Stay

by Nicola Griffith

  The woman was edging towards the car. I pointed the gun again until she stopped, then turned back to Luz. “I will explain very soon, but I need you to be very quiet and very still, just for five minutes. No one will hurt you. Do you understand?” She nodded, amenable but uncommitted. “Get back in the car.”

  She shook her head.

  There was no time to argue. “Then stand right here, next to me, and don’t move.”

  She crept to my side.

  I turned back to the woman. “Su bolso.”

  “Ella no comprende,” Luz said.

  “Your purse,” I said again, in English.

  “I could get it,” Luz said. If you please Mummy, she might do as she promised. And I wanted to pistol-whip this smug woman, this panderer of children, until her blood seeped into the Arkansas dirt.

  Luz climbed into the backseat, felt around the floor, and emerged with the purse. “It’s heavy,” she said, and held it out to me.

  I made myself breathe. In and out. “Find her wallet,” I said. I locked the car again and put the key in my pocket.

  Luz rooted around and came up with a slim, calfskin billfold.

  “Open it. I want her driver’s license and insurance card. Read them to me.”

  Luz did. Jean Goulay, an address in upstate New York.

  “Any business cards in there?”

  “What’s a business card?”

  I didn’t take my eyes off Goulay. Any minute now she was going to realize she was in even deeper trouble than she thought. People don’t avoid leaving their fingerprints if they mean you well. “Tip the purse out onto the road.” Luz did, and looked at me nervously. I forced what I hoped was an encouraging smile. “There, those pieces of cardboard with phone numbers and e-mail addresses.” Maybe she didn’t know what an e-mail address was, either. “Lift one up so I can read it.” I read it aloud. “Goulay Adoption Agency: specializing in difficult cases. Discreet. Established in 1987.” Nineteen eighty-seven. Fifteen years of processing children like imported grain. Some of them would be old enough to already be married.

  “This will stop,” I said to Goulay. Terrible heat was building in my bones and it was hard to get the words out; the hinges of my jaw felt dry and swollen. I put the gun back in my waistband.

  “Nothing I’ve done is illegal.” Perhaps it was seeing me put the gun away, but Goulay had relaxed again, on surer ground. She looked almost smug.

  My stomach squeezed. I took a step towards her. She would break so easily under my hands. “ ‘Illegal’ doesn’t interest me. If you import one more child, I will hurt you.”

  “What is it to you? They’re better off here. They’re well fed and well taken care of. Over there this girl would be a prostitute, like her mother. She’d probably be dead by now; her sister is. Her brother already has AIDS.”

  Well fed. Well taken care of. It wasn’t enough. I took half a step towards her.

  “You can’t touch me. You think I run a business like this without the best lawyers money can buy?”

  My arm came up, and as she realized her lawyers couldn’t stop me smashing my fist into her well-bred face her mouth fell open and her pupils dilated, and it reminded me of Karp’s fear; I remembered the animal noises I had made, and the vomit, and I didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to be that anymore. I lowered my hand, and the way the color rushed back into her face and the sweat started at her hairline made me think of one of those dolls that cry or wet their underwear when you press a button, and I laughed. My laughter made her change color again, which was even funnier.

  Eventually I sobered. “As of today, you are out of business.” I nodded at her purse. “I have your name and social security number. I know your face and where you live. You, on the other hand, know nothing about me. Not my name, not where I’m from, not even how I found out about you. If you do this again, even once, I’ll find out, and I’ll come for you, and you will spend the rest of your life in pain. Now put your belongings back in your purse and get back in the car.”

  And that’s when everything went wrong, when Goulay smiled instead of looking scared, and bent to pick up her purse.

  It’s heavy …

  I understood why at the same moment I understood that I could not move in two directions at once, and that, here, Luz was the point, just as in Norway Julia had been the point, only I had forgotten.

  When Goulay straightened with the purse in one hand—gaping as though disemboweled where the previously concealed compartment now lay open—and a nickel-plated Ruger .38 five-shot in the other, I was standing in front of the child. Luz inhaled sharply. The hand holding the Ruger didn’t waver.

  All the heat had burned from my bones, leaving them light and strong. A fly hummed a few feet from Luz’s head. I felt dense and supple and utterly relaxed. “Luz.” I reached behind me, put a hand on her shoulder. “Está bien.”

  She had been so brave all this time, but now I felt the tremble deep in her little bones.

  “It’s all right,” I said again.

  “Child, get the car keys and bring them to me.”

  “They’re in my right-hand pocket,” I told Luz, not taking my eyes off Goulay. The child was the point. This time I would not forget.

  Luz groped in my pocket for a moment and came out with the keys. The Glock hung in my waistband, but there would be no time to use it.

  “Bring them here.” Goulay held out her left hand, the gun in her right still trained on my stomach. The gun’s vanity plating meant it was probably the cheap model Ruger had taken off the market a few years ago, because there wasn’t much demand for a pretty weapon with a stiff trigger. And it wasn’t cocked.

  My head filled with humming. It wasn’t the fly. I breathed in, deep and slow, until the world took on a dreamy blue edge. All the time in the world. Luz moved in slow motion towards Goulay with the small unsteady steps of a terrified nine-year-old. One step. Two. On three her hand lifted and dropped the keys into Goulay’s palm.

  The human body is densely studded with nerve endings which constantly send information to both our conscious and subconscious minds. Generally the brain does a superb job of traffic control, and training can improve this, but an untrained person cannot focus on two important and unfamiliar things at once. When those keys touched the sensitive skin of Goulay’s hand, for a split second her attention was divided: her right arm still pointed at me, her index finger still rested on the trigger, but for that moment, just a hitch in time—the space between a breath, the time it takes for an electrical impulse to leap a nerve synapse—her body knew more about her left hand than her right. And it takes more pressure than the untrained realize to pull the trigger of an uncocked gun.

  Remember the child. Oh yes. This is who I am. This is what I do.

  I took one sliding step with my right leg, slapped the gun away with my left hand, and hit her neatly under the ear with my right elbow. She folded without a sound. I smiled at Luz, picked up the gun, broke open the cylinder, and tipped out the bullets. Dry-fired it. Just as I thought. Stiff. Cheap. I wiped the gun clean on my sweatshirt and dropped it into Goulay’s coat pocket. The bullets went in mine. Luz stared at me, lips pale.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said. “Can you be brave just a bit longer?”

  She nodded jerkily.

  “Good. I’m going to need your help to tidy up a bit.” I bent and plucked the keys from Goulay’s white hand. “If you open the back door, I’ll put her inside where she’ll be more comfortable until she wakes up.” My knee flared when I bent to pick up Goulay. Pain is just a message, information about an injury. If the structural damage isn’t enough to stop you, the message can be ignored. Goulay was heavier than she looked and it took me a while to make sure all her flopping limbs were safely inside before I could slam the door. “We have to move the rig, too.” I pointed at the trailer and truck.

  “Where’s the man?”

  Mike. Right. “He’s … You’ll have to help me with him, too. He’s tied up behind the tru
ck, but he’s not unconscious, so we’ll have to bring the car to him to make it easier to get inside. Okay? Come on. You can sit in the front.”

  Like all rental cars, the Maxima smelled new and unblemished. The tank was still two-thirds full. I drove the few feet to the rig so that the back door was as close as possible. “Open the door. I’ll go get him.” She slid out and went to the back door. I left the engine running.

  Mike’s face was livid. He writhed as much as he was able and grunted explosively as I pulled out his gun.

  “Two choices. One, I drag you to the car, face down, which will rip your skin up quite a bit, might even damage your eyes. Two, I untie your feet and you get into the car without a struggle. If you struggle, I shoot you. Dead people are just as easy to move.” Easier. But it would probably upset Luz. “Should I untie you?”

  More grunts.

  “Should I untie you?” I asked again, patiently.

  He nodded.

  I loosened the belt so he could free his feet but pulled it back tight on his hands. “Stand—”

  Luz’s scream sliced my sentence in half. I whipped around just in time to see Goulay, now in the front seat, one arm around Luz’s neck, her own head craning to see behind her, before the car screeched away in reverse. I lifted the Glock, and that’s when Mike hit me on the back of the neck with his clubbed fists.

  How did he do that? I thought stupidly, as the strength drained from my legs and my hands went numb. I staggered, the Glock fell from my fingers, and Mike hurled himself at me. I went down face first, him on top. One of my ribs popped with the long, leisurely sound a cork makes coming out of a particularly anticipated bottle of port. The gravel under my cheek should have felt cold but didn’t, though the metal at the corner of my eye did. Somewhere a child was screaming. Someone grabbed my right wrist and pinned it to the road by my head, so that I pointed after the reversing car, which was only a few yards away and moving terribly slowly. Dust and that scream hung in the air as though someone had stopped the world.

  The man on top of me shifted, dropping his whole weight down and forward on his hands to pin me more securely. My cheek tore on gravel as I smiled. Give me a long enough lever and I will move the world.

  The child had stopped screaming. I put it from my mind.

  For the Chinese, it is the source of chi, for the Japanese, ki, for dancers and gymnasts, it is the center of gravity: the fulcrum around which the body moves. Shift your balance, and everything changes. Balance is also psychological. If your opponent expects you to pull in one direction, he sets his muscles to resist. Mike had put all his weight over my wrist: he was balancing on it; he expected me to pull my hand in instinctively and protect my torso. So I did, but slowly, so he had time to resist, and when he began to push the other way—which pleased me so much I laughed, which startled him, which made it even easier—I thrust both hands up over my head, simple as stretching. His balance followed my wrists, sliding as smoothly as the bubble in a tilting spirit level, and as he fell forward, I pulled both legs under me and bucked. Thigh muscles are enormously powerful. He soared, upturned face comical, and I was scrambling after him on all fours like a strange, bloodied train, Glock in hand—where had that come from?—before he hit the ground. He was lovely and fast, already up on one knee before I pistoned right elbow into his neck, left fist into his solar plexus, and arced the Glock into the back of his skull. He collapsed. I smiled, and stood. Staggered. Pain is just a message.

  The Maxima was now forty yards away, veering wildly, jerking, driving again, still in reverse. I wiped the blood from my face, squinted. The child had stopped screaming because she had her teeth buried in the woman’s wrist. I lurched forward. My knee buckled and I almost went down again. Just a message. I ran. In another fifty yards, the Maxima would reach the crossroads where there would be room to turn around. Once it was out of reverse, I’d have no hope of catching it.

  The woman slapped the child. The child hung on. The car slowed almost to a stop. I ran. Thirty yards. The woman hit the child again. Twenty-five yards. The child let go. Twenty yards. Now or never. I lifted the Glock, sighted, breathed out, held it, and shot out the left front tire. I moved the gun slightly, sighted on the woman’s chest. Neither of us moved. Slowly, she raised both hands.

  I limped as fast as I could to the car. “Out,” I said to the woman. “Now.” Even in rural Arkansas a shot might not go unnoticed. She climbed out warily. There was blood on her right wrist. I could smell her fear. “Turn around. Hands on the roof of the car.” Before she’d even turned around properly I whipped the Glock across the back of her head. I caught her before she fell.

  The child had squeezed herself up against the passenger door, as far away from me as she could get. “Open the back door,” I said. She didn’t move. I ignored my knee, ignored the terrible need to hurry, and dredged up her name. “Luz. I need you to open the back door.” She stared at the gun, then my face. The gun, my face. I couldn’t put the gun down without letting go of the woman. Another child … shiny eyes … “Button needs you,” I said. “We have to hurry.” There was no more time. I slung the woman as best I could over my left arm and tucked the Glock back in my waistband out of sight. That’s when I remembered the noise my rib cage had made. I cursed softly, then put that message aside, too. I could just reach the door handle. I got it open and stuffed the woman in. She left a smear of blood on the upholstery. I slammed the door, got in the driver’s seat.

  Luz still hadn’t moved or spoken. I picked her up bodily—she was practically catatonic—put her in her seat, and pulled the seat belt round her. The pain was making it hard to breathe.

  The tire rim ground on the gravel as I drove the hundred yards back to the rig and the sprawled lump in the road.

  Out of the car, open the back door, drag the man to the car, lift and prop, fold and push him on top of the woman. Close rear door. Use remote to lock all four doors. Open door of truck, sigh, walk back to car, open passenger door. “I’m going to move the rig—the truck and trailer—so we can drive past. I’m coming back.” I’m going to pass out. “Stay there.” This time she nodded cautiously.

  I got in the truck, turned it on. I could just drive away and never come back. I checked my throat in the mirror: red, but not reopened.

  It took four minutes of slow and careful backing and filling before I had the rig on the side of the road, pointing south. Each time I twisted, each time I moved my right arm to change gear, I thought I might throw up. Just a message. The hitch didn’t feel right, but there wasn’t time to check it properly. Somewhere a sharp-eared neighbor might be dialing the sheriff. I turned off the engine, climbed down, went back to the car. The child was so quiet I could hear the two in the back breathing slowly but steadily. The child—Luz, her name is Luz—had unfastened her seat belt.

  “Fasten it back up.”

  Luz looked at me. “Button?”

  “We have a short drive to make first.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the woman Goulay and Mike, but didn’t speak. Probably thought I’d shoot her if she did.

  I had to slow for every curve. With that tire gone, the car tilted to one side and the front wheels had a tendency to skate. I checked the rearview mirror often. No pursuing traffic. “How far can you walk?”

  Now the look I got was full of incomprehension, as though I were speaking Urdu. How many nine-year-olds would know how far they could walk? She could probably manage three or four miles without any lasting damage, and I could always carry her. “There’s a map in the glove compartment,” I said. “Pass it to me please.” I slowed, one hand on the wheel, the other tracing tiny lines. Brink Creek campground was about four miles. The woods there would be dense enough to confuse most city people, and there wouldn’t be much traffic. I handed the map back to Luz, who refolded it and put it back in the glove compartment without being asked. Remarkable adaptation to circumstances. Her early life must have been interesting. Or perhaps all nine-year-olds were this resilient.
>
  The campground was empty. I pulled in under the trees, parked, and pocketed the keys. Luz seemed to listen to the silence.

  “Now you have to help me wipe the car down.” I eased Goulay’s heavy coat off her shoulders and ripped away one of her cardigan sleeves. “Take this and rub it all around the steering wheel. It’s very important that you rub every single bit of the surface.”

  “Why?”

  It wasn’t her fault the Carpenters didn’t have a television. I forced myself to breathe through the pain in ribs and knee, and managed to speak without growling. “Fingerprints.”

  While she scrubbed industriously at the wheel and gear stick I tore off the other sleeve and wiped at the doors and roof where I might have touched the metal inadvertently. Then I tackled the shiny vinyl on the backs of the seats and inside windows.

  I remembered the belt and wiped that down, too—after I’d retied it around Mike’s ankles. He must be more supple than I’d thought. Just as I was finishing that, he woke. “Don’t,” I said in his ear. “Keep still and you’ll be fine. She’ll wake up in a few hours and untie you.” It would be dark and cold by then. I tucked Goulay’s arms back into her coat.

  I motioned Luz away from the car, gave the wheel and stick a quick wipe myself, then threw the ragged sleeve on the front seat.

  “Now we walk back to the trailer. It’s a long way.” She didn’t move. “What?”

  “My stuff.”

  The suitcase, in the trunk.

  At first she insisted on carrying the case herself. She carried it two-handed, in front of her, bumping her knees. I tried not to wince.

  “When you get tired, let me know.”

  I matched my pace to hers, but even at two miles an hour my knee burned. The back of my neck throbbed and every now and then my hands tingled. Some kind of nerve bruise. I felt at my ribs gently as I walked; no obvious splintering. Cracked, perhaps, or maybe just soft-tissue injury at the sternum. Cartilage probably.

  I had no idea what to do with this child. I had seen the look on her face as Goulay tried to take her away from the Carpenters. But a dog will bond even with a cruel owner, one who beats it and starves it.