by Titan Books
When the can of Coca-Cola appeared on the bar in front of him, Patterson thought he had to be seeing things—a pesky hallucination from a guilty conscience, which always picked the goddamnedest times to wake up and tug his sleeve. He closed his eyes. You’re a day late and a dollar short, he told his conscience. Now get lost and don’t come back without a warrant.
But when he opened his eyes, the can was still there, and none other than Henry Brogan was sitting on the stool next to him. This was no hallucination—as guilty as Patterson’s conscience was, it didn’t have this degree of wattage.
“You know better,” Henry said, sliding the glass of whiskey over to himself.
Patterson gave a short, humorless laugh. “Surprised you give a shit.”
“Well, a bunch of assassins did try to kill me on your watch,” Henry said, chuckling. “But that doesn’t mean I want to see you drink yourself to death.”
Yeah, that was Henry, Patterson thought, feeling worse. The man was full of integrity and decency, qualities Patterson was pretty sure were innate. He had no idea how the DIA had managed to get their hooks into someone like Henry but he was pretty sure everyone involved would burn in hell for it, himself included.
“The Gemini lab’s been dismantled,” Patterson said. “The cloning program is history.”
“And Junior?” Henry asked. His voice was light but with an undertone that let Patterson know there was a lot riding on whether he liked the answer.
“Junior’s untouchable,” Patterson said. “No one will bother him, ever. And we checked—there are no more clones.”
Henry nodded. “What about you?”
Patterson dipped his head noncommittally, suppressing the urge to tell him to stop being so goddam decent. “Internal Affairs called. I’m looking at charges. But if I bury Janet, I can make a deal.”
“She earned it,” Henry said.
Patterson nodded glumly. He started to say something, thought better of it, tried to say something else and still couldn’t find the words. He took another breath.
“I’m really sorry, Henry,” he said finally, and winced at how utterly lame that sounded.
But to his surprise, Henry offered his hand and said, “Take care, Del.”
Goddammit, Henry was going to beat him to death with decency, Del thought as he took it. “You too.” He placed his other hand briefly over Henry’s. “And, uh, happy retirement.”
CHAPTER 21
Sitting on a bench in the middle of the City College campus, Henry thought, What a difference six months makes.
Not a phrase from which songs were made—it was too sensible, too realistic, lacking in lyrical drama. But people didn’t live in songs. It took time to recover, for bones to knit and wounds to heal, for bruises to fade and fears to subside. Twenty-four little hours couldn’t possibly cut it. Even six months might not be quite long enough to recuperate completely but it was a pretty good start.
Another good start was the name on the passport he was holding: Jackson Verris. Henry had initially been surprised the kid had decided to keep the surname. But after a little more thought, he realized it wasn’t all that surprising. Having a lousy father wasn’t a rare thing. Personally, Henry figured the lousy-father rate at fifty percent, give or take, and hoped he wasn’t underestimating. He had firsthand knowledge about lousy fathers and he’d still been Henry Brogan all his life. You were who you were. He wasn’t his father and Jackson Verris wasn’t his.
Like the man said, what’s in a name? Probably the same as what was in life—whatever you put into it.
Okay, he was getting way too heavy now, Henry thought, and slipped the passport back into the manila envelope with the rest of the paperwork. Maybe it was the environment influencing him to get cerebral, although City College wasn’t exactly an ivory tower. Ever since Budapest, however, Henry had acquired a more conscious respect for higher education; it was something he wanted for Junior. Correction: Jackson.
“Hey,” said a familiar voice behind him.
“Hey, yourself,” Henry said as Danny sat down beside him. “Good to see you. Congrats on the promotion. I hear the DIA’s got big plans for you. Think you’re up to it?”
“After you?” Danny laughed. “I’m pretty sure I can handle anything.”
There were a few more lines around her eyes, Henry noticed; some from laughing, more from worry, reminding him of Jack Willis. Although he was sure things would come out a lot better for her.
“How about you?” Danny asked. “How have you been?”
“Just got back from Cartagena,” he said. “Settled Baron’s estate, scattered his ashes in the Caribbean. All I want to do now is put some good in the world, you know? I’ve just got to figure out how.”
Danny patted his arm. “You’ll get there. How are you sleeping these days?” She was still smiling but her voice had turned serious; it went with her smile-worry lines.
“Better,” Henry said truthfully.
“No ghosts?”
“Not for a while,” he said. “I’ve stopped avoiding mirrors, too.” He was starting to feel a little uncomfortable now. Danny would have told him that after all they’d been through together, neither of them had anything to feel ill at ease about. No doubt she was right about that but he still found it difficult to talk about certain things and no matter how close they were, he probably always would.
But before he got stuck trying to find a way to change the subject, the subject changed itself. “Speaking of mirrors,” he said, looking past her with a grin.
Danny turned to see Junior—ahem, Jackson—coming toward them with some friends, a guy and two young women. The other three seemed to be on their way to somewhere else; they paused and had a quick discussion, probably about where they’d meet up later. The utter normalcy of it made Henry’s throat tighten and his eyes start to fill. He didn’t care to talk about his emotions but he sure had a lot of them lately. Most were good but even those weren’t always easy to cope with.
When they were especially intense, the memory of flailing his arms and kicking his legs in the deep end of the pool would suddenly pop into his head. His father had thrown him in because water was simple and simple was all his father knew. If the man had been immersed in what Henry was feeling, he’d have drowned.
Junior—no, Jackson, Henry had to remember he was Jackson now—told his friends he’d see them later and waved goodbye as he came toward Henry and Danny. As soon as Henry got to his feet, the kid wrapped him up in a big, enthusiastic hug, then did the same to Danny, his movements easy and casual without any awkwardness at all. Henry waited till he was done hugging, then held up the manila envelope.
“What’s this?” Jackson asked.
“‘This’ is you,” Henry told him. “Birth certificate, Social Security card, passport. Also, your credit report. Turns out you’ve got a pretty good credit rating. And I like the name you chose.”
“Thanks. Jackson was my mom’s name,” the kid informed him, as if he didn’t know.
“I’ll have you know she was my mom first,” Henry retorted.
The kid rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”
Henry puffed himself up in faux outrage. “Don’t you ‘yeah, yeah’ me, young man. Not when I’m about to show you a great place for lunch.” He began to usher them in the direction of his favorite deli. “Only half a block off-campus; you’ll love it.”
* * *
The newly minted Jackson Verris felt as if his head was spinning. Going on missions was easy compared to this. It seemed like he had to juggle a hundred different things in his mind—he had to remember where to meet his friends later, how to sign up for the classes he wanted, where all his classes were on campus, what days, and what time, where he had put the list of textbooks he had to buy, and now he had a manila envelope full of information all about himself.
How did people keep track of everything? Maybe that’s what they did with their phones; they put all the stuff they had to think about on them, which was why the
y were always looking at them. But how did they remember to carry their phones around with them in the first place or remember where they put them? He wasn’t sure he would ever get the hang of this so-called normal life. Sometimes it was all he could do to remember his own name was Jackson Verris now, not Junior.
“So,” Danny said, nudging his ribs with her elbow, “have you settled on a major yet?”
At last, a question he could answer. “I’m leaning toward engineering.”
“Engineering?” Danny looked at him as if she’d never heard of anything so crazy.
“I know, right?” Henry said, then turned to him with the same look. “Listen to her. If I were you—which I am, sort of—I’d do computer science.”
“Oh, hell no,” Danny said, doing her best impression of Henry. “Save that for grad school. You want to start in the humanities—”
“No, wait—don’t listen to her,” Henry said.
“No, don’t listen to him,” Danny said quickly. “You need a grounding in the classics—”
This was getting out of hand. “Uh, guys…” he said.
“Excuse me,” Henry said to Danny. “I’m trying to talk to myself here—”
“Yeah, you’re talking to yourself, all right,” Danny replied. “But you’re sure not talking to him—”
“Guys,” he tried again.
“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young,” Henry was saying.
“And now you need to let him make his own mistakes,” Danny said evenly.
Jackson stopped where he was. It took a couple of seconds before either Danny or Henry noticed. They turned to look at him, bewildered.
“Everyone chill the hell out!” he ordered them. Their expressions said they hadn’t seen that coming. “I’m going to be okay,” he added, a bit more quietly.
A broad grin spread across Henry’s face. “Well, if you’re okay, I’m okay.”
Danny made the ‘okay’ sign with both hands and they all laughed. But even as he was laughing, he wanted to hug Henry, tell him he’d just said the one thing he wanted—needed—to hear and he hadn’t known it until that very moment.
How had Henry managed that? Maybe it was just because he and Henry were so much a part of each other. But it could also have been because they were family. A family consisted of people who cared about each other, helped each other—not because one of them wanted something but because people needed to care for each other, to help each other, love each other.
For a moment, he had an almost irresistible urge to tell Henry all of this and how Henry had given him everything he’d always wanted before he had even known what that was. But he knew Henry wasn’t comfortable talking about emotions, not because he was repressed or shut down but simply because he was Henry. Talking about his feelings just wasn’t his thing and never would be. Not in so many words, anyway.
But that was all right. Recent events had convinced him to be wary of anyone who constantly had to tell you how much they loved you. There really was such a thing as protesting too much.
Now he smiled at Henry, then sighed and shook his head.
“What?” Henry asked him.
He sighed again. “I can’t believe that in thirty years I’m going to look like—” he gestured at Henry. “You.”
“Are you kidding?” Henry stuck his fists on his hips in mock indignation. “You should be so lucky, young man! You should be so lucky!”
All three of them cracked up as they started walking again.
“Now, first of all,” Henry said in an exaggerated, lecturing tone. “I work out every day—every day. Yeah, go ahead and laugh—wait till you’re fifty and we’ll see if you’re dragging your lazy ass around the track—”
“You mean fifty-one,” Danny put in.
“Don’t interrupt, young lady, or you’ll be grounded,” Henry said, shaking a finger at her. “Okay, secondly—and pay attention, this is extremely important—I brush, I floss, I rinse, and my teeth are spotless. Seriously, I got zero cavities, baby. Zero.”
Yeah, Jackson Verris thought, this new life was going to take some getting used to but he had no doubt at all it would be worth it.
END
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