Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  Prescott thought that was a good idea and grabbed another beer out of the cooler. A couple more women appeared out of the smoke and the cold and the night. Zeus rolled down the back window halfway so one of them could lean in. Harry could smell her perfume but couldn’t get a good look at her face. Zeus mumbled something. Prescott caught Harry’s eye in the rearview mirror and mugged silently. There was another woman now, walking across the street with her eye on the car. Prescott cracked his window as she approached. Beside Harry, Zeus had pushed his window all the way down. Harry could see long fingers, nails painted orange, and a thin wrist flashing gold bracelets. Up front, the woman with an eye for Prescott had disappeared. Zeus shifted his weight, blocking Harry’s view entirely as he talked in a low voice to the woman. Harry caught Prescott’s eyes again in the rearview mirror and was about to suggest they go when there was a sudden movement beside him. He turned just in time to see the woman’s silhouette as she disappeared down the block. Zeus was swearing and struggling with the handle on the door.

  “She took my wallet. Fucking bitch took my wallet.”

  Harry grabbed at his friend. “Wait.”

  The sleeve of Zeus’s coat ripped through Harry’s fingers and the big tackle was gone, running hard after the woman. Prescott fumbled for his door handle. Harry gripped his shoulder.

  “Stay with the car. You understand me?”

  Prescott nodded, eyes wide and weak. Harry climbed out. Someone was watching from a doorway and pointed. The guy was drunk and cheered Harry like he was running the marathon. Half a block ahead, he could see Zeus turn down LaGrange. Harry took the same corner just as his friend ducked into an alley. Harry hesitated, then started back toward the car. He’d get Prescott and they’d go together. Easier that way. Safer. Someone called out. He turned and saw a woman standing in the middle of LaGrange. She was long and willowy and wrapped in a short leather coat. She started to raise her hand when the door to a club called Good Time Charlie’s kicked open and a thick man stumbled out. He grabbed blindly at the woman, who stepped back, white light from inside the club catching her profile before the door slammed shut again. The woman slipped from the man’s grip and ran into the same alley Zeus had gone down. Harry followed.

  As he hit the mouth of the alley, he heard the dying chatter of heels on asphalt, then nothing. Harry called out for Zeus but got no answer. Blank windows stretched up both sides of the passage, the occasional lamp casting light here and there. A green door loomed on his left. Harry tried it. Locked. He could make out a Dumpster about halfway down one side and a string of garbage cans down the other. Harry crept forward, hissing for Zeus. He was about to start running again when he caught a flicker of movement. The man was crouched in a tight space between the Dumpster and the wall. He came at Harry from behind, swinging a blade that flashed in a yellow seam of light. Harry heard himself yell and caught the man’s elbow as the blade swung. It sliced in just below Harry’s rib cage, nicking the corner of his intestines and starting a flow of blood into his abdominal cavity. Harry felt the warm leak as his legs turned to slush and the back of his head hit the wall. Harry’s pulse was hammering, mind racing, wondering how, why, what. His attacker tripped and stumbled forward, looming over Harry, who caught a glimpse of gritted teeth and the shine of skin. A silver tooth dangled from the man’s neck. Then there was the knife again, at the top of its arc, poised to swing.

  * * *

  Daniel plunged through the layered darkness of the Boston Common. A necklace of streets surrounded it, embroidering the edges in soft yellow while the golden dome of the State House hung steep and chaste overhead like some secular confessor god. Daniel accelerated up a hill, not knowing where he was headed but certain he was desperately behind. He ducked between a set of park benches and paused on the edge of a wide field.

  Daniel could feel his heart beat in his blood, the flex and ripple in his legs even as his arms began to lengthen, fingers cracking and thickening into scaled pads of flesh, nails extending and hardening into yellow claws. Fur grew in ridges along his back, tawny orange with stripes of ebony running up his shoulders and around eyes that were sulfurous yellow with wet orbs of black in the very center. Daniel dropped to all fours and sprang forward, tearing up the earth as he powered across the field. He could smell the sourness of his breath and felt his teeth curve in his jaw, white whiskers bristling like wire in the November cold. He slowed, padding silently past Park Street Station—fully grown now, a Bengal tiger staring out at the passing cars and the fuzzy lights and the tender city.

  Daniel began to move again, gliding past a kiddie pool and over another rise, night vision aglow, picking up the heat of a man bundled on a bench. There was the smell of liquor and cigarette smoke and stale popcorn. Daniel sped on, feeling the brush of spiked tops across his belly as he jumped an iron fence. He was in a graveyard, the ancient tombstones cut hard by moonlight, set down in ragged rows like a rotting set of teeth. Daniel wove between them, tail flicking. Two strides and he was back over the fence, racing the curve of a walking path, Boylston Street cresting just ahead. He paused for a moment, rubbing his flank against a tree, enjoying the scratch of the bark on his hide and the smell of the earth in his nose. Then he stepped out of the Boston Common and back onto the street, back into his own body.

  Daniel had no memory of his run through the park, at least not on two feet, yet here he was. He looked down at his running shoes, Tigers of course, soaking wet and caked in mud. He took off his hat and shook the light sweat out of his hair. An image of Grace filled his head, followed by a black face with a silver tooth on a chain, swinging free off his neck as he reached for his gun. Harry rose up, Harry somewhere in the city, clutching at minutes, seconds, moments as they slipped through his fingers.

  Daniel sprinted the rest of the way up Boylston to the intersection of Tremont. Half a block away, a squad car lit up its flashers and accelerated, the cry of its siren spiking his blood and freezing all thought. The squad fishtailed around a van stopped at the light and disappeared down Tremont. Daniel followed, diving into the fragrant, yellow heart of Chinatown, the Combat Zone waiting just beyond.

  * * *

  Harry raised his arm as the blade fell, tearing at the sleeve of his jacket before scraping off the brick behind him. He was on one knee and came up hard, hammering a right under his attacker’s ribs, driving him back against the iron spine of the Dumpster. The black kid grunted and slumped halfway to the ground, his knife clattering onto the hardtop. Harry reached, but the kid was closer. He had the knife in his left hand, swiping low this time, catching nothing but air. The kid’s eyes were moving and Harry could see the clock ticking in his head.

  “You got thirty seconds,” Harry said. “After that the cops are here and you’re done.”

  The kid responded with another swipe of the knife, wider now, wilder. A drunk stumbled against a garbage can somewhere, the noise rattling through the maze of concrete and brick.

  “I’ll tell them I didn’t get a look,” Harry said. “But you got to go. Right fucking now.”

  The kid’s eyes slalomed from side to side, weighing, measuring, deciding. He slipped the knife into his pocket and disappeared down the alley. Just like that, Harry was alone. He slumped back against the Dumpster, legs splayed, hand over his stomach, feeling his abdominal muscles twitch and the thin flow of blood between his fingers. Harry tipped his chin up and stared at the wall of faceless windows scaling up both sides of the alley. Jimmy Stewart and Rear Window. That’s what it reminded him of. If Grace Kelly came walking down the alley, it might even be worth it. He chuckled and felt his eyes flutter. The cold was in his bones now as the adrenaline drained away. Shock wasn’t far behind. He lifted his shirt and checked the wound, not more than an inch or so, angry and red. He could feel the blood leaking inside, but it was slowing, clotting, stopping. Harry would live. He was certain of that. And he’d keep his promise to the black kid. A soft scuff of shoes. Someone approaching. Didn’t sound like Grace Kelly, bu
t Harry wasn’t complaining. Whoever it was stopped on the far side of the Dumpster.

  “Over here.” Harry’s voice was that of an old man, not much more than a croak. Then the person stood over him, backlit by the glow from a streetlamp.

  “I’m hurt,” Harry said, and held out his hand. His savior crouched, withdrawing a long sinew of silver from under a coat. This time there was no doubt, the steel driving deep into Harry’s belly, pinning him to the wall behind him. Once, twice, three times, the steel flashed. Then his attacker was gone and Harry lay flat on the pavement, blood bubbling out of the fresh holes with every pump of his heart. He turned his head, eyes clinging to each precious piece of life around him. He noticed the rough rub of the alley next to his cheek, the grit of dirt, and the crooked rubber wheel of the Dumpster six inches from his nose. J.J. ALBUS & SONS was stamped on the wheel’s metal caster and Harry wondered what J.J. looked like, what manner of man he might be. One with glasses and a fine, even temperament, Harry guessed. His eyes reached for the far wall. He studied the strata of brick, taking apart each grain of sand that made up the mortar mix, puzzling over its composition and the men who worked with it one summer’s day—months, years, decades ago. He saw a hot dog wrapper just beyond his reach and would have given what little was left of his life if there had been writing on it. A rat scuttled out from between two garbage cans and sat by his ear, whiskers twitching, eyes calculating. Harry moved two of his fingers in greeting. The rat lifted a paw, scratched its face, and scuttled off. Better things to do, no doubt.

  Harry took a final look around, inhaling every particle of the alley, feeling the energy of “being” as it sparked and flickered and hummed all around him. He could see clearly now the infrastructure that he’d always known without ever knowing, the cosmic glue, the light, the pure, effortless grace that bound and transformed and breathed life into inanimate lumps of clay we called “things”—people, buildings, cars, flowers, dogs, cats, rats and the garbage they picked through. He saw it all, entangled in a shifting, eternal, breathtaking pulse of light and dark, good and evil, birth and decay and birth again. And he knew, just as sure as he knew he was on the point of his own death, that Daniel was close by, that Daniel was coming, that they’d never really be apart again. Harry called out his brother’s name as he closed his eyes and breathed his last, falling forward into the web of seamless light, into the warmth, enveloping, embracing, taking him home. A place he’d never been before. A place from which he’d never leave.

  18

  FACES FLOATED past, painted eyes and curled lips, gums, teeth, and folds of flesh hanging loose from cheeks and under chins, all of it caught in harsh stripes of light. Daniel turned away, stumbling down one alley, then a second. In the close, sticky confines of the Combat Zone, he was forced to slow down. A door kicked open and a tide of human refuse flushed out, men, women, high heels and perfume, hard leather shoes and liquor, pushing him one way, pulling another. Someone asked if the kid was looking for a blowjob. Laughter. “Maybe a handy Andy. Denise, whaddaya say?” More laughter. Daniel was scraped up against the side of a building and left stranded as the tide drained off.

  Terror blinked in his belly, opening its filmy eyes again, sinking its fangs into his liver. Daniel fell to his knees and got sick, the vomit splashing up in his face before being carried by a trickle of water to a small grated drain and the sewer that ran rank beneath the city. He stretched out flat on his stomach, cheek against a rough cobble, and wondered what he was doing here, if the docs were right after all, if he was losing his mind, if he’d opened a door to something that would swallow him whole. He thought about Harry as the thing inside bit again, this time taking a chunk of his spine. Daniel shivered and groaned and struggled to his knees.

  Breadcrumbs of noise. Gruff voices giving directions, a high-pitched protest, someone cursing, the whine of a walkie-talkie. A door opened to Daniel’s right, and a wrinkled Asian face ghosted into view. Daniel tried to ask a question, but the door slammed shut. The noise was getting louder, the voices closer. A curtain moved in a window above him. A man leaned out, forearms on the sill, and gawked at something in the adjacent alley. He ducked from the window and returned with a camera, snapping away at whatever he’d spied below. Daniel got to his feet and took a final corner so he was almost directly beneath the window. A black man was kneeling beside a Dumpster. He turned and fixed Daniel with a hollow stare.

  “Who the fuck are you?” The black man was dressed in a dark overcoat and had a gold badge hanging shiny around his neck. “How the fuck did this kid get in here?”

  There were more sounds, heavy footsteps pounding toward them. The man climbed to his feet and moved to greet the newcomers. As he did, Daniel got a glimpse of what he’d been bent over. And then Daniel screamed, high and dry like an animal caught in a trap, willing to trade a limb for his life. Or his brother’s. The black man with the badge knew that scream, had heard it before, and dove. Too late. Daniel had Harry in his arms, still screaming, mingling tears with his brother’s blood, thick and dark and warm as it frothed and flowed from the hidden wounds. Three cops had him now, too many hands tearing at him, dragging him off Harry and trapping him in a corner. The black man shoved his face in Daniel’s and asked a bunch of questions, but Daniel didn’t hear any of them. All he did was scream and scrape at the flesh on his arms and the flesh on his face. He screamed while they cuffed him, screamed while they dragged him down the alley, screamed while they muscled him through the crowd of pimps and hookers and johns and hustlers who’d massed behind the police tape to see what sort of entertainment the night held, screamed while they threw him in the back of the cruiser still covered in blood, screamed while they drove him away. Then it was quiet and the people on LaGrange Street talked among themselves, agreeing this was a fine show and when were they going to bring out the body.

  * * *

  In the alley a cold, black rain began to fall in earnest. Barkley and Tommy were huddled under an umbrella while a couple of forensics guys worked on the corpse. Barkley pulled Harry’s Harvard ID out of his wallet and showed it to Tommy. They exchanged a look and told the forensics guys to go get coffee. Then Barkley crouched on his haunches and studied Harry’s face, comparing it with the ID. Behind him Tommy was on the radio, calling for more backup and cursing their luck.

  Part II

  19

  BARKLEY NEEDED coffee. They had a pot, filters, and silver bags of the stuff stashed in a corner of the squad room, but he had neither the patience nor the palate for fresh-brewed. With a soft grunt he got up and walked down the hall to a vending machine not far from the front desk. He dropped in a quarter and selected COFFEE-BLACK. There was a whirring sound, then the good stuff began to hiss into a cardboard cup with a smiley face on it. He took the coffee back to his desk and settled before the typewriter. It was already loaded with a blank police report and four layers of colored carbons. Barkley had just typed 3:15 A.M. in the box where it said TIME when Tommy hit the door.

  “Bark . . .”

  “Typing, Tommy.”

  “It’s the kid.”

  “You wanna do the typing, Tommy?”

  “He’s a problem. And no, I don’t wanna do the typing.”

  Barkley looked up. “You get him clean?”

  “He won’t clean. Won’t leave the fucking room.”

  “Where you got him?”

  “Number one.”

  Tommy stepped aside as Barkley swept past and down the hall to holding room number one. Barkley stopped at the door and turned. “We heard anything from the press?”

  Tommy shook his head. “How long you think before they turn up?”

  “Hard to say. Prick from the Herald already had Fitzsimmons’s name at the scene. He’ll get here first. After that, it’s the bigger prick from the Globe. And then the cameras.”

  “We gonna have to talk to ’em?” Tough guy that he was, Tommy hated the press. Pretty much shrank back into the skin of a ten-year-old anytime he got near a h
ot mike.

  “Sure as shit they’re gonna want my black face out there.”

  “Sorry, B.”

  “Ain’t your fault. Now, listen, this kid here, he’s gotta be gone before any of that starts.”

  “So we either arrest him or turn him loose.”

  “Arrest him? For what? You got an ID yet?”

  “Nothing in his pockets. Actually, he’s got no pockets. Looks like he was running.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “All the kid did was scream. Thank Christ he’s stopped that.”

  Barkley pushed open the door. The kid was curled up in a corner, knees tucked under his chin, skinny arms wrapped around his shins. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his chest was smeared with Ivy League blood.

  “You wanna take a seat?” Barkley turned one of the two chairs in the room toward the kid and sat in the other. Tommy leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest. The kid looked at both men, got up, and took the seat.

  “You want something to eat?” Barkley said. “Something to drink? How about we take you into the bathroom and let you clean up?”

  The kid shook his head.

  Barkley had forgotten his coffee so he folded his hands on the tiny table wedged between them. The kid was gripping the shit out of both sides of his chair and rocking back and forth. His eyes were glued to the floor.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Daniel.”

  Bingo. That wasn’t so fucking hard.

  “Daniel what?”

  “Fitzsimmons.”

  The kid’s last name crushed the room to the size of a closet. Barkley felt the familiar weight in his chest. Tommy shifted in his boots.

  “My name’s Barkley Jones. I’m a detective with the Boston PD.” Barkley threw a thumb over his shoulder. “The other guy who’s been helping you is my partner, Tommy Dillon. We’re gonna need to ask you a few questions.”