Bodyguard (24 page)

As she rounded the corner of the house he wanted to call to her, to tell her to wait, tell her it was okay to leave her bike out front. What the hell did he care what anyone thought? But he could see Andy Horton coming down the street on his Rollerblades, and he closed the door instead, praying that Mindy move her big butt a little faster.

And completely hating himself.

He was a complete coward, a total loser. No wonder his dad hated coming to see him.

“Tell me about your kids.”

Alessandra drove with both hands on the wheel, just a little bit slower than Harry liked. He kept glancing behind them to see what was keeping her from pulling into the fast lane. There were never any cars there.

Her eyes were still bruised and tired-looking from her tears, her nose still faintly red, despite the fact that she’d slept for at least an hour after she’d cried herself out.

“You drive too slowly,” he told her.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Speed up. You’re making me nuts.”

“I will if you tell me about your kids.”

Harry sighed. “All right. Jesus. Shaun’s in eighth grade. He looks like his mother. Emily’s in her second year of nursery school. She looks like me, poor thing, kind of dark and short.”

Alessandra glanced at him. “You’re not short.”

“According to George I am. It’s okay—I don’t mind. You know what they say about short men?”

“No, and I don’t want to know because it’s going to be rude, isn’t it?” She rolled her eyes. “But probably funny. Okay, tell me. What do they say about short men?”

“Got me. Damn, I was hoping you’d know.”

Alessandra laughed. He loved making her laugh. It was a particularly nice victory now, since she was still so sad about Jane’s adoption.

“I thought you were going to drive faster,” he said. “Although I better warn you, the engine’s souped up. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll be pushing ninety miles an hour before you know it.”

“Thanks for the hot tip. But I thought you were going to tell me about your kids.”

“Do you have to practice being so annoying,” Harry asked, “or is it something that comes naturally?”

“It’s a well-thought-out part of my cover. Alice Plotkin is definitely annoying. God knows she annoys me, it’s only fair she should annoy you, too.” She glanced at him again. “That’s why I’ve decided to talk like this from now on,” she added in a high-pitched squeaky, ear-jarring voice.

“Knock it off. You’re not supposed to be the funny one. I’m the funny one.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” she said in that same awful voice. “I’m just trying to be thorough, to completely be Alice Plotkin in every possible way.”

“Stop,” Harry said. “Dear Lord, help me. I feel like Dr. Frankenstein—‘Oh, God, what have I created?’ ”

She was laughing again, and Harry realized with a jolt that he was having a good time. He was driving cross-country and enjoying himself. A completely impossible paradox.

He liked her. It was wild—he actually liked Mrs. Griffin Lamont. She was more than he’d thought. Far more. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so wrong in his first impression of a woman.

Her world had ended. Her life had virtually been stolen from her. And yet she was moving ahead. She refused to
be caught in the pain or mired in the complete unfairness of it all.

“Tell me about your children,” she said in her normal voice. “We’re getting close, I want to know what to expect.”

Harry shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure what you want to know about them.”

She chewed on her lower lip. She had beautiful lips, so full and gracefully shaped.

No sex. No thinking about sex. No thinking about gently capturing that lip with his own teeth and … Harry turned away, digging through the glove compartment for the map.

“Well,” she said slowly. “What do they like to do? What kind of personalities do they have? Start with basics. Then we can move to the tougher issues. Like how have they dealt with the tragedy of losing first their mother and Kevin, and then you?”

Harry bristled. “They haven’t lost me.”

She didn’t say anything, she just glanced at him.

“Okay,” he said defensively. “So I haven’t exactly been around, but it’s not like I’m dead. It’s not like I’m never coming back.”

She still didn’t say anything, so he went back to the easier questions. What do they like to do? He wasn’t sure. Not anymore.

“Shaun’s kind of quiet,” he said, thinking aloud. “He always liked to read—in fact, he’d rather read. Kev and I used to be out in the yard, throwing a ball around, and Shaun would just sit on the deck with a book. He was a pretty good baseball player. I coached his Little League team a few years ago. He’s really fast, but not much of a hitter, unfortunately. A good bunter, though, because of his speed.”

“Does he still play?”

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “When I spoke to Marge last, she said he got one of the leads in the school musical.” He laughed. “That completely blew me away—I had no idea the kid could sing. He was always so quiet. I mean, what’s a shy kid like that doing up onstage? I was sorry I missed it.”

She looked at him again. She didn’t say a word, but he knew what she was thinking. His kid had a lead in the school musical, and he’d missed it? What kind of father was he?

A shitty one. There was no doubt about that.

“Quiet people aren’t always shy. They might just be quiet because they can’t get a word in edgewise,” Alessandra said. “I had this great-uncle—he was about six and a half feet tall, and he was the biggest, loudest, funniest man I’d ever met. And he had this little tiny bird of a wife, Aunt Fran, who just kind of sat off to the side and smiled, never saying much of anything. She spent one Christmas at our house, a few years after Uncle Henry had died, and I remember being so surprised when I talked to her, because she was even funnier than my uncle had been. It was just when he was around, he took up so much space, she never felt the need to speak up.”

“You think Shaun was quiet because both Kev and I were always so loud?” Harry shook his head, answering his own question. “Yes. Em was loud, too. She was only two, but I used to call her ‘the Mouth.’ She was like this little fierce space alien who was either scowling or laughing, nothing in between, and …” His stomach hurt. “I hate talking about this.”

“You hate talking about your children?”

“No, I mean, talking about what it was like … before. Jesus. You know, I busted my ass to make the divorce be okay, to make us all be okay, to still be a family
even though me and Sonya weren’t together. We made it through some really bad shit and I remember thinking just days before … that the worst was behind us. But then I got the call to come ID the bodies and … Can we talk about something else?”

“That must’ve been so hard for you. I can’t imagine losing a child. And Kevin was your favorite.”

“What, is Alice Plotkin suddenly a psychoanalyst now, too? Let’s just drop this, all right? Besides, parents aren’t supposed to have favorites.” He made a lot of noise unfolding the map. But even that didn’t erase the fact that she was right. Kev had been his favorite, it was pretty damn obvious.

Harry had pretended that their bond had been special because Kev was the oldest, but it had been more than that. They had had the same sense of humor, the same love of the absurd, the same likes and dislikes. They’d both tried to include Shaun in the things they’d done together, but even though he tagged along, he always was just a little too young, a little too outside their loop.

It was so damn hard to face Shaun, because the kid had to have known Kev was Harry’s favorite. He had to have known Kevin’s death affected Harry in ways his own death never would have. And the guilt of that was almost too much for Harry to take.

“What was he like?” Allie asked. “Kevin, I mean. Do you ever get a chance to talk about him anymore?”

Harry shook his head. No. He tried not even to mention Kevin’s name. It hurt too much. “You want to tell me about Jane?”

She glanced at him again. “I’d love to. She was barely a week old when I first met her. Her mother left the hospital a few hours after she was born and never came back. For the first two months, it was touch and go daily as to whether she’d survive. But then she started to get
stronger, and I’d stop in the nursery and hold her, give her a bottle.

“Let’s see. She has brown hair and brown eyes, and the kind of smile that makes you feel so good. I mean, she would just look at me as if I were the most wonderful person in the world.” She paused. “I would have given anything to be able to take her home with me.”

She glanced at him again. See? She could talk about Jane.

“Yeah, well, at least Jane’s still alive,” Harry said defensively. He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. It sounded as if he were saying “My pain is more valid than yours.” And that wasn’t what he’d meant. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m—”

“I kind of picture Kevin as a smaller version of you,” Allie said, giving him a chance to redeem himself.

He took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “No, he didn’t really look like me. He had hair that was kind of the color yours is now. He wasn’t a particularly good-looking kid. It was like he got the worst of both me and Sonya. My nose. Her chin. What a mess. But he was always smiling, and when he smiled, his face suddenly made sense. Then he was beautiful. He was one of those people who always saw the glass as half full, you know? An optimist.”

God, now that he was talking, he couldn’t seem to shut up. “He was an amazing athlete, too. He had this incredible pitching arm. He was a fourteen-year-old kid, and I was already dreaming of the majors. I mean, I wasn’t like one of those psycho Little League dads, foaming at the mouth and calling in the recruiters, but when I let myself have my little fantasies, I could picture him playing for the Mets.” Harry laughed. “He’d always been small for his age, but he was starting to grow, doing
that awkward, gangly thing with his arms and legs. He was at that point when he was turning from a kid into a teenager, you know? His face wasn’t a little boy’s face anymore. You could start to see glimpses of the man he was going to become, and …” His voice shook. “Jesus, just like that he was dead.”

Alessandra let the silence surround them, let him have a few long minutes to grieve and then regain his composure before she spoke. “He sounds as if he were the type of person who would be upset at the thought of you wasting the rest of your life, trying to get revenge.”

Harry stared at her as if she’d just announced her intention to join a satanic cult.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Alessandra chastised him. “I bet you’ve never stopped to consider that, have you? The fact that Kevin would hate knowing you’re obsessed with avenging his death to the point where you no longer have a life of your own?”

“Excuse me,” Harry said. “Did I ask for your opinion? I somehow missed the part where I asked for your opinion.”

“Are you going to give custody of Shaun and Emily to your stepsister?” she asked.

“Ah, Christ,” he said. “How the hell did you …?” He answered his own question. “George told you. I’m going to fucking kill him.”

“They’re the ones who need you, Harry. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but Kevin doesn’t need you anymore.”

He turned away, staring out the window the way she had done just hours before. After several long minutes of grim silence, Alessandra switched on the radio. She’d obviously said more than enough.

* * *

George turned on the light and reached for his cigarettes and the book on his bedside table. He tried not to disturb Kim, but she stirred.

“Can I get you something, baby?” she asked sleepily. “Are you hurting again?”

There was no “again.” He was hurting, period. It made sense that his leg would hurt. After all, someone had put a hole in it. He simply hadn’t anticipated it hurting so much, for such a long time, even now, after he was home from the hospital.

Still, there was nothing Kim could do.

“It’s not time for another pill.” He lit a cigarette and took a long drag, turning his head to blow the smoke away from her. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? I’m going to read for awhile—as long as the light doesn’t bother you?”

Kim raised herself up on one elbow, and the sheet fell away from her perfect, full breasts. “If you want, I could score you something stronger than that lousy prescription the doctor gave you.”

“Excuse me, have you forgotten you’re talking to a federal agent? I didn’t just hear that.” He reached for his ashtray.

“They should’ve at least given you Percodan.”

“I don’t need drugs. And especially not any illegal ones, thanks.”

The window in his bedroom was open, and the night air was cool. As George watched, her body responded to the cold, her nipples tightening to rigid peaks.

She slowly pulled the sheet down even farther, giving him an unobstructed view. “Or we could try the … What did they call it on that infomercial? ‘The holistic approach to controlling pain’?”

She reached for him, but he caught her wrist with one
hand and lifted her face back to eye level. “You know, it would be okay if we just talk.”

She looked completely confused. “Talk?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” George told her. “I like it a lot, but everything we do doesn’t have to be a lead-in to sex. In fact, it’s killed a little bit of the anticipation, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t know what he meant. “You don’t like it when I go down on you?”

Now that was something no man would probably say he didn’t like. “No, Kim, I just said I like it a lot. A whole lot.”

“I do, too.”

George laughed. “Well, that’s good. I hope so. I mean, I figured you did, because why else would you do it, right?”

Kim looked away.

Well, wasn’t that interesting?

“Have you noticed that except for once or twice early in our relationship, we’ve rarely had actual sex—you know, sexual intercourse? We always have oral sex, and I’m never on the giving end. I touch you, you pull away, and then you distract the hell out of me.” He watched her closely. “Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?”