He doesn’t say anything.
“You might be right,” says Albin. “I hope you’re not. It’s a shame. If you’d been a lyco, I might have asked you to join us.”
“I’m not a lyco,” I say. “There’s no part of me that’s lyco.”
“We really didn’t kill anyone.”
“I know Johnny’s wife,” I say. “He has three children. They’re falling apart.”
“We didn’t kill him. I’ve been trying to find out about him since Dick—There wasn’t anything in the papers about him losing his hand.”
“It happens too often. And the shooting, that didn’t make it either. But barebacks die young. I don’t suppose it mattered too much to an editor that he died of a bullet rather than a bite.”
I’m standing here talking to them. I should hate them. They may be lying to me, twisting my mind around their hands like twine. It’s strangely restful, though. If I said these things to a non, it would just be griping. And most lycos would shrug it off. I guess I have my captive audience now.
“I’m sorry about the man,” Albin says. “I wanted to give some money to his family, only I couldn’t do it without getting caught. Guess I could do it now, if I ever get out.”
I could say you can’t buy off people, but what would be the point? Sue Marcos needs money. “Do it direct,” I say. “Don’t go through DORLA. It would just get soaked up somewhere. Tell her you spoke to me.”
“Do you believe us?” Albin asks. “I mean, that we didn’t kill anyone?”
The hush rings in my ears, and I’m tired. I take a deep breath. “I don’t know,” I say. “If it turns out that you’re lying now and you did, then you’re the worst man alive. But right now, I don’t see it.”
All of them turn in their cells. The straw rustles like trees in a storm.
“Why did you think we did?” Paul says. “No one gave us any evidence. They just dragged us all off and started kicking the hell out of us and asking the same questions. What was it? Were we just getting tarred with the same brush because you knew we’d done one thing?”
“I’ve heard enough they’re-all-the-same comments to last me a lifetime,” I say, angry. “Barebacks are this, barebacks are that. You don’t think I’d start doing it myself?”
Paul shrugs. “You might. People tend to pass along whatever happens to them.”
“The man we arrested was wounded by a silver bullet and didn’t go to the hospital. Someone stole some Oromorph that day to dope him while they pulled the bullet out. And you, Dr. Stein, you had a prior for stealing Oromorph. It looked like you were in the habit of self-treatment.”
I didn’t mean to say all that. It came out in a rush. Paul has no business thinking I’d…
“I took Oromorph once,” Carla says into her knees. “I thought it might make furring up easier, that we’d be calmer afterwards.”
“It didn’t work,” Albin adds. “We just got stupid. But she only did it once.”
“If one of us had a silver wound, I’d never just treat it with painkillers,” Carla mutters. “Look what happened to that poor man you showed us. I worked hard in medical school. I know what happens if you neglect wounds like that. I worked hard.”
It’s then that I start to almost believe them.
THIRTY-TWO
“A
lly,” I say, “have you got a minute?”
He’s testing catching poles. There’s a machine you put the loops onto, with weights you can add and take off like in a gym; they have to be able to stand double the strain a lune is likely to put on them. Ally is holding one of the weights, and when he sees me his hands sag, as if it had grown suddenly heavier. “What do you want?” He lays it down on the floor. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
“I’m not going to do anything.” I hitch myself up onto a table and sit there, hands at my sides. “I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t especially want to talk to you, Lola.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“I don’t like being messed around with.”
I shrug. “Nobody does. Are you going to listen to me or not?”
Ally stares at me. The look is what Becca would describe as “as if he’d never seen me before,” but that’s not quite right. It isn’t my face that’s unfamiliar to him. “I can’t believe you, Lola. You just wander in like nothing’s wrong and expect me to drop everything?”
Part of me cowers, but there’s no way around this except a bold face. “More or less. It wasn’t about you, you know. You shouldn’t take it personally. I’ve treated other people worse than you.”
“Christ.”
“And I need someone to help me out, and you’re my best bet.”
“I’ve heard that one too many times.” Ally opens his mouth to say more, and I clench my hands behind my back, but he stops there. There’s a lot he wants to accuse me of, I know, and there’s a lot he wants to ask me. I don’t think he’s going to. He doesn’t know how. We met when we were too young. Even when I was fourteen and resolved to fight him off, I’d just scratch and kick. I wouldn’t even say no. We never talked about what we did.
“It’s about the prowlers we’re after.” I keep my eyes on him as I say this. His gaze flicks away from mine, then back, then away again. “I’m not sure the official line is right.”
“You came up with the official line.” He adds a weight to the machine. The loop of the catching pole snaps and the weight crashes down, making us both flinch. “Damn.” He rubs his fists together.
“Some of it, yes I did. But now I’m not sure it’s right. I still think Seligmann killed Nate and Johnny. And I still think Harper was with him. He reminds me of Seligmann, this new one. The way he’s acting down in the cells. I went to have a look at him; he spits at us and won’t talk to us. Doesn’t that seem odd, I mean, different from how all the free-rangers are acting?”
Ally takes the damaged pole in his hands, holds it close to him. “You want to let him out, let him out. Slip him a file when no one’s looking, leave the door unlocked, elope with him. Don’t ask me to help you out.” There’s a glare on his face, a wildness. He must want to say this very badly.
I take a careful breath. This has to sound calm. “That’s not what this is about, Ally. It’s not personal. I’ve been thinking about the evidence. The only real evidence we’ve got that ties them to Harper and Seligmann is that one of them once stole a bottle of Oromorph. The more I think about it, the more shaky that sounds, because it’s not the right treatment. She’s a doctor. This guy lost an arm. I don’t see how she could have allowed it to happen. I saw the doctor’s report of his condition. It was a botched job.”
“You like her, huh?” Ally’s still hugging the pole. “Think she’s a good doctor?”
“Yeah, I think she probably is. They didn’t pull her medical license for stealing drugs the one time they caught her. If she’d been useless, they would have. I—I think we’ve all got it wrong. These people are convenient. I mean, they moon loiter every month, and if you ask them about it, they’ll preach to you. Looks like they’ve got a whole philosophy going, or at least a whole lifestyle. I mean, what could we possibly hate more? They think we’re cripples, I think. Albin almost looks like he feels sorry for me, sometimes. And we’re looking for people who prowl, and who think we’re the enemy, and this bunch comes along, and it sort of fits. But I don’t think we’ve got enough evidence for it, not really. I think we all just—thought that someone out there was gunning for us, and these people were the type.”
“They are,” Ally says. His hands are tense around the catcher. “I know you’ve been down there. Think they’re that sweet and friendly to everyone? You just don’t want to think it. They’re your kind of people, that’s why you can’t handle the idea.”
“What?” I don’t know what he means, and still the accusation is frightening.
“Of course they are. I’ve seen your sister, I remember what kind of accent you came to the creches with. You’re a lawyer, for fuck’s sake. You want this group to like you. You figure they’re the kind of people you should have been. What, you think if you’d come out feet-first, you’d give a damn about any of us? You’d have gone to college with those people, you’d have been out there with them on moon nights. I’ve seen you staring out the window, all that stargazing. I bet given the chance you’d love the moon. Too bad for you you came out crippled.”
I sit, my hands holding the table edge, mute.
“Don’t look surprised, princess,” Ally says. “You were fucking one of them, weren’t you? Why wouldn’t you like them? Too bad for you they’re in jail now. You just don’t want to think that they did it because it’d spoil your little dream, that maybe they might accept you, that there’s still a part of you that could be like they are, like you think you should have been. Shame. You used to think with your head.”
I slide slowly off the table, land on my feet. “I’m sorry you feel slighted, Ally. I’m sorry you think you’re not good enough for me. I’m sorry I still give a damn about my sister and don’t hide her from you in case she touches a nerve. And that you think this is about caste. You know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do think I should have been more like them. But you know, I think if I had been, I wouldn’t have ever taken a silver gun and shot two men down.”
“You did take a gun,” Ally says. “I know one went missing from the storeroom.”
“And if I did, who do you think I was planning to shoot?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I’ve got some loyalty, even if you haven’t.”
“I’m sorry, Ally,” I say. “I don’t feel that loyal to you.”
He shivers. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Maybe because you tried to fuck me when I was a kid.” It’s out now, and I was the one who said it. I’m shaking, inside my chest everything is red and jolted, but my twitching eye has stopped and my face is still. “Perhaps. But I came to you because I need help with this; I want to send down the right people. I say there’s three of them, Seligmann and Harper and one other. There’s going to be other free-rangers out there, one or two, because I saw more of them in the garden that night, and if we waste our time trying to get them, someone may end up deciding that we’ve got them all, and whoever was with Seligmann and Harper will get missed. That’s what I don’t want to happen, Ally. And if someone doesn’t help me, then it might. I can’t make arrests by myself, Ally, look at me. I couldn’t bring in one man, never mind two.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could manage,” he says. His jaw is clenched.
“Are you going to help me?”
“You don’t need help. You don’t have any ideas. What are you going to do, wander around the city and knock on every door? There’s no one to arrest.”
“I think there is.” I put my hands in my pockets, curl them up. This is my piece of news. I thought I wanted to tell it to someone receptive, but mostly I just want this over with. “I went over Harper’s record. And his files. I’ve done a lot of research today. And you know what I found? He’s got a brother. Steven Harper. Minor record, a little shoplifting when he was a kid. He tried to train as a nurse, but he dropped out of the course before finishing. And you know where he works now? He’s a janitor in St. Veronica’s.”
“What are you talking about?” Ally shakes his head, dodging.
“I’m talking about Oromorph, is what I’m talking about. Someone stole some Oromorph from St. Veronica’s to patch up David Harper when Marty shot him. Dug out the bullet, gave him some painkillers, made a real fuckup amateur job of it. It was an unlabeled bottle. Steven Harper took it off a bedside table in the orthopedics ward. He cleaned everywhere in the hospital, he knew it was a good place to get painkillers, though he didn’t know enough to stop the gangrene. He could have walked through any ward in the hospital, lingered wherever he liked, and if he was pushing a mop, who was going to stop him? He could have even picked the stuff up off someone’s table if he made out he was dusting it. I showed David Harper to Dr. Stein. She said she didn’t know him, but he looked familiar. She doesn’t know him. What she saw was a family resemblance. It’s Steven Harper we’re looking for, that’s our third man. He might even know where Seligmann is. And I need someone to help me arrest him. Are you coming or not?”
“I was a kid, too, you know,” Ally says. He holds his hands still at his side.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I turn my back.
“You mean you can dish it out but can’t take it.” His eyes are narrow as he stares at me.
“I don’t think you want to talk about it either.” I look back at the wall.
“No?”
“And you’re probably right, I can dish it out but can’t take it. You can say a lot of bad things about me, and I’ll probably have to agree with you.”
“You had to bring it up, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, well, you had to do it in the first place.” There’s a dent in the wall, brown plaster showing through the paint. “You weren’t the only one. I wasn’t the only one. That’s the best that can be said about it.”
“We were kids.”
“Yes. Too young.”
“I’ve still got a scar on my arm where you bit me once.”
I remember the taste of blood in my mouth, salty and tainted. “First of many. Nothing compared to what lunes took out of you.”
“Lola,” he says. It’s a sigh, hoarse and weary.
“That isn’t even my name,” I say. “No one called me that at home. That’s a creche word. And don’t pretend a bite on the arm puts me in your camp. Do you want me to remind you what you did to me?”
If he said yes, I couldn’t do it, couldn’t say the words. I stare at the wall and remember how easy it was to say the same words to Paul. I could always tell him things. The first day we spent together, we were so pleased and excited, both of us wanted to run out and tell someone how good it had been, but we couldn’t leave the room, so we told each other. I’d never even been with a lyco before Paul. It was different, it was nothing like the creches, nothing like men who learned about girls locked up on moon nights. I didn’t tell him that; it was the only thing I didn’t tell him. At the time, I felt I had to keep a loyal silence, I didn’t want to insult Ally. Pushing the memory away is like running against the wind, it leaves me limp.
“I didn’t know how to think about it at the time,” I say. “I still don’t. But it shouldn’t have happened, Ally. Not all the boys in the creches did it. Some of them didn’t. You did. And if you didn’t know any better, then that’s your fault, too. I didn’t want to start learning it that way.”
“Holding out for someone special?” There’s bitterness in his voice. He’s trying for sarcasm, but it falls short. There’s genuine disillusion there. We must have had illusions once, to lose them like this. How did we come by them, all us malformed sidelined children? Though I can’t feel free of illusions, even now.
“No,” I say. The anger has fallen away. It was too hot, too heavy, I couldn’t keep hold of it. “But some consent might have been nice. It…to know it was worth something, even just fun or curiosity. Not just something to do because you’re locked in all night. Something that made me feel like a normal teenager, not a bareback freak. It would have been nice.”
“You are a bareback, Lola,” Ally says.
“You think I hate us, don’t you?” I don’t look at him; my head’s too heavy to lift. Instead, I slide down the wall, sit with my knees under my chin. “You think I hate being trapped in a bareback body and I hate all the others for being like me.”
He says nothing.
“I don’t, you know,” I say. “No more than the rest of us do.” I don’t hate barebacks, not really. Just sometimes, the walls press in on me, and I think about forgetting it all, about having something else to worry about, having different worries in different years instead of always the same unrelenting round of prejudice and poverty and wondering whether I’ll be hurt come next month. Not these same people, with the same problems, the same worn-out solidarity that gets us all through the same day. Sometimes I get thirsty for a little starlight.
I see now, clear and cold, that I haven’t forgiven Ally. His inexpert fingers finding no pleasant secrets in my scanty, half-formed flesh are a violation and an affront that I may never get over. We’ve spent too many years pretending for it not to be dangerous now. And we’ve both spent all of our years pretending we never look at lycos and wish for a little time on the other side of the bars.
Stupidly, my eyes are stinging and my throat aches. I thought I’d done enough crying. “We should go and arrest this man,” I say. My voice doesn’t work well, and there’s a wave of misery that I should show this weakness. I always got by with Ally by being a substitute boy, as much as I could. He knew I could kick and bite, but I never wanted him to see me cry.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t.” Ally takes a pace back from me. “I can’t take it. You’ve done everything else, just don’t start crying as well.”
He thinks crying is blackmail. He’s one of those. Or maybe he just can’t be in the room with a crying woman he isn’t allowed to comfort. “I’m not crying.” I wipe my palm against my eye.
“Yeah, right, of course you’re not.”
I rest my head on my knees, say nothing.
“You really think he did it?”
“This Harper brother?” I press my hands over my eyelids. “Yeah, I think he did. I think I’m right this time.”
“Does Hugo know you’re doing this?”
“He won’t be surprised. I thought we ought to get a head start, in case he runs when he finds his brother’s gone.”
“Okay.” Ally drums against the wall for a second, then takes a cautious step up to me. “Come on, let’s go.”