Burning Blue (16 page)

“The starfish?”

“After the lab. I tried to put her back in the water, but she wouldn’t go. You know Shale Beach, where it’s all smooth stones they brought in from wherever? I put her at the shoreline to let the waves take her out gently, but she dug into the rocks. I was crying as I threw her back in, because maybe she would drown.”

“Nah, starfish can’t drown. You saved her. She would have ended up drying to death and then getting chucked into the trash with the rest of the starfish that never made it out of the lab.”

“But maybe she just didn’t want to fight anymore, missing an arm like that, you know? Even if it grew back, she’d never feel like it had. She’d always feel like part of her was missing. Maybe she just sank.” She sipped from her Coke straw. “Question.”

“Okay, and then I have one for you.”

“Deal. What happened? Your mom, I mean.”

Word had gotten out about the pizza crust, and the sparrows were hopping up to us. One perched on the toe of my worn thin Chuck T. I tried to feed it from my hand, but it looked doubtful. When another bird helped itself to my palm, the first bird got over not trusting me and got in there too. “You want to know about my mom?”

“Please.”

“She came to all my baseball games. She never missed. She wore this bright pink Windbreaker no matter the weather. I mean, this thing was blinding.”

“Fluorescent, you’re saying.”

“Plugged into some serious wattage, yes. She called it her cheering jacket, had a hat to match too. This, like, crazy winter cap. You ever see those hats with the ears, like this cat or monkey or whatever is clinging to your head, the arms are way too long and hang down, you knot them under your chin to keep the hat on, they sell them in the city by Rockefeller Center from the tourist trap tables at Christmas?”

“I have one, Tony the Tiger.”

“Exactly. My mother’s was the Pink Panther. Imagine her wearing that to every one of my summer league games. She looked like a lunatic. Here’s the thing: No matter who was up to bat, me, one of my teammates, one of the kids from the
other
team, she screamed for him, like ‘You can do it, Johnny-boy!’ Or ‘Great swing, Pablito!’ even if the kid sucked and missed by a mile. She knew every kid’s name.” I nodded. “That’s it,” I said. “End of story.”

“That’s it?” Nicole said. “Are you kidding? That’s everything. First the pizza cab and now the Pink Panther. That’s so fricking awesome.” She nodded with me. “Your turn. What’d you want to ask me?”

“Nah. I’ll ask you some other time.”

“Nope, now or never. Anything. Go ahead.”

I hesitated. I couldn’t look at her as I asked. “Who do you think did it?”

“Everybody always asks me that. That’s
all
they ask me.

“Don’t you ever wonder, though?”

“All. The.
Time
. Jay? I. Don’t.
Know
. Okay? I can’t think about it anymore. The idea that somebody out there despises me enough to do this? It’s . . .” She shivered, and then she cried. “This is so crazy. I don’t want to know, you know? I don’t want to know who did it. How could I ever face him, you know? In court, I mean. They would make me testify, and he would be sitting there, staring at me. I almost hope they don’t catch him. That he just fades away. He . . . I can’t talk about this.”

“Nicole, I’m sorry.”

She stopped crying, almost too quickly, I thought, wiped her eyes and steeled herself.

“I’m sorry.”

She kissed my cheek, just a quick peck, and then she stood up. “Seriously, let’s go. Someplace where we can laugh.”

“You golf?”

“Never.”

“Then it’s Hackers, Hitters and Hoops. I’ll laugh anyway.”

“Your house.”

I hedged.

“What?” she said.

“No, nothing. Let’s go, I guess.”

Somebody left half-eaten takeout just outside the lobby. The rats were congregating. They didn’t move, either, when we walked by. Waddling up to the party, one of them looked more like a possum. He eyed me like,
No,
you
move
. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“About what?” Nicole said. “We had a mouse once. He was cute.”

“Stuart Little versus Bubonic Plague.”

We played Skyrim, and then she went to the piano. She was great, of course, even with Band-Aids on two of her fingertips.

“You know that song ‘How Soon Is Now?’” I said.

She played it. “Sit with me,” she said. She showed me the very simple top part of a four hands version of the song. “The squeeze bottle,” she said. “When it came up to your face. What were you thinking when the splash hit you?”

“It happened too fast. Start to finish in less than a second. I was like, okay, this psycho just squirted acid in my face. It was weird. I wasn’t thinking about me. I was thinking about him. How screwed up he must be to do that. Even after he told me it was water.”

She stopped playing. She looked at me.

I wanted to brush the hair away from the left side of her face. I didn’t. Instead I did something I didn’t want to do. Something I had to do. I said, “Dave.”

“What about him?”

“He said you broke up with him.”

She looked away, tapped the low end key. “I did.”

“You told me he broke it off.”

“I said the words, after he gave me an ultimatum.”

“As in?” I said.

She squinted at me, and I realized I was squinting at her. It hit me: She didn’t trust me either. Not fully. Not yet. She turned back to the keys, tapped out a very sad, slow version of “How Soon Is Now?” “He made Emma a bouquet once,” she said.

“What, he bought her mixed deli flowers or whatever?”

“No, he
made
them. From paper.”

“Like origami?”

“Exactly origami. He Kindled a how-to book. She loves sweetheart roses, the tiny ones, but they die after a day. He wanted to give her something that would last. Paper fades too, though. It curls in the sun. I wonder if she knows she has six months to live.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her. I was supposed to kiss her now, and I wanted to, but I didn’t, I’m not sure why. So we just stayed like that for a while, until it was clear I’d let the moment go, and she got up to get her coat.

“Stay,” I said. “PS3. Bootleg tennis. I’ll let you kick my ass.”

“Gotta get home. My dad. We have a Skype thing scheduled.”

I walked her to her car. She checked the backseat before she opened the door.

“Look,” I said, “I—”

She cut me off with a hug that was as tight as it was short. She slipped into her Saab and drove out of there a little too fast.

I watched her car disappear into the sharp red sunset. As I was heading back into the building, an engine revved, and a battered old-model Civic, black, eased out of the lot and swerved into the empty avenue. I was about to call Nicole to warn her, but the car turned west, away from where Nicole’s Saab had gone. I grabbed the tag off the rear bumper with my phone camera. Pete had advised me to take pictures every time Puglisi or one of his guys showed up. That maybe the police would get on him for stalking if we gathered enough evidence. I realized that the tag numbers weren’t Puglisi’s. And the car’s color was different. I remembered Puglisi’s Honda as less black, more gray. The windows were up, but I could make out that the driver was a woman, short with long hair. She was wearing dark sunglasses, almost as if she were copying Nicole.

Battered Civic, short girl with long hair: Starbucks Cherry?

I scrolled to the last text she sent and replied:
We need to talk.

It didn’t take long for her to get back, of course, fifteen seconds, about as much time as she would need to pull over and grab her phone.
We most definitely do. When?

Now.

Come to my house.

Someplace pubic.
My JKL key was lame half the time. I’d already hit
SEND
.

Took her a while to reply to that one.
Mall?

Apple pkng lot 20 min

Glad you figured out how to text. :o)

I called Angela.

“What’s up?”
She sounded a little out of it.

“You drinking?”

“Just straight vodka.”

“You at your computer?

“Where else would I be?”

“Need you to run some plates.”

“You can’t tap the lousy DMV yourself?”

“I have to check on something else right now.”

“As in?”

“Why after two years of knowing me a certain girl is all of a sudden crushing on me.”

Took me fifteen minutes to skateboard to the mall. I scanned the parking lot entrances for Cherry’s Civic. Somebody tapped my shoulder. I spun with my hand up to cover my face. I almost didn’t recognize her out of her Starbucks getup. She wore a tight pink hoodie, tight jeans. Her hair was lighter than I remembered. She always had it in a ponytail, and I’d never seen it loose. She’d gone heavy with the lip gloss. “Hey,” she said, big smile.

“Why are you stalking me?” I said.

“Okay, wait,
stalking
? I texted you like three times. You didn’t get back to me, so I let it go.”

“Cherry, coming to my building? C’mon.”

“Dude, I don’t even know where you live.”

“I saw you, okay? You almost got T-boned, swerving out of the lot.”

She put up her hands like I had a knife out. “This is messed up. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She backed away toward a row of parked cars.

“Unless you come clean, right now, I’m calling the cops. I’m serious.”

“I know you are. I’m definitely sensing seriousness.” She backpedaled to the driver’s-side door of a Honda Civic that was at least ten years older than the one that had pulled out of the lot in front of my building, not to mention that this one wasn’t black but
yellow
. “Take it easy, Jay. I don’t know what I did, but I’m leaving now, okay? I don’t want to hurt you.” She opened the door and barked, “Step
away
from the
vehicle,
” as if she’d Hulu’d one too many episodes of
The Shield
.

I was standing in front of the car, penning her in. “Maybe this isn’t your car.”

She turned over the ignition.

“Okay, so it is your car,” I said. Which meant that Cherry DiBenneditto was not the Recluse. This also meant maybe the driver of the black Civic was. Were Detective Barrone and Schmidt right? Was the acid thrower a woman after all? Any male on my suspect list—Kerns, Dave Bendix—was if not absolutely safe, then safer. Or maybe the woman in the car really was working for Shane Puglisi or another gossip rag, stalking Nicole for a picture. Or maybe she wasn’t connected to Nicole at all. She hadn’t followed Nicole out of the lot. She’d gone the opposite direction. Then again, if I didn’t check her out, and she was the Recluse, I would have to hold myself responsible for anything that might happen to Nicole.

A flicker zigzagged in my peripheral vision. I sat on the hood of Cherry’s Civic to catch my breath. She came out brandishing the Club, but when she saw I was kind of out of it, she lowered her weapon. “Jay?”

“Cherry, I’m sorry. I had you mixed up with the spider.”

“Happens all the time. The spider. Sure. What are you on?”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Are you
trying
to be a jerk?”

“What’d I say?”

“Hel
lo,
you know where I work?” Her eyes softened. “You can buy me a slice.”

“Pizza’s great,” I said, even though my stomach was twisting to accommodate the ever-expanding, four-pound-ball of cheese there after my pizza slam with Nicole.

“Sbarro?” she said.

“Hardy har.”

She had no idea what I was talking about. “Dude, what is your
prob
lem?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

I ended up forgetting my wallet, and she had to pay. Not that I touched my slice. I told her why I hadn’t texted her back, that I was crushing on Nicole.

“I figured,” she said. “What’s she like?”

I told her.

She’d heard about the attack. She rolled her eyes. “You know, of course, that this only makes me like you more. Crushing on a disfigured girl? That’s like an OWN movie waiting to happen. You really think somebody’s spying on you guys?”

“I’m somewhere between possibly and probably. Her engine coughed before it rolled over. Means it was cold. Means she was sitting there for a while, watching.”

“Or talking on the phone. Or taking a nap because she’d worked a double and started to fall asleep at the wheel on her way home. Or you’re
totally
paranoid
. I actually do need coffee now. You?”

“Definitely.”

She headed for the counter. I pulled my Nokia to see if Angela had run down the license plate, but my battery was dead. Cherry had left her phone on the table. I messed with it to make it untraceable. She’d notice next month when her data bill was zero.

“Jay?” Cherry was looking over my shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing, sneaking up on me like that?” I said.

“Getting my wallet, which, as you can see, I left next to my brand-new phone that cost me thirty hours worth of slinging lattes. What the hell are
you
doing? My poor Droid. What’d you do to her?”

My head was pounding. “You’ll get much better reception now.”

“You’re the dude who asked me for help texting Dad, right? Wait, you’re a
hacker.
”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“It
is
bad!”

I needed sleep. I was really losing it. I had willingly let Nicole know I was a hacker, and Angela had found me out on her own, but getting caught by Cherry was just sloppy. Too late now. “I have to use your phone.”

“I don’t have a ton of minutes.”

“You won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“How did you get into the DMV? You know that says Restricted Access, right?”

“I’m a member.”

“Of what?”

I ran the plates I’d seen on the black Civic. Sure enough, they tracked back to a red RAV4 that reported its plates stolen that afternoon. “She boosted somebody’s tags,” I said. “She tacks them onto her car when she wants to be anonymous. She can’t be driving around in her real plates in case a street camera picks her up doing the loitering thing. If the cops pull her over for speeding or whatever with the bad plates, she plays dumb. ‘What? Those aren’t my license plates.’”

“I think I might have seen something like this on—”

“
The Shield
?”

“Except on
The Shield,
they need court orders to do what you’re doing.”

“I know, so lame. Want to know how many older model black Civics there are in the tri-state area?”

“I think I may just need to kill myself if I don’t have that information. This is crazy, that you can get into government institutions like this. Imagine if you could hack into the Department of Defense?”

“Imagine.” I ran the search command into the DMV database.

“I had you pegged for stoner sexy, but you’re actually geeky sexy. Um, why is my phone flashing red?”

“Eight thousand, two hundred and twenty-two 1990s model Civics, black, are puttering around New Jersey. That’s too big a list for me to go through on my own. You’d need industrial computing power to work up owner profiles, and then you’d have to cross-reference the potentials with information only the investigating officers have. Cherry, I was right. Somebody’s stalking her.”

“Or you.”

“This was so much easier when I thought you were stalking me.”

“I’ll stalk you, if you want.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to catch this freak.”

“You’re not,” she said. “You have to call the cops.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Because?”

“They’d want to know how we got our information about the bad plates.”

“How
you
got the information. I just watched you break my phone.” She frowned. “I could do it. Let the cops know, I mean.”

“No, I don’t want to get you involved.”

“Not me. My father. He knows a lot of detectives. He could drop a tip about the Civic, and if he asked them to keep it anonymous, they would.”

“Okay, you couldn’t tell me your dad’s a cop before I hacked the DMV in front of you?”

“He’s an undertaker, but the funeral home has a contract with the state, special discounts for civil servants, their families. They do a ton of business with the police. What do you want me to tell him to do?”

“Ask him to give the cops the plate number and tell them that the driver of this vehicle, a black Civic, was acting suspiciously in the environs of Valedale Boulevard.”

“Acting suspiciously how?”

“Driving around parking lots, checking out parked cars or something. The anonymous witness said the driver was probably a woman. Have your dad say she was particularly interested in cars with baby seats. Actually, that’s pretty good. The kidnapping thing always gets the cops hopping. They’ll check all the local security cameras, maybe get a picture of the woman’s face, run it against the mug-shot database with face recognition software. You never know, we might get lucky.”

“You don’t have a better description than ‘a woman’?”

“She was in silhouette with the sun behind her, but she had nice hair. You know, long, a little wavy. Pretty, like yours.”

“Like mine. Great.”