The Butterfly Clues (20 page)

The bouncer. Vincent Navarro. I wait for my heart to lift, for my head to stop pounding. But, for some reason, it doesn’t.

I brush my bangs out of my face, three times, and glance quickly into the mirror. Sapphire’s bustier still peeks out beneath my hunter-green flannel, dark against my pale skin. Her face flits across my face and once again, and just for a second, we’re the same person. Wrapped in each other. Breathing together. Alive.

“Your Highness,” Flynt says, standing up from the gum-studded bus stop bench to bow. His bear ears look slightly off-center and more threadbare in the orb of the streetlight.
Tap tap tap, banana.
I want to bow back and say something witty, but my bangs are bugging me. So, I put my fingers to work in lieu of words, combing and flattening, combing and flattening as I walk to him.

“I think we should talk somewhere more private, Lady Lo,” he says to me, folding his real ears into his hat. “I’d take us to my crash pad—it’s the basement of this barbershop on the corner of Grover and Miles, a few blocks that-a-way—but, I’m actually kinda hungry. And there’s a diner nearby we can walk to.”

A breeze folds through the trees, six more streetlamps click on in a row. “Okay.” I’m eager to keep moving, curious about what he’s got to say, what he knows. We turn onto Egret Street. “Flynt, I—”

“Shhh,” Flynt says, pointing.

Standing a few feet away, beneath a flickering streetlamp near the end of the block, is a man wearing what look to be at least seven coats. A tweed hat is upturned between his red rain-booted feet, and he is swaying back and forth with his tiny arms in the air and singing, Louis Armstrong–style: “Mah Bay-bee. Ohhh. Mah Bay-bee, left me so-o-o-o-o saaaayyyd. S-o-o-o saaayyyd. Have you seeeeen huh, have you seeeeen huh, Oooo, won’t you tell huh that I miss huh. S-o-o-o baaaayyyd.”

He looks too small for his whale-bellied voice. As he sings, he seems to pinwheel around himself, revolving on his own hilt, shining like a celestial body burning light through deep space.

And then I remember him—the homeless man, wailing and swaying as I ran from Sapphire’s house the day she was murdered.

Flynt stops beside me, says into my ear: “The Prophet.”

“That’s his name?”

“That’s what everyone calls him.” Flynt drops his voice low, like an old southern man before a campfire: “Legend has it, he’s been coming to this corner, every single night for forty years, to busk. You know—sing for money. And everyone calls him The Prophet because he knows everything about everyone in Neverland. He’s like our own little almanac.”

My heart does jumping jacks as he says: “He knows everything about everyone.” Exactly the person I need to talk to.

“I’m going to go ask him about something,” I tell Flynt.

I practically leap forward, planting myself a foot or so away from the tiny swaying Prophet.

He smiles at me as he sings, his eyes a wide, pasty violet color. I stand there nervously, waiting for a break in song, watching his mouth open and close—several of his teeth are gone, and the rest look stuck into his gums like Chicklets. I look quickly away, pulse quickening, reaching into my purse for money.

Three dollar bills. One by one. Three seconds before each new bill.

“Bless you,” he says.

“Excuse me, but I was wondering if you know—” I begin.

“What I know is. Wonder. What I know is. Light,” he sing-speaks, still swaying his head between his shoulders, his coats floating and dropping to the ground each time he lifts his arms.

“Okay. But, do you also know—did you also know—a Bird?” I take a deep breath—Oren waves to me inside my head, only half a body, floating down Butt Creek.

He gazes at me with shocking violet-blue eyes. “The light is falling. The sky takes us all.” He moans softly, “Ohhhh
yes
.”

He angles his face downward, a darkness coming over his expression. “Oh yes. I know a Bird. Funny name. A unicorn all the time. And a nightingale when it suited him.”

I shake my head, confused. “But—do you know where I can find him?”

He cuts me off again, singing, “Fly, fly away. Fly away with my baaaaby… .”

I turn on my heels, counting my steps back to Flynt. I’ve got to take a giant one at the end to make it twelve instead of thirteen. He’s standing in the same spot with a crooked smile on his face, shaking his head.

“You’re funny, Lo … all those little things you do. Your Queenly Gestures. I like them.”

My body goes hot all over, as it always does. When I’m caught.

“I should have added,” he continues, clearing his throat, “that nothing the Prophet says makes any sense.” He weaves his arm through mine. “Come on.” Flynt says, pulling me forward. “It’s cold out here.”

Rabbit’s Diner is mostly empty when we get there—a time-warped place lined with filmy aqua booths, little jukeboxes at each table, checkered floor dappled in grease. We order a plate of curly fries from the soggy-faced waitress, who knows Flynt—of course—and brings us Cokes for free.

Flynt bends forward over the plate of fries and lifts one into the air. A bead of grease drips from it, splatting onto the table. “That’s what I’m
talkin’
about!” he says, popping the fry into his mouth, smiling as he meets my eye. He keeps looking at me—a few long, warm seconds, his eyes widening, sparkling gold and blue and green.

“So …,” I begin, dropping my eyes again to the plate, grabbing the ketchup bottle and squeezing a dollop onto my napkin, and then another, and another, evenly spaced, “on the phone you mentioned the bouncer … at Tens. What do you know about him?”

I raise my eyes to him, and he’s still looking at me, in that same, intense way, like he wants to … kiss me or something. I look away again, feeling myself blush; I reach for another fry.

“Not much, really; he was pretty rough, I know that,” he says, dancing his fingers across the table until they almost meet mine. I quiver. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. And I thought we should celebrate, all of this, finally being over.”

“Right. Yeah,” I say, trying to force a smile. My jaw tightens, I dip a fry into each of my three little puddles of ketchup, three times. It’s not over. I know it. But Flynt seems so certain, so ready to believe, to step away. The bouncer. Vincent Navarro. Vinnie.

His arrest happened before the end of the school day… . There’s no way he could have left the warning flyers on my locker. And, who was he talking to, who picked him up that day … in the black sedan? He can’t have been working alone. No way. I finish ketchup-ing my fry, eat it in three bites, trying to push the spinning thoughts from my head.

“That’s a good look for you,” Flynt says, laughing, staring at my mouth.

My face burns, I scan my outfit for stains, holes in embarrassing places. “What? What are you talking about?”

He leans over the table and brushes my lips with his thumb. “Ketchup,” he answers softly, showing me the evidence on his finger. My body goes hot. “Maybe I should have left it … you looked pretty cute, covered in ketchup.”

I feel a smile spread across my face and I clap my hand over it; I don’t want him to know, to know that he can do that to me.

His hand is back on the table and so is mine, and they’re nearly touching; there’s a band of heat between us, magnetic. “I think,” he begins, “we should do a little Dumpster diving, Queen P … to celebrate the good news.” He slides his hand slightly forward; our fingertips touch.
Dumpster-diving. Dumpsters. Dumpsters …
Something starts turning in my brain as soon as he mentions it; something important.

“The Westwood Center …,” I say aloud, staring at the three flattened pools of ketchup on my napkin. “Why can’t I …” And then my blood turns to ice. “Mario.” My fingertips fly away from his. My hands press hard against the battered edge of the table. “Flynt!”

He turns to me, a worried look on his face.

“This guy Mario,” I begin, speaking rapidly, “he was—he was selling things that belonged to Sapphire. That day. At the flea.” My hands fly to my thighs, begin tapping beneath the table.

“Yeah … so what?” Flynt tugs on his bear ears, reaches for a fry.

“So … he told me he got everything from the Dumpsters outside of the Westwood Center. But he couldn’t have! Right? They weren’t there. There was a news report today. Business owners— they were protesting; all the Dumpsters were removed, months ago. He knows something—he definitely knows something—we have to—we have to find him.”

Flynt leans forward, blinking. “Lo—I really think we’ve got to let it go now. They already arrested the bouncer—he did it.”

“But why would Mario have lied?” I protest. “He’s got to be connected to this somehow. Maybe he
knows
something.” I pull a five-dollar bill from my purse and plunk it down on the table, scooting quickly out of the booth. Flynt follows, catching my hand before I can bolt out the door, boring his eyes into me. “What? Are you not coming?”

“Lo. Listen to me.” He rests his hands on my shoulders; his face is stark and serious. “You have to leave it alone. The bouncer is in prison. They wouldn’t put someone in prison if they didn’t have a really good reason to think he belonged there.”

“Right … of course, because cops are
never
wrong.” I wriggle out from under his hands. “
First
you tell me to stay out of it, and then you say you want to help me, and then you tell me to stop again! I’m so sick of this—of your secrets!” I burst out, ignoring the stares of other customers. “Why don’t you just tell me the
truth
for once?”

He puts his hands back on my shoulders, pressing into me harder. “Lo, I
care
about you. I just want you to be safe, okay? That’s the truth. That’s all I want. And,” he continues, gently, “do you think that
maybe
you’ve just become obsessed with this case, with Sapphire, because it gives you a way to avoid dealing with your own shit?”

I wrench myself, again, from his grasp. “My shit?” I parrot back. “What the hell do you know about
my
shit? You don’t even know me. You don’t know anything!”

Flynt’s shaking his head; he looks like he might cry. “Lo—I didn’t mean—I’m—”

“You’re a liar,” I spit out, nostrils flaring. “That’s all you ever do—all you’ve
ever
done. You said you hadn’t been to Tens in forever, but you had; you said you had no idea who Sapphire was, but you did. Everything. Everything you say is untrue.” I stare for a second, blindly furious, into his eyes—the eyes of another person who doesn’t think I’m good enough or strong enough.

I’m filled with a violent urge to spit—some raging shoot of saliva that would come out fiery, speed past our heads like a comet—but I don’t. My feet are pulsing, screaming at the rest of my body, at my blood.
Go. GO
.

Now,
Sapphire whispers, fluttering to me through every tiny jukebox speaker.
Now.
I have twenty-seven seconds to leave— twenty-seven, the mother number, the protector, the number that sees, that knows, that transmutes its knowledge through every part of your body. Twenty-seven seconds to leave this place and get to the street. Twenty-seven seconds, or it’s all over.

Or I’m dead.
(Five, six, seven.)

I don’t look back (
ten, eleven, twelve
) as I run past the beat-up booths and through the old diner door that’s got bells on it.
(
S
eventeen, eighteen, nineteen
.
)
The
urge
flashes through my fingers—no choice—and I swipe the bells before I leave. They sound like the choked hymn of out-of-practice angels, knocking into each other in my pocket as I run (
twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven)
farther from the warm light of the diner, farther into the ramshackle, farther into the mess.

CHAPTER 17

I run the whole way from the diner to the flea, and by the time I arrive, I’m heaving, back and ribs and chest moving up and down like a scatter graph as I pause to catch my breath. It isn’t Saturday. I’ve never been here on a day that isn’t Saturday. I don’t know what it will be like—what it will feel like—if he’ll even be here—if the world will spontaneously combust. All I know is: I had to get here before it closed—before it was too late to find him.