Sparkle (25 page)

Joe was in awe; LaVonne was giving him another chance. After he left the Ravenna, his feet barely touching the pavement, the flowers in the van looked almost welcoming. He’d done the right thing. He was glad he hadn’t given them to her. They were definitely not good enough for her. Grocery store flowers. What was I thinking? Joe promised himself he’d get LaVonne something worthy, soon. Some real flowers. Or a plant. Something alive.

He ripped the many pages he’d written off the pad, rolled them up, and stuck them in the middle of the cheap bouquet. Maybe if he got his nerve up, he’d copy the whole letter neatly, or maybe even type it up so LaVonne could actually read it. Normally, he’d toss something like that. But not today. Yeah, make the letter nice. Make the flowers real nice, from a real flower store.

Joe propped the flowers up between the seats. These flowers and notes should stay right here. They’d make it so he wouldn’t forget. The next time LaVonne came over, he’d be ready.

As he started the van and drove off, he realized the roses did have a little smell, after all. Weak, but it wasn’t bad. Maybe Eddie would like them.

As Joe turned the corner, it occurred to him that the thought of LaVonne in his life was a lot less scary when she wasn’t actually around.

He walked up to the Red Lotus card room door with a smile on his face. He checked his watch, put his head close to the door, and knocked.

“Eddie, it’s five. You done? I’m coming in, okay?”

“Uh-huh. Okay.”

Joe opened the door. This was the only part of their work he enjoyed. He was always amazed by what Eddie could do.

He wasn’t disappointed. The room glowed with a lovely, orangey, late-afternoon light. The curtains were open. Eddie was wearing his protective gear, but instead of standing by the door as usual, he was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, staring at the floor.

“What’s going on, bro?” Joe walked over and saw that Eddie was entranced by a perfect circle of dried blood, bisected by two squares of linoleum. He had cleaned all around it.

“What’s that?” Joe said.

“Man-sized mess,” Eddie said.

“That’s a first.” What the hell’s going on now? “You do that on purpose?”

Eddie looked at Joe. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Okay.”

Joe looked at Eddie, and down at the circle. He looked at Eddie again.

The owner peeked through the door and walked in. “Good Lord,” he said, impressed. “This is amazing.”

Then he saw the dirty circle. “What’s this?” He squatted down beside the brothers.

“I don’t know,” Joe said, “but don’t touch it.”

“Switzerland,” Eddie said.

“Um…okay,” Joe hadn’t heard that one in a while. It meant Eddie wanted to see Joe’s Swiss army knife.

Joe fished the tool out of his pocket and handed it to Eddie, who folded open the blade with exaggerated care and gently shimmied it under the loose square of linoleum. He pried and teased it gently until a bloody scrap became visible, stuck to the floor.

It wasn’t much. Just a torn piece of paper soaked black with blood.

“Do you think I should call Louis, Eddie?” Joe said.

“Uh huh,” Eddie said. “Okay.”

Chapter 36

Maybe Eddie had found something and maybe he hadn’t.

“Christ,” Louis said. “Did you do this because you thought it was important, Eddie?”

“Uh huh. Okay.”

“Why?”

“Man-sized mess.”

“What did you clean this area with?”

“Shiny Gold.”

“Right.”

“And something made you leave this one circle uncleaned?”

“Uh huh. Okay.”

“Why?”

Eddie just stood still, placid and calm.

“Did you notice the loose linoleum?”

“Man-sized mess.”

The questioning went like that, with extremely minor variations, for 15 minutes. Finally Louis gave up with Eddie and started on Joe. But Joe knew even less.

“Why did you call me, Joe?”

“I don’t know. Eddie found something.”

“A piece of paper.”

“Shit. I just drive the van. Take it or leave it. But I’m hungry and I need to get my brother home.”

“Why shouldn’t I just have Eddie finish the job?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I don’t know why I called you. Eddie said he found something. He did find something. He hadn’t looked under that tile until I got here, and then he did, and there was something there. That’s all I know. Take it or leave it. I don’t give a shit. But make up your mind, Louis.”

“Okay. Let me think about it.”

“Can we go?”

Louis hesitated and thought about it. “I guess,” He said, finally.

“What about this little mess, here,” the owner interjected.

Louis hesitated. “It’s evidence, sir.”

It didn’t take more than five minutes for Joe and Eddie to get out the door, and Louis stood still and pondered the situation for a long time before he called Pinky. He wanted a second opinion.

Ten minutes after Joe and Eddie left, Pinky arrived at the scene. The owner had gone back to work, and Louis was alone, just standing there.

“Whatchya got?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Louis said, his deep baritone even slower and more measured than usual. “Eddie thought it was important. Scrap of paper under the linoleum.”

Louis and Pinky squatted down at the circle of blood. Pinky looked hard. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply.

“That? That’s what he found? That little fucking piece of paper?”

“Uh huh.”

“So Eddie’s a detective now?”

“It is soaked with blood,” Louis said.

“Well, duh,” Pinky said. “The floor all around it was soaked with blood until Eddie cleaned it up. And now the entire area’s been contaminated with bleach or whatever they use to clean.”

“I know,” Louis said. “It’s probably nothing, but it’s one more thing than the nothing we got now. I’m going to have forensics come in and scrape it off the floor and run it.”

“Jesus, George,” Pinky shook her head in disgust. “You’re going to make those guys come down for this? This is ridiculous.”

“I don’t know. You’re right that there’s not much there. What is there looks pretty soaked. But figuring it out is not my job, Pinky.”

Pinky stood up.

“Jesus. Don’t do this, George.”

“Why the hell not? It’s overtime for them, anyway.”

Pinky tried hard to compose herself. For a minute she looked like she was going to haul off and kick her squatting partner upside the head.

“Ohhhhhh,” Louis said, finally. “Right. Listen, Pinky, I can understand you being a little touchy about bugging forensics right now. Just take off. Just go. If there’s any heat to take on this call, I’ll take it. You were never here.”

“Yeah? Well, I was here earlier. I was in charge, in case you forgot. And we didn’t find shit. How’s that going to look? The janitor comes up with something? Even worse—the janitor comes up with nothing, and you get the whole forensics team down here? Jesus, George—let’s just get out of here and let Eddie finish the last ten minutes of his job tomorrow.”

Louis, still squatting over the circle of blood like a big cowboy by a fire, peered down at the blood-black scrap. “I guess it is pretty bizarre.”

“Do you realize the kind of grief you are going to take for this? Look, George, if there was the slightest chance this could help us get the bastard that did this off the street, I’d say call in the fire department, the mayor’s office, and a big fuckin’ brass band. But this is shit.”

“It looks like some kind of store receipt,” Louis said, quietly.

“Don’t do this,” Pinky said. Her voice sounded genuinely pleading this time.

“I’m doing it,” Louis said.

“Oh, Jesus Christ on a crutch,” Pinky said. She took a knife and plastic bag out of her pocket. “We don’t need fucking forensics for this.”

She squatted down again, and before Louis could stop her, she had deftly peeled up the scrap of paper and flipped it into the bag. She was about to put it in her pocket. Louis took it from her.

“It’s all yours,” she said. Then she got up and left.

Eddie didn’t even notice the flowers in the van. Or if he did, he didn’t mention them. He stared out the window, counting cars and rubbing his hair. Joe had wanted to share with him, in some way, the great thing that had happened to him today, but it seemed suddenly out of the question. So he kept quiet, too, trying to force his thoughts in the direction of LaVonne and as far away from Eddie as possible. Something wasn’t right with his brother, and Joe did not want to have to deal with it one bit.

An hour later, Eddie was sitting on the couch in his basement as usual, but everything else was seriously off. For some reason, Joe had decided to sit in the basement, too. He was wearing headphones, trying to watch the Mariners on his little TV, which he had perched precariously on Eddie’s coffee table. He occasionally scribbled something in his notebook.

Eddie had paused the Shiny Gold commercial at the moment the family was together and happy. He stared through the screen. He held the remote on his lap and bounced it gently up and down, up and down. What happened today?

Just let go. Had it really been a message from his mom? Eddie never doubted or questioned his experiences at jobs; they were what they were. But he couldn’t do that now. And as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t remember enough about his mom to make sense of the message that had come to him today.

In certain ways, even though he didn’t know much about her, he felt that his mom was always with him. For one thing, there was the urgent, heart-thumping reminder of her that came upon him so strongly at the start of every job. Now it had been with him nonstop for days, and it was getting harder and harder to concentrate on anything else.

What did it mean?

Even worse, all his worries about Jolie were back full force. Just let go. Was he supposed to let her go? He didn’t want to do that. But he’d made her a promise, too.

The promise to Lucy, though, was the worst of all. He’d have to look in his pocket soon, but he simply could not force himself to do it. He’d been wearing the same pants for days, and that in itself was enough to drive him to distraction.

For once, Eddie wasn’t looking forward to bedtime. His dreams had been leading him into stranger and stranger situations, and none of them seemed to be playing out well at all

Things were twisting horribly out of shape. The blood-soaked receipt he had found today was deeply unsettling. The old man’s ghost had done more than give him a message from his mom; he’d pointed to his own killer. He’d given something to Eddie and he wanted something in return. The card was evidence. Just like Lucy. The old man wanted justice. Lucy wanted justice. They wanted their killer stopped. Eddie knew it for certain, and the weight of responsibility it threatened was agonizing.

All this time he’d been content cleaning, doing his job. It had been enough. Eddie never cared about who did what, who got caught or didn’t. It wasn’t his business. It wasn’t his gift. He could clean. He could help people. He had to; so he did.

If you know somebody killed someone, can you not tell? He didn’t know if he could handle that.

Just let go. What did it mean? Was he supposed to let go of cleaning? He could never do that. Why wasn’t his mom around to tell him more than a few puzzling words? Something happened to her. Eddie knew it. He’d learned about blood from dealing with hers.

That thought forced Eddie to roughly snap his attention back to the silent, frozen screen. It was a big job, all he could handle, to keep his mind at least superficially focused on the eternally beaming, confident, pretty Mrs. Shiny.

Joe, sitting on the other end of the couch, realized that he had no idea what the Mariners were doing. It was hopeless. All he wanted to do was numb out.

He looked over at Eddie, staring at the frozen image on the big TV. Eddie’s hand was bouncing up and down.

Joe killed the game. He pulled off his headphones and rubbed his face. “Eddie?”

Eddie didn’t respond.

“Eddie? You’re not watching.”

Eddie hit play.

“Eddie, c’mon. I need to talk to you, man. Could you turn that thing off for a minute, please?”

Eddie waited until the commercial was done, then clicked the TV off. “Uh-huh. Okay.”

“What’s…going on with you, man? That thing today was weird. And catching that ball at the game, and taking off on me, not telling me where you went. You’re kind of… spooking me.”

Eddie didn’t respond. He kept staring at the empty screen.

“I’m worried about you, man.” Still no response. “You don’t have anything to say?”

“Just let go, Joe,” Eddie said.

“Excuse me?” Joe had never heard that one before.

“Just let go,” Eddie repeated. He looked over at Joe’s knees.

Joe stared at him.

“Good night, Joe.”

That was that. Joe got up. As usual, Eddie wasn’t going to be any help. “Yeah. Good night, Eddie. I guess I’ll just go to bed, then. You need anything?”

No response. Joe sat back down.

“Look, Eddie. Whatever it is…” There were a million thoughts swirling through Joe’s head, but they didn’t add up to anything. Eddie had done another amazing job today. Finding evidence at the scene was weird, but why not? As far as him taking off, he had only missed one day of work. No real harm done. And catching the ball—well, who the hell knew?

It seemed, though, as if something big, something new, was brewing in Eddie. Maybe he was going through changes, too. Joe had a startling upsetting thought: Maybe Eddie’s going through the same thing I am. Maybe this is somehow about Jolie. He shoved it out of his mind.

“You should get to sleep,” he said gruffly. “Can you handle getting ready on your own?”

“Uh-huh. Okay.”

“We’ve got another job in the morning. Just a small one, okay?”

Eddie didn’t respond.

Joe sat on the couch for another five minutes. Eddie sat next to him, motionless. Joe had hoped for communication; it wasn’t going to happen.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he finally said, almost in a whisper, then he trudged wearily upstairs to his room.

There was a lot about Eddie that no one except Joe ever saw. Joe was scared to believe what he knew in his heart that Eddie might be capable of.