Charisma

by Steven Barnes

  “When you arrived in Chicago, you moved to a … more affluent neighborhood. Alexander attended a private school.” He took a deep breath. “Mrs. Marcus, the man who assaulted your son … was he well-to-do?”

  She looked at him with no more expression than a cadaver. “He owned the largest furniture store in Harlem.”

  “And he never served time.”

  She exhaled a long, thin stream of air, and sagged back in her chair. “I’m afraid that is all, young man,” she said. The nurse appeared in the doorway, doubtlessly summoned by the push of a hidden button.

  “Mr. Sand,” she said, “is leaving.”

  “You took the money, didn’t you?” he said coldly. “While your son was still in the hospital, and the doctors were stitching his testicles together, you made a deal, and all of this…” he swept his arms at the walls, the lavish furnishings, the view beyond the windows. “All of this started with that deal you made, didn’t it?”

  “Get out.” She refused to meet his eyes now.

  The nurse clamped her hand on his arm. He looked down at the hand, and then at her straining face. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m finished.”

  50

  CLAREMONT

  Destiny shared fifth period History with Patrick, and before they headed their separate ways for sixth (him to Geometry, her to Gym), they found time to meet at their lockers, to take a moment to talk before the next period swallowed them. All day Patrick had seemed drawn, haggard, somehow shrunken. There was a bright, almost feverish look in his eyes that frightened her. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  He gripped at her hand wordlessly, painfully hard. “I need…” he began. “I need … I can’t sleep.…”

  She had heard about the explosion, seen it on television and in the papers, but Patrick had refused to talk about it, and she was afraid to press. When he was ready, he would. They were family, and families knew how to keep secrets.

  “Patrick!”

  Destiny was jerked out of her reverie as Patrick’s head came around. “Mrs. Hiroshi?”

  The little woman strode toward them, waving an envelope excitedly. “Good news. Good news. You’ve won one of the Guardian awards, and have two weeks at summer camp, besides!”

  Patrick stared at his counselor, searching her face disbelievingly. Then he sagged against the lockers, opened the envelope and read. He might have collapsed if there hadn’t been a wall to hold him up.

  “Well?” Mrs. Hiroshi asked. “What do you think?”

  He looked from Destiny to the counselor and back again, then jumped up and kissed Mrs. Hiroshi’s cheek. He hugged Destiny hard. “See you after school!” he called, and bounced up the stairs.

  Mrs. Hiroshi watched him go, blinking. “I thought he deserved a little good news.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Destiny said. “Thanks, Mrs. Hiroshi.” Then with more energy than she had felt in days, Destiny ran toward the athletic field.

  * * *

  Vivian was measuring Mrs. Fondelli, a fiftyish redhead who worked a cash register over at the Office Max. The manager was retiring, and the employees were throwing a costume party in celebration. Fondelli had chosen a black and vermilion Spiderwoman costume, and Vivian had also taken orders for a beaver, a fairy princess, and a matching Austin Powers/Dr. Evil set. Mrs. Fondelli held her breath and closed her eyes as Vivian measured, humming tunelessly, jotting the results in her black daybook. Mrs. Fondelli peeked at Vivian’s scrawl, but was unedified: Vivian wrote in her own private shorthand, the numbers and symbols meaningful only to her.

  Vivian’s every movement was tight and controlled. Probably too controlled, and had been ever since the funeral, and most especially the fire. Cappy was dead. Even had she not believed him complicit in Otis’s death, she would not have grieved. Cappy was a thug and a bully. But her heart told her that Cappy had been involved. How then should she feel about his violent end? Relieved? But if the explosion was no accident, then what to make of the coincidence, of Cappy and Otis dying violently in the same week? Didn’t that place her and Patrick within the circumference of a circle of violence and retribution?

  And if Patrick knew more than he was telling, what did it mean that he was awake and cold even as the fire engines were racing to the site of the explosion? Nothing? Everything?

  Distantly, she heard a police siren, and tensed.

  Mrs. Fondelli opened her eyes. “Is there something wrong, dear?”

  “No, not at all. Just pricked myself.”

  “You be careful, now.”

  The front door banged open, and Patrick entered. His bike was leaning against the front of the store.

  “Mom! Mom, look at this! I won!”

  “Just a second, dear. All right, Mrs. Fondelli, why don’t you take that off now.” The customer retreated to a changing room.

  Vivian took the missive from Patrick’s hands. “What’s this?”

  “Mom,” he said breathlessly, “it’s the camp. They said that they reconsidered me, and got a recommendation from one of my teachers—”

  “Oh? Which one?”

  “I don’t know. That was anonymous. But I get the two weeks in Arizona, and a chance at the thousand-dollar college bond.”

  Vivian felt his excitement, and her heart hurt for him, but all she felt was fatigue. “Hon, I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t want you away from home for two weeks right now.”

  “Why not?”

  Because I’m afraid you may have killed some people. “A lot has happened in the last few weeks. I’m still confused about some of it. I need you here, where I can be with you. And you can be with me. Patrick…”

  “Mom,” Patrick whined, “it’s a thousand dollars.”

  “And you’re the only child I have. You’re all I have, Patrick. I don’t want something to go wrong. And there is something wrong, isn’t there…?”

  She was very near tears, and reached out to take his hand. “Patrick. Sometimes we can’t talk about the things that are really bothering us. And we can’t talk about the things we feel … or do. I’ve always tried to keep the channels open between us, but they’ve been closed recently.”

  He turned away from her, his fists clenched, his small dark face tilted at the floor.

  “Patrick…”

  “I need to get away from here.”

  “From me?”

  His voice was terribly small. “From everything. Just for a while. Please, Mom.”

  She was silent for a few moments, and the void seemed overwhelming. “I’ll be good,” he said in a child’s voice.

  Vivian felt old. Of course he wanted to get away from here. Of course he wanted to be with his friends. But she couldn’t. Just couldn’t. “Maybe next year.”

  “There is no next year!” he screamed, face swollen with emotion. Patrick stormed out.

  She looked after him, a flux of conflicting emotions. She read the note. It consisted of a few hundred words, a promise of different skies, different land, new friends. A few dollars. She crumpled the letter, then changed her mind, smoothed it out and stuck it behind the cash register. The wrinkled corner was still visible, staring at her accusingly. “Damn,” she said.

  * * *

  In the half-empty parking lot of the Beefhouse restaurant across the street sat a sky-blue van with California plates, its hood and roof still powdered with dust from the drive up over the Cascades. Its windows were deeply tinted.

  Inside the van, two men sat, listening to every word said in the costume shop. They heard Patrick’s excited voice. They heard Vivian’s emphatic “Damn.”

  Their names were Hennings and Fields, and they were the second team. Like Schott and Wisher, they were retired military, family men with homes and lives in other states. Like the others they also gathered information, but unlike them they had not yet been forced into direct action.

  When the Emory boy’s father was murdered, Patrick’s chart went red. All news reports from Claremont were double-chec
ked, and when a few days later an explosion killed several convicted felons who lived in Patrick’s trailer park, that red light began flashing.

  Careful inquiries suggested that the dead were part of a meth ring responsible for several unprosecuted acts of violence around Claremont, and their leader was rumored to have lost a fight with Patrick’s father soon before Otis Emory was found dead.

  Fifteen hours ago, the second team had bugged Vivian’s home and store, and were monitoring all conversations, waiting to hear any discussion about the camp invitation. Judging by the last few words, the news was not good.

  Hennings, a chunky dark balding man, was monitoring the radio. “Better call home,” Hennings said. “It’s a wash.”

  Fields’s scalp was liver-spotted beneath thinning, pale red hair. At the moment, his mouth was twisted in self-loathing.

  “He’s a killer already, Chuck. If we ever needed proof that Wisher was right about the kids, this Patrick is it.”

  “Damn,” Chuck Fields said.

  Hennings ground his fists against his temples. “We’re going green,” he growled. “Maybe I’m going to hell, but I’m saving a few lives along the way. Get him on the phone.”

  51

  SATURDAY, JUNE 23

  Patrick straddled his bicycle at the top of Suicide Hill. He had pushed the ten-speed all the way up, too tired and unfocused to try pedaling. He pushed himself forward, rotating the pedals twice until the gears caught. He screamed all the way down, leaning into the curves, thrilled by the sensation of wind whipping through his hair.

  When he skidded to a stop at the bottom he looked up at the top again, the blood pumping in his forearms and face, heart jumping in his chest. He felt about two hundred percent better. He turned the bike around and began to pump. At the top he paused, panting, but before his pulse slowed he turned the bike around and sped to the bottom again, his face a small dark mask of concentration.

  He slewed around at the bottom of the hill, and then, without pausing, pumped his way back to the top again.

  * * *

  As soon as he was out of sight, the blue van pulled onto a side street intersecting Suicide Hill just before the last, ugliest curve. Hennings kept the van in Drive, and idled the engine with his foot on the brake.

  “This is fucked up,” Chuck said nervously. “What the hell are we doing. We’re not supposed to kill kids. We’re supposed to protect them.”

  Hennings spit out the window. “We are. From kids like this.”

  * * *

  Patrick stood atop the hill, astride his bike, surveying his domain. From this elevated position, he could see the entire valley, all of the shops and streets, the river and the smokestacks of the bustling mill. His heart still pounded from the pumping climb up Suicide Hill, and the exertion was a cleansing thing, sweeping away the crippling guilt.

  He had made mistakes, his father had made mistakes, everybody in this damned town had made mistakes, and just a few people had paid the whole bill. There was a dead place in his heart, a place numb and dark, and his mind tumbled toward it if he gave himself time to think and feel.

  For just a moment another image flashed to mind: a blue van. On his way up the hill he had seen it parked in the Chevron lot. A blue van with out of state plates, and two men in the front. One white, one black. He had a vague sense of having seen them before. But where? Ah, well—it didn’t matter. In a town this size you eventually saw everyone more than once.

  Then he forgot about the van and started down the mountain. Faster and faster he rolled, entering a world of motion, all logical thought turned off. As he turned the last curve, he felt more than saw or heard the van coming for him.

  He didn’t have time to turn his head: that would have been suicide on Suicide Hill. But from the corner of his eye he saw the gleaming bumper, the gleaming eye of the headlight, the terrifying blue steel mass hurtling to crush him.

  Time slowed, stopped. Patrick’s concentration became so acute that he entered a kind of perceptual tunnel, all darkness with only the tiniest spot of light at the end. And in that very special place he seemed to have both all the time in the world, and no time at all.

  To the left was the Van. Death. To the right, death if he went over the low rail and fell down the drop onto the reservoir’s concrete lip. If he went straight ahead, the Van would catch him in maybe three seconds, smash him there or grind him into the rail. Death.

  Without time for conscious thought Patrick hit his brakes, threw his bike sideways and jumped the instant his right foot touched the ground. Forward momentum was transferred into a bouncing tumble, the bike cartwheeling an instant after they crashed down. Patrick screamed as his back hit the ground, then his shoulder hit the rail and the breath jolted out of him. He bounced up, over the rail, flinging his arm out and catching the edge of it with desperate fingers. He screamed again as his shoulder, elbow and fingers hyperextended as he gripped, trying to slow himself. He flung his other hand up, grabbed the rail with both hands now, and slid a dozen feet downhill, tearing the skin from his hands with the friction and uneven metal edges. Momentum ripped him free and he tumbled, fingers ripping at the ground as he twisted across three short feet of grass before he went over the edge.

  His left foot went over the drop, and he knew he was dead, knew it, could already see his body fall down, hear his open, screaming mouth, see his head strike the concrete like a watermelon dropped off a bridge—

  Then that dangling foot hit a water runoff pipe projecting from the sheer side, a few inches below the grass. The jolt went all the way up his leg, but it slowed him for a moment, and Patrick frantically hooked his right leg toward the same protrusion, floundered and then found it. And then he was hanging, butt dangling, both feet on the pipe, both hands clutching at the grass, straining to climb back up. The grass slipped beneath his fingers, then tore out in a series of furrows, and he slipped again, then found his grip and pulled himself back up. He lay there panting, face over the edge, staring down at the concrete floor thirty feet below.

  Distantly, he heard a rumble as the van tore off down the hill. He had enough time to wonder: which one of Cappy’s friends did that?

  Something crazily like laughter escaped his lips, then he rolled over onto his back and passed out.

  52

  Angel of Mercy Hospital was located only seven blocks from Costumes, Period. Only eight minutes elapsed between the moment Vivian got the call about her son and her dash from the elevator on the fourth floor.

  One Doctor Hubbard was waiting for her there, a man in his sixties with a sun-bronzed face and hair so full and black that it fairly screamed toupee.

  “Mrs. Emory?” Dr. Hubbard asked.

  “Yes. Is he—?”

  He waved his hands at her. “Now, Mrs. Emory. Please be calm. That boy caught the luckiest break imaginable—if he’d gone off the edge, he’d be dead. Instead, just some bruises, and a strained shoulder.”

  Violence everywhere. Death and accident, injury and fear. Vivian’s mind was so crowded with ugly thoughts she felt she was thinking in slow motion. “Can I see him?”

  “He’s resting just now, but…” He shrugged. “I think seeing you is better medicine than anything we could offer.”

  Clutching her purse in front of her like a shield, Vivian found her way to room 419, and eased the door open slowly, relieved beyond words when she saw the tiny sleeping form curled on its side beneath the thin blue blankets.

  Patrick’s face was bandaged along the left side, and his lips were split and swollen. His right shoulder was bandaged as well, and the elbow taped. His left eye looked as if someone had punched him.

  She slipped into a chair beside his bed, leaning her head against the rail, slipping her hand around his. Even asleep, his fingers tightened on hers, and Vivian’s heart sang.

  “Pat?” she whispered.

  Patrick opened his eyes groggily. The left lid would only open halfway. He seemed momentarily confused, as if not remembering what had happened
or where he was. “Mom?”

  “Oh, God,” she said, leaning over to kiss his forehead. She was so relieved she almost lost the capacity for speech. “I was so worried. If I lost you…”

  “You won’t lose me,” he said, trying to growl. “I’m too tough.” He winced. Vivian flinched at the sight of her son in such pain.

  “Mom,” he whispered. “I have something I need to tell you.”

  “Shhh,” she said, and stroked his brow. “We’ll talk about it later.” She glanced over her shoulder. A nurse had entered the room, and checked something on a clipboard at the foot of his bed.

  “All right,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry about running the hill. Suicide Hill. You were right. It wasn’t very smart.”

  “Shhh,” Vivian said, and blinked back tears. “Just rest right now.”

  * * *

  When Vivian emerged from the room, her face was puffy with tears. She needed time to think, time to stop shaking, to try to think through the last few horrible days and make some kind of sense of them. The stress was crushing her. Every breath felt like inhaling water. More than anything in the world, what she wanted to do was curl up in her own bed and cry.

  Before she could take a single step a nurse in a starched white cap collared her. “Chief Haines would like a word with you,” he said.

  She turned, and saw Haines approaching. She had seen him at town meetings, but they’d never spoken. He seemed a kindly man. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, had a shiny bald spot precisely at the crown of his head, and was as hard and round as an Idaho spud. The chief’s eyes seemed tired, but the compassion in his voice was unmistakable. “Mrs. Emory? I want to ask you something which might be a little uncomfortable, but it involves your boy’s safety.”

  “Yes?”

  “To your knowledge, was your husband involved in any illegal activity?”

  Her mouth went dry. “No. Why?”

  He scratched his bald spot. “Well … recently, there’s … a lot of violence for a town this size. Beatings, a gang war of some kind. Rumors about a fight between your husband and Cappy Swenson.”