She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  We were somewhere in the dining area when the second propane canister exploded, followed immediately by the third.

  That’s when my body gave up and the thick, black smoke welcomed me.

  The dream.

  “I smell gas. We need to get out,” Momma said.

  “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”

  A door opening.

  The scrape of metal on metal.

  “Eddie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The other SUV. They’re coming.”

  “Get Jack out.”

  “Can you move?” Daddy said.

  “I…I think so.”

  A seat belt click. The sound of the belt retracting. “Eddie? They’re coming.”

  “We need to get you out.”

  “You need to stop them, or we’re all dead.”

  “Christ—where’s the gun?”

  “On the floor. By my feet. I think my arm is broken. I think I’m gonna…” Momma said.

  Chocolate milk, in my eyes, my hair. Sticky.

  “I can’t find it. Stay with me, Katy! Focus on my voice.”

  “It’s there. Was holding it. Couldn’t—”

  Momma’s voice fell away. Sleepy voice.

  Loud bang.

  Many loud bangs.

  “He’s coming around,” I heard a voice say, distant, through a tunnel, an echo off smooth walls.

  “Kid? Can you hear me?”

  The air was cold, wintry cold.

  I drew a deep breath.

  Coughed.

  I tried to reach for my mouth, but my hands, my arms, wouldn’t move.

  “Breathe, kid.”

  More cold air.

  Something mopped at my eyes. Wet.

  “Hand me the scissors. I need to get this sweatshirt off him. The jeans, too.”

  My eyes fluttered open.

  “There you are!” The man was looking down at me, a forced smile. He produced a penlight and pointed it at my eyes. When I closed them, he forced them back open with his free hand. First the right, then the left, then the light was gone. “Can you tell me your name?”

  I stared up at him, the churning clouds above him.

  “Kid?”

  “Pip.”

  “What?”

  “Jack.”

  “Just Jack?”

  “Jack Thatch. John Edward Thatch.”

  “That’s a long name.”

  “Everyone calls me Jack.”

  “You’re one crazy son of a bitch, Jack. Can you tell me who’s president of the United States?”

  “Clinton.”

  “Gold star for you.” He turned and shouted over his shoulder. “I need a free bus to take this kid to Mercy General!”

  “Two more ambulances inbound!” someone replied. “ETA, three minutes!”

  “Krendal,” I forced out. My mouth was not working.

  “What?”

  “The man I tried to pull out…”

  The paramedic’s face drooped. “I’m sorry, son. He didn’t make it.”

  Someone started tugging at my jeans. I turned to see a female paramedic holding thick shears, cutting through the material.

  My head swiveled, taking in my surroundings.

  I was in the middle of Brownsville Road, strapped to a stretcher. Black smoke churned out of Krendal’s Diner to my left, firemen crawling all around the opening like yellow ants with hoses, water flooding the sidewalk.

  I turned in the opposite direction, toward my apartment building. “Gerdy.”

  Her name came out, followed by another cough. I realized for the first time I had a mask on. The paramedic pulled the mask down over my chin. “What?”

  “Where’s Gerdy?”

  “Is there a Gerdy here?” the paramedic shouted toward the crowd of people around us.

  A woman stepped forward, an older woman in a floral print dress and gray hair pinned back neatly. Her arms and face were covered in black soot, the hem of her dress burnt. She knelt down beside my stretcher. “Is that the girl who was with you? I saw you walking down the sidewalk with her, right before…you were holding hands. Is that who you mean?”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes filled with tears. She leaned in closer. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop her, but she was just too strong. I couldn’t hold her.”

  “Hold her…what?”

  “She chased after you, into the fire.”

  Every muscle in my body tensed. I tried to leap up from the stretcher, but the straps at my wrists, ankles, and neck held me down.

  “Whoa, buddy,” the paramedic pressed a steady hand to my chest.

  “Let me out of this thing!” I rocked violently back and forth. “Gerdy!”

  I swiveled my head back toward the parked cars. A crowd of people stood between the Volvo and Sentra, where I had left her. I couldn’t see her, though. I didn’t see her. “Gerdy!”

  I turned back toward Krendal’s, toward the black smoke drifting out the shattered opening. Firemen disappeared inside, pulling heavy hoses with them. “She’s not in there! She wouldn’t go in there!”

  The strap on my right hand broke free. I reached over and started on the left.

  The woman in the burnt floral print dress backed away, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed.

  “Give me 10mgs Haldol, now!” the paramedic shouted above me, holding my chest down with the bulk of his weight.

  My ankle broke free.

  I tried to buck him off.

  A needle plunged into my arm.

  No, please. Not Gerdy. Not Gerdy.

  All went dark then.

  4

  Faustino Brier liked pizza.

  He liked pizza damn near more than anything else on this planet.

  Of all pizza in all of Pittsburgh, he particularly liked Mineo’s Pizza in Squirrel Hill, so when John Mineo came over to his table no less than thirty seconds after his 16” cheese and pepperoni arrived and told him he had a phone call, he instructed the man to tell whoever it was that he wasn’t there, he hadn’t seen him all day. When John Mineo returned and told him the caller knew he was there and it was urgent, Faustino carried a lone slice back to the phone on the bar and picked up the receiver in his clean hand.

  “This better be good.”

  “Hey, this is Horton with Narcotics. You need to get down to Brownsville Road.”

  Horton’s team had Duncan Bellino under constant surveillance in an attempt to build a trafficking case against him and his boss, Henry Crocket. Horton agreed to watch the Thatch boy too, and report anything out of the ordinary to Faustino. Professional courtesy.

  “Something happen with your boy or mine?” Faustino said, taking a bite of the pizza. Delicious.

  “Both. Get your ass down here. Now.”

  Even with lights and a siren, it took nearly thirty minutes in the afternoon traffic. Faustino saw the smoke from more than a mile away.

  Two blocks were roped off behind yellow crime-scene tape. First responders were everywhere. He parked behind two firetrucks and climbed out of his car. Firemen were rolling up hoses, putting equipment away. He pushed his way past the crowd of onlookers and reporters.

  Fogel saw him and ran over. He had called her from Mineo’s.

  He said, “Holy shit, is that Krendal’s?”

  Fogel nodded. She wore a pair of latex gloves and had a department-issue Nikon hanging around her neck. “Follow me. Horton’s inside.”

  Brownsville Road looked like a war zone, the pavement covered in bits of burnt debris—everything from chairs and tables to pieces of silverware, plates, and roofing material. The windows on all the surrounding cars and buildings had blown out, shards of glass crunched under his shoes. Krendal’s was the worst, though. The diner was gone, replaced by a black, smoking cave carved out of the old brick building.

  Faustino recognized an odor in the air, one he hadn’t smelled since the war, and hoped he never would again. Burnt flesh.

  Foge
l smelled it, too. She pulled a small jar of petroleum jelly from her pocket and smeared some beneath her nose, then offered the jar to him. He shook his head. She dropped the jar back in her pocket. “We’ve got six bodies inside, two more on the sidewalk.”

  Horton stood just inside what was once the front of the diner, the metal frame of the window, now bent and jagged, jutting out over the sidewalk. He waited for Faustino and Fogel to maneuver through the debris, then nodded toward what was left of a man in a booth near the front. “Meet Henry Crocket.”

  Crocket’s hair was gone, his skin black and cracked. He was lying facedown on the table, part of his head missing, his back riddled with bullet holes.

  Faustino looked around the diner, spotted three of the six bodies, two of them already in black bags.

  He turned back to the narcotics detective. “What the hell happened here?”

  Horton told him everything they had pieced together.

  5

  I woke to a dark room.

  I woke to beeping machines and distant people and the sound of my own breathing beneath a plastic mask.

  My head ached.

  My eyes attempted to adjust to the light.

  I reached up and pulled off the mask.

  Krendal’s.

  Explosion.

  Dunk, Krendal, Lurline.

  Oh, God, Gerdy.

  I tried to sit, fell back into a soft pillow, my head pounding with ache.

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  I turned.

  An outline of a man, sitting in a chair to the right of me. The detective, Faustino Brier.

  “Where?” My mouth was dry, my voice didn’t sound right.

  I sat up again, fighting past the nausea, the dizziness.

  Detective Brier stood, filled a cup from a plastic pitcher on the table beside me, and held it to my lips. I wrapped both of my shaky hands around the sides and drank. The water was warm, but it still helped. When I was done, I handed the cup back to him, and he set it on the table.

  “Where am I?” I repeated.

  “The paramedics sedated you. You were…hysterical. They needed to get a handle on your injuries. You could have hurt yourself. They brought you to Mercy for treatment and observation.”

  Brier crossed the room. “I’m going to turn on a light. Sometimes, after exposure to fire, particularly exposure to an explosion, the eyes can becomes extremely sensitive. Probably best you close them and open them again slowly, give them a chance to adjust.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. The black turned to deep red beneath my eyelids. I opened them, blinked. There was an empty hospital bed between me and the detective, now standing near the door.

  He returned to the chair. “Do you remember me? It’s been a long time.”

  I nodded. “You were at the funeral. You and a woman.”

  He seemed surprised I saw him there. “That was my partner, Detective Fogel. That’s not what I meant, though. I spoke to you when you were a kid. About Andy Flack. Do you remember?”

  Again, I nodded. “Detective Brier.”

  “How do you feel? Are you in pain? I can get a nurse. They’ll give you something.”

  I wasn’t. I wasn’t in any pain.

  I shook my head.

  A paper sack sat beside the detective’s chair. He pulled it between his feet, unfolded the top, and reached inside. His hand came out holding my Steelers sweatshirt. He set it on bed, smoothing the material. He reached back inside and pulled out my jeans, set those beside the sweatshirt.

  There was little left of either.

  The clothing had been cut off me, now ruined.

  What remained of the material was charred, riddled with dozens of holes, the edges of which were burned, the material melted.

  Without looking up from the clothing, the detective said, “We pulled clothes from some of the bodies in the diner that didn’t look this bad.”

  He slipped a finger through a hole in the sweatshirt, nearly six inches in diameter, the material cracked and flaked at the edges, small pieces raining on the bedsheets. “The fire destroyed your clothes, yet the doctor said you don’t have a single scratch on you. Not one. No burns, no bruises. Nothing. We have witnesses that say you ran inside that place not once, but twice. Pulled people out. Your friend, Duncan Bellino. Your boss. You were inside when the propane tanks blew.”

  I said nothing.

  “Your hair isn’t even singed.”

  I said nothing.

  “You should be dead.”

  My eyes fell on the back pocket of my jeans.

  The detective followed my gaze. I looked away.

  He reached back into the bag, pulled out the letter, set it on top of my jeans, still in the envelope. “Interesting letter. Mind if I ask where you got it?”

  I remained silent.

  “I shouldn’t have read it, I know. None of my business, really. All these years as a cop, though, makes you nosy. Couldn’t help myself, and it was open. Thought maybe I’d find an emergency contact listed or something.”

  Bullshit.

  Brier ran a finger over the edge of the envelope. “Eddie and Katy, that’s your parents, right?”

  “Where’s Gerdy?”

  The detective frowned. “She’s dead, son.”

  “I know that. Where’s her body? I want to see her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” His gaze never left the envelope. “The letter, it’s old. Dated 1978. Long time ago.”

  “What about Dunk? Is he…”

  “Surgery. He took a bullet in the shoulder, another in his chest—cracked three ribs, that one did. A third bullet got him in the gut. Two more in his left leg. He should probably be dead too, but he seems tough, might pull through, might not. Owes you his life if he does, that’s for sure. Then again, the explosion didn’t hurt you. Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt him, either.” Eyes still on the envelope. “Who is Richard Nettleton?”

  “I think I’d like to see the nurse now,” I said softly. “Get something for the pain.”

  “You’re not hurt.”

  “My head…”

  “Not a single scratch.”

  I looked around the hospital bed, located the nurse call button, and picked it up.

  Detective Brier raised both his hands. “Before you do that, there’s someone out in the hall who’d like to talk to you. I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say.”

  Before I could answer, he crossed the room, pushed open the door, and leaned out into the hallway. He spoke to someone for a second, then held the door open.

  I recognized the man who came in.

  The same man I had seen numerous times standing around the undercover police van outside my apartment building. Still in the rumpled white shirt and red tie. Although, now the shirt was covered in black soot and the tie had been loosened, the top button undone. He turned to close the door behind him, the bulge of his concealed handgun clearly outlined in stains of sweat and dirt at the small of his back.

  The plumber slash electrician slash carpet installer, who carried a gun.

  “This is Detective Horton. He’s with Pittsburgh PD Narcotics division,” Detective Brier said.

  “We’ve met, sort of,” Horton said. “I saw you run in there, into the diner, saw you both times. You’re either extremely brave or stupid, or maybe a little of both.”

  I reached for the nurse call button again.

  “You’ll want to hear me out, kid. You won’t like what I have to say, but you’ll want to hear it.”

  Detective Brier returned to his chair.

  Horton crossed over to the window, peered out at the black night. “Your friend, Duncan Bellino, is into some nasty business. I’m sure you know that, I’m not sure you understand the full extent, but at the very least, you know who he works with.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and he raised a hand. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s probably better you don’t, not right now anyway, just listen. You’ve seen us watc
hing your building. We rotate, we try to stay out of sight, but inevitably we get made. We’ve got photographs of you watching our vans from the building. Even got some audio of you and Bellino talking about them—”

  “Audio?”

  “You shouldn’t say anything, just listen. Self-incrimination, and all that.”

  I nodded.

  “When we started watching your friend, we weren’t really after him. We were after his boss, Henry Crocket. You know how that all works, you watch TV—we nab your buddy on something, get him to roll, give us something or someone bigger.” Horton rolled his hand through the air. “Keep going until we get the top dog, sometimes even the top dog’s boss, work with other agencies like the FBI or DEA, try to take down the whole mess. Crocket has been on our radar for nearly ten years. He started out just like all the other ones, working for someone else, learning the ropes, then branching off on his own. Usually that doesn’t work out well for the someone else.”

  Horton paused for a second, choosing his words. “See if this sounds familiar to you. He started with small-time stuff—pot, some prescription drugs, then a little meth and heroin. Dealt on his own in the beginning, then wised up and started using kids. Some as young as ten years old, peddling his shit on playgrounds and street corners. We bust them, they’re back out in a few hours. Kids never talk. They know they can’t get in much trouble. Crocket actually gives, well gave, them a bonus if they got busted and didn’t talk, couple extra hundred bucks in their pocket. Nice scratch for a little kid, even nicer for the parents who usually knew exactly what was going on and let it slide—they needed that money too, mouths to feed, bills to pay. Many have a habit, and when they let their kid work for someone like Crocket, they get the employee discount on smack. None of this is new. This is how the drug trade works around the world, every city and town, Pittsburgh’s no different. Some of these guys are happy keeping the business small—they make great money, after all. Why get greedy? They can take home a solid six figures per year. Others, though, others like Crocket, they catch the bug, they’re all about expansion, diversification, they gotta build the business, grow.”