Bloodroot (40 page)

“That’s more like it, Kevin.” Danny turned his blue eyes on mine. With one hand, he held Whitestone on his feet. “We are the choices we make under duress, big brother. Yours is always to run away, ever notice that? Don’t feel bad. George Washington created this nation on strategic retreats.” He smiled at me. “You taught me that. You go ahead and get out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”

The burning air rising through the building below us punched more holes, bigger holes, in the roof. Twisting arms of bats and smoke soared into the air. The tar under my feet was melting. Swatting at the bats, I stumbled backward, falling on my ass as the roof burst open inches from my feet, a gaping hole now yawning open between my brother and me. Rising up on my elbows, I saw Danny couldn’t reach me. The gulf between us was too wide to cross. He was trapped on his half of the roof; he had no way down. My only option was to run, to save myself. I didn’t move. I couldn’t leave him.

Danny looked at me. A helplessness washed over his face that I had never witnessed, not even when we were kids, a surrender that maybe nobody, not even his dealers, had ever seen. All the arrogance, all the defiance, all the wit had died. Knowledge was all that remained. None of us would make it off that roof alive and Danny was utterly heartbroken I had to be part of it. It was not what he had planned.

After everything he’d put me through, not just over the past few days but all our lives, Danny had finally drawn a line and tried to protect me from the things he did. He’d called me to Brooklyn that morning not only for the money and the discs, but also to get me out of the way while he went after Whitestone. He had warned me not to follow him, even pulling a gun on me to keep me away. But I hadn’t listened. After all the things I’d let him talk me into, I’d finally told him no. That choice had trapped us on the roof of a burning asylum.

I forgave Danny his part in where we’d arrived; it was his nature, in his blood. He’d never had much choice in what he did while I’d always had choices and had spent most of my adult life refusing to make them. I hoped he could forgive me my part in our end. And finally, I told myself, when the roof caved in we would do something together that could never be undone. I nodded to him, hoping the message got through. Danny nodded back, his sad eyes wide open, his mouth a thin, grim line.

One fist still full of Whitestone’s shirt, Danny propped the pulpy sack of a man on the ledge. Only the bloody bubbles rupturing at his nostrils showed Whitestone was alive.

“And you?” Danny said. “You will do what none of the others ever did.” He released Whitestone’s shirt and grabbed his face, holding the man aloft by his jaw. “You will look me in the eyes when the shot comes.”

Danny pushed Whitestone back against the ledge. Elbow high, he pressed the barrel of the gun between Whitestone’s eyes and pulled the trigger. The shot was deafening. Whitestone’s whole head exploded. His body dropped to the roof. Danny blinked for a moment at his empty hand. He tossed aside the gun and with both hands wiped at the mask of wet, crimson gore on his face. “Damn.”

He rubbed his hands on his jacket. His face streaked with blood, he took a step toward me then stopped at the edge of the smoking chasm between us. “Go, Kevin. Run. You might make it.”

“Danny, no—”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ve been dead before,” Danny said to me. “It’s not so bad. And it’s not as far away as you think.”

He turned and with a short running start leaped from the roof.

His black jacket blowing open, arms flung wide, he hovered a moment, a black angel in the burning sky. Then the tumult of bats yawned open and swallowed him. Danny vanished as if he had transformed into one of their anonymous multitude and shot off into the night on brand-new wings. I never saw him fall.

I lay down on my back, exhausted beyond belief, disoriented and nauseous from the smoke and fumes, sinking like a dinosaur into the softening tar. The flames were only moments away. God only knew what was burning down there, what I had breathed into my lungs and into my blood. It didn’t matter. Danny would come get me, let me chase him to the other side. We would run forever, never grow old, never run out of trail, never run out of time.

I heard someone screaming my name. Kelsey. No, no, no. Hadn’t enough of us died up here in hell already? Just take the money, sweetheart. Enjoy Chicago. Stay warm. Study hard. Leave me here. My brother’s coming. I can wait.

I turned my head, tar pulling my hair, to see her arm and the top of her pretty head squeezing through the door. She wasn’t going away. Why didn’t she listen? Wasn’t I talking?

I watched her search for me, stumbling, crying out, her hands reaching in front of her. Flames like fingers stretching under a door groped around the rooftop. Whose hands would reach me first? Kelsey really wasn’t that far away now, was she? I rolled over on my hands and knees and crawled toward her. I might have called out Kelsey’s name, because she found me. Danny was right; I couldn’t resist a strategic escape.

I felt her arms slip through my armpits. She lifted, chanting in my ear as she heaved. “Getupgetupgetupgetup.”

I tried. I folded my legs under me and pushed. With her help I found my feet. She dragged me toward the door. “Where’s Danny?” she asked.

“He’s gone,” I said.

 

 

 

KELSEY LED US
in a controlled fall down the stairs. The air seared our lungs with every breath we tried not to take. Between the second and first floors we collided with someone, someone large. He grabbed us by the back of the neck and shoved us ahead of him with the power of a wave. Water, filthy, putrid water rained on us from above.

He pushed us, hacking and puking, sliding on the wet tile, through the lobby and out the front door. Then he was gone. On the steps, more arms wrapped us in blankets and carried us far away from the burning building. The arms set us down in the cool grass like swaddled babies.

I shook off the blankets, fought off the arms and stood. I collapsed in the grass, flat on my back. Helicopters pounded the air over our heads, their spotlights sweeping huge patches of white light over the burning building. Sirens flashed red, white, and blue. Shouting men in heavy boots ran past me, crackling voices shouting back at them over their radios. Kelsey had indeed brought the cavalry. She sat next to me, her knees drawn to her temples, puking into the grass at her feet.

I stood again. I wobbled some but stayed upright this time. Someone handed me a water bottle. I chugged it down then threw it up all over my shirt. Damn. An EMT put her hand on my shoulder, a plastic oxygen mask waited in her other hand. I cocked my fist and she backed up. Not yet. No one, nothing could be in my way. Danny wasn’t here. I had to see it for both of us.

The roof fell first, smashing and roaring its way through floor after floor, the flaming wreckage gathering weight as it descended. An explosion of embers and black smoke burst into the night sky. The walls tumbled almost straight down, not unlike Whitestone had. Maybe like Calvin had when his time had come. Almost as fast as Whitestone, the building had collapsed into a dead, faceless heap. Flames lit the sky as firefighters circled from a distance, spraying huge arcs of water onto what was left of Bloodroot. They didn’t seem to be trying very hard. I couldn’t blame them. Let it burn. Eventually, when it had consumed everything within reach, the fire would burn itself out. That part I didn’t need to see.

I sat back down in the grass and wept for my brother.

Kelsey poured cool water over my head, running her fingers through my hair and whispering my name. Her voice sounded like a song. Like a song Danny used to sing when we were kids.

WHILE I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL, THE FIRST COUPLE OF TIMES I
tried to tell my folks the truth about Danny, my mother did the same thing. She smiled, told me not to talk, and folded my hands over my stomach. My father said nothing, looking at anything else in the room but me, like he was the one with bad news. At first, I got impossibly angry with them. How could they put Danny out of their minds so quickly? So easily and completely? Practice, I figured. Then, slowly, another explanation for my parents’ casual attitude about their missing son dawned on me. Maybe they knew something I didn’t. But whenever I tried asking them about this, my mom would just comment on how kind it was of Detective Waters to be visiting
again
.

Once, I thought I awoke to see Bavasi at my bedside, a dark, wide-shouldered figure behind him in the doorway to my room. But I couldn’t be sure; I was loaded with Demerol at the time.

Someone had put serious work into getting the mostly brick, concrete, and tile Bloodroot building to burn like that. The FDNY found traces of a high-grade accelerant in the wreckage. Someone would need “serious connections” to get their hands on enough of that kind of chemical. There was no way anyone could carry enough in one trip. Al might’ve had help. Might’ve just taken his time. Along with the accelerant, two sets of remains had been discovered on site. Al Bruno and Dr. Whitestone.

It was what the FBI found on Whitestone’s computer, everyone surmised, that had put him and Al on that roof. In addition to a history of violent crime arrests, Al Bruno also had six young nieces and nephews. No one had to think too hard to figure out what business they had gone there to settle. As far as the law was concerned, justice had been served.

It was Waters who kept us posted on all the developments in the weeks after the fire. That was all we called it: The Fire. Right after, he’d asked some questions of me, my folks, Kelsey, and the feds. He never got decent answers from any of us. He didn’t seem surprised. It didn’t surprise him when the feds took things out of his hands, either, in the process giving him a world of grief for letting his new informant run wild, committing kidnapping, murder, and quite possibly arson and suicide, all without giving up one good word about any kind of crime. Since the feds had everything figured out, Waters did not feel compelled to tell them Kelsey and I had been there. We didn’t tell them, either.

The feds did get one thing right, though, even if it was decades too late. Bloodroot was finally declared a crime scene.

When, a few weeks later, Santoro and Sons Construction came to clear the site and prep it for the new dorms they planned to build, nobody got in their way.

The feds’ computer guru eventually linked the mapping DVD to another computer with a Brooklyn Internet account, but when they got to the Park Slope apartment they found it stripped bare. Nothing but walls, floor, windows, ceiling, and a weird sculpture of seven baby angels that gave everyone the creeps. The landlord, Gino Bavasi, told the feds they’d gotten their signals crossed. No one had rented that place in over a year. One couldn’t let just anybody move in, Bavasi said. Park Slope was a nice neighborhood. You could never be too careful.

Christmas Eve, stretched out on Kelsey’s couch, “our” couch now, I answered a phone call from Brooklyn. I pressed the mouthpiece to my chest as I lit a cigarette.

“You’re not smoking, are you?” Dad asked.

I held the cigarette at arm’s length, watching the paper burn and the smoke spiral toward the ceiling. I had permanent scarring on my lungs from the fire, or so the doctors told me, but I’d developed a mistrust of doctors. I’d quit one day, to make my mother happy, but for the time being I was hooked and didn’t feel like fighting it. I tapped the ashes into the spider plant on the coffee table.

“No. I told you, I quit.”

“Don’t let your mother find out. You coming tomorrow?”

“Yup.”

“Good boy. See you tomorrow. Leave early, the Verrazano’s gonna be jammed. Hang on, your mother wants to talk to you.”

“Kevin, are you smoking?” Mom asked.

I sighed into the phone.

“Put Kelsey on,” Mom said. “She’ll tell me the truth.”

Kelsey sat cross-legged in an armchair beside the Christmas tree, engrossed in a history book. Prep work for her first semester of doctoral work at NYU.

“She’s busy,” I said.

Mom stayed quiet for a long time, a condensed version of the silent treatment for lying to her. “Have we told you,” she finally said, “about our trip to Vegas for New Year’s?” She had. Twice. “We’ve got a special, special friend out there. Your father and I can’t wait to see him.”

“Ma, you don’t have to talk like that,” I said. “No one is spying on us.”

“Oh, I know,” Mom said, giggling like a schoolgirl. “It’s kind of fun, though. And it annoys the hell out of your father.” She cleared her throat, took a deep breath. I knew what was coming, the same offer she’d made twice before. And I knew what my answer would be. “You could come with us, Kevin,” my mother said. “You and Kelsey. Our friend would be thrilled to see you.”

“We already have plans,” I said. “I promised Kelsey we’d go to Times Square for New Year’s. I’m not going to disappoint her. I’m sure your friend understands.”