“And here she is now,” Veronica said, her voice an aged rasp.

As Jim put his wallet back into his pocket he looked up to see that Trix had frozen in the middle of Abruzzi’s, staring at Veronica. Other diners had started to turn to watch the scene unfold. Jim noticed that some people-staff and regulars-seemed to be very studiously avoiding looking at them at all. He wondered how many times they had seen Veronica Braden arrive here to help people in need. People in pain.

“You came,” Trix managed, fighting back a sob. Tears slid down her face, and she did not bother to wipe them away. “I wasn’t sure you were even still alive.”

“If not me, then someone else,” Veronica said, ignoring the eyes upon her. “Now, come along, Trixie. We don’t have all night.”

Cruel Mistress

In the old days,” Veronica said, slipping into the Mercedes’ front passenger seat without asking Trix if she minded sitting in the back, “we’d have had to wait until morning. All the shops closed at a decent time then. Life was less frantic. Now people want twenty-four-hour everything. TV, takeout. Clothes shopping. Things are changing.”

“What do you mean?” Jim asked. He held the passenger door open, watching as Veronica made herself comfortable and then sat motionless with her hands folded in her lap. The only real sign of effort was the woman’s subtle sigh.

“Shopping,” Veronica said. She looked up at Jim, eyes twinkling, then glanced over his shoulder at Trix. “Oh, you’re coming, dear, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Trix said. She got into the back of the car, glancing at Jim and trying to communicate something with a frown, a sharp nod.

“What shopping?” Jim said, and he thought, Is she really just a crazy old lady after all? Out here on the busy Boston street, the woman seemed somehow smaller than she had in the restaurant, and less convincing.

Veronica closed her eyes briefly, resting her head back against the seat as if asleep. But the frown was not at home on a relaxed face. Her hands twitched a little in her lap, and Jim leaned sideways to look in the rear window. Trix, sitting in the backseat, was watching Veronica with her mouth slightly open, whether in awe or fear he couldn’t tell.

Veronica opened her eyes so suddenly that Jim took a small step back. “Copley Place,” she said. “There’s a mime artist on the library steps as they pass. Holly wants to stop and watch, but Jenny’s in a hurry to get into the mall and find somewhere to eat. Jonathan holds her elbow and whispers something to her. Something Holly can’t hear. I think she’s a little spooked. Jenny’s missed that. What kind of a mother am I? She puts one arm around Holly’s shoulder.

“But Holly’s fascinated by the mime, and his silently moving mouth. She rubs her ears, as if she’s been swimming and maybe got water in them. But she can still hear the pigeons and the traffic, and a bunch of children across by the church are singing a song she hasn’t heard before. The mime opens and closes windows in thin air, as if he’s peering through from somewhere else, and he smiles at her. She smiles back. He’s not so scary.”

“What is all this?” Jim asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you what I can of your wife and daughter before they went,” Veronica said. “Now, if you’ll just…” She raised and lowered one hand, an almost dismissive gesture.

“Trix, I don’t like-”

“Jim!” Trix snapped from the backseat. If her voice had been angry or impatient, he might have argued. But Jim could see that she was crying.

“Jenny’s hungry. She’s got lunch on her mind. But Jonathan sees what Holly really wants. He knows even as they pass the bookshop, and Holly slips away from her mother, pressing her face to the window. There’s a display of fairy books there. She already has some-she has three of them-but there are two others she’s always wanted. I’ll get us a table, Jonathan says, and Jenny smiles at him and nods. I won’t be long. She follows Holly inside. The smell of new books, coffee from the Starbucks upstairs in the shop, the sound of gentle conversation at the counter. Pages flip, books thump closed. Holly is already past the counter and at the kids’ section, and she has a book in each hand, deciding which to read.”

Veronica fell silent and her expression slowly changed. Gone was the gentle smile as she relayed Holly’s supposed behavior earlier that day. In its place was something like resignation.

“What happened next?” Jim asked, because he did believe, really. It wasn’t that he knew the story, but the subtleties were accurate: Holly’s delight at the fairy books, Jenny’s eagerness to get her daughter fed before shopping, Jonathan’s surprising perceptiveness for a guy who’d never wanted kids. She couldn’t be making this up.

“A book falls from the shelves,” the old woman said. “Jenny reaches for it, wonders, Why the hell did that one tumble, there’s no one to push it, there’s no reason- And then…” Veronica looked up at him again, and for a second there was a smile in her eyes. “Jonathan is back at home. The falling book is on its shelf, and your wife has never touched it.”

Jim breathed heavily, trying to process what she had said, and what she was still saying. “I don’t understand.”

“We must go there,” Veronica said. “That’s not always essential, but it can help. You need to feel the place to know it.”

“Copley Place?” he asked. The old woman nodded, and in the backseat Trix was looking at him expectantly. Jim pushed the door closed and stood alone on the street for a moment, cold, getting damp again from the fine rain. It’s where they were headed when I last saw them, so why the hell not? he thought. But as he got in and started the car, he knew there was more to it than that. He would go because Veronica had suggested it. And she knew.

The old woman sat quietly beside him as he drove, hands still crossed in her lap, and he adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see Trix.

“You all right?” he asked. Trix caught his eye and nodded. She even offered him a smile that said, Yes, fine now. He thought of standing on that traffic island pleading with the patterned cobbles for help, and the rain, and the long wait in the restaurant while Veronica dealt with some other city emergency.

“So what makes you the Oracle of Boston?” he asked. He heard an intake of breath from the backseat.

“Long story,” Veronica said.

“Well, it’ll take a few minutes to-”

“And private.”

“Right.” Jim pressed his lips together and flicked on the wipers. The rain was growing heavy again, and Boston’s evening streets demanded his attention. Dueling taxicabs jockeyed for position as they took couples and friends out for the evening. Other cars lined up at traffic signals, pedestrians dashed across the streets, and horns erupted here and there as impatience settled and tempers flared. You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience, he’d read somewhere once, and he leaned on the car horn for no reason.

Veronica turned to look directly at him. “Breathe, Mr. Banks,” she said. “I’ll do all I can.”

“Why Copley Square?” Jim asked. “Are Jenny and Holly still there?”

“Nowhere near. But you know that.”

“Then we should be going where they are!”

“You understand, Jim. You’re just trying hard not to.”

“Then fucking make me understand!”

“Jim!” Trix said from the backseat, but fear and anger had Jim now, and such emotions combined brought out the worst in people.

“Learn patience, Jim,” Veronica said, as if she’d known what he was just thinking. “I need to see where they were before they went, even if you do not. I need to… taste the air. It will help me pin down their location.”

Jim scoffed but said nothing. Tears pressed against his eyes and throat, and he did his best to swallow them down. They were as useless as drops in a rainstorm. “But you’ll help me find them?” he said finally.

“I have every intention of setting you on the right path.”

Вы читаете The Shadow Men
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