Black Heart

Page 9

 

  There’s always been a liquor cabinet in the dining room. I don’t think anyone’s been in it since before Dad died and Mom went to prison. There was so much clutter in front of it that it wasn’t exactly easy to get into. I find a couple of bottles of wine in the back, along with some bottles of brown liquor with labels I don’t recognize, and a few newer-looking things in the front. The necks are coated in dust. I take everything out and pile it on the dining room table.

  “What’s Armagnac?” I call to Sam.

  “It’s fancy brandy,” my grandfather says from the kitchen. A few moments later he sticks his head into the room. “What’s all that?”

  “Mom’s liquor,” I say.

  He picks up one of the bottles of wine and looks at the label. Then he turns it upside down. “Lot of sediment. This is either going to be the best thing you ever drank or vinegar. ”

  The inventory turns out to be three bottles of possibly sour wine; the Armagnac; a bottle of rye that’s mostly full; pear brandy with a pale globe of fruit floating in it; and a container of Campari, which is bright red and smells like cough medicine.

  Grandad opens all three bottles of wine when we sit down to dinner. He pours the first into a glass. It’s a dark amber, almost the same color as the rye.

  He shakes his head. “Dead. Toss it. ”

  “Shouldn’t we at least try it?” I ask.

  Sam looks at my grandfather nervously, like he’s expecting to get in trouble for our liquor cabinet raid. I don’t point out that among most people I know, legal drinking age isn’t going to exactly be a sticking point. Sam should cast his mind back to Philip’s wake.

  Grandad laughs. “Go ahead if you want, but you’re going to be sorry. It’ll probably do better in your gas tank than in your stomach. ”

  I take his word for it.

  The next one is nearly as black as ink. Grandad takes a sip and grins. “Here we go. You kids are in for a treat. Don’t just glug this stuff. ”

  In the kind of fancy magazines my mother reads when she’s shopping for men, they rate wines, praising them for tasting like things that don’t sound good to drink—butter and fresh cut grass and oak. The descriptions used to make me laugh, but this wine really does taste like plums and black pepper, with a delicious sourness that fills my whole mouth.

  “Wow,” says Sam.

  We finish off the rest of the wine and start on the rye. Sam pours his into a water glass.

  “So what’s the matter?” Grandad asks him.

  Sam bangs his head against the table lightly and then downs his drink in three long swallows. I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten to be worried about getting in trouble with anyone. “My girlfriend dumped me. ”

  “Huh,” Grandad says, nodding. “The young lady with you at Philip’s funeral? I remember her. Seemed nice enough. That’s too bad. I’m sorry, kid. ”

  “I really—I loved her,” Sam says. Then he refills his glass.

  Grandad goes into the other room for the Armagnac. “What happened?”

  “She hid something big—and when I found out, I was really pissed. And she was sorry. But by the time I was ready to forgive her, she was the one who was pissed. And then I had to be sorry. But I wasn’t. And by the time I was, she had a different boyfriend. ”

  My grandfather shakes his head. “Sometimes a girl’s got to walk away before she knows what she wants. ”

  Sam pours some of the Armagnac into his glass, along with the dregs of the rye. He tops off the concoction with a shot of Campari.

  “Don’t drink that!” I say.

  He toasts to us and then tosses the whole thing back.

  Even Grandad winces. “No girl’s worth the hangover you’re going to have come morning. ”

  “Daneca is,” Sam says, words slurring.

  “You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last. ”

  “Not ever?” I ask.

  Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots. ”

  I get up and start stacking dishes in the sink. I’m not too steady on my feet right now, but I manage it.

  When I was a kid, I guess I loved Lila like that. Even when I thought I’d killed her, I still saw her as the ideal girl—the pinnacle of girlhood that nobody else was ever going to be able to get close to. But when she came back, I had to see her the way she was—complicated, angry, and a lot more like me than I’d ever guessed. I might not know what Lila is capable of, but I know her.

  Love changes us, but we change how we love too.

  “Come on,” Sam says from the table, pouring bright red liquor into teacups he’s found somewhere. “Let’s do shots. ”

  I wake up with the horrible taste of cough medicine in my mouth.

  Someone is pounding on the front door. I turn over and cover my head with a pillow. I don’t care who it is. I’m not going downstairs.

  “Cassel!” My grandfather’s voice booms through the house.

  “What?” I shout back.

  “There’s somebody to see you. He says he’s from the government. ”

  I groan and roll out of bed. So much for my avoiding answering the door. I pull on jeans over my boxers, rub sleep out of my eyes, and grab for a shirt and a pair of clean gloves. Stubble itches along my cheeks.

  As I brush my teeth, trying to scrub the taste of the night before out of my mouth, dread finally catches up with me. If my grandfather guesses that I’m thinking about working for Yulikova, I have no idea what he will do. There’s no worse kind of traitor to guys like Grandad. And as much as I know he loves me, he’s also somebody who believes in putting his duty before feelings.

  I shuffle down the stairs.

  It’s Agent Jones. I’m surprised. I haven’t seen him or Agent Hunt since they turned me and Barron over to the Licensed Minority Division. He looks unchanged—dark suit, mirrored sunglasses. The only difference I detect is that his pasty skin looks red across his cheeks, like sunburn or maybe windburn. He’s standing in the doorway, shoulder against the frame like he’s going to push his way in. Grandad obviously hasn’t invited him over the threshold.

  “Oh, hey,” I say, coming to the door.

  “Can I talk to you . . . ” He gives my grandfather a dark look. “Outside?”

  I nod, but Grandad puts a bare hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to go anywhere with him, kid. ”

  Agent Jones is staring at my grandfather’s hand like it’s a snake.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “He was working Philip’s murder. ”

  “Fat lot of good that did,” says Grandad, but he lets go of me. He walks to the counter and pours coffee into two mugs. “You take anything in your coffee, government leech?”

  “No, thanks,” Jones says, and points at Grandad’s hand. “You hurt yourself there?”

  “Wasn’t me that got hurt. ” Grandad hands me one of the cups.

  I take a swig and follow Jones out through the sagging porch and into the front yard.

  “What do you want?” I ask under my breath. We’re standing near his shiny black car with the dark tinted windows. The cold breeze cuts through the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I cup the mug closer to me for warmth, but the coffee is cooling fast.

  “Something the matter? Afraid the old man’s going to find out what you’ve been up to?” His smile is gloating.

  I suppose it’s too much to expect that just because Jones and I are on the same side now, he’s going to start acting like it.

  “If you’ve got something to say to me, spit it out,” I tell him.

  He folds hi
s arms over his chest. I can see the bulge of his gun. He reminds me of every mobster I’ve ever met, except less polite. “Yulikova needs to see you. She said to tell you that she’s sorry for bothering you on a weekend, but something really big has come up. She says that you’ll want to hear it. ”

  “Too big for them to tell you what it is?” I don’t know why I’m taunting him. I guess I’m scared, what with him flaunting my connection to the Feds right in front of Grandad. And I’m angry—the kind of anger that burns you up from the inside. The kind of anger that makes you stupid.

  His lip curls. “Come on. Get in the car. ”

  I shake my head. “No way. I can’t. Tell her I’ll come later today. I just have to come up with an excuse. ”

  “You have exactly ten minutes to square this with your grandfather, or I’ll tell him that you framed your own brother. That you ratted him out to us. ”

  “Yulikova didn’t tell you to do that,” I say. A shiver runs through me that’s only partially from the cold. “She’d be pissed off if she knew you were threatening me. ”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, you’re the one who’s screwed. Now, are you coming with me?”

  I swallow roughly. “Okay. Let me get my coat. ”

  Agent Jones is still grinning when I go back into the house. I swallow the rest of the coffee, even though it’s like ice.

  “Grandad,” I shout. “They want to ask me some questions about Mom. I’ll be right back. ”

  My grandfather comes halfway down the stairs. He’s wearing gloves. “You don’t have to go. ”

  “It’ll be fine. ” I tug on a long black coat and grab for my phone and wallet.

  I feel like a terrible person.

  Whatever else I’m shaky on, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to con the people you love.

  Grandad gives me a long look. “Do you want me to come along?”

  “I think someone better stay with Sam,” I say.

  At the mention of his name, Sam looks up from where he’s draped on the couch. A strange expression passes over his face, and a moment later, he lunges for the wastebasket.

  Hard to believe it, but someone’s about to have a worse morning than I’m having.

  I don’t say anything while Agent Jones drives. I play a game on my phone and look out the window from time to time, checking on our progress. At some point I realize we’re not taking the right roads to get to Yulikova’s office, but I still don’t speak. What I do is start planning.

  A couple more minutes and I am going to tell him I need a rest stop. Then I’m going to lose him. If I can scope out an old enough car nearby, I can hot-wire it, but it would be better if I could con a ride. I go over various stories in my head and settle on looking for a middle-aged couple—a husband who’s big enough not to be intimidated by my height or my brown skin, and a wife to argue on my behalf, ideally a couple who might have kids about my age. I’m planning on giving them a story about a drunk friend who wouldn’t give me his keys and stranded me without a way home.

  I’ll have to work fast.

  As I am thinking it through, we pull into the parking lot of a hospital, three huge brick towers linked at the base, with an ambulance blinking its red lights in front of the emergency room entrance. I let out my breath. Escaping from a hospital is a piece of cake.

  “We’re meeting Yulikova here?” I ask incredulously. Then I think better of it. “Is she all right?”

  “As all right as she ever is,” he says.

  I don’t know what that means, but I don’t want to admit it. Instead of responding, I try the handle, and when I can get it open, I jump out of the car. We walk together to one of the side doors. The hallway is antiseptic, typical. No one questions us.

  Jones seems to know where we’re going. We pass a nurse’s station, and Jones nods to an elderly woman behind the desk. Then we walk down another long corridor. I glance inside an open doorway to see a man with a big grizzly beard and balloons around his wrists, so that he can’t bring his own hands to his face. He turns to me with a haunted look.

  We stop at the next door—this one closed—and Agent Jones knocks once before heading inside.

  It’s a regular hospital room but clearly both larger and better-furnished than some others we passed. There is a multicolored afghan thrown over the foot of the hospital bed and several jade plants along the window. There are also two comfortable- but generic-looking chairs sitting across from the bed.

  Yulikova is in a batik-print robe and slippers. She’s got a plastic cup and is watering the plants when we come in. She’s not wearing makeup, and her hair looks not so much wild as uncombed, but she doesn’t otherwise look unwell.

  “Hello, Cassel. Agent Jones. ”

  “Hi,” I say, lingering in the doorway like I might with a sick relative that I haven’t seen in a long while. “What’s going on?”

  She looks at her surroundings and laughs. “Oh, this. Yes, it must seem a little bit dramatic. ”

  “Yeah—and Agent Jones hustled me over here like a house was on fire and I was the only bucket of water in town. ” I sound only half as annoyed as I am, which is plenty. “I didn’t even get to shower. I’m hungover and probably stink like I’ve been using booze as aftershave—except that I also didn’t get to shave. What’s the deal?”

  Jones glowers.

  She laughs a little and shakes her head at him. “I’m sorry to hear that, Cassel. There’s a bathroom through there that you are welcome to use, if you’d like. The hospital has little packets of toiletries. ”