by Rob Hart
“No idea about what?” I ask.
“The storm that’s coming,” the guy says.
“Oh give me a break,” I tell him. “You know, I’m probably the only thing standing between you and that big motherfucker. The more you talk, the more I want to let him go to town on you.”
In response, he smiles, his teeth stained with blood.
I’m considering a response when Samson comes down the stairs.
“Nothing,” he says.
I now care way less about protecting this guy, so I tell Samson to watch them and head into the basement. Find a bare concrete space with a washer and dryer and slop sink. Some shelves and cleaning supplies. And a door, leading to another room. I put my ear to it. Can’t hear anything. Try the handle and it’s locked. Figure on going upstairs to find a key it, but then realize I don’t want to be in this house a second longer than I have to be.
I stop at the door, rear back, slam my foot into the wood next to the knob.
The door buckles but doesn’t budge.
Try it again.
Pain shoots up my leg. Something inside the door splinters.
The third kick does it. It flies open, making a sharp crack on the wall.
Inside, there’s a chair.
The chair is empty, save for a phone.
I pick it up. Purple-pink glitter case that catches the light and sparkles. Ginny’s.
That’s when I hear the sirens.
At the top of the stairs I hold up the phone. “Not here.”
“Fuck,” Samson says. He snatches the phone out of my hand, drops it to the floor, and drives his heel into it, hard. He stomps on it a few more times, then looks back up. “Let’s go.”
The two guys are still zip-tied by the door. I figure it’s best to leave them. I follow Samson, duck out the sliding glass door onto a deck, then go down the stairs onto the grass, across the narrow backyard to the fence. Samson vaults himself over. Given his size it’s almost shocking to see how agile he is, but then I remember the cops, and pull myself up after him.
We end up in another yard, this one full of kid’s toys. Samson nearly wipes out on one of those red-and-yellow smiley-face cars, but he rights himself and tears ass down the empty driveway alongside the house that leads to the street. I follow behind. The SUV beeps but before Samson can even get all the way around to the driver’s side door I hear: “Police!”
Stop. Turn. There’s an Impala with tinted windows blocking the road, the doors swung upon, a little electronic dinging sound coming from inside the car, the keys still in the ignition. There are two cops holding us at gunpoint. A petite Latina and an older guy with a bald head and a bushy mustache.
Samson and I stop. Put our hands up.
“You know the drill,” Samson says, soft enough I can hear it, not loud enough they can.
I don’t answer. Of course I know the drill. Shut my mouth. I’m slightly less concerned about that, and more concerned about what I might have touched in the house. At least I wiped the gun.
The cops move in on us.
“Against the car, now,” the woman says.
We assume the position. I watch in the reflection of the SUV’s tinted windows as the cops move in on us. The older one takes me, pats me down like he’s trying to put out a fire on my clothes. Takes my wallet.
The woman finished patting down Samson and doesn’t come up with a gun. That’s a little surprising. I figured he was carrying.
The woman proceeds to read our Miranda rights to us while the cop fiddles with my wallet, looks at my ID, and walks back to the cruiser. He comes back a few moments later, as the woman is cuffing us. He’s nodding his head and smiling.
“Got us a big one,” he says to the woman, nodding toward me.
I have no idea what he means, but I know better than to ask.
“Ashley McKenna,” he says. “You are under arrest for the murder of Brian Marks.”
His name is Detective Perry. Under different circumstances, I would like him. Probably former military, from the way he carries himself, the caution of his diction. He wears a light pink dress shirt, which you’d think a guy like him would avoid, but I think he wears it because he doesn’t care what people think.
The way he talks to me is like we’re pals. Like I’m in a jam and he can help me.
Even though I know it’s not true, he’s almost sincere enough I believe it.
“Tell me what happened,” he says.
I look around the room. Walls painted sky blue. The table is heavy duty and scuffed. It has a little metal loop screwed into it. They uncuffed my right wrist, and attached the handcuff to that. With my free hand I can sip at the small Styrofoam cup of coffee that must have come from a pod or a packet. It’s supposed to be French vanilla but it tastes like a chemical spill.
“This guy Marks was not a good guy,” Perry says, his voice low, like he doesn’t want anyone to overhear us. Which seems like a charade because I can feel the window across the room vibrating. Someone standing on the other side, watching.
Perry sits back in his seat.
“What he did to that neighborhood. The lives he ruined. I mean, you have no idea. You probably think you have an idea. You have no idea. I’m not saying what you did was okay, but you might have had a reason. And if it’s a good enough reason, I might be able to help. So level with me, okay kid? Tell me what happened. How did it go down?”
I repeat the phrase I’ve said a dozen times already: “Lawyer, please and thank you.”
He sighs. Shoulders slump. “Fine,” he says. He stands up, walks around the table to me, leans down close. “Remember this moment. This is your last chance. We could have done this the easy way. I get it. It’s fine. But remember this moment. Because at some point things are going to get really tough and you are going to wish you had played ball. There are no do-overs here.”
I attempt to smile. The smile is meant to cover up the feeling like I want to cry. He can tell, because he lingers for a second like he thinks I might finally crack. Too bad for him I’m too smart to do that. Or else, I’m too dumb. At this point I can’t even tell anymore.
He nods and leaves the room, letting the door slam behind him.
Well, this sucks.
Best I can figure is that Brick’s real name is Brian Marks, and someone killed him, and they think that someone is me. They kept mentioning ‘prints on the gun.’ Mine, specifically.
But, what gun?
I know how the cops have my prints. All those years ago, that fight I had to pick in Esperanto. Had I been smart enough to sit back down, to listen to Bombay, to ignore it, to walk away, I might not be in this mess right now. They would have had me on something, but not murder.
I run through the events of the past couple of days in my head. Try to remember. Maybe Paris and Athena pressed a gun in my hand after they dosed me. Insurance? A frame job? Maybe it’s the cops. The guy we smacked around in the stash house made some noise about there being something bigger at play with Kid Vicious. It’s a little heavy to think a heroin ring might stretch into the NYPD, but hey, you never know.
Otherwise, what is there?
And then I remember.
The guy outside Sanctuary.
I took his gun. Threw it in some bushes. Of course he went looking for it after I left. But I touched it. I left my prints on it.
I guess I could explain all that, but then what?
Would that even help?
I’m trying to figure out how to play that when the door opens. An older Italian guy built like a linebacker strides in and sits across from me, slapping a briefcase on the table. He’s wearing a carefully tailored charcoal suit. His gray hair is slicked back with so much grease it shines. What is it with Italians and this goddamn hairstyle?
“I’m your attorney, Anthony Moretti,” he says.
I glance at the gold cufflinks and the watch I think might be a Rolex. “You look a little high class for a court-appointed attorney.”
He laughs. “
I look like some public schlub defender to you? No, an associate of a mutual friend asked me come over.”
He doesn’t have to explain it any more than that.
Ginny.
He leans forward. “Here’s the deal. A little before noon a man named Brian Marks was shot and killed in an apartment in Park Hill. He’s a known heroin dealer who goes by the street name Brick. After he was shot and killed his apartment was cleared out and then torched. A gun was recovered at the scene with your fingerprints. So first things first. Do you have an alibi for this morning for around that time?”
I laugh. “I do, actually. I was having a conversation with a private detective. Turquoise Reese. We sat in her car on Richmond Terrace.”
Moretti smiles. “That’s Turk. I know Turk a little. That’s good, kid. It’s good to have an alibi. Makes my job a lot easier if I don’t have to find one for you. Now, want to tell me how your prints got on that gun?”
I explain the altercation. Taking the gun, tossing it away. I don’t explain why it happened and he doesn’t ask.
“Easier and easier,” he says. “That takes care of the murder charge. Turk is law enforcement. She vouches for you, it goes a long way. All that leaves is why you were on the block where they picked you up. We’re not even going to bother coming up with an answer for that one. I hear the kids they found inside are clammed up. Your prints inside?”
“On one of the doors, maybe.”
He sighs. “I’m going to talk to the cops. You are not going to say a word from now until we walk out the front door. We are going to knock this out toot-fucking-sweet. You got me?’
“I got you.”
Moretti disappears. He’s gone for a little while. I sweat a bit. The coffee bubbles like acid in my stomach. I wonder if all of this is going to work.
I’ve completely lost track of how much time has passed by the time Moretti returns with Perry, who is in a sour mood. He undoes the cuffs and tells me, “You’re free to go. Don’t stray too far. I expect we’ll be talking again soon.”
Like Moretti told me, I say nothing. I rub my wrist and exit the room, heading toward the front of the precinct. As we near the doors, I stop at a desk to retrieve my coat, and, luckily, my bag, which the cops pulled out of Samson’s car. I give a quick peek and the money is still there. As I’m getting everything situated Moretti looks around, makes sure we’re alone, and says, “You’re lucky. We got Turk on the phone. She verified she was with you. I explained why the prints were on the gun. They’re not thrilled, but they can’t come up with a better explanation. Beyond that, they got nothing. Best they could do would be to hold you on a minor trespassing charge for being on someone else’s property, but that’s stretching, and I made that clear.”
He roots around in the front pocket of his suit and hands me a card.
“He’s not lying. This won’t be the end of it. Call me if you need me. All covered by our friend.”
“Okay.”
“And in the meantime, keep your fucking nose clean, you hear?”
“Okay.”
“And stop saying okay like a goddam parrot.”
“Okay.”
He smiles, smacks me on the arm. “Attaboy. Get out of here. I have some cleanup to do.”
He disappears into the bowels of the precinct. I wonder if by cleanup he means Samson. Or maybe he cleared things up with Samson first.
I step outside. It’s evening now, orange light sinking in the sky. It’s snowing again.
Is this what rock bottom feels like?
The fall to the bottom hurts so much more when you’ve managed to climb out of the hole and see some sunlight.
All I can think about is that little taste of oblivion. I could go to Timmy’s. He could show me how to shoot. I could spend the night on the couch drifting away from all of this. It sounds like a very workable plan.
But then I see it.
I hadn’t hit rock bottom.
Because standing at the curb, her face twisted into a frown of epic proportion, is my mother.
There is nothing lower than this moment.
She’s wearing a tan coat. Her short gray hair collecting snow. Her arms are wrapped around herself, like she’s trying to shrink away from me. Like she’s trying to protect herself.
We stare at each other for a few moments. She looks so much older than when I saw her last. I think it has less to do with it being a year and more to do with the circumstances of our reunion.
“Get in the car,” she says, her voice a few degrees colder than the air.
Neither of us looks at each other. Neither of us speaks. The console between us is like a demilitarized zone. Two opposing factions waiting for the other one to surrender. We make it most of the way home before she opens her mouth.
“How long have you been home?” she asks.
“Couple of days.”
She winces.
“What happened to your face?”
“Got in a fight.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m alive.”
She nods. Sniffs. Still won’t look at me. Not even a glance. I feel sick. Sicker than I did after the naloxone. Sicker than when I was detoxing in a broken down bus in the middle of the woods. Sicker than all those times I was pretty sure I was about to die.
This is worse than all of that.
“Ma…”
“Why did the police come to my house this morning looking for you?” she asks. “They came and said they wanted to speak to you about a murder investigation. Then I get a call that you’re at the station and to come pick you up. Tell me what’s going on, Ashley.”
“It’s a long story…”
She yanks the wheel, throwing us to the curb outside a coffee shop. A man walking along the sidewalk jumps from the sudden appearance of the car, even though he’s a safe distance away. She puts the car in park and places both hands on the wheel, staring out. The man comes to the window to say something, but gets a good look at the both of us and backs off.
“What is happening, Ashley?”
No sense in lying.
She can tell when I’m lying.
So I tell her, starting with when I left: saving Crystal and her daughter. Saving some innocent people from being hurt by a militant environmental group. Getting wrapped up in a political conflict in Prague. And then trying to find someone who was missing, which put me on a path that made me, very briefly, a murder suspect.
After I’m done there’s no sound but the whirring of the engine and the dull thud of the wiper blades, flicking snow off the windshield. Those two sounds combine until they’re deafening. A car coming in the other direction illuminates her face. I can only see a small sliver of it but there’s a reflective streak on her cheek. She’s crying.
I’m past rock bottom. I’m digging furiously into the ground, hoping I’ll find a place to hide, but I can’t. My throat gets thick. I try to swallow, but I can’t.
Nothing in this world has ever hurt me as much as making my mother cry.
“Why?” she asks, her voice fragile, like glass.
“Because I wanted to help.”
Her voice drops to barely a whisper. “Your father died because he wanted to help.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you doing this to me?”
She finally looks at me, not trying to hide it anymore. She’s crying, which gets me going, my vision blurring and burning. I look down at my hands in my lap. Try to come up with an answer that’s going to be right, that’s going to make sense, that’s going to fix this.
But I don’t have one.
There is no correct answer here other than to tell the truth.
“When dad died,” I start. Rip off the scab. Breathe deep. Collect myself. “I wanted so much to be like him. Even though sometimes he got hurt. He saved people. He protected them. He was my hero. And heroes aren’t supposed to die. After it happened I kept thinking about what he said. That there are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys had t
o stick up for each other. I felt like… he left this void in the world. And I had to carry on with it. I know this all sounds really childish. In a lot of ways it is, because I was a child when he died and I think part of me just… froze in that moment. I fell into helping people. Stopping bullies. Protecting people. It felt right to do those things. And I kept doing those things until it seemed like the only thing I could do. People started to joke that I was like an amateur private investigator. And I began to believe it. So I thought it was something I could do with my life. But the whole time I’ve been… I don’t know, a kid playing pretend.”
I interlace my fingers, squeeze my hands.
“But now I know. This is what I’m supposed to do. I’m here to help. Because I can take it. I can live with it.”
I look at my mom, who is back to not looking at me.
“But I can’t live with hurting you. I can’t. Nothing is worth that. If you tell me to stop, I will. I’ll go get an office job. Something safe. Wear a suit. Whatever you want. Say the word.”
She turns like she’s going to look at me, but then she doesn’t. She puts her hand on the gearshift, pulls the car so it’s parallel to the curb, and turns off the engine. Opens the door, the interior illuminating, snuffing out when she closes it. She heads toward the coffee shop and I wonder if I should follow, or if she doesn’t want me to. But then she turns and waves at me, annoyed, like I’m making her late for something.
I climb out of the car and head inside. The place is half full, people eating waffles covered with sauces and candy. The smell of ground coffee and fried dough. My mom goes to the counter and orders two large black coffees and a glass of ice water, hands the girl behind the counter a ten. Without waiting for change she carries the coffees to the front window, where there’s a table and two worn wingback chairs.
She places the coffee down and we sit. She opens the cups and tips in some ice to cool them. The folly of drinking coffee black: you have to wait longer for it to be an acceptable temperature. But like she told me, years ago, when she wants coffee, she wants coffee, not a milkshake.
