Even fifty feet away, Tommy didn’t look good. He tottered unsteadily, as if drunk, as if he might lose his feet at any second. But it was him, and he was alive, and beneath the swollen bruises visible on his face, I saw him try to smile.
Despite it all, I smiled, too.
There was the splash of a foot in a puddle from behind me, and I felt the spatter touch my neck and cheek. In my periphery, I saw a man’s knees as someone settled himself on the step behind me, to my left, and in the distance, on the corner, Hoffman turned my way, saw the same thing, but she didn’t move.
The man pushed the guitar case with his toe.
“Don’t turn around,” he said.
Tommy was still standing where he’d stopped, maybe under instructions not to come any closer, not to leave. His feeble smile had vanished.
The man brought his head low, closer to my ear. “I’ve got a gun at your back,” he said. “Any tricks, boom boom boom.”
My fans were still at the Starbucks, now almost thirty of them, maybe more, and I looked their way. Ray, their leader, saw me, and it confused him. Then he checked his watch and gestured to the group, and they began coming toward me, loping down the steps.
“Where is it? Is it in the case?”
I reached out and flipped the locks, then lifted the lid, showing the contents. The Taylor lay in its bed of worn velvet, beautiful. I took it out, and rested it on my knee.
The kids were off the steps, coming toward me, grinning and joking and happy. Tommy hadn’t moved, and across the gap, I saw his concern. Marcus was coming down from the sidewalk, making for him. Hoffman was standing still.
A pressure dug against my back, high on the right side, below my shoulder blade. The voice was a hiss.
“Dammit, where’s my money?”
I didn’t say anything, fighting my injured fingers into position. Ray, leading his group, stopped in front of me, and I lost the view of my father, of Hoffman. More than thirty of them, and a couple latecomers running our way, desperate to reach us in time to hear the show. Some began swiping pooled water from the steps, taking seats, smiling and murmuring.
The pressure against my back increased, and his mouth came lower, and I felt stubble brushing my ear. “Make them go away,” he whispered. “Goddammit, make them go away or I’ll shoot you right here.”
“No,” I said, and if the gathered crowd hadn’t heard the threat, they certainly heard me say that, and several turned accusing eyes on the interloper at my shoulder. I lowered my head, checking my fingering, and pulled the melody I’d been fighting the last few days free from the Taylor.
“We’re not early, are we?” Ray asked.
“You’re right on time,” I told him, letting my fingers wander the strings, letting the music come. “Everyone? This is Detective Wagner.”
Everyone said hello to the man behind me, the man holding the gun on me. The pressure in my back sharpened for an instant, and he thought about doing it, then, I know he did. It took a second more before he realized exactly what I’d done, and that if he pulled the trigger now, he’d never get away with it. Even if my murder meant nothing, he’d have thirty fanatics to contend with, and all of them now knew his name, whether he denied it or not. They’d heard me, and they would remember.
“Do me a favor, Ray?” I asked.
Ray loved that I knew his name, it was in his face. He had blue eyes, and they adored me. “Anything.”
“You see a guy in a parka behind you?”
Ray turned, and in the space between him and the others, I saw Marcus with an arm around Tommy, helping him off the steps and to the street.
“Just that guy,” Ray said. “That the one you mean?”
Behind me, I heard Wagner shifting again, maybe getting ready to leave.
“That’s my dad,” I told Ray.
Wagner moved the gun from my spine to my neck, and it wasn’t as cold as I remembered it this time. The teenagers needed a second, realizing, and then it started, and there was a cry, and they began scrabbling away.
Wagner dropped his hand onto my shoulder, taking my jacket in his fist, trying to pull me up. “Come on.”
I started up, still holding the guitar. In front of me, Ray and his friends were backing off, confused and bewildered and terrified.
“Come on, you’re coming with me,” Wagner said again, harsher.
“No,” I repeated, and I pulled forward, and his grip came away.
“I’ll kill you.”
I turned and looked past the gun, and met his eyes.
It was the same man. Older and sadder, maybe, but fear can do that to you. His mouth had gotten smaller and the muscles in his face had grown looser, and he’d lost hair as much as he’d lost dignity.
“You damn bitch,” he said, and his voice cracked. “You damn bitch, you’re as stubborn as your damn father, why couldn’t you do this? Why couldn’t you just let me have this?”
I just stared at him, not answering. Behind, all around, there was motion, voices, action, but it was fading, the world contracting to encompass only me and my guitar and an aging cop with his gun.
“You owed me this,” he spat. “All I wanted was the money, all I wanted was what I was due. Damn you! You wouldn’t have any of this if it hadn’t been for me! You would be nobody if I hadn’t done what I did for you and your brother!”
“You did nothing for us.”
“I saved you, I protected you! You fucking think I didn’t know who was behind the wheel? You think I didn’t know who was lying, what really happened? I took your father away so you could have a goddamn
There was a taste in my mouth, metallic and sharp. The gun in Wagner’s hand was almost vibrating, his face twisting.
People shouting. Movement in my periphery, men and women in blue and in plainclothes, holding guns of their own. Someone was screaming my name.
“You killed my brother,” I said.
“He didn’t give me a choice!” The gun no longer wavered.
A voice told him to drop it, loudly. Another one told me not to move.
“You owed me,” Wagner said, quietly. His eyes danced around, as if seeing the trap for the first time, seeing the teeth of it closing around his life. He brought his eyes back to me.
“You owed me,” he said again.
Then he brought his other hand up, and the cops who had the shot took it, then.
The echo was louder than any audience had ever been as it caromed off the brick all around me.
CHAPTER 39
This is the song I can never write, because I lie the way we all do, because I lie about the obvious, I ignore all the facts in favor of a more comforting fiction. The way Wagner and Brian and Chris Quick did. All of us creating fictions, making reality out of a fistful of rain.
Like Mikel in the pickup truck, and Tommy getting out to raise a fist at my mother for blocking the drive. Mikel not wanting to see that again, not wanting to be helpless one more time. Mikel, in driver’s ed, thinking he knew enough, sliding along the seat and pulling the shift down to drive, looking over his shoulder.
Thinking he was in reverse.
