But Laura knew him.
Whatever had stopped her outside the room was gone. She crossed the room quickly now, sat down on the edge of the bed, carefully took his scrawny hands in her own, leaned forward and kissed his brow.
“Oh, Danny. What have you done to yourself?”
He gave her a weak smile. “Screwed things up as usual.”
“But this. . .”
“I want you to know—it wasn’t from a needle.”
Laura threw a glance over her shoulder at Cassie, then returned her attention to her brother.
“I always knew,” she said.
“You never said anything.”
“I was waiting for you to tell me.”
He shook his head slowly. “I could never put one past you.”
“When were you going to tell me?” Laura asked.
“That’s why I came back the last time. But I lost my nerve. And then when I got back to the city, I wasn’t just HIV-positive anymore, but had full-blown AIDS and . . .”
His voice, already weak, trailed off.
“Oh, Danny, why? What did you think—that I wouldn’t love you anymore?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I just didn’t want to be a bother.”
“That’s the last thing you are,” Laura assured him. “I know . . .” She had to swallow and start again. “I know you won’t be getting better, but you’ve got to at least have your family with you. Come home with me.”
“No.”
“Why not? Mom and Dad will want to—”
Dan cut her off, anger giving his voice some strength. “They won’t want anything to do with me.”
“But—”
“You never understood, did you? We lived in the same house, but it was two different worlds. I lived in one and the rest of you lived in the other. I don’t know why things worked out that way, but you’ve got to accept that it’s never going to change. That not even something like this could change it.”
Laura didn’t say anything for a long moment. She simply sat there, holding his hands, looking at him.
“It was so awful for you,” she said finally. “Wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Everything, except for you.”
That seemed to be too much for her, knowing that on top of his dying, how hard his life had been, right from when he was a child. She bowed down over him, holding him, shoulders shaking as she wept.
Cassie backed out of the room to join Joe where he was waiting in the hall.
“It’s got to be tough,” he said.
Cassie nodded, not trusting her voice. Her own gaze was blurry with tears.
7
“You never told her how you found me,” Dan said later.
When Laura had gone to get tea, Cassie and Joe came back into the room, sitting on hardbacked chairs beside the bed. It was still hours until dusk but an overcast sky cast a gloomy light into the room.
“And you won’t, will you?” he added.
Cassie shook her head.
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I guess I just don’t want her to get the wrong idea about the cards. You don’t use them or any oracular device to find answers; you use them to ask questions. Some people don’t get that.”
He nodded slowly. “Laura wouldn’t. She was always looking for miracles to solve everything. Like the way it was for me back home.”
“Her heart was in the right place,” Joe said.
Dan glanced at him. “Still is.” He returned his attention to Cassie. “But those cards aren’t normal Tarot cards.”
Cassie had shown him the cards the night before, the three images that had taken her and Joe up into the Tombs and eventually to Dan’s room here in the hospice.
“No,” she said. “They’re real magic.”
“Where did you get them? I mean, can I ask you that?”
Cassie smiled. “Of course you can. They come from the same place where your wild horses are running.”
“They. . . they’re real?”
“Depends on how you translate real,” Joe said.
Cassie gave him a light tap on his shoulder with a closed fist. “Don’t start with that.”
“What place are you talking about?” Dan asked.
For once, Joe was more forthcoming than he usually was with a stranger.
“The spiritworld,” he said. “It’s a lot closer than most people think. Open yourself up to it and it comes in close, so close it’s like it’s right at hand, no further away than what’s out there on the other side of that window.” He paused a moment, then added, “Dangerous place to visit, outside of a dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream that took me there,” Dan said.
“Wasn’t the drugs either,” Joe told him.
“But—”
“Listen to me, what took you there is the same thing that called Cassie to the old juju woman who gave her those cards. You had a need. Doesn’t happen often, but sometimes that’s enough to take you across.”
“I still have that need.”
Joe nodded. “But first the drugs you kept taking got in the way. And now you’re dying and your body knows better than to let your spirit go visiting. It wants to hang on and the only thing that’s keeping you going is spirit.”
“What about Laura’s need when she was looking for me?” Dan asked. “Why didn’t the spiritworld touch her?”
“It brought her to me, didn’t it?” Cassie said.
“That’s true.”
Dan looked away, out the window. The view he had through it was filled with the boughs of one of those big oak trees. Cassie didn’t think he was seeing them.
“You know,” he said after a moment, not looking away from the window. “Before all of this, I wouldn’t have believed you for a moment. Wouldn’t have even listened to you. But you start thinking about spiritual things at a time like this. When you know you’re going to die, it’s hard not to.” His gaze returned to them, moving slowly from one to the other. “I’d like to see them again . . . those horses.”
Cassie glanced at Joe and he nodded.
“When you’re ready to leave,” he said, “give me a call.”
“You mean that? You can do that?”
“Sure.”
Dan started to reach for the pen and paper that was on the table beside his bed. “What’s your number?”
“We don’t have a phone,” Joe said. “You just think about me and those horses hard enough and I’ll come take you to them.”
“But—”
“He can do it,” Cassie said. “Even at the best of times, he’s walking with one foot in either world. He’ll know when you’re ready and he’ll take you there.”
Dan studied Joe for a moment and Cassie knew what he was seeing, the dark Coyote eyes, the crow’s head sitting just under his human skin. There was something solemn and laughing wild about him, all at once, as though he knew a joke no one else did that wrapped him in a feral kind of wisdom that could scare you silly. But Dan was past fear.
“That’s something else you discover when you’re this close to the edge,” he said. “You get this ability to cut away the bullshit and look right into a person, see them for exactly as they are.”
“So what are you seeing?” Joe asked.
Dan smiled. “Damned if I know. But I know I can trust you.”
Cassie knew exactly what he meant.
8
Summer gave way to fall. On a cold October night, Cassie woke near dawn to find Joe sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his boots. He came over to the bed and kissed her cheek.
“Go back to sleep,” he said. “I might be awhile.”
They’d been up late that night and she fell back asleep before she could think to ask where he was going.
9
Dan’s funeral was two days later. It was a small service with few in attendance. Laura. Cassie. A few of the caregivers from the hospice. After the service, Cassie took Laura down to the lakefro
nt. They sat on a bench at the end of the Pier where they’d first met, looking out at Wolf Island. A cold wind blew in off the lake and they sat close to each other for warmth.
“Where’s Joe?” Laura asked.
“He had to go out of town.”
Laura looked different to Cassie, more sure of herself, less haunted for all her sadness. She’d been working as a bartender for the past few months—”See, I knew that M.A. would be useful for something,” she’d joked—spending her afternoons with Dan.
“It’s been really hard,” she said. “Especially the last couple of weeks.”
Cassie put her arm around Laura’s shoulders. “Probably the hardest thing you’ll ever do.”
“But I wouldn’t give up any of it. What Dan had to go through, yes, but not my being with him.”
“He was lucky you found him in time.”
“It wasn’t luck,” Laura said.
Cassie raised her eyebrows.
“He told me about the cards.” She shook her head before Cassie could say anything. “No, it’s okay. I understand. I know it would be so tempting to use something like that to make all your decisions for you. I’m not asking for that.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “But I was wondering . . . can they show me Dan one last time? Just so I can know if he finally caught up with those horses? Just so I can know he’s okay?”
“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “I think the only way we ever find out where we go in the end, is when we make the journey ourselves.”
Laura gave a slow nod, unable to hide her disappointment. “I . . . I guess I understand.”
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t look.”
She took her arm away from Laura’s shoulders and brought out the set of cards the old juju woman had given her, sitting there on her porch with the bottle tree clinking on the lawn. Removing the elastic, she gave the cards a shuffle, then offered the pack to Laura.
“Pick one,” she said.
“Don’t you have to lay them out in some kind of pattern?”
“Ordinary Tarot cards, yes. But you’re looking to see into someplace they can’t take you now.”
Laura placed her fingers on the top of the deck. She held off for a long moment, then finally took the card and turned it over. There were horses running along the lakeshore on it, golden horses with white manes and tails. The image was too small to make out details, but they could see a figure on the back of one of them, head thrown back. Laughing, perhaps. Finally free.
Smiling, Laura returned the card to the pack.
“Where he goes,” she said, “I hope he’ll always be that happy.”
Cassie wound the elastic back around the cards and returned them to her pocket.
“Maybe if we believe it strongly enough it’ll be true,” she said.
Laura turned to look at her. Her eyes where shiny with tears but that lost, haunted look Cassie had seen in them that first time they met was gone.
“Then I’ll believe it,” Laura said.
They leaned back against the bench, looking out across the water. The sound of the ferry’s horn echoed faintly across the water, signaling its return from the island.
In the Land of the Unforgiven
No people sing with such pure voices as those who live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song.
—Franz Kafka
The little dead boy shows up in his dreams, the night after Cray hears how he died. Stands there in a place that’s only half-light and shadows. Stands there singing, part of a chorus of children’s voices, the other singers hidden in the darkness.
The pure, sweet sound of their voices wakes Cray and puts tears in his eyes. The springs creak as he turns to lie on his back. He stares up at the cracks in the ceiling and can’t get the sound out of his head.
Cray waits in the shadows pooling at the mouth of the alley, his gaze on the lit window. Third floor of a brownstone, middle apartment. A swollen moon is just setting, so big and close it feels like it’s going down only a few blocks over. He watches the last fat sliver slip away, then returns his gaze to the apartment.
A silhouette moves across the window. Cray starts to take a step back, stops himself when he realizes what he’s doing. Like Erwin could see him.
The guys he came up with in the old neighborhood wouldn’t have let it go so long. Something like this, you moved in, hard, fast. You didn’t take time to think. You just popped him, end of story.
But Cray’s a long way from the old neighborhood. Not so much where he is, but who he is.
Earlier that afternoon, Danny Salmorin comes into the gym for a workout. He’s stand-up for a cop. Detective, Crowsea Precinct. There’s nothing soft about him. He’s in here regular as clockwork, three days a week. Free weights, jogs on the machines.
“Hey, Joe,” Danny says. “How’s it hanging?”
Cray doesn’t have time for small talk. This thing’s been on his mind for a couple of days now.
“Sonny Erwin,” he says. “You know him?”
“He’s scum. What’s to know?”
“He’s selling babies, Danny. Selling them for sex, body parts—whatever people are buying.”
Something flickers darkly in Danny’s eyes. “You’ve got something solid on this?”
Cray tells him about Juanita’s little boy.
“Let me talk to her,” Danny says. “I’ll set up a meeting with the D.A.’s office and—”
He breaks off when Cray shakes his head.
“She’s illegal,” Cray says. “No way she’ll talk to the D.A.”
“You’re tying my hands.”
“This guy’s a freak—you know what I’m saying?”
Danny nods. “I don’t need an excuse to look for some way to take him down, Joe. We’ve been on him for two years now and we can’t touch him. He plays it too clean.”
“These kids . . .”
Cray lets his voice trail off. He sees it in Danny’s eyes. No forgiveness. Shame for how the system keeps a freak like Erwin on the street. The law’s reactive these days—it can’t protect anymore, it can barely avenge, and even then you need hard facts to grease the wheels of justice and get them moving. Danny’s carrying the weight of all those lives taken, all those lives that will be taken, and he can’t do a damn thing to stop it.
“Something was to happen to Erwin,” Danny says, measuring the words out, careful, “and there was any kind of a problem, I’d be the one to call.”
Cray doesn’t get it, not then, but he nods to let Danny know he’s listening.
Later he’s sitting up in his office, can’t concentrate on the paperwork. All he can think of is what Mona told him about Juanita and her little boy. He looks out through the window, down to where Danny’s jogging on one of the machines. The darkness has settled deep in Danny’s eyes. Sweat’s dripping from his brow, soaking his T-shirt. He’s been on the machine for forty minutes now and he hasn’t begun to burn off his frustration and anger.
Cray remembers the last stretch he pulled. He’s been clean a long time, but you never forget what it’s like inside. He swore he’d never go back, and he’s held good to that promise, but he’s thinking now that maybe there are some things worth giving up your freedom for.
All he has to do is ask himself, what kind of freedom did Juanita’s kid have?
Cray squares his shoulders and crosses the street. As he walks up to the entrance of the brownstone, he hears the sound of a steel door closing. The sound’s in his head, only he can hear it. A piece of memory he’s going to be reliving soon.
It takes him maybe six seconds to jimmy the door—the lock’s crap. It’s been ten years since he’s creeped a joint, but he could’ve done this one in his sleep.
He cracks the door, steps inside. Starts up the stairs. Takes them two at a time. He’s not even winded when he reaches the third floor landing.
The sound in his head now is that of a children’s chorus.
“Let it go,” Mona says before he
leaves for the day.
She’s standing in the door to his office, tall and rangy in purple and pink Spandex shorts, black halter top. Red hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’s got an aerobics class in ten minutes. Anywhere from eight to fifteen out-of-shape, well-heeled yuppies who never come up against the kind of thing he can’t get out of his head.
Guys like Erwin know the drill. They’re hitting the poor and the illegals. The ones who can’t complain, can’t defend themselves.
The closest Mona’s class is going to come to it is maybe a couple of lines in the morning papers—if one of the kids gets even that much coverage. Most of them simply disappear and nobody hears about it, nobody cares except for their families.
“Juanita’s got to come forward,” he says. “Without her, they can’t do a thing.”
“She’s got three other kids. What’s going to happen to them if she gets deported?”
“That’s what I told Danny.”
She waits a beat, then says, “We did what we could.”
He can see it cost her to say that, but she’s got to know he can’t let it go now.
“And the next kid he snatches?” he asks.
She looks at him, knows where this is taking him.
“I should never have told you,” she says.
He shrugs.
“You’ll never get away with it.”
“I don’t plan to,” he tells her. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, you’ve got to take responsibility for your actions.”
“But Erwin—”
Cray knows how cold his voice is. “That’s something Erwin still has to learn.”
It goes easy. Three A.M. and Erwin doesn’t even ask who’s at the door. He just opens it up, smiles. He probably gets deliveries all the time—whenever opportunity presents itself to those who’re snatching the kids and babies for him.
The thing that gets to Cray is, Sonny Erwin looks so normal. Just an average joe. The monster’s hiding there in his eyes, but you have to know it’s there to see it.