South by Southeast (31 page)

Television news played through open windows. I heard my name mentioned by a star newscaster, like the sound of sizzling butter in a frying pan, a shock and then gone. Nothing stuck to me. She could have called me the president of the United States.

“Where are you?” April said, relieved to hear from me when I called her cell phone. “Right outside your back door.”

Thirty seconds later, I was in her bright kitchen. April had changed out of work clothes, into a braless white tank top and athletic pants with fabric so thin it looked like her skin. Her shoulders had thinned, and her lost weight sharpened her cheekbones. She looked
like a dancer. My eyes followed her every motion, drinking her up. I could have stared at April all night.

April stopped short of touching me, leaning against the kitchen counter, scooting away an overfed cat. She shook her head, eyes sad.

“Ten . . .” Whatever she'd planned to say must have been too big for words.

“He loved that cane you got him,” I said brightly, as if I were the one trying to cheer her up. “Stylin' with it like Fred Astaire.” I did a brief imitation soft-shoe to demonstrate, and April giggled despite her sadness. I got the smile I wanted.

April blinked back tears. “The funeral . . .”

“Too bad he missed it.”

“He was there,” April said. “I feel him right now.”

I shrugged. I always felt Dad, too, when our last moment came back to haunt me.

“He asked me to leave him,” I said. “I did what he asked me to do.” I sounded as if I was pleading for forgiveness, and maybe I was.

April nodded fervently. “I know,” she said. “That was so hard, Ten. I'm sorry.”

Relief uncoiled my back muscles. April knew me, and she understood. April knew me better than anyone alive. Now that Dad was gone, she was the only one who did.

April saw the thoughts on my face, nodding to me, holding out her hand as if there were a river separating us across her kitchen linoleum. “I'm here, baby. I'm right here.”

We kissed. We went back in time with our kiss and remade the future. Our kiss took us away from the funeral day, away from the new world. Finally—something I recognized.

I pushed aside a dish rack and hoisted myself to the edge of April's kitchen counter. I pulled April close to me, my fingers touching every part of her I saw.

“Nia?” I said, asking if her roommate was home. April's roommate never left the house.

April nodded. Nia was home, but April pulled off her tank top. I whipped off my shirt, too, dropping it into the dry, empty sink.

I pulled April close, our chests a sheet of warmth between us. I rested on the feeling of blending with her, stretching myself across her. Rubbing her skin across my face. The places where our skin touched seemed to pulse.

“I've missed you,” I said. “Not just since Miami. Since Cape Town.”

April blinked. Cape Town was a forbidden subject between us, but I took liberties.

“Me, too,” she said.

“I'm sorry about those sex stories.”

“That's not your fault,” April said. She didn't say that her family had seen the stories and asked questions, but I saw it in her face. She looked pained.

“It's my fault there's anything to write about.”

“You were a different man then, Ten.” The line sounded well rehearsed. She might have made the same defense to Professor William Forrest and Gloria Forrest back home. April had been raised with Jack and Jill and high expectations. Her father had marched with Dr. King. She was fighting her own battle while I fought mine, but she spared me the details.

“If you want some distance, I'll understand,” I said.

“Don't talk crazy,” she said.

“I don't mean just the stories,” I said. “The case. Escobar. The risks I took.”

For a moment, I saw a glint in April's eye:
Remember how I said you were trying to die?

“I just said I'm here,” she said. “You're a cop without a uniform. I got it at the funeral, Ten. You've never seen the resemblance, but you're just like him.”

We stopped talking. I gently chewed April's neck, lingering on her pleasure spot. When April went limp, her breasts stood on her
chest like perfect scoops of ice cream. The smell of Dad's blood tried to find me, but I hid between April's breasts.

I tugged down on her pants, a high school boy on prom night.

“Someone's . . . going to . . .” April whispered. She forgot her thought.

Despite kitchen windows and nearby neighbors, neither of us could think of a reason to care if anyone heard or saw us. We never closed the blinds. We never turned off the light.

April and I made love.

Under different circumstances, I might have spent the night at April's or invited her to spend the night with me, but the timing didn't feel right to bring her to the house or spend a night away from home. The timing was rarely right for us. Instead, I drove back alone.

I smelled coppery blood, and the blood smell didn't go away when I shook my head to clear it. I touched my upper lip, and it was moist. I was bleeding.

I couldn't remember ever having a nosebleed before, but suddenly I was rushing to find something to plug my nostril before I dripped all over my car seat and clothes. I pulled over at a BP gas station on the corner of La Cienega while I held a rumpled hand towel to my nose. The flow was steady, but it wasn't heavy. Like Chela had said, I knew how to stop bleeding.

I sighed so hard my throat hurt. Nearly a week after the tear-gas incident, I was still having discomfort, and now my first nosebleed. Would I have to add a doctor to my problems?

“Fucking asshole!” I said to Escobar. He always seemed to be with me.

On top of everything else, I hadn't been able to let the bastard go.

I kept the towel held up to my nose while I pulled out my iPhone and dialed the Miami number. I didn't hang up even after I realized later that it was after midnight Miami time.

“Hernandez.” She sounded alert when she answered.

“Are you at work?”

“Hardwick?”

“I forgot the time zone,” I said. “You working late?”

Detective Hernandez sighed. “No. Actually, I was at home sleeping. In bed.”

I checked the card again. She had given me her cell phone number. “Sorry. You don't turn your phone off when you go to bed?”

A pause. “Can I help you, Mr. Hardwick?”

“Yes you can, Detective Hernandez,” I said, matching her formal tone. “Anything yet?”

Detective Hernandez of South Beach Homicide was probably sorry she had given me her card when she hustled me out of the police station. I called her at least once every day, and so far, she was still taking my calls. We both knew she owed me. Now that the FBI was finished with me, they'd forgotten my name.

“No,” she said. “
Nada
. I said you'd be the first person I call.”

“Okay, sorry to wake you—”

“Mr. Hardwick, I'm not a shrink, but can I make an observation?”

“Not if you're going to tell me I need a shrink.”

“No,” she said. “But it's a big ocean. Strong currents. His remains might have been eaten days ago. Finding him isn't the event that's going to make sense of everything for you. You're looking for closure in the wrong place.”

She wasn't telling me anything I didn't know.

“Thank you,” I said. “But you'll call me if you hear anything?”

“I'll call you
first
if I hear anything.”

Detective Hernandez had never told me she was sorry about the way she and her colleagues had treated me when I came to them,
but she tried to show it every day. She was going out of her way to be helpful, which is a cop's greatest gift.

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “One last thing.”

“No call tomorrow?” She exaggerated her disappointment.

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Then ask me anything.”

I closed my eyes and saw Escobar's speedboat blossom into flames against the night sky.

“Do you think he's dead?” I said.

“I saw the boat. I read the report. Yeah, I absolutely think he's dead.”

I'd known what her answer would be, but it felt hollow. So hollow.

“And that's you talking?” I said. “Not the spin machine?”

“I'm not spinning you. I wish we'd fish out his corpse, because the missing body just makes people crazier with the legends and theories. But I think the guy is dead, thanks to you. You should get a medal. I don't care what all those piss-bags say about you.”

I almost smiled. “You embarrass me when you get all warm and mushy, Detective.”

“I won't make it a habit,” Hernandez said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yes.” Could she sense April on me through the telephone?

“
Bueno
. A girlfriend sounds like the best hobby for you right now. Take that as a little hint from a fellow crime fighter. Having a life helps.”

I thanked her, pretended she'd shown me the light, and said good-bye. Neither of us had stated the obvious. When it came to Escobar, she had been wrong. I had been right.

Before I drove home, I checked my face in the rearview mirror, dabbing my lip.

Blood is never easy to clean away.

THE NEXT DAY,
I was glad I'd parked around the corner and that I'd rented a car for the week. Three photographers and one video cameraman were camped out across the street from the house I was visiting in Brentwood, more paparazzi than I'd had at my curb that morning.

The story was moving in another direction.

Usually, I would stop and take a close look at anyone milling around near me, but I didn't want to be photographed at that house. I'd never expected to visit the Brentwood house again, wading through the overgrown pathway of orange trees. The lawn needed watering, dotted with fragrant, rotting fruit. The gardener was a week late. Mother's house was purposely modest on the outside, but Mother had kept her yard meticulous; she would be horrified by its condition. To her neighbors, she had been the quiet old lady down the street, and now the ruse was real.

I wasn't surprised when a uniformed male nursing assistant in his late twenties answered her door. He looked as if he spent more time in a weight room than at a nursing station.

I realized I didn't know what to call Mother. Her favorite name from Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment,
Katerina Marmeladova? I wasn't sure how much he knew.

“Tennyson Hardwick,” I said, keeping it simple.

His face soured with recognition, although he tried to mask it. He asked me to wait in the living room. I glanced around nervously before I stepped into the house.

“Where are her dogs?” I said.

I don't mess with Mother's poodles. That might sound funny, but Mother had standard-sized poodles the size of wolves, and she trained them to kill.

“In the room with her,” the nursing assistant said.

Soon after he left to announce me, I heard Mother's cackle from down the hall. I was glad to hear her sounding healthy, but I wasn't sure the laugh was a good sign. My last visit, when I'd come for help on a case, she hadn't been happy to see me. She had far less reason to be happy now. Tabloids said the district attorney's office was considering an indictment.

As I thought about police knocking on Mother's door, the side of my mouth twitched.
Damn.
I'd been careful but not careful enough. I could have watched Mother go to prison without losing sleep—past sins catch up—but I hadn't planned to be the one to send her.

And Lieutenant Nelson was going to push for indictments, trying to clean up his old mentor's business. Melanie, my lawyer, thought any case against me would be weak, hardly worth their time. But Mother was a bigger fish. Reports were surfacing from Europe. Mother had lived a long life outside the law, years before I'd met her.