Miri grabbed her, swept her up off her feet, and started carrying her toward the bedroom. Lily shrieked and started laughing. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m carrying you off to bed. For some serious cop-on-cop snuggling.”
“Oh my!” Lily exclaimed, like a Southern belle who was getting the vapors.
“And then maybe, if you’re feeling really frisky, we’ll take out the laser pointer and mess with Felix’s head a little.”
“Goodness!”
They changed into sweats and t-shirts, crawled into bed together, and curled up comfortably.
As Lily drifted off, Miri mumbled in her ear, “And by the way… Debussy is unlistenable.”
Lily smiled. “Mmm-hmm,” she answered sleepily.
Miri yawned, long and relaxed, and settled in against Lily’s back. “And deKooning’s women are the…”—yawn—“…ugliest goddamn things I’ve ever seen.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Goodnight, Lil.”
“Goodnight, baby,” Lily yawned, auditioning it for the first time. It felt good. Really good.
Ray dropped a stack of folders on Lily’s tiny desk on top of the copy of the Borough Record that was sitting there. Just as well, Lily thought, covering up that stupid headline about the mayor’s bastard brother, as if he was somehow responsible for his father having been a philanderer.
“Morning, Detective! Have a nice weekend?”
Lily honestly didn’t know how to answer. The benefit, Maggie Burnett’s flirting, Lamont, Dooley, and then last night with Miri… Jesus. “Um, it was…interesting. How was yours?”
Ray grinned. “I had a pretty good date.”
Lily nodded with approval. “Good for you. Tall, dark and handsome?”
Ray laughed. “Nope. Short, blonde, and filthy rich. Works just as well for me.”
Lily looked at the stack of folders on the desk. “So, what’s all this?”
“Well, it’s reports from some of those Brooklyn and Queens biker cases you were interested in, the older ones, from late last year and earlier this year. The photography’s a little iffy because they faxed it over, but I can see about getting better copies if you see something you want to get a better look at.”
“Good job. That was fast.” Lily was impressed.
Ray shrugged. “I know a lot of the kids over at those precincts. Went to the academy with half of them.”
“Thanks, Ray.”
“Oh, one other thing. Those other Manhattan precincts? Most of those victims had the same kind of priors as these. All of them went to trial. And all of them either walked, or got suspended sentences.”
This had to be a vigilante thing. Some bunch of delusional guys on bikes going out to clean up society. Who the hell knew what kind of narrative they’d constructed for themselves? They might just go around beating people up…or they could have watched Taxi Driver one too many times and be getting bigger ideas. “Thanks, Ray. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”
Lily sighed. She flipped open the folders and started paging through them, but she had trouble paying attention. She had to know one thing.
She walked over to Ray’s desk. “Hey, Ray? How long have you worked here?”
“About four years?”
“Was Captain Ramirez the C.O. when you started here?”
“Uh, no. He was X.O. and got promoted a little while after I started.”
“Who was C.O. here before that?”
“Actually, it was Inspector Connolly. Well, Commissioner Connolly, now.”
Lily nodded. “Thanks.”
Commissioner Connolly. What the hell was she getting herself into?
She shoved the thought out of her mind and went back to the biker folders that Ray had handed her. A handful were assaults, and appeared to be related to a very specific, very public gang. And most of those perps were still doing time, which meant it was unlikely that they were involved in the recent assaults.
With a sigh, she popped open the folders on the rash of vandalism and breaking-and-entering cases, figuring she was probably barking up the wrong tree with all of it, but that it was worth a cursory glance anyhow. A diner, a Chinese joint, a laundromat…a lot of broken glass and destroyed property. Someone was really angry about something, she mused. Most of these businesses were small and didn’t have any security camera footage, and there were a few not especially reliable or specific witness statements that amounted to “multiple perps on bikes,” in numbers ranging from four to eight. She shook her head. Whatever this was, it was troubling, but it probably had nothing to do with what was going on now.
She was about to close the last folder when she noticed that there were a few stills from security camera video of the street out in front of the particular business that had been targeted. She pulled them out and looked at them.
The photos weren’t particularly good quality, being faxes of stills of video.
But she could clearly see four bikes.
And she could see that one of them looked for all the world like a vintage Indian. Lily’s heart sank. New York was a big place, but there couldn’t be that many mint-condition 1948 Indians tooling around. It had been nagging at the back of her mind, the changes she’d seen in her sister. Now the pieces fell distressingly into place. Ainsley, what am I supposed to do about you?
21
No Consolation in Philosophy
Nadia had her feet up on a chair, reading an old issue of Fast Forward that had been lying around the club for a few weeks. She’d left her copy of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy on a shelf at work, and by the time she’d realized that she didn’t feel its familiar weight lying against her ribs through the inside pocket of her jacket, she was halfway here and didn’t feel like going all the way back. She’d been so damn distracted this week.
Her cheeks were feeling warm, and her stomach was suddenly threatening rebellion. She was trying to ignore it and focus on the article in front of her, something about stem cell research. It wasn’t going well. The music was feeling too loud and washing through her brain.
Vea and Eilidh were cleaning up after checking the chain drive on Eilidh’s bike. They stood at the shop sink in the back corner, washing the grease from their hands with hot water and GoJo, a heavy-duty cream soap that made a thick, grey-black lather that seemed to slither down the drain of its own volition. They finished rinsing at the same moment, and Eilidh yanked what turned out to be the last wad of paper towel out of the dispenser.
“Give us half, star,” Vea demanded, nudging Eilidh’s shoulder with her own.
“Go get a new fuckin’ pack,” Eilidh answered playfully. “There’s naught here but for one person.”
Vea gave her an irritated look. “Come on, girl, how’m I to open a new pack with these hands like this?” She held them up, dripping and still partially soapy.
“Not my fault you’re too slow,” Eilidh taunted. She continued drying her hands.
Vea slapped a wet, soapy hand onto Eilidh’s shoulder. “Maybe I dry them on you.”
It left a wet, gray, soapy print on her white t-shirt. Eilidh’s hands fisted up and went to her hips. She glared at Vea.
“Ya feckin scunner! I’m in me rights to lay yer arse out for puttin’ them drookit hands on me gear!” Eilidh now had that angry/laughing look she sometimes got; she was mad enough that she was seriously contemplating beating your ass, but she was thoroughly entertained by the thought of it.
“Jah, just go get the new pack, girl!” Vea groaned, growing frustrated. “Ya bogartin’ my patience!”
They were shouting at each other within moments. Eilidh was always nearly unintelligible, even more so when she was angry, which was often. Vea’s accent never seemed very heavy, but now, as she grew more riled up, the patois became so thick and so furious that the rest of the girls in the club simply stood there and watched.
Nadia forgot for half a moment that she was feeling poorly, and she looked on in amusement. She’d never seen V
ea get riled up by anything before, not even the night they got pinched by the cops. Even then, she’d stayed cool, made sure that Khady and Ainsley were as comfortable as they could be, talked the guard into giving Nadia her book. Vea was always cool. But Eilidh knew how to push her buttons, apparently, and it was hard not to find the whole thing funny.
She thought about trying to intervene, but she realized with an internal chuckle that this would be difficult; though it seemed like it had become about something more than the paper towels and Eilidh’s clothes, she didn’t really understand what the hell was being said at this point. Funnier still was that she wasn’t entirely convinced that Vea or Eilidh did either.
After a few minutes of this, though, the mutiny brewing in her gut became more than an empty threat. She jumped up, ran past them to the bathroom in the back and slammed the door behind her. The sound shook the warehouse and stopped Vea and Eilidh’s shouting match cold as she doubled over the bowl, heaving.
She heard Eilidh, muffled through the door, say, presumably to Vea, “You waitin’ for an invite in the post? Go on and see to her.”
She heard Vea’s footsteps draw nearer to the door. “Nadia?” Nadia couldn’t quite answer because another wave of vomiting came roaring through, pushing her to her knees this time. When the heaving stopped, she heard Vea’s soft knocking on the door, and then her voice, quietly: “Nadia? You all right in there, dawta?”
Nadia didn’t answer.
She knocked again, softly, and then pushed the door partway open.
Nadia looked up from the cement floor in front of the toilet, hanging onto the side of it, cheeks ruddy, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “I’m okay, thanks. It just kind of came out of nowhere. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Vea shook her head. She slipped inside and shut the door behind her. “You ain’t been drinking, girl,” she said softly. “And you and me had the same thing for lunch.”
Nadia felt trapped. She had a moment of panic. Was Vea going to think she was stupid for getting herself into this?
Vea sat down on the floor next to her, and put a hand on her back.
Nadia was done throwing up, but now she was feeling dangerously fragile. She didn’t want to cry in front of Vea.
“You take a test yet?”
Nadia nodded silently.
“And?” She eyed Nadia’s belly.
A pause, and then she nodded again. “Took it last night. I can’t be very far in, maybe just a few weeks.”
“You tell your boy yet?”
“No.”
“You gonna keep it?”
“I don’t know.” Nadia started to cry. Vea shifted closer so that Nadia could rest her head on her shoulder.
“Whatever you do,” Vea assured her after a moment, “it’s gonna be the right thing. You’re a smart girl. Smarter than me, maybe. Smarter than Khady, and probably smarter than them crazy white girls too.”
Nadia giggled through her tears to hear Vea refer to Ainsley, Empress and the others that way. She rested her head on Vea’s shoulder and let herself be overwhelmed, and afraid, and all of the things she didn’t want to be.
Vea put an arm around her. “Listen, girl. I been through it too, what you’re going through now.”
Nadia sniffled and looked up at her through red-rimmed eyes, surprised.
Vea put her other arm around Nadia, and squeezed. “I know you got to be scared now,” and her voice was as softly fierce as Nadia had ever heard it, “but let me tell you something. Me and dem, we’re your friends. We’re your family. You don’t got to do nothing alone.”
“Empress is gonna kick me out,” Nadia half-sobbed, half-sighed.
“Ah, fuck her if she thinks so,” Vea said. “Besides, girl, you know she probably knew before you did. She’s spooky like that.”
Nadia sighed, her voice warbling all over the place. “I have to tell Quin.”
“Don’t worry," Vea promised, jostling her a little. “Whatever you decide to do, you know we got your back. And if your boy don’t do the right thing, we’ll kick his ass.”
Nadia wasn’t worried about that. What worried her was that she didn’t know what the right thing was. She was on a path right now, a path that didn’t involve child-rearing and godforbid, marriage. What would she do, ride around on outings with her giant belly sticking out the front of her open leather jacket? Crack people's skulls in while a baby slept, drooling, in a Bjorn against her chest, wearing a black leather onesie with zippers on it that matched her jacket? Okay, she thought as she contemplated that last image, that’s a little bit funny.
It was hard not to feel that the universe was needling her right now. But it was impossible to know what it was saying. Maybe there was a reason she'd forgotten The Consolation of Philosophy when she headed out today. Today it didn't feel like there was any.
One day in middle school, a group of big girls cornered her and her brother Jojo when they were walking home. The four of them were easily all a head taller than Nadia, built broader, fingers armored in heavy rings laden with fake jewels, chewing their gum with too much gusto and spouting a bunch of cholita trash talk. She remembered quite vividly that she was carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye, and one of them grabbed it, threw it on the ground, and started stomping on it while the others started pushing her and JoJo with the idea of hemming them in against the side of this building they were walking next to.
Her chest had gone hot and thick, and she could hardly see anything through a red haze of rage that descended over her vision like a photo filter. She didn’t remember so clearly what happened next, except that when it was over, one girl was lying on the sidewalk holding her crotch, another was sitting next to her with a bloody nose, the other two were bolting off in the direction they came from, and Nadia was standing there with a long hank of someone’s hair in her hand, streaming in the breeze like a banner. She didn’t have too many people looking to bully her after that, but every now and then, she still had to beat someone down.
Nobody was surprised when she got a full scholarship to Barnard, but she was wholly unprepared for it. Not academically; she was every bit as smart and literate as any of these privileged white girls, and the few holes in her education that she hadn’t managed to fill on her own, she was surely capable of doing. She was wholly unprepared for the environment, though.
She didn’t understand the passive-aggression of privileged white girls. She was used to aggressive aggression. She was used to being a loner, and even used to people seething with resentment towards her. But in her old neighborhood, it had been because they suspected that she thought she was better than them. At Barnard, it was because they suspected that she didn’t really deserve to be there. And once a particular group of girls figured out that they were able to goad her into starting fist fights, it became a regular event that eventually got her ejected.
She’d always imagined she’d take another stab at college. She knew she could play on that level. But how would she do that if she was raising a child?
She knew the answer. She didn’t want to know the answer. She hated the answer.
But then again, she hated the question.
22
Thicker Than Water
Lina dropped some ice into a tumbler and poured scotch over it, pursing her lips as she watched the amber liquid run over the cubes and round their corners off. She glanced at her clock and noticed it was not quite noon yet. Jesus Christ, she thought, I’m going to become a fucking drunk like Corey Connolly if I keep going like this.
She looked at the television in her office, which was showing New York 1 with the sound muted. They were showing footage of people rejoicing outside of one of Operation Rescue’s local offices.
Erik sat in the chair in front of her desk. “So we’re really okay with this, are we?”
Lina shrugged. “Can’t even begin to care.”
“What do you care about?” he pressed.
She walked over to him, gazing at him lovingly, lightly stroking
his hair. “My children. My brother. Our family’s future.” And then the warmth closed off as quickly as it had opened up. “Nothing else.”
She walked back to her desk and picked up the day’s copy of the Borough Record.
“You see?” She held it up triumphantly. “The news is all about this, now. Protestors outside of clinics. Brave clinic workers no longer feeling safe on their way to work. And your nephew, the champion of free speech. Nobody cares about Roberto’s little bastard in Hoboken anymore.”
Erik looked at her with troubled eyes. “Of course our family comes first. But…these are people’s lives. It doesn’t bother you?”
She gave him what passed for a smile these days. “Not in the least, Erik. I sleep like a baby.” A baby with colic, maybe, but not even Erik needed to know how bad her nightmares were. “I have a trail of bodies at this point, my darling. It’s a bit of an occupational hazard.”
“Starting with Laurel Weatherspoon?”
She slammed her tumbler down on the desk and glared at him. “Don’t even mention her name to me.”
She and Erik had been young. Barely eleven years old. They’d been staying at the family’s estate on Cape Cod on a late spring weekend. The start of vacation season was still a month away and the only kids to play with were townies. Predictably, Frederick wasn’t having any of that, but nevertheless, they’d snuck out one night to go play with a girl they’d met at the pizza parlor in Barnstable. The evening began with illicit soda pop and pepperoni slices, and ended with a scuffle that saw Lina accidentally pushing Laurel down an old well in the woods near a forgotten barn.
It was the first terrible secret they would share.
“Sorry,” Erik said, and she knew part of him didn’t mean it. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you manage to get the votes?”
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