Authors: Ian Vasquez
He said, “Let me think about that a minute,” and lifted yet another suitcase and carried it to the elevator. He withstood the ride down by trying not to think about anything.
Tessa’s car was jam-packed with boxes, suitcases, and pillows, the big Sony television screen-down on the backseat. He popped the trunk, wedged the suitcase in beside her boxes of photo albums, which were the things that
she
always said she’d grab first in a fire.
Back upstairs, he dressed for work, rechecked his travel bag. He looked at the clock on the nightstand and stared into the deep darkness outside the window. It was almost time to leave. He walked out to the living room, to the storage closet, where Tessa was sliding out the dog’s cage. Wordsworth came sniffing around. She shooed him away and looked up. “What’s wrong, Leo?”
He’d planned to say something, but found himself changing his mind. “Nothing.” He started for the kitchen, for a glass of water he didn’t want, and turned back to her. “Need help with that?”
She was sweeping out the cage. “No, but could you check the medicine cabinet one last time?”
He walked into the bathroom. There was nothing in the cabinet he wanted. He dumped the expired bottle of Robitussin into the wastebasket, a box of Benadryl, two rusting razor cartridges. He came outside again.
After a moment, she set the broom down. “Why’re you staring at me, Leo? What’s wrong? You’re creeping me out.”
He said, “Nothing, nothing.” But, yes, there was something, only he didn’t know if it was the right time to say it. He went into the bedroom and stuffed the literary magazines into his bag, then, without any feeling, the folder of poems.
When they kissed good-bye at the door, her eyes were brimming. He took her hand. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” He said it casually, as though what was happening later were no biggie, like they did this all the time.
She lunged at him, hugged him tight and said, “I trust you,” and the unexpectedness of those words almost unmanned him, nearly caused him to drop his travel bag and pocket his keys and say, Okay, I have one more thing to tell you, but a second later that impulse lifted, and he kissed her quickly and was down the hall, turning the corner.
He passed the elevator and stopped at the garbage chute. He removed the folder of poems and considered it. He opened the chute door and chucked the folder down the chute. It felt right
that he felt nothing, those poems from another place and time, an old state of mind, and the moment had come to let that go.
On the drive to work, he opened his window halfway to the breeze, remembering Tessa’s question:
Why do you feel you have to keep running like this?
BECAUSE HERE’S what happened, Tessa, he wanted to say. Here’s the backstreet that brought him to this crossroad. The backstreet in Buttonwood Bay, where two nights after the Rev was killed he sat waiting in his father’s car for Freddy to come out of a weed dealer’s house. This is what happened: A car passed by slowly, parked two houses down. He didn’t pay it much attention. It wasn’t until the driver, a young Hispanic guy, a teenager it looked like, got out of the car, a silver four-door, and strode away that he was sure he recognized the car.
The Rev’s stolen silver Jag.
The young guy walked into a yard and disappeared inside a house. So Leo got out of his car and strolled up for a closer look. He peeked in through the tinted driver’s window, checked out the plates. There was no mistaking it: This was the Rev’s.
The young guy came out of the yard, followed by a fat man with a flashlight. Leo watched them circle the Jag, talking. Starting the car. Checking under the hood; opening the trunk; opening and closing the doors. Then Leo understood. They were haggling over the price.
When Freddy came out, Leo said, “Go back inside and call Fonso. That’s the Rev’s car right there. Hurry.”
To this day, Leo didn’t know what spooked the young guy. Maybe it was Freddy running back outside after making the
call, maybe he’d noticed both of them staring. But he glanced over, said something to the fat man, got into the Jag, and sped off.
The Hispanic teenager didn’t know how to drive—that’s the first thing Leo noticed. How in the hell do you steal a car and don’t know how to drive? Freddy was cackling madly, Leo tromp-ing the gas, Freddy saying, “You got him, yeah, yeah, cut him off now, cut him off!” But the Jag fishtailed it off the grass verge and swerved onto the Northern Highway, kicking up pebbles that bounced off Leo’s windshield.
The second thing he noticed—the boy was looking for a way to bail out. His brake lights flashed on and off at every corner, the Jag slowed then sped up, slowed then sped up. Leo warned Freddy, told him to get ready for a sudden stop. A second later, the Jag swung a hard right and bulleted down a dark street on the wrong side of the road. Leo eased off the gas and took the corner, and that’s when he noticed the third thing—the boy was crazy.
The Jag had slowed way down, was rolling diagonally across the street, the driver’s door open, and he was getting out even as the car was still moving. Near an open drain, brake lights flashed and the boy jumped out, running. Racing through high bush, sloshing into the drain and out onto the other side and through an empty lot, going for a backyard.
Leo stopped the car and he and Freddy scrambled out after him. Leo tripped over something and flew forward onto the street. But he leaped up and continued running, and the question he still had, after all these years, was why didn’t he take that fall as a sign? Why didn’t he stop to brush off his hands, take a deep
breath, and just think? Turn back, get in his car, drive away? But he didn’t, he wanted to tell Tessa now, he was clueless then, he never thought for one second that this boy was not some random car thief, and so he kept up the chase, getting himself involved in affairs darker than his foolish young self ever could imagine.
T
HE PSYCH WARD WAS A MADHOUSE. That’s what Leo would tell Tessa sometimes when she asked how his night had been. Well, tonight the description was apt every which way, and it really wasn’t funny.
A new patient in a wheelchair in Room 316 yelled constantly for help to go to the bathroom, Rafael in 310 had landed in seclusion after flinging his dinner tray at a nurse, Dolores Washburn had been wailing up and down the hall when Leo punched in and one hour later she hadn’t stopped, and the TV room reeked of piss and disinfectant.
Leo went about his work and tried to let the stress roll off him. He escorted Dolores to bed and knocked off the hallway lights on the women’s side. After that, he kept to himself. When Martin asked, Leo said he’d broken his fingers taking a spill on the basketball court. Martin seemed to believe it.
The biggest news of the night: Reynaldo Rivera had been transferred to Ward D. He could expect to be there a long while, Rose said, Dr. Burton was in no rush to discharge him. Leo wanted to know where was he going after that. Back on the streets? Rose told Leo he got it right in one try. Leo left the room with the rounds board, shaking his head, worry darkening his mood.
Rose had given him last break. No matter, he’d get tonight’s
mission accomplished one way or another. He went to Massani’s room and poked his head in. The old man sat awake in a chair staring out the window. “
Quién es?
Who is that?”
Leo opened the door wide so the hallway light poured in. “It’s me, Herman. Can’t sleep?”
Herman sat up stiffly, hands gripping the armrest. He was scared.
If his plan was going to work, he’d have to put Herman at ease, and he didn’t have long. Moving carefully, he sat on the edge of the bed across from Herman. “Hey,” he said in a level tone, “I want you to know that as long as I’m here, nothing’s gonna happen to you. Okay, Herman?”
The old man pulled a blanket around his bony shoulders and looked out the window. “They want to kill me.”
“I know, Herman. I know. That’s why I’m gonna help you.”
The old man kept staring out the window, lights burning in the windows of the building across the courtyard. “I don’t know who you are.”
Leo said it softly. “I’m the man who saved you this morning.”
The old man pulled the blanket tighter around himself. He wiggled his toes and studied them for a bit. “Who are you? What is your name?”
“My name is Leo.”
“Habla español?”
“The answer is the same as the last time you asked me.”
“I see you writing out there sometimes. You are a policeman? Detective, under the cover?”
“No, nothing like that. I work here.”
“What are you writing?”
Leo set the clipboard on the bed. “
Trying
to write. Poems.”
The old man looked at him quizzically. “Poetry?” He contemplated this a moment. Turning to the window he said, almost whispering,
“Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.”
Which made Leo smile. “Neruda. ‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines.’ ”
Herman nodded.
“ ‘El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.’ ”
Leo said the line in English: “ ‘The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.’ ”
For the first time he could remember, he saw the old man smile. Okay, so this was a fortunate little development, but he couldn’t rush it. He said, “And then there’s that line, says that he loved her and sometimes she loved him too.”
Herman said, “Maybe that is the best we can hope for? They will return your love—but only sometimes?” He nodded again. “Neruda.”
“One of the masters, if you ask me.”
“So why do you want to help me, poet? How much do you want for this?”
Leo said, “Just hold on there. Before you think I’m trying to shake you down, let me hit you with a dose of reality. Have you spoken to your doctor recently?”
“You talked to the nurses, eh? They told you I was calling Dr. Garrido.”
“You tried all day, didn’t you, and no luck. Tell me something, Herman. Is Garrido the one who was going to arrange a place for you to stay when you left here?”
Herman said, “I need to get out of here. It’s not safe for me here no more.”
Leo got up, shut the door, snapped on the light so Herman could see his face, and returned to his seat on the bed. “Listen to me, now. I am not here to shake you down in any way, but I want you to know you’re in bigger trouble than you think. I don’t know why people are looking for you but they are, and Dr. Garrido won’t be around to help you this time. Listen up,” and Leo told him about the doctor’s abandoned office in Hialeah and the two men who were waiting around for Garrido to show, and it sure as hell wasn’t for their health’s sake, or the doctor’s, he said. “The only savior you got right now is me, Herman. I don’t want your money, okay? I just need you to hear what I’m saying and for you to trust me if you want to make it outta here.”
He showed Herman his broken fingers. “Look at what they did to me this morning because I refused to hand you over to them. So you’ve got to believe me that no one’s gonna hurt you if I can prevent it, and they sure as shit ain’t going to hurt me again as long as I’m healthy enough to run and hide and outsmart their asses. But I need you to trust me, and we’ll be all right. You think you can do that? You don’t have much time to think it over, though, because we have to leave this place tonight.”
Herman struggled to his feet; you could almost hear his bones creaking. He stared at Leo. “Tonight? So you are a detective who is a poet who don’t know me and wants to help me for a reason I don’t know why?”
Leo glanced at his watch, scratched his jaw. “Herman, I didn’t
want to tell you this just yet but, you know, maybe it’s better so you’ll understand I’m not hiding anything from you. My name is Leo Varela. That last name rings a bell?”
“Varela?” Herman shuffled toward him and peered into his eyes. “Commissioner Varela? He is your family?”
“My brother. Did you ever work for him or have dealings with anyone associated with him, anything like that?”
“I-ya-yie,” Herman said, clapping a hand over his chest, “
Dios mio
… my heart is flying out of my body. Go ahead, tell your brother, go, you win,” waving Leo away without looking at him.
Leo jumped up. “Hold on there, now. Listen to me, okay? I don’t work for him. I’m an eleven-dollars-an-hour mental health tech in a hospital for indigents and you happened to walk in here and now people who I don’t know come telling me to walk you out, or else my brother, the politician, is gonna pay. That’s it, that’s my predicament. I don’t know anything else about what’s going on, what scheme this is.” His voice had risen, so he stopped himself and said, softly now, “I’m being up front with you. I could leave you here and it’ll be a matter of time before they get to you. Or you could trust me and with my help get the hell out and find someplace to hide. It’s your choice.”
“Why are you doing this? Helping me?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. I’m doing this for me. Trust me when I tell you that.”
Herman went to the window and shrugged the blanket off his shoulders. He looked out across the courtyard, not speaking for the longest time, and Leo thought he was crying. Leo approached, thought he heard sobbing but wasn’t sure. He lifted the blanket
and spread it over Herman’s frail shoulders. Herman reached up, clamped a hand over Leo’s. After a moment, he nodded.
“Ayudame, por favor.”
THE WARD was quiet at last, and how the rest of the night was going to play out depended a lot on Leo’s mind-set. So walking toward the nurses’ station, he was working on slow, gentle breathing. Shake the tension from your shoulders, relax your jaw muscles. He and Herman had had the talk and from here on it was about actions, no doubts, no second-guessing.
Rose was at the computer, Martin at the far side of the room doing paperwork. An abnormal silence hung in the air. Rose would check off a box on a form, sign it, and set the form aside instead of sliding it across the desk for Martin to file. Martin had to get up to reach it. If it was Leo doing the filing, then her inconsiderate behavior would be expected, but with Martin? No, something wasn’t right.