Snow Angels

by Fern Michaels; Marie Bostwick; Janna McMahan; Rosalind Noonan

  “Yeah, I know.” Joe lifts his chin, his gaze scanning the apartment building. There’s that third floor window, the apartment where he spent a dark eternity twelve or so hours ago.

  A lifetime ago.

  Cody slides into the car to find Mack staring out through the windshield. “What the hell are we doing? Joe, we gotta either book this kid for possession or let him go right now.” Mack sneaks a look in the rearview mirror and lowers his voice. “And you better hope and pray this kid doesn’t sue our asses for violating his constitutional rights.”

  “Flushing General,” Joe says. He’s breaking a dozen rules and laws, but he needs to do this. He’s got to get it right, at least this one time. “We’re taking him to the rehab center there.”

  “No program’s going to admit him on Christmas Day.” Although Mack is in argument mode, he puts the car in gear and rolls. “Besides that, we are the police, not social workers or shrinks, and there’s no law on the books that says the drug police can swoop down and throw your ass into rehab.”

  In the backseat, Armand is still hyped up and chattering to himself a mile a minute. Something about rolling marshmallows. The kid might need his stomach pumped.

  Joe turns back to his partner. “If anyone asks, we found this kid flying high as a kite, disturbing the peace. Figured we had to get him to the hospital, make sure he’s okay.”

  “And why didn’t we call an ambulance?” Mack poses the question.

  “We’ll say we couldn’t wait. Don’t you get it? This kid in the back is Armand Boghosian, Mr. B.’s son. And I’m telling you, sure as I’m sitting here now, he OD’d yesterday. For some freaky-deaky reason, it looks like we’ve been given a second chance here, a chance to save this kid’s life, and I, for one, am not going to sit around arguing department procedure while this kid fades out of the picture. Now are you going to get on board with this, or what?”

  “I’m driving, aren’t I?” There’s a cool grin on Mack’s face when he turns and bumps fists with Joe. “I sure hope the cheese-eaters took off for Christmas,” Mack adds.

  “Internal Affairs, yeah, they would be a problem. But really, do you think they’re out here on Christmas morning?” Joe waves off the possibility. Right now he’s got to take his chances. “Just drive.”

  Chapter 19

  “You still here?” A nurse smiles at Joe when she steps into the hospital room to check the IV drip.

  “I’m just going to stay until his father gets here.” Joe knows he’s not obligated to wait, that Armand Boghosian is in capable hands, but he has to see this through. He needs to know that, when he walks away, Armand’s father will be here for him.

  So he’s been standing in the shadows, using the time to pray to God for this kid. He started with a few Our Fathers, then switched over to a more stream-of-consciousness thing, figuring that God is probably as sick of hearing that memorized prayer as he is of saying it. And he wanted to tell God that he was grateful, thankful in an overwhelming way. Every cell in his body is ringing with peace and this new sense of power. He was part of a miracle, or, maybe just a witness to it.

  Either way, I gotta thank you, God. Thanks, and please, watch over this kid and put him on the right path. Give him a chance to do something good with his life.

  The nurse’s gaze moves along the clear tubing, which Joe has been watching with an odd feeling of hope. They told him the clear bag is filled with a saline solution combined with vitamins, but it’s gratifying to watch it drip into Armand’s veins. Like it’s infusing him with health. Getting him on the road to recovery.

  Corny? Yeah. Mack would cut him to the quick if he heard Joe talking that way. Maybe it’s a good thing he went off to the hospital cafeteria for two coffees.

  “He should be capable of conversation soon,” the nurse says. “Maybe he’ll make sense this time.” When they brought Armand in he was suffering some withdrawal symptoms, restless and irritable and pissed as hell that the attending physician ordered his stomach pumped—“gastric lavage” they called it. Thank God the staff had asked Joe and Mack to step out for the worst of it. When they returned, Armand had calmed down.

  Now he seems to be sleeping, his mouth caked with charcoal, his dark hair damp with sweat. The kid is still a mess, but to Joe he’s a miraculous sight. Alive and breathing. Alive.

  The nurse slips the blood pressure cuff over Armand’s arm; it pumps and releases automatically.

  “Is he sedated?” Joe asks.

  “No. We don’t like to give anything to a detox patient. We try not to.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Armand murmurs, though his eyes are still closed. He turns his head against the pillow, and the diamond studs along his ear twinkle in the pasty fluorescent light. “I’m still miserable from having that tubing shoved inside me. My throat hurts. That doctor needs to have his license revoked.”

  The nurse grunts. “Dr. Cohen had to be on the safe side, Armand. You had enough drugs in your pocket to kill an elephant.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I would never kill an elephant.”

  The nurse is ready to leave, but she clearly wants to get the last word. “Time to take some responsibility, Armand. We can clean you up and dry you out, but you’re the one who’s going to have to decide to make the change.”

  His only response is a groan.

  “Think about it,” she says curtly, then ducks out.

  Joe moves closer to the bed. He’s never gotten involved in a job this way, but it’s too late to pull back now. “You know, you’re lucky to be alive.”

  The kid’s head lolls to the right and his dark eyes spill open. “Oh, yeah. The cop.” He lets out a long breath. “You going to arrest me now?”

  “I’d rather not. Me? I want to go home to Christmas dinner with my family. And you? You got some work to do. You need to get straight. Clean and sober.”

  Although Joe expects a fight, Armand winces, his eyes straining as though in pain. “I know that. God, I know. I really screwed up.”

  “It happens,” Joe says. “We all make mistakes, but some of them can cost you, and I’m telling you, yours could’ve cost you your life.” As soon as he says it, Joe worries that it sounds trite. He tries to think fast, bring the conversation back to basics. “So I hear you play the saxophone.”

  “Yeah, it’s what I do best. Damn good sax player, for what it’s worth.”

  “Your father said you’re auditioning at Juilliard.” Joe takes out his memo book and removes a card from the back.

  “That’s what I tell people to get them off my back. Juilliard isn’t going to want a guy like me, especially…especially after all this.” He looks up at the monitors. “Am I going to have a criminal record now?”

  Joe shakes his head. “You know, the cops aren’t out there just to arrest people. Now and again we actually get a chance to lend a hand.” He extends the card, Jennifer’s card, to the kid. “My wife’s sister, she works at Juilliard. Not that I can guarantee anything, but she might be able to help you get an audition. If you’re as good as you say, maybe they’ll give you a shot.”

  The kid’s eyes go wide as he reads the card. “Wow, I…thanks. But you never even heard me play. Why would you stick your neck out?”

  Joe shrugs. “It’s Christmas.”

  He puts the card on the bed table. “I’ll call her as soon as…when I get out of here.”

  “Finish the program. Give it your best shot. She’ll wait ’till you’re ready.”

  But Armand’s focus has shifted past Joe, to the doorway. “Papa?”

  Garo Boghosian pauses on the threshold, arms in the air, his entire being a swell of emotion. “My son. My beautiful Armand.”

  The young man’s face crumples as tears fill his eyes. “Hey, Papa.”

  Stepping back, Joe takes it all in.

  Garo Boghosian shuffles up to the bed and pats his son’s cheek. “I have been wanting to see you, but not like this.” Anger and concern flare in his eyes. “What happen
ed to you?”

  “I screwed up.” Armand’s voice breaks on a sob. “I’m an addict, Dad. I need help. I want to make a change, but I can’t do it alone. I need help.”

  “I knew it.” Tears fill the father’s eyes as he freezes in place, as if locked in the cell of a film strip. “I knew…and I’m going to make sure you get what you need. There are people here who will help you, if you are willing to do the work.”

  In the pallid sheen of the overhead fluorescent lights, Garo Boghosian reaches for his son. Joe watches the father lift the young man’s shoulders into his arms, cradling him as Armand sobs like a newborn baby.

  Something deep inside Joe swells, an overwhelming feeling evoked by the scene before him. The embrace of father and son slides over the nightmarish image that has haunted him, and at once the visage of death disappears.

  This is the new reality.

  This is the culmination of a miracle.

  Chapter 20

  “Yes, yes, Auntie,” Wendy Min says in the fluent Mandarin her parents have always insisted upon. Her thoughts stray from the phone pressed to her ear. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Standing at the window of her apartment, looking out at the snow swirling under the light of streetlamps, Wendy Min wants to end the call. She wishes her parents and her auntie Fang would just let her be for a few minutes.

  They don’t know that she saw her boyfriend dragged away this afternoon. They don’t know that she dreamed of his death last night, a dream so vivid she can still feel the sting of salty tears in the back of her throat. And now…what will come next? So many thoughts and feelings to sort out. So many hopes and fears, dreams and worries.

  It’s that gray time of day, one of the shortest days of the year, when night begins to tug at the sky early, a greedy child pulling away the bedsheet. And today of all days Wendy feels all the more reluctant to let the night win. Night is the future, and anything can happen in the future. Wendy was raised to believe that you cannot avoid the destiny that comes rushing your way. The tsunami of the future. But today, she is not so sure. Today, for the first time, the storm passed over.

  “What’s that?” Auntie Fang’s voice draws her back to the present. “Fresh peas. I’ll go to the corner first and see if the market is open. Yes, Auntie. Bye-bye.”

  Wendy closes her phone but she does not turn away from the window, knowing he is out there. Armand is out there, somewhere, alive. Not the cold, petrified body in her dream, and not the powerful dragon of his birth sign rising up over her in fury, a swirling ghost of unrequited destiny.

  He is alive. That nightmare was wrong. Her spirit dances, lifted by the knowledge.

  Her gaze skitters over the urban landscape, the rooftops and jagged edges of boxy high-rise apartments blocking the gray sky.

  I know you are out there, her mind speaks to him. And I love you.

  The ring of her cell phone interrupts, and she flips it open, wondering what Auntie Fang wants now. “Wei?”

  “I love you.” His voice is chalky and dry.

  “Armand!” she whispers, closing her eyes so she can see him. Imagine him in a bed of crisp white sheets, a lifeline running into his arm, tethering him to the earth.

  “I miss you already.”

  “How are you? Did the police treat you well?”

  “I’ve been better, though the cops were real gentlemen. It’s the doctor who insisted on pumping my stomach that really pissed me off.”

  She takes a breath infused with hope. This is almost too good to believe, that the greedy addiction might end and, somehow, its hold on Armand would be broken. For so many months she has been wishing and praying that his life could be saved; now that it seems to be happening, she is almost afraid to embrace it. “I’ll visit you every day. What can I bring?”

  “No visits allowed for a while. Apparently we inmates can’t be trusted. But they’re telling me I can call you at night. I’ll call you every night.”

  Suddenly her throat grows thick, clogged with all the emotion and tears and worry she has kept tamped down, deep down inside. To think of Armand, safe in a place where there’s a chance he’ll get better…it’s overwhelming.

  “Wendy…you still there?”

  She swipes at a tear with the back of one hand. “I’m here.” Turning away from the window, she faces her shadowed apartment, which isn’t quite so intimidating now that she knows that last night’s horrific dream was not a prophesy. “It’s just…I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Standing in my apartment, looking into your eyes.”

  “A photo?”

  “No. The eyes of the dragon.”

  “The tapestry.” His voice sounds tired now, brittle as spun candy, and she worries that she’s tugging on him in the wrong way. She’s not sure exactly what they do in rehab and therapy, but she doesn’t want to be an obstacle to Armand’s recovery. “Pretend you really are looking into my eyes,” he says. “What do you see?”

  She switches on a lamp and the dragon tapestry fills the room with vivid color, its swirling composition no longer menacing at all. In fact, the image now has a sense of balance that has never been apparent to her before. “I see good fortune grounded by intense power. I see someone who takes his life very seriously.”

  “Go on…”

  “I see a talented, brilliant musician.”

  “Now you’re just trying to pump me up.” He sounds tired.

  “Get some sleep. I have to go search out fresh vegetables for Auntie Fang’s special dish. You’ll call me tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” he says, and she marvels that a single word could hold so much promise.

  Chapter 21

  The minute he walks through the door, Sheila knows he’s back. She sees it in the way he kneels down beside Katie and helps her speculate on the contents of a gift. The old Joe drops down on all fours with PJ, pretending to be a “peeze car” so PJ can ride his back with sirens whooping. And when he pulls Sheila into his arms and lifts her off her feet for a kiss that makes her giggle like a three-year-old…

  Oh, yeah. Joe Cody, her Joe, is back.

  “You’re home early.” Sheila wipes her lipstick from his mouth, then rises on her toes to kiss him again. “Smudged your lipstick a little.”

  He grins and swipes at his face. This time his smile radiates from his eyes, and the small laugh lines warm her better than a day at the beach. “It was pretty quiet, so the sergeant let a few of us go. Needless to say, I bolted out of there in record time.”

  Katie is spinning in circles around them, picking up gifts and dropping them at their feet. “Time for presents!” Her toothless smile is pure jubilation.

  “In a minute, Katie.” Sheila holds up a hand to her daughter, turns to Joe. “I’m dying to hear about your day. Last time we talked you were headed back to the precinct to find the paperwork on that kid who overdosed. So what did you find?”

  “That’s a long story.” Joe’s eyes are mysterious…dark, enigmatic gems. For a second Sheila flashes on how she ever landed a man so good looking.

  “No, no! Don’t talk now.” Katie reaches up and yanks on her dad’s arms. “We have to open presents! You can’t inspect me to wait all day.”

  “No, pumpkin, we don’t expect you to wait all day, but Mommy wants to talk to Daddy and…” Suddenly aware of the glimmering tree and piles of gifts and strings of garland and lights on the windows, Sheila stops herself. It’s Christmas. What was she thinking?

  “Katherine Bernadette Cody.” Sheila folds her arms, her voice crisp. “Are you and your brother ready to begin opening your gifts?”

  “Yes!” Katie jumps in the air, hugs her, then hurries over to start tearing at paper.

  While Joe goes for the camera, Sheila sinks down to the floor and lures PJ over to open his mystery gift. As he tears into the paper, the conversation with her sister replays itself in Sheila’s mind. No, Jen insisted, the gifts are
not from her; she still has the Codys’ gifts sitting under her own tree.

  PJ peels off the paper and his jaw drops, his lips a round O of awe.

  The gift is his heart’s desire, his favorite shiny, bright icon.

  “A peeze car!”

  Amazed, Sheila grabs at the toy car, but PJ maneuvers away with it and walks it over to Daddy. “See Daddy?”

  “A police car? Wow!” A gracious Joe knocks on the hood and hugs his son. “You must have been really good to get that from Santa.”

  PJ basks in joy for a moment, then takes to the floor with his new wheels.

  Sheila points to their boy and mouths to Joe: “That’s the one you tossed!”

  He shrugs, then points the camera at PJ and snaps a shot. A-ha! Sheila is onto him. He’s playing cool because he’s the one behind the mystery gifts, after all.

  Meanwhile, Katie drags herself away from two Dollar Store items that she “loves” to demand that Sheila open her mystery gift, which is surprisingly heavy. The wrapping flies away, and Sheila heaves off the lid to reveal a beautiful quilted down jacket in a rich shade of ruby red.

  “Oh, my gosh, it’s beautiful.” She jumps up to slip her arms into the cushy sleeves. It fits her to a T, and it’s so warm and just her color. And Lord knows she has needed a winter jacket. Layering sweaters just isn’t warding off the cold anymore, but this…this is elegant and smart and so warm. “I love it.”

  She blinks back tears and hugs herself in the coat, feeling very loved for this moment. Then she spins toward Joe and wags her finger. “And you’re in big trouble, Mister. We had a no-gift policy this year.”

  He shrugs. “Shee, I swear, I didn’t get it for you. I wanted to. I saw it in the window of Macy’s, but I knew it would be too much. We had a deal.”

  “Then who did? Who bought this?” Sheila throws her arms up, the new jacket stretching with her. She absolutely loves it, but if Joe didn’t get it for her, who did?

  Sheila and Joe share in their daughter’s joy as she makes her way through the other gifts, grateful for each bubble-maker and white board. PJ hasn’t touched another gift since he opened the police car, but that’s okay with Sheila. You can’t separate a boy from his heart’s desire.