Dead and Gone

And what it finally came down to was … no reason to be here anymore.

He went out with a bang. A big bang, taking a couple hundred along for the ride. Those kids at Columbine? They weren’t the first. Wesley was. He walked into an exclusive high school in the suburbs, carrying enough munitions to smoke every living human in the joint. And the truck he drove up in was full of some kind of poison gas, too. He went in there to die. And, like every other murder he planned, it worked.

Crazy. Maybe that’s what you’d think. Depressed, suicidal. It wasn’t any of that. He was tired, that’s all.

He left me something. A note. A suicide note, the way the cops saw it. For me, it was an escape hatch. In that note, Wesley took the weight for a lot of stuff I did. Signed it with his own fingerprint … the only part of him that the world ever recognized.

If he’d been depressed, instead of just DNA-deep sad, he wouldn’t have looked out for me that one last time. We were brothers. Came up together.

Wesley was ice, even then. I wanted to be just like him, once.

It was Wesley himself who told me the truth. He had no fear in him. And it wasn’t worth it.

So I knew. I wasn’t depressed; I was sad. I don’t know what other people who are sad do to fight back. I know some of what they do. Drugs, booze, sex—risks. I don’t know if it works for them, or for how long. But, for me, I could BASE-jump on cocaine and it wouldn’t change a fucking thing.

The only thing I ever can do is let both the monsters in. Fear and Rage. One keeps me alive and the other makes people dead. If you took them from me, I’d just be sad. Nothing else. Empty and sad. That’s when the Zero calls. That’s when I want to go and be with Wesley.

Maybe it would be like when we were kids. Leaning up against an alley wall, sharing a cigarette, eyes scanning, on full alert. Waiting.

Depending on who showed, we’d run, fight, or rob them.

But I don’t really believe that. I know where Wesley is. I know why they call it the Zero.

But it pulls me, still.

Max got back from Mama’s, came upstairs to my room, signed “telephone.” Then tapped his heart, pointed at me.

I shrugged a “Huh?” back at him.

He made the gesture for “Wolfe.”

I called at eleven, like she’d left word to.

“It’s me.”

“Immigration has them still at that address.”

“Illinois?”

“Yes.”

“Could it just be lag-time in getting the records updated?”

“It could be,” Wolfe said softly, “if I were relying on their records.”

I got the message. “Last contact?” I asked. “Almost a year ago. They made an application to sponsor a relative.”

“I’m missing a piece. More than one.”

“We’ve got someone out there.”

“INS?”

“Chicago PD.”

“You said … Never mind. He’s with you? Or just someone who can be worked with?”

“The former. And you and he have mutual interests, anyway.”

“How could that be?”

“He wants the missing kid,” Wolfe said.

Even if the DEA wasn’t lurking around every big-city airport, fitting passengers into their lame “profiles,” everyone on my side of the line knows better than to buy a ticket with cash. That one’s a guaranteed red flag. They want photo ID now, too, so slipping through the cracks isn’t as easy as it used to be.

I didn’t know how far my new face would take me. Didn’t know if they had an alert out. My old mug shots wouldn’t match up. I knew they’d photographed me in the hospital more than once, but never without the bandages. Still, the two Bronx detectives had seen the new face enough times so a police sketch artist could probably get pretty close.

It had been a long time. Happened in late August; now it was the tail end of January. Wolfe said there were no wants-and-warrants out on me. But that didn’t mean they weren’t looking—you don’t need a warrant to bring someone in for “questioning,” especially a two-time felony loser with no known address.

I wasn’t worried that anyone loyal to Dmitri was looking. I didn’t think there was anyone loyal to Dmitri still alive. If they were, they were holed up somewhere, waiting for their chance to get out of town. Or for a clear shot at Anton.

But whoever set the whole thing up, they were waiting. Or thought I was dead. And I had no way to tell which.

I shook my head, as if the movement would clear my thoughts. There were too many possibilities. And not enough data. Maybe whoever set it up did think I was dead. The shooters would have reported that I’d been hit. And that they’d put a round into my skull to make sure. An unidentified guy found dead in the Hunts Point wasteland wouldn’t have been enough to make the papers.