by John Hart
“Just give me a minute.” But it took more time than that. There was so much to convey and so little she could understand. He killed a man at ten to save his life, and killed the next to make the old man proud. “There are no innocents,” he said, and the words were a memory of childhood.
“What does that mean?”
Michael touched a patch of skin above his eye. “Something someone told me once. It doesn’t matter.”
“I need to know more. You told me you loved him and that you killed him. You can’t leave it at that. You can’t leave me with that and nothing else.”
“Just give me a minute.”
But the right minute never came.
They hit traffic north of Baltimore. One hour stretched to two. The engine droned, and at one point Elena slept. She went deep and hot, dreamed of babies and fire, then woke with a scream trapped behind her teeth.
“You’re dreaming,” he said.
“How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.”
The car was barely moving. Blue lights flashed through the glass, and she saw police cruisers in front of them, ambulances and cars with ripped skin. Shattered glass made stars on the road, and for one instant she wanted to fling herself from the car, to give herself to the police and be done. She pressed a palm against her stomach, heard a last, far cry as if from the babies burning in her dream.
Michael touched her hair.
“Just a dream,” he said.
“Am I okay?” She was not sure what she meant.
“I’ve got you, baby.”
It was a thing he said, words she’d heard a thousand times: late after a bad night at work; walking home in the dark or after some other nightmare; days when she was sick or feeling lonesome. He stroked her hair, and like that, the fear was gone. The nightmare faded, and his voice settled like a blanket.
Heavy …
“I’ve got you, baby.”
Warm …
* * *
She woke again in Washington, still blurry and scared and uncertain. Fifteen miles later, Michael said, “You haven’t asked me where we’re going.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing is real until tomorrow.” Her eyes glittered, and she shifted in her seat. “Today’s too big.”
They drove a bit farther. Headlights lit one side of Michael’s face and left the other side dark. “There are things I’ve done—”
“Don’t.”
“It’s important.”
“Please, don’t.”
Her grip was strong on his hand, but when Michael looked right he saw that she was struggling, one eye bright as a star in the hard rush of yellow light.
* * *
North of Richmond, Michael found a motel that took cash and didn’t worry about identification. It was cheap and clean, fifty yards off the interstate. He let Elena into the room, then watched as she pulled off her clothes and crawled between the sheets. The room was dim but for a blade of light between drawn curtains. Her head found a pillow and she rolled onto her back, one arm up. “Come to bed.” She pulled back the sheet, and said nothing as Michael withdrew the pistol from his belt and put it on the bedside table. He stripped off his clothes, slipped in next to her, and stretched out on his back. Elena rolled against him, put warm skin on his. She tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder, spread a palm on his chest, and Michael knew that she could feel his heart.
“Elena,” he said.
“Sshh. Sleep first.”
She pushed closer into his side, slipped a leg across the two of his. Her stomach pressed his hip, her breasts heavy on his ribs. Breath made a hot wind on the side of Michael’s throat, and he knew she was pretending that nothing had changed. Her man was just her man. All was right in the world. He let her have it, the gift of a night; and when she slept, Michael rose. He pulled on his pants and shirt, lifted the gun and checked it from long habit. He released the clip and racked the slide. Copper jackets gleamed in the dim light. Brass casings. Oiled steel. He reassembled the weapon, jacked a round into the chamber, and lowered the safety. Outside, the parking lot was still. Michael noted cars and sight lines and exits. Stevan had fifty guns on the payroll and unlimited resources. He also had Jimmy.
Jimmy could be a problem.
Moving a chair to the window, Michael sat and placed the gun on the windowsill. He watched, he waited; an hour before dawn, the cell phone in his pocket vibrated. Michael looked at the number and was unsurprised. His foster brother had always been a talker. “Hello, Stevan.”
“Do you know where I am?” The phone was warm on Michael’s ear. Stevan sounded low and tired and angry.
“How could I know that?” Michael kept his own voice low, but when he looked at Elena, she was stirring. He opened the door and stepped outside. The air was velvet smooth, the interstate strangely quiet. In the east, the sky hinted at dawn.
“I’m parked outside the city morgue. Do you know why? Because they took my father’s body. The cops took him, and now they’re cutting him open. That’s on you, Michael, that desecration.”
“I’m sorry, Stevan. I never wanted that. I just want out.”
“If I let you go, I look weak. Then, there’s my father. You killed him in his own bed.”
“You killed Elena. We’re even.”
“That would not come close to making us even, the death of a woman. Besides, I know she lived.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“How long do you think you can keep her safe?”
“You touch Elena, and I’ll kill you. It’s that simple.”
“Should I be scared?”
“You’ll never find me.”
“I don’t have to find you.”
“Why not?”
“Say hello to your brother.”
“I told you, I don’t—”
The line went dead. Michael closed the phone, and when he turned he found Elena standing in the open door. She’d wrapped herself in a sheet from the bed. “Was that him?” she asked.
“Stevan? Yes.” Michael turned her back into the room and closed the door.
“He really wants me dead?”
She was afraid. He took her chin in his hand and kissed her once on the lips. “I won’t let that happen.”
“How can you know?”
“You said nothing was real until tomorrow. It’s not tomorrow yet.” It was a lie they chose to accept, that dawn’s fingers were not yet clawing red from the sky, that it could even make a difference. She nodded, eyes closed, and Michael said, “Let’s go back to bed.”
Michael took the sheet and spread it over the bed. They climbed in, and she pressed against his skin as she had before. “Love me,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
The air was black around them, the door bolted shut. She nodded again, lips soft on his, and Michael rolled her onto her back. His fingers found the vellum of her skin, the warm planes and the dusky bits of her. She kissed his neck, his chest. They loved as if the night were their last, and in a way it was, for both felt the morning sun coming, the stark truths of the day that raced to find them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Michael slept hard and woke to the sound of the television. When he opened his eyes, he saw Elena perched on the end of the bed, wrapped in a blanket. The clock said it was almost noon. She was watching CNN. “They’re talking about us.” She did not turn, and Michael threw off the covers, scrubbed two hands across his face, and moved to sit beside her. The image on the screen was from the day before: the restaurant, burning. He watched firefighters assault the blaze, then the camera angle cut away, and the reporter was interviewing a man and a woman, both middle-aged and white, both nervous. They described a man who looked like Michael. They spoke of automatic weapons and people screaming, people dead. They described Elena, and it was a very good description.
“Black dress and long legs … very pretty…”
The wife tugged on her husband’s shirt, interrupting.
“She was holding his hand, running. They got in the same car.”
At the bottom of the screen, a grainy surveillance photo of a dark Navigator appeared with the caption, POLICE ARE SEARCHING FOR THIS CAR. Below the photo, they gave the license plate number.
Michael rose to check the parking lot. When he came back, the couple had disappeared, replaced by images of smoke-stained firefighters and paramedics bent over bodies. They showed a row of vinyl bags, wounded people that were blank-eyed and in shock. When the reporter began her recap, Michael heard the words “possible terrorist attack” on three occasions.
Elena stood and did not look at Michael. “The police think I’m involved, don’t they?”
“I don’t—”
“They’re looking for me.”
Michael nodded sadly. “Yes.”
“They think I killed my friends.”
“They don’t know what to think,” Michael said. “They have your description and mine. They have the car and a lot of questions. That’s it. That’s all. They don’t have our names; they know nothing about us.”
“Police want to arrest me and your friends want to kill me?”
“I won’t let any of that happen.”
“I’m going to take a shower.” She gestured at the television screen. “There’s more. You should watch it.” She hesitated at the bathroom door, still refusing to meet his eyes. “I’ll be in here for a very long time. Please, don’t come in.”
She closed the door. The lock dropped and Michael watched the television: “Sources close to the investigation indicate that organized crime may be involved…”
The television cut to an image of the old man’s town house in Sutton Place. Police cars lined the street. Yellow tape. Barricades. Cops moved in and out of the front door. Body bags rolled on wheeled gurneys and were hoisted into ambulances with dark lights.
“… the Navigator identified leaving the scene of the explosion has been traced to this address. Initial reports indicate seven bodies were discovered here just minutes before the explosion in Tribeca…”
Michael glanced at the bathroom door. His name was not mentioned, though Stevan’s was. The cops wanted to talk to him. They showed his picture.
And Jimmy’s.
Michael turned off the television and checked the parking lot again. The day was blue and flawless. He called the front desk, got an older man with a smoker’s voice. “What’s the best place to shop for clothes?” The man gave directions to the local mall. Michael wrote them down, then pulled on the same clothes from yesterday. He tied his shoes, ran fingers through his hair, then wrote a note that read, WENT OUT TO BUY CLOTHES, ETC. BACK SOON. PLEASE DON’T LEAVE. She wouldn’t, he was sure, not after last night. There were too many questions, too much to say.
Outside, the air was hot and tasted of traffic. Michael drove ten minutes into Richmond, then got off the interstate and found the big shopping mall exactly where he’d been told it would be. He parked the car and entered near the food court. Shopping as quickly as he could, he bought three changes of clothes for himself and for Elena. He kept it simple when it came to his own needs: jeans, casual shirts, good shoes. A light jacket with a zipper would hide the gun.
Michael knew Elena’s sizes, the kinds of shoes she liked. He spent lavishly and paid cash for everything. Back in the parking lot, he took the plates off the Navigator and switched them with a dark blue pickup parked in the far, back corner. The last store he visited was a drugstore two blocks from the hotel. He bought toothbrushes, shaving gear, whatever he thought they’d need. At the motel, he did a slow drive through the lot and saw nothing that alarmed him. The place was like a million others.
He parked and went inside.
Elena was sitting in one of the chairs, wrapped in a towel. “I couldn’t bear to put the same clothes back on,” she said. “They felt soiled.”
He put the bags on the floor. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Elena said, “You should take a shower.”
Michael turned the shower on as hot as he could bear it. He lathered and scrubbed and shaved, so that by the time he came out, dressed in new jeans and a blue shirt, he was fresh as he thought he could be. “You look better.” Elena’s gaze lingered. She wore expensive jeans and brown leather boots with low heels and buckles at mid-calf. She stood, uncomfortable. “Can we walk?”
“There’s not much out there.”
“I just need to move.”
Michael put on the jacket and clipped the nine millimeter back onto his belt. They slipped out of the room, Elena in front. The parking lot had few cars. Large, metal-sided buildings could be seen down a slight incline. Storage. A boat retailer. Used cars. A second motel pushed close to the feeder road that ran parallel to the interstate. Blank windows stretched in rows, looking out on the same parking lot. Next to the motel was a diner with brushed metal sides and booths behind the glass. On its sign was a giant coffee cup. Elena pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I feel like I should run.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
Instead, she walked. She aimed for the back of the lot and seemed content to walk along the verge where scrub trees and chain-link fencing met. They walked in silence until the trees thinned and they could see rooftops across a wide gulley. Elena closed her eyes and lifted her chin as if testing the faint, acrid breeze with her nose. When she opened her eyes, there was a firmness to her mouth, an edge of decision.
He was going to lose her.
“How many people have you killed?”
The question caught Michael off guard. The words were matter-of-fact, but her face twisted, and fear, suddenly, inhabited everything around them; it gave urgency to the limbs that rattled and scraped, voice to the cars that screamed on the interstate, depth to the reflections caught in motel glass. It was fear of the next step, of crossing some uncrossed line and finding oneself trapped on the other side. Michael worried how Elena would react to the words he chose, and knew, too, the thing she feared. “One or a hundred,” Michael said, “does it really matter?”
“Of course it matters. What kind of stupid question is that?” She shoved her hands into her pockets, and together they watched a dog by the interstate. It loped along the verge, nose down, tongue lolling over brown, broken teeth. It looked once up the hill, then nosed a diaper that littered the roadside.
“With the exception of the man who raised me,” Michael said, “that dog is better than any man I’ve ever killed.”
Elena shivered at the certainty in his voice, the implications. “A man is not a dog.”
“A dog is usually better.”
“Not always.”
“I have good judgment.”
The dog pulled its snout from the diaper, and Elena wanted to scream; she wanted to run and vomit and carve great chunks from her heart. “What do we do now?”
“I take you to lunch.”
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
Michael laid three fingers on her arm, and said, “It’s not about the food.”
* * *
The restaurant was an Italian bistro with white tablecloths and deep booths. Soft leather sighed as they sat. A waiter brought menus and filled their water glasses. “Anything else to drink while you’re thinking about your order?”
“Elena?” Michael asked.
“This is too normal.” Her hands found the white cloth and she pushed herself from the booth. “Excuse me.” She moved past the waiter and disappeared into the ladies’ room.
The waiter’s face showed his confusion.
Michael said, “I’ll have a beer.”
When Elena came back, they ate lunch, but it wasn’t easy. There was a reticence in her that went beyond the expected.
* * *
Back at the motel, Elena shut herself in the bathroom. When she came out, her hair was damp at the edges, the skin of her face pink from cold w
ater and a rough towel. “I’ve made a decision.” She was resolute. “I’m going home.”
“You can’t.”
“I love you, Michael. God help me for that, I do. And I get it, okay? The whole childhood thing, what’s happened to you and how you turned into the man you are. It breaks my heart, truthfully, and I could spend a day weeping for the sad, small boys in that photograph you carry. But I have to put the baby first. This baby. Mine.” Both hands covered her stomach. “That means I can’t be with you. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not safe in New York. You’re not safe here, not without me.”
Her chin lifted. “I called Marietta.”
“Marietta who lives next door?”
“She has a key. She is sending my passport here by overnight mail. Tomorrow I will go back to Spain.”
“You gave Marietta this address?”
“Of course.”
“When did you call her?”
“What does it matter? I called her. She is sending the passport and I will leave.”
Michael caught her arm. “When?”
“This morning. While you slept.”
“What time?”
“Seven thirty, maybe eight. Ow, Michael. You’re hurting me.”
“Call her.” Michael released her arm and pushed his cell phone into her hand. “Do it.”
Elena dialed. “She is not answering.”
“Try her cell.”
Elena redialed and was shunted straight to voice mail. “She always has it with her. She always has it on.”
Michael knew this was true. Marietta worked in public relations. Her phone was her life. “Tell me the conversation.”
“She was going on about some corporate event—Mercedes, I think. I told her where to find the passport, in the cabinet above the oven. She said she would mail it first thing.”
“What else?”
“I heard voices. People on the stairs, maybe. She said she had to go.”
“Get your things. We’re leaving.”
“Why?”
“Marietta’s dead.”
“What?”
“We have to move.”
Michael checked the window. Outside, three men climbed from a dark green van. They were hard-looking men, one Hispanic and two whites. The Hispanic carried a duffel bag, and it was heavy. Michael did not recognize any of them, but knew at a glance what they’d come for. He took in the plates on the van, how their eyes moved, the way they carried themselves. “Too late.” He flicked the curtain closed, stepped into the bathroom, and started the shower. When he came out, he left the bathroom door cracked.