‘Edward.’ Washington had been so silent through the last few minutes Jason had almost forgotten he was there. Now, seeing
the man straighten, he felt a flush of panic. Washington looked at Jason, then at Cruz, and finally over to the alderman.
‘Sir, you’re wasting time.’
Oh god.
Jason scrabbled for words to stop him.
‘How’s that, Dr. Matthews?’ Owens’s face was unreadable.
‘Because you listened to all of that.’
‘Wait a sec –’ Jason started to interrupt.
Washington ignored him. ‘You listened to all of that, and you’re not doing anything about it yet.’
Jason’s jaw dropped open.
Washington paused, and when he spoke, it was in the rich voice of a lecturer. ‘Edward, I realize you don’t know Jason Palmer,
and that must make it hard to believe what he’s said. But you know me.’ Washington put a warm hand on Jason’s shoulder. ‘And
I’m telling you that his word is all you need.’
The party still swirled around them, but for Jason, the world had come down to this single minute. His chest swelled, and
his vision went swimmy around the edges. He could feel the rush of blood in his veins, the stickiness of his palms.
Then the alderman nodded. He spoke slowly, saying, ‘All right, Washington. All right.’ He turned to Jason. ‘I’ll need all
the details you can give me.’
Jason wanted to throw his head back and whoop. They’d done it. Maybe their luck was finally changing. He gave Cruz a giddy
smile.
Only she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she stared the opposite direction, her mouth open. ‘What?’ He followed her gaze to
the entrance of the room.
And realized their luck wasn’t changing at all.
The first reaction was fear, an animal panic that made the air hum and buzz, that slowed time, the world gone languid as his
instincts screamed for flight.
The second was the copper taste of murder in his mouth. A primal rage, a desire to beat and smash and kill.
Fingers clenched white, stomach loose and warm, Jason stood rooted, staring at the man in the doorway.
An evil spirit in a cheap suit, only this time Anthony DiRisio wore a tuxedo over heavy slabs of muscle. Five o’clock shadow
and thin black hair, a nose too large and bent slightly sideways. He stood at the entrance, his eyes scanning the crowd, moving
slow and precise. A predator’s gaze, working right to left.
‘Mr. Palmer?’ Owens asked, one eyebrow high.
Jason shook his head, yanked himself out of his stupor. Turned so his back faced the door. ‘DiRisio.’ He grimaced. ‘He must
have been watching my apartment after all, and followed us here.’ Something nagged at him, a detail he couldn’t put his finger
on. It felt important, but refused to clarify. Maybe something he’d seen on the drive over?
‘The arms dealer? Here?’
‘Yes. Mr. Alderman, we have to get my nephew and get out of here.’
‘Your nephew?’
‘My brother’s son. He’s here.’ Jason clenched his lips, risked a quick glance over his shoulder. DiRisio had vanished in the
crowd. ‘Sir, we have to go. Can we continue some place more private?’
‘All right.’ Owens looked at his second, who frowned. ‘Daryl’s right. I should probably say a few good-byes. It will look
strange if I don’t. Twenty minutes?’
Jason nodded. ‘Fine. Where can we regroup?’
‘My car is in the service garage. A black Towncar. But how will you get past your man?’
‘We’ll figure something out.’
The alderman smiled. ‘I’m glad a soldier is on the job.’ He turned to Thomas. ‘Let’s make the rounds quickly, shall we?’
Jason watched them go. He’d done it. Joy bubbled up within his chest, and he turned back to his friends. Cruz grinned a hundred-watts
worth. Washington put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good work, son. I’m proud of you.’ He looked Jason square in the eye. ‘Your
brother would be, too.’
Something swelled in Jason’s chest, something fluttery and luminous, and he felt the muscles of his cheeks pull into a too-wide
smile. He held out a hand, and Washington took it, then pulled him into a hug. The familiar tang of Old Spice filled his nostrils,
a safe, comforting smell. He wanted to linger, to laugh and toast their success.
But DiRisio was out there.
Jason stepped back, grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, but we should –’
‘I know, son. Go.’
Jason squeezed his shoulder, touched Cruz’s arm, the skin soft and warm, and then he stepped into the thick of the crowd.
Where would Billy be? The air had the recycled smell of a too-f party, cut by the chaotic tinkling of women’s laughter.
There weren’t any other children around. It was too crowded for DiRisio to try anything, or at least he hoped so. Still, he
wouldn’t feel better until he found his nephew. He started for the buffet, where Ronald had last seen Billy.
But there was no sign of the boy. He felt his heart quicken. He couldn’t risk calling out. DiRisio could be stalking this
same ground. But where would the boy be?
Then he had a thought, and dropped to a squat. A small pair of shoes were barely visible beneath the table. Jason parted the
tablecloth. Billy looked up, his smile blooming like a flower. He wore a tuxedo and a clip-on bow tie. Now in robot form,
the Transformer wreaked havoc on a landscape of baguette slices and gouda cubes.
Jason’s heart climbed his chest, buoyed by a wave of pure warmth. If this was what responsibility meant, he could get used
to it. ‘Hey, kiddo.’
‘Uncle Jason!’ The boy leaned forward and threw his arms around Jason’s neck. ‘I missed you.’
‘Me too.’ He tousled Billy’s hair. Part of him wanted to crawl under the table with him, but there wasn’t time. Soon, though.
They were almost finished. ‘We gotta go, buddy. You ready?’
Billy nodded, released his arms, and climbed out, carrying the toy by one robotic arm. Jason stood, trying to at once scan
the room and remain inconspicuous. At least DiRisio didn’t know Billy was here. He kept to the fringe of the crowd, moving
against the windowed walls.
Ronald stood in the corner, Cruz beside him, her features drawn with worry. She brightened when she saw him. Jason spotted
Washington, nodded toward the others, and he joined them.
‘Now what?’ Cruz had moved so her back was to the room. ‘Out the front door?’
Where would DiRisio be? Jason put himself in the other man’s position. ‘No. He doesn’t know we spotted him, and the crowd
is tough to move through. His best bet would be to watch that door.’
‘So what then?’
A harried server pushed past him, balancing a tray of desserts. He saw Cruz looking at it, met her eyes, both of them smiling.
‘Let’s go.’
The servant’s entrance was marked by a set of swinging kitchen doors. Beyond lay a bright white hallway, the lush atmosphere
of the ballroom replaced by rubber-mat floors and fluorescent lights. A row of six-foot service carts held the remnants of
dinner, half-eaten steaks in pools of béarnaise,
abandoned vegetables. Two Hispanic guys in spattered aprons and hairnets leaned against the wall, laughing at something.
They froze as the doors opened. One of them said something in Spanish, then, ‘Bathroom other way.’
Cruz pulled her badge from her purse. ‘
Policía.
’ The men looked at one another nervously, and she let them. ‘
¿Dónde está el elevador?
’ The larger of the two waved down the hall. She nodded curtly.
The service elevators were built for functionality, with worn linoleum floors and scuffed walls. The five of them stepped
aboard, gestured away a pretty maid who started to follow, pressed the door close button.
Jason leaned against the back wall. Let himself breathe. They’d done it. Somehow, against all odds, they’d done it. He felt
a smile creeping onto his face, and a weird sense of lightness in his limbs. He looked up to find Cruz smiling, too. That
good smile, the one he liked.
‘Come here,’ he said, not caring that the others could see.
One side of her lips curled higher than the other. ‘You.’
They met halfway.
‘Why aren’t you coming home now?’ Billy looked up at him with guileless eyes.
‘I will soon, buddy. We’re almost done.’
‘Did you get the, the uh –’
‘Briefcase?’ Jason glanced in either direction down
the empty hall. They’d gotten off on the second floor rather than ride it all the way to the kitchen. ‘Yeah, we did. Everything’s
under control, buddy. You’re going to be okay.’
‘What about you?’
Jason smiled. Dropped to one knee. ‘I’m going to be okay, too.’
‘That’s good.’ The boy sounded tired. ‘So you’ll be home soon?’
‘Very soon.’
‘Good.’ Billy hesitated. ‘Will you come to see me when you do?’
‘Sure thing. But you’ll be asleep.’
The boy shook his head, looked at the floor.
‘You having trouble sleeping, buddy?’
Billy nodded.
‘Bad dreams?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Billy’s voice little boy earnest.
Jason felt the weight of the moment. An everyday moment of fatherhood, the kind of thing Michael probably had dealt with effortlessly.
But Michael was gone now. It was up to him.
‘You know what you do?’ Jason put one hand out, took the Transformer from Billy, started to fold it. Surprised to find his
muscles remembered exactly what to do with his long-ago toy. He turned it into a gun again, and passed it back to Billy. ‘Take
this to bed with you. No bad dreams will come near you then.’
‘That’s silly. You can’t kill a nightmare.’
Jason laughed. ‘Maybe not. But I bet you feel better
anyway.’ He stood up, looked at Washington. ‘You’ll watch out for him?’
The man nodded. ‘We both will.’ He took Billy’s hand. ‘Ronald’s probably got the car pulled around – you ready to go see him?’
Billy nodded and let Washington lead him away. Jason stood and watched them walk away. Felt a tug in his chest.
‘You okay?’ Cruz touched his arm.
He nodded. ‘Just realized I have a family.’ He turned to her. Smiled, and kissed her again. She returned it, her lips soft
with promise, not the fever of earlier, but something lasting, the kind of kiss that might go for years. Finally, he broke
it, glanced at his watch. ‘We better get moving.’
In the lobby, men and women waited with valet tickets, or kissed cheeks in final good-byes. A table of tourist chicks sat
sipping Cosmos and playing at
Sex and the City.
The uniformed cops were gone; he supposed they’d probably been clocking overtime.
‘What if DiRisio came down?’ Cruz asked.
‘He couldn’t be sure we would come through the lobby. My bet is he’s still watching the ballroom exit, hoping to bottleneck
us.’ Jason had a twinge of that same feeling he’d had upstairs, something about DiRisio that didn’t fit. Shook it off and
stopped to study a fire evacuation map. ‘Looks like the service garage is this way.’
The volume turned down with every step away from the lobby. They passed a restaurant, the air heavy with the smell of french
onion soup and filet mignon,
and took a side corridor to a door marked ‘Employees Only.’
The garage was dreary, the buzzing sodium lights draining color. Several panel trucks were backed in against the wall, followed
by rows of staff cars, Hondas and Fords, most a couple of years old. The air was stale with old exhaust and cigarettes.
The alderman’s car sat twenty feet away, beside a delivery truck. The Towncar was running, a trickle of exhaust rising from
the tailpipe. Lightly tinted windows screened the interior, but he could make out a man in the rear seat. ‘Right on time,’
Jason said. They started toward the car, Cruz’s high heels clicking on the concrete. ‘Let’s get this over with, get home.
I could sleep for a week.’
Jason opened the car door and leaned in, opening his mouth to say hello.
In the splinter of a second it took to process the man pointing a gun at him, a thin face marked by a white ridge of scar
tissue, it hit Jason what had been nagging at him.
Anthony DiRisio had been wearing a tuxedo. If he’d followed them here, where would he have come up with a tux?
Then something hard and heavy cracked his skull, and the world shivered into night.
Back in the desert.
The street was winding and filled with children. They laughed, wrestling, tumbling in the dust, all almond eyes and shining
smiles. But beyond them he could hear a noise, a humming, crushing sound, something coming closer. It was death, he knew that,
and he yelled, tried to warn them. The children wouldn’t listen, none of them would
listen
, even as it came around the corner, a juggernaut of creaking metal treads and armor plates the color of disease, spitting
gouts of flame in a tide of red and yellow. The children played, never looking at the machine drawing closer, this terrible
engine that had its own momentum, that ruined everything in its path. Martinez was in the street, too, the children squealing
with delight as they climbed on him and over him, and he hummed a single steady note as he stared at Jason, hummed it as the
flames reached him, hummed it as fire ate the world, hummed a single droning note like the end of everything.
Then the car hit a bump, bouncing Jason Palmer’s head against the window it lay on, and he came to, the hum transformed into
the buzz of tires, the vibration of glass against his ear. His eyes opened, bleary, swimming, too wet. The car seat fabric.
Headlights through
the glass. His hands, in front of him and touching at the wrists.
Voices.
It came back in a flash, and he closed his eyes, head and heart racing. Pain blossomed with consciousness, a throbbing flower
with roots unmaking his brain. It was worse with his eyes closed, color and shape playing against the darkness as they passed
other cars, nothing to focus on but creeping scarlet pain.
Voices again, from the front. ‘I’d like to get there tonight, Grandma.’
‘Don’t be an idiot. We can’t afford to get pulled over.’
‘Why not? You could chat with them, you know, bullshit about the job. Pretend you’re still a cop.’
‘Fuck you.’
Jason’s skull was filled with concrete. He was in a car. Slumped on the right side. The men in front of him were talking.
Bickering. His body hurt, every crack and divot in the road ringing up through his temples, and his hands were bound together.
Zip-tied, by the feel of it; his hands bloodless and numb. There was something warm leaning against him. Warm and heavy and
soft.