“Vignette,” Shane stupidly began. Fortunately his stutter only let him blurt out, “Vin-Vin-”
“Vinny,” Vignette interrupted with a masculine scowl. “We’re brothers. Just found each other. After the quake and all. Everybody else bought the farm. All of them.”
“Ah! Brothers!” cried Father Juan Carlos as if a miracle had unfolded. He looked around with an expression that invited all to witness. “You were separated by the terrible earthquake, and you have discovered each other once again at the Mission Dolores!” He called out to everyone within earshot. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Everyone within earshot agreed, with all the enthusiasm of hungry people impatient for a meal. More than one grumbled about there being a line.
“Two young muchachos,” Father Juan Carlos rhapsodized. “Her-manos, who both thought that they were alone in the world, but the Lord looked after them!” He was much too grateful for being in the company of this miraculous occurrence to worry about miniscule things like lines and places in them.
Vinny piped up in a boyish voice, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the area. “Thank you, Father. But since we saved your place in line for you, why don’t you get in here and grab a plate?”
“Oh!” replied the happy friar without missing a beat. “That’s right! I suppose I should. And thank you again, chico.”
“It’s our pleasure, Father. We’ll be seeing you around, since we’re both living out in the shed and guarding the cemetery at night and all. Looters, you know. If we even see one, we’ll set off a ruckus they’ll hear for miles!”
Shane shot Vignette a panicked look, convinced she was about to say something that would draw the wrong attention to them. He was ready to move into the streets with her if he had to, but he hated the idea of letting that happen.
“Oh. Really?” Father Juan Carlos replied. “Both? Then you’ve gotten permission—” He paused. “Yes. Well then. I’ll see you at mass, no?” He smiled and lost interest in them, loading up his bowl and plate.
“Yes, Father. Both of us. We do everything together.” “Bueno, then,” the hungry friar replied, eyeing his ample lunch. He smiled around at the nearby workers. “Thank you everyone. Blessings upon you.” He continued to smile while he walked off with his food.
Shane paid close attention to a number of the workers, who seemed to accept Shane and Vignette as just a couple of brothers who lived out in the cemetery, seemingly with permission. Something told him that as long as he and Vignette kept quiet and didn’t cause any trouble, rumor could serve them as well as fact.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE LATE MAY MORNING AIR was misty cold, ignoring summer. Tommie had eaten nothing at all for over two days to achieve maximum inner purity. At this point he was feeling lighter than air, filled by an unusual sort of electrical charge. He walked all the way to the City Hall Station from his place up on Russian Hill, just to burn off some energy. In contrast to the morning’s frosty temperatures, his body radiated heat like a powerful gaslight. He could feel himself glowing.
By the time he entered the station house and found his way to Lieutenant Gregory Moses, Tommie was prepared to overwhelm that shrinking lieutenant and quietly coerce him to tell everything he knew about the surviving boy Shane—and about his connection to Sergeant Randall Blackburn, one of the lieutenant’s own men.
Tommie knew for a fact that whatever scraps of willpower remained in the lieutenant’s semi-corpulent form would quickly dissolve in Tommie’s presence. Afterward, Lieutenant Moses would feel proud to have been of service to one of his betters.
Moses had to wonder just how much of a fool that they thought him to be, these faceless higher-ups in the Department brass, that they would send Tommie Kimbrough to test him yet again. Their low opinion of his intelligence grieved him far more than whatever it was that they were doing to try to take away his position and give it to their nephew, or their bartender, or anybody they might owe a favor. He was astonished that anyone who knew him would judge him to be such a fool. Did they have no idea of the kind of mental skills necessary to run the Record Keeping Department?
And yet here it was. He was being presented with this little popinjay of a man and some mad plan to persuade Moses to give out information about Sergeant Blackburn and that Shane kid. The one from the newspaper. Moses threw a glance up at the only other occupant in his office: some attorney sniffing around for answers to a few questions. Moses left him to continue waiting while he dealt with Kimbrough.
“Oh, I’m afraid that Sergeant Blackburn is most likely home asleep at this hour, Mr. Kimbrough.” He smiled a smile of kindness. “He works a midnight shift, you see.”
“No, Lieutenant, as I just said, I don’t need to speak with him right now. But, well, you know how much I support the work of our police.”
“Oh yes.”
“And after reading the article, I just couldn’t stop wondering about how the sergeant met the boy. Or about whatever has happened to the boy since then.”
“It’s only been a few days.”
“A lot can happen in a few days, Lieutenant.”
Moses briefly noticed that Kimbrough seemed to be trying to glare at him with a strange intensity.
“I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to tell you,” Moses replied, modifying his smile to one of mere professional courtesy. “Not that I know anything to tell. If you want to come back at around eleven-thirty tonight, maybe you can catch him before he goes back on duty. See if he’s willing to talk to you.”
Moses watched Tommie’s face darken and fought the urge to taunt him.
“Lieutenant Moses,” Kimbrough began, “I’m only taking this personal and direct route because I know how busy our city leaders are with the reconstruction efforts, and I hate to bother them for favors just because they are willing to do them for me. It seems unfair to take advantage of my inheritance in that way.”
Moses could no longer keep his contempt bottled. “Oh, really? Your inheritance? Must be a real tribulation to have that much money.”
“It’s a civic obligation, the way I see it.”
“An obligation! Like the obligation to pay your bills.”
“Exactly.”
“Such as the mortgage bills on your house. That sort of thing, yes?”
Kimbrough’s face darkened again. This time he took a pause before he said anything. When he finally spoke, it was done softly and in measured tones. “I wonder if the lieutenant has reconsidered my offer to buy that foreclosure notice?”
“Absolutely unnecessary! Save your money, sir.” He leaned close to him and whispered, “Your secret is safe with me.”
Moses picked up the big Duty Roster and started going over names. A moment later he looked up again, as if he were surprised to see Tommie Kimbrough still in front of his desk. He gave him one more vague smile and then dropped his eyes and went back to work on the roster. By the time he looked up again a minute or two later, Kimbrough was gone.
Moses worked for another ten or fifteen minutes before Randall Blackburn came walking out of the rear office area.
“All right, Lieutenant. That’s it on all the paperwork for this latest one. Maybe now we can get some funding for extra detectives to track this maniac down.”
“No money for that now, Sergeant, we’ve been down that road. Meanwhile, this gentleman over here has been waiting for the last thirty minutes, just to see you.”
The attorney stood up and extended his hand. He was a tense-looking young man with a suit that was perhaps a size too small. “Gabriel Towels, Sergeant. Esquire.”
“Mr. Towels, I’m way overdue to go home and sleep.”
“Yes sir. I’ll just—” He looked around as if there must be spies. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
“Use the office,” Moses told them with a wave. “Time to make a few rounds.” He walked out and left the two men alone.
Blackburn sighed. “All right, Mr. Towels, if we could just—”
“The ar
ticle about Shane Nightingale—”
“That again?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. What about it?”
“Sergeant, I represent the Great Republic Insurance Company, and part of my duty is to locate benefactors of our policies in the wake of the earthquake and resulting fires.”
“Good. And you have a check for me?”
Towels ignored that. “Until the article, we had no idea that anyone in the Nightingale family survived. Nobody filed any claims, even though Mr. Nightingale owned three apartment buildings. Though his business was not covered, they had to have fire insurance under the law, and therefore were insured.
“We are not one of those companies who are trying to avoid their obligations to clients, Sergeant. We owe the Nightingale family twenty-seven thousand, five hundred, seventy dollars, and forty-two cents.”
“Forty-two cents.”
“We’re very thorough.”
“You’re looking for Shane Nightingale so you can give him money?”
“Yes. And he does not need to be a named heir to claim the money, as long as nobody else in the family survives to step ahead of him.”
“Shane’s rich, then? That money is his?”
“Well, not rich. Perhaps someday, if he invests well. But the point is, we can have a check in his hands within a few days, as soon as he signs the papers.”
Blackburn felt an idiot grin spread from ear to ear. He was about to watch Shane Nightingale’s life turn around on a dime and speed off in a whole new direction. For once, he was going to see a deserving kid get an honest break, and maybe change his whole life for the better.
He clapped Attorney Towels on the shoulders, accepted his business card and promised to bring Shane in to see him right away. Then he was out the door and on his way to the Mission Dolores, full of glee at the chance to be the bearer of this news.
While he hurried along, he once again failed to notice that he was being followed. And since the chaotic atmosphere of reconstruction was everywhere, offering a thousand points of distraction to disguise another’s presence, Tommie Kimbrough discreetly tagged along.
Blackburn and his secret tail reached the old Mission in less than fifteen minutes. He went in and excitedly checked around for Shane, who was nowhere to be found. But when he peeked into the rear toolshed, he saw that Shane’s meager belongings were still in there. So it seemed that Shane was missing out on his daytime sleep, too.
Oh, well, he told himself. The money will still be there tomorrow.
He decided to stop by again after his shift, early the next morning. Then he headed home to catch a few hours of sleep.
This time there was nobody waiting to follow him. Tommie was already on his way back to Russian Hill, now that he knew exactly where to find the person who had spoiled his perfect crime.
Shane worked to keep up with Vignette while they jostled and pressed their way through the crowded outdoor marketplace. Even though she was two years younger, she seemed to have some sort of motor inside. Her legs kept pumping away while his grew heavy.
Vignette also seemed to make it a point to keep him laughing just hard enough that he could rarely get in a full breath. She threw him questions that only required short answers, then gave him a second or two to respond. After that, if he still wasn’t ready to answer, she began chanting random letters and numbers while he fought to keep up his concentration.
Every time she managed to make him stumble, they both laughed together. The thing that kept them on the same wave was that they both sensed how quickly Shane’s ability was growing because of this little game. It tickled because it worked. Shane felt himself flooded with emotions of gratitude that he had not felt since the day of his adoption.
Finally, she whipped into an alleyway and grabbed his sleeve when he passed. A second later she had pulled him into the shadows underneath a stairway.
“Look!” she beamed. She opened up her baggy shirt to pull out a loaf of bread and a large cooked turkey leg. Shane’s jaw dropped.
“Where did you geh-geh-geh-”
“You were right behind me!” she interrupted. “Where do you think I got it?” She put her face right up in front of his and bugged her eyes out at him.
Shane broke out laughing. The combination of her lively innocence, her street smarts, and her warmth was completely overwhelming. And now, to see her casually demonstrate her mastery of petty theft, the whole picture of her that resulted twisted his funny bone until he had to let go and laugh.
“You’re feeling guilty, right?” She prodded him and giggled. “You think we should give it back, don’t you?” She tore the loaf in half, then pulled a chunk of turkey off of the leg and handed it to him, along with his half of the bread.
He took it, bit off a mouthful of bread and followed with a large bite of the turkey leg. Then he nodded and said, “You’re right. Let’s give it back.” But all that came out was “You’re rihh, leth givih—” followed by a cloud of bread crumbs and turkey bits.
They both screamed with laughter. The sense of relief while the laughter poured out of him was so deep and so strong that all he could do was ride along with it. Shane realized that laughing to death would not be a bad way to go; he just hated the thought of missing out on more time with his sister.
The early afternoon light was blocked out of Randall Blackburn’s little garden apartment by thick drapes. He had been forced to accept the first place he could find because of the severe housing shortage, but he was grateful to have somewhere to go after work that was private and quiet. The artificial twilight inside was restful, giving the place a quiet feel that was the complete antithesis of his working life. On most days at this time, he lay sound asleep after the prior night’s shift. He slept on this day, also, but there was no peace in it. Images of his wife haunted him, as they sometimes did. She appeared to him holding their swaddled newborn daughter in such a way that he could not see the baby’s face. It was the same as always.
He had let the grim surgeon talk him into not viewing the dead newborn’s remains. What was there to see? they asked him. The infant had died in childbirth, shortly after the mother succumbed to blood loss.
And so he never got to see their baby. As often as his wife’s image came to him, the one thing that never varied was that she held their new baby so tightly that he could see nothing. He knew that the baby was a girl; someone had told him, but he had not even seen her in his dreams. No matter how many times his wife and baby visited his sleep, he never got a glimpse of his daughter’s face.
Blackburn sat up with a gasp, still reeling with dizziness. He focused his eyes on the blanket and made himself take deep, even breaths until the room began to hold still and his head cleared. The heavy curtains rustled slightly at the open windows and the breeze gradually cleared the cobwebs from his brain.
He checked his watch; it was barely afternoon, too early to get up for work. Dropping back onto the mattress, he closed his eyes with a deep sigh. He felt stirred up inside, with the sort of emotional hangover that sometimes hit him after having to break up a married couple in the middle of a vicious fight.
He spent a few moments wondering what it was that had awakened him like that, leaving him sweating and so upset. But the images and words were already fading. Sleep began to pull at him. He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, and then he was out again.
Not long after sundown, Tommie paced back and forth across the floor of his study, angrily stepping over Friar John’s prostrate form each time. He had already tied his victim down once again by the feet and neck, but Friar John was so far gone now that the restraints were a ridiculous overstatement. Tommie was astounded by the speed of this infection. Friar John’s face had already turned several shades of red, purple, and black. His eyes were blank. He only moved when he convulsed with yet another sharp gut pain.
Tommie tried yelling into Friar John’s ear again, hoping to force some awareness back into him. “I trusted you
and I confided in you that I have this difficulty with money. Parting with it is more painful for me than it is for you working morons. But all my bills get paid, eventually. It really is no one else’s concern. And yet you used that against me. How did you persuade the Nightingales to adopt Shane, in particular? Did you offer incentives to encourage them not to take some other child?”
He turned and kicked Friar John in the ribs and got a satisfying grunt of shock and pain out of him. Friar John’s eyes popped open and focused on Tommie, who was delighted to see that he was conscious again.
“Oh! Back with us, then? Lovely! They say many dying people often experience a final few moments of energy and clarity before they expire. How fortunate that this is also the case with you.
“You are dying of the plague. You were supposed to be my experiment and I was going to record every aspect of your death, but the disease, as you may have noticed, has turned out to be far too strong for my needs. Much too quick. Too quick.” He pulled out his heavy-bladed knife and admired its edge.
“This knife, however, is a highly controllable instrument. Simple and effective. Some things, it seems, need no improving. I should have trusted it to deal with you. I could have spent days carving my initials over every square inch of your body, keeping you gloriously alive and conscious the entire time! Think of that! Think of it!”
Whether or not it was that image which did it, Friar John’s eyes glazed over again. This time, he continued sinking. He seemed to melt into the floor and shrink within his cocoon.
“No!” Tommie cried. “Not yet, damn it!”
But as if to spite him at the last, Friar John completed the act of dying without paying any regard to Tommie’s demands. The last air wheezed out of his stilled lungs in that familiar death rattle that Tommie knew always signaled an end to his special recreations.
He stomped the floor. “It’s too soon!” Yet even as he spoke the words, he began moving toward the side door leading to his garage and stable. He knew it would take half an hour to hook up the buggy.
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