Reckless Night

by Lisa Marie Rice

  The Mercedes lurched forward a foot then stopped. He barely noticed.

  The paintings were like little miracles on a wall. A glowing still life of wildflowers in a can and an open paperback on a table, as if someone had just come in from the garden. A pensive man reflecting himself in a shop window. Delicate female hands holding a book. The artwork was realistic, delicate, stunning. It pulled you in to the world of the picture and didn’t let you go.

  Drake had no way to judge the artwork in technical terms; all he knew was that each work was brilliant, perfect, and called to him in some way he’d never felt before.

  The car rolled forward ten feet, bringing another section of the wall into view.

  The last painting on the wall jolted him.

  It was the left profile of a man rendered in earth tones. The man’s face was hard, strong-jawed, unsmiling. His dark hair was cut so short the skull beneath was visible, which was exactly as Drake wore it in the field, particularly in Afghanistan. Far from even the faintest hope of running water, he shaved his head and his body hair, the only way to avoid lice. The face of the man didn’t exactly look like him, but the portrait had the look of him—features harsh, grim, unyielding.

  Running from the forehead over the high cheekbone and down to the jaw, brushing perilously close to the left eye, was a ragged white scar, like a lightning bolt etched in flesh.

  Reflexively, Drake lifted a hand to his face, remembering.

  He’d been a street rat on the streets of Odessa, sleeping in a doorway in the dead of winter. Some warmth seeped through the cracks in the door, allowing him to sleep without fear of freezing to death in the subzero temperatures.

  Emaciated, dressed in rags, he was perfect prey for the sailors just ashore from months working brutal shifts at sea, reeling drunk through the streets. Sailors who hadn’t had sex in months and didn’t much care who they fucked—boy or girl—as long as whoever it was held still long enough. Most of the sailors didn’t even care whether who they fucked stayed still because they were tied down or dead.

  Drake came awake in a rush as the fetid breath of two Russian sailors washed over his face. One of the sailors held a knife to Drake’s throat while the other dropped his pants, already hauling out a long, thin, beet-red cock.

  Drake was a born street fighter and fought best when he was close to the ground. He was born with the ability and had honed it by observation and practice. He scissored his legs, bringing the man with the knife toppling to the ground, then hurled himself at the knees of the second man, hobbled by his pants. The man fell heavily to the ground, his head hitting the broken pavement with a sickening crack.

  Drake turned to the first man, who’d scrambled to his feet and was holding the knife in front of him like an expert, edge down. The chances of surviving a knife fight barehanded were ludicrously low. Drake knew he had to even the odds fast, do something unexpected.

  He flung himself forward, into the knife. The blade sliced the side of his face open, but the surprise move loosened the sailor’s grip. Drake wrenched the knife out of his hand and jabbed it into the man’s eye, to the hilt.

  The sailor dropped like a stone.

  Drake stood over him, panting, his blood dripping over the man’s face, then pulled the knife out of his attacker’s skull and wiped it down on the man’s tattered jacket.

  He took both men’s knives. One was a nozh razvedchika, a scout’s knife. The other was a Finnish Pukka, rare in those parts and very valuable. He bartered both along the Odessa waterfront for two guns, a Skorpion and an AK–47—

  including clips and shooting lessons—sold cheaply because they were stolen.

  He was on his way.

  Later, as soon as he could afford it, he had plastic surgery on the long, jagged white scar on the left side of his face. He was known for being able to blend into almost any environment, for turning himself invisible, but a very visible scar was like a flag, something no one forgot. It had to go.

  The surgeon was good, one of the best. There was nothing visible left of his scar. Besides himself, only the surgeon could remember the shape of the long-gone scar. But there it was, in a painting in a gallery in Manhattan, half a world away and two decades later. However crazy it sounded, the scar in the painting was the same scar the surgeon had eliminated, all those years ago.

  Traffic suddenly cleared and the Mercedes rolled smoothly forward. Drake punched the button in the center console that allowed him to communicate with the driver.

  “Sir?” Mischa sounded startled over the intercom. Drake rarely spoke while they were traveling.

  “Turn right at the next intersection and let me off after two blocks.”

  “ Sir?” This time the driver’s voice sounded confused. Drake never left the car en route. He got into one of his many vehicles in his building’s garage and got out at his destination. The driver caught himself. Drake never had to repeat himself with his men. “Yessir,” the driver replied.

  Once out of the limousine, Drake continued walking in the direction of the car until it disappeared into the traffic, then ducked into a nearby department store. Ten minutes later, satisfied that he wasn’t being followed, he doubled back to the art gallery, having ditched his eight-hundred-dollar Boss jacket, Brioni pants, Armani cashmere sweater and scarf and having bought a cheap parka, long-sleeved cotton tee, jeans, watch cap and sunglasses. He was as certain as he could be that no one was tailing him and that he was unrecognizable.

  The art gallery was warm after the chill of the street. Drake stopped just inside the door, taking in the scent of tea brewing and that mixture of expensive perfumes and men’s cologne typical of Manhattan haunts, mixed with the more down-to-earth smells of resin and solvents.

  At the sound of the bell over the door, a man came out from a back room, smiling, holding a porcelain mug. Steam rose in white fingers from the mug.

  “Hello and welcome.” The man transferred the mug from his right hand to his left and offered his hand. “My name is Harold Feinstein. Welcome to the Feinstein Gallery.”

  The smile seemed genuine, not a salesman’s smile. Drake had seen too many of those from people who knew who he was and knew what resources he could command. Everything that could possibly be sold—including humans—had been offered to him, with a smile.

  But the man holding his hand out couldn’t know who he was, and wasn’t presuming he was rich. Not dressed the way he was.

  Drake took the proffered hand gingerly, not remembering the last time he’d clasped another man’s hand. He touched other people rarely, not even during sex. Usually, he employed his hands to keep his torso up and away from the woman.

  Harold Feinstein’s hand was soft, well-manicured, but the grip was surprisingly strong.

  “Have a look around,” he urged. “No need to buy. Art enriches us all, whether we own it or not.”

  Without seeming to study him, Feinstein had taken in the cheap clothes and pegged him as a window-shopper, but wasn’t bothered by it. Unusual in a man of commerce.

  Drake’s eyes traversed the wall and Harold Feinstein turned amiably.

  “Take my latest discovery,” he said, waving his free hand. “Grace Larsen. Remarkable eye for detail, amazing technical expertise, perfect brush strokes. Command of chiaroscuro in the etchings. Quite remarkable.”

  The artist was a woman? Drake focused on the paintings. Man, woman, whoever the artist was, the work was extraordinary. And now that he was here, he could see that a side wall, invisible from the street, was covered with etchings and watercolors.

  He stopped in front of an oil, a portrait of an old woman. She was stooped, graying, hair pulled back in a bun, face weatherbeaten from the sun, large hands gnarled from physical labor, dressed in a cheap cotton print dress. She looked as if she were just about to step down from the painting, drop to her knees and start scrubbing the floor.

  Yet she was beautiful, because the artist saw her as beautiful. A specific woman, the very epitome of a female workhorse, t
he kind that held the world together with her labor. Drake had seen that woman in the thousands, toiling in fields around the world, sweeping the streets of Moscow.

  All the sorrow and strength of the human race was right there, in her sloping shoulders and tired eyes.

  Amazing.

  The door behind him chimed as someone entered the gallery.

  Feinstein straightened, his smile broadened. “And here’s the artist herself.” He looked at Drake, dressed in his poor clothes. “Take your time and enjoy the paintings,” he said gently.

  Drake smelled her before he saw her. A fresh smell, like spring and sunshine, not a perfume. Completely out of place in the fumes of midtown Manhattan. His first thought was, No woman can live up to that smell.

  “Hello, Harold,” he heard a woman’s voice say behind him. “I brought some india-ink drawings. I thought you might like to look at them. And I finished the waterfront. Stayed up all night to do it.” The voice was soft, utterly female, with a smile in it.

  His second thought was, No woman can live up to that voice.The voice was soft, melodic, seeming to hit him like a note on a tuning fork, reverberating through him so strongly he actually had to concentrate on the words.

  Drake turned—and stared.

  His entire body froze. He found himself completely incapable of moving for a heartbeat—two—until he managed to shake himself from his paralysis by sheer force of will.

  Something—some atavistic survival instinct dwelling deep in his DNA—made him turn away so she wouldn’t see him full face, but he had excellent peripheral vision and he watched intently as the woman—Grace—opened a big portfolio carrier and started laying out heavy sheets of paper, setting them out precisely on a huge glass table. Then she brought out what looked like a spool of 10-inch-wide paper from her purse.

  Goddamn. The woman was… exquisite.

  D ANGEROUSL OVER

  Summerville, Washington

  St. Jude Homeless Shelter

  Christmas Eve

  H e needed Caroline like he needed light and air. More.

  The tall, emaciated boy dressed in rags rose from his father’s lifeless body sprawled bonelessly on the icy, concrete floor of the shelter.

  His father had been dying for a long time—most of his life, in fact. There had always been something in him that didn’t want to live. The boy couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father clean and sober. He had no mother. All his life, it had been just the two of them, father and son, drifting from shelter to shelter, staying until they were kicked out.

  The boy stood for a moment, looking down at his only blood relation in this world, dead in a pool of vomit and shit. Nobody had noticed his father’s dead body yet. Nobody ever noticed them or even looked their way if they could help it. Even the other lost, hopeless souls in the shelter recognized someone worse off than they were and shunned them.

  The boy looked around at the averted faces, eyes cast to the floor.

  Nobody cared that the drunk wasn’t getting up again. Nobody cared what happened to his son.

  There was nothing for the boy here. Nothing.

  He had to get to Caroline.

  He had to move fast before they discovered that his father was dead. If they found the body here, the police and social workers and administrators would come for him. He was eighteen, but he couldn’t prove it. And he knew enough about the way things worked to know that he’d become a ward of the state. He’d be locked up in some prisonlike orphanage.

  No. No way. He’d rather die.

  The boy moved toward the stairs that would take him up out of the shelter into the gelid, sleety afternoon.

  An old woman looked up as he passed by, cloudy eyes flickering with recognition. Susie. Ancient, toothless Susie. She wasn’t lost in alcohol like his father. She was lost in the smoky depths of her own mind.

  “Ben, chocolate chocolate?” she cackled and smacked her wrinkled, rubbery lips. He’d once shared a chocolate bar Caroline had brought him, and Susie had looked to him for sweets ever since.

  Here he was known as Ben. In the last shelter—Portland, was it?—his father had called him Dick. Naming him after the manager of the shelter always bought them some time. Not enough. Eventually, the shelters got sick of his father’s drunken rages and found a way to kick them out.

  Susie’s hands, with their long, black, ragged nails, grasped at him. Ben stopped and held her hand a moment. “No chocolate, Susie, ” he said gently.

  Like a child, her eyes filled with tears. Ben stooped to give her grimy wrinkled cheek a kiss, then rushed up the stairs and out into the open air.

  No hesitation as he turned into Morrison Street. He knew exactly where he was going. To Greenbriars. To Caroline.

  To the one person on the face of the earth who cared about him. To the only person who treated him as a human being and not some half-wild animal who smelled of dirty clothes and rotting food.

  Ben hadn’t eaten in two days, and he had only a too-short cotton jacket on to keep the cold away. His big, bony wrists stuck out of the jacket’s sleeves, and he had to tuck his hands into his armpits to keep them warm.

  No matter. He’d been cold and hungry before.

  The only warm thing he wanted right now was Caroline’s smile.

  Like the arrow of a compass to a lodestar, he leaned into the wind to walk the mile and a half to Greenbriars.

  No one looked his way as he trudged by. He was invisible, a lone, tall figure dressed in rags. It didn’t bother him. He’d always been invisible. Being invisible had helped him survive.

  The weather worsened. The wind blew icy needles of sleet directly into his eyes until he had to close them into slits.

  Didn’t matter. He had an excellent sense of direction and could make his way to Greenbriars blindfolded.

  Head down, arms wrapped around himself to conserve what little warmth he’d been able to absorb at the shelter, Ben slowly left behind the dark, sullen buildings of the part of the city that housed the shelter. Soon the roads opened up into tree-lined avenues. Ancient brick buildings gave way to graceful, modern buildings of glass and steel.

  No cars passed—the weather was too severe for that. There was nobody on the streets. Under his feet, the icy buildup crackled.

  He was almost there. The houses were big here, in this wealthy part of town. Large, well built, with sloping green lawns that were now covered in ice and snow.

  He usually made his way through the back streets, invisible as always. Someone like him in this place of rich and powerful people would be immediately stopped by the police, so he always took the back streets on a normal day. But today the streets were deserted, and he walked openly on the broad sidewalks.

  It usually took him half an hour to walk to Greenbriars but today the ice-slick sidewalks and hard wind dragged at him. An hour after leaving the shelter, he was still walking. He was strong, but hunger and cold started to wear him down. His feet, in their cracked shoes, were numb.

  Music sounded, so lightly at first that he wondered whether he was hallucinating from cold and hunger. Notes floated in the air, as if borne by the snow.

  He rounded a corner and there it was—Greenbriars. Caroline’s home. His heart pounded as it loomed out of the sleety mist. It always pounded when he came here, just as it pounded whenever she was near.

  He usually came in through the back entrance, when her parents were at work and Caroline and her brother in school. The maid left at noon and from noon to one the house was his to explore. He could move in and out like a ghost. The back door lock was flimsy, and he’d been picking locks since he was five.

  He’d wander from room to room, soaking up the rich, scented atmosphere of Caroline’s home.

  The shelter rarely had hot water, but still he took care to wash as well as he could whenever he headed out to Greenbriars. The stench of the shelter had no place in Caroline’s home.

  Greenbriars was so far beyond what he could ever hope to have that there was
no jealousy, no envy in him as he touched the backs of the thousands of books in the library, walked into sweet-smelling closets full of new clothes, opened the huge refrigerator to see fresh fruits and vegetables. Caroline’s family was rich in a way he couldn’t comprehend, as if they belonged to a different species living on another planet.

  To him, it was simply Caroline’s world. And living in it for an hour a day was like touching the sky.

  Today nobody could see him approach in the storm. He walked right up the driveway, feeling the gravel through the thin soles of his shoes. The snow intensified, the wind whipping painful icy particles through the air. Ben knew how to move quietly, stealthily when he had to. But it wasn’t necessary now. There was no one to see him or hear him as he crunched his way to the window.

  The music was louder now, the source a yellow glow. It wasn’t until he had reached the end of the driveway that Ben realized that the yellow glow was the big twelve-pane window of the living room, and the music was someone playing the piano.

  He knew that living room well, as he knew all the rooms of the big mansion. He’d wandered them all, for hours. He knew that the huge living room always smelled faintly of woodsmoke from the big fireplace. He knew that the couches were deep and comfortable and the rugs soft and thick.

  He walked straight up to the window. The snow was already filling in the tracks his shoes made. No one could see him, no one could hear him.

  He was tall, and could see over the windowsill if he stood on tiptoe. Light had drained from the sky, and he knew no one in the room could see him outside.

  The living room was like something out of a painting. Hundreds of candles flickered everywhere—on the mantelpiece, on all the tables. The coffee table held the remains of a feast—half a ham on a carving board, a huge loaf of bread, a big platter of cheeses, several cakes, and two pies. A teapot, cups, glasses, an open bottle of wine, a bottle of whiskey.

  Water pooled in his mouth. He hadn’t eaten for two days. His empty stomach ached. He could almost smell the food in the room through the windowpane.