Dead and Gone (5 page)

I knew what that meant, those kinds of thoughts coming. Just another way of going to sleep in a snowbank. After a while, you’re not cold anymore.

I stopped walking. Leaned against a building, my hands auto-groping for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there. Okay, the street signs were coming into focus. I knew where I was. And that I wouldn’t survive the night outdoors. Only one way to go, then. I about-faced and headed west, toward Park Avenue.

The Thirty-third Street subway was deserted. No clerk in the token booth. I slipped under the turnstile, grunting with the pain. Made my way down to the platform, found a bench. A young couple were on the next bench over, still party-blissed, not in a hurry.

Time passed. I was alive in every nerve ending, but I didn’t have much left in my tank. If a roving wolfpack of teenagers decided to have some fun with the bum, I wouldn’t be able to stop them. And if the cops were close by, if they had an alert out to Transit, I’d have to keep faking it. Tell them some story about “going home” to … I don’t remember.

The downtown No. 6 finally pulled in. I shuffled aboard. The car was about half full. I wanted to keep away from people, but I needed to sit down, too. I was still making up my mind when a woman who looked like she worked till midnight cleaning offices got up. I took her seat. I wanted to thank her, but her face told me why she got up—she figured I must come with a smell to match my looks, and she didn’t want any part of that.

The train let me out at Canal and Lafayette. Plenty of people; plenty of traffic, too. I couldn’t tell if anyone was paying attention. I started my walk.

Chinatown runs twenty-four/seven, but most of the activity isn’t on the streets once the tourists clear out. And I was close enough to a batch of different homeless camps so that I didn’t get a second glance as I shuffled along, watching as close as I could to see if I had company.

The way you signal Max’s dojo is to push the bell for the warehouse loading bay three times, fast. A light flashes in Max’s place, on the top floors. He’s deaf. If he’s around, the side door will click open. You step into murk, even in daylight, but Max can see you from the landing.

I prayed for that click. When it came, I slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind me. There was a blur in the blackness as Max vaulted down. I felt him land next to me. Opened my hands to tell him I was …

I
woke up inside Max’s temple. I recognized it right away. No disorientation. Just … weak. Sunlight slanted in through a window above me. I was under a sheet, naked. And safe, for the first time since I wrapped myself in Kevlar and went out to trade some money for a kid. I felt myself drifting off. Didn’t fight it.

M
ax was there when I opened my eye. I shaded that eye with my left hand, turned my head from side to side, signing “looking.” Then I pointed at myself. Max shook his head “No.” I used both hands, made the sign for opening a newspaper, moved my head to show I was scanning it. He shook his head “No” again. Then he put his fists in front of his eyes, opened them to make the sign for glasses. Thick glasses. The Mole. On his way.

I made a gesture of thanks. Max ignored it, stepping over to me, running his fingers all over my body, checking. When he pushed against any part of me, I pushed back, letting him test.

Then he moved away from me. Held his hands far apart, pointed two fingers at each other, and brought them together so they touched. I sat up. Tried the same thing. Missed by a few inches. Shook my head, concentrated. I couldn’t make the connection. I tried it again, slower. No go. One finger was closer to my body than the other. Instead of touching, they kept overlapping.

Max closed one eye. Used the other to make sure I was watching him. Then he brought his two fingers together so quickly it was like watching a vapor trail. They hit as precisely as if they’d been on rails. He pointed at me. Then at his wrist, where a watch would be if he wore one. Sure.

It would take time, but I could do it.

Max bowed slightly, disappeared.

I started to practice.

T
he Mole was cutting through the bandages on my head, using scissors with the lower blade in the shape of a spoon. As soon as he finished, Michelle unwrapped them, slowly.

I looked around the room. Nobody said anything.

“Do you want a mirror, honey?” Michelle asked.

“I … guess so. It’s that bad, huh?”

“It just … doesn’t look like you anymore, baby. They had to … you know, to …”

“I know.”

The mirror they handed me was a 2× magnifier. The man looking back at me had a shaven skull, crisscrossed with stitches. I knew there was a metal plate under there. Titanium, the doctors had bragged to their lab rat. The man’s left eye was hazel, with flecks of black. The right eyebrow had been shaved off. Underneath it was a weird bronze iris, marbled with yellow. The man was hollow-cheeked, pale. The top of his right ear was gone, neatly cut away. His right cheekbone was slightly indented around a small depression crosshatched with surgical staples.

My own mother wouldn’t recognize me
, leaped into my thoughts. I cracked a joke to myself about how that was okay—I wouldn’t recognize her, either. A tear ran down my face. I guess the bullet had done something to the ducts. I wiped it away. Took in a deep breath, turned around.

“What happened?” I asked the Prof.

He didn’t move from the far corner, but his voice carried, a legacy from his preaching days. “The trap snapped, brother. It was a hit from the git.”

“Yeah. The kid … the one I was supposed to be buying back … he came out shooting. If it wasn’t for the wrapping, I was gone. He put a couple into me quick, knew what he was doing.”

“We couldn’t name the game until they was almost done, son. We had you on the Mole’s tracker-thing, but we had to hang back until they got into position. By the time they did that, you was already pulling in, so we got way back in the weeds. Figured we could block ’em out if they tried to get bogus and split. We heard the first shots before we could see anything. Then we started pumping back at where their truck was stashed. They scrambled. We moved in, scooped you up. One look, we knew we couldn’t handle it ourselves. So we got you over to the ER and split.”

“You didn’t drive all the way back into Manhattan?” I asked, avoiding what I needed to know.

“No way. We went straight to Lincoln. I don’t know why they transferred you over to the other place. Maybe they had some special stuff over there.…”

“But you found out where I was?”

“Sure. Wasn’t that hard. My boy Clarence knows half the damn nurses in the city.”

“When it was going down … could you tell how many there were?”

“The one guy who went over to get the money, he was the boss. There was at least two more in the truck they had, besides that kid.”

“They were good, too. I got hit a few times, even in the dark.”

“They came to kill, not to fight,” Clarence said, his island-voice blue with contempt. “When my father cut loose with his scattergun, they did not even return fire. If it was not for that one boss, they wouldn’t have even come over and—”

“—tried to finish me.”

“Yes, mahn. My father didn’t hit any of them—too far away for his weapon. But one I took, for sure.”

“Did they—?”

“Motherfuckers picked up their dead,” the Prof cut in, knowing what I wanted. “Pros. When we got there, their truck was
flying
out. We only had the one car, and we needed to get yours out of there, too. Plus, we had to get you to the hospital.”

“But you took …?”

“We took your dog, honeyboy. We wouldn’t leave her there. You know that,” he said gently.

“Where is she?”

“She is with us,” the Mole said. Meaning: buried in his junkyard.

“We got your car stashed,” the Prof cut in quickly. “And Clarence and I got into your crib, pulled out a bunch of your stuff. I don’t think the cops know about it, but …”

“You did the right thing. How much longer were you going to wait?”

“Before what?”

“Before you came and busted me out of that place.”

“Bro, we had no way to go. We knew where you was, but the place was crawling with cops. Nothing on the news. We didn’t know how to play it. I mean … maybe you wasn’t in no shape to be getting out; maybe you needed some more … work, whatever. And they couldn’t hold you forever, we figured.”

“I played it like I lost my memory,” I told them all.

“Yes, honey, we know,” Michelle said. “That ugly brute of a cop, Morales? He came into Mama’s one night. Told her: ‘I went to visit this guy in the hospital. Thought I knew him. Guy named Burke. But he didn’t know me. Didn’t know himself. Got some memory problem. From being shot in the head and all. I don’t know when he’s going to get better. But he’s real weak now … no condition to travel.’ So we knew what the score was. All we could do was wait.”

“They were waiting, too,” I told her. “For you. For any of you. Now we have to see what they do.”

“What
can
they do, bro?”

“They can play it straight, like I’m a patient with amnesia who walked away from the hospital. It won’t make America’s Most Wanted or anything, but it’d be good enough for the local news.”

“It’s been—”

“I know,” I said. “Max told me. Blank. So they’re playing it like they know the amnesia thing was just shining them on. But so what? There’s no bodies up there in the Bronx—nothing to want me for. And nobody followed me here.…”

That last was a question, and they all knew it. I’d done my best to check for tags, but I wasn’t sharp when I made my break. And part of me knew I’d done wrong—if I brought the law to where Max kept his family, it was something that couldn’t be fixed with a moving van.

Nobody said anything. I took their quiet the wrong way. “I couldn’t have made it to my place,” I told them. “Not without a car. The buses don’t run enough at that hour … and people watch too close on them, anyway. I had to stay underground. This was the closest place I could …”

“You came alone, homes,” the Prof assured me. “They knew you was here, they’d have made their move. Been three days. No way.”

“I’ve been here three days?”

“Four, counting today, bro.”

“I don’t …” I cut myself off before I could say the word “remember.”
It was all an act, goddamn it. You fucking “remember”
that,
don’t you?
I kept my bitter sarcasm inside my thoughts, wondering if my face was flat to match.

Max came close to me. Tapped his heart. Used his finger to draw a circle around it. Then he spun his hands into that same circle, the fingertips touching, an impregnable barrier. He closed his two hands into fists, watching my eyes.

I nodded. Got it. Nobody had come
close
since I’d shown up. Max’s temple was never unwatched. Even Mama never understood the Mongol warrior’s relationship with the mixed-Asian street gang that poached off the more established shock troops of the Tongs. But everybody knew about the vacant-eyed boys in their fingertip-length black leather jackets and silk shirts buttoned to the throat. And that they would kill for Max as casually as a suburban kid would click the mouse on his computer.

“I have to—”

“You don’t have to do
anything
for a while, baby,” Michelle said, patting my forearm. “You’re going to need some serious rehab. And some medication.”

“What medication? I don’t remember which—”

“Oh,
pul-leeze,”
she mock-pouted. “How long do you think it took my man to get into their little computer?”

“You mean the Mole—?”

“What
other
man would I be calling mine?”

“Michelle, give me a break, okay? You’re saying the Mole hacked into the hospital computer, right?”

“Right. And we know every single medication you’ve been taking, every single little report they logged.”

“What’s my name on their machines?”

“Well, they don’t have a name. You’re a John Doe to them. But we still put it together in two minutes. We had the physical description, time of admission, nature of … injuries. You know.”

“Sure,” is all I said, wondering why the cops hadn’t put something into the computer themselves. Maybe the insurance companies wouldn’t let them. This is New York. Money doesn’t just talk here, it’s Dictator-for-Life.

“Do you need …?”

“What?” I asked her, too sharply, put off by something in her voice.

“The … drugs, honey.”

“If you mean antibiotics or whatever other kind of crap they were giving me in those pills … I guess so. But if you’re dancing around the morphine, don’t. I haven’t had any for weeks.”

I told them how I’d done that. The Mole nodded like it made sense. The Prof chuckled. Michelle just watched me.

“I’ll be fine,” I told my family. “But there’s something I’ve got to know first. And only Mama will know the answer.”

“I’ll roll on by and say hi,” the Prof volunteered.

“Thanks, brother,” I said, closing my eyes.

“N
o, bro,” is all the Prof came back with.

“No what?”

“No show, no go. Man hasn’t said word one.”

“Dmitri thinks I’m … what, then?”

“No way to tell. Depends on where he stood at the beginning.”

“These Russians—the parents—they didn’t get their kid back.”

“Right.”

“And they didn’t get their money back, either.”

“True.”

“And it was
real
money, Prof. Remember, I went through it myself. Told Dmitri I wasn’t handing over some Chicago bankroll for the kid, take a chance on the wheels coming off.”

“Sure. All true, I’m with you.”

“So they
took
the money. Must have—the one guy had his hands on it when the kid came up blasting.”

“Okay …”

“What about
our
end?”

“Huh?”

“We … I was supposed to get a hundred large, for the whole deal. We were going to whack it up, like always. Dmitri paid half up front. To Mama. You ask her if he ever paid the other half?”

“No, son, I didn’t. She was supposed to be the go-between, that’s all. They don’t know nothing about our …”