Children of the Underground (17 page)

“Can we go now?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Now we can go.”

* * *

Reggie and I
had dinner, the phone in the apartment rang. I hadn't heard it ring before. It took me a second to realize what it was. At first, I thought it was some sort of alarm. When I finally picked up, I heard Michael's voice. “I wanted to check in and make sure that you guys were okay.”

“We're okay,” I told him. “Are you?”

“I'm fine,” he said. Neither of us said anything for a few moments.

“I found the envelope,” I told him, breaking the awkward silence.

“Yeah? What did you think?”

“I want you to be careful. I think our mark is dangerous.”

“Dangerous is a relative concept,” Michael responded.

“When are you coming back, Michael?”

“When do you want me to come back?”

“Soon. Now. Yesterday.”

Michael let himself laugh. The sound of his laughter made me feel better than I'd felt in days. I looked over at Reggie sitting on the couch. He looked pensive. I didn't like that look. “I should be done with my recon soon,” Michael said.

“We need you here,” I said into the phone.

“Do you?” Michael asked.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said, and then he hung up.

* * *

In the middle
of the night. It wasn't unusual for me anymore. Usually there's no reason for it, only nightmares and bad memories disturbing my sleep. That night, there was a reason. I heard sounds coming from the apartment door. It sounded like someone was trying to get inside.

The lights were all off. The dark clouds outside covered the sky. The apartment was dark. I rolled over and tried to peer through the darkness. Reggie had been spending the nights sleeping on the floor on the other side of the room. I searched for him, wondering if he was already awake, wondering if he'd heard what I heard. His sleeping bag was still in the corner of the room but it was empty. My mind raced. They couldn't have come in and gotten him while I was sleeping, could they?

I slipped out of the bed, careful to step quietly onto the floor. I heard another rattling sound at the door. I stepped into the kitchen. Someone was standing in the darkness. The figure turned toward me. “Maria,” he said.

“What are you doing, Reggie?” I asked. I reached over and turned on the lights.

Reggie had his backpack over his shoulder. The chain lock was still hanging across the door. Reggie had been blindly fumbling with it. That was the sound I'd heard. “I'm going home,” Reggie said. “I'm not ready to run.”

My mind immediately jumped to Dorothy's promise.
If you help us here, we may be able to help you in the future
. “You can't go home,” I said to Reggie.

“I can. You saw me. We were there today. That's where I belong.”

I shook my head. “That's not home, Reggie. That's a fiction. That's two hours. What about the rest of the time? Nothing's changed.” Michael would have told me not to let Reggie go back to Brooklyn. He would have been right. He would have been right for all the wrong reasons, but what difference did that make? “They'll try to turn you into something you're not.”

“I don't know if that's true. Maybe the person they want me to become is actually who I am. Maybe this really is in my blood.”

I took a step closer to him. “No. It's not. It's not who any of you really are.” I thought about your father and you and Michael. “You know that. I know you know it.” Suddenly it wasn't about Dorothy's promise. It was about trying to help this lost, frightened kid get away. If I could save him, then maybe I could save you.

Michael's emerald green eyes began to glisten in the light, covered by a thin film of tears. “I want to say good-bye to my mother,” Reggie pleaded. “I never said good-bye to her.”

“You don't have to,” I assured him. “She's your mother. She'll understand.”

“Understand what?” Reggie pleaded.

“She'll understand that you had to leave her to be safe. She'll understand that you're safer without her, that you're better off without her. If she doesn't understand that, then she doesn't know what it means to be a mother.”

“And you do? What were you a mother for, like, a month?” Reggie stared at me.

Reggie's words stung. He knew he'd hurt me. He started to apologize, but I cut him off before he had a chance. I didn't want his sympathy. I wanted him to understand. “Do you really doubt that I know what it means to be a mother? I watched them carry my baby away screaming, and haven't had a moment go by where I haven't heard those screams since. I would lay down my life in a second if it meant that my baby would be safe. And if I were your mother, I would want you to run and never look back.”

“Are you sure?”

I took another step closer to Reggie. I reached out and held one of his hands. “It's the only thing in this world that I'm sure about.” I needed to convince him. I needed him to understand. First him, then Michael. Then I could move forward and get back to searching for you. “You're not running from your mother,” I assured him. “You're running
for
her—her and any other real friend you've got.”

Twenty-six

Michael still hadn't come back. I hadn't heard from him since his one and only phone call. I didn't exercise on the morning of the drop-off. Michael had taught me that you don't exercise on the day of a job. You save everything—everything you have—in case you need it. If Michael wasn't going to show, I figured I should be doubly ready. It was the first day in weeks that I hadn't exercised. The lack of that release made me antsy. My body was begging me to burn off energy. Instead I sat in the apartment with Reggie, doing nothing. Reggie was in worse shape than I was. At least I'd gotten out of the apartment for my run the day before. Looking at Reggie was like looking at a coiled spring.

The air had grown cooler. At some point in the afternoon, the heat broke. It wasn't cold, just cooler. I kept the windows open. We could hear the city outside. I watched Reggie, trying to determine if he was enjoying hearing the city one last time or if the sounds were painful for him. He didn't let on one way or the other.

It was the middle of the afternoon when we heard a knock at the door. It was s single knock and then silence. “What the fuck was that?” Reggie asked, looking at me, growing more nervous with each moment.

“It's Michael.” I was so excited to hear his knock that I'd almost forgotten how strange Michael was acting when he left, how disappointed he'd seemed to be with me. I nearly ran to the door. I unhooked the chain lock to let Michael in. I nearly hugged him, but stopped when I remembered how cool Michael had been to me. Michael stood in the doorway for a second. Somehow he looked bigger than I remembered. He was carrying a large brown paper bag in one of his hands.

“Hey, you two,” Michael said as he stepped inside. He glanced over at Reggie. “Did I miss anything?”

“Almost,” I answered him, referring to the fact that he'd finally shown up only hours before we were supposed to be meeting with Dorothy. “But I guess you have a few hours to spare.”

“
Almost
is a word for people with too much time on their hands,” Michael replied. He walked over to the cabinet to get a glass. His limp hadn't improved. He filled up his glass with water and drank the whole thing in two enormous gulps. Then he turned back toward us. He looked at Reggie. “You ready?” Michael asked.

“As I'll ever be,” Reggie answered flatly. I wondered if I should tell Michael about Reggie's cold feet.

“I got something for you,” Michael said to Reggie, reaching into the brown paper bag and pulling out a small silver gun. I saw Michael kill the two men in St. Martin. I listened to him describe killing the fat man. But a gun was something new. Reggie stared at the piece of metal in Michael's hand. “Do you know how to use it?” Michael asked Reggie. I remembered the crash course your father had given me in how to use a gun.
All you have to do is point it at anything scary and pull the trigger
.

“I think so,” Reggie answered. He didn't question why he needed a gun. “Is there anything tricky that I need to know?”

Michael showed Reggie the gun. “There's no safety on this one,” Michael said. “It's a double action, so all you have to do to fire it is pull the trigger. So when it's loaded, be careful with it. It's loaded now. You've got twelve bullets. Then you need to reload. Twelve shots go quicker than you'd think. Remember that.”

“Okay. Anything else?” Reggie asked Michael.

“Yeah,” Michael said. “It's a small gun. Small guns aren't very accurate from a distance. If you're going to use it, be close.” Michael handed Reggie the gun. Reggie lifted it in front of him so he could feel the weight of it in his hand.

“Why did you get him the gun?” I asked. I didn't appreciate how Michael waltzed in here after five days and acted like he'd never left.

“Because he might need it,” Michael said without looking at me. “Because I know what it's like to be out there with no one protecting you.”

“He's got people protecting him,” I said to Michael. I didn't want to believe that Reggie would need a gun. I wanted to believe that he would run away to a normal life and live happily ever after.

“Do you carry one?” Reggie asked Michael.

Michael shook his head. “I'm still part of the War. We were taught not to use guns unless we needed them. My knife has kept me alive this long.”

“But the gun is okay for me?” Reggie asked Michael.

“Unless you tell me otherwise,” Michael said, giving Reggie one last chance to back out before we hooked up with Dorothy again. Reggie put the gun in his pocket. A long silence filled the room.

“So, are you going to tell me how things went in Philly?” I asked Michael, killing the silence.

“Maybe,” Michael answered. “Once he's gone. If you still want to know.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I nearly shouted. “Of course I want to know.”

“This can wait,” Michael said to me after glancing at Reggie.

“No,” I told him. “It can't. I don't care if Reggie hears this. Hell, maybe Reggie should hear this. Listen, I know I should have asked you about working with Dorothy before agreeing to do it, but you've got to drop it. It happened. We need to move on.”

“I'm not mad at you for agreeing to do this without asking me. You can make decisions. I'm not your babysitter.”

“Then why are you mad at me?”

“I'm mad at you because you made a bad decision without really thinking about it,” Michael said, pointing at Reggie. “You were careless. You can't be careless like that. You risked everything we're working for. You put yourself in danger. You put me in danger. Hell, you put your own son in danger.”

“You're going to lecture me about being careless? Don't forget that I know a lot more about you than you know about me.” Maybe it wasn't a fair thing to say, referring to all the stories that your father had told me about Michael before Michael even knew that I existed.

Michael shook his head. “I may be reckless, but I am never careless.”

“You think there's a difference?”

Michael's voice lowered. “You're naive enough to think there's not? Carelessness is doing something without thinking about the risks and ramifications first. Recklessness is knowing the risks and ramifications and rolling the dice anyway. Recklessness can be a choice. I may choose to be reckless sometimes. I may choose to take risks. But it's always my choice. I am never careless. My recklessness is never a mistake.”

“Why do you choose it, then?” I asked.

“To prove that I can,” Michael said. “To prove that I'm in control. If I wasn't willing to be reckless sometimes, I would have dropped you the moment we got out of St. Martin.”

I felt a chill run down my spine when Michael said those words, but I knew they were a lie. “That's the biggest heap of bullshit I've ever heard.”

“You don't think that there's a difference between being reckless and being careless?”

“It's not that. I just don't think that's why you're mad at me. I think you're mad at me because you're worried that I'm going to leave you. You're worried that I found a different cause and that we're not on the same team anymore.” I looked at Reggie. Even though I was the one doing the talking, he was watching Michael. “You think that Joe left you because of me and that I'm going to leave you because of Reggie, and nobody tells you shit and it makes you feel stupid and used.” I could tell from the way that he looked at me that I was right. That look gave me strength. “I should have recognized it before, but I wasn't used to seeing you look scared. Stop me if I'm wrong.”

Michael didn't say a word. He simply stared into my eyes. I have known all along why I needed Michael. I was only beginning to realize why he needed me back.

“Okay, then. Let's get a few things straight. First, Joe didn't leave you. He left the War because he figured out it was shit. He didn't tell you because he wanted to protect you. It's not more complicated than that. Second, I'm not going to leave you until we find my son, and even then it's going to be your call. I'm not just using you. Sadly for me, you're my best friend. So don't fuck that up, because I'm pretty sure that I'm your only friend.” I gave Michael a moment to say something, but I didn't expect him to. It wasn't his style. I looked over at Reggie. He was sitting silently, absorbing everything. All these men, they're so physically strong but emotionally fragile.

“Okay, Michael. We've got, like, four hours before we have to meet Dorothy and send Reggie on his way. Are you going to tell us what we need to do or not?”

“Well, if you're done with your speech”—Michael feigned coolness—“I can probably help us work on a plan.” I could already hear the sound of the old Michael seeping back into his voice. Nobody is fearless, Christopher. It helps to understand your friends' fears as much as your enemies'.