by Scott Lasser
There were footsteps, boots on the stairs, heavy weight ascending. Every molecule in David’s body wanted to flee, to hide, but Carolyn was down there. He thought he could hear her sobbing. He moved down the hallway toward the stairs, the footsteps nearing, the pace methodical, a metronome. The first thing he saw was the gun, and then, briefly, a man, shaved head, leather jacket, but by the time this registered David was already swinging. The tire iron hit the man in the forehead with a damp clang. The bar vibrated in David’s hands. There was a brief moment—probably less than a second, though it seemed far longer—when time stopped; David saw surprise, pain, then blankness pass across the man’s face, and then the world spun again and the man fell backward, banging and crashing down the stairs. The gun, though, fell onto the second-floor landing, bounced twice on the wood, and came to rest on the runner that ran the length of the hallway.
David peeked down the stairs. The man—even from here he looked huge—lay sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. It was so quiet that for a second David thought he’d gone deaf, but then the voice came back.
“Get down here, or she’s dead.”
“Don’t come down,” Carolyn yelled.
They hit her. David heard it, and then he heard her cry.
“I’m going to give you one minute to be down here, or she’s dead.”
He was sure they meant it.
“I’m coming,” he called.
David took the gun. It was surprisingly heavy. Somewhere, he thought, there was a safety. He didn’t know where, but he knew that much. Probably it was off. The man at the bottom of the stairs would have come up armed.
He would trade his life for hers. Just as he would have traded his life for Cory’s. Here it was: the great second chance of his life. There was one goal now, to get her out. He took a breath and started down. He could see the body below him. He looked at the grain of the stained wood on the stairs and was struck by its beauty, surprised that he’d never noticed it before. He took in the smell of the house, a faint, dry odor, perhaps from the old books. He looked again at the man at the bottom of the stairs. He descended with confidence. Now that he had decided to give up his own life, he felt invincible.
Two steps from the bottom of the stairs he saw them. Carolyn was in his reading chair. A man stood in front of her pointing a gun at her head. She was quietly sobbing. The man holding the gun was tall and lean, expressionless, also in a leather jacket. Beside him was the kid who had come with Marlon to David’s office the day they met.
David stepped over the man at the bottom of the stairs.
“Drop the gun or I’ll blow her brains out.”
David considered. “And then I’ll kill you,” he said. His voice sounded very loud in his head. Slowly he raised the gun, sighted it as best he could. He held it with two hands, the way he’d seen police do it on TV. The man was maybe twenty feet away, close enough, he thought, for him to feel uncertain about his chances.
The man nodded to the kid, Marlon’s friend. The kid produced a gun from his waistband and pointed it at David.
“Two beats one,” said the man.
“What do you want?” David asked.
No one said anything. He looked at Carolyn. Her head was down, her hair hanging snarled over her face. She sniffled. Gasped.
“Marlon. You give me Marlon and you live.”
“Why should I trust you?” David said.
“Don’t,” Carolyn cried.
With his free hand, the man slapped her. She cried out. David moved forward.
“You got no choice,” said the man. David stood perfectly still, trying to think his way through this. The man stepped away from Carolyn and said, “E, shoot the bitch.”
David squeezed the trigger. He was pointing the gun at the man, but nothing happened. He pulled harder and still nothing happened. A long, agonizing second passed. He charged, ran right at the man, who was still pointing the gun at him. Later, the utter foolishness of this act was apparent, but at the moment he was merely running, throwing himself into the fray, trying to stop what couldn’t be stopped.
The explosion so startled him that he fell to his knees. For a moment he thought he’d been shot, but he felt nothing. Carolyn screamed. That was when he knew she was okay. David lay facedown on the floor. He looked up and there in front of him was the man, eyes blank, head bleeding. It was eerie, chilling. David had never before looked into a dead man’s eyes. He crawled around the man to Carolyn.
She was on the floor, sobbing. He held her and then looked up at the kid, who almost smiled. Then he set his gun on the floor; a tendril of smoke rose from its barrel. He stood and put his palms up.
“That’s all,” he said. “It’s over.”
XII
HE WALKED OVER to check on Dre; the man was dead. He had a big bump on the front of his head, and whether the blow had killed him or the cartwheels down the stairs, E-Call couldn’t say. He was just glad, ’cause you didn’t shoot Elvis and not expect Dre to do something about it.
He looked back at the man and the pregnant lady. The whole thing was fucked up. He knew Elvis was after Marlon, but till tonight, when they found what must have been the hiding place in the floor joists, he hadn’t really believed that Marlon was skimming. He just thought that Elvis had the wrong impression. Of course, when a man had an impression and a gun, the truth wasn’t all that important. Marlon had split, and that was smart, but it was sad, too, because E-Call wasn’t sure he’d ever see him again. Marlon was really the only family he had. More family than his own real brother.
The lawyer was moving the woman away from Elvis. E-Call felt relief at his death, and so he knew he’d made the right decision. And he’d made that decision early, as soon as they got in the house, because Elvis never brought E-Call along for things like this. He was a street seller, all retail, not muscle, so Elvis must have had an impression. He must have wanted to keep an eye on him. There was probably someone back at E-Call’s place right now, looking for the lost cash. Marlon had told him to get out, and that was right. Now, especially, he’d have to disappear, which was easy enough. He’d planned for it.
They all went to the kitchen. “Why? Why’d you do that?” the lawyer asked. He handed E-Call a Vernor’s, which was good. E-Call liked Vernor’s, and his mouth was very dry.
“Why you do it? You thought you was gonna run through a bullet.”
“I had to do something.”
“Like die?”
“I wasn’t thinking about myself.”
“Well, I was,” E-Call said. “And I was next. When you took care of Dre, you made it easy. And besides, it wasn’t right, hitting a pregnant lady. There are supposed to be rules.”
“Thank you,” the woman said.
“You welcome.” He took a swig of Vernor’s. Nothing ever had tasted so good. “Mostly I did it for Marlon.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
“He gone. That was the smart play, and Marlon was always smart.”
“Did he really take money from those men?” the lawyer asked.
“I bet he did. He was a man with a plan. I just did my part, you know. For Marlon.”
“For Marlon?”
“We family. Can’t be nothing that trumps that.”
“Family?” the lawyer asked.
“Came up together,” E-Call told him, feeling nostalgic, wishing Marlon were here. “Thicker than blood.”
XIII
RUSSELL WILSON CAME in with the police. He knew the lead detective. They left Carolyn in the kitchen with the paramedics and they sat David down in the dining room and asked him questions. He kept two secrets. First, that the “robbers” had been after Marlon. Second, who the kid was who turned on his boss. The detective told David he was one lucky SOB, and David didn’t argue.
The detective, who was black, folded up his notebook and took another moment to think on the matter. “Just one more question,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?�
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“Here. In Palmer Woods. I mean, you just moved in, right?”
And that’s when Wilson piped up from the side of the room. David hadn’t even known he was still there.
“He belongs here,” Wilson said.
The detective looked at the judge, then back at David, and left without speaking.
• • •
TWO NIGHTS LATER he took Kevin to a Tigers game.
It was Carolyn’s idea. She thought they needed to spend time together, and David could see her point. David hadn’t formed an opinion of the kid one way or the other. He was quiet, that was all. David had gone back to Bergen and asked for two good seats. They again ended up just behind the Tigers’ dugout.
For two innings David got nothing but one-word answers. Then, in the third, Kevin turned to him. “You know,” he said, “you’re not my dad.”
“I know that. And I don’t want to be.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I happen to be in love with your mother. I’d like us all to make a home together. But no one will ever be your father except your father.”
“You can’t boss me around,” the kid said.
“You listen to your mother, that’s good enough for me.”
Kevin looked at the field and David said, “You miss your dad?”
The boy turned, and David thought he saw the kid relax. He’d been rigid, trying to stand against David, fighting some battle he probably didn’t understand. “Yeah,” Kevin said. “I guess. A little.”
“I get that.”
“What do you get?”
“I know what it is to miss someone,” David said. “I miss my son.”
XIV
THE BLACK DETECTIVE had been back to see them twice. He had it pretty well figured out. He knew about Marlon Booker.
“It had to have been a drug dispute,” the detective said. They were sitting in the living room, the scene of the crime, though cleaned up now. It was odd, Carolyn thought, how surviving that night had made the room hers. At least, that’s how she thought about it.
The detective’s name was Cousins. “They tore up that room where this Marlon Booker stayed. They were after something.”
Carolyn nodded.
“Did you understand,” the detective asked David, “that you were letting a drug criminal stay in your home?”
“He’d gone straight,” David said. “He had a legitimate job.”
Detective Cousins rubbed his forehead, then shook his head. “But why this kid?”
“He was my brother’s nephew,” Carolyn said. “This used to be my brother’s house. We felt we needed to help the boy.”
“That’s the other thing,” Cousins said. “The deceased, Charles Werther, aka Elvis, and Andre Cassidy? We think there’s a connection to your brother’s and sister’s shooting.” He explained that circumstantial evidence existed. “We found a newspaper clipping of the story at Cassidy’s apartment, and there’s a street camera shot of Mr. Burton’s car being followed by Cassidy’s car. But we don’t have any solid proof, and we can’t find a motive. Agent Burton was long retired, and he had no connection to these two when he was at the FBI. It really doesn’t make any sense, except for this: they both knew Marlon Booker.”
“But why would that make them want to kill Dirk and Natalie?” David asked.
“What makes sense to men like that doesn’t always make sense to you or me. But Booker has run, so he must have known he was being hunted. Werther and Cassidy ended up here looking for him. The car Mr. Burton and Ms. Brooks were killed in was registered to this address. You don’t have to be a genius to know that their killing was related to Booker.”
Like the detective, Carolyn had guessed that Marlon might have had something to do with Natalie’s death. It would have been nice to know exactly how and why, but she realized she wasn’t going to get that kind of answer. Dirk had always cared for Marlon, and it had got him and Natalie killed. It was a terrible price for doing the right thing.
“What about the shooter here?” David asked.
“Oh,” said the detective, “I think I know who that was. Process of elimination. But he’s in the wind.”
“Can you find him?” Carolyn asked. She wanted the kid to get away. He had saved their lives. He deserved his freedom.
“We will,” Cousins said, “but he did the world a bit of a favor. I, for one, am willing to go easy on that kid. These guys, Werther and Cassidy, were the scum of the earth.” He closed his notebook. “Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—it’s funny how things can work out.”
XV
A STRAY DOG kept coming to the back yard for food till he let it move in. It had tags. Champ was its name. David called the owners, but the number had been disconnected. Champ was some kind of hound mix, content to sleep at David’s feet and howl whenever someone or something (a heavy wind, say) passed by the house. The dog had adopted this home, and David felt safer for it.
He’d been thinking about what Judge Wilson had told him about Marlon, that trouble followed the boy. The judge had been right. Still, David didn’t regret helping Marlon. He felt proud of it. He understood why Dirk had worked so hard for the kid: there was something there worth saving, and when you saw that, what choice did you really have? Still, the consequences were unpredictable. David had been lucky, and Dirk had not. David hoped that Marlon was out in the world reinventing himself, and that someday they would meet again, but not too soon.
• • •
HE’D BEEN THINKING about changing out his car. His new life demanded something different, and it was the dog that put him over. Champ just didn’t belong in an Audi. He soon found himself at a Ford dealership just north of 8 Mile. He parked the Audi by the entrance, so that it could easily be seen from the showroom. A salesman came up to him as soon as he walked in. He was a short white man in a three-piece suit. David hadn’t seen anyone wear a three-piece suit since the last time he’d lived in Detroit.
“May I help you, sir?” the salesman asked.
“Yeah. I want to trade in that Audi for an American car. Am I in the right place?”
“God bless you, sir.”
He found himself looking at the modern version of the station wagon, a midsize SUV, with its backseat bench and storage behind. He resisted the idea, but he had a lot of chattel now and he needed a car to hold it. It didn’t take long to make a deal.
“What brings you here from Colorado?” asked the salesman. David still hadn’t changed his plates.
“I’m moving back home. Thought I should drive something American.”
“Consider yourself home,” the man said.
XVI
SHE NAMED HIM Karl, with a K, after his great-grandfather who died in the war. He was eight pounds, seven ounces, and beautiful, with a shock of dark hair and brown eyes he almost never opened. He slept, he ate, he rarely cried: a contented baby, so unlike Kevin at the beginning, who cried every minute he wasn’t sucking and who was bald with just some corn-colored fuzz.
And he came quickly, two weeks early and just five hours after her water broke. Amazingly, she’d forgotten the agony of labor, but she held David’s hand and screamed. When it was over, they cleaned her up and then she held the little boy. At that moment she felt her heart slow; she was exhausted. She looked at him and then closed her eyes as his were closed and held him to her chest.
It was three in the morning. The next afternoon she took the baby home to David’s. It was her home, something she’d fought for. It proved she was stronger than she’d thought. Kevin, too, had gone along with the move.
One day, about two weeks into Karl’s life, David came to her while she was nursing. “We need to go see my father,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet.”
• • •
THEY DIDN’T CALL. They loaded everyone in the car, then drove north to the suburbs, dropped Kevin at a friend’s, and headed to Sol’s. David said the old man would be there, and he was, wearing a pair of je
ans pulled up as high as his belly button.
“Let’s go to the living room,” David said.
They walked to the living room and Carolyn and David sat on the couch. Karl slept in the little carrier that snapped into the holder in her car and became a car seat. In front of her was a table littered with old papers and used coffee cups.
“So, Dad, here’s what we came to say: this baby, I’m the father. Carolyn is the mother. And you, Dad, you’re the grandfather.”
Sol was in the reading chair to Carolyn’s left. Karl was in his carrier. She reached out and lifted Karl slowly, then placed him on the floor by Sol. The baby slept, didn’t so much as take a deeper breath.
“This is Karl,” she said.
She expected that he might be angry—why, he might have asked, didn’t you tell me?—but he seemed perfectly calm. He reached out and lightly touched the handle to Karl’s carrier. “You two have given me reason to get out of bed in the morning,” he told them.
He smiled at her, and Carolyn wished her own father could have shared this moment. He’d been gone for years. Long stretches went by when she did not think of him, and then suddenly the loss of him hurt sharply, as it did now. She wished Dirk and Natalie could be here, too. It was a pity; almost no one had gotten through.
XVII
THE CLOUDS HAD burned off. He drove south, the radio playing “What I Like About You,” one of the anthems of his high school years. They all were headed back down the Lodge Expressway. At 7 Mile he looked left, as if he could see his home. Next they passed the exit for the art museum and then, a little beyond, the spot where Dirk and Natalie had died. He drove faster. There was a new casino, of all things, to the right as they continued south. Detroit was a city where you could be right downtown and still drive your car at seventy-five miles per hour.
He parked at the Ren Cen, then led Carolyn and Kevin up to the esplanade along the river. He carried his sleeping son in his right arm. Kevin moved out ahead, pulled along by Champ. They strolled along the water without speaking. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the sun and the fine warm weather, not the way people took it for granted in Denver. The river reflected the sun, as did the windows of Windsor across the way.
