by Dave Housley
The vehicle, whatever it was, slowed and stopped, made a right turn, and then slowed again. Wherever they were, there were stoplights and traffic. He was in a bus or a truck. A big one.
He wondered if they were at Soldier Field. It was likely there or some criminal facility, a federal prison devoted to those like him.
He had snapped the guy’s neck. A cop. Not his first cop, but the first since he had made the change. The first since he had really, consciously tried to change the way he lived. The first since the night at the motel in San Jose, maybe the worst undercover he’d ever encountered. He had snapped the man’s neck the minute they laid out the drugs, the rest of them with no idea that the guy was even a cop, Cain so sure he hadn’t wanted to waste a second once he figured out the cop was alone, didn’t want to risk a name or a voice out on a wire somewhere. They had another room and another scene in another town, so he snapped the guy’s neck and they put their shit back into the backpack and they moved along to the next town and the cops were none the wiser. Not until way later. Not until he had already undergone the change.
He heard voices. He didn’t know how, but he knew it was night. He was, after all, awake. He was alive. For now.
There were two options. Either he was with the girl and the little nerdy-looking guy, the Dealer. Or he was with the feds. He wasn’t sure which would be better. The feds at least were transparent, easy to understand, to place him in some continuum that made sense in a larger context. The girl and the Dealer were more complicated.
The two of them were an odd pair, hard to figure. Cain remembered what he could from the night before: the cops, the hunger overtaking him, worse than it had ever been, a hard ache in the center of his head that throbbed like an ocean current. This was a part of him now, something he could tamp down but could never put out completely. He could cover it up, drown it, feed it with blood, but it would still be there.
He heard people knocking around, low voices in the vehicle. He couldn’t pick up the words but their tones were serious, scared even. Voices rose and he picked up a word or two, his own name and the phrase “scientific responsibility.” He wondered what that meant, but he knew it wasn’t good, could tell by the tone of the voices that they were worried.
He felt for a door handle, a lock, some kind of opening. There was a rough patch in the smooth metal, what he assumed had been a kind of handle that had been sawed off, and he clawed his fingers at the place where the floor and the wall connected. If he could jam a finger, a fingernail in there, he could force the thing open and…what? Kill everybody inside? Fight his way out of whatever they were in? Fight his way to where, exactly?
A knock. “Remain calm.” It was the Dealer’s voice. So there was that, at least. They were more likely to be at Soldier, or in an isolated compound somewhere, than one of those mythical federal facilities. “I’m going to open the door now.”
Cain shifted in the chamber, balled his fists. He posed his body for an attack. Then he remembered where he was, what he’d done. These people were the only ones who might be able to get whatever it was out of him the same way they’d put it in.
“It won’t work if you try to come out fighting,” the Dealer said. His tone was flat, almost amused. “You have noticed that I have the ability to…control is too strong a word. Influence your actions, yes?”
Cain knocked, once, on the partition closest to the voice.
“So it’s really quite simple for you. Come out fighting and you’ll force me to influence your actions. Come out like a gentleman and we can talk.”
One dose, Cain thought. One moment of weakness in his carefully managed life and here he was with no choices at all.
“I won’t kill you,” the Dealer said. “If that’s what you’re deliberating about in there. I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy for any of us from here on out.”
Cain’s hands began to tremble again, just lightly, moth’s wings flapping at a lantern in the dark. He flashed on a memory from his childhood, sitting around his grandparent’s trailer with his cousins while a campfire burned.
“You may be noticing a shaking in your hands,” the Dealer said. “Just a little demonstration.”
Cain imagined tearing into the Dealer’s neck and the trembling grew, butterflies into birds. He struggled to lift his arm, knocked once on the side of the container.
“Very well,” the Dealer said, and immediately the tremors retreated. Retreat was the right word, Cain thought: whatever was in there was still there, but the Dealer had made it go away, if only for the time being. Cain thought about that helpless feeling, letting himself go and letting his body do what it wanted to do. He knew it could happen again at any time.
The side opened and Cain waited for a beat. He put a foot out first, then another, shimmied until he was out of the container and standing unsteadily in what seemed like a large bus. A tour bus? The Dealer was standing a few feet back, a syringe filled with clear liquid in his hand. The girl was behind him, fidgeting with her hair, near what looked like a communal area with low couches and a single table.
“Mr. Cain,” the Dealer said. Behind him, the girl shook her head and scowled. She looked out the window. Cain could see the usual parking lot scene through the tinted glass. “Welcome to the last stop on this tour.”
Chapter 36
July 7, 1995. Washington, DC.
Pete changed the channel. On the screen, a young woman stood in front of a jeering crowd. A woman with hair that didn’t move and a fright mask of makeup held a microphone in front of her, asked “Do you really think we should believe you?” The crowd went crazy, shouting and shaking fists.
The young woman wagged a finger at them. “That’s right! You know you waaaaaaant it!” she teased.
Pete giggled. He wondered if he was still stoned, even now. They had been here, in this station, for hours, the rest of them leaving him in this holding room. He considered whether he should be mad, or worried. He was, technically, a government agent, even if he’d only been one for a few weeks, and mostly what he’d done was follow the Dead around and ask not enough questions. Mostly he was tired.
He wondered what other people his age were doing. Sitting in offices, making spreadsheets, daydreaming through graduate school lectures. What was Padma doing? He always pictured her in some kind of romantic comedy situation, shopping with her sisters, walking along the streets of Manhattan laughing, all of them beautiful and free. She was his only real friend, and how much did he know about her, anyway? Not much. Nothing more, really, than what a real government agent could piece together in a few days of surveillance.
The girl at the show had looked a lot like Padma, but there was no way it could actually be her. It had all happened so fast.
The door opened and he sat up, wondered briefly if he had done a bad enough job to get fired, or even worse, be thrown in jail. Could they do that? He had no idea what they could do. The tall cop, the one who had been wearing the tie-dye, was standing in the doorway with a bag of chips and a coke.
“I’m Jenkins,” he said. He handed Pete the chips and the soda.
Pete tried to talk and a squeak came out. He cleared his throat. Had it been that long since he’d last spoken? “Vandenberg,” he said. He opened the chips. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, how thirsty. Maybe he was still stoned.
“That was my partner,” Jenkins said. “Crabtree was his name.” Pete nodded. He had no idea what to say in this situation. What could you possibly say? “He was a good man,” Jenkins said. “He was a…he was… Ah, to tell you the truth he was kind of a goofball. You know? Kind of a fuck up. One of those guys you’re not quite sure what he might do next. Kind of guy, though…” he swallowed, stood up and walked to the window. “The kind of guy you want on your team. That kind of fuck up.”
Pete had no idea what this guy was talking about, what the good kinds of fuck ups might be. The emotion in his voice was clear, though, and Pete had seen him stomping around the crime scene, combing thro
ugh evidence like a machine cutting through alfalfa.
“What I need from you,” Jenkins said. He placed a hand on Pete’s shoulder. He sighed, resigned to something that Pete knew he would never understand. “Is help.”
Chapter 37
July 7, 1995. Washington, DC.
Jenkins walked toward the window and watched the kid squirm. Jesus. This is what it’s come to? He barely looked old enough to drink. He clearly hadn’t shaved or washed himself for at least a week. He stunk like weed and beer and dirt, a smell Jenkins knew he would forever associate with this brief, disastrous tenure as an undercover Deadhead.
Still, he had to give the kid credit: he was there. A week on tour, barely any training, and no prior connections, and the kid had been standing there when they got through the clearing. Somehow, he had done his job, found the one who was sick. He was there before Jenkins, before Crabtree, even before Tibor. Standing there in the clearing, far enough away to avoid trouble and close enough to know who was making it. Like a cop.
Jenkins thought about Crabtree lying there on the ground, the sound of his skin ripping, of that thing sucking his blood in gulps like a man gasping for air after holding his breath for too long. He knew he’d never forget that sound, all of it mixing together with Crabtree’s own gasps, his throat struggling to draw air, the sound of a human engine sputtering out of gas.
The kid was watching the television again, his eyes widening as Jenny Jones’ audience grew more raucous. He smiled a stoned smile. The smile of a kid who didn’t know he was being watched. David hardly smiled like that anymore. He was too cool. Like the piggyback rides and Saturday morning trips to the diner, the cartoons and spelling tests and Hawaiian Punch, his innocent smile was just one more little-boy thing put away as he retreated further into his own teenage identity. It was good, Jenkins reminded himself. It was good. A boy needs to pull away at a certain age. He remembered something Tibor had told him earlier, wondered if it was true, if this kid met the criteria he’d heard about, which at the time had seemed way too specific.
“You an orphan?” he asked.
The kid jumped. His head turned and he seemed to be remembering where he was. Jenkins wondered how long the dope would stay in his system, or if he was always like this. “Parents were killed when I was little,” he said. “Ward of the state.”
“How long you been out of school?” Jenkins said.
“Not long,” he said.
Jenkins realized that this was the extent of the kid’s resume so far. His entire professional experience had been the past few days, culminating, of course, in the death of Crabtree, that ripping sound, the vampire gulping blood and Crabtree making that high animal whine.
“Wait,” the kid said. “How did you know that?”
“Heard some talk at a party once. Or, I don’t know, party after the party after the party. You know, police, even federal, they talk. They drink and then they talk.”
The kid made eye contact and then looked away. “Your friend,” he said. “Not the one who died. I’m sorry about that,” he said it quickly, unused to this kind of conversation, Jenkins could tell. “Your other friend. The tall one. The one who walked off. Is he…”
Jenkins nodded. “Used to be my partner,” he said, surprised that he was telling the kid this much, more than he had told the other undercover. “Back in the day there was a program, paired us up like a buddy comedy, Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte, you know?”
“A pretty good movie,” the kid said. He was still watching the television, toying with a bracelet on his wrist.
Jenkins wondered what David was doing right now. He had spent so much of the boy’s life away, out, pacing around in rooms like this one, compiling data, searching for one person and then another. It would never end.
He should never have gone to lunch with Kathleen. Still, it was nice to see David in what was clearly becoming his natural element. Band practice. A girlfriend. He was smart enough to see the situation for what it was, to clear the hopeful blur out of his eyes. Chicago was David’s home now. With Kathleen. He would get four visits a year, and then three, and then two. Maybe if he played it cool, went along and didn’t make a fuss, David would look at some East Coast schools, maybe even American or George Washington. But somewhere along the line, sometime when Jenkins had been standing around a murder scene, or putting together bits of information until they started to form pieces, following Crabtree into a stash house or suspected affiliate’s place of business, or maybe in small ways during all of those times, in increments over the past few years, he had lost David to Kathleen and Chicago and this was the boy’s home now.
“So now?” the kid said.
Jenkins opened his notebook. “This is the part where you tell me everything you know.”
Chapter 38
July 9, 1995. Chicago, IL. Soldier Field.
Tibor scanned the crowd. They were ragged, dirty as he and Ilya had been coming off the boats those many years ago. They were the same age, as well, most of them—late teens, early twenties, some older people mixed in, as clearly lost and doomed as the elderly had been at Ellis Island and then the Bronx. He remembered them as apparitions, the old country beamed into the New World, clothed in black wool and clutching their rosaries or crosses, their Bibles printed in Italian or Polish. They had stumbled along with the rest of them, herded like animals from one holding pen to another. They had made the journey, but it seemed impossible that they would actually live at the destination.
And now these new ghosts, the gnarled, bearded, wonder-eyed children of the sixties that had somehow, against all odds, remained alive and stumbling around the parking lot of Soldier Field. They clutched their version of rosaries—bongs or bowls or baggies full of powder, clumped into their own little groups like the Czechs or Hungarians fresh off the boat and already reeling in the New World.
He wondered how they were still alive. They were not careful people, and a lifetime of living carefully—two or three lifetimes if he was being honest with himself—had led him to distrust those who lived any other way. An overdose, an undercover cop, a heart attack, stab wound, infected cut, or mouth cancer—somehow, they had avoided all of the millions of things that may have ended their brief stumble through life. Through some combination of luck and pharmaceuticals and genes, they were here. They were wrinkled and too tan, skin and bones or obese, one-legged or blind or in perfect health, falling down drunk or stoned or tripping on who knew what, but they were here. Somehow, they were still here.
Tibor scratched his long sleeve tie-dye. He felt naked without the overcoat. It had been years, decades, since he’d been outside without it. The sun had just gone down and the parking lot was getting loud. Drums, recorded music, shouting, the steady hiss of nitrous oxide tanks emptying into balloons. It was all too much. He remembered that he’d checked himself into the facility for more reasons, really, than just the one. It was quiet. Regular. Orderly.
He had the kid in his peripheral vision. Sitting there. Just sitting there, drinking a beer, looking around like he was waiting for somebody. Was he waiting for somebody? The kid was raw, but there was no doubt he had something—instincts or luck. He had been standing in that clearing before the rest of them had gotten there, had avoided running right into the gauntlet like poor Crabtree. That ripping sound. Tibor had only heard it a few times before. Another reason for a careful life.
“Hey, man. Hey. Man.” Tibor looked down. A small old man, his face grizzled but eyes shining that wonder-eyed hippie gleam, a combination of childlike and wise and tired and amused. “You need?” the guy said.
“Need,” Tibor said.
The man backed up a step, held out his hands. “Don’t want nooooo trouble, man,” he said. “Specially with you all.”
“You all?” Tibor said.
“You smell like a cop, man,” the guy said, taking a few more steps back, looking for an escape route. “No offense.”
Tibor nodded, continued to scan the parking lot as the man
slipped through a row of cars and disappeared. The kid was still in place, still sitting there. He was drinking another beer now, smoking a cigarette. This was significantly different police work than Tibor had done in his day. He thought about that first year in the NYPD. 1922. Maybe not that different, after all.
He hadn’t thought about those days for so long. Nostalgia served no purpose in a careful life. The best advice he had been given after going through the change had been to leave the old life behind. Ilya and Prague and those first few years on the force—careless, freewheeling days of lager and dancehalls, all of them seemingly equal parts thrilled and astonished to find themselves walking among the skyscrapers of New York City, and not just living but actually thriving in the New World—he had shed the memories like a cicada discarding the husk of its shell.
Ilya. He looked around at the women in the crowd, young girls in flowing skirts and long hair, dancing and laughing, rushing from one place to another. Things were so different now. Ilya would have loved it, would have thrived in the modern world. He hadn’t allowed himself the extravagance of memory for so long and wondered why it would come to him now, here, in this place with these people who followed a rock and roll band from place to place. Ilya had never even heard of rock and roll. He pictured her dancing in one of those halls, always a little faster, more loose than the others. Her hair flowed and there was that look in her eye like she was making fun of him and she wasn’t. She was always so much smarter than him, always the smartest person in the room.