Invisible Boy (33 page)

“Not if I saw him first,” I said.

“You trying for humor there?”

“No.”

And then I leaned over and barfed into the wastepaper basket.

“Cheap date,” said Skwarecki.

My “Fuck off” echoed weakly up out of the metal bucket.

“Try not to get any on your cast.”

Skwarecki and I walked into the courtyard of my building. She was tense, scoping out all the dark corners, which didn’t calm
me down any.

Some graffiti butthead had tagged the bricks next to our front door—the paint was still wet, dripping down into the mortar.

“
Four
of you live here?” asked Skwarecki once we were inside.

“It’s a two-bedroom,” I said.

“What d’you pay—six, seven hundred?”

“Eleven fifty.”

“You know you could get a whole house for that out where I live?”

“See, that’s why I’m happy to pay so much, Skwarecki. Just to make sure I don’t end up with a view of
your
sorry ass out my bedroom

window.”

She got me in a neck-lock and roughed up my hair. “G’wan, admit it. You
worship
my sorry ass. You’d pay
extra
.”

I thunked her in the ribs with my cast. “Get the hell over yourself.”

“Make me.”

“Piece of cake. I’ll scream ‘Police harassment!’ and puke on your jacket.”

She let go and I turned on the living-room lights.

“Jesus Christ,” she said, squinting against the onslaught of orange paint. “Who’s your decorator? Ray Charles?”

“If you’re giving me shit just so I stop being scared, it’s not working.”

“That paint color? I’m scared myself.”

“Maybe you should get a carry permit,” said Skwarecki.

She and Pagan crossed their arms and looked at me.

Sue was in Vermont skiing. Dean was back in Houston.

“What the fuck would
I
do with a gun, you guys? I have a goddamn cast on my shooting arm. My
third
goddamn cast, by the way.”

“Might turn out to be handy, someone comes after you,” said

Skwarecki. “You could just whack ’em over the head with it.”

“Don’t think that didn’t cross my mind tonight,” I said. “And I sure as shit wasn’t reassured.”

“Do you think someone
is
gonna come after her?” asked Pagan.

Skwarecki looked back at me. “You took the call, you know what he said. The guy mention anything made you think he was for
real?”

“He knew my
name
, Skwarecki. He knew where I worked.”

She shrugged. “Might just be some perv, though. You guys ever get that kind of call—bunch of young chicks, working a switchboard?”

“Some guy wanted to know about my underwear last July,” I said.

“You ever tell anyone your name on the phone there?” she asked. “Get to chatting a little?”

“I might have. I don’t know.”

“Or maybe that other girl told him?”

“Yumiko? She said he asked for me,” I said.

“He seem like he knew anything
else
about you?”

“Other than how the boogeyman’s gonna get me? No.”

“Nothing connected to the trial, this case?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Nothing to indicate it was anything but a prank.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You’re sure? Play it back through in your head one more time.”

I did, and still came up with nothing. “All I know is he fucking
scared
me, Skwarecki. Bad enough to make me call you.”

“Scares the hell out of me,” said Pagan, “and I don’t have shit to do with this trial. It’s not like we know for sure it
was
a prank, either. There could be a boogeyman climbing the fire escape as we speak.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “But that doesn’t make me any less freaked out.”

“You guys know I’ve got your back, right?” asked Skwarecki.

“Oh, like you had my sister’s when she got run over?” asked Pagan.

“Hey!”
I said. “She did her best.”

“You could’ve been fucking killed, Maddie,” Pague continued. “And you
don’t
know it was random. None of us do. Isn’t that right, Detective?”

“How would anyone have known I was going to be at the cemetery that morning?” I asked. “Or even what I looked like?”

“And did you finish testifying today? Or do you have more to go?” asked Pagan.

Skwarecki didn’t answer that.

“You never traced that car, right?” I asked. “I thought someone gave you guys a partial plate number.”

“Wasn’t enough. Two letters.”

“They say what it looked like, the car?” I asked.

“Big thing,” she said. “American.”

“I figured that from the sound of the engine. And it sure as hell didn’t
feel
like a Datsun.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Skwarecki. “Pedestrian versus car? Jap-scrap’ll kill you just as dead.”

I shivered.

She shook her head. “Fucking bicycle will, it’s going fast enough.”

My bones remembered the gunning engine, the
smack
that punched me out of my shoes.

“What color?” asked Pagan.

Skwarecki looked at her, puzzled.

“The
car
. If someone got a partial plate number, they had to see what color it was, right? At least Maddie’d know what to look out
for next time she’s stranded alone at a bus stop.”

“Guy said it was some kinda gold,” said Skwarecki. “With a white roof.”

That’s right. A flash of white, then pain and sky.

I hunched forward, bile climbing my throat.

Skwarecki touched my shoulder. “Yo, you okay? Gonna puke again?”

I bolted for the bathroom.

I
f getting run over is connected to this case, how’d they know you’d be back at Prospect the morning you got hit?” asked Pagan
once I’d brushed my teeth and returned to the living room.

“Someone overheard us in the restaurant across the street from the courthouse,” I said. “There were these guys at the next
table—”

“Bost talking about it all pissed off right after the grand jury,” said Skwarecki.
“Fuck.”

“How’d they know you’d be in the restaurant, though?” asked Pagan.

“Only place to eat,” said Skwarecki. “Lunchtime, you kidding?

Everybody’s
there: lawyers, cops, witnesses, jurors, any perp who’s made bail.”

“Did your perps make bail?” asked Pague.

“No,” I said.

“Doesn’t mean they don’t have friends on the outside,” said

Skwarecki. “Albert’s got some gang crap on his rap sheet. Witness intimidation’s practically the entire point of gangs.”

Pagan looked at me. “Like maybe those two guys at the cemetery the morning you got run over?”

“Jesus,” said Skwarecki. “You tried to convince me in the hospital, Madeline, and I blew you off. You think maybe those two
were in the restaurant the day before?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “They still would’ve known it was me.”

“How?” asked Pagan.

“They took my picture.” I looked at Skwarecki. “After you and Bost left they started messing around with a Polaroid camera.
I remember the flash going off, right in my eyes. They took my fucking
picture
.”

“You guys have lunch there again today?” asked Pagan.

“Like I told you,” said Skwarecki. “Only fucking ziti for twenty blocks.”

“But how would they know where I
work
?” I asked.

“The address was your work address on all your witness statements,” she said. “Anybody could’ve sat behind Bost today and
seen it.”

“This is really getting creepy,” said Pagan.

“Creepy, but still weird,” I said.

“Weird how?” asked Skwarecki.

“Well, it’s not like anyone actually threatened me about testifying
specifically
, right?” I said. “I mean, the guys at the cemetery, the phone call tonight. If they’re trying to intimidate me as a witness,
shouldn’t somebody have come right out and said so? Like ‘Go to court and you’ll sleep with the fishes’ or some shit?”

“Maybe they thought they’d killed you the first time, with the car,” said Pagan. “And then when you showed up today, they
realized they’d only winged you.”

“Even so. The guy on the phone tonight scared the crap out of me, but he
didn’t
tell me not to get back on the stand tomorrow.”

Maybe it
was
just a prank call after all.

“They don’t have to come right out and say it,” said Skwarecki. “Shit like this? They figure you’ll know.”

“But I
didn’t
know. Even you didn’t, really,” I said.

Pagan crossed her arms. “It’s still fucking scary.”

“Look,” I said, “on the bright side? They know where I work, but they don’t know where I live.”

Skwarecki nodded. “Is your home number unlisted?”

“No,” I said.

“Is it in your name?”

“All our names,” said Pagan.

“Any of you ask Ma Bell not to publish the address?”

“Shit,”
I said.

Skwarecki glanced at the security grate over our fire-escape window. “Not to mention someone just tagged your building. Paint
was still wet, right?”

“What?” said Pagan.

“Fresh graffiti by the front entry,” said our friend the detective. “
There’s
your overt threat.”

Pague went pale. “You got a gun, Skwarecki?”

“I’m a cop. Of course I’ve got a fucking gun.”

“
On
you?”

Skwarecki peeled back her blazer, revealing the holstered pistol at her hip. Then she put her right foot up on the table and
lifted her trouser cuff so we could see the smaller one strapped to her ankle. “Any more questions?”

“Yeah,” said my sister. “Want to sleep over?”

Not like any of us actually
slept
, really. Pague and I both went to bed a while after we’d made up the sofa for Skwarecki, but I’d moved from Dean’s-and-my
bed to Sue’s an hour later, apprehensive in the dark.

Around midnight, Pague reached her foot across the space between the beds to poke me in the calf.

“You still awake?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Is it
worth
it, going through all this?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I just can’t believe I’m putting you through it.”

“Look, if you think it’s important I’ve got your back.”

“Thank you.”

“You should probably be glad Dean’s out of town, though. He’d freak.”

“Hey!” said Skwarecki out in the living room. “Simmer down in there or I’m gonna have to separate you.”

Before I could answer, the phone rang.

I threw off the blankets and climbed out of bed.

“You think it’s the guy?” whispered Pague. “Calling
here
?”

“My luck, I bet it’s Astrid.”

I answered it in the dark kitchen, and shut the door behind me.

“Bunny?”

“Hey there,” I said softly. “How’s Texas?”

“Not bad,” he said. “One of the sales reps took me out to dinner at his favorite restaurant tonight.”

“How was it?”

“Chicken-fried steak so big sumbitch hung off both sides of the plate.”

“We’ll have plenty of Szechuan waiting soon as you’re home.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s going to be a little longer than I thought.”

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Actually, everything’s great. Christoph just promoted me to sales—raise
and
a commission.”

I could hear the pride and relief in his voice, and I was incredibly happy for him after the rocky plains of the last year
and a half.

Hardly the right moment to come clean about the armed cop camped on our sofa. Pagan was right; he’d totally lose his shit.

“Dean, that is
awesome
. Congratulations. And it makes me like Christoph a whole lot better, that he knows what a good thing he has in you.”

“Well, I have to go to Canada as soon as I’m done here. Quebec, to a paper mill. My first sales call.”

“Will you be back in time for Mom’s nuptial event?” I asked.

“I’ve got five more days here, then La Tuque. I’ll do my best.”

“I could use the moral support, you know?”

“I just want to see you,” he said.

“Me too you. I’m really glad things are going so well, but it still sucks to have you on the road.”

And I’m scared.

“How’s the cast?”

“Itchy.”

“When does it come off this time?”

“Another couple of weeks,” I said.

“I can’t wait to see your naked arm again.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay? You sound kind of sad.”

“Just tired,” I said.

“I love you, Bunny.”

“Me too you,” I said, and we hung up.

I walked back to the bedroom.

A car drove by in the street below, schussing through the slush.

“You didn’t tell him,” said Pagan from across the darkened room.

“This kind of news? I figured I’d better do it in person.”

If I’d told him all the details of my day, he would’ve come running home on the first prop-jet out of Amarillo. Just when
things were starting to look up for him.

I didn’t care about the paycheck, just his pride. He had something to excel at now—as he so very much deserved.