Cracked

by Barbra Leslie

  When his heart stopped beating, I felt it. Mine stopped too. I hoped it would never start again.

  When he stopped shaking, when his body was still and I heard the sounds of sirens right outside, I got up and walked down the hallway. I was holding my gun again in one hand. I didn’t remember picking it up. In the other I was holding Matty’s hand.

  “Luke,” I called. “Luke.” But he didn’t respond, because he wasn’t there.

  All that was at the end of the hall was a bedroom with an open window onto a fire escape.

  Slowly I walked back down the hall, putting my gun on the floor carefully. I sat on the floor beside Jack and held his hand, and Matty’s, and waited for all the people to come.

  24

  Matthew and I were sent to Sunnybrook Hospital to be checked out. They wanted to take us in separate ambulances, but Matt wouldn’t leave my side, and I certainly wasn’t leaving his. We held hands tightly in the ambulance but didn’t say anything. I could feel his leg pressed up against mine. He was shaking. So was I.

  Jack and Lola, they took to the morgue.

  There was nothing wrong with me. Physically, at least. Once they cleaned Jack’s blood off me, they saw that I had no injuries. I tried to fight them when they wanted to clean his blood off. I kicked someone, when they tried to clean his blood off me. They gave me a shot of something to calm me down and make me docile. They tested my hands for gunshot residue, even though I told them I shot Lola. They tested me for hepatitis and HIV, due to all the blood – Jack’s blood – I’d gotten into my eyes and mouth. I told them they didn’t have to test me. It was only Jack’s blood.

  It was my blood.

  Matty was in the same room, on another bed, being checked out. I had threatened the medical staff with a painful death if they thought they were going to take him out of my sight for even a second. I don’t know whether they believed me, or if it was Matty’s shrill screams when they tried to take him away from me, but they kept us together. Those screams were the only sound Matty had made since I’d seen him when Lola brought him out of the room in the apartment. No words, not even to me, but he kept his eyes on me.

  I looked at my hands, sitting on that hospital bed. They were clean now. My right hand was still bruised and swollen from punching Detective French, but otherwise you would never have been able to tell that these hands had tried and failed to staunch the blood of the only man I would ever love. These hands had killed a woman in cold blood. Two days before that, I had beaten her badly, badly enough to break bones. And yet I had no remorse, and I couldn’t figure out why. My parents didn’t raise me to be this way. A psychiatrist might disagree, might say that my father rewarding me for punching out Darren’s high school sweetheart was encouraging later homicidal tendencies. But if I did have those tendencies, they were focused. I enjoyed people. Despite the horror and chaos of the last week, I had made small connections with strangers. Marta, for example. The cab driver who was doing the twelve steps. Wanda the nurse.

  Jack was dead. My husband was dead. The last couple of years of our separation didn’t seem to matter. My husband was gone. And Ginger was dead. My sister, whom I had loved fiercely, who deserved a happy, gentle, chaotic life with her wonderful sons. Lola and the bartender were meaningless bad guys, and I didn’t spend a second worrying about their wasted lives. Dominic Pastore was an innocent bystander. I didn’t love him, but he didn’t deserve to die. Darren had killed a man, too. I was pretty sure that he was going through something like what I was.

  But Darren didn’t have the love of his life bleeding to death in his arms.

  Jack died trying to save my family. And if I died doing the same? Well, it didn’t seem to matter much.

  I was glad they had given me the shot of whatever it had been, to calm me down. For once I didn’t even ask anyone what it was. Thorazine maybe? I was actually glad it wasn’t crack, for once. It kept me calm but not euphoric. I believe I would have lost my mind, perhaps irrevocably, in those couple of hours, if I had been allowed to fully process everything. And seeing that would have damaged Matty even further. Medicated, I could even try to smile at him, as the nurses took his vital signs and took his blood and the doctors performed basic neurological tests on him. They did sexual assault tests on him, and he allowed them to draw the curtain between us for that. He didn’t make a sound.

  Police came in and out of my room. My impression was that they didn’t know what to charge me with. Weapons offences were being whispered around, but I wasn’t paying much attention.

  When they finished examining us medically, Matty came and sat on my bed with me. We held hands, but didn’t speak. We both listened to people in the hallway talking about us.

  A nurse came in, finally, a kind older woman. She said that Matthew was going to have to go to his own room.

  “No,” I said calmly. “He stays with me.”

  “I am staying with her,” Matthew said clearly, and I smiled at him for real. They were the first words I had heard from him, through the whole ordeal.

  The nurse left the room, and we could hear someone in the hallway saying, “For the love of God, do you have any idea of what that boy has been through? What both of them have? They aren’t to be separated.” Whoever that person was, I loved him. I put my arm around Matty and kissed the top of his head.

  A minute later, the owner of the voice came in.

  “Knock, knock,” he said. I thought I recognized him as one of the cops who had come into the apartment where I was sitting on the floor in a bloody tableau with Jack and Matthew. He was fifty-ish, and looked kindly and smart. His name was Detective Paul Belliveau, and he told me that my brother Darren was on a plane, on his way, and that we were both being kept in the hospital overnight for observation. He seemed to feel very sorry for us, and kept patting my foot gently and awkwardly over the blankets.

  He seemed like the nicest person I had ever met. Matty seemed to think so too. Paul, as he told us to call him, pulled up a chair next to the bed where we were half sitting, half lying. He told us he had all night, he had all day tomorrow, and we could tell him our story in our own good time.

  Matty talked. They had been taken by their nanny. She had fed them, but at the same time, she gave them drugs to make them sleep a lot. Mary Poppins, she was not. He was feeling particularly guilty that he and Luke hadn’t fought back. Before they realized that Jeanette was bad, she had convinced them to tell the authorities she was their aunt, so Social Security would release them to her, she said, and they could go home to see Marta and James. She had taken them to the In & Out Burger and bought them food.

  But she didn’t take them home.

  And on the plane to Toronto and for the rest of the time, they were given shots to keep them dull and unable to move much. They slept a lot. They ate junk food. She didn’t talk to them much, but other than drugging them, she didn’t hurt them either. Another lady came to stay. She wasn’t very nice. Jeanette said she was their aunt, but they knew that wasn’t true.

  Then earlier tonight, Uncle Jack had come into the apartment where they were being kept. He winked at them, they said, to let them know he was going to help them. That’s what they figured, anyway. They trusted their Uncle Jack. Jack had spent time with them in California before their mother was killed, had taken them to a Lakers game, to the movies, to a concert in Anaheim. They had all gone to the beach together.

  Matt told me he knew they were going to be all right, that Uncle Jack would take them home.

  But then Uncle Jack had left their room and somewhere in the hallway he sort of yelled a bit and Matty thought he could hear him fall, but then he fell asleep again.

  He hadn’t mentioned his mother yet. There were so many layers of trauma, I didn’t want to bring her up either. Matt kept asking when we were going to get Luke back. I told him we would. I promised him that I would get his twin brother back.

  I hated myself for the promise. I would die trying, but my trying might not be good enough.


  He hadn’t mentioned his father yet either. There was going to be a lot of pain for this boy. I wished more than anything that I could take that pain for him so he didn’t have it.

  Paul listened to Matty and wrote a lot of notes. I didn’t say anything. I just asked Paul if he would mind coming back in the morning. I wanted to sleep. I needed to escape. A few minutes later someone brought Matty and me some buttered toast and chocolate milk, and not long after that we turned out the lights. I enveloped Matty up as best I could with my body around him. No one was getting to this boy. I couldn’t stay awake, but if anyone tried to touch him, I would wake up. He was safe.

  “You’re safe, and I love you,” I said to him, I don’t know how many times. I felt his tears, hot on my arm. Over and over I told him he was safe, and that he was loved, until I felt him fall asleep.

  And then I exhaled, and I slept too.

  * * *

  In the morning, I woke up with a craving for crack that made me actually dizzy. My opiate-induced pseudo-serenity of the night before was gone. But I had to maintain an outward calm, for Matty’s sake. He was sitting in a chair next to the bed, holding onto my hand, holding a comic book he wasn’t reading.

  A nurse came in to check me. She looked at my foot with the stitches.

  “You’re going to have a nice scar there,” she said. “Oh well. Better than on your face, eh?”

  I smiled at her. “Not really,” I said. As far as I was concerned, I could have scars covering every inch of me. It would be appropriate, for how I felt. People should shy away from me. No one experiencing this level of pain should look normal.

  The nurse nodded, as though she understood, though she surely couldn’t know that part of the story. But she’d seen lots of stories in her days as an E.R. nurse, I was pretty sure. “Someone will be in to talk to you soon,” she said, and patted my foot.

  “No doubt,” I said.

  I wondered for the first time where Dave had gone. Had it only been yesterday that he had made me breakfast in my apartment? I just hoped he was out there looking for Jeanette and Luke.

  From what I could hear, which wasn’t much once the nurse half shut the door behind her, police in the hallway were trying to figure out what to charge me with. Matt had made it clear that Jeanette and Lola were the bad guys.

  In the meantime, until Darren could come, we were both being kept in the hospital. It was the safest place, they said. And I had a feeling Darren had informed the hospital staff that I was an addict who shouldn’t be discharged.

  I would never do drugs while Matty was on my watch. But once Darren got here, Darren could keep him safe. And then I could go back to my apartment, or even to a motel, and do what I do. Just for a day. One day. One day of getting high and letting Jack and Ginger go. And then I could go and find Jeanette and Luke.

  I had a shower and in the bathroom, put on the clean sweats a nurse had given me. When I came out, Matthew was asleep again. I wasn’t the only one who needed escape.

  I watched him sleep for a while. I hoped he wasn’t dreaming. And then I kissed his hot forehead and promised him vengeance.

  25

  For the second time in the space of a week, I woke up in a hospital bed with my brother smiling at me. There are worse ways to wake up. I had those this week, too.

  “Well, Bean,” Darren said. He looked like he’d been crying. “Well. Fuck me, Danny, I don’t know what to say.” He shook his head, over and over. “Jack, huh. Jack. Shit, Danny.”

  “Stop, Darren, please,” I said. I couldn’t deal with comforting Darren right now. I woke up alert, awake, and ready to kill. I could not, would not, go back into the hell of sadness. “I love you, Darren, but I really can’t do this.” I could hear the shower. Matty had been encouraged by the nurses to get cleaned up, get some real clothes on.

  “Okay,” he said. “Give me a minute, Beanpole.” Darren got up off the edge of my bed, hitched his jeans back over his hips – he had lost weight – and paced for a minute.

  I waited. My heart was cold. I had had enough emotion for one week.

  “They’re going to release Matt today,” Darren said, coming back to the bed. “To me.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I’m going to take him to my place,” he continued. Darren had a huge rental in hardcore downtown, off King Street. It was nice, but he wasn’t there all that much. It was definitely a bachelor pad. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about a bed and stuff.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” I said. “He’ll be safe with you.” And Detective Paul had assured Matty and me many times that he would have people watching us all the time, until we found the bad guys and got Luke back. “What about me?”

  “They haven’t charged you with anything yet?” he said. “They said they want to keep you in another day.” I wanted to roll my eyes, because I knew that was Darren’s doing, probably aided by Skip and Laurence. I was detoxing, after all, whether I wanted to or not. I didn’t need any medical treatment. What? For the six stitches in my foot? The bump on my head? My poor knuckles? Relatively speaking, I had escaped this week with barely a scratch.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Well, I have a lawyer friend who’ll look after you.”

  I looked at him. He looked terrible. “How was your flight? Get any rest?”

  “A bit,” Darren said. He was used to being on the road. Darren could roll with more punches than I had thought.

  “I have to find Luke, Darren. I have to find him. Then this can be over.”

  “We have to find him,” he said. I didn’t say anything. He had Matty to take care of now.

  “How are you, about what happened at Lucky’s?”

  “I am fine with what happened at Lucky’s,” Darren said. He looked me in the eye. “I think you’re not. But, Beanpole. I. Am. Fine.”

  “I want you to forget that ever happened, Darren,” I said. “If it gets back to us, I did it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I closed my eyes. All I could see was blood. It wasn’t the blood that had already been shed. It was bloodshed to come. “This is my fight, Darren, you know?”

  “Ginger was my sister too, Danny.”

  “I know. I know. But she was my twin. And Jack,” I stopped. I bit the inside of my cheek until I could taste blood. “Jack was my husband.” I took a breath. “And you have Matt now. He needs you. And Luke will need you, when I bring him back. You’re more, I don’t know… equipped. Equipped to take care of them right now.”

  Darren laughed, a ragged sound which seemed to match the flickering fluorescent lights. “Are you high?”

  “No.”

  He looked at me. “What happened in there, Danny?”

  I closed my eyes for a minute, saw Lola’s face just before I shot her. Jack’s blood, gushing through my fingers. The boys’ faces.

  “I’m not going to stop,” I said. I was speaking to him, I supposed, but not looking at him. “I’m not going to stop, until it’s over. I’m the only one. I know that now.”

  I closed my eyes and prayed for crack, my one day of crack before the mayhem that I knew had to follow.

  “We promised to do this together,” he said.

  “We did. You did more than your part. Now, you have to be about Matty, Darren. Please. He needs you. They lost their mother, their father is in the wind, and they saw Jack, and what I did to Lola. Their nanny drugged them. They have so few people to trust. They trust you.”

  “They trust you, too,” he said. “Matty can’t bear to be away from you for more than a few minutes.”

  “He’ll get over that, now that you’re here. When they see me, all they’re going to see is murder, and blood. Maybe that’s all they’ll ever see.”

  “No, Bean,” Darren said softly. “That’s not all.”

  “For now, Darren,” I said, “that has to be all. Because right now, that’s all there is.” I looked at him, dry-eyed and calm. “It’s mine now. Do you get it?”

  He
shook his head, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Darren. Get me that lawyer. I need to get out of here. I know what I need to do.” Darren nodded. He had more contacts in the real world than I did.

  He turned around at the door. “Hey, Danny,” he said.

  “Yo,” I said.

  “Bear with me on this,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “If I had been killed, instead of Ginger… would you…”

  I stopped him. “Darren,” I said. “If it had been you, nobody would be left standing.” I motioned him back to me. I licked my right thumb, and he did the same. We pushed them together.

  “Don’t give up on me,” I said. “I’ll come back from this.”

  “Danny,” Darren said. “If you don’t, I won’t be left standing. Think about that, okay?”

  “Okay, my brutha,” I said. I smiled. “Now, go and take care of our boys. Capiche?”

  “Capiche.”

  * * *

  Later, Darren took Matty for ice cream while Detective Paul came in and formally arrested me for possession of an illegal firearm. For the time being, at least, it was the only charge. There was enough evidence to show that I had acted in self-defence in the apartment. I had killed Lola while she was going to try for the second time to kill my husband. Detective French had, surprisingly, refused to press charges against me for punching her in the hospital bathroom. And I hadn’t heard a word about what had happened at Lucky’s.

  The gun that Dave had given me was unregistered. I wasn’t surprised, of course, but I told the police honestly that it had been given to me for my own safety by my brother-in-law’s private investigator – a person whose identity they hadn’t confirmed yet, as I didn’t have his last name. They believed me that the man existed – they had him on CCTV in the hospital when we took Gene in, though apparently he was aware of cameras, and always had his face averted.

  “I have something to tell you, though, Danny,” Belliveau said. “I just found out this morning.”