Last Safe Place, The (6 page)

Correction: Yesheb Al Tobbanoft was crazy. The rest of them were just along for the ride.

When Theo finally realized there was no way he could talk her out of running, he grudgingly agreed to help her. She hoped she’d light a fire in Ty’s eyes when she told him where they were really going. When she told Theo, he looked like he’d been gut-shot.

T
HEO LAY ON
his back on the big queen-sized bed with sheets that smelled like bleach and had been ironed so stiff you could cut yourself on them if you rolled over wrong.

He didn’t waste no time trying to make sense out of the past twentyfour hours because he already knew how he’d got his self tangled up in all of it. You had to be real careful what you prayed for.

Lord, I asked you for a gentle little breeze and you done give me Katrina!

When I said I wanted a chance to spend a little time with the boy, be a better grandfather than I was a father, I had in mind something like playing catch! Okay, maybe not throwin’ a ball at him, but talking to him. Listening to him. Teaching him some jokes or how to make a saxophone sing. I didn’t plan on gettin’ chased out of my bed in the middle of the night by the poster boy for Nuts R Us. Now, Gabriella’s sayin’ they gone run off and crawl into some hidey hole—did you hear where she say they was goin’! For two months!

Now, what am I gone do? I don’t have no more idea than a spook how I’s supposed to fit into all this. You gone have to make it so clear a old man like me can’t miss it. Like … write it in the sky.

In purple.

In Hebrew!

Amen.

Theo did know two things for certain, though. One was that the hearing was completely gone in his left ear. He’d had to concentrate real hard to understand what Gabriella’d been saying earlier. And he suspected that this time the hearing loss wasn’t temporary, figured he’d ought to kiss that one goodbye. And the second thing he knew for sure was that something was eating at Ty that didn’t have nothing to do with that crazy fool who wasn’t no more The Beast of Babylon than he was the Tooth Fairy. He looked over at the boy in the next bed. Ty was sleeping soundly, not like last night.

Theo had been awake, in his robe and house shoes, when Gabriella came for Ty because he hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after the boy woke him up screaming. Ty was fighting the covers, crying out how he was sorry and he didn’t mean for it to happen, saying crazy stuff about killing his father.
Stoney’d died in prison!
When Theo shook Ty awake, the boy had curled up in a ball in the bed and told Theo to leave him alone. And all that was
before
the Ghost of Christmas Past showed up. Theo was planning to talk to Gabriella about it, but that conversation got hijacked—and might never happen now that they was leaving.

This wasn’t what I had planned, Lord. Just so you know.

T
Y STARED AT
the puke green motel room wall as he listened to the rise and fall of voices in the next room. He couldn’t understand what they were saying but figured it had something to do with their trip to New York to see a Broadway show.

Who cared about some dumb play! The only thing Ty wanted was to vanish quickly and quietly so the Boogie Man wouldn’t come looking for him again and hurt his mother. Now, he’d have to wait until they got back home from—

Wait a minute. New York City. Millions of people. He could run away
there!
Just get up to go to the bathroom during the show and never come back. New York City was full of homeless people; nobody’d notice one more stray kid.

And after he ran away he would … what? Get a job washing dishes or sweeping floors, he supposed. That’s what he’d seen orphans do in the
movies. He didn’t know how long the $300 he had saved would last, but he didn’t think it would be long enough. When it was gone … well, he’d figure that out when the time came.

* * * *

Gabriella, Theo and Ty sat dawdling over dessert in the TGI Friday’s in the Pittsburgh International Airport, killing time before their flight to JFK in New York.

“This coffee tastes like rat puke,” Theo said.

“There’s a Starbucks in the food court, Grandpa Slappy,” Ty said. “I could get you a—”

“I’m a gone get me some coffee from that Starbucks I seen in the food court!”

“I just said I’d—” Ty started but Theo ignored him again and started to rise. Gabriella touched his arm and cut her eyes to P.D., lying peacefully on the floor at his feet. “Take Puppy Dog with you. You’re supposed to be visually impaired, remember.”

The big golden retriever—almost 85 pounds of him—was a trained assistance and service dog. When Ty was five years old, their busybody neighbor had convinced Smokey the boy needed a puppy. Since Smokey hated dogs, he’d been a soft sell when the lady proposed they volunteer to raise a puppy and then give the dog to an agency when he was 18 months old for training and placement with a handicapped person. It had sounded good on paper—no dog, just a puppy. It didn’t occur to anyone—Smokey included—how attached they’d all become to the animal in a year and a half. When they had to give him up, the whole family went into a meltdown. Smokey held out for six months before he tracked the animal down through the agency and paid the owner $20,000—double the cost of a service dog—to get him back.

But P.D.’s training carried a bonus they hadn’t considered at the time. Being a service dog meant he could go along with them wherever they went. Put his harness and sign on him and he was welcome anywhere.

“I don’t want that animal nowhere near me,” Theo said. He pointed down at the blond glaze of dog hair on the leg of his black trousers. “If I’s to collect all the hair that fur factory has left on my clothes I’d have enough for a whole new dog.”

Theo hobbled away and Ty stuck his ear buds in and cranked up his iPod while Gabriella called to confirm their reservations at the Warwick New York Hotel. Gabriella could hear the earphone music, a small, distant sound. It was Withered Soul, of course. His father’s band. And Garrett’s.

A sudden lump in her throat made it hard to swallow and her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t mourn Smokey, who’d been the bass player in her brother’s grunge metal band. But Garrett … the pain of her twin brother’s death still took her breath away.

The melody and pounding rhythm was all she could catch from Ty’s ear buds. But she knew the lyrics of
Night Screams,
the song that had propelled the
Vast Abyss
album to gold, because she had written them. And all the other lyrics for the band’s music. She and Garrett had been a team, different sides of the same coin.

Gabriella could look back now and see how dark their collaboration eventually became, that together the two of them tapped into a great well of despair and hopelessness that neither one of them could have found alone. But there was a difference between them she didn’t understand now any better than she ever had. Gabriella could walk away and leave it; Garrett’s whole life existed on the barren plains his wailing laments sang about.

Some critics hailed the loneliness, desperation and anger of Withered Soul. Others deplored it. But none ever found fault with the quality of the music, the complexity of the chord structure, the haunting melody, Garrett’s piercing tenor voice and amazing keyboard performance. It was genius.
He
was genius. Beginning the moment he walked into Trombinos Music Store in the Galleria Mall in the South Hills of Pittsburgh two days after his eighth birthday, climbed up on a bench in front of the first piano he’d ever seen and started to play, his incredible talent was a fiery meteor that burned exquisitely bright. Then flamed out.

Gabriella squeezed her eyes shut and tears slid down her cheeks. All the horror and fear of the past few days had ripped the scabs off so many childhood wounds. But not everything that bubbled up out of her childhood was horrible. The sweet, cleansing aroma of pine swirled around her. She could feel a damp mist on her face and a warm, golden glow shone through her closed eyelids. If she opened her eyes, she’d see Garrett’s gap-toothed grin. She’d hear his silly giggle and a rumble like—

“Mom?” Ty’s voice. “Are you crying?”

She reached up hurriedly and wiped her wet cheeks.

“No, Honey. Not crying, just …” Ty’s face swam in the wash of tears, his features pinched, his brow wrinkled with concern. “I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night and my eyes are tired, watery.”

She knew he didn’t believe her. What was it doing to the boy’s trust that she constantly lied to him and he knew it?

“You know how much they charged me for this piddly little cup of Joe?” Theo eased himself into the chair facing her. “Three bucks! You b’lieve that? Just cause you in a airport and can’t go no place else, they allowed to mug you. Might as well club you brains out with a roll of quarters in a tube sock!”

Gabriella opened her mouth to launch into her familiar refrain—that Starbucks coffee was always overpriced, no matter where you got it. That coffee was coffee. Adding a bunch of cheaper ingredients like milk and ice and sugar ought to make the brew cost less, not more. That you were paying for advertising and—

She didn’t say any of those things, however, because she caught sight of a young black man with a Pirates baseball cap turned sideways on his head and full sleeves of tattoos all the way up both arms making his way to their table. He was decked out in full bore hip-hop. Baggy shirt, pants belted tight ten inches below his waist so the crotch hung down between his knees and his plaid underwear was plainly visible. He had an earring in his left ear the size of the Hope Diamond, a teardrop tattooed on his right cheek and a silver stud in his tongue. And he held a copy of
The Bride of the Beast
in his hand, glancing down at the picture on the back cover as he approached.

Gabriella was surprised she’d been recognized with her black hair in a neat bun, her pointed bangs pulled back under a headband and her scar hidden beneath a thick layer of makeup. She sighed. In a few minutes, this fan would likely be very sorry he’d spotted her. The poor boy had no idea what getting that book autographed was about to cost him.

“This is you—right?” the young man asked.

“And who you think you be, fool?” Theo said before she could answer. He glared at the stranger through the steam rising out of his Starbucks cup.

Theo wasn’t a big man—five-eight maybe, with rounded shoulders and a paunch—but he had an intimidating presence Gabriella could only acknowledge, but not define or explain. Maybe it was all those years on stage playing to hostile crowds or fielding the jabs of hecklers. His thick mat of
hair—slicked back in a mass of waves that resolved into curls at the back of his head—was the dark gray of a pipe wrench, his eyebrows and beard stubble as silver as a new quarter, and the fire in his yellowed, chocolate drop eyes could burn a hole through boot leather.

“You think you Jay Z or Snoop Dogg? 50 Cent, maybe? Why don’t you ask one of yo pimp homies what it mean in the iron house to walk ’round with yo pants on the ground like that.”

The young man looked remarkably unruffled by Theo’s verbal assault.

Theo turned to Ty. “I ever catch you dressed like that, Tyrone, I rip yo arm off and beat you to death with the bloody stump.” He turned back to the young man. “Pull you pants up, boy!” He reached out and plucked the ball cap off the stranger’s head. “And take off yo hat when you talking to a lady.”

Gabriella stepped in quickly before Theo had a chance to launch into his tattoo speech or his body-piercing speech.

“Yes, that’s me,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

The young man’s smile went totally flatline. He reached into the hip pocket of his baggy pants and pulled out a sealed envelope.

“You can take this,” he said and handed Gabriella the envelope. “Gabriella Carmichael, aka Rebecca Nightshade, you’ve been served.”

“What? What is this?”

“What’s it look like—it’s a summons.” The young man turned to Theo. “You can keep the cap, Pops. Have a nice day.” He turned and strutted out of the restaurant. Theo threw the cap at him, but missed.

Gabriella stared unbelieving at the envelope in her hand.

“How that process server get in here?” Theo boomed. “You got to go through security, got to have a boarding pass. How …?” He noticed that Gabriella hadn’t moved. “Well, don’t just sit there sucking on a prune pit—open that thing up and let’s see what’s in it.”

She slid her finger under the flap and pulled out the single piece of paper inside.

Words leapt off the page and smacked her hard in the face.

Slander.

… made false and defamatory statements to the press ...

… damaged the reputation and good name of …

Yesheb Al Tobbanoft!

She couldn’t breathe. Theo snatched the paper out of her hand and scanned down it.

“He claiming you
slandered
him?” he said.

“What does slander mean?” Ty asked, looking from his mother to Theo and back to her.

Gabriella’s head was spinning. Why would he …?

“This summons gone put a hitch in your git-along,” Theo said and tossed the paper down on the table in front of him. “Says here you got to appear in court at 9 a.m. on June 26—here in Pittsburgh.”

That
was why! June 26 was the date of the next full moon.

The waitress materialized at Gabriella’s elbow. She was absurdly basketball-player tall, six-feet-three and skinny as a shoe lace. The ingratiating, adoring look on her face told Gabriella the girl had recognized her, too.

“Excuse me, but … could I have … would yinz sign dis?” The girl said, her accent decidedly Pittsburgh. She held out a napkin. “It’s all I could find, but it’s all right, heh? For an autograph, I mean.”

“Sure,” Gabriella said, and switched to autopilot. She fixed a smile on her face like putting on a surgeon’s mask and fished around in her purse until she found a pen.

“Could you make it ‘To Louise Yurkovich … from
The Bride of the Beast
?’” Gabriella took the paper napkin and the girl continued to gush. “I can’t believe I seen yinz here today—right here, in my very own restaurant. Your book is like my favorite book
ever!
The way you write, it’s … poetry—only it ain’t. I got to ask—how’d yinz ever come up with somethin’ that … real?”