Cold Springs (6 page)

He tried for a smile. “What you up to, Talia?”

“Was I supposed to say no?” she asked. “He give me a lot of money.”

Samuel could swear she was accusing him—turning her guilt on him.

Then she added like an afterthought, “Race be okay.”

“Oh—yeah,” Samuel agreed. “He's always better without you.”

Talia let a tear escape, and Samuel thought,
That's good. Now you cry.

She started to leave, but the anger in Samuel was building. He hated this woman. She was always leaving—like a cockroach. Every time you turned on a light, there was Talia, scurrying away.

He knocked the satchel out of her hand. It split open, spilling bricks of cash.

They stood close enough to dance, the cash scattered around their feet. Talia's perfume burned his nose. She was staring down at her wrist, squeezing it.

“Look here,” Samuel said. “Goddamn.”

“I was gonna leave some for you,” Talia said.

“What you done?”

“Some for Race, too. Y'all both got a share. He can stay at the house a few more days. After that, I figure Nana take him.”

Then Samuel understood—the whole thing clicked into place. “What's your end of the deal?”

“Just disappear.”

“Just disappear,” he repeated. “With Race.”

She stared at the rug.

Samuel's throat felt dry. “Well, then. You'd better do it.”

She started to push past him, leaving the money behind, but he said, “You forgetting something?”

She turned, glanced down at the cash. She looked nervous and hungry, like an animal, waiting for permission to grab some food.

“You got to disappear,” Samuel said.

“Yeah. Vincent waiting for me—”

“That's his name. Vincent.”

“He's a good man.”

“Oh, yeah. All of them, good men. So checking, savings, real estate. You got it all into cash, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Liquidated,” Samuel said. “Everything about you gone—squeezed into dollar signs. Like you never existed—not to me, not to your boys, not to nobody. That the way you want it?”

Talia's eyes were Christmas-ornament fragile, the way they always looked when a man started to turn angry on her, got ready to knot his hands into fists. Samuel had seen that look too many times, and it made the bones in his fingers turn to acid.

“I'll leave you the cash,” Talia said. “Let me take Race.”

“Oh, now you're taking Race.”

“He's my son. Just take the money. I owe you.”

“You owe me what?”

She wouldn't say.

“You owe me what?”

“Please.”

“Look at me. Say my name.”

“I got to—it's eight o'clock—Vincent, he—”

“Look at me, girl.”

The knife was in his hand now, melting into his palm, becoming an extension of his fingers.

“Samuel,” she murmured.

“You're not gone yet,” Samuel said. “Not totally. You need to disappear, girl.”

Talia stepped back, sensing that moment on the edge of the railing, when you are still sure you can recover, before you tumble and realize the void is void. That you don't get second chances.

Samuel's knife slashed up, splitting leopard-pattern cloth like the leather satchel, spilling everything like the cash, everything she'd kept inside all those years—her softness, her warmth. He and Talia sank to the floor together like lovers, her fingers hooked into the flesh of his shoulders, her magnolia perfume and her sap-crust hair and the little sounds she was making, whimpering as he made heavy, desperate thrusts—so much like making love—a warm wet spray on his face, dampening his shirt, sticking his sleeves to his arms.

He stopped only when the handle of the knife slipped from his grip, the blade biting his index finger, tangling in a fold of what used to be Talia's sweater. Samuel stayed on his knees, straddling her, his breath shuddering. He sucked at the salty cut on his finger joint. He was wet all over, but it was already starting to dry, starting to cool.

After a long time, he stood, flexed his fingers to keep them from sticking together. He stared at a twenty-dollar bill, floating in a wet red halo. Talia's shoe, twisted at an unnatural angle.

He walked to the bathroom, turned on the shower. He stripped and stood under the warm water, naked, until the needles of heat stopped causing any sensation in his back. He watched swirls of pink curly clouds in the water, tracing the outlines of his toes.

Samuel forgot where he was. He forgot who he was. He felt like someone had gone carefully under his skin with a hot filament, separating the skin from the muscle, so that his face floated on top of someone else's—some other person he didn't like, someone who hadn't turned his life around, who carried a knife and spent every dark hour of the evening, for the past nine years, studying a reflection in the blade, seeing Talia's eyes, Talia's mouth, Talia's cheekbones.

He stepped out of the shower, the house too quiet without the noise of water.

What would he do if Race walked in with his girl right now?

He stood naked in the bedroom doorway, looking down at Talia in her sticky nest of money, her eyes soft and dewy and staring at the ceiling, looking straight through to Jesus.

Something glinted at her hip. Samuel knelt beside her, hooked his pinky around a loop of silver chain, and pulled the necklace out of her pocket. He laid it across his palm, read the inscription. His eyes began to burn. He remembered a warm brown throat, slender fingers lifting the chain, rubbing it nervously across full red lips.

Samuel looked at the flattened leather satchel at Talia's feet. He imagined the phone call, the offer to buy the house. He understood the deal better than Talia ever had—the rich man trying to get around him, trying to take control of the situation, get his daughter free of the Montrose family.

Samuel had tried to be restrained. He had tried to forgive. And now the girl's father had broken the rules, stepped over the boundary.

He wanted a final settlement? He wanted to pay the big price?

Samuel could arrange that.

He wiped the necklace clean, then dropped it into the blood next to Talia's left breast.

2

The call haunted Chadwick all week.

Monday, he and his trainee Olsen escorted a student from Cold Springs to Hunter's Playa Verde campus in Belize. The whole flight down, the 737 angling into the sun, making hammered gold out of the Gulf of Mexico, Chadwick thought of Ann Zedman.

“It's Mallory,” she had said, her voice so thick with worry that Chadwick hardly recognized it. “I don't know who else to turn to.”

Chadwick had wanted to ask a thousand questions, but each was a jump across a nine-year chasm. He knew he couldn't make it.

Tuesday, he and Olsen flew back to the States for an escort job in Los Angeles—a Korean girl named Soo-yun who had neon-blue contact lenses, a severe case of bulimia, and the keys to her father's gun cabinet. She locked herself in the bathroom at her parents' produce market on Western Avenue. Chadwick tried to talk her out, but when that didn't work he called her bluff, busting down the door and pulling the gun out of her hands. The gun turned out to be unloaded. Soo-yun's dazed but relieved parents gave him a basket of papayas to take on the plane. That night, on the red-eye flight east, his clothes smelling of ripe fruit, Chadwick thought of Ann Zedman.

“We don't have to accept the girl,” Hunter had told him. “If it bothers you—”

“It doesn't bother me,” Chadwick answered. And the two of them had let the lie hang between them like a piñata, waiting for a stick.

Wednesday, Chadwick and Olsen dropped Soo-yun at the Bowl Ranch facility in Utah, which was equipped to deal with eating disorders, then flew west, arriving in the Bay Area after midnight.

It wasn't the first time Chadwick had been home. He'd made dozens of Bay Area pickups for Asa Hunter since he started escort work in '94, but each time Chadwick returned, he feared the familiarity of the hills, the eucalyptus smell in the air, the shadows in the canyons between downtown skyscrapers and the mist shrouding Sutro Hill. He feared the sadness that seeped into his limbs like anesthesia whenever he saw anything that reminded him of Katherine.

He and Olsen spent Thursday tracking Mallory Zedman, scouting all the locations her friends said she might be, looking for a boy she liked to hang out with, a young dealer by the name of Race Montrose. The boy's last name bothered Chadwick. He was bothered even more when one of Mallory's friends told him Race was a student at Laurel Heights. Ann hadn't mentioned either piece of information on the phone, and Chadwick tried very hard to believe he'd heard the last name wrong, or that it was simply a coincidence.

“You okay?” Olsen asked him.

He realized his hand was clenched in a fist.

“Yeah. Just praying for no more papayas.”

“You know this family, right?”

“A long time ago.”

“And?”

Chadwick folded his paperwork. He slipped a recent photo of Mallory Zedman out of his briefcase. “Take Shattuck south. There're three or four more places.”

They spotted Mallory at a sidewalk café on College and Ocean View, just south of the Berkeley city limits. She was sitting across from a tall African-American boy in a camouflage jacket.

Chadwick parked across the avenue. He and Olsen watched for twenty minutes until the boy in the camouflage got up to take his empty espresso cup into the café, leaving Mallory alone at the table.

Chadwick said, “Now.”

Olsen stuck her pepper spray canister into her denim jacket. Her hands were trembling.

“You'll do fine,” Chadwick told her.

“This is the one who attacked her mother with a hammer, right?”

Olsen was a big Swedish girl, a former college basketball player with a drill sergeant's haircut and a master's degree in child psych, but at the moment she didn't look much older or tougher than the girl they were picking up.

Chadwick said, “Don't worry.”

“Don't worry. Yeah. Okay. Her friend is a dealer. You think he'll be armed?”

“That's why we've waited. We don't want to have to hurt anyone.”

“You're kidding.”

Chadwick opened his car door, looked at her expectantly.

“You're not kidding,” she decided.

They got out of their rental car, stepped into the crosswalk.

The evening fog was snapping down over the East Bay like a Tupperware lid, muting the sound of the BART trains at Rockridge station, the hum of traffic on Highway 24. The air smelled of roasting coffee and fresh-cut freesia.

Chadwick was glad for the commuters on College—the moms with strollers, the black-clad students on their way to the bookstore or the burrito shop. When you're six-foot-eight you welcome all the help you can get covering your approach.

At the café table, Mallory Zedman was studying a chessboard, her middle finger resting on the head of a white pawn.

She was fifteen now. Her blond hair had been dyed a combination of orange and black, thin braided strands of it looping above her ears like racing stripes. Her face had filled in, making her look more like her mother, but she still had the sharp nose and intense eyes of her father—eyes that could go from humor to anger in a millisecond. Her biker jacket was too big for her, her tattered jeans rolled up several times at the ankles. The skin under her eyes was pneumonia blue, and the way she shivered, Chadwick figured she was hungry for her next fix.

He tried to imagine her as a small bundle of energy in an oversized T-shirt, shouting with glee as she flew onto Katherine's bed. But that little girl was gone.

“Mallory,” he said.

She looked up.

No recognition—just fear. She glanced inside the café window, saw her friend Race with his back turned, talking to the guy at the espresso machine.

“That's not my name,” Mallory said.

Then she looked at him more closely, and her wariness eroded into bewilderment. “Chadwick?”

“Long time, sweetheart. This is my colleague, Ms. Olsen.”

“What are you—” The color drained from her face. “Don't hurt Race. He didn't do anything. My father's lying to you.”

“Easy, sweetheart.”

Mallory started to get up.

Olsen made the mistake of coming around the table, taking Mallory's arm. Mallory yanked away, overturning the plastic chair.

“We're not going to hurt anybody,” Chadwick assured her. “Your mother hired us. We're escorting you to a boarding school—Cold Springs Academy.”

“A boarding . . . you're fucking crazy. You're shitting me.”

Inside the café, Mallory's friend in camouflage hadn't turned around yet, but it was only a matter of seconds.

“Your mother's made the decision, sweetheart,” Chadwick said. “Cold Springs is a good place to turn your life around.”

“I don't need turning around.”

“You're living on the street with a drug dealer,” he reminded her. “Is that where you want to be?”

Mallory glared down at the chessboard—a lopsided game in progress, her white pieces sweeping the board.

“He's not a dealer,” she said. “He's my friend.”

Chadwick heard no conviction in her voice. She was a little girl, trying to explain a nightmare.

“Let's talk in the car,” he said.

“His mother was killed. She fucking died, Chadwick.”

“Okay, honey.”

“I can't leave him. He's in trouble. It's my fucking fault.”

“Okay, honey. Okay.”

A few people at the inside tables were now watching them through the glass. Olsen kept a nervous eye on the guy in camouflage.

Chadwick willed the young dealer to keep chatting up the espresso guy. He willed Olsen to stay put
—don't press the girl. Don't ruin it.

“Mallory,” he said, “we can work it all out. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe this was the best thing for you. Come with us.”

Chadwick could feel the situation teetering. Mallory was about to crumble, to let herself be a kid again and cry, probably for the first time since she'd run away from her mother.

Then the camouflage boy, Race, turned and saw them.

Olsen made a small noise in her throat like a bedspring snapping loose.

“Get in the car,” she told Mallory. “Now.”

She grabbed Mallory's arm, but underestimated the strength of a desperate kid.

With all ninety pounds of her body weight, Mallory shoved Olsen away, into the table, which collapsed under her. Chess pieces clattered down the sidewalk and Mallory took off up Ocean View.

Chadwick saw things unfold in slow motion—Race coming out the door, reaching into his jacket; Olsen scrambling up, not ready to defend herself; Mallory Zedman ducking into the alley behind the café dumpster.

Chadwick cursed, but he had to let Mallory run.

Race came around the corner.

Chadwick registered the boy's features with the instant clarity you get when looking at a person who is trying to kill you—nappy rust hair, jawline like a lightning bolt, Arabic nose and eyes as hard and bright as amber.

Race's face transfixed him, resonating with an old, dark memory even as the gun came out of the boy's coat, the muzzle rising toward his head.

Chadwick only unfroze when Olsen screamed his name.

His right fist caught Race in the nose, his left coming from underneath, hitting the kid's gut hard enough to slam him backwards onto the sidewalk, where he curled into a combat-colored heap, the gun clattering into the street.

Olsen looked at Chadwick, her eyes blank.

“Come on,” he told her, then he ran.

Chadwick had lost precious time, but his stride carried him well. He saw Mallory at the opposite end of the alley. She crashed into a sidewalk flower seller, knocked over a bucket of yellow roses, dashed into the street and barely missed getting run over by an SUV.

Chadwick started closing the distance. When he came out of the alley, Mallory was pounding up the steps of the BART station sandwiched between lanes of traffic on the Highway 24 overpass.

An eastbound train was pulling into the platform. Mallory could easily be on board before he got there.

Chadwick ran, kicked up a cloud of pigeons, took the stairs four at a time. He got into the terminal in time to hear the station manager yell, “Hey!” and see Mallory hurdle the turnstile.

Chadwick yelled, “She's mine!” and jumped the gate.

The BART manager yelled, “
HEY!
” with more outrage.

The escalators to the platform were all moving the wrong way. This was the evening commute—everybody coming back to Rockridge, not going out. Chadwick got up top, did a quick visual sweep. The wind and the cold were intense, the view stunning—hills streaked with fog, lights of houses like fairy glow; the Oakland-Berkeley flatlands spread out to the west, trickling to a point at the red and silver lights of the Bay Bridge; the Bay itself, an expanse of liquid aluminum.

Then he spotted Mallory—thirty yards down the platform, pounding on the closed doors of the train, trying to get in. She pried at the rubber seal with her fingers. The train slid away, pulling Mallory with it for a few feet before she stumbled backwards, cursing.

Chadwick closed in, pushing against the wave of exit-bound commuters. Mallory stared at him like a cornered possum.

Another train was coming from the hills—its yellow headlights just now visible in the east. Chadwick would have Mallory in hand before it reached the station.

Mallory moved back, to the very end of the platform, then glanced across the rail pit—at the chain link fence that separated the station from the highway.

Don't be crazy,
Chadwick thought.

Mallory jumped.

She hit the fence, but failed to hold on to it and tumbled back into the rail pit, her back slamming into the metal, money spilling out of her coat pocket—a brick of cash. Her foot was inches from the electric third rail.

The train was coming fast—only a quarter mile away now. Chadwick could see the lights of the operator's car, hear the electric blare of his horn.

“Give me your hand!” Chadwick yelled.

Mallory wasn't getting up. The look in her eyes told Chadwick her paralysis was more than physical—she had decided she wasn't going anywhere.

Chadwick jumped into the pit, picked her up like a sack of apples and heaved her onto the platform, another stack of currency tumbling out of her coat. Chadwick turned, saw the train bearing down on him—saw the eyes on the driver's face, white with terror—not even considering the possibility of so sudden a stop, and Chadwick pulled himself out of the pit.

The wind of the train ripped at his clothes. A funnel cloud of money spun into the air.

Chadwick lay unhurt, on top of Mallory Zedman, who made a poor pillow.

He sat up as the train's doors sucked open, and found himself face-to-knees with a cluster of passengers who hesitated, stared at the money falling from the sky, then parted around Chadwick as if he were a rock in the current. Nothing can surprise a Bay Area commuter for long.

Chadwick looked toward the station, saw a dour-faced BART policeman running up, the station manager, Olsen behind them, limping.

Underneath him, Mallory Zedman wept, as fives and tens fluttered around them, snagging on the shoes of commuters and the doors of the westbound train as it pulled away.