Gunshots popped off. One, two, three, four. Movement on the roof. There was a scrabbling sound on the tar paper, and from my position crouched on the floor under the open window I glimpsed something larger-than-man-sized go sailing overhead and collide with the tree in the yard next door in a flailing of branches. Leaves seemed to explode from the tree as a black shape went scrambling down—panther? Leopard? Very furry ninja?—whatever it was, it ran down the tree head-first in the darkness and the four men fled, led by Pierce with his ponytail flying.
The Thai dude was the last to flee. He turned and fired at the shadow as he ran, but his shots were wild.
The men cut across the street and ran between some houses, disappearing from sight. The shadow followed them without a sound.
Malu’s voice. ‘I need the police. Yeah, I’m in Cliffside Park—’
I dived across the room, grabbed the phone from her and killed the connection.
‘What are you doing?’ Her eyes and teeth flashed and she tried to get the phone back but I was too quick for her.
‘They told us not to report it or they’d come back. Don’t you get it? The police can’t protect you from people like that. We have to just keep quiet, and lie low, and... I’ll be right back.’
‘You’re crazy,’ she shouted at me. ‘Don’t go out there! Hey!’
‘Emergency services have to call you back. Don’t answer it,’ I commanded, standing in the half-open door. I grabbed the only weapon I could find, a collapsible umbrella. ‘Don’t talk to the police. You’ll get us killed.’
Then I went. As I closed the door, she shouted, ‘Yeah? You’re not the one with duct tape burns on your ankles!’
I ran down the stairs. By now people were out on the landing, including the super, Irene, yakking into her cell and running her free hand through a giant mop of blonde hair like it was the end of the world. Who was I kidding? The whole neighborhood would be calling the police. You didn’t get gunshots at nine o’clock on a Thursday night in Cliffside Park.
Irene put out a hand to me as I passed, but I dodged around it. Nobody touches me if I don’t want them to.
‘Hey!’ she said. ‘You know anything about this, Jade?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If it’s gunshots, the black girls upstairs must know something about it, right?’
That shut her up. I went out.
I didn’t follow them at first; I turned right coming out of the apartment and went up to Anderson Ave. like I was going to get a bus or whatever. I walked a couple blocks north and then cut back down the hill on a side street that I knew would connect. You can’t go very far east in Cliffside without hitting the cliff itself.
I heard dogs barking toward the bottom of the hill. I could track the men by the disruption they caused. I followed them north, towards Fort Lee. Maybe they’d left their car up there to be closer to the Turnpike.
I didn’t have to go far. If I had, then I’d have had time to think about what I was doing and I’d have realized it was pointless, and dangerous, and the kind of thing that never ends well for me. But I’d jogged only a few blocks when I saw the automatic security lights come on behind a big house on the cliff, and I heard the muffled sound of a dog barking inside. I started up the driveway, waiting for somebody inside to turn on more lights or open a window or shout or something, but nothing happened. There was a Lexus in the driveway. From the back yard came a terrible snarling noise.
I stopped in my tracks.
It was an Animal Planet type noise, a roaring, slavering, complicated utterance that sounded like a very large predator having a messy meal. I shrank against the hedge separating the big house from its neighbours. Through the windows of the house next door I could hear the refrain of a Lady Gaga song. Nobody inside had any idea what was going on out here. The dog in the big house continued to bark.
The noises seemed to go on and on. Pretty soon I’d changed my mind about investigating shit further. I started edging away, trying to stay out of sight and hoping I was downwind of whatever the thing was. Then I heard footsteps and two of the men bolted past me. I could hear their ragged breathing. They were practically knocking each other over to get out of the backyard of the big house by the cliffs. It was Pierce and the Thai dude. They ran up the street and through another yard.
I got a pretty good look as they passed. Their faces were drawn with terror, and Pierce was holding something in one hand that it took me a few seconds to recognize. It was like a prop from a horror movie. He was holding somebody’s hand, and part of the arm attached to it, dripping blood.
When I got home, the police lights had turned my block pretty colors. I was tempted to keep walking, but it would look bad. So I went right up to the building and stopped by the front door. I could see Lt. Perez leaning on his car and talking on his radio. I waited for him to notice me.
He took me in, squinted a little, said something into the radio and then put it down. He came over, pulling his whitest minty-fresh smile.
‘So, Jade, how you doing?’
‘I’m doin’,’ I answered, smiling fakely back in an ‘aw shucks’ kind of way. ‘Is it safe to go in there now?’
‘Where you been?’ he said seriously. ‘Your cousin’s worried about you. You know something about this?’
‘Me?’ I said, pointing to my own chest. ‘You know I’m straight now, Lieutenant. I don’t know nothing. Anything. I don’t know anything about it.’
‘About what?’ he said.
‘The gun shots. We heard them, and I told Malu to call 911 and then I went to look around.’
‘You went to look around. That was smart. That your official statement?’
‘I just went to see what was going on. But I couldn’t see nothing, so I came back.’
‘You been gone a good... twenty minutes. You sure you didn’t see nothing, Jade?’
‘I didn’t see nothing,’ I said, looking him in the eye.
‘OK,’ he said, and the way he said it was so neutral I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking about me but I figured it couldn’t be good. I didn’t think Malu would have caved so quickly, but Perez knew how to make me feel guilty just by looking at me. He always made me feel like I should be going to church with him and saying my Hail Marys. He’s so... moral, which I find funny in a cop. He always used to be on my side, though, back in the day. I decided to try and play it through.
‘Can I go upstairs now?’ I said.
‘Yeah, yeah, go.’ I turned, not daring to believe it would be that easy—
‘Yo, Jade, one more thing!’
I turned back. I knew it. Perez sauntered toward me, getting ready to spring whatever he was going to spring. But before he could say anything, his partner in the car put the sirens and lights on and gestured for Perez to get in.
Perez kept his eye on me as he jumped in the car and went. I watched the cop car do a U-turn in the road and squeal off down the hill, toward a big, fancy house on the cliff, where they’d find...
I tried not to think about what they’d find.
Malu was sitting on a kitchen stool doing shots of tequila. She’d had the presence of mind to put on a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of yoga pants that covered the marks of the duct tape, but when her sleeve fell away from her arm you could see a weal.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I swear to god I don’t know what any of that was about.’
She gave me a wounded look. Even though now she goes to the New School for Social Research and I go to the Old School for Kicking People’s Heads In, still I tell her everything. She might be upset about being held at gunpoint and tied up and stuff, and she might be scared of what those guys could do to us, but the look she gave me now was the look of betrayal because she thought I’d been into something and hadn’t told her.
‘I swear,’ I said again. ‘I don’t know who they are or why they wanted that phone—you know I didn’t steal it or nothing, I found it and I forgot I even had it in my bag—’
Malu gasped. She had just taken a wedge of lemon out of her mouth and now she turned to look at me as she made the same connection I’d made earlier. She’s usually a little quicker than that; being tied up and drugged must have put her off her game.
‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘You were a mule. That’s why those guys wanted it back. You have to tell the police, explain what happened and that it was innocent. It happens to people all the time. Just tell the truth and—’
‘Shhhh!’ I hissed, so vehemently that spit flew everywhere. I slid past her into the kitchen and reached for a glass for myself. ‘Why don’t you talk a little louder so Grandma Bernstein can pick it up with her hearing aid?’
‘Sorry,’ Malu whispered. Then, hand trembling, she picked up her drink and took a long swig. She shuddered a little as it went down. She looked at me. ‘You OK?’
‘Me?’ I laughed. ‘I should be asking you that. Do you need to go to the hospital? They didn’t... they didn’t do anything to you, did they?’
She shook her head.
‘Not that I know of. I was out of it part of the time.’
‘They knocked you out?’
‘They were here when I got home. I don’t know how they got in, but they grabbed me as soon as I came in and put a needle in me. When I woke up I couldn’t move, and that huge guy was asking me what I did with the phone. He called me Jade.’
I put my hand over my mouth. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I swear to you, Malu, straight up, I’m not into anything here. The phone was in the cat carrier. I don’t know how it got there.’
‘I don’t know about that Mr. B, Jade. You read the behind-the-scenes stuff on MMA, there’s Mob money and stuff like that going on. I wonder if these guys are some kind of Thai Mafia.’
‘What did you tell the police, anyway?’
‘I said you heard a noise and went after them.’
‘And Perez bought that?’
‘I didn’t know what else to say. You heard that scary guy. Even the other guy—Johnny?—even he’s afraid of that guy. How can the police protect us from that?’
‘They won’t have to,’ I muttered. The scary guy was now a dead arm. Ugh.
‘You did the right thing, Malu. The last thing we want is for them to come back.’
‘But... I still think I should have reported it. Won’t the police take it more seriously if they know I was drugged?’
‘They’ll take it serious. The question is, do you want to go to the hospital and get checked out?’
Malu poured another shot. ‘I’m all right. They’d better get the guys. Do you think they’ll get them?’
I didn’t look at her.
‘I hope so,’ I said unconvincingly. ‘But we gave them the phone, so they have no reason to come back here.’
‘Did you see where they went?’ she asked.
I made a vague face. It’s almost impossible to lie to Malu.
‘You better call your grandma and tell her,’ I said. ‘You don’t want her to see this on the news.’
‘You saw something, didn’t you?’ Malu would make a great interrogator. I swallowed my drink. I don’t really like tequila, but this wasn’t the time to be choosy.
‘I saw something but I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Oh, no, don’t give me that. You owe.’
I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could un-remember.
‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ I said. ‘And plus, it’s gross.’
‘Try me.’
I told her. She said, ‘You smoking herbs now at that gym?’
‘I’m so glad I tell you things, Malu.’
She said, ‘What are we talking about here, werewolves? Vampires? Giant spiders?’
‘Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘So what about the guy’s arm?’ she said. ‘What happened with that?’
‘I think we can expect Lieutenant Perez to be coming back,’ I told her. ‘I just got to think what I can say to him.’
‘Well, he can’t accuse you of being involved in some supernatural shit. I think you should just tell the truth. There has to be a plausible explanation.’
I finished my drink. I could see the cop in the hallway, pacing up and down and talking on the phone. She was just babysitting us. But what if that man-eating shadow came back up here? Plausible explanation or not, I had the urge to call Aunt Yanira in the Dominican Republic, who practices
Las 21 Divisiones
. Maybe she could ask the ancestors to help me out with some kind of protection. But then my mother would find out. So... maybe not.
‘You’re going to lie, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You don’t believe in telling the truth.’
‘When the system’s fair to me, I’ll be fair to it,’ I said, echoing what my dad used to say. ‘Anyway, who would believe the truth? I told you, two of them got away, including that asshole with the piercings. Do you want them to come back here? What if they saw me see their guy getting eaten?’
‘You actually saw people getting
eaten
?’
‘Well, no, but I heard it. I definitely saw the dismembered member, you know what I’m saying?’
There was a silence. The tap dripped. Malu said,
‘Let’s leave. Let’s go to my Grandma’s house.’
Malu’s grandmother on her dad’s side was an OK lady, but she wasn’t my Nana. I wasn’t going there.
‘Go to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll get rid of the cop. We’ll be OK. We can deal with it.’
I don’t know why after all these years of me fucking up my life and her succeeding in hers, Malu still listens to me. But for some reason, she does. She went to bed.
Birdhouse in Your Soul
T
HE RED BIRD-GIRL
was called Hla. She was the first of many animal-children who came to Mya for human food. There was an elephant-headed bird whose body housed the spirit of a capricious nine-year-old boy, and a skittish deer girl who was afraid of the elephant head. And there were others, too shy to speak to Mya but no less hungry.
All of them had been dumped in the forest by Mr. Richard and his associates, but had been taken under protection of animal spirits.
‘Are they alive or dead?’ Mya asked Luck.
The ghost shrugged. ‘Both. Neither. Like Shea. They could go either way.’
Luck told her that he’d been the first of Mr. Richard’s children to travel to the forest. At first he had come alone, sent to find plants that Mr. Richard could use in his drugs. Later Mr. Richard had developed the extract of the night orchid that enabled him to come with Luck and explore the immortal land for himself.