“It’s about two boys.”
“You?”
“And my brother.”
“You don’t have a brother.” Michael waited, and she nodded. “Ah. Another lie.”
“I’ve not seen him since I was ten.” Sun pushed heat through the windows. Michael showed her a photograph. Colorless and cracked, it was of two boys on a field of snow and mud. Their pants were too short, the jackets patched. “That’s me on the right.”
She took the photo and her eyes softened. “So young.”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Julian.”
She traced Julian’s face with a finger, and then touched Michael’s. Color moved into her face, the empathy that was one of her best traits. Her accent thickened as it did when she got emotional. “Do you miss him very much?”
Michael nodded, knowing that she would listen, seeing it in her face, the way it softened. “They say you don’t remember much before the age of two, but that’s not true. I was ten months old when Julian was left naked on the bank of a half-frozen creek. He was a newborn. It was snowing. I was with him.”
“Ten months old?”
“Yes.”
“And you remember this?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Like what?”
“Black trees and snow on my face.”
Elena touched the photograph.
“The silence when Julian stopped screaming.”
Elena kept her eyes down as Michael spoke of two boys dumped like trash in the woods, of cold water and the hunters that carried them out, of long years at the orphanage and his brother’s deterioration. He spoke of crowded rooms and sickness, of conflict and boredom and the indifference of malnutrition. He explained how strong kids learned to steal and weak ones learned to run; how older kids had the power to hurt. “You can’t imagine.”
Elena listened carefully as he spoke. She listened for lies and half-truths and the tells that would reveal them. She did this because she was smart and wary and carrying a child that meant more than her own life. But there was honesty in him when he spoke: flashes of anger and regret, a fire banked long in his heart. “Hennessey died on the bathroom floor. I took the knife and I ran.”
“To protect your brother?”
“Because I was the oldest.”
“You ran and took the blame with you?” Michael said nothing, but Elena knew from his face that the statement was true. “What happened next?”
Michael shrugged. “Julian was adopted.”
“And you were not.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“It is what it is.”
“And once in New York?”
Michael rolled his shoulders. “The city is not a good place for a boy alone.”
“What do you mean?”
Michael slipped into the left lane, passed a slow-moving car. His voice did not change when he said, “I killed a man nine days after I got off the bus.”
“Why?”
“Because I was small and he was strong. Because the world is cruel. Because he was drunk and insane and wanted to set me on fire for the fun of it.”
“Oh, my God.”
“He found me asleep near the docks, and doused me with gasoline before I could get to my feet. He had one foot on my chest, trying to get the match lit. I remember his shoes, black, tied with white string; pants so crusted with grime they crunched under my fingers. The first match didn’t light. It was damp, I guess. Or he stripped the sulfur. I don’t know. God, maybe. The second match was in his hand when I put the knife in his leg. Right in the side, just above his knee. It hit bone and I twisted it until he fell. Then, I put it in his stomach and I ran.”
Elena shook her head, no words.
Ten years old ...
Michael cleared his throat. “There was a lot of that on the street,” he said. “Insanity. Random violence. That’s the unpredictable stuff. Beyond that, it’s easy to spot. People try to own you. They try to control you, put you to work, use you, screw you. Whatever. If a kid on the streets can’t go to the authorities, he doesn’t have much. I was lucky, I guess.”
“How?”
“I was strong, fast, knew how to fight. Iron House gave me that. It made me alert and unforgiving. What I didn’t know until I landed on the streets was that I was smart, too. That people would see that, and that I could use it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One kid on the streets is vulnerable. Two together are better, but still not safe. A dozen, though, or twenty, that’s an army. Ten months after stepping off the bus, I had six kids working for me. Six months later, I had another ten, some younger than me, some as old as seventeen, even eighteen. We slept together, ate together. And we did jobs. Smash and grab. Burglary. Tourists were always an easy mark. Eventually, people started to notice.”
“Police?”
Michael shook his head. “Gangs, mostly. Some small-time hoods. We weren’t getting rich, but there was value there. Electronics, jewelry, cash. Some people figured it’d be easy to come in and take what I’d built. Kids, they figured, would be easy to scare, easy to co-opt. It was an untapped market, a low-risk opportunity. It got violent.”
He touched the white line on the side of his neck, and Elena asked, “Not a glass door?”
“Another lie. I’m sorry.”
She knew the scars he carried: two on his stomach, three on his ribs, the long one on his neck. They were pale, slightly raised, and she knew the feel of them, cool under her lips.
“We were living under a bridge in Spanish Harlem, maybe seven of us at the time. We’d been there for a few weeks. We moved around, you see? A week in one place, a month in another. I guess we stayed there a day longer than we should have, ’cause some local gangbangers showed up one afternoon. They didn’t want a thing other than to beat the crap out of us. There were only four of them, but everybody else ran.”
“The other children?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I stayed.”
“And?”
Michael shrugged. “They cut me, I cut them back; but it was only a matter of time. Eventually, they got me down. One of them stepped so hard on my wrist it broke bones. They pinned me down. I should have died.”
“What happened?”
“Someone came.”
Something in the way he said it made Elena think this was the crux of it. A half mile of industrial buildings slid by on greased skids: metal slabs on dark tarmac, chain-link fencing and sodium lights on tall poles. Elena said, “Michael?”
“I’d heard of him but never seen him. He was just a name to me, then, someone to know about, a man to avoid. He was ruthless, people said. A criminal. A killer.”
“Mafia?”
“No. Not Italian. Nobody really knew what he was, although some said Polish; others, Romanian. Actually, he was American, born in Queens to a Serbian prostitute. An orphan, I later learned. He was there when the fight started, a long car on the other side of the street. His window was down. He was watching.”
“While you fought?”
“They got me down, put a knife here.” He touched the line on his neck. It was seven inches long with a jagged twist in the middle. “I was pretty sure they were going to kill me. I was bleeding. They were working themselves up. I saw it in their faces. They were going to do it. Then he was just there.”
Michael blinked and relived it: Crooked legs in a navy suit. Dark hair salted white.
“He looked lost,” Michael said. “That was my first thought. This man is lost and dumb enough to smile about it. Then I saw how fear came over the men who were beating me. They stepped back, hands up. One of them dropped his knife…”
Do you know who I am?
Michael could still feel the steel in the old man’s voice, but there was no way to explain it. No one else could fully grasp what the voice meant that day, what it meant now.
You should leave.
“They didn’t stay to talk.” Michael cleared his throat. “They just ran.”
“Michael, you’re sweating.”
Michael palmed sweat from his forehead. He still saw the old man’s face: a narrow jaw and thin eyebrows, eyes as dark and dull as stone. Two men were with him. They stood while the old man squatted at Michael’s side. He was in his forties, lean with city-pale skin and narrow, maimed hands. His teeth, on the bottom, were crooked and white.
The others ran. Why didn’t you?
I don’t know. I just couldn’t.
How old are you?
Twelve.
Your name is Michael?
Yes.
I’ve heard about you.
But Michael was fading. The blue suit rustled as the old man stood.
What do you think, Jimmy?
I think he’s a tough little shit.
Shoes scraped concrete. Light dimmed as Michael bled, and words came down like fog off the river.
That my son was such a boy as this ...
Michael was sweating heavily, suddenly warm in the car. He felt the old man’s face, papery and hot under his hand. He felt brittle ribs and a failing chest, the old man’s final, sucking try at breath. “He taught me everything I know,” Michael said. “He made me what I am.”
“You’re pale. Jesus, Michael. You’re white as a sheet.”
“He gave me a home.” Michael’s voice faded as the car drifted left. “He gave me a home and I killed him.”
Little else was said for the next three hours. Elena asked, but Michael shook his head, spoke in fragments. “He was dying. I loved him.”
“And they want to kill you for this?”
“And because I’m with you. They think I’ll sell them out. Go to the cops.”
“For me?”
“For a normal life.”
“Would you do that?”
“No.”
Michael pictured the old man nine days ago. Jaundiced and stripped of flesh, he was propped up with a view of the river. Michael took his hand and told him for the first time about Elena: how he felt, why he wanted to quit the life. He apologized for keeping her a secret.
She’s special. I don’t want this to touch her.
This life?
Yes.
The old man understood.
She loves you?
I believe that she does.
The old man nodded yellow tears.
She is a gift, Michael, and rare for men like us.
Men like us?
Men for whom life makes very few gifts.
But how do I tell her?
The truth? You don’t.
Never?
Not if you wish to keep her ...
“Michael?” Elena’s voice was worried.
“Just give me a minute.” But it took more time than that. There was so much to convey and so little she could understand. He killed a man at ten to save his life, and killed the next to make the old man proud. “There are no innocents,” he said, and the words were a memory of childhood.
“What does that mean?”
Michael touched a patch of skin above his eye. “Something someone told me once. It doesn’t matter.”
“I need to know more. You told me you loved him and that you killed him. You can’t leave it at that. You can’t leave me with that and nothing else.”
“Just give me a minute.”
But the right minute never came.
They hit traffic north of Baltimore. One hour stretched to two. The engine droned, and at one point Elena slept. She went deep and hot, dreamed of babies and fire, then woke with a scream trapped behind her teeth.
“You’re dreaming,” he said.
“How long have I been out?”
“A few hours.”
The car was barely moving. Blue lights flashed through the glass, and she saw police cruisers in front of them, ambulances and cars with ripped skin. Shattered glass made stars on the road, and for one instant she wanted to fling herself from the car, to give herself to the police and be done. She pressed a palm against her stomach, heard a last, far cry as if from the babies burning in her dream.
Michael touched her hair.
“Just a dream,” he said.
“Am I okay?” She was not sure what she meant.
“I’ve got you, baby.”
It was a thing he said, words she’d heard a thousand times: late after a bad night at work; walking home in the dark or after some other nightmare; days when she was sick or feeling lonesome. He stroked her hair, and like that, the fear was gone. The nightmare faded, and his voice settled like a blanket.
Heavy ...
“I’ve got you, baby.”
Warm ...
She woke again in Washington, still blurry and scared and uncertain. Fifteen miles later, Michael said, “You haven’t asked me where we’re going.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing is real until tomorrow.” Her eyes glittered, and she shifted in her seat. “Today’s too big.”
They drove a bit farther. Headlights lit one side of Michael’s face and left the other side dark. “There are things I’ve done—”
“Don’t.”
“It’s important.”
“Please, don’t.”
Her grip was strong on his hand, but when Michael looked right he saw that she was struggling, one eye bright as a star in the hard rush of yellow light.
North of Richmond, Michael found a motel that took cash and didn’t worry about identification. It was cheap and clean, fifty yards off the interstate. He let Elena into the room, then watched as she pulled off her clothes and crawled between the sheets. The room was dim but for a blade of light between drawn curtains. Her head found a pillow and she rolled onto her back, one arm up. “Come to bed.” She pulled back the sheet, and said nothing as Michael withdrew the pistol from his belt and put it on the bedside table. He stripped off his clothes, slipped in next to her, and stretched out on his back. Elena rolled against him, put warm skin on his. She tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder, spread a palm on his chest, and Michael knew that she could feel his heart.
“Elena,” he said.
“Sshh. Sleep first.”
She pushed closer into his side, slipped a leg across the two of his. Her stomach pressed his hip, her breasts heavy on his ribs. Breath made a hot wind on the side of Michael’s throat, and he knew she was pretending that nothing had changed. Her man was just her man. All was right in the world. He let her have it, the gift of a night; and when she slept, Michael rose. He pulled on his pants and shirt, lifted the gun and checked it from long habit. He released the clip and racked the slide. Copper jackets gleamed in the dim light. Brass casings. Oiled steel. He reassembled the weapon, jacked a round into the chamber, and lowered the safety. Outside, the parking lot was still. Michael noted cars and sight lines and exits. Stevan had fifty guns on the payroll and unlimited resources. He also had Jimmy.