Safe House (9 page)

Three men came out of a bar down the street. They turned in our direction and started moving toward us in a tight triangle. I tried to pull my left hand away from Crystal Beth. She held it tighter.

“Drop it,” I told her, cold, eyes on the men.

She did. I put the glove back on, unzipped my jacket so I could reach inside, stepped forward quickly, putting her a half-pace behind me. I followed the rules for dealing with a pack—take the alpha first. The lead man in the triangle was a Latino, shorter than me but thicker in the body. Our eyes touched, dropped at the same time. The triangle moved past us. I reached over for Crystal Beth’s hand, but she yanked it away, making a snorting sound through her broad little nose.

We turned left at the end of the block. “What was that all about?” she asked me.

“I needed my hands free,” I told her.

“For what?”

“For whatever. If those guys got stupid, I’m holding your hand, I might as well have been wearing handcuffs.”

“They didn’t do anything.”

“I’m not a fucking fortune-teller,” I said.

“Are you always this suspicious?”

“Yeah. Are you always this not?”

“I wasn’t raised to be paranoid,” she said, looking at me for the first time.

“Where I was raised, it was the best way to be.”

“Where . . . ?”

“Inside,” I said. “Surrounded. You understand?”

“I . . . don’t know.”

“You want to give me your hand again?”

“Why? Did you like it?”

“Yeah. I did.”

She was quiet a minute, walking next to me now, stride for stride. “Me too,” she finally said. And put her hand back in mine.

S
he led me into an alley just barely wide enough for a garbage truck. Didn’t look like one had tried that for quite a while. She turned right, stopping before a chain-link fence secured by a rubber-covered padlock that spanned a narrow opening in the alley wall. A metal sign wired to the gate said:
BEWARE OF THE
. . . The rest of the sign was a jagged edge from where it had been ripped apart.

Inside the chain-link, a back door was positioned between a pair of windows covered with thick wire mesh. The door itself was encased behind a security gate, a heavy lock anchoring it to a steel frame. She took her hand from mine, pulled a Medeco key from her coat pocket and turned the lock. The security door pulled out. Behind it was another, this one painted a light blue. Crystal Beth used the same key on another lock, and we were inside.

“Come on,” she said, starting up a flight of metal stairs.

T
he staircase was almost pitch-dark, the dim light flowing from somewhere above us too faint to do anything but cast murky shadows. Crystal Beth climbed as confidently as a Sherpa. I followed a couple of steps behind her, not questioning. Only myself for going along with this.

At the landing, she turned and walked toward what had to be the front of the building. We passed a few doors—all closed. At the end of the corridor was a pair of blacked-out windows. The floor looked deserted. Crystal Beth walked past the windows without a glance and started up the next flight, still not saying a word. I went along, following.

On the next floor a pair of long fluorescent tubes cast a yellowish light down from the ceiling. One door stood halfway open. Crystal Beth stepped through it. Over her shoulder I saw a whole wall of exposed brick and a tall woman with a clipboard in one hand. The woman looked past Crystal Beth to where I was standing, said, “Who the fuck is this?” in a voice as warm as a microchip.

“He’s helping me with something,” Crystal Beth told her, not moving.

“No outsiders,” the woman said, holding the clipboard like it was a cross and I was a vampire. A chocolate-colored cat stuck its narrow head around the corner of her room, regarding me with that “What’s-in-it-for-me?” stare they all have.

“Stop making rules, Lorraine,” Crystal Beth told her. “We’re going to my place. I just wanted you to know we were in the building.”

“I—”

“Come on,” Crystal Beth told me again, turning on her heel and walking away. I followed her again, not looking back, feeling the tall woman’s glare on my back like a laser-dot from a sniper’s rifle.

We walked quickly past the next floor. All closed doors, but I could hear music playing behind one of them.

“This is mine,” Crystal Beth said when we finally reached what I guessed was the top floor. She opened a door and walked in.

As soon as I saw the skylight overhead, I knew I’d been right about it being the top floor. The room was spartan—a mattress on the floor with neatly tucked blankets on top, an ancient leather easy chair patched with multi-colored scraps sitting under an old-fashioned floor lamp with a parchment shade; next to it, an empty orange crate held a large handmade clay ashtray and a box of kitchen matches. A wood desk was against the far wall, bracketed by some army-surplus filing cabinets. The only modern furnishings were a laptop computer with a row of wire-connected peripherals and a radio–CD–cassette–tape combo with bookend speakers sitting proudly on bookshelves made from long planks set on cinderblocks. I glimpsed what might be a kitchen to my left. Closed door to my right was probably a bathroom. The other door was a closet, maybe? Thick-cored gray radiators sat between the windows and against a side wall. The windows were heavy-coated with the same blackout paint they had downstairs.On the sill next to one of them was a green Micata cordless electric drill, a long narrow bit already fitted.

“You into carpentry?” I asked her.

“I’m into self-defense,” she said firmly, picking up the drill and pulling the trigger. The bit whirred. Up close, it would make a knife look friendly.

Crystal Beth replaced the drill—crossed over to the easy chair, flicked on the floor lamp. It glowed faintly yellow through the parchment shade. “Give me your jacket,” she said. Hers was already off, folded over her arm.

She opened one of the closed doors. Hung up our coats on a single hanger, mine over hers. Said “Have a seat,” pointing to the easy chair.

Then she took a beige metal chair from where it had been lying folded against the wall, unsnapped it and put it next to the easy chair. She sat down.

“I’m going on my instincts,” she said. “Letting go of my fear. Do you understand?”

I nodded like I did, but the whole idea was insane to me. The best thing you can do with fear is use it, not lose it.

“You know what this is?” she asked, making a sweeping gesture with one hand.

“Squatter’s roost?”

“No. It just looks abandoned. We did that on purpose. It’s mine. I own it. This is a safehouse.”

“For . . . ?”

“Victims,” she said quietly. “Victims who are tired of the role.”

“Where do I . . . ?”

She smiled and handed me my own pack of cigarettes. Must have taken them from my jacket when she hung it up, searching with her fingers. I lit one with a kitchen match from the box sitting on the orange crate, blew smoke at the ceiling to tell her I was still waiting for the answer.

“Do you want to hear my story?” she asked. “Or just the bottom line?”

Without taking my eyes off hers, I reached up and pulled the cord on the floor lamp so I wouldn’t feel like I was in an interrogation cell. The room darkened. “Tell me your story,” I said.

“
A
ll communes get runaways,” Crystal Beth said. “Throwaways too. Good ones and bad ones. The communes, not the runaways. And they all make newcomers live by their rules if they want to join. For some of the communes, that means practicing their religion. For others, it means turning tricks. Or selling drugs. With us, it was they had to live in peace. Peace and love. Sounds stupid to you, maybe?”

“No. Not stupid. Just . . . hard.”

“Yes! Sometimes it was very hard. They didn’t all make it. Some were running away just for the adventure. Some because they were scared. Or lost themselves. There were outlaws too, looking for a place to hole up. And some, they thought they could . . . take over, I guess. Be in charge. We never had anyone in charge. We never did that. They—the elders—started the commune to be free of violence. They had all felt violence in their lives, and they all had moved away from it in their spirits. What they wanted was a place where anyone could do that.”

She stopped talking then. Got up and walked around in a little circle. Came back and took her seat again.

“Her name was Starr,” she said. “Good name for a little hippie, wasn’t it? When she came to us she was maybe fourteen. . . . Nobody really knew. And we never asked.” She took a breath. Then she said, “Everything was fine until they came for her.”

I knew better than to hold her eyes all through whatever story she wanted to tell, so I focused on the tattoo, not even sure if I was actually seeing it in the darkness, just knowing it was there, moving as she spoke.

“Who came for her?” I asked.

“Bikers. A whole pack of them. They said she was their property, and they wanted her back.”

“Were they flying colors?”

“What difference does it . . . ? Oh, I know what you mean. I’m not being fair. With the story, I’m not being fair. We knew a lot of bikers. They had their own communes, just like we did, only they lived in cities. They were nice, most of them. Friendly to the big people, sweet to the children. I remember one of them—Romance, his name was, I’ll never forget that. He had a great flaming red beard, like a Viking. I used to go for rides on the back of his motorcycle all the time. Not off the grounds—my mother wouldn’t let me do that—but we had plenty of land.”

She was rambling. I threw out a line. “He was the one who taught you to ride?”

“No, that was Roxanne. She had this old Indian, a big huge black thing with a white stripe on the tank. It had a foot clutch. She had to work it for me while I sat in front of her. She was . . . How do you know I ride?”

“Just a guess,” I told her, straight-faced. “So these bikers—the ones who came for Starr—you didn’t know them?”

“None of us knew them. They were from downstate somewhere. California, I think. But I don’t know. I don’t remember much about them except . . . my father wouldn’t let them take her. Starr. He was very gentle with them. He explained it. Nobody is property. No person can own another. That’s wrong. It’s against nature. Starr was scared. She said she would go with them, but my father said she didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to. I remember it like it was an hour ago. Three of the bikers, aimed like an arrowhead. Straddling the motorcycles, the leader in front. Telling my father that Starr was their property. She even had their brand on her. They told my father to make her strip, take a look for himself. . . .”

Crystal Beth started to go somewhere else, like she had earlier, in the café. “What happened?” I asked her, trying to bring her back.

“They killed him,” she said in a flat, detached voice. “The leader did it. He just took out a pistol. A big chrome one. I remember it gleaming in the sun. I thought it was pretty. He shot my father in the chest. He was standing so close blood flew out of my father’s back. Then they turned around and rode off.”

“What did—?”

“Nobody did
anything.
We were in shock. The sun disappeared. I don’t even remember the rest of that day. The police were there. It was a death. Not just the death of my father, the death of everything.”

“Did they ever catch—?”

“The killers? They left Starr there. She knew who they were, but she wouldn’t tell.”

“If—”

“She wouldn’t tell the police. But she told my mother. It was a few weeks later when she told. That’s when she left.”

“Starr?”

“My mother,” Crystal Beth said, a sadness in her voice as long and deep as thigh-bone marrow. “My father was a brave man, but he was a hippie in his heart. Gentle and sweet. A poet in his soul. But my mother, she was just
with
him, you understand? She loved him, so she lived his life. But that wasn’t her, not in her spirit. She was a warrior.”

“So she went after them?”

“She told me goodbye. She told me she was going to be with my father. I was grown then, almost sixteen. My mother had money. We weren’t supposed to have money. Not individual money, you know? But she had some, and she told me where it was. And some other things. That’s when I got my markings,” she said, touching her jaw. “My mother did that. Herself. Her mother’s mother taught her, she told me. But she never did her art on anyone else, not in all the time I knew her.”

“And she just left then?”

“There was a ceremony. I don’t know if I could explain it to you. It was . . . just me and my mother, alone. When I got my markings. She took Starr with her and they left in the pickup truck we had.”

“And you never heard from her again?”

“In a way I did. There was a . . . network. In a little book my father had. I went to the different places. Traveling. Not just here—I went to Europe too. There was a passport in the stuff my mother left me. I’d never known I had one. Never thought I’d ever leave the commune. . . .

“I was looking for my purpose,” she said. “Like my mother wanted. One of the families I stayed with told me—I don’t know how they knew. When I came back to America, I went to the library, and I found it in the newspapers.”

“What happened?”

“Happened? Nothing happened. My mother went to be with my father, like she said she would. As she had vowed. My father, he wasn’t always a man of peace. I don’t know why he left Ireland, but I know he had to. He always kept a chest, like a captain’s chest? My mother emptied it out before she left. She gave me my father’s poems, and she took the other stuff.”

“He had—?”

“I don’t know what he had. All I know is that my mother took whatever it was. To their clubhouse, that’s what the newspapers called it. She walked in there with a knapsack on her back. And while she was inside, the place blew up. Seven of them died. My mother too.”

“Damn.”

“I started walking then,” Crystal Beth said. “And I didn’t stop until I found my purpose.”

S
he sat there in silence after that. Not inside herself, just watching. And waiting.