On Broken Wings

by Francis Porretto

  Her eyes returned to his. He felt the pressure of a test in progress.

  "I promise to believe whatever you tell me, child."

  Her gaze was oddly full of knowledge. "We'll see."

  ***

  "Now what do you think?"

  Schliemann shook his head. "I don't know what to say. But you're not complaining, are you?"

  "No! I just need to know why. He doesn't seem to want anything from me. Not that I've got that much to offer. But I've practically sat on his face at least twice, and he didn't even blink."

  The priest gasped. "Christine!"

  "Did I say something wrong? That's the way Louis sounds when I say 'shit' or 'fuck,' but I didn't say those words. Unless I forgot and did it by accident?"

  Schliemann made a frenzied shushing motion.

  "It's all right, child, really. Sometimes I forget about your, ah, background." He rose and paced the room. "So what really bothers you is that you can't figure out his motives."

  She nodded, watching him with concentration.

  "And you know he has to have some, because we all do. But he hasn't said anything." He paused. "What has he told you about his own situation?"

  "Nothing, Father. Where does his money come from, anyway?"

  Schliemann's eyebrows went up. "Does it really matter, child?"

  She met his eyes without flinching. "It might, Father."

  "Ah. Perhaps you're right. Well, he made a lot some years ago, doing what he's teaching you to do, and he's invested it very well, or so he's told me. At any rate, I don't think we need to worry about that. He certainly doesn't."

  She grimaced. "You have to understand, for ten years I was surrounded by guys who made money by beating the living, uh, daylights out of people and taking it from them."

  "Ah, I see. He came by it honestly, never fear." He returned to the sofa, sat beside her, and took her hands between his own again.

  "It's true that we each have reasons for the things we do. But it would be wrong to assume that someone's reasons have to be evil ones just because he hasn't discussed them with you. Isn't that so?"

  She nodded. "I just want to know, that's all."

  "I understand. In your position, I would, too. But you can't force him to tell you. For now, it lies between him and God. And you have more than enough experience with him to know that he will not harm you in any way." He thought for a moment. "Christine, did you ever ask him?"

  She snorted. "Yes, Father, I did. Just last night."

  "Well? What did he say?"

  "He said he wanted me to become strong, confident, and happy."

  "That sounds like Louis all over. But it's not enough for you, because there's nothing for him in any of that. Am I correct?"

  "Yup."

  Schliemann winced. "I'm sure he's asked you not to do that."

  She grinned. "Yup."

  He shook his head. "Perhaps it'll take a while. But I can assure you of this: you couldn't be in better hands. And he does have his reasons, and they are good ones."

  She sighed. "I guess I knew that." The rectory door opened with a protracted squeal. Evidently Louis had returned. "Can I come see you again sometime, Father?"

  "Any time, child. For any reason, or none. You will always be welcome in my home, and God's."

  ***

  Christine was silent on the drive back. Louis tried to make small talk, but his heart wasn't in it either. When they returned to the house, Christine went to the mess from the previous day's shopping spree and began to sort through it.

  "Which closet?" she asked.

  "The one in your room, of course. Give me a second." He grabbed two plastic trash bags from the kitchen and dashed up the stairs. Five minutes later her closet was empty and the bags were full.

  "I've been meaning to clean that closet out anyway. I just needed a reason."

  She turned from her mountain of purchases and gave him that heart-stopping smile.

  "I know, Louis." She bounded to him and embraced him, pulling him tight against her while he stood there holding the bags filled with his old clothes. Ridges of scar tissue scraped gently against his cheek. Her lips brushed the side of his face. She stood back from him, smiled again at his incomprehension, and returned to her pile of purchases.

  "What was that about?"

  "Oh, no reason."

  ====

  Chapter 12

  The nurse disconnected the intravenous unit and rolled it away. Louis didn't move.

  Dear God, how much worse can it get?

  He feared even to turn his head. The nausea had hit him as the drugs entered his bloodstream, and it was more powerful than he could have imagined. The breathing trick was not working. Panic was setting in.

  He closed his eyes, hoping that the lack of visual stimulus might allow him to gain some purchase on his vertigo. The opposite occurred. The surges in his head and guts seemed to swell to enormous dimensions, as if he were being tossed back and forth by a pair of unseen giants.

  His eyes snapped open again. It was unbearable. He could not lie there a moment longer. He raised himself on one elbow and tried to swing his legs off the gurney. They moved much more sharply than he intended, and he fell.

  He crashed to the floor alongside the gurney. The impact shocked open his stomach valves. His body emptied itself in a rush. His nausea metamorphosed into pain, a combined sense of burning and corrosion that reached from his throat to his groin.

  "Nurse! Thirty milligrams of compazine, stat!"

  He recognized Miles Jefferson's voice. The young resident's face swam in his darkening vision. As his consciousness faded, he was irrationally comforted by the thought that at least he hadn't eaten breakfast.

  ***

  Louis woke to pain. His left arm throbbed from shoulder to fingertips, and his left hip seemed to be a single giant bruise. Mercifully, the nausea was gone.

  He had been laid on a bed in a tiny private room. Jefferson was there, asleep in a metal guest chair, head thrown back at an angle that looked downright fatal.

  How does the man sleep in positions like that?

  "Miles?"

  The resident started, blinked, yawned, and focused on Louis. "How're you doing, sport?"

  "Hard to say. I hurt like hell, but the nausea seems to be gone."

  "It damn well should be. I hit you with enough compazine to quench a volcano."

  Louis raised himself up on his elbows. Ignoring the throbbing from the left one took some effort. "Miles, is it always going to be like that?"

  Jefferson grimaced and looked away. Louis could tell that the resident was mulling over how much to tell him.

  "You've reacted badly so far. I'd have to say very badly. Normally, that's a pattern that doesn't change. This stuff is not kind to your innards."

  "I hope it's even less kind to the cancer."

  The resident ground his teeth and said nothing.

  "Miles, you're scaring me."

  Jefferson slouched forward, dropped his elbows onto his knees and covered his face with his hands. "It's not working, Louis. I'm sorry."

  Louis waited until the resident could meet his eyes again. "What do you mean, it's not working?"

  Jefferson stood up, staggering a little from exhaustion. "Are you okay to walk?"

  "Sure."

  "Then get up from there and come with me."

  ***

  The X-rays on the light board were arranged left to right from oldest to newest. Their testimony could be interpreted only one way. The original malignancy on his lower spine had enlarged and sent out thick vertical tendrils. Dark masses had proliferated throughout Louis's abdomen. It appeared that every organ had been affected.

  Louis stared at the story of his deterioration in silent shock.

  Intellectually, he had known how slim his chances were. Emotionally, he had never conceded the certainty of his own death. Now, facing the evidence, he could no longer deny it.

  He turned to Jefferson, who had kept silent while Lou
is absorbed the import of the X-rays. "How long?"

  A spasm of pain passed over the resident's face. "Not long at all, Louis. I'm sorry."

  "Miles, how long? I need figures."

  Jefferson started to speak, stopped. He turned back to the light board. "This cancer is racing, Louis. The chemo hasn't had any retardant effect at all. In two months, at the outside, you'll be unable to care for yourself. After that, thirty days, max."

  "How do I extend that?"

  "Damn it, Redmond, I can't save you!" Jefferson's voice broke, and his shoulders began to shake. He turned to hide his grief against the wall.

  How many more times do I have to hear that?

  Louis went to his friend and laid a hand on his shoulder. Jefferson emitted a cry of pure loss, as if his heart had been torn from his body. He did not turn.

  "It's okay, Miles." He kept his voice as low and soft as he could. "I know you've done your best. But I need time. Two months isn't enough. What can we do, you and I, however radical, to buy me another three or four months? Self-sufficient months?"

  At first he wasn't sure the resident had heard him. It was a long time before Jefferson turned to face him, face wet and eyes crimson-lidded.

  "I don't know, Louis. I should ask a few people and do some thinking. But I'd say you should quit the chemo at once. It's weakening you horribly and doing no good at all." The resident's eyes began to brim again, but he checked it and collected himself. "We could try palliative surgery."

  "Meaning?"

  "Open you up and scoop out anything we find that doesn't belong there. It's got its own risks, though. The state your kidneys are in, you could die on the table. And the postoperative pain will be no joke."

  Louis considered it. "What would the time gain be?"

  Jefferson clenched his jaw again. "It could get you your four months, if everything went right."

  "Is there anything else that has a better chance?"

  The resident shook his head.

  "Schedule it. I'll call you tomorrow to get the details. I'll need to know how long I'll be on my back, too."

  Jefferson nodded again and began to turn away. Louis grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into a tight embrace.

  "You tried, Miles. We both know that. But it isn't given to any man to defeat death. Not permanently, anyway."

  The resident quivered and began to cry again.

  "You are the strongest person I've ever known." The young doctor's words were a series of faint gasps.

  Louis held him and said nothing.

  ***

  The reveling had subsided. A few Butchers and fewer Vikings were still on their feet, talking, drinking, arm-wrestling, boasting of exploits past or recounting the one they had just accomplished together. The rest snored in every corner of the Vikings' base, a dilapidated old millhouse that had been forty years idle when Jake Bonham's eye lit upon it.

  Tiny couldn't sleep. He was too pumped. Even though it was a week in the past, the assault on Vallares Arms continued to sing in his blood. Listening to the others talk about it at every idle moment made it worse. He craved further action, to hit another fat target and claim the spoils that would accrue to him as the toughest guy on the scene. But it would be a while, and a good distance from here, before he could risk anything ambitious, and he knew it full well.

  What this country needs is more cops like Eric Smalley.

  The commander had been as good as his word. The twenty Vikings and Butchers who had staged the distraction had passed through District G's paper mill like a needle through a sheet of gauze. Twenty-four hours later, all of them had been released, and all evidence of their arrest had been destroyed. As for the strike group that had taken down Vallares Arms, none had suffered a scratch. The haul had been over a million dollars in cash, jewels, and easily fenced goods after splitting with Smalley.

  It was an arrangement that begged to be tried elsewhere.

  As he sat on an ancient workbench, musing over how to popularize this excellent new development in law enforcement, he saw Jake Bonham approach. The Viking boss, as big as Tiny but startlingly blond and fair-skinned, held out a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels. He was grinning tiredly.

  "Another toot?"

  Tiny shook his head. "Been meaning to cut back."

  Bonham snorted. "Yeah, sure. And I know Elvis ain't dead, 'cause the Martians told me so." The Viking put the bottle to his lips and threw his head back for a count of five. He wiped his mouth on a bare forearm. "Give this up and what's left to live for? Pussy?"

  Tiny shrugged. "It beats solitaire."

  Bonham squinted at him in the gloom. "You getting ready to hang it up, man? You don't look or sound the same as when you passed through here last. The old motor ain't there. I always figured you for a lifer, but I guess maybe not."

  The comment took Tiny by surprise. "You think I'm losing it, Jake?"

  Bonham shook his head. "Naah. But you might be losing the taste. You were good at the hit, man. Damn good, I've never seen better, and I've been rumbling for twenty years. I'll tell you straight, if you challenged me for the Vikings, I'd give 'em to you and walk away while my skin was still whole. Don't tell my boys that, though."

  Tiny laughed. "Keep 'em, Jake, I've got enough troubles. So why do you think I'm losing the taste?"

  The boss Viking grimaced. "I get the feeling your mind's on other things all the time, that's all. Even when you're tryin' to party down. And I keep thinking, maybe losing Tex was a bigger deal than anybody knows."

  Tiny stared Bonham full in the eyes.

  "Guys die, Jake. Even our guys. Tex wasn't the first."

  Bonham started to reply, then thought better of it. He started to offer the bottle to Tiny again, then turned and shambled away to where a small knot of Vikings were still trading boasts and insults.

  He knew what it was that he missed, and it had nothing to do with Tex. He missed the sight of a pair of brown eyes driven wide with fear and pain, above a body that screamed ravish me to every red-blooded man within twenty miles. He missed the way fear would mount in those eyes whenever he looked in her direction. Above all he missed the frenzied efforts she had gone to, to keep him from taking her down the one-way street he had promised he would one day show her.

  He could not believe she was dead. Vitality such as hers would not pass from the world without someone like him to flense it from her with attention to every detail.

  He sauntered the perimeter of the millhouse's central space until he came upon Hans. The Butcher lieutenant was lying on a filthy mattress, nursing a bottle by himself.

  "Skoal, Boss." Hans waved the bottle in a half-assed salute in Tiny's direction. "Want a hit?"

  Tiny shook his head. "I want to ride."

  Hans struggled onto his elbows. "You picked our next stop yet?"

  "Onteora."

  "But --"

  "She isn't dead, Hans. I know it."

  Hans examined his leader's face for a long moment.

  "Okay. You got a new idea about finding her?"

  "Nope. But I'm gonna do it, if I have to burn the whole county down and sift the ashes through my teeth."

  The big blond nodded. "It ain't the same without her, for sure."

  Tiny grinned, felt the grin turn feral, and relished it.

  "For sure, pal. But we'll fix it. We ride tomorrow."

  "You got it, Boss."

  Tiny sauntered on. His demeanor was unchanged, but the singing in his blood had acquired a new chorus, addressed to the absent object of his reverie.

  Put on your party smile, slut, 'cause ready or not, here I come.

  ***

  Malcolm could have taken any four of them with ease. Unfortunately, there were eight of them.

  The melee had gotten out of his control. He had not suspected the proximity of the second group until he had already engaged the first one. After that it was parry, thrust and whirl and hope to stay alive.

  They knew their business, too. They might not have know
n what he could do, but they treated him with the respect due a dangerous adversary. One group of four acted as a containment while the other four harried him back and forth between their blades. Their coordination was good enough, so long as he remained unarmed. They had scored on him too many times already for him to think of anything but escape. He had weakened too far for the escape to be of any kind but one.

  The time for it was approaching. If he waited too long, he risked a head shot and God-only-knows what after.

  The two behind him were acting as beaters for the two before him. The flankers stayed close enough to pen him in, but not so close that he could puncture the containment with a lucky shot. The lot of them were too wary, too practiced at their trade to allow him to dream of a surprise breakthrough. He kept them at arm's length only by whirling and flailing his limbs in all directions. He couldn't do it much longer.

  He permitted himself to be herded forward, continuing to flail for space so that they had to keep their blades high. The beaters and flankers slid along with him, as they had done all along. With each step he was forced to take forward, the two adversaries on that side probed for an opening that would permit them to finish him.

  Knives on the left too low. Got to move right.

  He summoned what was left of his strength and essayed a fury of spin kicks to his left. The two on that side were pushed back, but no gap opened between them through which he could flee. The two on the right closed smoothly. While he moved forward, one of them brought his weapon chest high. Loughlin saw it from the corner of his eye and flung himself to his right as suddenly as he could.

  The knife caught him between the third and fourth ribs and drove deep into Loughlin's heart. The organ shuddered to a stop in a way that had become all too familiar.

  This is getting to be such a bore.

  With the dregs of his consciousness, Loughlin forced himself to curl inward and away from the fatal blow, causing his killer to pull the knife out of his chest, and pitching him face first to the street.

  ***

  The gang waited for an indication that their victim was playing possum. None came. The spreading pool of blood in the street testified to the efficacy of their work.