Lowboy (22 page)

Then the talking was over and Secretary came back to bed. The look on her face was hard to make sense of. Lowboy opened his mouth but she held up two fingers. “That’s just Ty,” she said. “Ty like to grieve me.” She let herself sink back onto the bed. “He said we ought to done this on the street.”

“I heard him,” said Lowboy.

She looked at him now. “You heard all of that?”

“You never talk until he’s finished talking.”

She made a sharp sound with her tongue against her teeth. Then she made what sounded like a laugh.

“Why is that, Secretary?”

“Get them clothes off you, Bradley. Why you pull your pants up?”

“I was cold.”

She pulled them down and shook her head at him. “Damn if you ain’t good to go,” she said. “I guess Ty didn’t spook you much.”

“Who’s Ty?”

She was back on her knees with a towel under her and the front of his pants in her fist like a ball of old paper. What she was doing to him was terrible but he wasn’t afraid of it yet. “That’s my little Bradley. Look at that doggy dick.” Her voice was high and toneless and impatient. A child actress, he thought, but that wasn’t right. A fullgrown actress playing the part of a child. Talking straight at his stomach and keeping her child’s eyes wide open. The top of her head was kinked and wiglike and his stomach itched where her hair brushed against it.

“You ready,” she said suddenly. “You good.” She pulled a coffeecan down from a shelf above the bed and brought out something
wrapped in silver foil. He knew what it was for and smiled and nodded. She bit open the wrapper and stared at him until he closed his eyes. She held him down with one hand and put it on with the other and brought her knees up level with his hips. He was afraid of her now. He heard her squat and stop and shift and take a breath. She was smaller than seemed possible and her body had no smell or weight at all. “All right now,” she singsonged. “All right.” Her hand held him pinned like a butterfly in a glass case. He thought of museum of natural history and the skeletons set like jewels into the tiles. When he opened his eyes she was smiling and looking him over.

“You a sweet boy,” she said.

He opened his mouth and closed it.

“You couldn’t find a little girl to date?”

“I’ve got $600,” he told her. “I’ve got—”

She moved her hand up to his mouth. “Quiet now.”

Why was I born, thought Lowboy. Is this why.

She let out a thick breath and put him inside her. He tried to keep quiet. He was underwater now and so was she. She was moving above him like someone on camera, making small sounds so as not to wake the neighbors. He forgot her and remembered her again. She was moving the way he’d imagined her moving and the sight of it flooded his body and brain with relief. It was happening now there was no way to stop it. He was laughing apparently. The room had gone silent and the light had gone dim and he opened his mouth and the whole world went silent. Somewhere voices were screaming in amazement and victory but the screaming was too far off for him to hear. There was no need to hear. She was moving above him. He could see out of the holes in her eyes and taste with her mouth and feel every single thing that she was feeling. He felt the skin around him breaking and the silence breaking with it. He seeped out of his body like the yolk out of an egg. The world was outside his body now, which meant he was alone. His body was on the outside of the world.

“That’s right, doggy,” she said. Her eyelids fluttered like the receipts on the wall and her mouth hung wide open and he saw black spaces where her teeth had been. “That’s right, doggy,” she said. “Give it up.”

Afterward she leaned forward and they came softly apart and that was all. But the world was so different. He was seeing out of his own eyes again. For the first time he noticed a poster behind the dresser of a deserted sunny beach and one above it of the singer Ricky Martin with two holes punched into his neck. The mark of the vampire, Lowboy thought sleepily. He felt easy and harmless. He raised a corner of the bedsheet and ran it slowly back and forth across his stomach. Now it’s happened, he thought. Now the world can stop ending. He let his head fall back and looked at Secretary. She was turning out the pockets of his jeans.

“Where’s the money?” she said. She dropped the jeans to the floor. “Where the fuck is my $600?”

She almost seemed to be saying it to herself.

T
hey arrived at the precinct and found the right room just in time to hear Emily’s statement. It was well after midnight but the building seemed crowded. Such a different place from the Department of Missing Persons, Violet thought. Everything so close together. No one asked them who they were or what they wanted. They found Emily sitting up straight in a room full of desks, a proud and solitary figure, watching the desk sergeant curse at his computer. If she noticed them she gave no sign of it. She seemed too old somehow, not the same girl at all, a stand-in for Emily Wallace. An understudy, Violet thought. Only when the sergeant had asked if there was anything else and she’d shaken her head no did she turn and look at them over her shoulder. Her forehead and her neck were smeared with soot and her jacket was ripped along the collar but her face was a careless mask of self-sufficiency. If anything she seemed very slightly bored.

She learned that from Will, Violet found herself thinking. That’s Will’s look on her face. Her own expression was not much better and when she realized that she forced herself to smile. The sergeant
nodded to Lateef and withdrew discreetly behind the photocopier. Not a word passed between them. He stepped around Violet blankly, squinting down at his files, as though she’d been put in his way by accident.

No one spoke for a moment. Emily seemed to be looking at Violet but in fact she was looking at nothing. I’m going to make a mess of this, Violet thought. Emily’s dislike of her expanded to fill the empty space between them. Violet opened her mouth, took in enough breath to speak, then bit down on the knuckle of her thumb. She felt her body tipping backward. Finally Lateef cleared his throat and sat down heavily behind the desk. He looked uncomfortable there. The sergeant’s ergonomic chair gave a slow disdainful hiss under his weight.

“Hi there, Miss Wallace. I’m Ali Lateef, the detective in charge of Will’s case. I think you know Miss—”

“I know her,” said Emily. Her voice was clear and composed, the same voice she’d been using with the sergeant. “Hello, Yda.”

“Hello, Emily. I’m so happy to see that you’re okay.” The fact of Emily sitting composedly before her, a little disheveled but otherwise in perfect health, was too much for her suddenly, too extravagant a gift. How could such a thing have happened, she thought. How could it have happened twice. But this second miracle was not like the first: Emily’s empty face was proof of that. There was no love for Will to be found there.

“Something’s happened, Yda. To Will, I mean.” She smiled crookedly. “I know that sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid, Emily.” Violet gritted her teeth and took a small step toward her. “Will’s gone off his meds. He stopped almost two weeks—”

“It’s not the meds. It’s something else.” Emily turned to Lateef. “He’s a different kind of sick now than he was.”

“Different how?” said Lateef.

“Something happened to him while he was gone. He tried to tell me what it was but I freaked out. I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
She made a face. “He wasn’t ever rough with me before. I know he got sent away for assaulting me or whatever but I never agreed with that. He used to be afraid to let me kiss him. That’s part of why he pushed me that first time.” She hesitated. “I guess you know why he took me to the tunnel. What he wanted to do with me, I mean.”

Violet let herself down on the edge of the desk. “I think so. Will seems to have confused—”

“He wanted to fuck me.”

She was looking back and forth between them now, eyes wide and unblinking, challenging either of them to contradict her. There was nothing blank about her expression any longer. She sat on the backs of her hands, letting her full weight rest on them, as though to keep from doing something she’d regret. She seemed to have no idea that she was crying.

“Do you know what he wanted me for?”

Violet nodded mutely. I’m afraid of this girl, she told herself, framing the thought very clearly. I’m afraid of her because she’s been with Will. Because of what he’s told her and because of what she’s guessed. The sooner this is over with the better.

Lateef shook his head. “Miss Heller and I understand, Emily. There’s no shame in that.” He cleared his throat like an embarrassed father. “You know that there’s no shame in that, don’t you?”

Emily rolled her eyes at Violet, as if they both knew that Lateef was being childish. “If he’d still been the same I’d have done it,” she said. “It’s not my first time, you know. Not like Will.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I might even have done it anyway.”

Lateef said nothing to that. Violet saw her chance and took it.

“You’re right about Will, Emily: he’s always been afraid of things, and he’s still afraid. You agree with that, don’t you? So maybe he hasn’t really changed so much.” She was smiling and nodding at Emily but she was talking to Lateef. “Look at me for a second. Would you do that, Emily? Let’s think this through together. I’ve always tried to shield you from Will’s bad spells, always kept him at home, so you’ve probably never seen him at his worst. I’m sure you
remember, on certain days, how I wouldn’t let him come to the door—” But by then it was clear that she’d made a mistake.

“That’s bullshit, Yda. You’re lying.” Emily was on her feet now, no longer holding herself back, pointing at Violet like a detective on the last page of a thriller. “The reason you didn’t let Will out had nothing to do with that. Who the fuck could you protect from anything?”

“Miss Wallace—” Lateef was half out of his chair, looking from one of them to the other, huffing and swaying like a man twice his age. “Miss Wallace, I’m going to have to ask you—”

“You’re right, Emily,” Violet said softly, reaching out to take her by the arm. “You’re right about everything.” But Emily had already started screaming.

“You’re the reason Will’s the way he is, Yda. What other way could he fucking be? You’re his
mother
.” She stood for a moment with her feet wide apart, bracing herself as if for punishment, taken aback by her own fearlessness. Then she said the thing that Violet had been dreading.

“What he did to me proves you’re his mother, Yda. You know it does.”

Violet said nothing, did nothing, made no reply or sound of any kind. Lateef was next to her but he did nothing either. He’ll ask me now, she thought, and that was enough to keep her mute and still. She waited until she couldn’t stand it, until she felt actual pain; then she turned around to face him. And still he didn’t ask.

“Miss Wallace,” Lateef said, as decorous as ever. “I’m going to have to ask you to sit down.” Violet watched him as if through a telescope. She no longer felt the slightest trace of fear. He’s not in on the joke, she thought. How could he be?

“She’s lying,” Emily said through her teeth. “She’s lying, Detective Lateef. Just look at her.”

Lateef kept his eyes fixed on Emily. “Miss Wallace,” he repeated. This time he said it differently. Emily coughed into her fist and sat back down.

“You’ve been through a lot today, Miss Wallace, and you have my
sympathies. But Will is Miss Heller’s son, as you’ve just said yourself, and I think it’s safe to say she’s suffering, too.” He took in a conciliatory breath. “Would you agree with that?”

Emily said nothing.

“Why don’t we all have a seat, Miss Heller.”

Violet did as she was told, feeling more detached than ever. She hadn’t been aware that she was standing. She’d had the identical feeling at the end of Will’s trial, and again when she’d visited him at Bellavista: the sense that disaster had missed her by inches. Somehow the feeling failed to comfort her.

“All right, Miss Wallace. Do you feel as though you could answer a few questions?” Lateef pulled open a drawer and rummaged through it, exactly as he’d have done in his own office. “The truth is that we really need your help.”

“Don’t talk down to me, then. And don’t say ‘we.’”

Lateef smiled at her patiently. “I’ll try my best.”

She narrowed her eyes at Violet. “I’m not going to talk with her around.”

The smile faded. Violet thought he might glance at her but he did no such thing. He simply let them both watch the benevolence drain from his face.

“You broke the law today, Miss Wallace, and whether or not you regret it now doesn’t especially matter. You seem like a decent girl to me, but sometimes I’m not the best judge of these things. Am I wrong this time?”

Emily shrugged and stared up at the ceiling.

“No, I don’t think I’m wrong.” He looked at Violet now—perhaps for Emily’s benefit—then sighed and leaned soberly forward. “I’m told that your parents are on their way, Emily. I’d like to give them some good news when they arrive.” There was a trace of appeal in his expression now, almost of vulnerability. Violet couldn’t help but admire his technique.

“What do you say, Emily?” He glanced at his watch. “Can we work out a deal, the two of us?”

Emily slouched farther down in her seat. “What kind of a deal?”

“Did Will talk to you about what his plans might be?”

She frowned at him. “Plans?”

“Did he say anything about where he might go next?” Violet said before she could stop herself. “Did he say whether he was—“

“I’m not talking to you, liar.” She kept her eyes on Lateef. “Tell her to go away.”

Lateef took the watch from his wrist and laid it deliberately across the desktop. “You’ve got a quarter of an hour until your folks get here, Miss Wallace, and about seven seconds before I ask Sergeant Cruz to keep you overnight.” He let his eyes linger on the watchface. “Should I call the sergeant over?”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Did Will ask you to go somewhere with him? Somewhere after the station?”

She shook her head stiffly.

“Why did he want to have sex with you, Emily?”

“To save the world.” She leered at Violet. “But you knew that already.”

Lateef looked up from his watch. And still he doesn’t ask, Violet thought. The fact that she’d won him over so completely almost sickened her. It’s for Will, she reminded herself. It’s for his sake, not mine. But still it was easier not to watch it happen.

Lateef rapped against the desk with his knuckles. “Look at
me
, Emily, not at Miss Heller. Where did Will want to go?”

She shrugged again. “Anywhere I wanted. He had money.”

“What money?”

“Six hundred something dollars. He stole it out of a suitcase.”

“Wasn’t there some place you talked about? There must have been.”

She gave the same laugh as before. “He only really ever talked about one place. But I shut him up about that.”

“Why?”

She looked past them both as though the answer were obvious. “It was Union Square Station, that’s why. He said it was the best place in the world.”