by the stairs to the second floor, where Mikel’s bedroom had been, but before I even thought about going for it, he came back. He was folding the FedEx envelope in both hands, forcing the cardboard to bend down, and as soon as he’d finished he put it in one of the parka pockets, then brought the gun out again from another.
“He’s alive,” Parka Man said, and he used the gun to indicate Tommy. “Remember that. Bad as he looks, he’s alive.”
I could see that Tommy’s hands were cuffed together behind his back.
“You want him to stay that way, you’ll listen to me,” Parka Man said.
The blood that I’d feared would run into my eye turned right, flowing along the ridge of my brow, and I could feel it trickling along my hairline, down my jaw.
Parka Man came closer, holding the gun casually in his hand, pointed down. I waited for him to stop, but he didn’t, kept coming, until he was standing over me in the chair. I stared at his middle, at his parka, at all the shiny metal of his zippers and buttons and clasps.
His free hand came up to my face, and I flinched, but kept silent. I felt a gloved thumb touch my brow, follow the line of blood, wiping it away. I could feel the stitching that surrounded his finger. When he reached the end of the blood trail, he dragged it across my cheek, toward my mouth. He touched my upper lip, pressed, then flicked his finger away.
It felt like something inside me would explode. Somewhere beneath the edge of the parka was his groin, and I thought about kicking, striking out hard.
Then I remembered the gun.
He made a noise, like he was happy with the way things looked, like he was satisfied. He backed away, toward Tommy, and used the toe of a black work boot to roll him onto his belly.
“Didn’t want to have to do it this way,” Parka Man said. “But he was being stubborn. I’d have settled for a hundred thousand, honestly, but he had to get a spine or soul or whatever you friggin’ drunks discover in AA, so now we’re doing it the hard way. So the price goes up, too.”
I stared, confused, terrified, trying to make sense of the words. It was as if he wasn’t really talking to me, more to himself. I told myself he was crazy, but he didn’t sound crazy; he sounded like someone who enjoyed having power, enjoyed using it.
“Straight to the source this time,” the Parka Man said, and his black-toed boot kicked Tommy in the gut. It wasn’t savage, almost absent, and I thought I heard Tommy groan. “No middleman.”
He looked up from where Tommy sprawled, the emptiness inside his hood settling on me.
“A million dollars. Not too much, not for you. You’ve got until noon Friday to get it, in cash. Soon as you have it, you go home, turn on your porch light. Leave it on. I see the light, I know you’re ready, and I’ll tell you where to bring it. I don’t see it on, the next time you see your daddy is when the Detective Division comes and asks you to identify the body. You understand me?”
Tommy made a cracked sound that died in the carpet.
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
Parka Man slid his gun back in his pocket, crouching. He grabbed Tommy with both hands, one on the cuffs, the other on his upper arm, hoisting him to standing. Tommy’s legs seemed like they were hollow, like they were crazy straws beneath his torso, and they bent with his weight, unable to support him.
“Believe me when I say this,” Parka Man told me. “I’ll know if you talk to the cops. I will know if you even whisper to them. If that happens, I’ll kill Tommy, here. I’ll take my time about it. Then I’ll come and kill you, too. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Who says celebrities are unreasonable, right?”
“Right.”
“You just sit there and catch your breath, think sweet thoughts for a couple minutes after I’m gone. You’re in no hurry. You’ve got until noon on Friday, like I said.”
He grunted, turning Tommy and then hoisting him onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. They went down the hall, out of sight, and I heard the front door open. A couple seconds later I heard it close. An engine started outside, and I supposed it was the Parka Man’s SUV, and it sounded like it was coming closer, and then it was moving away, and then it was gone.
The shaking started in my hands. It ran up my arms, it slid into my legs. My stomach went wild. It felt like stage fright, and it felt nothing like that, because this was terror, and it was different.
I was certain I was going to vomit, steeled myself for it, but it didn’t happen. Then the shakes went away, just as they had come, and I thought about getting up, but didn’t. My stomach settled, and I started to feel heavy and strangely euphoric, almost postorgasmic. All of the adrenaline, I guess, leaving me high.
The room had huge windows on the east side, to allow the view of the city. The room had been tidied after Mikel’s death, and the fresh bloodstains on the carpet looked grotesque next to the ones that had refused to come out.
There wasn’t really any doubt, anymore.
It didn’t matter if Tommy was everything he had claimed when he’d come and asked to be my father again. It didn’t matter if he was as sorry as he said, as sad as he seemed. Maybe he wasn’t. It didn’t matter.
I couldn’t be the reason he died.
He was all I had left.
Outside, I heard a siren coming closer, and I didn’t think it was coming here, and I didn’t know what I would do if it did. The wail climbed, fell, climbed, and then receded, passing by.
I made my way into the bathroom, turned on the light over the sink. There was a gash on my forehead, not very deep, but long. The skin was torn, and in the opening I could see red flesh, still seeping. The blood that the Parka Man had smeared was already dry, tight on my skin. There was some bleeding on my scalp, too, showing through the curls where the Parka Man had torn hair.
I splashed water on my face, and the cut stung, but in its way that made me feel a little better, made me focus a little more.
A million dollars, that was a lot of money, but I had more than that. It couldn’t be that hard to get the cash, and Parka Man had given me most of four days to do it.
I’d get the cash.
Explaining the cut, that would be something else. It looked like I imagined a gash from the edge of a piece of furniture might look, if for example someone had tripped and not caught themselves in time. Something a drunk might not even remember doing to herself if she had gotten really hammered after her brother’s funeral.
I can do this, I told myself. I can do what needs to be done.
I didn’t think I was lying this time.
CHAPTER 25
It was stupid, but it was the only disguise I could think of, so I wore a ball cap and sunglasses when I went to the bank. I’d bought both of them at a Walgreen’s down the block from my branch, and maybe it was the cut, or maybe I just didn’t matter that much anymore, but no one seemed to recognize me when I made the purchase.
There was a small group waiting in the teller lines when I got to the bank, the last of the lunch crowd, and I stayed out of their way, trying to be inconspicuous, and it totally backfired and people stared. Maybe sunglasses and a ball cap would do it at the movies, but in a bank, it just made me stick out a little more. I got a withdrawal slip from the stand and filled it out precisely, and waited until the line died down before attaching myself to the end. That didn’t work, either, because another three people came in right after I’d done it, and assembled behind me. They were all women, professionally dressed, and none of them looked much older than I.
Four people in front of me, and the line had just shortened to three, when I heard one of the women say, “You know who she looks like? She looks like the girl from Tailhook.”
“That’s not her. She’s too short to be her.”
“Not Van, not that one, the
