The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  “Oh?” the old man said. “Do you think so, Louise? I thought I’d carry all this on my head.”

  The barista ignored the words, registering only a weary fluttering in her eyes. When she brought two paper bags from under the counter, the old man leaned forward and snatched them from her. The woman didn’t even respond, only scanned each item and handed it over.

  The old man leaned backward and squinted at the other customers. He looked like an old Viking gone to pasture, but a hint of the berserker still remained. Despite his age, the tall old man fairly throbbed with vitality, slim, and the skin of his face was tight against his cheeks. He had a thinning beard, and his hair, visible in wisps underneath his wool cap, looked like white lines of electricity.

  “How much?” he demanded. “How much?”

  “It’s right there!” a man behind him on line snapped, pointing at the register’s display.

  The old man looked at the other customer and slapped the counter. “Do you know there was a time when a man might be told the price to pay? Instead of having to read it off a screen!”

  “Weren’t dinosaurs alive then, too?” the man asked.

  The old Viking frantically patted at his waist as if he were reaching for a gun, or a battle-ax, and seemed mystified when he found no weapon there. The man who’d made the dinosaur snap waved the old man off wearily.

  The old man took his bags of Starbucks food, beaten but unbowed. He muttered to himself as he walked, head down. He slammed past the table crowded with teenagers. To Apollo’s surprise, they said nothing. Their phones held their attention.

  “When Papa was away at sea,” the man grumbled as he plowed through the store and continued to mutter as he moved.

  Apollo had been scanning the counter. What would he do for food now? They had small packs of nuts or cookies by the register. He could fill up on those, he supposed. He felt a vague buzzing along his jawline, as if a fly were coming too close to his ear. He scratched at his chin, but that didn’t fix it.

  Apollo spun around.

  The old man.

  The old Viking paused at the door, as if collecting himself before stepping out into a storm. The whole time he spoke the lines from that children’s book in a tortured growl, and Apollo listened along like a child.

  The old man walked out the door, into the night. Apollo would’ve sprinted toward the door and tackled the man if he hadn’t been wheeling that heavy suitcase. When he got out the front door, he saw the shape of the old man already two blocks away.

  Apollo followed.

  IT’S DIFFICULT TO follow a man when you’re pulling a squeaky suitcase. Apollo tried to carry it instead, but between the mattock and the gravestone, he couldn’t heft it for long. The old man moved southwest down 71st Avenue, and Apollo kept his distance, trailing by a block in the hopes he would not be heard as they entered the tony section of the neighborhood, Forest Hills Gardens.

  Seventy-first Avenue became Continental Avenue, and the sidewalks blossomed with trees, and Tudor brick homes lined the road, which had hardly any traffic. Just like that, a walk of three blocks, and Apollo entered one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in New York City. Two blocks ahead, barely visible in the dim light of the cast-iron streetlamps, was the old Viking, striding on. He and Apollo were the only human beings to be seen, and the grand Tudors watched both with solemn caution.

  They passed Slocum Crescent and Olive Place, Groton Street and Harrow Street. The sun set, and Apollo followed the man through the deepening night. Ingram Street, Juno Street, Loubet Street, and Manse. The old man never looked back, never turned his head as he crossed the street, and never seemed to tire, though he had to be thirty years older than Apollo.

  Finally they crossed Metropolitan Avenue. Goodbye Tudor brick and hello detached colonial one-family; the end of brick facades and the rise of aluminum siding. This lasted all the way to Union Turnpike, and still the old man traveled on as if he was leading a tour through the descending class structure of Queens.

  It really felt, to Apollo, as if they’d tripped into another region, another world. Block after block of single-family homes, sidewalks lined with aging cars and rusty SUVs, gas stations and corner stores, and then they reached the Northern Forest, the northeastern edge of Forest Park, more than five hundred acres of wilderness right there in the borough of Queens. If they’d come to a towering city of silver and gold, it would’ve seemed no less strange. The old man crossed the street to walk along the perimeter of the park. Apollo thought maybe the old guy had finally figured out he was being followed and planned to sprint into the woods, lose Apollo inside, but maybe that wouldn’t matter. He’d led Apollo to where he wanted to be.

  The old Viking reached a corner and went around it. Apollo broke into a jog, pulling the suitcase behind him, creaky wheels be damned.

  Apollo turned the corner expecting the old man to appear right there and confront him, but the old man was far ahead. He stood before a stairway that led up into the grounds of the park. There were two streetlamps at the base of the stairs, so Apollo saw quite clearly as the old man climbed to the top of the stairs. But instead of disappearing into the trees and underbrush, the old man went down on his knees, his head bowed. He set the bags of Starbucks food at the top of the stairs. He stood and watched the tree line. Because of the streetlamps, Apollo could see the man’s profile. His lips were moving, but was he speaking to someone or simply muttering to himself? Hard to say.

  Finally the old man turned and walked back down the stairs. The way he held the railing made him appear tired or drunk. Apollo thought the old man might return the way he’d come, so he picked up the suitcase and crossed the street and hid himself in the shadows. He propped the suitcase against the back wall of a brick garage and settled himself on the luggage, a makeshift chair. The old man watched the top of the stairs, the border of trees, the brown bags emblazoned with the Starbucks logo. Eventually he turned and strolled away. Apollo meant to keep following, but he couldn’t do it.

  A police car appeared at the corner.

  It came down Park Lane South as casual as a puma. Just as the car reached Apollo, the driver threw on those red and blue lights, though he didn’t use the siren. Apollo had been concentrating so directly on the bags of food at the top of the stairs that when the lights popped on, he fell right off the suitcase and sprawled on the sidewalk.

  The officer in the passenger seat rolled down his window and leaned out to watch Apollo. He surveyed Apollo for about twenty seconds before he spoke.

  “Bad place for a nap, my man.”

  Apollo pushed himself up onto his knees. The cop in the driver’s seat watched him carefully.

  “That was fast,” Apollo said.

  The cop pointed at the houses behind Apollo. “This part of Forest Hills is still called Little Norway. You were never going to blend in.”

  “Even at night?”

  “Especially at night,” the driver said.

  Patrice had been right. Heroes like him didn’t get to make mistakes.

  Apollo set his hands on the ground to get himself up on his feet, but the cop at the passenger window said, “Why don’t you stay there on the ground for a minute.”

  “It’s cold,” Apollo said.

  “It’s winter,” the cop said.

  The driver opened his door and came around. Then the cop on the passenger side stepped out. He walked closer to Apollo, put out one hand, and waved for Apollo to stand.

  “Where do you live?” the cop asked.

  The driver looked behind them, into the park, then back at Apollo. He didn’t seem to notice the bag of food at the top of the stairs. To him, it must’ve seemed like any other piece of garbage. His radio beeped and chattered, but he ignored it. The red and blue lights continued to glow and gave the moment a dizzying quality.

  “Manhattan,” Apollo said. He left his hands at his sides but still far enough from his pockets that neither cop might have reason to get shook. This would go worse for Apollo if th
ey got scared. More importantly, he realized, if they called his name in, they’d find out he violated his parole. He hadn’t been to the therapy session and, even worse, hadn’t gone in to see his PO. Any urge he might have to argue hid itself away deep inside. The only point was to avoid being hauled back to jail. And getting shot to death. The two were his top priority just now.

  “You came all the way to Forest Hills, from Manhattan. With a suitcase. Just to lie on the sidewalk in Little Norway?”

  “That’s one long trip,” the driver said, and he let out a quiet, incredulous laugh.

  Then behind them both, at the top of the stairs, something stepped out of the woods. Someone.

  Emma Valentine.

  His wife stood at the top of the stairs.

  But it wasn’t her. Not exactly. A witch. That’s what he saw.

  He wouldn’t ever have thought the gaunt figure was the woman he’d married. It was the coat he recognized, the knee-length maroon down puffer coat she’d been wearing in the video from the night she escaped. The coat was torn and dirty, and the same could be said about Emma. She looked as thin and tough as the limb of a tree. But also—really and truly—she glowed.

  As she stepped out of the woods, she seemed to walk in a cloud, an actual nimbus of blue energy. She cast off a color almost as bright as the blue police lights flashing on the patrol car; it was as if she wore sparks of electricity.

  Emma Valentine stepped out of the woods and picked up the bags of Starbucks food. Then she turned and walked back into the deeper darkness and disappeared.

  And that was that.

  “Seriously, chief,” the cop closer to Apollo said. “If you need shelter space, we can point you the right way, but you can’t be lurking around people’s houses.”

  “Gives people the creeps,” the other cop said.

  “No, sir,” Apollo muttered. “I mean, yes, sir. She was glowing. She was…”

  It took a clap on the shoulder from one of the cops to bring Apollo back to himself. That was Emma. Was she living in the park? And why had the old man brought food to her?

  Now he looked at the officers with clarity. “I don’t need a shelter or anything,” he said. “I just got confused. I’ll go back home. I’ll catch the bus.”

  “You got money?” the cop asked, arm still on his shoulder. It would be easy for the man to tighten his grip and force Apollo into the back of the patrol car.

  “I can—”

  But before he finished floating some lie, the cop walked back to the patrol car. “We got any more of those MetroCards?” he asked his partner.

  “Look in the pack,” the driver said, and while his partner leaned into the car, he came around the front, closer to Apollo, hand floating near his hip, his holstered pistol.

  “Got it.” He returned to Apollo. “This has twenty dollars on it. This is a gift from the NYPD.”

  The MetroCard lay inside a clear plastic sleeve. The cop tore it open and handed the card to Apollo.

  “You can catch the Q11 or the Q21 right over on Woodhaven Boulevard,” the cop said.

  “Thank you,” Apollo said. He accepted the MetroCard, but then he just stood there. If the cops drove off, he could still rush up the stairs right now and hope, maybe, to find her.

  “I tell you what,” the driver said. “We’ll give you a ride to the bus stop right now.”

  The other went back to the patrol car and opened a back door. “You don’t have to thank us,” he said. “But you do have to accept.”

  He climbed in, and the lights were turned off. As the car approached the bus stop on Woodhaven Boulevard, the officer on the passenger side spoke without turning his head.

  “We love driving down Park Lane South. It’s one of our favorite streets. We’ll be driving down it most of the night. We don’t expect to be seeing you there again.”

  They reached the bus stop, and one cop let Apollo out. Apollo wheeled the suitcase onto the sidewalk.

  The driver rolled down his window. “It’s going to be a while for that bus,” he said. “But you need to be on it. Don’t let us see you out here again. It’ll be a bad night for you if we do.”

  Apollo didn’t respond because no response was required. The cops drove off, and he stayed at the stop until their car went well out of view. He wasn’t returning to Washington Heights, but no doubt those cops had been telling the truth. They would be patrolling the perimeter of the grounds all night. He needed to shelter until morning.

  THE FOREST PARK Visitors Center sat only thirty yards behind him, just inside the park, and beside it a smaller brick structure, the public bathrooms. Apollo waited at the bus stop for fifteen minutes. No bus, no cops, no one around but him. Finally he hurried through the front gates into the park. He shut his eyes as he crossed from the sidewalk to the concrete path leading to the bathrooms, expecting the cops to jump him, but they didn’t.

  He reached the bathroom. There were two doors, one on either side of the small brick hut, the men’s room and the women’s. Heavy black doors showed chipped paint and faint names or symbols, many pictures of tits and dicks, etched into the surface. Both doors were locked, large padlocks hanging from looped handles, but Apollo had brought along the right tool. He laid the suitcase flat, unzipped it and took out the mattock. If he slid the flat mattock blade between the door and the frame, he could force the door open quickly. Now the only question was which bathroom he wanted to hide inside: the women’s or the men’s? If he had to guess which side would be cleaner, there really was no question.

  He popped the lock of the ladies’ room door with two sharp yanks. The metal door shrieked loudly each time. So loud Apollo felt sure the cops would arrive or a denizen of Little Norway would call them in. Some “concerned citizen’s” anonymous phone call had killed many a black man before him. But the bathrooms were far enough inside the park and flanked by trees.

  Apollo pushed the bathroom door open. There were no windows, so the room remained murky. He stepped inside and let his eyes adjust. Two stalls, one sink, enough floor space for him to set his suitcase flat. So cold here that the bathroom didn’t even stink, or maybe his nose had just gone numb. He stepped outside once more. Why not just go looking for Emma now? He took four steps in the direction of the forest but stopped at the sight of all that territory, the shrouded dark. Would Emma welcome him? Would she even give him a chance to admit the mistakes he’d made? The woman who’d stepped out of those woods hardly seemed human, and he was the man who hadn’t believed in her. What might she do to him if he stumbled across her in the woods well after midnight?

  Finding her in daylight seemed safer. No shame in admitting it, he felt afraid. Also, the park spanned hundreds of acres. Wandering that much land late at night, in the midst of winter, was a surefire way to end up frozen dead in the maze of trees. No thanks, Jack. He returned to the bathroom. The darkness inside the ladies’ room would become total as soon as Apollo shut the door. He welcomed this idea. Like bedding down inside a cocoon.

  Apollo still couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen. All these months, and there stood Emma. The last time they’d seen each other, they were the exhausted parents of an infant, estranged man and wife. What were they now?

  Apollo needed to talk all this through with someone. Wanted to explain what the old man had done: setting the food at the top of the stairs like an offering. And when Emma appeared, she’d scooped up the bag quickly, as if she’d been expecting to find it.

  He took out his cellphone and dialed a number.

  “You shouldn’t be using your old phone,” Patrice said as soon as he picked up. His mouth pulled away from the phone. “It’s Apollo.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Apollo said. “I can’t outthink this dude every minute.”

  Patrice huffed into the mouthpiece. “Yeah. You plan for one thing, and he’ll just switch to another. You want to hear something wild? I came back home and did a complete flush of the computer. Found his fingerprints all over my files. Do you know
this dude took back the money he paid us? We can’t even do the right thing with the cash. Cleared it right out of our account. This motherfucker is as good as the Russians.”

  “So he knows everything?” Apollo asked.

  “No one knows everything,” Patrice said. “But he knows more than we’d like.”

  Apollo straightened up, his back tight against the cold wall of the women’s bathroom inside Forest Hills Park.

  “Where are you at now?” Patrice asked.

  Instinctively, Apollo formed the words—Forest Park—but caught himself. He’d made this call so he could say he’d seen Emma, but that too seemed imprudent now. What was the only way to keep a secret in the modern world? Never type it on a keyboard; never utter it over a phone.

  When Apollo didn’t answer Patrice let it go.

  “Are you and Dana okay?”

  Now Patrice spoke quietly, sounding winded, or wounded. “Dana has to sign in at her job at the start of her shifts,” he said. “Normal procedure. But she got there yesterday, and they told her they had no record of her being employed by them at all. Obviously they know she works there, but right now, officially, according to their records, Dana Green has never worked for them. I mean, this motherfucker wiped her out completely. And for what? Because she’s married to me? Because I’m helping you? They’re treating it like a computer error, but how much damage is this guy going to do? One angry man with a computer—that’s all it takes anymore.”

  He sounded pained.

  “124 86th Road,” Patrice said.

  “What’s that?” Apollo asked.

  “That’s about the only piece of help I can offer you. 124 86th Road. That’s in Forest Hills. Can you get out there tonight?”

  Apollo leaned forward into a crouch, as if Patrice—or someone else—might suddenly see him there. He decided to play pretend. “Why go out there?” he asked. “What’s in Forest Hills?”

  “You remember when that motherfucker took us on his boat? He said he only had one boat signed up for that stupid app of his. I took a look behind the wall and found out who the boat was registered to. Jorgen Knudsen. The address is 124 86th Road. Wheeler probably stole access to the boat just like he stole his wife’s money, but at least if you talk to Knudsen, he might have some kind of clue to finding William.”