After half an hour, I’d walked the length of Broadway until it started to curve at the north end. Nobody lucid had run into Candace tonight. I crossed the street and started back on the other side.
By the strip of shops called the Alley, I hit pay dirt. Candace herself, squatting outside a sushi place with another girl and her Chihuahua dog. The girl said “change” by reflex as I hunkered down next to them. Both her hair and her crusted eyes needed a rinse.
“Hey, Van,” Candace said. “Good to see you.” She sounded as though she meant it, like always. That was Candace. Ultra-skinny and scattered and she dressed like she’d picked the clothes randomly out of someone else’s laundry, but you’d have to work damned hard to dislike her.
“You, too,” I said. “I gotta talk to you. About Colten.”
Alarm widened her hazel eyes, and I held up my hand. “I’m not with Singer Boeman. Swear.”
“Okay.” Her fear hadn’t completely left. The fried girl caught the tense vibe and curled up around her dog.
“Singer’s looking for him. And his gang. You know that, right?”
Candace nodded.
“I’ll help. But I have to talk to Colten. Tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Candy. This isn’t going to go away. At least tell me why Singer’s so pissed off.”
She glanced at her friend, who might as well have been on Venus. “Colt . . . He had some stuff to sell around school. Nothing really bad. I’ve told him to stop but he has such a hard time saying no to them . . .”
“What stuff?”
“Poppers. A whole bag of them, like two hundred. But someone stole the bag, and now they’re blaming Colten.”
“Okay.” Davey had mentioned seeing little nitrite vials at a party he’d crashed recently, students mixing them with coke for a bigger rush. We figured it was the latest trend, old shit becoming new again. “So what’s Colten’s plan now?”
“I don’t know.” Candace was near to crying. “He can’t go to his parents. They’re terrible.”
“Let me talk to him. I won’t let anyone else know where he is. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
The childish vow hit home. Candace said a few words to the girl, and we left. Half a block on, Candy pointed another group of teens she seemed to know well in the girl’s direction, asking them to look after her. Then she led me on a long walk down the slope of Olive. Even with the breeze, the exhaust fumes of the constant traffic lingered in between blocks. She slowed at the little King of the Hill market, eyes wandering over the selection inside.
“You hungry?” I said.
She nodded, and we went in long enough to buy microwave burritos. Candace heated two up on the spot and ate one as we carried on.
We finally stopped at an ivy-covered apartment complex called the Biltmore, shaped like a block-letter C. The deep inside of the C formed the brick-accented entryway, lined with shrubs and small trees. While the brick exterior looked grand, like something built a hundred years ago, music from three different stereos on upper floors competed for dominance, and I could hear voices arguing from the nearest windows.
“My aunt lives here,” Candace explained. “We’re going to crash after she leaves for work.” She turned to call out toward the apartments. “Colt?”
Colten Gulas emerged from behind a stand of trees at the far side. He was dressed for the cold in a tatty ski parka, gloves, and thick hoodie, but he didn’t look comfortable at all. The only color on his drawn face came from his pink nose and red eyes. Baked, and maybe crying, too.
“Wha’s he doing here?” Colten said.
“He’s come to help,” Candace said, handing him the warmed burrito she’d carried in her pocket. He didn’t acknowledge it.
“How you doing, Colt?” I said, thinking that was the sort of thing Candace might say, and maybe I’d get further with kindness.
“Shitty, man.”
“Candy told me about the poppers,” I said. “That sucks.”
“Fuck, Candace, why you have to talk?” he whined.
“I need to know something,” I pressed. “And if you tell me, I’ll see if I can help you like Candace said.”
“Wha’d you want?”
“The quilt that went missing from the library last year. Who took it?”
“Aw, shit, man. That’s not—nobody knows, man.”
“You do. Straight trade. Tell me, and you’ve got me on your side.”
“Help me first, then maybe.” His bloodshot eyes looking as close to sly as they could get, being so clouded. I held myself back from grabbing Colten and shaking him like a bull terrier on a rat.
“Colten,” said Candace, placing her hand on his chest, which managed to be hollow even with the parka. “This is a good deal.” The way she said it made me suspect she knew more about the theft of the quilt than I did, but Colten was our focus right now.
“Tell me what happened with the poppers,” I said.
Colten shrugged. “I picked them up. I went to school. When I came out, they were gone from my trunk. That’s it.”
“Came out where? To your car?”
“Yeah.” Like that was obvious.
“Who knew they were there? Who saw you?”
“Nobody saw me, man. Somebody busted in. They kinda pushed the window down and opened the trunk and took them.”
“But they didn’t take anything else,” I said. Colten shrugged. I took that for a yes. “Who’d you pick them up from?”
He shuffled his feet, reluctant to squeal. “Burn. He gave all the poppers to me that morning.”
“Just Burn? No one else was around?”
“No way. I’m not stupid.”
You passed stupid on the way to dumbfuck, I thought.
“You think Burn took them?” Candace said to me. “But he had the poppers in the first place.”
And Burn wanted them, so he made Colten the scapegoat, giving him the poppers just long enough to hang their disappearance on him. But Burn hadn’t been bright enough to reason that if he was the only one who saw Colten put them in his trunk, he would be the prime suspect. Granddad always told me ninety percent of crooks were dead in the head. Singer and his boys looked like poster children.
Moreover, I had a pretty good guess why Burn might have wanted to steal his own gang’s supply.
“I can get you off the hook with Singer,” I said, “but no going back on our deal.”
“Sure,” Colten said, shifting his feet again.
“Colt.” I waited until his bleary eyes got a focus on me. “I’m a lot worse than Singer or Burn. A lot smarter. You’ll tell me who took the quilt or I will make what you’re going through now seem like summer vacation. Yeah?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I nodded.
“You didn’t have to bully him,” Candace said as I walked away.
Maybe not. But call it a little extra insurance. I was about to take a big gamble for Colten, and even if he didn’t appreciate it, he’d sure as shit pay for my grief.
Twenty-Seven
After leaving Guerin, I made a phone call. It was answered by a service. The lady at the other end took my name and number and said, with superb diction, that she would pass my information along to the party requested. No promises made or implied of any further contact.
I’d held the cryo bottle with its own promise of Aura’s future children for twelve full hours now. I was conscious of that clock ticking, perhaps almost as much as Aura must be herself. If we couldn’t make a deal within the next few days, what would I do? Rent space in some cryogenic bank somewhere? Tough job filling out those forms and explaining how I’d come into possession of human eggs.
Nothing for it but to set my only plan in motion, and find out if my persuasion skills were on par with my survival instincts.
Addy’s friend Dorothy lived near Lincoln Park in West Seattle, the kind of location that Realtors would tout as being mere steps away from majestic views. When I pulled up to the odd hou
se—like someone had placed a Craftsman bungalow as a cap on two additional stories to maximize vertical space—the only view I had was of similar homes squashed into their own cramped lots.
Cyndra was playing with Stanley in the side yard, taking advantage of the unusually bright and dry winter day. The yard wasn’t nearly big enough for a game of fetch, so she tossed a tennis ball high into the air and Stanley would try to catch it as it came down. More often than not the ball bounced off his nose or noggin, which didn’t discourage him. He’d snatch it off the ground and run in happy circles, tearing through the bark landscaping until Cyndra ordered him to drop the toy so she could throw it again. Slobber spun from the thrown ball like rain off a whirling pinwheel.
“Look,” Cyn said, once Stanley was running loops again. “Dorothy had those in her basement. She heard I was lifting weights and she made us take them.” Boxes on the porch held pairs of dumbbells, each pair coated in pink or purple nonslip neoprene, in various weights up to eight pounds.
“You’re already stronger than these,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Isn’t that cool? I’m gonna give them to the team.”
I grinned and left her to Stanley, who was rolling on the ball like he wanted to fuse it with his pelt.
My knock at the door was answered by Addy’s shout to let myself in. Inside, past a knickknack-laden sitting room still strewn with confetti from the night before, I found her puttering around the kitchen putting things in order. Like me, Ms. Proctor was not one for sitting idle. She’d find something that required adjustment, at least to her way of thinking, and set to work.
“Where’s Dorothy?” I said.
“She’d already made plans with her children for the day, so we have the house to ourselves for a few hours. A relief after staying up so late. Is there any news?”
I understood what she meant. “Still working on clearing the coast. But you and Cyn should be able to go home within a day or two.”
Addy nodded but didn’t look away from her work rinsing dishes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not fair to either of you.”
“As hideouts go, this could be shabbier,” she said. “I’m too tired to debate you right now. Have you learned any more about who your father might be?”
“Nothing good.” I told her all I had uncovered about Sean Burke and the murders he’d committed for his gangster boss. I didn’t have to sugarcoat it for Addy. Or for myself. She settled on a blue divan in the living room. After another minute of pacing I made myself sit on the couch.
“Worse than you feared,” she said when I’d finished talking.
“Yeah.”
There were levels of bad, like shades of night. Dono had not been a good man, even if he’d tried to be a decent parent to me most of the time. I was somewhere on the murkier end of that spectrum myself.
But Burke was something else. Somewhere past what I, even with my sorry background and questionable choices, could justify. Unredeemable was the closest I could come to putting a name to it.
“So what now?” Addy said. “Do you let it go?”
“Everything tells me I should,” I said. “That it would be smart to be Zen about the whole damn thing and release it to the universe, or whatever the hell the phrase is.”
“But.”
“But I still don’t know if Burke is my father. And I hate not knowing. I have always hated not knowing.” I clenched a fist. “At least with a definite answer, I won’t have the question burning a hole in me.”
“Could you talk to him? Or”—she shrugged—“get his DNA somehow? You could send it to one of those labs that verifies family relations. Just because you learn the truth doesn’t mean Sean Burke has to.”
I’d had that idea, even before breaking into Burke’s house in Bitter Lake. That place had been so clean I’d wondered whether he intentionally kept it scoured of all genetic evidence.
“To do that,” I said, “we’d have to at least meet.”
“Something tells me I’m a step behind,” Addy said.
“Only just.”
Burke had found me once. I’d have to make sure our second encounter was on my terms.
“Pain is here!” Cyndra, calling from the porch.
It took me a second to grasp what she’d said. I looked out the window. Cyn’s derby trainer—Wren, aka Pain Austen—stood on the sidewalk, holding a hand out for Stanley to sniff and lick in greeting. Her right hand, on the arm with the winding spiral of birds. Wren’s hair was free of its braid today, the black-coffee waves cascading down to end just above the small of her back.
“I forgot to tell you,” Addy said. “Cyndra invited Wren over to pick up the weights before tonight’s beginner class.”
“Uh huh,” I said, knowing there was more to Cyn’s motives than that. Maybe Addy’s, too. I was suddenly aware that I hadn’t shaved today, and I was still wearing Hollis’s T-shirt touting tourism in Mexico.
We stepped out onto the porch. Cyn had ordered Stanley to sit and behave while Wren opened the gate and joined us.
“Happy New Year,” Addy greeted her.
“Happy New Year, and hello,” Wren said to me. “Cyn didn’t tell me you’d be here.”
“There’s a lot she’s neglecting to mention today,” I said.
Cyndra covered her sudden blush by asking if we’d all care for something to drink, automatically using the same inflection Addy would have used. We sat in three Mission-style chairs on the porch while Cyn escaped to the kitchen. Wren asked Addy how she’d spent the holiday, and Addy wove adventures of her faction of very active retirees.
Addy talked. Wren listened. I tried to do the same. But I was struck with a feeling of separation, of watching myself from outside my body with disbelief. The night before I’d been scaling a building and scrambling to keep Saleem from blowing my head off. Today I was sipping iced tea on a porch.
Returning home after a deployment overseas created a similar shock to the system. Between rotations I would dampen that blow to my psyche by staying immersed in Ranger life and training around Benning. If I never fully wound down, I never had the challenge of gearing back up. But there was no escaping the anchor-like drag of civilian life.
Maybe that was a learned skill. Living in peacetime. I’d never had a chance to practice it much, even in childhood. Now that an opportunity for the quiet life presented itself, I was finding that I was a lousy student.
“Van?” Addy said, bringing me back to the now. “Did we lose you?”
“Sorry,” I said. “New Year’s Eve was rough.”
“I kept my partying to a minimum. This time.” Wren grinned. “Last year I felt like you do for three whole days.”
“Speaking of recovery,” Addy said, “there’s nothing in the pantry. Cyndra dear, grab my keys and we’ll visit the grocery store while it’s quiet. Come on.”
She headed off Cyn’s protests, handing me a house key and bustling the kid to the driveway and into Addy’s Subaru. They were gone as efficiently as if a helicopter had snatched them into the sky on a SPIE rope.
“That was awkward,” I said.
Wren laughed. “Mortal Cyn is playing Tinder.”
“Yeah. Sorry again. She’s good at ambushing.”
“I don’t mind. And I’ve been stuck inside all weekend. Are you regretting last night too much for a walk?”
“It’s not a hangover. And yeah, let’s go.”
Stanley would have battered down the door if we’d left him behind. I buckled the giant hound into his harness and we set off toward Lincoln Park. Wren was dressed lightly for the cool day in green cotton pants with slim cargo pockets, and a white polo and fleece vest that contrasted nicely with her skin.
“Cyn said you grew up here in Seattle,” Wren said.
“Capitol Hill, born and raised. You?”
“Might as well throw a dart at a map. I was born in Algiers. Then when I started school we moved to my father’s home in Marseilles. We came to the United Sta
tes when I was ten. Since then, seven different states, if you only count the places we stayed longer than a year.”
“Whoa. So you’re—French Moroccan?”
“I’m American, like you. But I have my French citizenship as well.”
I was reminded of Sean Burke’s Russian passport, acquired no doubt to facilitate his work for Anatoly Liashko. I mentally shoved the intrusion away.
“I’m Irish,” I said, “but that’s the American version of Irish, which can be More Irish Than.”
Wren laughed. “Performative heritage?”
“Exactly. My grandfather was the real thing, from Belfast. He got out during the bad times in the 1970s and made his way here.”
An ambulance flew past as we reached Fauntleroy Way. I tugged at Stanley’s lead. He wanted to race after the howling beast.
We crossed the road to enter the park and chose a trail that led to railroad-tie steps, down through the sparse forest of ferns and ponderosa pine. Scores of kids running and shouting on the nearby playing field sounded like colliding streams, splashing and bubbling with chaos.
“Seven different states, huh? And counting?” I said.
She looked at me, one dark eyebrow cocked. “Do you always find the heart of things so quickly?”
“I withdraw the question.”
“No, it’s all right. It’s only—I’ve been thinking hard about that same question. I’ll have been in Seattle for three years this spring. The first place I’ve lived, the longest I’ve been anywhere, without any of my family nearby. Most of them are in New Mexico now. I miss them. It’s a good life here, though.”
“But you’re not sure if it’s a permanent fit.”
“Nothing is permanent, except change. I’m just deciding whether to make change happen, or let it happen on its own.” Wren grinned. “You know about that kind of choice. When did you leave the military?”
“Cyndra told you?”
“No. One of my brothers is stationed down at Pendleton. There’s a way of moving. Like”—she motioned—“the backpack is still there, and you’re too light without it. Did you know you walk on the balls of your feet?”
It was my turn to laugh. “That’s kinda witchy.”
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