by David Khalaf
“Why did you do that? Por qué?”
She turned her head away and waved her hands in the air, clearly upset. But before Panchito could press her further, there was a loud rapping knock at the door.
“It’s Lulu!” the little girl shouted from the other side.
Panchito returned to the living room as Elsie opened the door. Lulu sped through, then turned back to the open door.
“Ta-da!”
They heard steps outside and then, slowly, a sweaty and bedraggled Gray appeared.
“I told you to slow down,” he said to Lulu.
“I did!”
Gray walked into the apartment, dressed in an orphan’s uniform—secondhand clothes that were dull and ill-fitting.
Panchito watched Gray and Elsie beam at each other. A goofy grin sprung from Gray’s face like a jack-in-the-box. He quickly stuffed it back down.
“You’re awake, dollface,” Gray said.
“Don’t call me that,” Elsie said, but she was smiling.
“Do you think you’ll be OK?”
She nodded.
“I think so. I have bouts of dizziness, but it’s been getting better.”
Gray turned to Panchito. He cleared his throat a few times and his eyes kept drifting toward the floor.
“Do what you want with the Eye,” Gray said. “But you can’t meet with Atlas. It’s a trap. He means to kill you all. To take all of your powers.”
There was an apology somewhere in there, even if Gray hadn’t said the words. It was good enough. Panchito pulled the Eye from around his neck and put it on the coffee table.
“Then we’ll destroy it.”
“What about your plans to avenge your father?”
Panchito couldn’t spend the rest of his life trying to restore Pancho Villa’s honor. If he did, he would remain stuck in the past, like that photo. Maybe it was just as well that Abuelita burned it.
Someday he would seek out his father’s killer, but for now he had to invest in the people around him who mattered, the ones who needed him.
“The eagle doesn’t waste time hunting flies.”
Panchito thrust the Eye across the table to Gray.
“Let’s do whatever it takes to save Mrs. Pickford,” Panchito said.
Gray took the Eye in his hand.
“I have an idea. It’s going to take all of us.”
“I’m in,” Panchito said without hesitation.
“Me too!” Lulu shouted.
“We’ll see about that,” Elsie said to her. “You can count on me as well.”
“What about Chaplin?” Panchito asked. “Are we going to try to free him?”
Gray’s face became suddenly ashen. For a moment he seemed unable to speak. When he opened his mouth, it was as if he couldn’t get the words to come out.
“I have some bad news,” he finally said.
CHAPTER
F ORTY-TWO
THE NEXT TWENTY-four hours were a riptide of grief, out of which Gray couldn’t pull himself. Elsie picked up on everyone’s sorrow and, combined with her own, it created a powerful cocktail of despair. She would unintentionally pulse everyone with sadness, making them even sadder, which she then picked up on again. It was a vicious cycle, a cyclone of anguish they were unable to escape throughout the long night.
When nothing improved by the next morning, Gray did what he did best: He put up his walls and blocked out Elsie’s emotion. The sadness closed in on him from all sides, but he held it back long enough to get everyone except Elsie out of the apartment. She needed to be alone so that she could calm and compose herself.
Panchito went downstairs to clean up from the fire and salvage cookware. Abuelita agreed to take Lulu to see Susannah of the Mounties, the latest Shirley Temple film. That left Gray free for the errand he was dreading.
Gray had broken out of Elsie’s cycle of sadness by thinking of Farrell, by drawing up angry memories of the man’s condescending expressions, his nasal voice, his cloying smell, the endless cocktails.
And that’s when it had struck him.
He arrived at the Emory Partridge Home for Boys, found the kitchen door unlocked, and walked in, stopping by the pantry. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, so the boys were still at work in the printing room. Gray slunk up the steps to Farrell’s private loft space. He found the man there in a plush leather armchair, a Bloody Mary in one hand, flipping through the Saturday Evening Post with the other.
If Farrell felt surprised to see Gray back, he played it cool.
“I knew you’d be back,” Farrell said. “There’s nothing out there for a diseased creature like you.”
Gray walked up to Farrell face to face, close enough to make his skin crawl. He stared into the man’s eyes.
“You look healthy as a horse,” Gray said.
“I’ve been out with a dreadful flu. Not that you would care.”
Gray removed Newton’s Eye from his pocket. He held it up.
“I need you to make a replica of this. Immediately.”
Farrell looked at the Eye, then at Gray.
“Me? I’m no woodworker. What makes you think I can?”
“It’s easy,” Gray said, “You just need to sand down a block of wood to the right shape and hollow it out. The brass rings on each end should be simple enough. You’ll need something for the glass insets, but a pair of eyeglass lenses should work.”
Gray stared pointedly at the thick, heavy eyeglasses on the nightstand.
“I think you can,” Gray said, “because it’s no different from making a wooden toy, and you’re the best toymaker there is.”
He tossed the Eye to Farrell. It landed in his lap. There was no danger of him using it, and he didn’t understand its value.
Farrell shifted uncomfortably, a man caught red-handed.
“Even if I could,” Farrell said. “What makes you think I would?”
Gray removed from his pocket the full bottle of Worcestershire sauce he had snagged on his way in, the one he almost knocked over yesterday. The one that had been empty the previous night.
“This is why you would.”
He smashed the bottle on the ground. The sauce was thick, shiny, and dripping in the wrong direction. The bulk of it splattered upward and hit the ceiling.
Farrell leapt to the floor, cutting his hands and tongue on broken glass as he desperately tried to lick up whatever liquid remained. When it was gone, he looked up, eyes as wild as a morphine addict. Gray’s stomach turned.
“You have forty-eight hours, Mr. Partridge.”
By the time he got back to Olvera Street, Panchito had come back upstairs and Elsie seemed stable. The two were playing an uninspired game of race horse rummy.
“Where were you?” Elsie asked.
Gray sat down.
“Have you ever seen the Maltese Falcon?”
He shared the idea he had gotten while visiting Howard Hughes. If the replica was good enough, it could be the key to rescuing Pickford.
“I don’t mean to be the wet blanket,” Elsie said, “but how do we know she’s still alive? There’s no point in risking our lives if she’s dead.”
Gray had been pondering this for some time.
“I got a way I think we can tell,” he said. “I gotta make a trip to the hospital.”
Panchito and Elsie exchanged a look.
“Sorry,” Gray said. “I mean we gotta make a trip to the hospital.”
“That’s better,” Elsie said.
Panchito left a note for his grandmother and the three hopped a bus to the Los Angeles County General Hospital. It was northeast of Downtown, across the river on a low hill.
“Who are we visiting?” Elsie asked as they got off the bus.
“Pickford’s driver,” Gray said. “He’s handsome.”
Elsie raised a mocking eyebrow.
“Handsome?” she teased.
Up close the hospital was a concrete monster, a monolith with narrow windows, like arrow slits in a castle battlement. They a
sked directions at the front desk but were told by a nurse that patient information was confidential. So they found a doctor with a clipboard, which Panchito thrust out of his hands. Gray picked up the clipboard and scanned the names while Elsie calmed the doctor’s suspicions.
“There’s only one Edward on that list,” Gray said, after the doctor left. “He’s in a private room six floors up.”
Minutes later they were in front of the room, looking inside. Gray saw the feet of a man sticking out from a bed, but he was surrounded by five nurses, who were all hunched over him.
We’re too late.
Gray ran up and muscled his way in-between two of the women. Edward was sitting up in bed, very much alive. He had a bandage on one side of his head but he looked fine otherwise. Gray saw beams of energy shooting from his face.
“So I hit him square on the nose,” Edward was saying, “but not before another one jumped through the passenger window and cracked me on the head. I was in a coma for a week.”
The nurses all ooh’ed and ahh’ed. Edward caught sight of Gray. The smile dropped from his face.
“Ladies, you must be sick of this story. I tell it twenty times a day.”
“We’d never get sick of your stories!” said a small, mousy nurse.
“Tell it to us again,” a plump nurse said.
“I need some rest. Go do some work or something.”
The nurses just stood there.
“Go on! Get!”
Edward shooed them as if they were sheep getting sent out to pasture. He waited until they had all left the room before turning to Gray.
“Atlas got her, didn’t he?”
Gray nodded.
“You’re supposed to be on the other side of the country,” Edward said.
Gray shrugged.
“I’m taking the scenic route.”
Elsie and Panchito entered the room. Elsie walked straight up to the bed and stared at Edward with big, vapid eyes like the zombies in that movie they had watched at Chaplin’s.
“Hello, I’m Elsie Avery.”
She held out her hand, but Edward pushed it away.
“Oh, please. I could be your grandfather.”
Gray looked at Elsie. She had melted for him, fast as an ice cream cone during a heat wave.
“Elsie, look away,” Gray said.
But Elsie continued to ogle the man’s dimpled chin as if she’d never seen one before.
“She used the Eye on you, didn’t she?” Gray asked.
Edward nodded.
“I was her first experiment. A few years back.”
“You’re Edward!” Panchito exclaimed, as if seeing him for the first time. “I thought she got a new driver. I thought you died!”
Edward stiffened at the remark.
“I’m only fifty-eight.”
“Yeah, but, come on. You used to look pretty bad.”
“I wasn’t that bad.”
Panchito raised his brow skeptically.
Elsie rested her elbows on the bed.
“You should be a movie star.”
Gray grabbed her arm and pulled her off.
“I could have,” Edward said. “But I stayed loyal to Mrs. Pickford. Is she hurt?”
“She’s alive,” Gray said.
“How do you know?” Panchito asked.
Gray pointed to Edward’s face.
“I can see his energy,” Gray said. “But it’s not really his. When Lulu and I went to see Howard Hughes, he saw part of you in Lulu, as if a fraction of your talent had overlaid hers.”
“Yuck,” Panchito said.
“If Atlas had given Mrs. Pickford the kiss off, I’m pretty sure every person she gave her talent to would revert back to their original state. Meaning, Edward here would be ugly. Sorry Edward.”
Edward touched his smooth face, as if to assure himself it was still there. At that moment, Gray saw the rays of energy flicker, and for a split second Gray had a glimpse of the original Edward, a haggard man with a weathered, wrinkled face. His energy was fading.
“We have to hurry,” Gray said. “I think she’s dying.”
CHAPTER
F ORTY-THREE
THE FADING ENERGY on Edward’s face worried Gray more than he let on, and not only for Pickford’s well-being. She was Atlas’s bargaining chip just as Newton’s Eye was theirs. For the moment they were suspended in a fragile equilibrium that would break the moment Pickford died. And without Pickford’s life to use as leverage, Atlas would have to become ruthless.
They got in an elevator and pressed the button for the lobby.
“What’s the matter, Elsie?”
Panchito was watching her as they descended. Gray had been too caught up in his thoughts to notice her clenched jaw and shaking fists. She was an overinflated balloon on the verge of popping.
“So much anger,” she said.
“Who is it?” Gray asked.
She shook her head.
“Who are they.”
The elevator doors opened to the lobby and they found themselves in the middle of an angry fracas. Men were everywhere, most of them police officers. They dragged in seven or eight beat-up sailors, most of them with bright red blood staining their white uniforms. Behind them more officers dragged in a half dozen gang members, pachucos in baggy zoot suits and big flashy hats. Some men were unconscious and had to be dragged in by hospital staff.
Gray pushed the button to close the elevator doors, but one gang member ripped free from the police and slammed a sailor into the elevator car. Gray yanked Elsie out of the way, and as the two men duked it out they stepped over them and out into the lobby. The exits doors were on the other side, directly through the skirmish.
Elsie was breathing hard and struggling to compose herself. Gray focused himself into a state of calmness, then took her hand. He could feel energy flowing into her. Almost immediately Elsie relaxed.
“Thank you,” she said.
Gray could see a soft blue swirl of energy expanding around them. The two men in the elevator stopped fighting as if they had lost interest. Elsie had created a small bubble of calm around her.
An officer entered through the front doors.
“Get them to a hospital bed and handcuff them to it!” he shouted over the fray. “And for heaven’s sake, split them up unless you want another brawl!”
Gray recognized the voice. He stood up on his tip toes.
Captain Stoker.
Gray flared inside, bursting Elsie’s bubble of calm.
“Don’t,” Elsie said.
“It’s him,” he said. “He’s the one who killed Chaplin. I’ll kill him.”
Gray darted at him.
“Stop him!” Elsie shouted.
Gray weaved through officers, sailors, and gang members. He spotted a gun on an officer who was struggling to carry a large, unconscious pachuco. Distracted as he was, it was easy to unbutton the man’s holster and pull it out. He gripped it in his hand and kept going.
Gray ducked under two men and found himself with a clear shot of Stoker. He held up the gun but an unseen force thrust it out of his hands, sending it skidding across the floor.
Gray scrambled after it as a burly officer slammed into him and pinned him to the ground.
“Get off me, oaf,” Gray wheezed.
“I can’t,” the man said. “I’m stuck somehow.”
I’m gonna kill Chito if this fat man don’t kill me first.
In the ruckus, no one seemed to notice them. Stoker stood nearby, watching chaos settle into order as nurses led the injured away. Two deputies stood next to him as the lobby cleared out.
“These gangs get worse every year,” Stoker said. “It’s un-American, provoking our military men when we’re on the brink of war. We should be worrying about the Germans, not these imbeciles.”
Stoker sneered as the last few men were dragged out of the lobby.
One of the deputies nudged Stoker with his elbow.
“Hey Chief,” he said. “Speaking
of Germans, how does Hitler tie his shoes?”
Stoker looked at the deputy with a blank stare.
“In little knotzies!”
The two deputies doubled over laughing, but Stoker didn’t so much as crack a smile.
“Start filing your paperwork,” he snapped, then left the lobby.
One deputy leaned in.
“Geez, that guy has no sense of humor.”
The other nodded in agreement.
“He never has.”
The comment made Gray nostalgic for Chaplin, who had the power to change the dynamics of a room with just a few laughs. Captain Stoker didn’t have any aptitude for that. Gray shot up.
Stoker has no sense of humor.
Gray pushed and frantically rolled the big officer off his legs. Elsie and Panchito rushed over to him.
“Sorry,” Panchito said, “but I didn’t want you doing something you’d regret. You taught me that.”
Gray jumped up.
“The morgue!” he yelled. “We have to get to the morgue!”
“He’s dead,” Elsie said, struggling to keep up.
Gray was rushing down a long flight of stairs with Elsie and Panchito trailing behind.
The morgue was easy enough to find; it was in the basement directly below the emergency room. It didn’t say much for their confidence in emergency care.
They entered a large room, well-lit with an uncomfortably low ceiling.
“Quickly,” Gray said.
“Who are we looking for?” Panchito asked.
“Raymond Lisenba.”
“Who’s that?”
Gray didn’t answer. He ran over to a long wooden wall with rows of large square doors, stacked three on top of each other. They looked like a hybrid of an ice box and a giant dresser. The doors had brass slots for holding removable paper placards.
“Help me look!”
They spread out and scanned the placards.
“Here!” Elsie said, pointing to a door halfway down in the middle row.
Gray ran over and pulled the large handle. The door opened and they saw a sheet with the outline of feet underneath it. He tugged on the wood underneath. It slid out like a drawer. They crowded around it.
“Are you sure?” Elsie asked.