He went back to the car, looked around once more to make sure he was alone and unobserved before he opened the rear door of the Jeep. Mrs. Dollie lay in the same spot he had stowed the last two corpses. She was wrapped in a blanket. He bent down and lifted her. She was small and thin, easy to carry.
Burn hurried down the stairs. He lowered her gently to the concrete steps and unwrapped her from the blanket. Enough streetlight reached him to see the look of terror on her face. For a moment he felt he couldn’t do this, leave this decent woman who had treated his son so tenderly lying like refuse dumped on the steps. Then Burn took the blanket and went back to his car. He checked once more that he hadn’t been observed and drove away.
He knew that when the body was found on the stairs in the morning, it would be called a mugging. When the police came, he would add substance to that fiction, tell them that she had left his house at around seven, refusing his offer of a ride, saying that she enjoyed the walk down to the taxi. That it did her good, the bit of exercise. It would be easy enough to reproduce the dialogue that had passed between them many times before.
As he pulled the car into his garage, Burn felt sick. Because of him Mrs. Dollie had unwittingly been drawn into something that had taken her life. He had met her husband, a timid and self-effacing man who could not be persuaded to call him anything other than Mr. Jack. He’d also met her daughter, Leila, a young woman in her twenties who was pursuing a career in business, the product of her parents’ years of selfless dedication.
Burn knew he couldn’t afford the luxury of guilt. He had to keep one thing, and one thing alone, on his mind.
Matt.
Carmen Fortune woke in the morning with the tik craving chewing at her nerve ends. Fuck, she had to score. Then she remembered the white kid, her little present from God. She sat up, the greasy sheet falling from her naked breasts. Where was he?
The night before, she had put him in the bed next to her and locked the bedroom door from the inside. He hadn’t woken when she had released his hands and feet. He probably had a concussion. She had made a token effort of cleaning the blood from his blond hair. The hair was so fine and soft under her fingers, not like her Sheldon’s, which had grown out hard and wiry, like steel wool.
She saw the boy sitting on the dirty linoleum in his pj’s, staring vacantly into space, sucking on his thumb. He didn’t look at her when he got out of bed and crossed to the closet, pulling a T-shirt over her nakedness.
She crouched in front of him. “Hey,” she said.
He didn’t react. She saw that he was sitting in a pool of piss. Jesus, was it her curse to be surrounded by men who couldn’t control their fucken waterworks?
She shook him by the shoulder. “Hey, little guy.”
Slowly, his eyes tracked up to her face. Carmen, even in her state of low-grade tik withdrawal, could see they were beautiful eyes. Blue, with something almost like purple in them. Like her week-old bruises from Rikki.
“How’s your head?” She reached out and parted his hair to see if the cut was healing. The boy flinched and pulled away.
He took the thumb from his mouth and spoke for the first time. “I want my mommy.”
The accent was American, like one of those smart-ass kids on the sitcoms. It made Carmen want to laugh. Was this for real? “You’ll see your mommy later, okay?”
The kid was starting to cry, the mouth quivering and those beautiful eyes tearing up. Jesus, she wouldn’t be able to deal with a bawling brat right now.
She stood and held out her hand. “Come, let’s go get you some food.” The kid just looked at her. “You wanna watch the TV?” No reaction.
She grabbed hold of his hand and hauled him to his feet. He wobbled a little, then found his balance, pulling his hand away. “What’s you name anyways?”
“Matt.”
“Okay, Matt. You can call me…” She stopped. She couldn’t very well tell the kid her real name, could she? “Call me Jenny.” Like J. Lo’s “Jenny from the Block.” Still one of Carmen’s favorite songs.
“Are you Leila’s friend?” He was looking up at her, desperate to make some sense of what was happening to him.
Who the fuck was Leila? Some Muslim chickie who looked after him, maybe. “Ja, sure. Me and Leila is tight. She tole me to look after you, okay?”
He nodded. When she held out her hand, he took it this time, and she unlocked the door and walked him through to the kitchen.
Uncle Fatty sat on the sofa, just woken up. His hands shook as he tried in vain to squeeze a drop of wine out of an empty foil bag. Then he saw the white kid, and his face looked like he was sure he was having hallucinations.
“You just shut up about this, okay?” she said, pointing at the boy. “I’m gonna go now and get you a wine.”
Uncle Fatty nodded, licked his dry and scummy lips. Carmen knew how he felt. She was going to take some of Gatsby’s money and go and score a globe. Then Uncle Fatty could get pissed, and she could get high, while the American kid watched cartoons.
Life on the Flats.
Burn found himself sitting in tt.#8217; s bedroom, on the bunk bed with the brightly colored duvet. A Dr. Seuss book lay on the carpet. The Cat in the Hat. Burn picked it up, leafed through it, each page imprinted on his memory from the endless nights he had read it to his son. He put the book down.
Was his son still alive?
Burn pushed these thoughts from his mind, went to the landline in the living room, and called the clinic. He finally managed to talk to the nursing sister from the night before-was it only the night before?-who told him Susan’s procedure had been postponed by a day. It would happen tomorrow; her doctor was delayed at a conference in Johannesburg. This suited Burn. The longer Susan stayed away from the house, the better.
His cell phone rang. He snatched at it. “Yes?”
A young woman spoke, vaguely familiar. “Mr. Hill?” Definitely not the kidnapper.
“Yes. Can I help you?”
“This is Leila. Leila Dollie.”
Oh, Jesus, Mrs. Dollie’s daughter. Burn shifted gear, suppressing the feeling of guilt that almost paralyzed him, ready to lie. “Yes, hi, Leila. What can I do for you?”
“Is my mom maybe there?”
“No, she left here last night. At around seven, seven thirty.”
There was a pause. A worried one. “I see. I thought she was staying the night at your house.”
“No, I think that had been the plan, because Susan had to go off to the clinic. But then I was back early, and your mother preferred to get on home.”
“Really? Now I’m very worried. How was she getting home?”
Burn spun his story about the ride he offered being rejected, Mrs. Dollie’s determination to get a bit of exercise.
The young woman was battling to control her anxiety. “Ja, that sounds like my mom. Okay, I better go. I think I’m going to check with the police, the hospitals.”
“Is there anything I can do, Leila?” Like maybe tell you that I dumped your mother’s body on the stairs above High Level Road?
“No, no, thank you Mr. Hill.”
“If you need anything at all, please let me know, okay?”
“Thank you. Okay.”
Leila was gone. About to face her worst nightmare.
It started as a whisper on the streets. Gatsby was a wanted man. There was a warrant out for him. There was even a price on his head. He had killed a kid, Ronnie September from Tulip Street in Paradise Park. Shot him and burned him with two other men. And now the cops were after Gatsby, hunting one of their own on the streets of the Flats.
The wiser heads shook when they heard this. No way. This had to be a lie. Gatsby had ruled his patch with an iron fist for what? Fifteen years? Seventeen years? He had more blood on his hands than a halalutcher, and no
