Midnight Taxi Tango (18 page)

“The Blattodeons are a plague on both our houses,” Reza says. “We join forces to annihilate them once and for all. Their leader, Jeremy Fern, and his sister, Caitlin, whatever her involvement is. And all their roach zombies. The elder Ferns were involved in funding their son's activities. They've already been handled.”

“You killed the Ferns?” one of the Survivors asks.

“They've already been handled,” Reza says again. “Which means the roaches are probably in disarray right now, trying to figure out what the next move is. Carlos is speaking with the Council at this moment, to see what their involvement will or won't be. Either way, we have a fair amount of firepower from my end—I'm sure you know Charo isn't one to be trifled with. And Giovanni here has been studying their movements for several years now.”

“I don't like it,” Gregorio says.

“Neither do I,” a tall guy in wraparound sunglasses says. He's still clenching his pistol like he wants to splatter us all across the forest.

Gregorio shoots him a look. “Easy, Blaine. Easy.” He makes eye contact with the older woman and then exhales
sharply. “Marie is right. We came here to hear you out, and it's not my call to make. We will take it back to the others and send word through Dr. Tijou of our decision.”

Reza nods. The Survivors are already fading back into the shadowy woods, one by one. Soon, only Sasha remains. “Can we talk?” she asks in a voice so quiet I want to just wrap around her again right then and there.

“Of course,” I say. I signal to Gio and Reza and they walk ahead, casting a few dubious glances back at us.

• • •

The rain slows to a gentle sprinkle and the sun peeks through the swaying branches above us. Sasha and I stroll along at an easy pace; she could be my older sister or one of those concerned teachers that takes a liking to a student and goes the extra mile.

“I need to,” Sasha says. And then she stops. Looks up at the sky. Searching for words, I guess. We walk another couple of steps in silence. “I need to talk to Carlos,” she finally spits out.

I laugh. “No shit. He spent all night trying to track you down after they figured out the roach guys were gonna send their baby-ghost assassins after you.”

“I know.” She shakes her head. “There was too much going on. The Survivors are in turmoil, as I'm sure you just saw. Gregorio and Marie have been going at it more and more. And with the babies, it's just . . . I don't know . . .” She stops walking, so I stop too. She takes a deep breath that's almost a sob. “I don't know how to talk to him.”

“Then you'll be on equal footing,” I say. “Cuz I promise he doesn't know how to talk to you.”

She allows a slight smile. “Some days I'm terrified. Of it, what I've done, what's happened. What he must feel. How angry he must be.”

“I don't think he's—”

“How angry I still am.”

I nod. He killed her brother, even if he didn't know it at the time. “What are their names?”

She smiles again, wider this time, but still unendingly sad. “The girl's Xiomara. The boy's Jackson.”

“Beautiful,” I say. “Glad you didn't go the corny petty route and name 'em Trevita and Carl or something. I can tell him?”

We start walking again. The rolling fields of Highland Park appear in spots of bright green through the trees. “Yes,” Sasha says. “Please do. And tell him I need to speak to him. It's urgent.”

“Any details? You know he's worried sick about you. And them.”

She shakes her head, eyes narrowed. “I'll be taking care of myself. He should know by now I'm perfectly capable of that.” Her hand rests on the hilt of a short blade strapped to her belt. “But no, it's about the past. There's . . . information. A way to get information. About what happened to us. How we died. Ol' Ginny, the fortune-teller in Flatbush, as it turns out.”

“Oh yeah, he'll be excited about that. So you want me to . . .”

Another deep breath, this one strong, unbroken. “Tell him I'm ready to talk. Tell him the southwest entrance to Prospect Park, tonight at nine.”

For a half second, I wonder if this whole thing is some setup. Carlos would be easy to take out if he thought he was going to meet Sasha. Wide-open to attack. But it's not for me to figure these things out. All I can do is pass the message along and pray he's pulled it together enough to not get got. Anyway, I trust Sasha. I don't know why, but I do. There's nothing put-on about what she's said.

“Alright,” I say as we step out of the woods. Up ahead, the wide-open field stretches up a small hill. There, three
tall men in gray suits stand looking down at us. Reza is beside them, the duffel bag still slung over one shoulder. They cut an imposing tableau.

Sasha stops walking. “Damn. Reza wasn't bluffing, huh?”

“Nope,” I say. “Reza don't bluff.”

Carlos

C
aitlin Fern looks older in person. Of course, it could be the sudden death of her parents or the wear and tear of being a homicidal necromancer etching those worry lines across her sallow face. Her dirty-blond hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail; some stray strands frame her wide forehead in a chaotic halo. Her eyebrows sit high above her eyes, giving her the look of someone perpetually surprised. She steps outside of the chilly warehouse and stands beside me as a flock of pigeons rush past us down the deserted street.

“Let's take a walk,” Caitlin says. It's still chilly, and she wraps her arms over her chest, shivering a little even in the heavy cardigan she wears.

I nod.

Inside, her voice had trembled as she described being called out of an important late-night meeting at the adoption charity. She'd paused, gulped back a sob, and then shook her head, eyes closed. “I'm sure he . . . I'm sure he wants to kill me too,” she'd said as Arsten cooed sympathetically and Botus looked on.

Now that frightened woman begging for the Council's
protection is gone. The new, unimpressed Caitlin walks ahead of me to a fence blocking off the industrial harbor area. Beyond it, the gray ocean swirls beneath the gray sky. “C'mon, let's go by the water,” Caitlin says. She lifts a detached section of the fence and ducks through.

Listen: not only am I half dead with nary a legit document to my name, but I'm Latino. Beneath this gray, I'm still brown; the cops remind me with their suspicious sneers every chance they get. Since I died and came back, all I've known is a life under the radar, blending in, avoiding arrest, questions, prisons, hospitals, institutions of every kind. So when I trespass, it's because I have to. That's it.

But Caitlin stares back at me, her high eyebrows arched in challenge, a slight sneer across her face. I won't kill her. I promised Reza and Kia, and anyway, they're right; we need to know more about what the fuck she's up to. Still . . . I'm on a mission, I remind myself. This is work. And anyway, she's clearly hiding something from the Council that she's not afraid to show me. I glance up and down deserted-ass First Avenue and then duck through the fence after her.

• • •

“I know about you, Carlos.”

Again, I resist the urge to draw this blade. We stroll past massive freighter crates along a narrow strip of concrete beside the choppy waters of New York Bay. Way out over the waves, the Statue of Liberty is barely visible in the mist. If things get messy, there aren't many options for escape. If Caitlin works for the Council, that means she is the one that's been necromancing all those baby ghosts. I haven't seen any of the little guys floating around, but who knows? On top of that, I'm pretty sure some security schmo will pop out any second and arrest us both.

“What do you mean?” One clean slice. That'd be that.
I'd reach across myself, grip that handle, and the cut would catch her neck from below, lopping her head clean off. The head would bounce once and then roll into the waves; the body would tumble and with, a little kick, follow suit.

“I've heard about you, who you are, what you've done.”

“All good things, I'm sure.” I force a smile that I'm quite sure looks forced.

“I heard about Sarco and how you tricked that other halfie from the Survivors into helping you.”

So
that's
the story about me and Sasha the Council's going with these days. Figures. I shake my head. “Complicated times.”

“Indeed. So I'm not going to pussyfoot with you. I need your help. I need someone I can trust, a soldier. I believe that's you.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Find the part of the lie that's true,
Reza had said,
and tell everything else to fuck off.

“First of all, you strike me as the kind of man that can't lie for shit.”

I laugh a little too eagerly. “Well, that's true.”

“And second of all, I believe you'll do what has to be done. You're not overly burdened by conscience or identity like the Survivors. But you're not trapped by protocol and bureaucracy like most of the Council drones.”

I shrug. Everything else can fuck off. And the less I say the better. We wind along, past a pier and into a corridor between more brightly painted shipping crates. “My brother, I don't know what the Council told you about him, but he is . . . special.”

I try not to laugh, and it comes out a grunt instead. Caitlin ignores me.

“He was always on some deeper stuff, you know?” She squints, remembering the Jeremy that Giovanni once fell so
hard for. “Other kids had their after-school activities or little Magic card games, whatever. Jeremy was reading all the apocryphal books of the Bible by the sixth grade. He loved to dance. That was his one indulgence, I think, but besides that he approached even his childhood like he was training for something.”

Back out in the open now, we stroll along some abandoned train tracks. A seagull caws at us from its perch on a tire heap. “When they took him, when he disappeared, I think I was the only one who felt it coming. I had my own gifts—not unlike yours, although I didn't have to die to get them—and even though I didn't know how to use them yet, the whispering universe had given me some clouded sense that Jeremy had more to him than just a quiet, overachieving life in suburban Queens.

“So while my parents mourned, I prepared. That's a whole other story, but I began learning how to use my talents and honed them. Why? Because I knew Jeremy'd come back to us, and when he did, he'd need my help.”

“And he did.”

When she nods, her frown deepens like she's holding back a sob, and I wonder if she's putting on that same Oscar-worthy show she gave the Council earlier. “About a year later. You have to understand, Jeremy has tapped into a kind of power that's deeper than anything humanity has fathomed yet. I mean . . . I know that sounds ludicrous, but it's true. We humans are so wrapped up in this idea that the magic of the universe revolves around us, our needs and desires, and it's so much deeper. You think Christianity is old? Buddhism? Just babies. The shit Jeremy's wrapped up in—the magic flowing through him—that shit predates humans, predates monkeys, predates the supremacy of these ridiculous hairy bipeds. It's deeper.”

She stops walking, closes her eyes, and takes a deep
breath. It looks like a trick she might've learned in therapy. When she opens her eyes again, they're sharp, unapologetic. “What do you think power means, Carlos?”

I shake my head. “How 'bout you just tell me what you have to tell me. I don't like riddles.”

“Power is survival. Against all odds. Power is the ability to maintain, through any circumstances, whatever may come: nuclear holocaust, arctic freeze, flood, and fire. We think we're powerful because we can bring that storm, but power isn't in destruction. It's not even in creation. That's kid's stuff. Tonka Toys. I'm talking about power that outlasts all that.”

Roaches. I hate everything.

“Those powers, they function in a kind of collective consciousness that's way deeper than anything we could understand, right? And through those millions of minds functioning as one, they chose Jeremy. Jeremy is the one destined to bring about the dawn of this new power, this global power.”

She's proud of him. Proud of her one and only psychopath roach master brother. Family is an amazing thing.

We stand at the edge of the docks. The fog has swept in fully, wrapping Manhattan in a cloak of gray. A light drizzle begins.

Caitlin turns to me, looks me dead in the eye. “You want to get a drink?”

“Absolutely.”

• • •

“Man!” Caitlin yells. “It's good to be able to talk about this shit without having to explain everything and coddle a man!” She slaps the bar. “And take his little hand and walk his stupid little ass through each!”—slap—“and every!”—slap—“step! Jesus!”

She's four martinis deep and Quiñones the bartender is shooting death rays out of his one eye at her.

“This the spot you Council goons frequent, right?”

I nod and swish my rum and Coke around. It's the same one I've been nursing for the past hour, staying meticulously sober while Caitlin rambles on about everything except what exactly the fuck is going the fuck on. I haven't been drinking that much this year, not since everything went down with Sasha, but hearing the nonspooky half of Caitlin's autobiography has made me want to empty this place into my liver. Still, I gotta stay on point, especially if Caitlin plans on drinking herself into an oversharing stupor.

“Where are all the ghosts, then?”

“Must be a busy day,” I mutter. Truth is, they all ducked out pretty soon after we walked in. Caitlin seems to have a reputation among the dead.

“Anyway, yeah, I dated this guy Rex for a few months. I mean . . . his name was fucking Rex, right? How much should I really have expected? Ugh. He worked at a different nonprofit, did fieldwork actually, which was you know, sexy? I guess. In theory more than practice, but yeah . . . at some point, you know, it got more serious, and he met my . . .” Her voice trails off.

I wait.

“And the truth is, and I know you know this as well as I do, Carlos. Can I call you Carlos? I mean, I have been, but . . . I mean, it's your name!” She spits a laugh out and I catch some in my eye. “Ha! Anyway, as we both know, at some point, no matter how fucked up your”—she shoves a finger into my chest, then hers—“or my nighttime activities may be, at some point, you gotta let people into your life. You can't keep living in your . . . in your parents' you know . . .
basement!
Forever. Right?”

She might cry. The sob hovers in wait. Then she bursts out laughing. “Shit! I tried to explain to Rex about stuff. About you know,
ghosts . . .
and
Jeremy.
Shit. I walked him through it
slowly,
Carlos. I was really . . . I was careful.
Didn't spring it on him. And I'd been dropping little hints along the way, right? I can be subtle when I want to be. Caitlin can be subtle.”

Caitlin has reached the speak-about-yourself-in-the-third-person stage of wrecked.

“So what does he do? Loses. His. Shit. Carlos. Carlos! How did he lose his shit?”

I just stare at her, because I think it's a rhetorical question. She stares back.

“How did he lose his shit?” she says again, quietly this time.

“I . . . I don't know?”

She gets real close to my face and whispers: “Like a little bitch.”

We both lean back and stare at each other for a few seconds. I have lost all patience. I'd been operating on a What Would Reza Do principle for the past hour—not asking her too many questions so I don't seem overly eager, letting her say what she has to say so she can ramble around to giving me whatever information I need. I've been patient, balanced. But I'm fucking done. I down the rest of my rum and Coke and order another. Quiñones grunts.

“Caitlin.”

“Eh?”

“What happened with your brother? Why do you think he's trying to—?”

“I've been cleaning up that little motherfucker's messes for a long time, Carlos. You know about cleaning up messes. You're a cleanup man. You are to the Council what I am to Jeremy. Understand? When he gets sloppy, when one of his . . . when someone gets out. Or there's a witness, or whatever . . . I'm the one that tidies up. Why? Because he's family, and that's what family does. We do our part. And Mom and Dad, they've been doi—they did their part, for years.
Years,
Carlos. They never even saw him, all those years, but they
knew. They knew everything, because
I
told them. I held their fragile little hands while they cried and shook and carried on and then calmed down, because eventually, Carlos, everyone calms down. The shock is a performance. We're
supposed
to be horrified by the weird shit our family does. It's expected. So they went through their motions, and I waited by their side, and when they calmed down and were ready to help their son step into his destiny and become what he was meant to be, well, I was there to transfer the funds and keep everything on the level. Do you understand?”

Very slowly, I nod.

“So they gave. And gave and gave and gave. And me, I did what I do, closed all the open doors, so to speak.” Open doors like Shelly and Angie. Kia . . . Sasha. I suppress a shudder. “And fulfilled my contracts with the Council on the side.
And
worked at the agency, which is no easy work either. But he always wanted more. It was never enough. They . . . the thousands and thousands of them, all thinking as one, all manifesting through Jeremy and the weird underground universe he created around him . . .
They
want and want and need and it was never enough.

“They were always, always arguing. The back-and-forth was incessant and it happened through me, always. Why? Because they could never see him, never see what he'd become. He was ashamed, even through all his heightened sense of self, all his big talk about channeling these primordial energies, and he is, he is, but still . . . it's made him a monster and he knows it. Somewhere deep down, he still feels shame, and he loved and hated our parents for that shame, because he knew if he looked at them face-to-face he'd see the horror reflected back at him, of everything he once was and everything he had become.”

Quiñones drops off my rum and Coke and then Caitlin and I sit side by side in silence for a few seconds.

“So yes, I'm sure. The police found no bodies in the ruins
of my house, Carlos. None. They found the tunnel, of course, but the tunnel just goes into the sewer system. It's weird, but nothing they could do much with. Jeremy finally got fed up with the back-and-forth and he killed them and took their bodies out and burned down the place. He's threatened to do it before.” She looks up at me, her eyes wide and wild. “Sick fuck,” she whispers.