Loud Pipes Save Lives

by Jennifer Giacalone

  “That was your sister, though…” Quin answered, slowly putting together the fact that none of this made any sense. “Why does your sister care what happens to Lily? And why was she calling you about it? She didn’t know you were with me.”

  He took a few agitated steps back from Erik.

  Erik clenched his teeth some more and answered, “Please, Quin. Please don’t make me tell you everything. I don’t want you to lose your sister. I don’t want anyone else in your life to get hurt. Can’t that just be enough?”

  Quin was starting to get frustrated with this. “No! It doesn’t make any sense!” And then it did, as the recognition dawned on Quin’s face. “Your sister is the one who wants Lily out of the way, isn’t she?” He ran his fingers nervously through his hair, moaning, “Goddamnit, my mother told me not to be friends with you. She told me your fucking family was nothing but a problem, and I didn’t listen to her!”

  “Hey!” Erik interrupted. “If you weren’t friends with me, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to warn Lily right now. Please, Quin, just do it, okay?”

  But Quin wasn’t satisfied. “No, Erik. What else aren’t you telling me? What is Lily investigating that is endangering her life? Why?” He stepped closer to Erik, fists balling up at his sides.

  Erik took a step back. “Quin, I can’t. I can’t rat my sister out, but…I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I never wanted for anyone to get hurt.”

  “What are you talking about? Who else? Who, Erik?” He stepped closer.

  Heart racing, Erik placed his hands out in front of him, trying to calm Quin down. “Quin, your sister is investigating something that is going to get Lina in a lot of trouble. Just tell her she’s in danger. Tell her to back off.”

  “Back off of what?” Quin demanded.

  “Quin, the less you know, the better,” Erik pleaded.

  “No, Erik,” Quin insisted, his voice shaking. “You need to tell me everything. Right now. Because all I can see is that you’ve been lying to me, I don’t know for how long—maybe the whole time you’ve been my friend—and I need to know why!”

  They stood regarding each other for a moment, breath heaving in clouds between them.

  Erik looked away. “Quin, your sister has been secretly investigating your father’s death.”

  “Why? I thought they closed the case. They found the suspect, but he was shot while resisting arrest.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the official story. But your sister wasn’t buying it. Someone moved her to Midtown South, knowing she’d investigate, of course. She’s your father’s daughter, how could she not?” Erik said wretchedly. "Someone put her there, knowing she’d be in harm’s way. I don’t know who it was.”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with you,” Quin bit out. His voice was cold, but he looked like he was about to be sick.

  Erik knew that this was going to end badly; there was no way around it. But he couldn’t stand it anymore. “It wasn’t what really happened. My sister was involved in covering it up. And Lily is getting too close to the truth.”

  “What really happened?” Quin demanded, his voice filled with quiet, simmering rage.

  Erik thought back to that awful night, all those years ago, when he and Lina were so young; that night when she had accidentally pushed Laurel Witherspoon down that well. He had helped her cover it up. They never told anyone. And God knows that lie ate at him, but Lina had been the one carrying the burden of having actually killed the girl. Suddenly, it was less mysterious to him how the weight of that night might have transformed her into who she’d become, how it might have slowly rotted away and soured all her sweetness. She’d always been brash, brittle, hot-tempered, but there used to be a gentle side, too. He rarely saw it now. He wanted no part of going down the same path.

  “It was an accident, Quin. It was a terrible accident; it shouldn’t have happened. And she was just trying to protect her own, like anyone would under those circumstances.”

  Quin’s eyes began to well up, his face wrenched with hurt and disgust. He shook his head. “You can’t be serious. You can’t be telling me it was you. This entire time, it was you. I can’t believe you. You’re fucking with me or something,” he rasped, hardly able to breathe.

  Erik’s eyes pleaded for forgiveness but knew he would find none. “You’re right to feel that way, Quin. I’m so sorry. I can’t—I can’t take it back. I wish it hadn’t—”

  Quin lunged forward at Erik and swung at his head. “You took my dad from me!”

  Erik instinctively blocked with his right hand. Quin wound up slamming his fist into the prosthetic and then, with a sharp little cry of hurt, jumped back. He stopped for a moment and shook his hand, as if trying to shake the pain out of it. He recovered quickly and ran at Erik, swinging from the left to try and avoid the hand that had just caused him pain. Erik backed off again, not wanting to hurt him, but when Quin came at his throat, his fencing instincts kicked in and he moved aside and let Quin tumble past him, sure he was going to hit the ground.

  But he didn’t. He caught himself. Not exactly gracefully, but he didn’t hit the pavement. He recovered and wheeled around to face him, panting.

  “Good catch,” Erik told him through heavy breaths, legitimately impressed.

  “Yeah, Ron’s been working with me on my balance,” Quin replied, and came at him again.

  “Quin, I don’t want to hurt you,” Erik warned, backing away.

  “It’s a little late for that,” Quin almost sobbed through gritted teeth, getting his hands around Erik’s throat.

  Erik coughed and gagged for a minute, not pushing him off, not moving, wanting Quin to see that he meant it. “Quin,” He choked out. “Your sister…”

  Tears in his eyes, Quin let go of him and watched him gulp for air, the hurt and betrayal and hatred written all over his face.

  “Quin, I’ve been trying to—”

  “Just don’t,” Quin interrupted. “Just get out of here.”

  They looked at each other, chests heaving, for a minute.

  Quin turned and ran out of the garden, heading toward the most treacherous of its exits.

  In a panic, Quin stood in the middle of the sidewalk on Central Park West, panting and frantically calling his sister. It rang, and rang, and rang.

  “This is Detective Lily Sparr. I’m not available to take your call right now. Please leave a message and I’ll return your call promptly.”

  “Lil!” he panted. “Lil, for the love of Christ, please, I hope you check this message. This is really urgent. Call me back.”

  He hung up and waited thirty seconds, pacing in a circle, not even sure quite what to do.

  He called again.

  “This is Detective Lily Sparr. I’m not available to take your call right now. Please leave a message and I’ll return your call promptly.”

  “Lil, it’s Quin. I’m sorry to call you again but this is really, really, really urgent. Please call me back immediately, the second you hear this.”

  His head was still spinning. Erik had brought him to his new legs. He’d convinced him to get the bike, which brought him back to Ainsley, and given him Nadia. He'd given him advice on all the painful dysfunctions of his family. He had been trying to do right. How could Erik have acted so avuncular this entire time and yet been lying to him? There had to be something he didn’t understand. There had to some piece of this that he just didn’t get—something that Erik just hadn’t made clear to him.

  But Erik had been clear about one thing: Lily was in danger.

  He called again.

  “Lil, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know everything, but you’re not safe right now. Wherever it is you’re going, please don’t go. Please turn around and just go somewhere else. Go to Miri’s house. Whatever. Erik told me that you’re investigating Dad’s death and you’re getting too close.”

  He paused. It felt absurd and possibly dangerous leaving this in a phone message, but he didn’t
know what else to do. He plunged on.

  “He said they were gonna try to do something to you tonight. Please, Lil, call me when you get this. Let me know you’re okay. I think it was Erik who killed Dad. I don’t know why—it doesn’t even make sense—but I think you might be in trouble. Please call me and let me know you’re still alive.”

  He hung up and wandered numbly back to the garden. He needed to think for a moment. There must be something else he could do.

  He stood there for a few minutes, through blurred tears that chilled his face, looking at the sun going down on the purple asters and goldenrod.

  29

  Into the Grey

  “It’s too cold today for this shit,” Ainsley complained as she wriggled into her sports bra and a stretchy flannel shirt. A few moments ago, she’d been tangled in warm, delicious Khady, and the thought of biking up to the ass end of Queens held about as much appeal as the idea of swimming in the dankest part of the East River in mid-December.

  Khady, already in her biking gear, paused from wrapping her hijab for a half-second to let herself watch her grumpy lover getting dressed in the mirror. “Aww,” she cooed, “you want some hot cocoa when we get home?”

  Ainsley stuck her tongue out and then popped her shirt over her head, buckled her belt, and took a quick inventory of her pockets.

  It had been a bumpy couple of weeks since they’d made their appearance at the clinic with Quin and Nadia. Empress was livid with them, despite every justification they’d given, and Vea, stepping up in defense of the rest of the girls, nearly came to blows with her. After that, Abra had goaded them to go all-in on this clinic thing, so they’d shown up at a few others to do as they’d done for Quin and Nadia, and, in an evening that made Ainsley remember their good old days, they trashed an Operation Rescue office that had sprung up, seemingly overnight, in a cruddy storefront in what used to be Hell’s Kitchen.

  Empress had sent them a bunch of angry texts, then locked them out of the clubhouse and then nothing, for the last week or so. Ainsley had decided to leave it be for the time being. They had, after a quick vote, decided to go through with the final outing that Empress had assigned them: Ainsley’s baby, the St. John’s frat. She and Khady had been tailing the guys for the last couple of weeks, getting their routine figured out, and they were on their way over to the frat house now to do a little more observation before making their move.

  Ainsley wandered over to where Khady was finishing up, peeled the leather collar of her jacket back, and planted a kiss on the side of her neck.

  “Maybe it’s for the best that Empress isn’t involved anymore,” Ainsley sighed, more to herself than to Khady.

  Khady turned to look at her, hair bound up under a sapphire blue fabric that had little threads of silver through it. “You’re taking it personally,” she observed.

  “Maybe,” Ainsley said, shrugging. “But you know… I don’t know. Maybe Abra’s right? Maybe we should be more political or something.” She paused, giving Khady an awkward look. “What I mean is…well, what’s your religion say about something like what we’ve been doing?”

  Khady sighed, giving Ainsley that smile of bottomless sweetness. She hooked her arms around Ainsley’s waist. “It says a lot about forgiveness. If you slap me in the face, for example, I am supposed to forgive you. But it also says if I find you, for instance, hitting and hurting again and again, then it’s only right for me to fight you, and stop you.”

  “So, basically, we’re cool?” Ainsley guessed, hopeful, but half-grinning. She was kidding, but sort of not.

  Khady laughed, and Ainsley felt it warm her toes. “Yes,” she allowed after a moment.

  Ainsley extricated herself and cast about for her helmet. “Anyway, I don’t care if we patch it up with Empress after this or not. What we’re doing is righteous, you know, and I don’t regret any of it, but in a way, it’s not enough.”

  Khady arched an eyebrow, zipping her jacket. “Bigger plans, hm?”

  Ainsley shrugged. “I don’t know about plans. I just… I don’t know.” She pulled out her phone and checked the time. “We’d better get moving.”

  For all the riding that they did with Phaedra’s as a pack, Ainsley loved it best when it was just the two of them, lunging forward at the world with the roar of the engines beneath her, the bike’s animal growl vibrating through her whole small frame and the girl she loved more than anything racing along beside her. It felt powerful, primal, and it was something that she hadn’t shared with anyone else she’d even thought she might have loved.

  She understood now why her mother and father had continued to do their damnedest to make time for the ritual of Sunday rides together. She was surprised, as she and Khady made their way up the BQE, that the thought of her parents sharing something like this made her eyes warm and watery and her throat close up a little in spite of her best efforts; she missed seeing them ride away, her dad on the Indian that she now rode and Eleanor on the old black metallic Goldwing, on the side of which her dad had stenciled “My Queen.” Sentimental dope.

  God, she missed him. He and Khady would have loved each other.

  They came up a few blocks from the frat house, parked their bikes under a broken street lamp (this neighborhood seemed plagued with a number of these), and strolled up in the direction of the house, mentally checking off details of the block as they went. This was a relatively clean, safe part of Queens, blocks crammed with boxy brick row houses, close enough to the boulevard that its steady stream of traffic was clearly audible. It wasn’t dangerous, but it was ugly as sin. Ainsley remembered a line from one of her favorite movies, State of Grace: Gary Oldman complains about driving through Queens, but when Sean Penn offers to drive, Gary Oldman replies, “Nah, then I’d have to look out the window.”

  In front of the place, they paused, watching as a car full of “bros” pulled into the driveway. They took out a couple of cigarettes and went through the pantomime of giving each other lights, watching to see whether their marks were in that car.

  “You know, they were probably all complicit. That’s the way it works with these things,” Ainsley grumbled as she puffed without inhaling too much. “We should probably just torch the whole place.”

  Khady frowned at her. “You don’t mean that.”

  Ainsley shrugged, doing her best to blow smoke. “I guess not. God, this tastes like shit.”

  She felt a sudden hand on her shoulder, firm and familiar. She spun around. She found herself face to face with Lily.

  There was a long moment where they stood there, frozen, staring each other down.

  Lily spoke first: “When did you start smoking, Ainsley?” Her voice was ice against Ainsley’s face.

  Ainsley tilted her chin up. “Maybe it’s a new thing.”

  Another long silence. Lily looked them up and down, then shook her head. “You’re not even holding it like a smoker. You’re holding it like a pot smoker. I should arrest you two right now.”

  “For what?” Ainsley challenged. “Smoking on the sidewalk in Queens? Crack work, there, Detective.” She couldn’t help it, though—she was unnerved that Lily had found her way here.

  “Ainsley, Dad’s Indian was on the news when you guys went to the clinic. It was on a security camera the night you guys got picked up for vandalizing that shop in Sunset Park. I haven’t found a way to tie you to the other hits—not yet—but… What else could you be doing here? You’re casing the frat house because those guys walked.”

  Ainsley’s stomach and chest grew hot. She had done so much work to find her own way to be a Sparr—to get away from the pressure that came with it—and yet here she was, and nothing had changed. Her big sister was still the “good kid” and she was still the “bad kid.”

  Her free hand balled up in her coat pocket. “You know it’s not right, Lil. You know it’s not.” She dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her boot.

  Lily shook her head. “Yeah, sometimes guilty people walk, Ainsley. And it suck
s. That doesn’t mean you go and exact your own justice.”

  “You know why they walked?” Ainsley demanded, fighting to control the volume and tenor of her voice. “The girl’s testimony was seen as unreliable because she had ‘mental issues.’ She was on meds for bipolar disorder so that had to mean she was lying, or crazy. Do you understand how wrong that is?”

  Lily just looked sad now. “I know, Ainsley. I get it. I get how wrong that is. But beating these guys up isn’t the answer. What am I supposed to do now? You’re a criminal, as far as the law is concerned.”

  “But what about where you’re concerned?” Ainsley was near tears now. She wanted to believe her sister at least understood. “You never told me what Whitaker did to you, but wouldn’t you have felt a little better if there had been someone like me—like us—to make him pay for it? Wouldn’t you feel a little better if you thought that maybe someone had taught him a lesson, that maybe he wouldn’t do it to any other girls?”

  That was the moment when she saw Lily’s face darken. She hated bringing up Whitaker, because whatever had happened, it had been bad enough that Lily never wanted to talk about it. But she could tell she’d gotten through.

  Lily, after looking at the grungy sidewalk for a moment, shook her head. “Look, Ainsley, I’m supposed to be working this case, okay? I’m supposed to be trying to catch you right now. It was the official reason why I was moved to Midtown. I can…” She sighed heavily and looked up, meeting Ainsley’s eyes with her own ice-blue stare.

  “You have to stop doing this stuff, Ainsley. I—I can just… I can just not catch you, if you promise to stop.” Her tone was cool, but Ainsley recognized the begging in her look. “Whoever has been helping you, you’ve been careful. You’ve covered your tracks. They were pretty much lost when I got in there, so...” She trailed off.

  “Yeah, well. We have someone who knows the system.” They shared an uneasy look. “Anyway. Look, I’m not going to promise we aren’t going to do this one, but I can promise there won’t be anything after.” She turned and Khady gave her a single silent nod.