Half-Resurrection Blues

by Daniel José Older

  I’m nodding, dazed more by the shock of agreeing than by the alcohol.

  “And finally,” Botus finishes elaborately, “who was he working for?”

  I stop nodding. “Come again?”

  “We have reason to believe, Agent Delacruz, that the conspirator Sarco was actually in league with another entity . . .” I’m not tipsy anymore. My mind is sharp with despair. “One besides the ngks, that is.”

  And then my stomach plummets. I know exactly where this is going. And as I think it, Botus is sliding Sasha’s picture across the table with his icy fingers. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

  And I’m raging across the room, overturning carefully placed furniture and growling my inhuman wrath as I wrap my hands around Botus’s shimmery neck and plunge my blade through his chest. No. No, not that. I’m nodding. Looking with disinterest, a touch of disdain even, at the picture Trevor showed me those months ago, ignoring the fluttering sensation in my chest. I shrug. Don’t want to overdo it. Just a shrug.

  “We believe this person to be, in fact, the mastermind behind the conspirator Sarco’s operation. Or should I say . . . mistressmind?”

  That cements it: Botus gotta die. He looks at me for a shared chuckle, but I just stare.

  He shrugs. “Anyway, we believe she has designed and carried out numerous breaches of the Council code and may have even manipulated this Sarco into performing her bidding. Perhaps with some form of mind trickery or hypnosis.”

  Lies. Impossible, ridiculous lies. “I see.”

  “We also have reason to suspect, Agent Delacruz, that she is, like yourself, an inbetweener, probably related somehow to the unsavory fellow you dealt with so proficiently last New Year’s Eve. Well done, by the way.”

  I nod. Some of my best work, actually. Completely fucked up my life. You’re welcome.

  “Anyway, it’s fitting, in a way, that you should lead up this part deux of the investigation, so to speak.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  “We don’t know, I’m afraid. May take a little reconnaissance work. But all your operational considerations regarding Sarco should be transferred directly to this new target, considered extremely lethal and a vast threat to the Council and all that we stand for. From what we can figure, an attack is imminent.”

  An attack is always imminent, but I don’t have it in me to get slick.

  “We want her dead. Deeply dead. Gone. Extinct. Is that clear, Agent Delacruz?”

  “Crystal. When do I start?”

  “Immediately, of course.”

  My voice sounds cold and a hundred miles away. “Excellent.”

  * * *

  “Well,” Riley says. “We both knew this was going to happen sooner or later.”

  I shrug. We’re back at the Burgundy, but I don’t even feel like drinking anymore. “It’s true, but damn . . .” A horrible thought occurs to me and I try to put it away.

  “Spit it out, man.”

  “I just . . . you don’t think . . . the Council’s somehow . . . you know?”

  Riley sighs. “I know, and no.” I’m almost disappointed. In some twisted way. This whole mess’d be much easier to swallow if I could just blame it on a vast Council conspiracy and call it a day. “I’ve had that thought many times, Carlos, believe me. The sheer amount of complete fuckery that goes on over there is astounding, but it’s just that: fuckery. There’s no logic or rhythm to it. There’s no underlying genius or cover-up. They just overdo everything and get bogged down in all that supernatural bureaucracy, and somehow it manages to fuck up the rest of our lives again and again.”

  “Damn, that does pretty much sum it up.”

  “Let me ask you a question.”

  I nod for him to go ahead.

  “Y’all fucked or you made love?”

  My face says, I have no idea what you’re talking about, so that I don’t have to.

  “Did you pound that pussy, or did you softly caress it until the morning’s first motherfuckin’ light?”

  “Um . . . a little of both, I guess.”

  Riley puts his face in his hands and sighs. “Oh, Christ Jesus, Carlos. That’s bad.”

  “Why? What’s that mean?” Riley and his damn relationship theories. I really think he spends this much time thinking about it because he hasn’t been in one since he’s been dead. I’m not even really sure if he . . . can. The few cryptic shards of his life he claims to remember always magically happen to be when he was getting it on. It’s gone well past the realm of credibility at this point, but I don’t really mind.

  “I’m just saying, when you . . .” He pauses, tries to arrange his thoughts. “I’m trying to establish the degree of entangled that you’ve gotten yourself. Because when it comes to women that are involved with investigations, it’s one thing to have a one-off, like you were on the brink of with that white chick, Christina.”

  “Amanda.”

  “But it’s a whole other situation when you’re talking about, you know . . . the heavy-duty shit. And you killed her brother? Damn. Tangled-ass web you weave, son.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So you gonna go after her?”

  I nod.

  “What you gonna do when you catch her?”

  I dismount the barstool and drop some ones on the counter. “To be honest, I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Find Sasha.

  This is, after all, what I do. When I returned, when I woke from the groggy, infinite sleep, my body already knew how to cast this fibrous, tingling net around me and then cull it back and digest the wealth of information it brought. I knew how to interpret each flash and glimmer, the droll tides of sorrow and flash-pan bursts of joy. Lying there in Mama Esther’s guest room, I perfected the push and pull. Found the outer reach, contracted just so and then released again, inching this web of mine farther and farther until the entire neighborhood around me gave up its pulsing secrets, and I had to stop from sheer information fatigue.

  And now, standing in the center of an open field in Prospect Park at dusk, I throw farther out into the reaches of Brooklyn than I ever have before. This is my second night of searching, second night of standing perfectly still in the middle of this park, projecting and retracting, coming up empty. Clouds cover the moon; a breeze passes, whispering of autumn’s approach. The amphitheater of trees around me shivers.

  Ignore the park spirits—no anomalies ping out from the darkened slopes to either side. The surrounding neighborhoods tingle with life—Brooklyn braces itself for something. Hearts race, preparations in full swing. Even the cops know it’s coming; they shift their weight and mutter to one another.

  But what?

  I draw back in. Breathe. Breathe again and then release, wider this time, beyond the park, beyond the projects and massive ornate apartment complexes, past Empire Boulevard and Eastern Parkway, deep into Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush.

  Sasha.

  Thousands of pings, heartaches, fears, great sweeping torrents of love and doubt, explosions of rage and the glib, monotonous landslide of depression. Honking horns and flashing lights, a thrusting motion, sudden death, slow impossibly slow decay, the birth of a new movement, a ritual repeated again and again, the gathering tide of generations shifting repeating changing vanishing a pinprick a temper tantrum a gas leak a nail clipping a regret a scrap of lined paper scribbled on in long frantic letters a puff of steam a journey a bike helmet playing cards Sasha an engine a pair of scissors a— It was just a wisp. Circle in, circle in—train tracks domino tables chairs the night sky regret a swallow a crack in the sidewalk a tunnel an old hand, shivering, turns over another card a trash can a wheel a pigeon two pigeons an iron bridge over the tracks a chair—

  “Again?”

  What?

  “Yes?”

  I open my eyes. The glimmer of a soulcatcher helmet clouds the night sky. The threads release, a last flickering glimpse of Sasha vanishes amid the avalanche of information,
and then there’s nothing.

  “Sir?”

  I blink. I’m lying on my back.

  “Sir, you don’t look well, sir.”

  No . . . shit. Information overload. Never cast the net that far before.

  “A hand, sir?” The soulcatcher reaches a shimmering glove toward me.

  I shake my head.

  “We came for orders.”

  Orders. We. A few shadows stir in the corner of my eye. Right. Hunched on my elbows now, I take in the squad of soulcatchers. Those battered, horseshoe-crab helmets and long hooded cloaks. Ornate face guards like some elegant skullsmile.

  “We brought you coffee, sir.”

  Bless them. I gather myself, roll onto my front, then heave up to a crouch, and finally stand. “Black?”

  “And no sugar, just like you like it.” The soulcatcher nods to where a blue-and-white to-go cup sits in the grass. Protocol junkies. There’s no one around, no one to see the cup float and then pass to me by an invisible hand. They probably whispered in some poor drunk’s ears till he stumbled into a bodega for it and then distracted him and whisked it away, vanishing it with some Council magic as they made their way through the streets into the park. And then they put it on the ground for me. So the empty park and midnight sky wouldn’t see them pass it.

  Protocol junkies.

  I pick it up, pop the plastic lid opening, and take a sip. It’s thin bodega trash water, but I let out a satisfied ahh sound anyway. “You’ve done well, fellas.”

  “Thank you, sir. Do you have orders for us?”

  “Orders?”

  “Regarding the apprehension of Sasha Brass.”

  “Queens,” I say.

  “Sir?”

  “Got word she might be in Queens.”

  The shrouds flutter uncomfortably. “The borough? Anything more . . . specific?”

  “Is Queens too large an area for you to cover with your ’catchers?”

  “No, sir.”

  I look up at the cloudy sky and sip my coffee. “Then happy hunting. I’m following up with some leads over here.”

  For a few seconds, the soulcatchers just waver in the night wind. I turn to look at them, very slowly and with death in my eyes. They turn and slip silently across the field.

  I know I’m an asshole for that. They’ll be searching the backstreets of Corona and Rego Park until next Tuesday, but I need them out of the way, and if I just send them home, it’ll raise too many eyebrows.

  Once again in silence, I close my eyes and strain, poring over the jumble of meta- and microdata. A wrinkled hand overturned a card onto a velvet cloth. It’s a cloth I’ve seen before, a hand I know.

  I open my eyes and then run.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Old Ginny is not a fortune-teller I put much stock in. Nice lady, but as far the future goes, she’s useless. Still, when she looks me dead in the eyes tonight and scowls, “You, sir, are fucked,” I have to lend it a little credence. I’ve never seen her predict with such certainty; usually she’s all waving hands and hmming it up to seem more authentic.

  “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Ginny.”

  She looks up at me from her little cubbyhole storefront. “I’m just saying.”

  “Maybe keep it to yourself next time. I didn’t ask for a damn reading.”

  “Sometimes I give freebies.”

  “How charitable. You seen a—?” How to describe Sasha and not sound like a twelve-year-old asshole discovering poetry for the first time?

  Ginny raises her eyebrows at me.

  “A beautiful . . .” I wave my hands around.

  “I seen her,” Old Ginny says. “Stopped by a few hours ago.” She flips over another card: Death. “Oh boy.”

  “You turn over that card every time I come around, Ginny. I’m not impressed.”

  “Well, maybe that should tell you something.”

  “The woman. What’d she want?”

  “Weed.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She asked me if I knew where to get some weed.”

  “Did you . . . did you tell her?”

  “Sent her to TiVo.”

  “The fuck kinda street name is TiVo?”

  The old fortune-teller shrugs. “He likes to have his shows recorded while he’s out selling, I guess.”

  “Whatever. Where does he sit?”

  “Ocean Ave.,” Ginny says. “A few blocks down from the park.”

  I close my eyes. She’ll let you know how to find her when she’s ready to be found. Mama Esther’s words whisper through me. “Thank you, Ginny.”

  “Be careful out there, Carlos.”

  * * *

  Brooklyn’s beautiful tonight. I stroll down a quiet residential block, enjoying the warm air on my face. I can almost ignore the nagging sensation that Sarco looms in every tall shadow. A wrinkled old man sits on his stoop, enjoying a cigarette like he’s done every night before bed for the past forty-something years. He’s dying and he knows it, better than his doctors even, but he could give a shit. It’s been a long and glorious life, full of hard work and good love and he’s pretty much ready to go. So he sits there grinning out at the night and tips his battered baseball cap as I pass.

  “Evening,” I say. A few cars go by. The trees swirl and gossip quietly above me. No ghosts, no Sarco. No one at all, in fact, once I pass Old Dying Guy. Then I turn a corner onto Ocean Ave.; the block is alive with mommies and children, teenagers flirting, street vendors selling knickknacks. Smoke billows from those big barbecue vats, and you can smell jerk chicken getting brown for blocks and blocks and blocks. The whole neighborhood is celebrating another day of life.

  I’m pretty sure Sasha had no interest in buying weed, but just in case I’m wrong, I walk up to the dude with a baseball cap and puffy jacket on the far end of the block.

  “TiVo?”

  “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  “I do.”

  He sizes me up, squinting through whatever calculation makes me coplike or not. “Come,” he finally says. We walk between two apartment buildings, past a trash dump, and into a small back office where a little white guy sits typing on a laptop.

  “This dude came looking for you, T. Want me to pop him?”

  I’m working out my own calculations—how fast I can unsheathe my cane-blade and slice both these motherfuckers—when TiVo waves a hand without looking up from the screen. “Nah, it’s cool, Melo. Thanks. Hang on one”—he types one last thing and then looks up at me—“sec. There. Hey, what can I do for you? You want some weed? Meth? Red? Purple Haze? P-funk? I got it, homeslice.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m straight. Did a pretty girl come through today, looking for weed?”

  Melo wiggles his eyebrows. “Did she! Ay . . .” I shut him up with a glance, look back at TiVo.

  “She did.” He smirks. “Sold her a dime bag.”

  “She say anything?”

  I’m wondering when it’ll kick into TiVo that I could be a cop, a rival gang member, anything . . . but he just shrugs. “Nah, just bought the dime and peaced.”

  “See where she went?”

  “Nah. You sure you don’t want some weed, man?” His eyes drift back to the computer screen.

  I shake my head and see myself out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I stand perfectly still across the street from Sasha’s building. It’s another of these giant, antique-looking beasts that fill up Flatbush with their vast lobbies and rickety old elevators. I’d given up staking the place out when it was clear she’d vacated the place. Now she’s let me know she’s back and I have no idea what to do. There’s a little Mexican kid sitting outside wearing a Spider-Man outfit and talking to himself. I’m trying not to see myself in him.

  This is supposed to be fun. I was born to hunt, dammit. But instead, for the first time, I am that creepy guy that people so often mistake me for. I’m a stalker. And my stalker’s mind is cluttered with endless irritating debates about what will h
appen next—a hundred hypotheticals, none of which do me any good whatsoever. I could walk right up there. We could have it out, settle our differences, have amazing sex, and then fuck up Sarco’s plans. In whatever order makes the most sense, of course. But then I could walk up there and find Sarco waiting instead of her. Or Sarco waiting with her, infinite ughh, and then that’d be that.

  Across the street, mini-Spider-Man is having a whole debate with himself in Spanish.

  What if, he’s probably saying, Sasha really is behind the whole thing?

  Bullshit, he replies, shaking his head. She’s had every reason in the world to stab you without being a supernatural criminal mastermind.

  But she reeled you right in too, didn’t she? Worked it just right. You think it was all just happenstance how sweet everything worked out?

  I followed the footprints she left for me to see. She’s not stupid, and she knew I’d be looking for her. She led me to her door. Mama Esther said she’d reach out; she reached out.

  Mm-hmm. Bet it feels good to think that.

  You shut up.

  Okay.

  The kid fishes some old crackers out of his little school satchel and chews on them, looking thoughtfully at nothing at all. I go for a Malagueña, realize I’m out, curse, and then limp from my stalker spot toward the bodega on the corner.

  And that’s when I realize I’m being followed.

  It’s like a jolt of pure life in my veins. The little hairs on the back of my neck stand up; the whole world around me springs into sharp focus. I’d been waiting for this feeling, that sweet thrill of the hunt, but when the target’s all cluttered by emotions, well . . . the thrill keeps its distance.

  This, though, is something else entirely. Someone has their eyes glued to my back. They’re plotting from the shadows, improvising around any obstacles or uncertainties, planning ahead, setting up traps. Doing what I do. For a terrible second I both hope and fear that it’s Sasha, but immediately, I know it’s not. This is an altogether different feeling. The wind whispers in my ear, the subtle atmospheric changes, the faces passing by, the shushing trees—they all sound the subtle warnings of the universe. Something is coming. It’s close. It’s been with me for a while, too. I’ve just had my head too far up my ass to notice. Damn.