Authors: Michael Marshall
Dawn listened in silence apart from when they got close to the bridge over to Manhattan, when she asked him where they were going. He got out the map from the glove compartment and told her to head toward Chelsea.
He told her how Maj had remained a constant into his late teens, well past the point where David had realized this was an abnormal state of affairs and had begun to become embarrassed by seeing his old friend in the background in bars or keg parties or outside the windows of diners in which David was muddling through his first, terrified dates. David had started to fight back against his father’s character summation by then, trying to reinvent himself as someone who
could
function sociably, and was making progress, too—to the point where he’d stopped wanting to be reminded of the terribly lonely little boy who’d once hidden under the kitchen table.
You want to be different than everyone else and then you want to be the same, and finally you need to be different again. That means being
you
, and nobody else. Old friends become an encumbrance, a reminder of the buggy beta version of you. The magnets started to repel, and the move to New York turned up the charge a hundredfold. Eventually David pushed hard enough and grew up enough, and the idea of Maj fell out of his head.
“I just didn’t remember,” David said, as he sat flicker-lit by neon in the passenger seat, eyes glazed with an avalanche of things that had been lost. “I forgot Maj. I have to remember him again now, or he’s never going to leave me alone.”
Five minutes later Dawn made the turn onto 16th. She drove along the dark, tree-lined street until David indicated for her to pull over to the curb.
“Why are we here?”
“See the church? That’s the one Maj brought me to. The priest knows about him and his friends. He may know where Maj is now. I don’t know what else to try.”
Dawn turned off the engine. She sat in silence with her hands in her lap. Apart from asking directions, she had not spoken for forty minutes. She seemed in no hurry to say anything now.
“Well?”
“Well what?” she said.
“Do you believe me?”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“How could you have forgotten all of this?”
“I didn’t forget. I just … didn’t think about it.”
“But how?”
He shrugged. “The way you forget what you did any given afternoon when you were five or ten. The way you lose track of things you used to feel or understand or dream of when you were fourteen. The way you’ll find your favorite toy in a drawer and stare at this tired, dusty thing and find it impossible to understand how there were months when you couldn’t go to sleep at night without it. You change and you forget and you leave behind. You abandon things.”
“I had an imaginary friend too,” Dawn said. “It’s why I leave a couple of mouthfuls at the end of a meal.”
“So you know what I’m talking about.”
“No. I was six years old. All this … It’s very hard to believe.”
“Oh, believe it,” said a voice from the backseat.
There was a low chuckle, and David realized, far too late, that this had been the source of the swirling blackness he’d felt from the moment he got into the car.
Then all the doors locked.
It took ten minutes to get back to Chelsea. On the way, I fumbled a card out of my wallet and made a call to the cops. I got an answering machine on Raul Brooke’s number, but I figured leaving a message was better than nothing.
That done, I concentrated on moving fast. Lyds had been insistent I shouldn’t go straight to the church but instead should meet her at the junction of Eighth Avenue and 13th. There was no sign of her. I’d tried to get her to be more specific about what was going down, but she was both more together and even crazier than usual, and making the call from a phone box in a noisy bar. I didn’t know what to do but wait to see if she appeared.
I tried Kristina yet again in the meantime. “Kris,” I said, fighting to keep my voice fairly calm. “Please call me back. I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sorry you couldn’t stop it. But
we have to talk
.”
I ended the message feeling I’d once again failed to say anything that would make a difference. On an afterthought I called back and added: “Plus I saw Maj and some other guy in Union Square. Maj looks upset and very angry. I don’t know whether he’d try to do anything to Catherine, but if you’re near where she lives and see him, bear it in mind. And
please call me
.”
Someone emerged from a shadowed doorway. It was Lydia. Her eyes were wide. She was swallowing compulsively. She approached warily.
“Is … that you?”
“Of course it’s me, Lyds. How long have you been watching?”
She took cautious steps toward me, peering like a mole. “I had to be sure. Lot of liars out tonight.”
“A lot of what?”
She swept her hand to indicate the busy avenue. “You see them too, right? I know you do. Mirror people in windows and puddles, and then the assholes aren’t even really there. They’re always around. But tonight …”
“Lyds …”
She kept looking around suspiciously. “All
over
the place. Liars. Never
seen
so many. I saw a shadow man run away down the street and climb up a wall like a spider. I saw a hefty girl with white hair screaming and punching a store window and it didn’t even break. Five minutes ago I saw another guy, running up 16th. You believe me?”
“Yes, probably, whatever. Lyds, I don’t know where Kris is and everything is badly fucked up. Can you
just tell me what’s going on
?”
“I went to the church a couple hours ago. Wanted to talk to the priest. He wasn’t there and I was going to leave, but then he came back. He looked worse than you do. Not beat up, but
fucked
up. Thought he was drunk, he was staggering up the road so bad. Face wet and smeared and like, I don’t know what. He gets his shit together and lets me into the church, but he’s shaking and so messed up he can’t hold his hands steady. There’s a thing of coffee on a table and I pour some for him, and even though it’s cold he drinks it and drinks some more and he starts pacing around the place and talking to himself.”
“About what?”
She started hurrying up the avenue, and I followed. “I have no idea. It’s just word and then word and they ain’t connected, but he’s getting angrier and angrier. All this shit about his life and I don’t know what. I mean, Jesus fuck, I ain’t so fucking happy about how the dice has rolled for me the last few decades, but this guy has
really
got his hate on. He’s hurting bad.”
I put together how many times Jeffers had dropped Lizzie’s name when he’d been discussing the people he’d been trying to help. I wondered if, while he’d been trying to assist them all toward whatever light he felt beckoned to them, perhaps he’d been reaching out to one in particular—reaching out
for
, even. I didn’t know how to reconcile that with what he’d told us he believed, but I was giving up on the idea of things making sense. Maybe things don’t
have
to make sense. Maybe we should just let everything be.
“And then what?”
“Suddenly he stops shouting. When he starts talking again, he’s calm but in a bad way. Tells me he has done wrong, got distracted. Then he goes downstairs and I hear him yelling on the phone. He’s even weirder when he comes back up. I tried to talk him down, but he’s not hearing. He tells me the whole time he’s been there there’s been ghosts downstairs under the church. He says it’s another priest or some shit like that. The guy never left and is watching him the whole time, watching, watching. He says the ghost’s never going to leave unless he steps up and does the thing. The man is … this priest has got serious issues, John, is what I’m saying. I left him to it because I don’t need this kind of crap in my life right now, but as I’m coming out another guy turns up in the street, heading for the church, and he
reeks
of bad.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tough-looking, coat, head like a bullet.”
“Shit,” I said wearily. We were now at the corner of 16th. “Okay, Lyds, you did the right thing.”
“I know. But what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to the church. You’re going to walk away.”
“I hear you.”
I started up the street, feeling exhausted and scared. I’ll admit I was wondering why I would risk contact with a man who’d already beaten the crap out of me. Because another man had been kind to us and taken us in during the middle of the night, I guess. I hoped that was a good enough reason.
I realized Lydia was trotting along right behind me. “Lyds …”
“Said I heard you,” she rasped. “Didn’t say I was going to do what you fucking said.”
When I got to the church I heard the sound of shouting from inside the building and so I ran through the gates and up the stairs, Lydia close behind.
“More liars,” Lydia whispered loudly as I hurried down the corridor toward the sound of pain. “Fake people. You
listen
to me, John.”
The hall was barely lit but for a couple of lamps and a row of candles down at the far end and it felt like a damp mausoleum. Reinhart was right in the middle, chairs in chaos all around him. Maj was leaning against the wall, watching, face like thunder.
Jeffers lay in a slumped position against the far wall, near the remains of the altar, blood dripping from his nose. He lifted his head when he saw me, but I didn’t see anyone I recognized in his eyes.
“Wow, déjà vu,” I said to Reinhart, feeling my fists bunch hard and tight. “You really get a kick out of messing up a church, huh?”
He did a double take. “Jesus,
you’re
here? How fucking dumb
are
you, Henderson? Haven’t you been back to your shitty little apartment yet?”
“That’s what I’m here about. I want my girlfriend’s credit card back.”
Lydia scuttled around me and toward the priest. Reinhart made a grab for her as she passed, but his attention was on me and she eluded him.
“Actually you don’t,” he said. “I already used it to buy some pretty funky stuff.”
“You and I need to talk sometime,” I told Reinhart. “But that’s not why I’m here. I want the priest.”
“You want … the priest?”
“I’m going to get him out of your face, okay?”
Reinhart walked over to me. “I checked you out,” he said thoughtfully. “You used to do some intelligence shit for the government, right?”
“Long time ago.”
“Must have been. I find it hard to believe intelligence
ever
figured in your life. You honestly think you’re walking out of here, with the praise Jesus fuckhead or without? Then you’re even dumber than you look. You’ve saved me time by presenting yourself, though, so thank you. I think it’s important to be polite to people, don’t you, if they’ve done a good thing?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I really do,” he mused. “Because that way they understand that when you kill them, you mean that too.”
He pistoned his hand out into my chest, knocking me backward. “You trying to take over my action? You really think you can do that?”
“I just want the priest,” I said doggedly. “I don’t even understand what these people are.”
I heard Lydia bellowing from the end wall, asking me to help. She was trying to keep Jeffers down. He was hauling himself to his feet and in the direction of the broken altar. I wasn’t in a position to influence their debate because Reinhart was right up in my face now and thrumming with the desire to hurt.
“You don’t?” he sneered. “I’ll explain. It’s simple. They’re children. Without attention they’re nothing—like all the other losers in this city, in this whole country. It’s
look at me, look at me
all fucking day. If no one’s looking then they’re just empty space, like ninety-nine percent of people in the world.”
“See,” I said. “You don’t know either. Aren’t you even curious?”
“I just told you, asshole.”
“No. You just told me about yourself.”
The street door slammed open behind me and I turned with relief to see a man I’d been hoping would arrive—the person I’d called on the way from Union Square. Raul, the detective who’d come to see me in the hospital.
“S’up, Mr. Henderson,” he said.
He looked alert and ready for action, and my stomach flipped over with relief. Reinhart looked perplexed.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
The cop came and stood next to him. “Mr. Henderson called for assistance. I’m here to help.”
Reinhart laughed. “I love it. I just been telling him how dumb he is.”
I realized he was right.
Things happened fast, and this time I was the first to move. It’d been brewing since I woke up in the hospital smarting with the ego of a man who’s been physically dominated by another. The cop just happened to be at the head of the line. I decided to cut the next few exchanges and hammered my fist straight up into his gut as hard as I could. He staggered, reaching into his jacket.
Reinhart was very fast to rotate about the waist and throw a blow up toward my face, but I’d been caught out by his speed before and had already stepped to the side and around the cop in anticipation.
I knew he’d be straight after me and that I couldn’t fight them both at once, so I focused on smacking hard on the cop, trying to keep him between me and Reinhart long enough to at least get one of them down.
Raul was sucking breath trying to recover from the first punch at the same time as having to duck from further punches from me, and he messed up pulling his hand out of his coat. I ducked another incoming blow from Reinhart and kicked out to the side, catching him below the knee hard enough to knock him back. I was aware of Maj pushing himself off the wall and heading our way and I didn’t know what, if anything, he’d be able to do, but I knew it wouldn’t be on my side, so I went for broke and smacked my forehead down into the cop’s nose, slashing out with my left elbow and connecting with Reinhart’s throat more by luck than judgment.
The cop staggered backward. I grabbed his arm. The hand holding the gun tore free from his inside pocket and I let him drop. He slammed onto the floor semi-sideways, head connecting with the boards, and I stamped on his wrist with all my weight.