38
Brady does know her. He does.
At first he can’t get it, it’s like a word that’s stuck on the tip of your tongue. Then, as the band starts some song about making love on the dancefloor, it comes to him. The house on Teaberry Lane, the one where Hodges’s pet boy lives with his family, a nest of niggers with white names. Except for the dog, that is. He’s named O’dell, a nigger name for sure, and Brady meant to kill him . . . only he ended up killing his mother instead.
Brady remembers the day the niggerboy came running to the Mr. Tastey truck, his ankles still green from cutting the fat ex-cop’s lawn. And his sister shouting, Get me a chocolate! Pleeeease?
The sister’s name is Barbara, and that’s her, big as life and twice as ugly. She’s sitting two rows up to the right with her friends and a woman who has to be her mother. Jerome isn’t with them, and Brady is savagely glad. Let Jerome live, that’s fine.
But without his sister.
Or his mother.
Let him see what that feels like.
Still looking at Barbara Robinson, his finger creeps beneath Frankie’s picture and finds Thing Two’s toggle-switch. He caresses it through the thin fabric of the tee-shirt the way he was allowed—on a few fortunate occasions only—to caress his mother’s nipples. Onstage, the lead singer of ’Round Here does a split that must just about crush his balls (always supposing he has any) in those tight jeans he’s wearing, then springs to his feet and approaches the edge of the stage. Chicks scream. Chicks reach out as if to touch him, their hands waving, their fingernails—painted in every girlish color of the rainbow—gleaming in the footlights.
“Hey, do you guys like an amusement park?” Cam hollers.
They scream that they do.
“Do you guys like a carnival?”
They scream that they love a carnival.
“Have you ever been kissed on the midway?”
The screams are utterly delirious now. The audience is on its feet again, the roving spotlights once more skimming over the crowd. Brady can no longer see the band, but it doesn’t matter. He already knows what’s coming, because he was there at the load-in.
Lowering his voice to an intimate, amplified murmur, Cam Knowles says, “Well, you’re gonna get that kiss tonight.”
Carnival music starts up—a Korg synthesizer set to play a calliope tune. The stage is suddenly bathed in a swirl of light: orange, blue, red, green, yellow. There’s a gasp of amazement as the midway set starts to descend. Both the carousel and the Ferris wheel are already turning.
“THIS IS THE TITLE TRACK OF OUR NEW ALBUM, AND WE REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!” Cam bellows, and the other instruments fall in around the synth.
“The desert cries in all directions,” Cam Knowles intones. “Like eternity, you’re my infection.” To Brady he sounds like Jim Morrison after a prefrontal lobotomy. Then he yells jubilantly: “What’ll cure me, guys?”
The audience knows, and roars out the words as the band kicks in full-force.
“BABY, BABY, YOU’VE GOT THE LOVE THAT I NEED . . . YOU AND I, WE GOT IT BAD . . . LIKE NOTHIN’ THAT I EVER HAD . . .”
Brady smiles. It is the beatific smile of a troubled man who at long last finds himself at peace. He glances down at the yellow glow of the ready-lamp, wondering if he will live long enough to see it turn green. Then he looks back at the niggergirl, who is on her feet, clapping and shaking her tail.
Look at me, he thinks. Look at me, Barbara. I want to be the last thing you ever see.
39
Barbara takes her eyes from the wonders onstage long enough to see if the bald man in the wheelchair is having as much fun as she is. He has become, for reasons she doesn’t understand, her man in the wheelchair. Is it because he reminds her of someone? Surely that can’t be, can it? The only crippled person she knows is Dustin Stevens at school, and he’s just a little second-grader. Still, there’s something familiar about the crippled bald man.
This whole evening has been like a dream, and what she sees now also seems dreamlike. At first she thinks the man in the wheelchair is waving to her, but that’s not it. He’s smiling . . . and he’s giving her the finger. At first she can’t believe it, but that’s it, all right.
There’s a woman approaching him, climbing the aisle stairs two by two, going so fast she’s almost running. And behind her, almost on her heels . . . maybe all this really is a dream, because it looks like . . .
“Jerome?” Barbara tugs Tanya’s sleeve to draw her attention away from the stage. “Mom, is that . . .”
Then everything happens.
40
Holly’s initial thought is that Jerome could have gone first after all, because the bald and bespectacled man in the wheelchair isn’t—for the moment, at least—even looking at the stage. He’s turned away and staring at someone in the center section, and it appears to her that the vile son of a bitch is actually flipping that someone the bird. But it’s too late to change places with Jerome, even though he’s the one with the revolver. The man’s got his hand beneath the framed picture in his lap and she’s terribly afraid that means he’s ready to do it. If so, there are only seconds left.
At least he’s on the aisle, she thinks.
She has no plan, the extent of Holly’s planning usually goes no further than what snack she might prepare to go with her evening movie, but for once her troubled mind is clear, and when she reaches the man they’re looking for, the words that come out of her mouth seem exactly right. Divinely right. She has to bend down and shout to be heard over the driving, amplified beat of the band and the delirious shrieks of the girls in the audience.
“Mike? Mike Sturdevant, is that you?”
Brady turns from his contemplation of Barbara Robinson, startled, and as he does, Holly swings the knotted sock Bill Hodges has given her—his Happy Slapper—with adrenaline-loaded strength. It flies a short hard arc and connects with Brady’s bald head just above the temple. She can’t hear the sound it makes over the combined cacophony of the band and the fans, but she sees a section of skull the size of a small teacup cave in. His hands fly up, the one that was hidden knocking Frankie’s picture to the floor, where the glass shatters. His eyes are sort of looking at her, except now they’re rolled up in their sockets so that only the bottom halves of the irises show.
Next to Brady, the girl with the stick-thin legs is staring at Holly, shocked. So is Barbara Robinson. No one else is paying any attention. They’re on their feet, clapping and swaying and singing along.
“I WANT TO LOVE YOU MY WAY . . . WE’LL DRIVE THE BEACHSIDE HIGHWAY . . .”
Brady’s mouth is opening and closing like the mouth of a fish that has just been pulled from a river.
“IT’S GONNA BE A NEW DAY . . . I’LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!”
Jerome lays a hand on Holly’s shoulder and shouts to be heard. “Holly! What’s he got under his shirt?”
She hears him—he’s so close she can feel his breath puff against her cheek with each word—but it’s like one of those radio transmissions that come wavering in late at night, some DJ or gospel-shouter halfway across the country.
“Here’s a little present from Jibba-Jibba, Mike,” she says, and hits him again in exactly the same place, only even harder, deepening the divot in his skull. The thin skin splits and the blood comes, first in beads and then in a freshet, pouring down his neck to color the top of his blue ’Round Here tee-shirt a muddy purple. This time Brady’s head snaps all the way over onto his right shoulder and he begins to shiver and shuffle his feet. She thinks, Like a dog dreaming about chasing rabbits.
Before Holly can hit him again—and she really really wants to—Jerome grabs her and spins her around. “He’s out, Holly! He’s out! What are you doing?”
“Therapy,” she says, and then all the strength runs out of her legs. She sits down in the aisle. Her fingers relax on the knotted end of the Happy Slapper, and it drops beside one sneaker.
Onstage, the band plays on.
41
A hand is tugging at his arm.
“Jerome? Jerome!”
He turns from Holly and the slumped form of Brady Hartsfield to see his little sister, her eyes wide with dismay. His mom is right behind her. In his current hyper state, Jerome isn’t a bit surprised, but at the same time he knows the danger isn’t over.
“What did you do?” a girl is shouting. “What did you do to him?”
Jerome wheels back the other way and sees the girl sitting one wheelchair in from the aisle reaching for Hartsfield. Jerome shouts, “Holly! Don’t let her do that!”
Holly lurches to her feet, stumbles, and almost falls on top of Brady. It surely would have been the last fall of her life, but she manages to keep her feet and grab the wheelchair girl’s hands. There’s hardly any strength in them, and she feels an instant of pity. She bends down close and shouts to be heard. “Don’t touch him! He’s got a bomb, and I think it’s hot!”
The wheelchair girl shrinks away. Perhaps she understands; perhaps she’s only afraid of Holly, who’s looking even wilder than usual just now.
Brady’s shivers and twitches are strengthening. Holly doesn’t like that, because she can see something, a dim yellow light, under his shirt. Yellow is the color of trouble.
“Jerome?” Tanya says. “What are you doing here?”
An usher is approaching. “Clear the aisle!” the usher shouts over the music. “You have to clear the aisle, folks!”
Jerome grasps his mother’s shoulders. He pulls her to him until their foreheads are touching. “You have to get out of here, Mom. Take the girls and go. Right now. Make the usher go with you. Tell her your daughter is sick. Please don’t ask questions.”
She looks in his eyes and doesn’t ask questions.
“Mom?” Barbara begins. “What . . .” The rest is lost in the crash of the band and the choral accompaniment from the audience. Tanya takes Barbara by the arm and approaches the usher. At the same time she’s motioning for Hilda, Dinah, and Betsy to join her.
Jerome turns back to Holly. She’s bent over Brady, who continues to shudder as cerebral storms rage inside his head. His feet tapdance, as if even in unconsciousness he’s really feeling that goodtime ’Round Here beat. His hands fly aimlessly around, and when one of them approaches the dim yellow light under his tee-shirt, Jerome bats it away like a basketball guard rejecting a shot in the paint.
“I want to get out of here,” the wheelchair girl moans. “I’m scared.”
Jerome can relate to that—he also wants to get out of here, and he’s scared to death—but for now she has to stay where she is. Brady has her blocked in, and they don’t dare move him. Not yet.
Holly is ahead of Jerome, as she so often is. “You have to stay still for now, honey,” she tells the wheelchair girl. “Chill out and enjoy the concert.” She’s thinking how much simpler this would be if she’d managed to kill him instead of just bashing his sicko brains halfway to Peru. She wonders if Jerome would shoot Hartsfield if she asked him to. Probably not. Too bad. With all this noise, he could probably get away with it.
“Are you crazy?” the wheelchair girl asks wonderingly.
“People keep asking me that,” Holly says, and—very gingerly—she begins to pull up Brady’s tee-shirt. “Hold his hands,” she tells Jerome.
“What if I can’t?”
“Then OJ the motherf*cker.”
The sell-out audience is on its feet, swaying and clapping. The beachballs are flying again. Jerome takes one quick glance behind him and sees his mother leading the girls up the aisle to the exit, the usher accompanying them. That’s one for our side, at least, he thinks, then turns back to the business at hand. He grabs Brady’s flying hands and pins them together. The wrists are slippery with sweat. It’s like holding a couple of struggling fish.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but do it fast!” he shouts at Holly.
The yellow light is coming from a plastic gadget that looks like a customized TV remote control. Instead of numbered channel buttons, there’s a white toggle-switch, the kind you use to flip on a light in your living room. It’s standing straight up. There’s a wire leading from the gadget. It goes under the man’s butt.
Brady makes a grunting sound and suddenly there’s an acidic smell. His bladder has let go. Holly looks at the peebag on his lap, but it doesn’t seem to be attached to anything. She grabs it and hands it to the wheelchair girl. “Hold this.”
“Eeuw, it’s pee,” the wheelchair girl says, and then: “It’s not pee. There’s something inside. It looks like clay.”
“Put it down.” Jerome has to shout to be heard over the music. “Put it on the floor. Gently.” Then, to Holly: “Hurry the hell up!”
Holly is studying the yellow ready-lamp. And the little white nub of the toggle-switch. She could push it forward or back and doesn’t dare do either one, because she doesn’t know which way is off and which way is boom.
She plucks Thing Two from where it was resting on Brady’s stomach. It’s like picking up a snake that’s bloated with poison, and takes all her courage. “Hold his hands, Jerome, you just hold his hands.”
“He’s slippery,” Jerome grunts.
We already knew that, Holly thinks. One slippery son of a bitch. One slippery motherf*cker.
She turns the gadget over, willing her hands not to shake and trying not to think of the four thousand people who don’t even know their lives now depend on poor messed-up Holly Gibney. She looks at the battery cover. Then, holding her breath, she slides it down and lets it drop to the floor.
Inside are two double-A batteries. Holly hooks a fingernail onto the ridge of one and thinks, God, if You’re there, please let this work. For a moment she can’t make her finger move. Then one of Brady’s hands slips free of Jerome’s grip and slaps her upside the head.
Holly jerks and the battery she’s been worrying pops out of the compartment. She waits for the world to explode, and when it doesn’t, she turns the remote control over. The yellow light has gone out. Holly begins to cry. She grabs the master wire and yanks it free of Thing Two.
“You can let him go n—” she begins, but Jerome already has. He’s hugging her so tight she can hardly breathe. Holly doesn’t care. She hugs him back.
The audience is cheering wildly.
“They think they’re cheering for the song, but they’re really cheering for us,” she manages to whisper in Jerome’s ear. “They just don’t know it yet. Now let me go, Jerome. You’re hugging me too tight. Let me go before I pass out.”
42
Hodges is still sitting on the crate in the storage area, and not alone. There’s an elephant sitting on his chest. Something’s happening. Either the world is going away from him or he’s going away from the world. He thinks it’s the latter. It’s like he’s inside a camera and the camera is going backwards on one of those dolly-track things. The world is as bright as ever, but getting smaller, and there’s a growing circle of darkness around it.
He holds on with all the force of his will, waiting for either an explosion or no explosion.
One of the roadies is bending over him and asking if he’s all right. “Your lips are turning blue,” the roadie informs him. Hodges waves him away. He must listen.
Music and cheers and happy screams. Nothing else. At least not yet.
Hold on, he tells himself. Hold on.
“What?” the roadie asks, bending down again. “What?”
“I have to hold on,” Hodges whispers, but now he can hardly breathe at all. The world has shrunk to the size of a fiercely gleaming silver dollar. Then even that is blotted out, not because he’s lost consciousness but because someone is walking toward him. It’s Janey, striding slow and hipshot. She’s wearing his fedora tipped sexily over one eye. Hodges remembers what she said when he asked her how he had been so lucky as to end up in her bed: I have no regrets . . . Can we leave it at that?
Yeah, he thinks. Yeah. He closes his eyes, and tumbles off the crate like Humpty off his wall.
The roadie grabs him but can only soften the fall, not stop it. The other roadies gather.
“Who knows CPR?” asks the one who grabbed Hodges.
A roadie with a long graying ponytail steps forward. He’s wearing a faded Judas Coyne tee-shirt, and his eyes are bright red. “I do, but man, I’m so stoned.”
“Try it anyway.”
The roadie with the ponytail drops to his knees. “I think this guy is on the way out,” he says, but goes to work.
Upstairs, ’Round Here starts a new song, to the squeals and cheers of their female admirers. These girls will remember this night for the rest of their lives. The music. The excitement. The beachballs flying above the swaying, dancing crowd. They will read about the explosion that didn’t happen in the newspapers, but to the young, tragedies that don’t happen are only dreams.
The memories: they’re the reality.
43
Hodges awakens in a hospital room, surprised to find himself still alive but not at all surprised to see his old partner sitting at his bedside. His first thought is that Pete—hollow-eyed, needing a shave, the points of his collar turning up so they almost poke his throat—looks worse than Hodges feels. His second thought is for Jerome and Holly.
“Did they stop it?” he rasps. His throat is bone-dry. He tries to sit up. The machines surrounding him begin to beep and scold. He lies back down, but his eyes never leave Pete Huntley’s face. “Did they?”
“They did,” Pete says. “The woman says her name is Holly Gibney, but I think she’s really Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. That guy, the perp—”
“The perk,” Hodges says. “He thinks of himself as the perk.”
“Right now he doesn’t think of himself as anything, and the doctors say his thinking days are probably over for good. Gibney belted the living shit out of him. He’s in a deep coma. Minimal brain function. When you get on your feet again, you can visit him, if you want. He’s three doors down.”
“Where am I? County?”
“Kiner. The ICU.”
“Where are Jerome and Holly?”
“Downtown. Answering a shitload of questions. Meanwhile, Sheena’s mother is running around and threatening her own murder-spree if we don’t stop harassing her daughter.”
A nurse comes in and tells Pete he’ll have to leave. She says something about Mr. Hodges’s vital signs and doctor’s orders. Hodges holds up his hand to her, although it’s an effort.
“Jerome’s a minor and Holly’s got . . . issues. This is all on me, Pete.”
“Oh, we know that,” Pete says. “Yes indeed. This gives a whole new meaning to going off the reservation. What in God’s name did you think you were doing, Billy?”
“The best I could,” he says, and closes his eyes.
He drifts. He thinks of all those young voices, singing along with the band. They got home. They’re okay. He holds that thought until sleep takes him under.
THE PROCLAMATION
THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
WHEREAS, Holly Rachel Gibney and Jerome Peter Robinson uncovered a plot to commit an act of Terrorism at the Mingo Auditorium adjacent to the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex; and
WHEREAS, in realizing that to inform MAC Security Personnel might cause said Terrorist to set off an explosive device of great power, said explosive device accompanied by several pounds of metal shrapnel, they raced to the Mingo Auditorium; and
WHEREAS, they did confront said Terrorist themselves, at great personal risk; and
WHEREAS, they did subdue said Terrorist and prevent great loss of life and injury; and
WHEREAS, they have done this City a great and heroic service,
NOW THEREFORE, I, Richard M. Tewky, Mayor, do hereby award Holly Rachel Gibney and Jerome Peter Robinson the Medal of Service, this city’s highest honor, and proclaim that all City Services shall be rendered to them without charge for a period of ten (10) years; and
NOW THEREFORE, recognizing that some Acts are beyond repayment, we thank them with all our hearts.
In testimony thereof,
I set my signature and
The City Seal.
Richard M. Tewky
Mayor
BLUE MERCEDES
1
On a warm and sunny day in late October of 2010, a Mercedes sedan pulls into the nearly empty lot at McGinnis Park, where Brady Hartsfield not so long ago sold ice cream to Little Leaguers. It snuggles up to a tidy little Prius. The Mercedes, once gray, has now been painted baby blue, and a second round of bodywork has removed a long scrape from the driver’s side, inflicted when Jerome drove into the loading area behind the Mingo Auditorium before the gate was fully opened.
Holly’s behind the wheel today. She looks ten years younger. Her long hair—formerly graying and untidy—is now a glossy black cap, courtesy of a visit to a Class A beauty salon, recommended to her by Tanya Robinson. She waves to the owner of the Prius, who’s sitting at a table in the picnic area not far from the Little League fields.
Jerome gets out of the Mercedes, opens the trunk, and hauls out a picnic basket. “Jesus Christ, Holly,” he says. “What have you got in here? Thanksgiving dinner?”
“I wanted to make sure there was plenty for everybody.”
“You know he’s on a strict diet, right?”
“You’re not,” she says. “You’re a growing boy. Also, there’s a bottle of champagne, so don’t drop it.”
From her pocket, Holly takes a box of Nicorette and pops a piece into her mouth.
“How’s that going?” Jerome asks as they walk down the slope.
“I’m getting there,” she says. “The hypnosis helps more than the gum.”
“What if the guy tells you you’re a chicken and gets you to run around his office, clucking?”
“First of all, my therapist is a she. Second of all, she wouldn’t do that.”
“How would you know?” Jerome asks. “You’d be, like, hypnotized.”
“You’re an idiot, Jerome. Only an idiot would want to take the bus down here with all this food.”
“Thanks to the proclamation, we ride free. I like free.”
Hodges, still wearing the suit he put on that morning (although the tie is now in his pocket), comes to meet them, moving slowly. He can’t feel the pacemaker ticking away in his chest—he’s been told they’re very small now—but he senses it in there, doing its work. Sometimes he imagines it, and in his mind’s eye it always looks like a smaller version of Hartsfield’s gadget. Only his is supposed to stop an explosion instead of causing one.
“Kids,” he says. Holly is no kid, but she’s almost two decades younger than he is, and to Hodges that almost makes her one. He reaches for the picnic basket, but Jerome holds it away from him.
“Nuh-uh,” he says. “I’ll carry it. Your heart.”
“My heart’s fine,” Hodges says, and according to his last checkup this is true, but he still can’t quite believe it. He has an idea that anyone who’s suffered a coronary feels the same way.
“And you look good,” Jerome says.
“Yes,” Holly agrees. “Thank God you got some new clothes. You looked like a scarecrow the last time I saw you. How much weight have you lost?”
“Thirty-five pounds,” Hodges says, and the thought that follows, I wish Janey could see me now, sends a pang through his electronically regulated heart.
“Enough with the Weight Watchers,” Jerome says. “Hols brought champagne. I want to know if we have a reason to drink it. How did it go this morning?”
“The DA isn’t going to prosecute anything. All charges dropped. Billy Hodges is good to go.”
Holly throws herself into his arms and gives him a hug. Hodges hugs her back and kisses her cheek. With her short hair and her face fully revealed—for the first time since her childhood, although he doesn’t know this—he can see her resemblance to Janey. This hurts and feels fine at the same time.
Jerome feels moved to call on Tyrone Feelgood Delight. “Massa Hodges, you free at last! Free at last! Great God A’mighty, you is free at last!”
“Stop talking like that, Jerome,” Holly says. “It’s juvenile.” She takes the bottle of champagne from the picnic basket, along with a trio of plastic glasses.
“The district attorney escorted me into the chambers of Judge Daniel Silver, a guy who heard my testimony a great many times in my cop days,” Hodges says. “He gave me a ten-minute tongue-lashing and told me that my reckless behavior had put four thousand lives at risk.”
Jerome is indignant. “That’s outrageous! You’re the reason those people are still alive.”
“No,” Hodges says quietly. “You and Holly are the reason for that.”
“If Hartsfield hadn’t gotten in touch with you in the first place, the cops still wouldn’t know him from Adam. And those people would be dead.”
This may or may not be true, but in his own mind, Hodges is okay with how things turned out at the Mingo. What he’s not okay with—and will never be—is Janey. Silver accused him of playing “a pivotal role” in her death, and he thinks that might be so. But he has no doubt that Hartsfield would have gone on to kill more, if not at the concert or the Careers Day at Embassy Suites, then somewhere else. He’d gotten a taste for it. So there’s a rough equation here: Janey’s life in exchange for the lives of all those hypothetical others. And if it had been the concert in that alternate (but very possible) reality, two of the victims would have been Jerome’s mother and sister.
“What did you say back?” Holly asks. “What did you say back to him?”
“Nothing. When you’re taken to the woodshed, the best thing you can do is wait out the whipping and shut up.”
“That’s why you weren’t with us to get a medal, isn’t it?” she asks. “And why you weren’t on the proclamation. Those poops were punishing you.”
“I imagine,” Hodges says, although if the powers that be thought that was a punishment, they were wrong. The last thing in the world he wanted was to have a medal hung over his neck and to be presented with a key to the city. He was a cop for forty years. That’s his key to the city.
“A shame,” Jerome says. “You’ll never get to ride the bus free.”
“How are things on Lake Avenue, Holly? Settling down?”
“Better,” Holly says. She’s easing the cork out of the champagne bottle with all the delicacy of a surgeon. “I’m sleeping through the night again. Also seeing Dr. Leibowitz twice a week. She’s helping a lot.”
“And how are things with your mother?” This, he knows, is a touchy subject, but he feels he has to touch, just this once. “She still calling you five times a day, begging you to come back to Cincinnati?”
“She’s down to twice a day,” Holly says. “First thing in the morning, last thing at night. She’s lonely. And I think more afraid for herself than she is for me. It’s hard to change your life when you’re old.”
Tell me about it, Hodges thinks. “That’s a very important insight, Holly.”
“Dr. Leibowitz says habits are hard to break. It’s hard for me to give up smoking, and it’s hard for Mom to get used to living alone. Also to realize I don’t have to be that fourteen-year-old-girl curled up in the bathtub for the rest of my life.”
They’re silent for awhile. A crow takes possession of the pitcher’s rubber on Little League Field 3 and caws triumphantly.
Holly’s partition from her mother was made possible by Janelle Patterson’s will. The bulk of her estate—which came to Janey courtesy of another of Brady Hartsfield’s victims—went to Uncle Henry Sirois and Aunt Charlotte Gibney, but Janey also left half a million dollars to Holly. It was in a trust fund to be administered by Mr. George Schron, the lawyer Janey had inherited from Olivia. Hodges has no idea when Janey did it. Or why she did it. He doesn’t believe in premonitions, but . . .
But.
Charlotte had been dead set against Holly moving, claiming her daughter was not ready to live on her own. Given that Holly was closing in on fifty, that was tantamount to saying she would never be ready. Holly believed she was, and with Hodges’s help, she had convinced Schron that she would be fine.
Being a heroine who had been interviewed on all the major networks no doubt helped with Schron. It didn’t with her mother; in some ways it was Holly’s status as heroine that dismayed that lady the most. Charlotte would never be entirely able to accept the idea that her precariously balanced daughter had played a crucial role (maybe the crucial role) in preventing a mass slaughter of the innocents.
By the terms of Janey’s will, the condo apartment with its fabulous lake view is now owned jointly by Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Henry. When Holly asked if she could live there, at least to start with, Charlotte had refused instantly and adamantly. Her brother could not convince her to change her mind. It was Holly herself who had done that, saying she intended to stay in the city, and if her mother would not give in on the apartment, she’d find one in Lowtown.
“In the very worst part of Lowtown,” she said. “Where I’ll buy everything with cash. Which I will flash around ostentatiously.”
That did it.
Holly’s time in the city—the first extended period she has ever spent away from her mother—hasn’t been easy, but her shrink gives her plenty of support, and Hodges visits her frequently. Far more important, Jerome visits frequently, and Holly is an even more frequent guest at the Robinson home on Teaberry Lane. Hodges believes that’s where the real healing is taking place, not on Dr. Leibowitz’s couch. Barbara has taken to calling her Aunt Holly.
“What about you, Bill?” Jerome asks. “Any plans?”
“Well,” he says, smiling, “I was offered a job with Vigilant Guard Service, how about that?”
Holly clasps her hands together and bounces up and down on the picnic bench like a child. “Are you going to take it?”
“Can’t,” Hodges says.
“Heart?” Jerome asks.
“Nope. You have to be bonded, and Judge Silver shared with me this morning that my chances of being bonded and the chances of the Jews and Palestinians uniting to build the first interfaith space station are roughly equal. My dreams of getting a private investigator’s license are equally kaput. However, a bail bondsman I’ve known for years has offered me a part-time job as a skip-tracer, and for that I don’t need to be bonded. I can do it mostly from home, on my computer.”
“I could help you,” Holly says. “With the computer part, that is. I don’t want to actually chase anybody. Once was enough.”
“What about Hartsfield?” Jerome asks. “Anything new, or just the same?”
“Just the same,” Hodges says.
“I don’t care,” Holly says. She sounds defiant, but for the first time since arriving at McGinnis Park, she’s biting her lips. “I’d do it again.” She clenches her fists. “Again again again!”
Hodges takes one of those fists and soothes it open. Jerome does the same with the other.
“Of course you would,” Hodges says. “That’s why the mayor gave you a medal.”
“Not to mention free bus rides and trips to the museum,” Jerome adds.
She relaxes, a little at a time. “Why should I ride the bus, Jerome? I have lots of money in trust, and I have Cousin Olivia’s Mercedes. It’s a wonderful car. And such low mileage!”
“No ghosts?” Hodges asks. He’s not joking about this; he’s honestly curious.
For a long time she doesn’t reply, just looks up at the big German sedan parked beside Hodges’s tidy Japanese import. At least she’s stopped biting her lips.
“There were at first,” she says, “and I thought I might sell it. I had it painted instead. That was my idea, not Dr. Leibowitz’s.” She looks at them proudly. “I didn’t even ask her.”
“And now?” Jerome is still holding her hand. He has come to love Holly, difficult as she sometimes is. They have both come to love her.
“Blue is the color of forgetting,” she says. “I read that in a poem once.” She pauses. “Bill, why are you crying? Are you thinking about Janey?”
Yes. No. Both.
“I’m crying because we’re here,” he says. “On a beautiful fall day that feels like summer.”
“Dr. Leibowitz says crying is good,” Holly says matter-of-factly. “She says tears wash the emotions.”
“She could be right about that.” Hodges is thinking about how Janey wore his hat. How she gave it just the right tilt. “Now are we going to have some of that champagne or not?”
Jerome holds the bottle while Holly pours. They hold up their glasses.
“To us,” Hodges says.
They echo it. And drink.
2
On a rain-soaked evening in November of 2011, a nurse hurries down the corridor of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, an adjunct to John M. Kiner Memorial, the city’s premier hospital. There are half a dozen charity cases at the TBI, including one who is infamous . . . although his infamy has already begun to fade with the passage of time.
The nurse is afraid the clinic’s chief neurologist will have left, but he’s still in the doctor’s lounge, going through case files.
“You may want to come, Dr. Babineau,” she says. “It’s Mr. Hartsfield. He’s awake.” This only makes him look up, but what the nurse says next gets him to his feet. “He spoke to me.”
“After seventeen months? Extraordinary. Are you sure?”
The nurse is flushed with excitement. “Yes, Doctor, absolutely.”
“What did he say?”
“He says he has a headache. And he’s asking for his mother.”
September 14, 2013