Coyote (25 page)

Someone jostled me from behind, snapped “Excuse me.” Throngs of rushing homeward-bound commuters tried to shove Ramirez and me aside. I didn't want to take any more steps forward. I grabbed the fake Ana and we dodged to the left. The station was dense with people. I stared across the too-narrow gulf and saw that Clinton was having as much trouble as I was with the shoving, rushing pedestrians. He was trying to keep a firm grip on Paolina, on the gun in his pocket, and still get a clear view of Ana. I could see him easily, but then we were both taller than the crowd. Paolina was practically invisible. Ana must have been nearly as hard to see.

I held my breath.

The noise level increased threefold as a rush of local high-school kids, freed from class, poured down the stairs and through the turnstiles, waving their T passes, moving to deafening rap music from a red-lining boom box. Instead of neatly splitting between the two staircases, heading inbound or outbound, they stood mid-platform, arguing and gesturing, finishing off some school dispute.

I could barely see Clinton. I heard him shout. Then I saw Paolina twisting and weaving through the crowd. Clinton yanked something from his pocket and I yelled “Down!” I hollered at full volume, with desperation behind the shout, but my voice was lost in the uproar.

Paolina was a just a flash between somebody's legs, trying to push her way through to me. I could see that her mouth was open, but I couldn't tell if she was screaming or what she was screaming. Clinton raised his weapon. He wasn't sighting on Paolina. I turned and knocked Ramirez to the ground.

The first shot brought silence, the second panic. Paolina was in front of me, her arms wrapped around me, almost knocking me over. I whirled and thrust her behind me, pushing her down two steps behind a cement barrier.

“Stay here,” I yelled. “Let go.”

I stood and surveyed chaos. One of the school-kids was down. I couldn't see Ramirez. Clinton turned, stuffed his gun back in his pocket, joined the race downstairs. Bewildered commuters stood and screamed. Guards in MBTA uniform swarmed and shouted. I caught a glimpse of Ramirez hauling herself to her feet. There was blood high on the shoulder of Ana's raincoat. She had a gun in her hand. She sank back on the ground. I yelled, “Officer down! Officer in need of assistance!” as loudly as I could, praying somebody was picking up something from the damn machine strapped tight to my ribs. Then I pushed in close to her, grabbed the gun from her unresisting hand, and plunged through the crowd, down the staircase, after Harry Clinton.

“Get down! Get out of the way!” The stolid citizens on the staircase had no eyes, no ears. They hadn't heard shots, just backfires, hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary, just a guy racing to catch some train. Damn inconsiderate of people, rushing around, shoving on a staircase. Somebody could get hurt, dammit.

I kept the automatic at my side, pointed at the ground, invisible. Ramirez had already clicked the safety off. From ten steps up I surveyed the station platform. It was a blur, a whirl of shapes and colors. My eyes picked out bits of movement. A boy grabbed his father's hand. A flash of red turned into a young woman's scarf. Blue was a book bag, an umbrella. Most of the faces were in profile or turned three-quarters away, gazing down the tunnel for the headlight of the train. Where was he? Racing for the Berkeley Street exit? On a train back to Park Street? Behind a pillar? My breath was coming in starts and stops. The train rumble hammered my ears. My hand shook. I wanted to shoot the bastard, kill him. Shoot bullet after bullet into his dying body, yelling their names, Manuela, Aurelia, Delores, Amalia—

An Arborway–Huntington train lurched into the station. I watched the doors part, spilling new innocents onto the platform. I knew if I saw Clinton, I'd never get a clear shot off. I'd hit some poor kid reaching for his father's hand.

I remembered Ramirez, bleeding on the ground. And the anonymous kid who'd fallen. And Paolina, crouched on the staircase, vulnerable.

I swallowed and shoved the safety on the automatic. My mouth tasted like metal. I crammed the gun in my pocket, turned, and raced back up the stairs, making myself small against the banister, pushing against the crowd every step of the way. The sound of approaching sirens added to the cacophony.

Paolina was where I'd left her, eyes wide and staring. A gray-haired woman was trying to comfort her, but Paolina was deaf to her soothing words. She moaned softly. I knelt in front of her, called her name. Her eyes focused slowly on my face, and then she was in my arms. I picked her up, and it seemed as if she had no weight. She crushed the transmitter into my ribs and the pain felt good.

39

At eight-thirty the next morning, dressed in shorts and long-sleeved top, I was resting my butt on the hard wooden bench of the Huntington Avenue Y's gym, listening to the smack of sneakers on floorboards, the referee's shrill whistle, sporadic yells, and brief bursts of applause. Mainly I heard the cheers of the rival squad. We were down a game.

And I was decorating the bench.

My nose and cheekbone were fine. An ice pack wrapped my left ankle, more or less secured with an Ace bandage. I'd played only the opening two points. I must have slipped on the damn staircase at Arlington Street station, maybe when I'd lifted Paolina. I hadn't noticed the pain, not till this morning.

Kristy had given me a long look when I'd limped in. Ordinarily I hate missing a practice, much less a match—and this was the championship, and here I sat on the bench. I stretched out a hand and rested it on Paolina's knee. She turned and gave me a tentative smile.

“Maybe you can go back in,” she said earnestly. I reached over and tucked a strand of shiny hair behind her ear so I could see her better.

“Maybe.”

“I'm sorry you hurt your ankle.”

“It's not your fault.”

Her hand crept into mine. She was okay. A bruise or two, hidden by her striped shirt. A scraped knee under blue-green pants. Her fingers toyed with a goldfish pendant, suspended on a black silk cord, the twin of the one I'd found in my house. She was physically okay, but much, much too quiet.

While I was changing in the locker room pretty Edna had asked about handsome Harry, the Olympic scout. Would he be watching today's game, cheering for me?

I hadn't told her Harry Clinton was locked in a cell at Charles Street Jail. The wire hadn't worked well on the station platforms. Too far underground. But Mooney had gotten the message to move to Arlington from the broom man at Park Street. And up on the staircase in Arlington, only ten feet beneath the street, my voice had carried loud and true. Harry Clinton had emerged at Berkeley Street to the hostile stares of six cops and two FBI men. With no hostage in tow.

He wasn't talking about the killings, not to the cops at least, except to say that they must be the work of a crazy man, and since he wasn't crazy, he couldn't be the murderer. Not crazy. This from a man who'd chopped off Manuela's hands to prevent her identification, and then repeated the pattern so the later deaths would seem like the work of a ritualistic killer who chose his victims at random.

Smart didn't rule out crazy.

Ramirez was in Boston City Hospital with a broken collarbone. The kid who'd gone down had a shattered kneecap.

“It's just I thought I saw him today,” Edna said, double-tying her shoelaces, a puzzled frown creasing her brow.

I wondered if she'd ever link the Olympic scout with the mug shots of Harry Clinton on the front pages of both dailies.

James Hunneman was at police headquarters, practically stuttering in his eagerness to talk. The factory owner swore he didn't know a damn thing about murder. He was only bribing Clinton. It had been going on for a long time.

He'd always gotten cheap labor from Clinton, no questions, no papers, dollars changing hands. When the new law took effect, making him vulnerable to fines for employing illegals, he'd started paying Clinton more, to avoid INS raids. He made ends meet by sticking some of the illegals in his brother-in-law's rental apartments on Westland. Canfield charged what the traffic would bear and kicked back a percentage to Hunneman. Still, Hunneman thought it was getting out of hand. He could barely make a profit. American workers wanted more and more. Unions and benefits. Health care, for chrissake.

Hunneman's lawyer tried to get him to shut up at this point, but he was a man with a grievance and he wanted to set the record straight.

And Manuela, and the other women who so suddenly disappeared after supposedly getting their green cards?

Well, he blustered, he wasn't in business to ask questions. He didn't give a damn. They were just a bunch of illegals.

I hoped he'd see the inside of prison for a long time to come, he and his brother-in-law both. It wasn't enough. If there was a hell, I wanted them booked for an endless shift, stitching and stuffing pillows in a sweltering, unventilated closet.

The people in the stands came alive as Kristy made a terrific dig, and my replacement, a black woman named Nina, spiked a kill. Fourth game even at eight all. I yelled encouragement. It felt funny to watch. The perspective was wrong.

“I'm all mixed up in my head,” Paolina mumbled, leaning against me.

“Let's talk about it.”

“Not now. You wanna watch.”

“Well take a walk. I'll test my ankle.”

I leaned over and murmured to a teammate. If everybody else broke a leg, she could find me wandering the first-floor corridors. I took Paolina by the hand and we went out the big double doors. The noise of the game receded behind us.

“What's all mixed up in your head?” I asked after we'd walked awhile in silence. The ice bag thumped against my ankle.

“Does your ankle hurt?”

“Only when I tap-dance.”

“Mom said not to tell you about the factory.”

“Is that what's bothering you?”

“I gave Amalia your card. She was in the bathroom, crying, and she said no one could help her. I remembered how I always used to cry when I was a little girl, and I said maybe you could help her like you helped me.”

When she was a little girl
. When had a ten-year-old ceased being a little girl?

“I wish I could have helped her,” I said. “She didn't tell me enough.”

Paolina said, “She was crying. I hate it when grown-ups cry.”

We were near a staircase, and I sat heavily on the third step up. I leaned forward and probed my swollen ankle with tentative fingers.

“If she'd told the truth,” Paolina said hesitantly, “would you have helped her? No matter who she was? No matter if she was illegal and everything?”

“I'd have done my best. I might not have helped, but I'd have tried.”

“What if—what if she had a secret that was too awful to share?”

“Sometimes if you tell secrets, they don't seem so bad,” I said.

She twisted the wire fish that dangled around her neck, ran her fingers over the black silk cord. “Mom lied to me,” she said, “about my dad.”

“Tell me about it,” I murmured, almost afraid to talk for fear she'd shut me out again.

She went on and I breathed a little easier. “I just wanted to tell the truth and not hurt anybody.”

“That's tough,” I said. “Sometimes you can't tell the truth and not hurt somebody.”

“I thought if I went to—to that man, he could help me because he worked for Immigration and everything, and because you liked him. I thought he was okay.”

She stared at the floor. Her fingers were busy with the fish again.

“You saw him the night you stayed at my house with Roz. You took his card off the hall table.”

“You kissed him,” she said accusingly.

This was not the time for a lecture about spying from staircases. “I thought he was okay too. I made a mistake about him.” I said gently, “The good guys don't wear white hats and the bad guys don't wear black.”

“But then how can you tell?” she asked.

My mother always told me I couldn't trust anyone. She had a hundred ways to say it, couched in her own mother's useful Yiddish phrases. There were so many, all about the uselessness of strangers. The one that summed it up was,
A goy blayht a goy
. A stranger remains a stranger. A Gentile is always a Gentile.

If you trust people, you could wind up bedding Harry Clinton.

Or loving Paolina.

She wasn't crying, but it cost her a gallant effort not to cry, and I wanted to tell her to let go, not to put on any brave front for me.

“Why did you need to talk to the Immigration man?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and continued in a shaky voice, “Because I'm illegal. I'm not an American.”

“Oh, Paolina.” I rested my hand on her head. Her shiny hair felt soft.

“My dad isn't from Puerto Rico. He's somebody I never met. I don't even have a picture of him. I never heard of him until we went to Bogotá.”

“How did you find out?” I asked. I wanted to probe to the bottom of the wound, to make sure she talked it all out. But I kept my voice gentle and easy.

“We stayed with my aunt,” she said, “my
tía
Rosa, but one night we went to this big house, this enormous house on the top of a hill. A woman in a uniform, like a nurse, answered the bell, and Mom said I should go with her. She took me down a long hallway, lit with candles, to the kitchen, and we had mint tea and cookies. She told me how to get to the bathroom, but I got lost. Maybe I took the wrong staircase. It was such a big house.”

“Go on, honey.”

“I kept walking around, looking at things. There was a big blue-and-yellow parrot on a stand in one hallway, and I talked to him but he didn't talk back. I kept thinking I'd find the kitchen again, and then I was on this balcony, in a tiny room that looked over another room, a room with almost as many books as a library. And I heard my mom talking. I should have yelled down to her. But I didn't. I listened.