Die For You

“She freaked. Her accounts are close to empty.”

She nodded as though it was news she expected. “What’s she going to do?”

“My guess?” he said, still looking up Broadway in the direction of the cab that had sped Isabel away. “Something stupid.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jez nod her agreement.

“Let’s find Camilla Novak,” Breslow said after a moment. “I think we have to go back to that point to figure out what’s happening here.”

Grady shrugged. He didn’t have any better ideas. But he stood rooted in place; there was something else nagging at him. He couldn’t quite get a hold on it, though.

“Today, Crowe,” said Breslow impatiently. “I’ve got to pick up Benjy at three in Riverdale.”

“The doorman,” said Crowe.

“Who? Shane?”

“Yeah.”

“Never showed up at his apartment today.”

“Let’s get a warrant and search his place first.”

“I don’t think we’ll get a warrant just because the guy didn’t turn up at home after work.”

“He had opportunity to let the intruders in, he left his post before the next guy showed, and he withheld information. Let’s try.”

She raised her eyebrows at him and gave a quick nod, took her phone from her coat. She always made these kinds of calls, had more finesse, more relationships and less of a temper. Things just always seemed to go easier when Jez handled them. Crowe found he could rub a certain kind of person the wrong way. He had no idea why.

His ex had called the night before last. He knew it was her when he heard the phone ring, though she hadn’t called him in months. He’d just finished working out on the weight bench he kept in the basement of the Bay Ridge row house they’d shared.

“Keep it, Grady” she’d said of the house when they were splitting up assets. “I hate Brooklyn. And I hate this house.” They’d inherited the house from his grandparents and hadn’t been able to afford to change much. So they walked over the same linoleum floors his father had as a child, endured the same pink-tiled bathrooms, and climbed the same creaky steps. But he loved that house, and it was theirs free and clear-paid off long ago, taxes insanely low. So we sell it. Buy something that’s ours. He wouldn’t, couldn’t sell the house where his father had grown up, where he had, too, essentially. Their first and angriest arguments were about that house.

He was breathless, his shirt damp with sweat, when he heard the phone ringing. Something about the way it traveled through the house, how he heard the ringing through the floorboards, made his palms tingle. He took the stairs two at a time and got to the phone, an avocado-green wall unit, by the third ring.

“Crowe,” he answered.

Just silence on the line. But it was her silence. He’d know the sound of her anywhere.

“Clara. Don’t hang up.”

A round release of air, as though she was trying to cloud cold glass with her breath. When she spoke, her voice was taut. “How did you know it was me?”

“Every time the phone rings, I think it’s you. I just happened to be right tonight.”

“Stop it.”

“I miss you. Clara,” he said, and it sounded like a plea, “I could die from how much. I keep thinking about the last time.”

He heard the sharp intake of breath that he knew meant she was going to cry, and he felt close to tears himself, a thickness in his throat.

“Come back to me.” It wasn’t the first time he’d begged.

“I have to go. I shouldn’t have called you.”

“Wait,” he said quickly. She hung up and he leaned his head against the wall. “Wait,” he said again into dead air. He drew his fist back and punched the wall hard. The plaster buckled in a near-perfect circle and he brought his hand back fast to his chest. The pain started dull, slow, then radiated up his arm, his knuckles split and bleeding.

“Fuck,” he whispered, though he wanted to scream. The pain felt good. He’d rather have physical pain than the raw gnawing he’d had in his chest since Clara left. Unfortunately, now he had both.

“I’VE BEEN MEANING to ask what happened to your hand,” said Jez as they sped up the Henry Hudson, the dirty river glinting to their left, the city rising to their right. The warrant issued through some magic on Jez’s part, they were headed to Charlie Shane’s Inwood address.

“Bar fight.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What?”

“Let’s just say I see you more as a lover than a fighter.”

“Nice,” he answered, slightly offended. They were partners after all; supposed to have each other’s back. Did she really think he couldn’t hold his own in a brawl? He stopped short of asking.

“Seriously.”

“Hurt it working out. Punching bag.”

She nodded, looked skeptical, but didn’t say anything else. She had that motherly way about her, always with a tissue in her purse and a nose for bullshit. She always had snacks, too-peanut-butter crackers or granola bars.

“I know it’s not easy,” she said finally, looking out the window and not at him, almost as if she was thinking aloud. He didn’t bother pretending that he didn’t know what she was talking about. They took the rest of the ride in silence.

11

Fred was standing in the doorway when I reached the front step of the house. He wore an expression of concern as he watched the taxi depart. In his gray cardigan sweater and pressed navy slacks, he was solid, comforting, stronger than his seventy-five years.

“Isabel Blue,” he said.

He’d called me this since we first became friends, a few years after he married my mother. The timing of this coincided with my sister leaving for college. When she moved into the city to go to Columbia University, she took a lot of her anger with her. I’d always adored and worshipped my older sister and I grieved her departure from the house, but even I had to admit that the dynamics in our home shifted for the better without her.

Like sand over ice, her absence allowed us to find firmer footing with each other. We were able to welcome my father’s memory home-hanging old photographs, my mother and I talking openly, fondly, about him and the good things we remembered. Linda had hated for anyone to mention him, had sunk into despair on his birthday, Father’s Day. For Linda, sadness had always been best expressed through anger. And her outbursts were frequent and passionate. With therapy and Erik, that had changed in her adult life. But out of loyalty to her-and not a little fear of her temper-I had kept my distance from Fred for the early years of his marriage to our mother.

Fred always weathered the storms of Linda’s unhappiness with patient stoicism, as though he believed on some level that he deserved her anger. Maybe he did. I don’t know. With the fog of her unhappiness dissipated, Fred and I saw each other for the first time over the kitchen table. I was dressed for school, feeling sad, missing my sister. He said, “Isabel Blue.”

I looked at him and he offered me a warm smile. “It’s not so bad, Isabel. She’s just a train ride away.”

I didn’t have words for it then, the sad hollow inside me, the recognition that everything changes, that people die or they just leave you, and that you’re expected to move along in the current of your life as though nothing has happened. It seemed terribly unfair to me at thirteen years old. Why did people even bother with anything if it was all just going to fade away or be wrested from you?

“My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.” Fred was fond of haiku.