Eli ignored him.
We communicated as we had when I was little, with never a spoken word.
You’re a son-of-a-bitch, snarled Donald. Casting us out like that!
It was my home, I said in return. Not yours.
We belonged there. You said we could stay, Gerald said reproachfully.
What does a five-year-old know about commitments to disembodied voices?
Point taken, laughed Amanda.
I have a proposition, I said.
They gave me their attention.
I’m going after Misty. I’m taking her back inside whether she wants to or not and I’m going to hold her here. Will you help me? I can’t do it alone.
That bitch! Donald shook his head.
Donald, please. It’s monotonous. Gerald looked at me. How much chance do you have with our help?
I have no idea. She’s stronger than she was. I’m hoping I am, too.
Amanda watched me quietly. And we’ll have a place with you?
For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. As long as I live.
I reached out my hand. Gerald tottered over and took it. Donald grasped it without looking up. Amanda gave a bubbly laugh and reached up from the floor.
I took their hands and reached across, drawing them inside.
The boy and the woman on the floor collapsed. The old man seemed awake for a moment. Then, he clutched his chest and fell. His breathing rattled a moment and then stopped.
I turned to Eli and Dooley.
“What did you do?” Eli stared at the bodies on the floor, then at me. “What did you do?”
“I brought them home.”
A horn honked outside. I looked outside. Pujol was standing beside an amazing sports car. I’d never seen the like.
Dooley was standing next to me. “1978 Lotus Europa, like I said.”
I turned to him and he looked at me sheepishly.
“Hoffman told me who to call,” he said and shrugged. “If it’s my last night as a free man…”
The car was powder blue and low slung to the ground. It looked like a big cat waiting to run.
“Sweet,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” Eli screeched at us.
“We’re going hunting.”
oOo
Eli didn’t like it but fuck him. Pujol didn’t like it either but he could only advise me, so fuck him, too. I told him where my important papers were. For his part, Dooley told Pujol, “Ask Pop. Hoffman knows where to find him.”
Then, it was a screaming run down 128, then I-95, left on I-93. Some traffic—even at two in the morning, there’s always some traffic in Boston. In the wee hours of Halloween on the last day of Conclave there might have been a bit more. There might have been cops on the road that had been told to watch for us; there might not have been. There weren’t any cops that could have caught us.
“Where are we going?” Dooley yelled over the roar of the engine.
Where to? I asked.
Not sure, said Gerald. South?
You’re guessing, said Donald.
Can’t you feel her? said Amanda. Go where the other flyers are—that’s where she is. She loves to fly.
“Chinatown,” I said, my teeth clenched. Dooley’s driving was going to kill us all. “The party always moves down into Chinatown.
“Figures,” Dooley said. “I even know a place to park.”
Dooley pulled out red light with a magnet and, at ninety miles an hour, slipped it onto the roof. It took hold with a clang.
“Damn it!” he yelled. “I just painted this thing.”
The traffic was thickening as we crossed the river but the lights cleared the way.
“Good thing,” he said in my ear. “I don’t have a siren in this thing.”
I didn’t have breath to reply.
oOo
Dooley found an alleyway I had no idea existed. The Lotus fit just behind the dumpster and couldn’t be seen from the street.
“How did you find this place?”
“I didn’t. Misty did.”
It took me a moment: Katelin. Sean Gifford.
Dooley saw it on my face. He grimaced. “Yeah.” He popped the hood and pulled something round with dangling wires. “At least nobody’s going to hotwire it,” he said as he put it in his pocket. “Where now?”
We weren’t sure.
Outside and around the corner, Kneeland Street was jumping. Every store was open—a grocery store, its windows papered with huge and indecipherable Chinese symbols, each symbol given unintelligible emphasis by a string of exclamation marks. The grocery was flanked by a butcher shop, naked chickens hanging lewdly from stainless hooks. The bakery had a line out the door and I saw stacks of almond cookies shaped like witches on brooms.
That made me think of Katelin and I looked up.
A woman was hanging from a long wooden pole perhaps fifteen feet in the air. She spun around the free-floating high bar doing giant loops, streamers tied to her feet, a continuous human spiral. Jugglers were everywhere. Anything could be juggled—I saw one man, bent and sweating, ponderously maintaining three cinder blocks in a simple fountain. I gave him a wide berth. He didn’t notice.
And the noise!
Gongs. Bells. Firecrackers. Whistles. Long plastic horns. Drums. There were at least a dozen people singing different songs and across the crowd I could hear, but not place, the thin voice of an oboe.
The merchants had set up tables in the street. Next to the usual T-shirt hawkers and souvenir sellers, there were Chinese herbalists. Next to them were hucksters selling every possible way to increase your paranormal talent: magic words, crystals, wire rings, complex electronic machinery, rays, beams, glowing water, juices, oils, sexual methods, methods of sexual abstinence.
Dooley saw her first. She was standing in the shadow of a billboard advertising some Broadway show. I could barely make her out—I couldn’t believe Dooley saw her.
But she leaned out and the spotlights and lasers against the building across the street lit her face. Thin. Green in the reflected light. Then red. Then orange. She looked haunted.
It was Katelin looking down at me. Not Misty. For that moment, whether Misty was busy or whether the two of them were united in some shared misery, I saw Katelin’s face as if I was using a telescope. And I remembered her lying next to me at night, her sharp features softened in sleep, but still able to open me up and lay me bare. I could never hide from her. I remembered at that moment why I had needed her, why I had felt lost when I left.
Why I felt lost still.
She saw me and stepped back in the shadows.
We reached for her, all four of us, but I heard Misty laugh. I saw her now—she looked nothing like Katelin. A narrow, cruel face, a mocking smile.
“Oh, lover. Now you want me.”
She shot off the roof like a rocket.
“Crap,” said Dooley. “Now what?”
oOo
We couldn’t catch her, I said.
Are you so surprised? Amanda said. You were only able to cast us out or house us. You were never able to force us to do anything. Nor could we force you.
It came to me that maybe I couldn’t hold her. Not for long.
Where is she? I asked.
No one answered. Then, Amanda repeated: she loves to fly.
“Exchange Place,” I said to Dooley.
“Is that where she is?”
“If she isn’t there now, she will be.” I looked up. “Katelin’s favorite building.”
“You have a plan?”
“I have a plan. I’m going to need you.”
Dooley grinned at me. “It’s good to be needed.”
Congress Street was only a few blocks away. We forced our way out of the crowd and ran between the buildings. There was nothing unique about Boston’s financial district; they look the same the world over.
We stopped at the night entrance.
“Get us in,” I said to Dooley.
He
looked back at me. “How?”
“You’re a cop. You should know these things.”
“How should I know—”
“A detective would figure it out.”
He gave me a nasty look and walked up and rang the afterhours bell. When a voice came through the grill he looked around and found the camera. “Hey there,” he yelled. He held up his badge. “We need immediate entrance to this facility.”
“This is after hours—”
“There is a felony happening in this building at this very moment and this is hot pursuit. Check my badge and let us in.”
“Hold on a second.”
A minute passed and a harried-looking middle-aged black man came to the door. “What the hell do you want here at four in the morning?”
“Crime never sleeps,” I said.
“And who the hell is he?”
“This is my associate, Mr. Sabado. He is assisting me in this apprehension. Now let us in.”
“He better have a goddamned badge before he gets the hell in—”
The door was glass. Dooley tapped it carefully, pulled out his gun and shot through it.
The guard cried out and hit the floor.
“Don’t kill him!” I yelled.
“Of course not!” He hauled the guard up. “You okay?”
The guard had his eyes tightly closed. He felt his chest, stomach and groin, then opened his eyes. “I’m not dead?”
“Not yet.”
“You better be damned glad I got a good heart!”
“We are.” Dooley looked at me. “Where are we going?”
“The roof. Where else?”
“Yeah,” said Dooley. “Where else, indeed. Come on.” He pushed the guard to the elevators and we went up. Elevator music had never been so disturbing.
“This,” Dooley declared, “is starting to get weird.”
“That’s for damned sure,” said the guard.
On the top floor, the guard led us to the door to the roof. Dooley took his keys. “You go on downstairs and call Boston Police Department. Get Albert Hoffman and John Rush. Got that?”
The guard nodded, swore under his breath and started back to the elevator.
“Let’s go,” Dooley said.
“Give me the gun,” I said.
“Hell, no. You can’t hit anything with it.”
“I know she won’t get shot if I’m holding the gun.”
“What if she shoots you? Did you think of that?”
“No,” I said slowly. “But it doesn’t make any difference. Give me the gun and we’ll put this whole thing to bed.”
Dooley looked at me with agony on his face—the same pain that I’d seen on Hoffman’s. What is it about cops and their guns?
Finally, he gave it to me. I put it in my jacket pocket. “Do you have any others?”
Sourly, he pulled out a smaller gun and a knife
I stared at them. “There ought to be a movie reference here somewhere.”
“There is,” he said. “Hundreds.”
“Okay. Let’s go up.”
oOo
The roof of Exchange Place was broad and flat, studded with misshapen pipes and machines and no edge to speak of. We stepped out on it. The gravel ground together and pressed into the asphalt top. It smelled of rain and chemicals. The wind, nonexistent on the street, was stiff up here—not enough to pick a fight but burly enough to push you around. The roof was lit with blinking aircraft lights and the dim lamps from adjacent buildings.
“What now?” Dooley whispered.
“We wait. She’ll be here.”
The wind was cold and we stood near heater exhausts to keep warm.
“Are you sure she’s going to show?” Dooley said, rubbing his hands.
“She’ll show.”
In the distance we heard sirens.
“She better do it quick.” Dooley gestured towards the sound. “They’re coming for us.”
“She knows that.”
“Know what, lover?” Katelin said twenty feet above us.
“Hi, Misty.” I looked up.
I couldn’t see Katelin clearly when it was dim, but she was lit clearly every few seconds in garish green and red by the aircraft lights. She was thinner. Her wrists looked bony and her face was hollow. In the red light she looked like some ancient crone. All she needed was a broom.
“You didn’t know what you had here, lover,” she said, twisting in a slow circle. “This one’s special.”
“I know that.”
“I may just keep her.”
“You can’t,” I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. “Not for long.”
“True.” She sighed. “But what a ride. Why are you here?”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“Yeah. I do.” I took a deep breath. “You never asked me. You tried force and you tried seduction. But you never actually asked.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “You threw me out.”
“So?”
“You didn’t want me!”
“You don’t know what I want. We spent twenty years together, closer than anybody. You don’t just quit wanting someone because you throw them out.”
She banked away and came back, a cat not sure of its welcome. “This is a trick.”
“In a way. If I have you, no one else is going to die. That’s got to stop.”
“Do you hate me?”
“No.” Astonishingly, it was true. For all she had done—done to her victims, done to Katelin, done to me—I didn’t hate Misty. It was like having a crazy sister or brother or wife. They might do terrible things but they are crazy, and no matter what, they remain your sister, brother or wife.
She drifted down to me. “We can live well. I stashed Rabbitt’s money in an island account. I know the numbers—all we would have to do is claim it.”
“That’s a relief,” I said. “This is going to cost me my career. It’s nice to know I won’t starve.”
“You won’t starve. It’ll be great. Better—much better—than before. I’ll be better.”
I held out my hand.
Tentatively, she reached for me.
“I knew you would forgive me,” she said.
I tried to grab her hand but missed.
She pulled back. “It’s a trick. I should have known.” She backed away, rising slowly. “Take a good look, David. You’ll never see her again.”
Misty started to take off.
I ran after her, reached the edge of the building and jumped, caught her.
She cried out and tried to right the stick, holding us both in the air.
All four of us grabbed her and yanked her inside. Misty screamed.
“Come on, Katelin. Wake up!” I yelled in her ear. Then, I let her go.
I held the four of them now. Both hands. Arms. Nothing now between me and the ground below.
It felt like I was flying.
oOo
Time slowed down—I wondered if Katelin ever experienced this. I don’t think I’d realized my plan until the moment I did it—though I must have conceived of it, came up with it and executed it. Surely on some level I must have known I was going to do this. I thought over what had brought me here. Falling was the inevitable conclusion from where I started.
Inside, they were all screaming at me: Donald, Amanda, Gerald and, of course, Misty. I closed my eyes and stopped listening to them.
Then I was jerked suddenly. I opened my eyes.
Katelin had grabbed me by the collar of my coat and was trying desperately to slow me down. I looked down, looked at the building rushing by.
It’s not going to be enough, I heard Donald say.
I had a sudden vision of all of us lying there on the ground, broken for my mistake.
Okay, then.
I pushed out everybody but Misty—Gerald, Amanda, and Donald cried out as they left. Then, I spread my arms wide and raised them. I slipped through the coat like a rock
et. Katelin went tumbling above. Misty screamed at me.
Okay, then.
I held on to Misty. Hard. With everything I had. Whatever happened was going to happen to both of us.
I was never letting go.
Epilogue: Katelin, Christmas, 1999
My father stared at me from across the restaurant Formica.
He played with his cup of coffee. I looked around the room.
As I promised, I’d brought Sandy home to her folks in Sedalia. After that I came directly here. Mattie had been right. There were many bridges to rebuild and the first one had to be to my family.
My father and I were meeting in what could only be called a neutral venue: Ernie’s Restaurant in Columbia. Ernie’s wasn’t in Jeff City and I didn’t live in Columbia anymore. For better or worse, I was now a Boston girl.
“What happened then?” Dad leaned forward from his side of the booth.
I toyed with my soda—no more alcohol for me. “I tumbled against the building, broke my shoulder and collar bone, fell about forty or fifty feet before I managed to get some kind of lift. David hit the ground from at least twenty stories—that’s how high we were when he slipped away. I managed to bring myself down beside him. He was still breathing, barely. I had no idea what to do—how do you give CPR to a broken doll? Then, he stopped. As carefully as I could I started breathing for him—I kept doing it, too, until the EMTs got there. We did it in shifts—me, Hoffman, Rush and Dooley. The EMTs took over. Shocked him. Injected his heart. But it was no use.”
“Do you think he planned it as a suicide?”
“Suicide? David?” I shook my head. “I’ll never really know, of course. Dooley said he was as surprised as I was. I think it was pure impulse—he was trying to save me and that’s the only way he saw to do it.”
“Did any of them live?”
“Eli said they found Gerald and Amanda. Donald is still missing as far as we know—even Gerald and Amanda don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he didn’t survive. Maybe he thought hanging around was a bad deal. Martin tells me he could detect no sign of Misty.”
“He couldn’t before when she wanted to disappear.”
“True enough.”
“What about David?”
“What do you mean?”
Dad pushed the spoon through his coffee a couple of times. “I mean if they could live, why not David?”
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