Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  “Was he happy to see Gio?” I ask. All of this family stuff is a mystery to me, but I guess I better start figuring it out.

  Kia’s smile is more of a grimace. “Happy’s a funny word for it. He broke down crying when they hugged. Then my dad held Gio at a distance and looked at him, and Gio just shook his head and kept apologizing and they both cried and then we all cried and then we ate a big lunch just like Gio and I had planned, and then we told him about how I’m leaving school and going to Brazil with Gio and Rigo.”

  “Smart move,” Reza says. “Always feed people before you deliver crushing news.”

  “And then he lost his shit.”

  “Ain’t mad at him,” I say.

  Kia shrugs. “It’s been an emotional day.”

  “Week,” I say.

  “Year,” Reza adds.

  We all nod.

  “Anyway . . .” Kia perks up. “I wanted to thank you both. You know, for saving my life and letting me help out and all that shit.”

  I smile. “I mean, you really saved my life.”

  “If your half-dead ass hadn’ta been in the way, that big ol’ half-dead-ass cockroach monster dude woulda had nothing between me and him. So yeah, maybe I pulled the Tartus ghost off ya, but I’m gonna still give you credit for the save on that one.”

  I doff my cap in acceptance.

  “And you.” She looks at Reza. “I just . . . I want to be like you when I grow up.”

  Reza rolls her eyes. “Here I thought I could make it to sixty without anyone ever saying that to me. Please don’t be. Seriously. Just be like you. Hell, I wanna be like you when I grow up.”

  “Whatever,” Kia grumbles. “Thank you.”

  We clink mugs just as Cathy appears holding a cupcake with one of those white emergency-supply candles shoved in it. “Happy birthday, little darlin’,” she rasps. Then she places the cupcake on the table and lights her cigarette off the candle flame.

  “Oh my God!” Kia squeals. “You guys didn’t have to—oh my God!” She leaps out of her seat and hugs Cathy, who looks slightly terrified, and then shoves into the bench with Reza and me, squeeing like a—well, like a teenager.

  She almost never cracks that tough facade, I realize. I’m going to miss her when she’s gone. “Of course we had to,” I say. “It’s your birthday, right?”

  “I mean, shit, yeah, but . . . I dunno. Wow!”

  She tells us about all the exciting things she plans to do in Bahia when she gets there, how Rigo lives a ten-minute bus ride from the ocean and she’s going to go every day and how the orishas are everywhere down there, not just in botánicas. She goes on and on, face lit up by the birthday candle and all the future has in store.

  When three o’clock hits, the last thing I want to do is leave, much less deal with the vapid, senseless explanations of the people upstairs.

  But.

  “Alright, y’all,” I say. “I gotta go speak bureaucracese to the Council and see what’s what.”

  Reza’s smile becomes sly. “And I got some other business to attend to.”

  “Oh?” I shoot her a glance, eyebrows raised. She just grins.

  Outside, the afternoon is wrapped in gray; rain teases the edges of the sky. I give Kia a huge hug, holding tight till she taps my shoulder to let me know she can’t breathe. “Be careful out there,” I say. Everything I could think up sounded pretty stupid, so I opted for the least stupid.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Kia rolls her eyes. “You be careful.”

  “You got the blade I gave you?”

  She pats her shoulder bag. “Of course, C. Chill. I got this.”

  If this is even a microscopic slice of what parents feel like sending their babies off to college, I’m not sure I’m cut out for the job. But I guess I’ll figure it out one way or another. Kia gets into Reza’s Crown Vic, waves one more time, and then they take off down the dusty backstreets of Bushwick.

  • • •

  “Basically,” Riley says, “Tartus was the third leg of the Blattodeon Trinity, but he bit it early—we think one of the Survivors got him when they were warring with the roaches—and so the Ferns had him frozen in ghost carbonite so to speak until the time was right. Then, when all didn’t go according to their plan to resurrect the Master Hive and two Petaris, they started improvising. Didn’t work out though.”

  Botus’s frown reaches all the way down his shimmering face.

  Usually, that lights a dancing candle of joy within my heart, but on this overcast afternoon, it’s cause for alarm.

  He leans his long, angular body all the way across his desk at Riley and me. “What I fail to understand, gentlemen, is how you ended up beneath the city fighting pests while the individual we asked you to protect slipped away. She could’ve been kidnapped by her brother’s minions, for all we know!”

  “Funny thing about that,” I say, my voice cold as death. “Turns out Caitlin Fern was involved in the illegal torture and weaponization of ghostlings.”

  Botus narrows his eyes at me.

  “Which I know is strictly forbidden by Council protocols.”

  “Of course,” Botus says icily.

  “So, I took it upon myself to unravel the Ferns’ schemes. As I’m authorized to do. Which led me to the lighthouse, where we destroyed most of the Blattodeons and the head of the Survivors, along with one of his henchwomen. And since the Survivors have long been a public enemy of the Council, I was surprised that someone the Council asked me to protect was aligned with them.”

  Bartholomew Arsten emerges from the shadows behind Botus. “Are you implying, Agent Delacruz, that—”

  “I’m implying that instead of this interrogation,” I growl, “perhaps a simple thank you would do.”

  Botus waves his arm. “That’s enough.” Arsten fades back into the darkness. The Chairman swings back to us. “As to your concerns, Agent Delacruz, the Council was unaware of any of the indelicate activities you describe regarding Miss Fern, and of her connection to the Survivors.”

  “Imagine,” Riley says. “And it was all happening right under your nose.”

  “Caitlin Fern was a private contractor with the Council,” Botus continues. “Much like yourself, Agent Delacruz. She has a special talent for working with the dead, and she’s done excellent work for us in the past. The allegations that she snatched children from the adoptive agency she worked for are, of course, troubling and completely out of line with Council policy.”

  Riley and I just stare at him so he knows we’re not eating his bullshit. What’s the point of arguing though?

  “Anyway, our throng haints are seeking her out, and they’ll surely turn her up soon. After all, she trained them. The throng haints know her ways better than anyone else at the Council.”

  I don’t release the hundred curse-outs rising inside me. Of course the throng haints won’t catch Caitlin; they’re probably helping her escape right now. And Botus damn well knows it.

  “When she’s caught,” Botus goes on, as if his words have meaning, “she’ll have to answer for her crimes, as well as those of her associates.”

  Charming.

  “Speaking of associates.” Botus whirls around, his eyes boring into Riley’s. Riley doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch. “We would love to have a word with Soulcatcher Bell and the recently defected Squad 9. Just a word, is all. If they reenlist and answer a few questions, all will be forgotten, of course. The Council takes care of its own.”

  Silence.

  “Well, do let them know, if you should happen to . . . bump into any of them out in your travels.”

  I stand up, because if I’m here any longer I’ll do something reckless. “We done?”

  “Just one small matter,” Arsten simpers.

  I stare at him.

  “Your next assignment, he-he.” He looks around. No one’s laughing
with him. “Mount Prospect Park. It’s the one squished between the museum and the public library, over on Eastern Parkway?”

  “I know it.” My voice: ice.

  “A bum got squashed there last night. Like . . . flattened. Horrible stuff. Got a certain supernatural flare to it, it seems. See what you can find out.”

  Botus is smiling.

  I shake my head and walk out the room.

  • • •

  “You know those mothafuckas knew exactly what Caitlin was doing the whole goddamn time!”

  We’re facing the water, past the fence that Caitlin recklessly led me through just yesterday. I nod. “She’s in the wind now though.”

  “We tried to find her, man. Shit was chaos for a minute after you took off. Sylvia’s guys say they musta had an underwater tunnel in that pit somewhere. She was just gone, man.”

  “Nothing you coulda done.” I pass him a Malagueña. Cup my hands into a shelter and light it for him. I don’t even feel like smoking.

  “Thing now is,” Riley says. “What do we do?”

  I just stare at the crashing gray water. “The Council protected Caitlin while she plotted the destruction of my family. They gave her resources, looked the other way while she enslaved and tortured baby ghosts. Baby ghosts she sent against Kia, was gonna send against my . . . children and Sasha. I just . . .”

  Riley shakes his head. “Council gotta die, bruh.”

  “I know. Reza said if you’re going to kill a thing, you gotta kill it dead. And I want to light them up, but . . . we can’t yet.”

  Riley drags hard and releases a mountain of smoke. “Word. I been doing these filthy shitsuckers’ dirty work for my whole afterlife. I’m through. But I’m not tryna go out in a blaze and just scratch the surface. We gotta move with strategy. I’m talking ’bout: we tumble the whole situation on its head.”

  “Start from scratch,” I say as a grim smile creases my face.

  “Not a lotta spirits would be very sad to see the Council fall,” Riley says.

  “But way fewer would lift a finger to make it happen.”

  “My man.” He slaps his chilly translucent hand against my outstretched one. “We got work to do.”

  “Carlos.” I don’t have to look to know it’s Sasha. But I do, and once again those eyes rob the breath from my body. She’s in the peacoat she wore the second night we saw each other, collar popped. A winter hat holds her hair back, and her slender face would fit perfectly in my hands.

  “And I’m out,” Riley says. “Later, Sasha.”

  She smiles at him as he goes and then she stands beside me at the fence, staring out at the bay.

  “Awfully close to the Council Headquarters for a public enemy,” I say.

  “Oh, they pardoned me.” She puts little bunny ears around “pardoned” and rolls her eyes. “For helping take down Gregorio and the Survivors. Told them to go fuck themselves with their fuckass pardon, but it still applies, apparently.”

  “I’m glad.” Something giant hangs there in the air between us, but I have no idea what. “Do you want to—”

  “The fortune-teller,” Sasha says. Her face when she walked out from the curtains. She saw something, something about her life.

  Suddenly, Sasha looks like she’s about to cry.

  “Wha—” I start, but she holds up one hand, palm out, and I shut up.

  “I’m sorry, Carlos.” She puts the hand on my forehead, her cool skin on mine, and then I’m looking at myself, and it’s pouring rain, and behind me the ornate archway of the Grand Army Plaza looms against the dark sky.

  And I know what’s about to happen.

  I watch myself slash to one side, then the other with something, then look up in shock as a blade slices downward across my left leg. My bad leg. I see my own eyes grow wide, and then I whisper one word as the blade stabs into my chest: “Aisha.”

  My whole body goes cold as the rainy night vanishes and the world becomes gray again. “This is your memory,” I gasp. “You . . . it was you. You killed me.”

  Sasha’s crying, nodding. “If you need to . . .” she says.

  I turn around, head south along the dusty speedway beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I’ve spent the last year of my life yearning. First came the stretch to find her, a constant reach since that night in the park when I first saw her picture in the hands of her dying brother. Then we met, we loved and lost, and memories overtook me. I cross Bensonhurst, move toward the shore. Memories overtook me, and regret and the slow burn of a justified rejection. And all the while, a deeper strain rumbled beneath: the growing, insatiable hunger to know what my life was before I died, what kind of man I was, and more than that, to know my own death past that singular, blurry snippet.

  And now I do.

  And now forgetting tugs at my whole being like the icy hands of a hundred decrepit ghosts as I cross the highway and stand at the foot of the towering bridge to Staten Island. Remembering tore open the scab again and again. The twins are a singular beacon of light in my mind. Everything around them is pain.

  The waves snarl and spit at the concrete legs of the Verrazano.

  Sasha. Aisha. The last word I spoke, her name.

  I turn back toward Brooklyn, toward my next assignment, whatever murderous shroud awaits me in the park. My whole body sags with the urge to forget, to finally, fully, let go.

  So I do.

  Kia

  “How were they?” I ask. “The services this morning.” We’re speeding through Bushwick toward the Stuy, and Reza’s wiping cigarette ashes from her pin-striped suit and cursing while salsa blares on the radio.

  “Sad,” Reza says. “They were good people, both of ’em. It’s always sad. But they died in battle; it’s how they would’ve wanted to go.”

  I nod, because what do you say to that? Really, no one wants to die beneath a horde of evil roach-covered corpses, but I get it. And then another angry text comes in from my dad. The snarl escapes from me without asking permission.

  “What’s the matter?” Reza asks.

  “You get along with ya daddy, Reza?”

  “Ever since I shot him in the face when I was in the fourth grade . . . yeah. Before that? Not so much.”

  “Whoa.”

  “He stays at the old folks home on Lorimer now. I visit sometimes. We play checkers. The coffee’s not so bad there, actually.”

  I have no idea what to do with Reza’s random barrage of information. She knows how to paint a picture though, I’ll give her that. I imagine Reza in a big dining area surrounded by little old Puerto Ricans gibbering away; she’s in her nice brown suit and sipping coffee with a slight smile while she triple jumps a little red plastic coin across the board, and an old man with half a face curses across from her.

  Seems about right.

  “I swore if anyone ever hurt my mom, I’d shoot them in the face,” Reza says after a pause. “And he did. So I did.”

  “I mean, you a woman of your word, Reza.”

  “He got me too though. Just clipped my elbow. Which, all things considered, was considerate of him. My dad knew how to shoot back then. And he wasn’t the man to put a gun on. So he did what he had to do while causing the least amount of damage possible, in the twisted logic of his world. Our world.”

  “But?”

  “He didn’t do it fast enough.”

  I’m trying not to laugh, because what the fuck, but then I look over at Reza and she’s smiling. “Apropos nothing,” she says, “one of these days, someone’s gonna have to buy Carlos a goddamn cell phone.”

  “Word!” We both get a good chuckle out of that. Then Reza pulls up in front of Karina’s and shoots me a sharp look.

  “What I do?”

  “Nothin’.” She shakes her head. “Just don’t get hurt out there. We need you. You give us . . . you know . . .”
Reza looks like she has to wrestle with her tongue to get the word out. “Hope. And there’s not much of that around.”

  “Okay, Princess Leia.” Then I feel like an asshole because that really was touching. I get serious. “Thank you.”

  “I’d take you to the airport, but I got somewhere to be.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout it. I think Gio called a yellow cab.” Karina squints into the tinted windows from the stoop where she sits. “Anyway,” I say, “I gotta say bye to this heffa first.”

  • • •

  “Wait. Hold up,” Karina says. “You mean you didn’t sit on Rigo’s face?”

  “Karina.”

  “Don’t Karina me, bitch. Did you sit on his dick?”

  We’re on her stoop, watching Bed-Stuy pass, not talking about what’s really on our minds. It’s just easier this way.

  “No, Karina.”

  “Did he sit on your—”

  “Girl, shut the fuck up.”

  “I’m disappointed, is all. But I guess it’s fine. Now he’s open for me to make my—”

  “Rigo’s taken, boo. He don’t want you.”

  She puts a stick of gum in her mouth and looks down the block at nothing in particular, chewing loudly. “Man, fuck this.”

  Drasco shuffles past and then his army of cats, single file as always. He nods at us without breaking his endless stream of mumblings. We nod back.

  “You really leaving,” Karina finally says.

  I shrug. “Yeah. I’ll be back though. I promise.”

  “The fuck am I sposta do in the meantime? Selfish ass.”

  I scowl at her, roll my eyes.

  “I’m kidding, Kia. I’m happy for you. Really. I know you gotta see other things besides these streets and do what your spirit’s calling you to do.” She punches my shoulder and then we’re hugging, and I really will miss her ass, I realize. The past few days of hell well up inside me for a second, and I just let Karina hold me until it dies down.

  “Don’t be a noncalling or e-mailing heffa though,” she says when we finally break the embrace. “I’ll replace ya ass with a quickness. Best friends a dime a dozen in this here county of Kings, bitch.”