by Lumen Reese
“That was the fugitive… getting us a new lead.”
I nodded toward the still-closed bathroom door. She stepped past me and pushed it open, but recoiled immediately. “Jesus Christ.”
I had been afraid to look, myself, but as the door swung closed I saw the man flat on his back on the white floor. There was a splash of blood coming off of his head and a growing pool around his knee. He was not moving, had to be unconscious. I flinched away from the awful reality of what I had just done, the guilt in me as immediate as if I had kneecapped him myself. At the same time it was unreal, something that happened in crime novels, when the mafia got their hands on the rat.
Clark had climbed up into the VIP section, the crowd was growing louder with malcontent in the brightness. He spotted us and I could see the relief on his face. I had worried them both.
Hatley’s face was hard as she sized me up for a moment. “Where are we going, then?”
“I’m sure he’ll let us know,” I said.
She sighed long and low. “You could have told me, you didn’t have to scare me like that, Stella!”
“I’m sorry…”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, now. You know this could be the end of this investigation of ours, don’t you? There’s a man bleeding on the floor in there, Stella. A man we were supposed to catch.”
“Well, we did catch him, technically.”
She huffed, rolling her eyes away from me, wrapping her arms around her stomach as a little smile spread across her lips. “If you want to risk your reward for the sake of these missing girls, that’s your business. I even respect it. But be careful. That man is dangerous, Stella.”
I was forgiven. I tried to sound sure of myself. “I know what I’m doing.”
*
I took the others to the Blue Motel, late that night. An ambulance had been called for the man bleeding in the bathroom, and the Hearts police called to watch him and to take Vincent Zucholi into custody. A call was placed to Jericho but we had no answer, and so Hatley left a tentative message and said we would call again in the morning.
We retired. Hatley seemed like she wanted to say something else as we stood in the doorways of two adjoining rooms, but then she just turned in with a quiet, “Good night.”
And I went into my room as well. It was plain and small, with a queen bed taking up most of it, a television on a small dresser across, and a tiny bathroom in the back. I sat on the bed and could look out the window by leaning and poking a finger between the blinds. I waited like that for some time, with my eyes heavy. The buildings in the neighborhood were short and square, with single neon signs of different colors instead of the monotone unity of the bigger areas. A man was smoking outside a convenience store across the street.
After maybe an hour I stepped out into the night, and felt an instant hum of city energy fill me up. Wonderland, like New York, had a sacred kind of feeling when it was empty. I could see stars.
“There you are.”
I did not jump; I had been listening and looking for him from the moment I shut the door. I walked to the end of the motel’s corridor we were on, and he was sitting in a cheap patio set in the shadow of the two-story main complex. A small pool glowed blue nearby, a black gate wrapped around the courtyard.
I pulled out a chair and sat, letting out a sigh as I did. My thighs, calves, and feet were sore.
Corso said, only, “We’ve been moving…”
“Mm-hm.” He looked dead on his feet. “When was the last time you slept?”
He had a corner-of-his-mouth smile for that. “I got a catnap this morning on the train down here. I’ll get a wink tonight, when I find a place.”
I hadn’t really thought of him sleeping on cold floors in abandoned buildings, never feeling safe. “Have you eaten?”
“I’m fine.”
“How about a shower? Just come inside.”
He was still smiling, but looked down at the table as he grumbled the words, “We shouldn’t be together, Stella.” I blinked. He looked up. “Not for too long. Too dangerous.”
“Bullshit. We have guns. You need to take care of yourself. Your sister needs you in shape. And it might be your last chance.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You’re about to fall asleep in that chair. Could you even shoot straight?”
“Always.”
His confidence deflected me for a moment, but I breathed deep and dove back in. “Look, I didn’t want to have to tell you this. You stink.”
“Oh?” I could hear his voice tight with a laugh.
“Bad.”
He stood from the table, took two steps and I began to ask what he was doing when he leaned hard to one side and plummeted head-first into the pool.
I walked over as he broke free of the surface again, whipping hair that had gotten a bit shaggy.
“Oh God,” he gasped, and the sound was so riotous that I had to look away for a second with my cheeks hot. I glanced around, there was no one else on the street around us. The man who had been smoking by the convenience store had gone. He dipped under the water again, and reappeared. “Well… that woke me up.”
“You’ll be wet all night.”
“I can handle it,” he huffed, treading water. Then he stroked forward and reached the edge where I had sat, with crossed legs. “We used to work wet all day on the plantation, to stay cool.”
It was the first time I had ever heard him mention it. I felt a rush of warmth that I had to disrupt. “Where are we going, Corso?”
He sobered, and wiped his face free of shiny drops. “Spades, first. Then south. It’s a town called St. Ayrs. You meet me, alone, and we’ll go together from there.”
“You don’t trust me.” I found my feet. The humor was long gone from us. “All this about me needing to trust you and you don’t trust me?”
“I still can’t be sure how far you’ll go.”
“I’m the one who should be worried about how far you’ll go! I let you torture a man earlier.”
“-A rapist,” Corso corrected. He moved to one side of me and pushed up on his arms to climb, dripping, out of the pool.
“Still, it has to make a person wonder what else you might be capable of, that you could just do that!”
“I should go,” he said after a moment.
“Yeah, you should.” I was simmering.
But he stood for a moment, the dripping onto the ground slowing and quieting. He had his face turned down to the ground and only glanced up at me, something like ashamed. “Don’t give up on me, Stella.”
He wasn’t used to asking people for their help, I could tell. He went through most of his life alone, the same as I did. At work he had Joey, and their bond was an unspoken, unbreakable thing. That was the great thing about Joey, he didn’t push. When Corso came around the house, he effortlessly charmed Stacey and the kids -and women, too, in his nights-but I would guess he had never been in a position of genuinely needing another person in his adult life. I could imagine it all very clearly, and I felt everything he was feeling, because I was in the same boat. I was feeling the same anxiety, embarrassment, and apprehension as I nodded, eager for the moment to be gone.
He started toward the street at the front of the motel and I followed a step behind, wondering if there was anything else to be said. A light clicked on when he stepped past the corner.
“Excuse me,” said a man’s deep voice.
“Shit.”
And then Corso was running, and a man in a dark uniform went streaking by after him, shouting, “Stop!”
I leaned out and saw them disappearing around the side of the courtyard, then I turned and ran the way we had just come, past the pool and to the back of the courtyard where I turned down a narrow alley and spilled out onto a larger, more crowded street. There were more pedestrians and the buildings were brighter and more tightly packed together. Corso was headed my way, diving lithely through a throng of people at the crosswalk and then dodging a car pullin
g up to the light. I couldn’t see the officer chasing him but he couldn’t be more than a few seconds behind. In fact I heard a tangle of yells as he collided with civilians.
I realized I was standing beside a multiple-story building with a neon sign shaped like a woman’s stiletto glowing over the top, another advertising rooms at hourly rates, and two women dancing in the front windows.
“Here!” I shouted, waving my arm to catch Corso’s attention.
He made a beeline for me and I had the door open before he reached me. We slammed it closed together and he was breathing hard, then bowing over and clutching his head. I reached out to steady him when he swayed in place, even though he was grumbling, “I’m okay, I’m alright.”
We were in a nice lounge populated mostly with women, a bordello, but they were hardly looking. They had to be used to the chases and the surprises, living in the Four Quarters. They might think we had stumbled out of our storyline; probably that I was the buyer and he was my love-interest, from the look of us.
I leaned closer and hissed, “You’re exhausted!”
“We gotta go,” he said, starting to lurch forward. His steps grew more confident as we moved past rows of tables and chairs, and a long, gold couch. There were several doors at the back which were not labeled, and though Corso was headed for them, I was sure we would pick the wrong one and be trapped. I tugged him toward the exposed stairway winding up to the second floor.
“This way.”
He followed my lead and we were peaking up over the second floor landing when I heard the door bang open, and accompanying, theatrical gasps from the extras.
We were in a hall with two rooms on each side. Three of the doors were closed, but the second door on the left was open. The stairs kept climbing, and so could we, but Corso seemed dizzy again and we were slowing down. So we went down the hall without discussing it, sliding into the room which smelled of perfume and was decorated expensively with a cushy bed in the center.
There was a window, and I saw a fire escape. But when I had shut the door behind us, I saw that Corso could not keep running. I was panting, too, and for a second I just turned the lock and hoped we had lost the man.
But another bang from down the hall and a woman’s scream made us both groan.
“God damn it,” he puffed, “let’s go.”
He turned toward the window but I stopped him.
“Corso.”
He turned halfway back. I reached out and caught his arm and jerked him back around. My stomach did a flip as the idea popped into my head… that the officer had probably not seen me, and only knew he had been chasing a man in a blue sweater.
“Take off your sweater,” I said.
He looked bewildered, so I reached out and yanked the zipper down with trembling hands. He was compliant but still confused as I shoved it down off of his shoulders, feeling the bare skin of his muscled arms there; the white undershirt he wore was sleeveless.
I flung the sweater into the furthest corner and couldn’t help but to jump when the door across the hall from us banged open like the other had, though the people or person inside did not scream. We looked at each other and I could see that he understood, and though I was frozen he moved forward and closed the gap.
His hands came up and grabbed my face, wrapping around the back of my head and pulling me into him where the hardness of his skull stopped me. And for a moment it did just feel like our mouths had bumped into each other. But still moving forward and with me stumbling back to keep from being bowled over, his lips became a gentle tumble, easing mine open and then pursing them closed, a brush of warm wetness and making my head light. Then another step changed him again and he was prying my mouth open with his, and his tongue hot and reaching for mine. I hit the wall and our legs became a tangle and his hips were pinning me flat, and pressing into me where I wanted to be arching against him made a whimper break out of my throat.
The door crashed open. We were both startled.
The man who had burst in held a gun and wheeled around to look at us, doubtful, fearful. He was young to be balding the way he was.
Me and Corso spoke at the same time.
“What the Hell-.”
“-Get the Hell out!”
The police officer turned and ducked out without a word.
We were frozen, looking after him as we heard the last door in the hall bust inward, followed by only silence, then he went running back the way he had come, and we heard him pounding up the stairs. I had not been breathing, and all at once found myself gasping. Corso was still pressed against me. As soon as I had put my hand out and pressed on the flat of his stomach, though, he stepped away. His hands came up but they stopped before making contact with my face, then dropped to my shoulders. I felt the tension in my body fade to shivers, and then I was just heavy all over, dead on my feet.
“Some quick thinking, honey,” Corso said. He had a little smile for a second with just the corners of his mouth, then he looked away.
“Are you gonna listen to me, now? We are getting you some food, and you are coming back to the motel with me and you’re getting some sleep.”
“Okay.”
We left by the front door, quickly but calmly, and got him food from a street vendor. Something full of vegetables. And as soon as he had opened the Styrofoam and peeled back the foil, a puff of steam hit him and he sighed.
“Just like home.”
He ate with chopsticks, which I found distantly interesting as we walked. It was reaching three in the morning, and maybe it was the exhaustion which had left me feeling like I was walking around particularly exposed.
I didn’t really decide to say it, but I mumbled, “It feels like New York. Like night in New York.”
“I know what you mean. How come you call me Corso?” he asked suddenly.
“Everyone calls you Corso.”
“I tell people to call me Corso, I never told you to. Pretty sure I introduce myself as Miles, where children and ladies are concerned. We were children when we met but you’re a lady now, so, either way…”
We were careful on the approach to my room, made the safety of the darkness and stood, once I had shut the door, in the shadows and silence cut by the rattling of the ceiling fan. We were vague shapes, and I felt like I was losing my body, formless, floating. In trying to be someone stronger, I had done things which cut the cord to my old self, leaving me without even the baseline for being a real person.
I told myself probably I was just tired.
Corso showered quick, then came back out in a fresh shirt and jeans we had bought him off the street. I was sitting on one side of the bed.
“Hey,” he said, and I looked over.
My eyes must have adjusted. The edges of his face had focused.
“We’ll be fine for you to get some sleep, too.”
I nodded, then laid on my side facing the door and curled up. I wasn’t thinking of anything, but I was feeling everything I had felt or half-felt during the entire day, over again. Maybe from the entire week. And then my mind was flashing with thought. I was thinking about the missing girls. I was thinking about the man Corso and I had jointly tortured; jointly, because letting it happen and doing nothing to stop it was as bad as participating. I was thinking about what sixteen felt like. I was guilty and scared and lonely. I was shaking and felt so far away that it surprised me when Corso put his hand on my arm. I exhaled slowly. My chest ached. Tears filled my eyes and then there was no holding it back. The pain got worse, it felt like I was being torn open from the inside, and suddenly I was really crying. I covered my face and sobbed into my palms. Corso shifted on the bed, moving in. I curled tighter into myself, trying to force the waves of tears to stop, then his arm snaked over me and I went limp and shaky again and just let it come. He even lifted my head and settled it down into the crook of his other arm so that he could wrap himself around me more completely.
“I’m sorry, honey… It’s okay… It’s gonna be okay… It’s gonna be
okay… It’s gonna be okay…”
Chapter Twenty-Three
My phone rang early the next morning, when what little light seeping through the blinds was still grey. I was groggy and remembered with humiliation how the night had ended. Fumbling for the phone, I sat up on the edge of the bed.
Corso had retreated to the other side at some point. I heard him move as I answered but couldn’t look back.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” Henry sighed. “Rise and shine. Get your asses to Spades, cause some stuff happened last night and Jericho and the rest are all here.”
“Jericho and the rest?” My mind wasn’t turning yet.
“Isaac and Kayla. And Spicer is here, too. That’s all they would tell me on the phone, I’m just getting to the train station. Do you think Spicer could have caught the fugitive?”
“No,” I said, stealing a look back at Corso who was watching me. “I don’t think Spicer caught the fugitive.” He smiled and looked away. “And Jericho might have reason to be mad at me…”
“Oh geez. Well, tell me when you get here. And get here fast.”
“On my way.” And I hung up the phone. I packed up the charger, the phone, and shoved them into my bag while grabbing the clean shirt inside and heading for the door adjoining my room with Hatley’s, which I pounded on. “Wake up! We have to get to Spades! Henry and all our bosses are waiting!” I lowered my voice as I moved around Corso, saying, “I’m sorry about last night.”
“-‘S okay,” he breezed, and rubbed his eyes. “I’d like to sleep for a few days but a few hours was nice. Thank you.”
“They’re probably going to cut me off, after what happened last night,” I said, lingering in the doorway. “I’ll meet you in St. Ayrs when I can.”
He nodded.
When I had finished in the bathroom he was gone .
*
On orders from Jericho, the train took us back to Spades an hour before it would normally be running. It would disrupt the train schedule for the day, and every mile closer my anxiety grew. Hatley and Clark said mostly nothing on the way. I would not ask Hatley to lie for me, but I wondered whether she might. I tried to think of a way I could explain my position to Jericho without giving Corso away. I wondered whether it really mattered anymore if I did give him away. He made it into the Four Quarters on his own, but I didn’t think he would make it out with his sister and maybe more, too. Not without help from me and the company. The only reason it was imperative Jericho and the company not know his identity was that it would connect the two of us and make me look unfit, which surely I already did after the night’s antics. I would have to read the room when the time came.