The Broken Ones (40 page)

“Who’s been to my desk?”

“Christ, Mariani, who the fuck would come to your desk? No offense.”

“Foley.” The urgent tone of Oscar’s voice brought Foley back around, blinking. “What was her address?”

“Man, you really got to get a secretary.”

Oscar took two fast steps forward, and Foley’s eyes widened. “Whoa-whoa!”

“Seriously,” Oscar said.

“Okay!” Foley said. “Fucksticks. Jeezjeezjeez.”

Foley opened his drawer and pulled out a notepad, ripped out a page and handed it to Oscar.

“You copied it?”

“She sounded cute.”

Oscar ran for the door.

The motorbike’s exhaust echoed against the concrete balusters of the bridge. Oscar sped across the river, into West End. Two-story shopfronts, shuttered restaurants, blocklike apartments, and tin-roofed houses in dark narrow streets crooked in an arm of the river.

An hour. Someone had come looking for Oscar and found the address of the girl from Elverly on his desk. Haig? Kace? It didn’t matter. Time did.

He slowed, looking for street signs, but few sign posts had escaped thieves’ wrenches. He hoped his memory served him. He leaned the bike and twisted the throttle.

Workers’ cottages were purposeful as miners jammed in a lift, each house an arm’s width from its neighbor. Weatherboard faces under corrugated hats, all dark. A dog barked. Oscar let the motorcycle roll to a stop outside a rusted chain-link fence guarding the skeletal, weed-choked remains of rosebushes. Out front was a glossy black sedan with no plates.

The house was a pinched-looking timber building on dark stumps: two windows, a faded set of Buddhist prayer flags under a sagging awning, a set of dangerously listing stairs. Oscar dismounted the bike, listening.

He stepped over the fence, avoiding the rusted gate, and hurried up the stairs.

The front door was locked. He went down the side of the house, squeezing between the dark, warped battens and the side fence, his boot soles slipping on the mossy concrete.

The backyard was a long, narrow pit of tall grass smelling of jungle rot. The thin light leaking from the evening sky picked out the aerial-like wires and struts of clothesline; a sheet hung like a limp sail, and a second trailed one end through the grass, still clipped to the line by a single peg. Dark paths had been beaten through the grass toward a hunched toolshed in the yard’s far corner. From behind the shed came sounds of struggle.

Oscar ran. Two figures grappled silently in the black corner; the grass around them was beaten down by their fighting. Zoe Trucek was pinned to the ground by a dark figure who was trying to wrap a third bedsheet like a noose around her neck. Zoe was kicking hard, but the makeshift rope was finding purchase, and her legs swung weakly. The man had his back to Oscar, who was halfway across the yard.

“Hey!” Oscar ran, reaching for Stuart’s gun tucked in the small of his back.

The attacker’s shoulders froze momentarily, then he renewed his work with greater urgency. He twisted hard on the sheet around Zoe’s neck, and Oscar heard a strangled croak.

Oscar thumbed back the .44’s hammer.

The attacker hesitated no more than a second, then pushed powerfully onto both feet, ran three light steps to the fence, and vaulted it into the neighboring property.

Oscar let his momentum carry him into the corner, feet sliding on the wet grass. He looked over the fence.

The neighboring yard was a dark clot of shadows: a maze of vegetable gardens, compost bins, and fruit trees covered in nets. There was no sign of the man.

Oscar dropped to his knees and pulled the sheet from around Zoe’s
neck. She had a weak pulse but wasn’t breathing. He quickly felt the skin of her throat—the thyroid cartilage and the structure of the larynx felt whole. He pinched her nostrils closed, put his mouth over hers, and inflated her lungs. Listened. Inflated. Listened. Felt her pulse, weaker.

“Zoe,” he said sharply in her ear, and clamped his mouth over hers, exhaled.

A choking gasp, a rattling suck of air.

She rolled away from him, pulled her hands to her neck and her knees to her chest. She coughed harshly, and he heard a liquid spill and smelled the tang of vomit. From the front of the house, Oscar heard a car start—and, a moment later, the heavy clatter of Lovering’s motorcycle falling on its side.

“We have to go,” he said.

She rolled back. In her hand was a tiny wink of silver. He ducked back as the knife sliced the air. He clamped his hand over hers.

“You sent them,” she said. Her voice was a croak, her breaths harsh. He simply shook his head.

Her wrist vibrated in his hand. He let her look at him.

“We have to go.”

Her green eyes were dark, shining.

“You sent them,” she repeated. But he could hear the doubt in her voice. She let him lift her.

Oscar raised Paz’s bike. It had a dented tank and a huge gouge through the chrome of the gearbox housing. He put the key in and twisted the throttle. It started. He looked back at Zoe.

“You can’t stay here,” he said.

She watched him for a long moment. Then she climbed on behind him.

He stopped the bike at the top of his street and scanned the shadows under the trees. Then he switched off the headlight and did a loop of the block. No dark cars, no one surveilling his house. He parked
the bike down the side of the house and helped Zoe up the stairs. She walked on weak legs, most of her weight on his shoulders. He winced with every step. She was sleepy, a natural aftereffect of shock.

He took her inside and put her on the couch. She curled her knees to her chest and in moments was breathing deeply. He lit the kerosene lamp and saw the bruising starting to rise on her long, thin neck. He went to the fireplace, placed the .44 on the tiled hearth, opened his cache, and pulled out a box of cartridges. Slowly, carefully, he loaded his service pistol.

He boiled water, opened one of his few remaining packets of tea, and made a pot. He drank slowly, cup after cup, feeling the caffeine sparkle in his blood. He pulled a chair close to the front window and watched the street.

In the empty bus shelter opposite, the dead boy stood, watching. He raised his fingers to his chin. Oscar licked his lips and looked up the street. No cars came. Nothing else moved.

When she began to stir, he checked his watch. It was after nine. He poured her a cup of tea from the pot—it was still warm. When he went to her, she was sitting up, watching with green eyes tinted bronze by the orange lantern glow. He handed her the cup. She didn’t take her eyes off him.

“I don’t trust you,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “But you have to.”

A long moment later, she took the cup and sipped.

On the roof, a tick. Tick-tick. The first drops of rain.

“Why did you want to talk to me?” he asked.

She watched him over the rim of her cup.

“Someone needs to know.”

“Know what?” he asked.

She watched him with catlike eyes and shook her head. “I don’t trust you.”

They sat in silence as hard and fragile as glass. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his service revolver. She lifted her chin, and he saw her shoulders tense. He handed the gun to her, grip first.

“The safety’s on,” he said.

She slid it off with a practiced thumb, pulled back the slide, and chambered a round. The semiauto’s hammer remained cocked. She raised the muzzle level with his belly.

“Did you send him?”

“No.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened to Penny Roth?”

“They cut her, a symbol. A ritual killing. We found her. Someone on the inside tried to destroy her body. I saved it, for a while. But they got to it again. Like you said, she’s burned.”

The gun pointed at him didn’t waver.

“Someone on the inside,” she said. “You don’t know who?”

He shook his head. Her eyes traced over every square centimeter of his face. The cuts, the bruises, the singed hair, the plasters. With every flick of the eyes, she connected mental dots.