Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  “I didn’t tell you to get lost for the period,” Rozner said.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Lonergan couldn’t find the book. And then the headmaster came in and wanted to talk. And then . . .”

  There was a sudden rumbling from somewhere in the bowels of the building, followed by a boom like an explosion, then a second. Rozner rushed into the hall as teachers and students poked their heads from classrooms. Word spread quickly. Boston English had gone off again. And now they were coming across the street to liberate their Latin School brethren.

  14

  DANIEL RAN to a set of windows overlooking Avenue Louis Pasteur, wedging out a spot for himself and Grace among the chattering students and peering down into the street. A steady stream of bodies poured out of English, flowing down the block and up the steps of Latin School. The crowd cleared space around the front door while a steel pole was stripped of its stop sign and passed overhead. The first rank of kids, all twitch and itch, lined up the pole and started to ram it against the door. The crowd cheered with each blow, none of which seemed to have much effect on the door. Inside Latin School, however, it was a different story. Some of the students were scared. Some wanted to get out on the street and bust heads. A rock flew through the air, falling short of its mark. The second broke a first-floor window, sending the crowd on the street into hysterics. The kids on the pole redoubled their efforts. Grace punched Daniel in the shoulder and pointed. A section of the mob had broken off and was running down the far side of the building.

  “They’re headed to the gym,” Grace said.

  “Ben.”

  They flew down one flight, then a second. The sound of banging echoed up the stairwell. Grace and Daniel turned the corner together and found Ben hanging on to a set of push bars as the door he was supposed to protect bowed and buckled under the weight of the assault. Daniel could hear screams and swears through the door. “Jew boy. We gonna fuck you up.”

  Daniel grabbed on to the push bars. His friend’s shirt was torn at the shoulder.

  “Did they hurt you?” Daniel said.

  “No, but I barely got the thing closed.”

  Someone outside was talking about liberating the white man. There was a lot of laughter and the doors bowed outward again. A hand reached through to grip the inside of the frame and a shoulder followed, wedging the doors open. Ben pointed to a Koho hockey stick by his feet. The shoulder had been joined by a head as Ben’s door gave birth to a smiling teenager explaining to them how much he was looking forward to kicking some Latin School ass. Grace picked up the Koho and popped the butt end off the kid’s forehead. Then she tomahawked down with a two-hander. The kid fell away and the doors slammed shut again. She slid the stick between the two inside handles, securing the doors for the moment.

  “Holy shit.” Ben’s eyes goggled out of his head as he absorbed her handiwork.

  “I know, right?” Grace held her hand over her mouth and started to giggle. Just then there was another massive boom and the hockey stick snapped like kindling.

  “What do we do now?” Grace said.

  Daniel pulled her back as the doors blew out, light shafting the dark gray of the stairwell. A hand yanked Ben outside, leaving behind nothing except his scream. Eddie Spaulding appeared at the top of the steps. He paused for a moment, then rushed down the stairs and plowed into the mob after Ben. Daniel followed him through the gap.

  * * *

  Daniel tripped over something and stumbled down a short flight of steps, scraping his chin and hitting his nose before winding up face-first in the dirt. He was on the edge of a rough field that ran down one side of Latin School. To his right was an empty parking lot, to his left thirty to forty kids enveloped in a rising din of fists and curses and shoves and elbows. At the very center of the mass was Eddie, an attacker on his back and a second hanging off his arm as Ben kicked and clawed to stay by the football player’s side. Daniel pulled himself to his feet and dove in. His fist cracked off the side of a skull with no apparent effect. He swung again, this time connecting and hearing the crunch of what might have been bone or tooth or both. Someone screamed in his ear and pulled his hair as he fell to his knees. A blow glanced off his cheek and someone bit his shoulder. There was no pain in any of it, his blood spiked with adrenaline as a tangle of bodies threated to crush him. He rolled to one side and watched the pile of arms and legs tumble past, windmilling across the field until it slammed into the side of a green Dumpster.

  For a moment the space cleared and the action seemed to slow. Eddie Spaulding had Ben behind him, safe for now between the Dumpster and the building as a half-dozen kids circled. Eddie had blood and snot bubbling from one nostril. A swipe of fingernails had scraped his cheek. He caught Daniel’s eye and raised his chin. Daniel turned just as a tree branch swung out of the sun. It clipped him on the shoulder, freezing one side of his body as he fell. The kid swinging the branch wasn’t much bigger than Daniel, the weight of the limb carrying him ass over teakettle past Daniel and into the dirt. Daniel was about to get up and jump on the kid’s back when he felt a second presence behind him. Another kid, more man than kid, stepped forward, stopping within arm’s reach and looking down at Daniel. His forehead was heavy and thick; his eyes sunk deep in his skull. He was wrapped in a long leather coat with gray sweats and black winter boots and held his hands loose and quiet by his sides. The man-child wore a white do-rag with short dreads poking out from underneath, and a silver tooth hung from a chain around his neck. He smiled at Daniel, who saw the gap where the tooth should have been and felt a chill as his mind went off script, reaching out and pushing up against his soon-to-be attacker’s.

  Almost immediately Daniel felt them entangle.

  The man-child was twelve when his “uncle” hit him with the hammer—broken pieces of teeth and gums and blood all over the cracked kitchen table and linoleum floor. That night the man-child sat in a locked closet under a set of stairs, sucking on a wet towel and listening to the thumping and bumping until it was quiet. Then he forced the lock and slipped through the kitchen. They were in his mother’s bedroom, wrapped in a sheet and the foul smell of their sex. The man-child raised the hammer, clean light from the hallway catching its heft. He saw the gleam of their eyes as they rumbled out of their sleep and opened their mouths but never screamed. And then the hammer fell and skulls cracked in the red moonlight and bone and brains leaked all over the man-child’s bare feet. No one had ever heard the story because no one had ever told it. But Daniel knew it now, felt it pumping in his blood, a pulsing, living cord of tissue and flesh and feeling and memory, a flowing back and forth that Daniel wanted to cut off but couldn’t. Cuz he’d entangled when he shouldn’t have and now they were one.

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said.

  The man-child blinked and Daniel felt the weight of the gun hidden deep inside the man-child’s leather coat. Daniel watched in his mind as the man-child pulled it free in a smooth, practiced fashion. The first bullet struck Daniel square in the throat, blood bubbling up into the back of his mouth and spilling over his chest. The second caught him in the shoulder, turning him as the final bullet ripped through his left cheek and roofed in his skull. Daniel fell forward, striking the ground with a dull thud and rolling onto his back so he was staring up at the white blue of the sky as his soul swirled down and away to whatever place went the souls of young boys who spent the coin of their lives foolishly and thoughtlessly and recklessly and reckoned the world would stand still as they fell when nothing could be further from the truth. Daniel saw all that in the wink of a moment as the mind of the man with the silver tooth yawned wider and Daniel peeked over the edge at the twisted ribbons of smoke blowing through the breach. Then he leaped, hanging on to the man-child’s right arm before he ever had a chance to pull his gun, ripping at the man’s coat, clawing at the weapon still tucked inside.

  “Motherfucker.” The man-child pivoted, Daniel clinging like a terrier, his weight peeling the leather coat back from the man’s body
and dislodging the gun. It flew through the air, still dark with fury as a brace of sirens sounded and three cop cars rolled into Latin School’s back lot. The man-child with the tooth around his neck shook free of Daniel and felt for the gun against his ribs. He cursed when he realized it wasn’t there and looked around wildly for it. Then he ran, quicker than anyone could ever have imagined, taking Death with him, leaving an ugly, rippling scar behind.

  Daniel was still on his knees as the squad cars rolled up, chasing what remained of the mob across the bumpy field toward Avenue Louis Pasteur. Eddie and Ben were gone. Daniel had no idea where. He struggled to his feet and ran crookedly toward the steps and the side door Ben had been tasked to protect. He’d just reached the first step when he heard something he thought he knew—the soft sounds of a woman’s struggle. In a stray panel of light Daniel could just make out a couple of backs, three backs, huddled on the far side of the Dumpster. They hadn’t run like the others and the air rippled and danced around them. Daniel went up on his tiptoes, changing the angle enough to catch a glimpse of a red sneaker attached to a long leg. It was a girl’s sneaker, Grace’s sneaker, trapped beneath the hump-backed monster.

  Daniel opened his mouth to scream, but heard only a high shriek, torn from his lips and borne away in the tumult. He began to run, taking one step, then a second. He felt his foot gouge the earth, pulling up clods of dirt and rocks. Daniel looked down as his legs narrowed, his feet, first one, then the other, curving into hard yellow talons. Feathers sprouted from his shoulders and traveled down his arms until they covered his fingers in fine, swirling ruffles. His bones hollowed and the breeze at his back coarsened, lifting him as he took a third step, then a fourth, and then he no longer touched the earth.

  Daniel soared high overhead, flapping his wings in long, powerful strokes and peering down at the three sets of gray shoulders huddled over Grace. One turned and looked up, fleshed hood slipping off a bald head to reveal pulpy red eyes, a hooked beak, and the thick tongue of a vulture rattling in a hiss. Daniel angled back against the breeze and settled on a corner of Latin School’s roof, almost directly above them. He could hear Grace’s fear—thin music that pierced his skull to cracking and filled the air with its tremble. Daniel spread his wings again and dove, the cold slipstreaming over sinew and muscle. He clenched and unclenched his talons and sharpened his eyes as he dropped through the sky, hunting for a soft spot among the scavengers. Then he was back on the ground, back in his own skin, falling on Grace’s attackers like hell’s hammer with fists and teeth and spit and screams. They ran as one, overwhelmed by the fury without ever considering the size and strength, or lack thereof, of their foe. Daniel watched them go, nostrils laid back, sucking in air while one leg shook and there was nothing he could do about it. Grace was huddled tiny against the wall, fully clothed with her knees under her chin and her hands locked around her legs.

  “They didn’t do anything.” She was looking straight ahead, voice stripped and tender and raw.

  “I know.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “It’s okay, Grace.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s okay.” She tried to get to her feet but stumbled and collapsed back against the wall. Daniel sat down beside her and touched her arm.

  “You wanna talk to the cops or something?”

  She shook her head. “They didn’t do anything, Daniel.”

  “Grace . . .”

  “They tried or they would have tried, but you stopped them.” She leaned over and kissed him quickly on the cheek, touching a soft spot under his eye. “Tell Ben and the other guy I said thanks as well.”

  “Why don’t we go inside and see the nurse . . .”

  “I just wanna go home.”

  “All right.”

  “Maybe we can meet tonight. Nine o’clock at the fish tank?”

  Daniel nodded. She gave him a hug and stood up, making no sound as she crept down the side of the building, holding on to the brick wall for balance, and then slipping through the back lot to the street.

  He sat back and let the chemicals percolate in his blood. He was coming off it now, whatever “it” was, and fatigue was setting in. The moments, real and imagined, rampaged through his head, rippling in staccato bursts of color and sound. It all seemed slightly off-kilter, out of control. Daniel wondered about the meds he’d refused to take and dug his nails into his palms just to feel the bite. That was when he saw the beaded grip of the gun sticking out from under the Dumpster. He pulled it toward him with his foot and stretched his legs out, covering the gun with his thigh as the sirens whooped and someone on a megaphone told the crowds at the front of the school to disperse or they’d be arrested. Close by came the crackle of a walkie-talkie and the crunch of footsteps on cold gravel. The cops were circling back, putting together the pieces of the brawl. They’d want to talk to him for sure, but only if they found him.

  Daniel picked up the gun, surprisingly snug in his palm, and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he crawled toward the door, duckwalking as he got closer to keep the Dumpster between himself and the cops. When he got close enough, he took a deep breath, paused for a second, and ran into the building. He expected to hear a cop yelling for him to stop, but there was nothing. Daniel went down to his locker and stashed the gun behind a text on Cicero’s Catiline Orations. Then he wandered back to the school’s main entrance. Kids filled the hallways, chattering excitedly about what had happened, the accounts growing wilder by the minute. Daniel hung on the edge of the conversation and listened. Eddie was the hero who’d saved Ben the bookworm. No one mentioned Grace. No one mentioned a gun. No one mentioned a student transforming into a bird of prey.

  Daniel went into a bathroom and touched his face in the mirror. The images came ripe and unbidden. Claw and beak. His body morphing, lifting, soaring. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back as the headmaster’s voice crackled over the intercom. Classes were canceled for the day; buses would be waiting outside. Daniel took his time washing his hands and walked slowly back to his locker. He pushed the gun he’d found down to the bottom of his bag and covered it up. Then he threw the bag over his shoulder and left by the same side door where he’d found Grace and fought his battle. The cops were still there, but they had bigger problems. It was just past eleven in the morning and a little more than a mile back to his new home.

  He’d walk it. Unless he flew.

  15

  TOMMY DILLON skimmed the surface of the Tobin Bridge at eighty miles an hour, flipping through stations, hopping and popping from blues to jazz to Elvis. He settled on Bowie’s “Starman” and picked up the garage bill stuck in his console. Three hundred fifty bucks for what? Tommy pressed down on the accelerator. Piece of shit still had no pickup. He flew off the end of the bridge, sparks flying as he scraped bottom, and sipped from a paper cup filled with ice and Coke and a hit of fine, dark rum. Tommy called it taking the edge off.

  He glanced down at the directions he’d printed on the inside of his wrist. Five-mile bomb down Route 1, then another mile or so once he got off. The Stones came on the radio. Tommy turned it up and started slaloming in and out of afternoon traffic, humming to himself as he hunted for gaps, then jumping into the breakdown lane and punching it. A piece-of-shit Vega tried to squeeze him into the guardrail. Tommy laid on the horn and flipped him off, laughing like a motherfucker and loving it.

  He peeled off the expressway in Revere, took a quick suck on the rum and Coke as he squeezed between two trucks, and pulled into a fenced-in parking lot behind an old cement factory. Fucking drama with this guy. Tommy could have met the prick in Faneuil Hall and it would have been just as good. He killed the engine and watched two men climb out of a puke-green Monte Carlo. The one Tommy knew was wrapped in a leather duster coat and wore biker boots with run-down heels. A Mexican was just behind him. Both stood with their backs to the sun and their legs spread, like it was the fucking OK Corral or something.

  Not a problem.

  Tommy made his way ac
ross the lot with a bow in his legs and a roll in his gait. John fucking Wayne, taking his John fucking Wayne time. The Mex was hard around the eyes, but nervous. He wore a brown corduroy jacket bunched at the shoulders and had a gun in his pocket.

  “Tommy, you know Rafa?” The man in the duster was nothing to Tommy. A means to an end. Another route through the sewer.

  “Get rid of him,” Tommy said.

  The Mexican grinned, white teeth flashing, and mumbled something in Spanish.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He says he’s seen you around. Says they call you ardilla. Means ‘the little squirrel.’” The man in the duster thought that was funny as all fuck. Tommy pulled out his gun and whistled a slug by the ear of the Mex, who hugged the ground and looked like he might just piss himself.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” The man in the duster spread his hands. The Mex raised his eyes off the gravel, his piece in his fist. Maybe he was gonna shoot someone in the ankle.

  “I ain’t in the fucking mood,” Tommy said, putting his gun away and bringing himself back to heel.

  The man in the duster nodded at the Mex, who scrambled to his feet and walked backward to the Monte, never taking his eyes off Tommy as he climbed in the front seat.

  “Why am I out here?”

  “Fucking relax, Tommy. Jesus, it was a joke.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Fine, my ass. What’s the problem?”

  “Nothin’. Cases piling up. Partner’s nervous as a fucking cat. Yesterday we pulled your guy out of the harbor.”

  “Afraid I can’t help you with that one.”

  “No shit. So why am I here?”

  The man in the duster led Tommy back behind the Monte. Tommy toodled his fingers at the Mex as he went by, then stood back as the man in the duster cranked open the trunk. The inside was layered with fat bags of cocaine. Tommy moved closer, lip twitching, one hand resting on the rubber lining of the trunk, the other running smooth and light over his gun grip.