Brick House

by Daniel Nayeri

  “Huh? What’d she just say?” said Ari.

  Both Saul and Mack looked at the sliding-glass door to the backyard. Then they looked at each other. Mack put a finger in the air and said, “Wait. Mustard and Randy look practically the same, except Mustard has a scar over his eyebrow. And we saw the scar on the kid hanging around the Biemans’ place. Randy’s at school, so . . .”

  “That leaves the kid out there making a rocket launcher,” said Saul.

  “Either it’s Randy’s wish,” said Ari, “or the orphan had himself a wicked idea, too.”

  Mack drew her twin Desert Eagles. Saul drew Sweetheart, and the two bounded toward the sliding door and into the backyard.

  FOR THE THIRD time that day, Detectives Mack and Saul, code-named Five-Leaf and Ji-Ji, part of the classified Imaginary Crimes Unit, jumped out with guns blazing and scared the living bejeebuz out of an orphan who answered to the name Mustard. The startled boy yowled and let go of one of the rockets he was working on. The plastic rocket screamed toward Mack’s head, spiraling like a sidewinder missile.

  In one blurry motion — so quick that Saul wondered if it was humanly possible — Mack managed to turn her shoulder just in time to let the missile graze past, then brought up her Magnum and blasted the other rocket Mustard was holding. Smithereens of plastic and cardboard flew in all directions. Mustard flinched, then sat shivering with the blown-up remains of his rocket still in his hand.

  The whole yard was a rectangular patch of grass the size of an end zone, with an eight-foot wooden fence to cordon it off. Saul walked over and stood over the kid. “Howsit going?” he said.

  The boy looked and acted just like the one they had interrogated early that morning, measly. “I knew it,” said Mack. “So, you’re Mustard.”

  “It’s, it’s ’cause I put it on my chicken wings,” said the kid, still quivering in his undersize brown sweats.

  “What did he say, chicken wings?” said Ari. “That don’t match the record, Saul.”

  “Last time you told us you put it on your eggs,” said Saul.

  Mustard dropped the broken rocket and put both palms up to his face. He sobbed, “I put mustard on my eggs, too!”

  Mack kneeled down next to the watery Mustard and put her hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay, little man. Putting mustard on things isn’t a crime.”

  “It’s not?” said the boy, peeking out from behind his wet palms. Mack smiled and shook her head no. “Then why are you shooting me?”

  “Lemme talk to him,” said Ari.

  Mack sighed. “Honestly, Mustard, we don’t have time to tell you why.”

  An aborted pause. “That’s okay,” said Mustard. He seemed used to the idea of people not having time for him, maybe more comfortable with it than anything else. Pieces of the fuselage were scattered on the dirt launchpad he’d created. Mustard picked up a lacerated plastic hunk and tried to fit it, like a jigsaw puzzle, among the scraps of wreckage in his hand. Saul picked up the red plastic tip of the rocket and held it out to the kid. Mustard looked up. He reached into Saul’s wide brown hand and took it. A sweet grin. Honey Mustard. The kid had a scar over his eyebrow, just like the one they had brought in that morning (not to mention the same brown jammies). They had let the wish go, ’cause he obviously didn’t want to kill the Biemans. But Mack had been right. It was still a Wicked Idea made Suddenly Human. It just hadn’t been Randy’s idea.

  Now all they needed to know was what impossible thing Mustard wished for.

  “What were you working on?” asked Saul, squatting down next to him but clear of the launchpad and any tiny invisible ground crew.

  “I mean, there were lots of phases,” said Mustard, bashful but proud. “Phase one was my surface-to-air missile silo. Then I was gonna make a mounted warhead with the wood over there”— he pointed to a moldy wine crate in the corner of the yard. If not for the liddle lithp, or maybe because of it, he sounded like a NASA engineer. Even a deadbeat dad would have had the decency to get him out of those jammies and into a science camp.

  “A rocket launcher,” said Mack.

  “Uh-huh,” said Mustard.

  “For the love of Aquaman,” said Ari, “why is it every kid we meet is a munitions expert?”

  “Do you like war games?” said Saul.

  Mustard shrugged. “Not really.”

  Saul glanced at Mack. She shook her head. They didn’t need a debrief to tell them they weren’t getting anywhere. And now they had two wishes on the lam, en route to crimes that ought not to be. There wasn’t any time to explain to the kid, as they’d done for Randy, and the captain had pinched them already about talking too much. Then Mack said, “Hey, Mustard, let’s play a game.”

  The kid put down the pieces of the rocket. “Okay.”

  “It’s a quiz game,” said Mack. “Like, if you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?”

  “Donkey Kong,” said Mustard. He turned to Saul.

  “My turn?” said Saul. Mustard nodded. “I’d be a goldfish.”

  Ari spoke into their earbuds, “You’re a good man, Sulaiman al Djinn.”

  “What about you?” said Mustard, looking up at the female detective.

  Mack put a finger to her lips to think. “I would be a seagull, or a heron, or one of those bears that eat salmon from the river.”

  “You are a stone-face gargoyle,” said Ari. “You’re a fugly sea cow.”

  Mack grinned at Saul. Then she said, “Okay, let’s say it was your birthday —”

  “It was my birthday,” said Mustard.

  “Really? When?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “Perfect, what did you wish for?”

  The kid clammed up. “I dunno,” he said. Maybe he was ashamed of it. Or maybe he still wanted it to come true. Everybody knows you can’t tell people what you wished for. Dreams, like crimes, are better kept in the dark.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I would wish for,” said Mack, trying to jump-start the kid, “I’d wish for . . .”

  The detective stopped short, sucker-punched by her own question. Her mouth was still open, waiting on a thought; then it closed. Nothing. You would have thought she had nothing to wish for. Saul wondered what kind of story Angie was gonna dig up in the Wishing Post archives. What was Mack hiding?

  “You know,” said Saul resting his hand, heavy as a family quilt, on Mustard’s shoulder, “I lost my family a long time ago. If I had a birthday, I’d wish to see them again.”

  Mustard’s eyes grew wide to take in the entire king-size detective at once. They could see what he was wondering. Maybe if he got shoulders so broad, he could bear not having a family, too.

  “Is that what you asked for?” said Saul.

  Mustard nodded. “I wished my parents would want me back,” he said. Then he picked his nose and added, “I’m not an orphan, you know. My parents just aren’t around.”

  Mack sucked the air through her teeth and rose to her feet. Saul’s knees both groaned as he got up. They’d rather the kid had wished for an undead army, a skeletal warhorse, and the cursed ice-blade of the Lich King to go rampaging up through the Brooklyn petting zoo. At least Mack could pistol-whip the wicked idea of murdering a bunch of llamas and reanimating them into a zombie herd.

  But this was one of those cases that made police work stink like a witch’s chimney.

  “I need some chai,” said Saul.

  “It’s chilly out here,” said Mack. “Maybe you should come inside.” Mustard was too busy sorting the pieces of his rocket and the fallen leaves.

  Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with wanting your parents to love you.

  Of the wishes that can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t happen, maybe this was one of those wishes that just wouldn’t happen. It could, and it should, but it just wouldn’t.

  The wish would become one of those pitiful creations they’d pick up now and then. No resisting arrest, just a hangdog apparition, roaming around, waiting to come true, but unable for
some reason nobody could guess. Mustard’s parents were never going to want him.

  In the brick house they had a minimum-security wing for them — because they never lasted long. They’d walk the prison yard with their hands in their pockets, wondering why they were in prison for a crime that didn’t seem a crime.

  First thing to go was their shape. The lines that made them up would look wobbly, like they were just heat rising from the pavement. Then their color would fade like an old Polaroid. Then the wicked ideas — that no one could tell you why they were wicked — would become the night’s shade, the musty air.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Saul as they walked back into the kitchen.

  “What doesn’t matter?” said Mack.

  “That he only wants Doc Bieman to love him again,” said Saul. “His wish is with Clara right now, trying to act lovable. That thing’s a weapon, don’t care how pitiful.”

  “So we all agree that Mustard is the doc’s first son, right?” said Ari. “Got a grad student pregnant or something. And left the baby at the orphanage so he could get with Randy’s mom . . . before she was a mom? Right? That’s what we all think?”

  In the kitchen, Lady Cavanaugh was eating cashews from a plastic bag. “Ma’am,” said Mack, “what can you tell us about Mustard’s parents?”

  “Some egghead dropped him off, says he sent his mama back to Russia or something when her visa ran out. And he’d got another woman to marry, so this kid was old baggage. He pays the rent, and we keep the kid.”

  “What’s Mustard’s real name?”

  “Neville Jr. or somethin’.”

  Mack put a finger to her comm unit and said, “Yep, that’s what we think.”

  As they walked out, the boy with the Yankees cap was still in the hallway, spray-painting the drapes. As Saul stepped around him, he said, “Hey, kid, what’s your name?”

  The boy had a familiar sneer. “I got lots of names, mister,” he said. “What’s it to ya?” Then he added, “Got one for every letter.”

  Saul stopped. Mack came up short behind him. “What?” she said when he whipped around and looked at the dirty carpet where the boy used to be.

  “He’s gone,” said Saul. “And he used to be a Mets fan.”

  Mack’s expression was blank.

  “You really didn’t notice anything weird about the boy?” said Saul, trying to catch a twitch, a shift, any recognition that she’d used the same line on him back at the diner, that she had every name in the alphabet too.

  “He’s got a bunch of aliases,” said Mack, “and you keep calling him a boy when I’m pretty sure it was a girl, but other than that, no.”

  One of those pauses where everybody’s too tired to change the channel.

  Saul rolled his eyes, exhaled, and said, “Randy.” Then he walked through the kitchen to the backyard and found Randy’s wish with its hands around Mustard’s neck.

  The ghul looked exactly like Randy Bieman. It slackened its grip on Mustard’s throat, but the orphan’s body hung limp in the wish’s arms.

  Saul put his hand on the comm unit and said, “Central, I got visual on the wish. Looks like a G — as in ghul — class. Confirmed shape-shifter. Repeat: G-class shape-shifter, copy?”

  A crackle, a nasal reply, “Ten-four, Ji-Ji. Proceed to apprehend. Standing by.”

  Randy’s wish held Mustard up to a standing position with one hand clutching the orphan’s neck. The other hand hovered over Mustard’s exposed throat. Saul moved his hand up to his holster. The wish growled. Two of the fingers on its hand elongated, then sharpened into straight razors. A wicked idea. Mustard’s head was slung backward and his mouth was open. As a warning, the wish tapped its morphed fingers on Mustard’s teeth.

  The sharp clicks made Saul pause. Randy’s wish leaned forward on the balls of its feet and arched its hackles like a wolf curling over the orphan boy — Randy’s half-brother. Its teeth grew outside the curtains of its lips.

  Ari said, “You gotta take him now, big guy. None of that nicey-nice.”

  “Shhh,” whispered Saul.

  “Don’t shush me, Saul. Not in front of the perps.”

  Mack’s voice cut in on the comm channel. “The house is secure. I’m joining your position.”

  Over his shoulder, the ex-genie saw his new partner approach from the kitchen, baring the twin Magnums. “Drop him,” said Mack.

  The wish panicked at the sight of Mack. It dropped Mustard’s unconscious body on the grass and darted. To Saul, it looked like the wish was scared of his partner, not her guns.

  Mack sent a volley of rounds, each one exploding out of the barrel with a cone of fire, toward Randy. The wish took the shape of a squirrel, bouncing across the yard, then an ocelot. The .38-caliber bullets splintered the moldy wine crates and shattered a hanging pot of azaleas.

  The ocelot’s legs stretched as its body expanded into a cheetah. It sprinted and leaped toward the fence. When it hit the wooden surface, it turned and launched itself off the fence, flying back toward them like a swimmer in a pool. As it lanced through the air, the wish’s face thinned into the prong of a swordfish.

  Saul and Mack lunged in opposite directions to dodge the attack, but the blade bone cut Saul across the temple as it sliced past. When it landed, the wish was a monkey, hopping around the yard, hurling rocks.

  “Now!” said Ari. “Snuff the punk.”

  “All right, all right,” said Saul. “Quit screaming.”

  Saul pulled Sweetheart from the holster and ran toward the monkey. He sighted the BB gun and sent three pellets whistling through the air.

  Tack, tack, tack. The monkey squealed at the stinging shots and dropped the stone in its paw. The outline of its body rippled with pain.

  Just as the ghul turned back into its original shape, Saul came barreling down on him and smashed his right fist into Randy’s face.

  “Ha-ha!” shouted Ari over the unconscious ghul — shaped like a kid with a shiner and a broken jaw. “Ha. Howsit feel now, Ran-dee? Guess every wish comes true, and dreams are songs our hearts sing . . . except ones that try to kill family and get beat like a friggin’ rug, you little urinal cake!”

  Saul cuffed Randy’s wish and carried it through the house. Mack stopped in the kitchen, where Lady Cavanaugh was leaning on the counter, eating cashews.

  “Ma’am, you should probably check on the boy,” said Mack.

  Lady Cavanaugh looked out the glass doors. Mustard was sprawled out like a starfish. “Wish his papa would wise up.” She sighed. She didn’t even ask whom Saul was carrying. “But you know what they say,” she said. “If wishes were horses, even beggars would ride.”

  “Oh, they’re not horses,” said Mack.

  Back at the 3-1, Alvarez and Goodie were still lounging around the DT bureau, the captain was still counting case files at his desk, and the seal on the floor still read, “To project and to swerve.”

  The first star of that night would still be a deadly weapon for someone else. And Angie was probably still at the Wishing Post — a lambent halo sitting on her hair like a tiara, wondering how an angel ever ended up in a dispatch office.

  The fact was they had all been wish-makers of some kind — the angel, the fisher prince, leprechaun, pixie, troll, and genie. All except the captain — he was just an old man. They knew the job. Some of them even liked the job. Most of them, it was all they had.

  The badge set them apart, made them outsiders among their own kind. Alvarez talked like he was a Don Juan of the pixies — Ari like he vacationed with mermaids. The truth was they were nothing but Wish Police. But that was a choice they’d all made. No point crying about it now.

  When Mack slammed the door, dragging Randy Bieman’s wish behind her, Alvarez took his feet off the desk and said, “Wokay, you got some cholita in you, Mami.”

  Mack shoved the kid into the metal seat across from Alvarez and cuffed him to the armrest. “Don’t call me mommy,” she said. Mack looked at the comic books on his desk, then at Goodie, st
ill knitting a shawl. “We take a case off the board, and you guys haven’t even started?” said Mack.

  Alvarez shrugged. Mack took off her leather jacket and dropped it on her desk. She filled a paper cone at the water cooler. As she drank, Randy’s wish squinted at Alvarez and said, “Why are you wearing makeup?” Alvarez leaned forward over his desk, a comic book in his hand crumpled into a ball.

  “Whatchu say?”

  “I think she’s making it up,” said Angie. Saul stood in the tiny dispatch office. Angie sat at the switchboard. A touch screen showed a map of the city with dotted lights representing the imaginary crime activity for that night. The room was dark. The city looked like a Christmas tree. It even had Angie and her shining halo to look over it. “I couldn’t find any records on Mack before three years ago, when she joined the force. Before that, she could have been anywhere.”

  Saul didn’t tell Angie about the ghul getting spooked at the sight of his partner or the fact that her stories didn’t match up. Angie was a good girl — by definition she was — but she had a lot of time on her hands, and gossip was her stock-in-trade. Those morsels would have tempted even a cherub. Besides, Saul was the last person to give up somebody else’s secrets.

  “Thanks, Angie,” said Saul. “I owe you.”

  “Wait, what happened with your case?”

  She wanted him to stay, maybe cook her a nice penne with grigio for dinner. She’d told Alvarez once, at the Christmas party, that she liked Saul ’cause he was so . . . normal. She just wanted a regular guy.

  “I got this one, Saul,” said Ari. “Truth is, Angie, we got a seawall of paperwork. Turns out we had two kids get their wishes crossed. Rich kid wanted his family dead, so we stake the place. Orphan’s wish shows up instead and plays like a pound puppy. So at first, we lost the scent.”