushing for a phone call, though, since it’s usually just telemarketers. But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
“Whatever that phone call was—it must have upset him,” said my father.
I looked up toward him, but he’d gone.
• • •
LATER, WHEN THE DOCTOR ASSURED me that Paul would rest comfortably for the rest of the night, I left and went back to Paul’s apartment.
The building was quiet, my footfalls loud on the stairs. At the landing, I saw right away that the door was ajar. I probably left it open, but I would have thought Mr. Rodriquez would have come up to close it behind us. He’s like that, careful, always looking out for his tenants.
I stood and listened—maybe Mr. Rodriquez was inside or maybe the nurse came. But I didn’t hear anything, and finally I pushed the door. It drifted inward with a low squeak. The long hallway was clear, so I stepped in, closing the door behind me.
The kitchen was as we left it, the oxygen tank still near the chair where Paul might normally sit and have his coffee and toast. The coffee beans were out, the grinder lid open. Yes, that was it. He came to make the coffee, then went back to the room to answer the phone. I took a paring knife from the block by the window and slipped it into my pocket, then moved out of the kitchen and down the hall.
It took a second to register that the living room had been tossed—cushions thrown off the couch, books knocked from the shelves in piles on the floor. The area rug has been pulled up; the television knocked over. Adrenaline started to pulse, my heart thumping. I took three deep breaths to push back the throb of fear, of anger.
Who was here? What were they looking for? Some junkie taking the opportunity of an open door to look for money? Kids from the building disrespecting a sick old man who never did anything but help people all his life? They wouldn’t find anything. Paul had saved some money, enough to be comfortable, but he owned next to nothing. An antimaterialist in a hyper-materialistic world. Even the television was ancient. He still used a VCR, rewatching old tapes from twenty years ago.
They’re coming for it, Zoey. Be careful.
Or something more? Something else? Was there someone still here?
The bedroom door was open and the air-conditioning unit, left on from this morning, hummed. I stood to the side and waited, listening. Nothing. Finally, I moved inside. The space was empty but trashed like the living room—covers torn from the bed, drawers spilled open, closet ransacked. Boxes pulled from the shelves and contents spilled on the floor—reams of papers, folders, videotapes, old case files.
“They were looking for something.”
My dad sat in the chair over by the window.
“What?” I asked. “What could they be looking for? He doesn’t have anything.”
My dad lifted his eyebr
ows and cocked his head.
I picked my way through the mess and reached for the phone beside Paul’s bed. I dialed his voicemail and listened, deleting as I scrolled through the slew of spam from telemarketers, campaign ads, messages from banks, credit cards, his insurance company. Finally, I get to a message left last night.
It took me a long time to figure it out, old man. But I finally did. Time for you to give it up.
Cold moved through my body. I was having trouble connecting the dots, my mind reeling. I hung up and clicked through the caller ID until I found an unfamiliar number with an exchange I knew. I struggled for breath, all my training, all my calm leaving me. I called it back, but it went straight to a generic voicemail, a robot voice repeating the number back. I hung up. Suddenly I was fourteen again. Helpless. Afraid.
That’s when I heard it, the sound of movement toward the front of the apartment.
I took the knife from my pocket and moved soundlessly into the hall.
A creak of weight on the wood floor, the sound of someone moving slowly, quietly. I pressed myself against the wall. Other than the front door, there was no other exit from the apartment except the windows that led to the fire escape. The window in Paul’s room was blocked by the air conditioner—an acknowledged hazard that we never got around to dealing with.
I would have no choice but to fight my way out. I could wait for whoever it is to turn the corner, but instead I decided to rush forward and use surprise to my advantage. I took a deep breath and sprinted.
I saw him in flashes—dark hair, tall, and broad shouldered—as I tackled him and took him to the ground hard. A surprised shout, a whoosh of air as the wind left him when my shoulder connected hard with his abdomen. And then I was on him, straddling his center, the paring knife to his throat. It happened quickly, fluidly.
“No, please.” Panic. Fear. “Miss Zoey.”
That’s when I saw, with alarm, that it was Mr. Rodriquez, the super.
He was looking at me with pure terror in his eyes, gasping hard for air as I sat heavy on his lungs. I slumped with relief, blowing out a breath, removing the knife from his throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said, struggling for air myself.
“Dios,” he gasped. I climbed off of him, offering my hand. I helped him get to his feet. “Miss Zoey.”
He doubled over, coughing. I hurried to the kitchen to get him some water.
“Someone broke into the apartment,” I said, handing him the glass. He leaned heavily against the wall. “I thought you were an intruder.”
“I saw you come up,” he said. He takes a few sips but keeps coughing. “The door—was—open.”
He was looking at me as if he’d never seen me before, which I get. I am half his size and I just knocked him to the ground and held a knife to his throat. Formerly, he saw me as a little girl, someone he watched grow. I guess he won’t be seeing me that way again. I am all grown up.
“I came to give you this,” he said.
He held out an envelope, my name written across in Paul’s scrawling handwriting. “He brought it to me a couple of weeks ago.”
I took it and stared, hefting it in my hand. It is small but heavyish, something, not paper, inside. I opened it and found an oddly shaped key, nothing else. No note or any indication to what the key might open. I held it in the palm of my hand.
“Did he say anything else?” I asked.
“Just that it was important,” he said, looking at the tarnished key. “You don’t know what it is?”
“No idea,” I said. I looked in the envelope again, but there was nothing else. I put the key back inside and stuffed it in my pocket. It’s not like Paul to be cryptic. I thought of his panicked eyes, his warning, this trashed apartment. I bit back a pulse of fear.
“Is he okay?” Mr. Rodriquez asked, still staring at me wide-eyed. He edged toward the door, away from me, maybe wondering if I’m going to attack him again.
“He’s alive,” I said. “But he’s—not doing well.”
He ran a hand through his graying hair, He nodded solemnly. His wife, Elmira, used to cook for us sometimes when Paul was working late and she knew I would be home alone. She’d bring pork, or chicken, with yellow rice and black beans, plantains. She would bring a ton, and we’d eat for days. Paul helped get her nephew out of a vandalism charge, gave him a scared-straight talking-to. They were good neighbors to each other, friends.
“He said if anything happened, I should give this to you,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry. About attacking you.”
He lifted a hand, tried for a smile. “You’re stronger than you look.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Rodriquez.”
“Who did this?” he asked looking into the living room. “Should we call the police?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. He has his eyes on me, dark, wondering. “No police.”
He nodded as if he understood, even though he didn’t. I didn’t even understand. But if the police came, it’s another thing to deal with, and I couldn’t handle more. And meanwhile, I was the last person who needed to be talking to the police.
“Did they take anything?” Mr. Rodriquez walked around the room, started picking up books and putting them back on the shelves. He righted the couch, the chair, the table, and I moved over to help him. The furniture was cheap, insubstantial. It didn’t take much to put things back the way they were. The pillows were ruined, though, slashed and oozing stuffing.
“He didn’t have anything,” I said. “What were they looking for?”
“Cash, jewelry,” he said with a shrug, a lifelong New Yorker resigned to crimes like these. “Anything they could sell. But how did they get in?”
He looked back at the door.
“The door was open,” I said. “I must have forgotten it when we left.”
He shook his head. “I came up,” he said. “I’m sure I locked it.”
He must have been mistaken. There were only three keys to this place. I had one, Paul did, and Mr. Rodriquez. I was sure of that.
“Let me help you finish cleaning up,” he said.
“It’s okay. I’ll handle the rest.”
I wanted him to leave, and he must have sensed that because he started moving toward the door. I had to think, figure this out.
“Call me?” He kept his eyes on me, wary, concerned. “Keep in touch about Paul, and let me know what you need, okay? I’ll go see him tonight. We been friends a long time, Miss Zoey.”
It’s a term of endearment, not a way of indicating status. All I could do was nod, not trusting my voice. And then he was gone. I turned back to the apartment and moved into the mess. I had to figure out what they were looking for. Whoever they were.
fourteen
Chad Drake pulled his car into the lot, tires crunching on the gravel, and came to a stop under the oak tree in the north corner, far from the other vehicles. Most people parked as close as possible to their destination, but not him. He killed the engine and sat in the dark, letting the quiet wash over him. The days—how did they get so hectic, a rush, a mash of work and family and this demand and that worry? He was so tired all the time. Was it normal to be so tired?
The door to Burgers and Brew opened, and an arc of amber light and laughter and the sound of footfalls spilled out.
Please don’t be drunk, he thought. Please don’t make me get out and ask if you’ve been drinking.
He squinted into the dark and saw that it was Dr. Sherman and his wife, Lainey—walking steady, holding hands. He watched them make their way to their older but well-maintained Volvo. He got the door for her—nice. And then he climbed in the driver’s side. The Shermans were good people, two boys in school with Zoey—one a year ahead of her and one a year behind. There were a couple of other pediatricians in town, but everyone said he was the best—careful, honest, slow to prescribe. Zoey had been his patient since she was a few hours old.
The Volvo’s engine came to life after a couple of
minutes, then the headlights. Then they pulled slowly from the lot and onto the main road.
Thank you, he said silently.
If only decent people—the ones that didn’t have to be taught how to live without hurting others—knew how much cops appreciated them.
He rubbed his eyes, waiting. Paul was late, which was not like him. Chad got out of the car and stretched long. Too much sitting—slouching in the prowler or hunched over the desk doing paperwork. There were two hard knots of pain between his spine and each shoulder blade. Only his wife, Heather, could work them out. She’d straddle his lower back and use the hard knobs of her elbows and get in deep, deeper while he howled.
“Big baby,” she’d say. “Try to breathe into it. Release it.”
“Stop, Heather,” Chad would beg. “Please.”
“What are you so worried about?” she’d ask. “What are you carrying around?”
Some of it she knew. Some of it she didn’t. Some of it she’d never know, not if he had anything to do with it.
The twin beams of Paul’s headlights caused him to raise a hand, shielding his eyes from the brightness. The beat-up old Suburban pulled to a stop beside him, and the man he thought of as a brother climbed out. They were brothers, closer than brothers because there was none of the sibling baggage.
“I stopped by to see Heather and Zoey,” Paul said.
It was a cool night, but not cold. Halloween a few days away. Jack-o’-lanterns sat on every porch of their picture postcard of a town, leaves turning orange, red, gold. At the precinct, Mr. Bones, the old plastic skeleton had been pulled out of the supply closet and taken his place in the chair outside the evidence locker. There was a bucket beside him where folks dropped in their spare change and more to help fund the holiday party they’d throw for area “at-risk” kids at the Y.
“You didn’t tell them I was coming,” said Paul. “They were surprised to see me.”
“It might have slipped my mind to mention it,” he said.
“Nothing slips your mind, brother,” Paul said. The older man pulled him into a powerful hug, slapped him on the back.
