The Sixteen Burdens (28 page)

“Larson! Cuff this kid and gag him until we’re through.”

Gray reached out and took Chaplin’s hand one last time.

“I’m sorry,” Gray said.

Chaplin squeezed his hand.

“Did I ever tell you that I have a son? He’s only a bit older than you.”

Gray shook his head.

“He lives with his mother,” Chaplin said. “He doesn’t visit me much.”

Chaplin let go of Gray’s hand.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I’m glad we’re friends.”

The officer cuffed Gray to a chair in the corner, then gagged him with a rag that tasted like sweat.

“Let’s get this finished!” Stoker said.

The room quieted down and a man standing near Chaplin tinkered with a control panel that was connected by wires to the chair. He placed what looked like a metal crown on his head.

Stoker stepped up next to Chaplin and unfolded a piece of paper.

“Raymond Lisenba, also known as Rattlesnake James.”

The coppers in attendance smirked but most of the prison guards looked on earnestly.

“You have been convicted of the murders of Mary Busch, Dolores Grayburn, and Tottie Anderson. You are hereby sentenced to death this Christmas Day, December Twenty-Fifth, Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-Nine. Do you have any last words?”

Chaplin turned his blindfolded face to Stoker and smiled.

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

Stoker stomped over to the control panel, where the man stood ready at the dial.

“May I?” Stoker asked.

Before the man could object Stoker nudged him out of the way and cranked the dial up to full blast. The hum of electricity filled the room. Chaplin cried out, and his back arched in agony.

The electric buzz seemed to make the whole room vibrate. The lights grew dim from the surge of power.

Gray turned his head away and clenched his eyes shut, but the incessant hum pierced his thoughts. Even as he tried to distract himself, the smell of burning hair pierced the room, and men began to cough. The room was silent, and yet it felt to Gray like the loudest noise in the world.

Whether it was two minutes or twenty, Gray didn’t know. But eventually he became aware that the humming had stopped. People in the room were quietly shifting in their seats.

He opened his eyes and saw Chaplin in the chair, his head slumped forward. Only the leather straps kept him upright.

“Where’s the doctor?” Stoker asked.

“It’s Christmas,” someone reminded him.

Stoker cursed under his breath, then unstrapped one of Chaplin’s hands and lifted his forearm. He pulled up the sleeve and felt the pulse on Chaplin’s wrist in a cursory manner. He looked at his watch.

“Time of death. Three Twenty-Two in the afternoon.”

He let Chaplin’s hand drop.

“Let’s get home for dinner. Merry Christmas, everyone.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-N
INE

A
S
SOON
AS
someone uncuffed him, Gray ran. Through a door, down a hall, he wasn’t sure. He just ran. He had to.

His vision grew blurry. He tripped over Officer Blythe, who was kneeling on the ground, fiddling with a long strand of light bulbs that had blown out. The guard shouted something, but Gray didn’t hear. He just kept running.

He ran outside, past the entrance guard and over the bridge. He ran through Chinatown, drawing stares from pedestrians and shop owners who were working on Christmas. He ran south, down the empty sidewalks of Broadway, past the tall buildings of the financial district. Even when he realized that he had no idea where he was going, he kept running. Even as his feet burned inside his shoes and his knees ached, he kept running.

As dusk approached, Gray climbed up the long, steep steps that ran parallel to the Angel’s Flight funicular. At the top of the hill he finally stopped to catch his breath. The city below was orange and motionless in the hazy sunset. A dirty snow globe.

He walked through the streets of Bunker Hill. His feet seemed to have a destination—west on Fourth, north on Fremont—so he let them lead the way. He found himself in front of the Zelda Apartments, a home for the elderly and infirm. The building was foreign to him but the address was familiar. Every year the boys at the home signed a thank-you card to Emory Partridge for the toys he sent them. Gray, as the oldest, addressed the envelope and gave it to Farrell to mail.

The entrance was right off the sidewalk, opening into a yellowing lobby not much larger than a closet. A paper Christmas tree cutout had been taped to one wall.

“Can I help you?” a nurse asked from behind a counter without looking up.

“Emory Partridge,” Gray said. “I’d like to see him.”

“Emory who?”

“Partridge. He’s been here for years.”

“Mm.”

She put her hand on her hips.

“I been here some fifteen years and I ain’t heard of no Emory Partridge.”

“He makes toys,” Gray said. “He sends them to us on Christmas.”

“Uh-uh. I think you better lay off the eggnog. Now get.”

Gray stumbled outside and checked the address and the name of the building. This was the place, he was sure. Or was he? His mind was an alphabet soup of feelings and memories, and he couldn’t seem to string the fragments together to make a coherent thought.

He walked through a residential block. The once-pristine Victorian homes along the street had become worn and dilapidated after years of neglect. Even so, the street had a cozy feel. Lights began turning on and Gray saw people moving about inside. The families in those homes didn’t appear to have much, but they had a place. They belonged somewhere.

I want to belong somewhere.

It was the only coherent thought Gray could grasp.
An hour later he found himself standing in front of the Emory Partridge Home for Boys. His mouth was dry and his feet were blistering. One knock on that door and everything would return to normal. He could go back to printing and folding maps tomorrow, maybe even that very night. It would be simple and straightforward.

In a few years he’d leave the home and look for work. Not a private detective. Maybe he could learn to carve toys. Or drive a taxi. Whatever it was would be a solitary life, where he was committed to no one and nothing. An independent existence where he could cut ties if he didn’t like someone, or move away if he didn’t like where he was.

You wanna survive, you got only yourself to rely on.

He knocked on the door.

It took a few minutes, but finally someone answered it. It was Emory Partridge.

“Mr. Partridge!” Gray said. “You’re here! I was looking for you.”

The man was old, even older than Gray remembered. He had the same thick eyeglasses, the kind that looked as if they were carved from stone and weighed as much.

Mr. Partridge looked Gray up and down, like an owner whose stolen car has been returned to him. He seemed satisfied that no damage had been done.

“It’s cold,” he said. “Let’s get you inside.”

Most of the faces Gray saw as he walked down the hall were familiar, though a couple were new. They all stared—the escaped convict returned to prison.

Mr. Partridge shuffled down the hall, looking ridiculous in one of Farrell’s borrowed robes. He took Gray to the small table in the back of the kitchen and sat him down. He gave him some leftovers and allowed him to eat in silence. As Gray shoveled food in his mouth his mind was blissfully blank. He wasn’t even sure what he was eating. A casserole of some sort.

“Where’s Farrell?” Gray asked.

“Not feeling well.”

In the open pantry, Gray saw the empty bottle of Worcestershire sauce Farrell used in his Bloody Mary cocktails.

Apparently not too sick to drink.

Mr. Partridge closed his eyes and appeared to doze off, but as soon as Gray finished he took his plate and set it in the sink.

“You don’t look well,” Mr. Partridge said.

“I had a bad day,” Gray muttered.

The old man smiled apologetically, then brought out the bloodletting tools. The equipment had once looked so familiar, but time had given it a patina of strangeness.

Gray didn’t resist. It probably needed to be done. Mr. Partridge stuck the blade into Gray’s forearm. It was a rough puncture, sloppier than Farrell’s nimble fingers. The air held the familiar smells of his metallic blood and Bay Rum aftershave. After placing the bowl upside-down on the counter, Mr. Partridge bandaged Gray’s arm.

“How you been?” Gray asked. “I haven’t seen you in I dunno how long.”

“I’m just a rotting geezer,” Mr. Partridge said. “Old age is the prison that holds you until Death comes to execute you.”

He shifted in his seat and his joints cracked painfully.

“I tried to visit you,” Gray said. “They said you wasn’t there.”

Mr. Partridge patted him on the hand.

“Go rest. You look like you’ve had a long day. We’ll all be better starting tomorrow.”

Gray thanked Mr. Partridge and left the kitchen. The dormitory was empty since bedtime was still an hour away, but Gray was tired and had no desire to talk to anyone. His old bed appeared to be unoccupied, and there were clean pajamas in the drawer. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and put out the lights.

Despite his fatigue, he didn’t fall asleep. He kept hearing the hum of the electric chair. He covered his ears but it wouldn’t stop.

The afternoon kept replaying over and over in his mind. He could still feel the final squeeze of Chaplin’s hand. He felt it on his hand, felt it around his heart.

If this was the price of having friends, Gray decided it wasn’t for him.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY

G
RAY
HID
C
HARLIE
Chaplin’s mansion from sight. He did it over and over again. But every time he picked up a fresh map from the printing press, he found his eyes wandering over to the drawing of Chaplin’s home—its grand entrance, the massive windows, the wraparound balconies—until his vision became blurry. Then he made his trifold, momentarily blocking the home from view and Chaplin from his mind.

There was a brief story about the execution of Rattlesnake James in the morning newspaper that Gray had snagged while everyone slept. It made no mention of Chaplin or of any mix-up. That meant no one knew yet.

A boy Gray didn’t recognize, who had probably only been there a week, leaned over from across the table.

“You better step it up,” he said. “You gotta fold and package two boxes worth before you’re allowed to eat lunch.”

Gray looked from his meager pile of maps to the five neat, large stacks across the table from him.

“You new?” the boy asked.

Gray shook his head.

“I been here nearly fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years? What are you, an idiot?”

Gray shrugged and returned to his maps.

Farrell had returned unceremoniously, and was on the other side of the room chiding a boy at the paper cutter for cropping too close to the margins. He had a Bloody Mary in one hand and was wagging his finger with the other.

Farrell hadn’t even acknowledged Gray yet; either he was giving him the silent treatment or he hadn’t seen him. Either way was fine by Gray.

When he looked back at his desk he couldn’t find the ruler he used to make a crisp folded edge. It had been there just seconds before.

“What’s this for?”

Gray jolted when he saw Lulu standing just inches from him, wielding the ruler playfully as if she might smack him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Chito sent me. Elsie’s awake.”

Before Farrell or anyone else could see her, Gray grabbed Lulu’s arm and dragged her into the hallway. He led her into the empty kitchen, way in the back by the industrial sink. It still had his dirty plate from last night and the used bloodletting tools.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. This must be the millionth place I looked. You weren’t at Pickfair or Chaplin’s mansion. You weren’t at the Santa Monica pier or at Howard Hughes’s airplane hangar. I tried every movie theater I could think of. Chito said there was no way you’d come back here, but he was wrong. He owes me a nickel.”

Lulu was flushed, her auburn hair tangled and dark with sweat.

“Those places are all over the city,” Gray said. “That would have taken you all day and then some.”

Lulu clenched her little fists to her chest, her signature posture of mischief.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

“OK. Wh—”

But before Gray could finish his thought, Lulu pulled an Amelia Earhart. She simply vanished into thin air. He felt a tap on his shoulder. When he spun around he knocked over a full bottle of Worcestershire sauce on the counter and just barely caught it.

Lulu was standing behind him.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“Are you so dense?” she asked.

She held her hand out, palm up.

“I’ll get your ruler.”

This time Gray looked closer and saw a shadow of energy zooming away from him. Lulu disappeared for a blink, like a radio signal that has a hiccup, and then she was there again. She was in the same position with her palm out, but now the ruler from his work desk was in it.

“Speed,” Gray said, but even as the words came out they didn’t make sense.

Lulu levitated the ruler in her hand.

“You’re fast
and
you still have Chito’s courage! But how?”

The girl shrugged. She seemed to accept it without question.

“You killed Sugar,” Gray said. “And you gained her talent…”

Chaplin had told him that when a Burden died, the talent was bestowed to someone else born somewhere in the world. The search for the new person had to begin all over again. But what if a Burden died at the hands of someone else?

“If you kill a Burden, the ability becomes yours,” Gray said. “You bear that Burden.”

He remembered Sugar’s proposal, that the Burdens all congregate together and swap powers. It had seemed too diplomatic a solution, too fair. Now Gray knew why.

“Atlas wants to gather us together so he can kill us all.”

That way, Gray figured, he could have all of the powers to himself.

“Go tell them,” Gray said. “Tell them they have to run and hide.”

“No,” Lulu said. “
You
come tell them.”

“There’s nothing I can do to help,” Gray said. “My place is here.”

Lulu looked at the ramshackle kitchen, the dirty dishes and the secondhand furniture.

“Here? I’ve been in dives nicer than this. Besides, they’re not your friends. We’re your friends.”

That word again.

It sat bitter on his tongue. They weren’t friends. Panchito was only helping so he could use the Eye to avenge his father. And Elsie and Lulu had been swept up in this fiasco; they never meant to be part of it.

“Friends are just a means of getting what you want,” Gray said.

“No,” Lulu said. “Not real friends.”

She took his hand, this fierce little girl.

“Friends are the family you choose,” she said. “We choose you.”

Gray could not recall having ever been chosen before.

“You’re a real pain in the neck,” Gray said. “Let’s go.”

Lulu’s face erupted into a gap-toothed smile that took up half her face.

“Try to keep up.”