Save the Enemy (21 page)

Pete, ahead of me, carries a still-comatose Ben, dripping blood on that lovely white marble in the foyer, with that big elephant looking out from the second-story landing. It might be a real elephant, killed and stuffed and exhibited now, forever, to look out on this marble expanse that leads to the outdoors, the wilds of DC’s wealthiest suburbs.

When we walk through the front door, P.F. says to me, “I can help you still.”

“HOW?” I yell.

“We have to leave,” Pete says, urgently.

“Where is Roscoe’s leash?” I ask P.F. I’m sobbing again. “Please get me his leash.”

P.F. disappears for a moment. He might not come back, I think, but he does, carrying a heavy leather leash with some sort of harness attached to it. We walked Roscoe on a hot pink piece of webbing Dad had picked up from a discount pet emporium, attached to a fake leather collar that he is no longer wearing.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Madeleine had this custom-made,” says P.F.

I try to attach it to the dog. I don’t know how it works. This is like what I imagine creepier adults use when they are enjoying naked time with other creepy adults.

“Here,” P.F. says. He bends down and, with a few motions, wraps Roscoe in the leather in a way that makes him walkable. He looks at me. “I can still help you,” he says. “I could have killed your dog. Or your brother. Or you. I didn’t.”

“You didn’t kill Mrs. Severy, either,” I say.

“Come on,” says Pete.

I take the leather leash and walk out the door. P.F. stands there watching. I’m not sure where Mrs. Severy is. Pete keeps looking back, like he’s making sure she’s not following. Or like he’s hoping to see her.

We get outside into the bright day. It’s spring. It feels like real spring now. The trees have pink buds on them. I’m told cherry blossom season is DC’s nicest time of year. The air is warm, not hot. The air smells delicious. I shield my eyes with my hand.

“Where’s the car?” I ask Pete.

“Oh no,” he says, still with my limp, large brother slung over his shoulder. “Molly had the keys.”

We stand on that path, just outside the house. I’m holding
a gun in one hand, Roscoe’s S&M-style leash in the other. Molly is missing. Where she’s gone to, I don’t know. I hope she’s okay. It was probably smart to flee when she did, except she took our only mode of transportation with her. I don’t
think
Mom would have told her to do that.

“We could … what’s it called? We could carjack a car,” I suggest.

“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” Pete says. “If the people whose car we take call the police, we could end up …”

“In jail?” I say.

P.F. is still lingering—you might even say malingering—in the doorway.

“Point the gun at me,” he says quietly.

“What?” I ask.

“Point it,” he whispers.

I lift my arm, point the gun at him.

“Shoot into the foyer,” he says. “Make sure you don’t hit anyone.”

I aim at the elephant and shoot. My bicep hurts again. Maybe more this time; it’s still sore from the last shot. But I hit the elephant. I’m okay with the gun.

“Demand my car keys now,” he says.

“Give me your keys,” I hear myself saying.

“Louder,” he says.

I say it louder. “Give me the keys! GIVE ME THE KEYS, GODDAMNIT!”

He reaches into the pocket of his rumpled pleated khaki pants. I notice that the hems are frayed, like he’s been walking on them, dragging them on the ground. He hands me a black key.

We go into the long, long driveway, covered in crushed white shells. P.F.’s Lincoln is parked close to the big garage. Pete lays Ben into the backseat.

“He needs his seatbelt,” I say. My parents always make us wear our seatbelts. Made us wear our seatbelts.

“It’ll hurt him,” Pete says. “It’ll touch him where he’s been shot.”

“Uh huh,” I say. Where he’s been shot. Where Ben’s been shot. “So we’ll go to the hospital now.”

“We can’t,” Pete says.

“Why not?” I ask. “Why not? He’s been shot.” That sounds reasonable. Get shot, go to the doctor. Brother is shot, brother needs doctor.

Pete slams his hands on the steering wheel several times. “That’s
not
what I thought would happen,” he says. “Once she saw you in person, I thought she’d be reasonable. That she’d understand.”

“Understand
what
?” I ask.

He hits his hands on the steering wheel again, but more softly. He breathes out several times, loudly. “I want to come clean,” he says. “I really do.”

“I need you to take my brother to the hospital,” I say. I can feel the rage boiling up inside of me again. And the power that comes with holding the gun. “Because that
man
who was with your
mother
shot him.”

“If we do that, we may not get to your father in time,” Pete says.

And then I shut up and start listening.

Pete explains to me
what I must have known since we got to his mother’s house, maybe longer, if I’d been paying attention. The P.F.s work for his mother. He doesn’t know exactly what his mother does for a living, but he does know that she has a number of P.F.s working for her. He doesn’t know if P.F. is their real name. It’s the only name he’s ever known any
of them by. Maybe for exactly this reason, so they can’t be identified by name.

Most of the P.F.s are, as far as he knows, widowers—
“They’re widowers, Zoey,”
Pete says, the implication hanging in the air that they are widowers because of his mother, somehow. The implication being that my father is another of the P.F.s, maybe, when he is on the job. That Dad is a widower, and I am motherless, because of his mother.

She’d asked him to keep close watch on Zoey and Ben. To try to find the J-File. Which is in Molly’s car. Which is somewhere. Hopefully somewhere safe.

“Why?” I ask, again, always.

“I wanted to impress her,” he says, not answering the question I really wanted answered, which is why does she want the J-File? What
is
all of this?

But now he’s crying. I can see the tears streaming down that face that I’m still amazed by, with its eyes I can’t see behind the thick sunglasses, which is good, probably, seeing as how much those eyes look like someone who is the enemy of my family, I think.

“She didn’t think I was up for it. For keeping track of you and Ben. Or looking for the J-File. She thought my sister should do this, but I wanted to do it. To show her that I’m not such a fuckup,” Pete says. “But, I guess I am a fuckup, Zoey. Because I fell … for you. And I thought if we went there, I could convince her to leave us be …”

“Leave us be?” I say. “And my dad? And you and I are just supposed to … to what? To date? To go to the prom?” And as much as I hate to admit it, there’s a part of me that still thinks I would like to go to the prom with Pete.

“We don’t have proms at Shenandoah,” Pete says.

“Seriously?”

“My arm hurts. I’m bleeding. It hurts,” says my brother from the backseat, with that changing, warbly voice of his. “Why am I bleeding? What’s
Roscoe
doing here?” I turn around in my seat and see Ben petting our dog. Giving the dog an awkward, joyful little hug. “Roscoe! Welcome home, Roscoe!” Roscoe’s mouth lolls open. His tail thumps a little bit. At least Roscoe is happy! “Ow,” Ben says. “It hurts. Are we going to a doctor?”

“We don’t have time,” Pete says.

“Don’t have time to get my
shot brother
looked at?” I say.

Pete fumbles in his jacket pocket, pulls out his phone. Hands it to me. “Dial nine-one-one,” he says.

“An ambulance?” I ask.

“Dial it!” Pete says.

I dial. “Now what?”

Pete takes the phone back from me. Holds it shoulder to ear while driving too fast. “I’d like to report a break-in,” he says. He gives his mother’s address. “Please hurry.” He hangs up the phone. Searches for something on the car door. “How do you get the window down?” he mutters before finding the button. He opens the window, throws the phone out. The cool air feels good. I close my eyes, smell the blossoming trees.

Pete says, “That’ll buy us a little time. Hopefully enough. We’ll take you to get checked.”

“Time for what?” Ben asks. “Did I miss something? I remember pulling into the driveway …”

Pete pulls into a strip mall parking lot, up to one of those drop-in clinics.

“We can get out,” he says. “But if we do, we might not get to your father in time. But we might. It might not be too late, so long as they don’t take a long time here. It’s up to you.”

I look at Ben. “How’s your arm, honey?” I ask.

“It hurts,” he says. He takes off his coat. He’s wearing a Doctor Who T-shirt underneath. I can see the wound in full, now. It looks red and sore and, well,
angry and dangerous
, and like the sort of thing that under ordinary circumstances would one hundred percent require the attention of a medical professional.

“Let me see?” I ask him. The wound is getting my very unprofessional attention; Ben turns, shows me his upper arm. It’s still bleeding. I can’t tell if there’s a bullet inside or if his arm’s just been grazed. It doesn’t look like he’s going to die, thank you, higher power, thank you, if you exist, which you don’t, but if you do, thank you.

“Can you wait to see the doctor?” I ask him. “Can you wait? Do you need to go now?”

“Buddy, your father is in trouble,” Pete says. “If we go in here now, it’s going to take a long time. The doctors might call the police …”

“You want to avoid the police,” I say. “Like the kidnappers. And P.F.
P.F.s
. Your name is Pete. What’s your middle name? What’s your middle name, Pete? Is it Francis? Or … Frankie?”

“That’s the same name,” Ben says.

“Felonious?” I say. I don’t know more male F names. I’m losing my authority here.

“Francis,” Pete says. “That is my middle name. I am, no, I
was
, my mother’s child. But I don’t think you understand, Zoey,” he says. “They are going to kill your father. We have to get to him first.”

“Give me your shirt,” I say to him.

“What for?” he asks.

“Tourniquet,” I say.

Pete unbuckles his seatbelt. He takes off his coat, then
takes off his button-down shirt, a soft green and blue plaid he’s wearing over a plain white V-necked T-shirt. He hands me the button-down. I rip off an arm. It takes a while to get through the seams, and my biceps are aching a little from the gun, but, using my teeth, I tear it off.

“C’mere, babe,” I say to Ben, who leans forward. I tie the shirt above Ben’s gunshot wound, his gunshot wound!, and say, mostly to myself, hopefully not loud enough to alarm my bleeding brother, “I hope this works.”

Ben doesn’t cry. He doesn’t complain about the bloody injury, about me touching him. He just asks, “Can we try to get to the hospital soon enough that I won’t lose my arm to gangrene from the loss of blood flow?”

Pete rebuckles his seatbelt. I’m crying again, trying not to let Ben see. It’s my job to protect him. I think maybe I’ve failed, I’m failing, at this job.

“Where are we going?” I ask Pete.

“To get your father,” Pete says.

“Where is he? How do I know this isn’t a trap?” I say, feeling panicky again.

“I’m
going
to make this right,” Pete says. “Please, Zoey.” He keeps one hand on the steering wheel. Wipes my cheek with his right hand. Then puts it in my lap, picks up my left hand. “Zoey, I have to make this right,” he says again. “Buddy, we’ll do our best to get you to the doctor in time.

We’ll do our best.”

I feel that melting feeling in my head, in my stomach. My heart is pounding. I feel confusion, panic, fear,
mistrust
. “Where is my dad?” I say, still leaving my left hand in his right one. I still have the gun in my pocket. I feel it with my right-hand index finger. I could remove it from the pocket. Could point it at Pete. Maybe I should. Maybe I need to. “Why should I trust
you?” I say, pulling out the gun, touching its nose to Pete’s fingers. Hoping Ben can’t see.

Pete keeps his hand in mine. He stares straight ahead, says, “I’m pretty sure they’re in a town in Virginia. A town called Lorton.”

Ben perks up. “Is it …” He rattles off an address.

“How did you know?” Pete asks.

“Mom told me,” Ben says. “There is a former prison in Lorton that is now an artists’ colony. Norman Mailer, the writer, was held at that prison for two days in nineteen sixty-seven, after a Vietnam War protest. That was the protest when some people tried to make the Pentagon levitate. I don’t think it’s possible to make any big building levitate. It doesn’t seem scientifically realistic.”

“I don’t think ghosts seem scientifically realistic,” I say.

“That’s true,” says Ben. “But it doesn’t directly bear on the Pentagon levitation issue.”

He then settles back into the seat and, tugging on Roscoe’s tail three times, looks down at his bloody, bound arm, picks up his economics book, and starts to read.

We’re on the Beltway, stuck in traffic. One is always stuck in traffic on the highway that encircles DC. Usually it’s annoying. You have to pee, or something, and you’re inching along this massive ugly road while your brother’s spouting off facts about
whatever
the hell is on his mind and your dad is talking about how private roads would relieve congestion, and, back before she was killed, your mother would be singing along with the radio in her terrible voice.

Right now, mid-afternoon on Saturday—two or three days after the original deadline to get the kidnappers the J-File, I realize, depending on which day the kidnappers considered to be day one—in P.F.’s bizarre old-man car that he told us to steal from him, it’s worse. Yes, I have to pee. I always have to pee. And yes, my brother is talking about some odd, obscure thing that’s on his mind. (I can’t concentrate enough even to grasp what he’s on about this time. I keep hearing him say the word “platelets,” but I’m not
getting more than that.) What I can’t hold in is my anxiety over where we are, what we’re doing, what’s to come, what’s happened.

“Can you imagine if DC had to be evacuated?” asks Ben, moving on from platelets and other blood-related matters for the moment. “If, say, a nuclear bomb were headed for the White House?” He’s looking up from his economics book, petting Roscoe. Did I not notice that he had the book with him at Mrs. Severy’s house? Why didn’t he keep the whole briefcase, then, with the J-File in it?