“You shouldn’t have done that, Puppy,” Cheng clucked his tongue as if Puppy had spiled cookie crumbs. “But Mooshie failed to kill Grandma the first time. Love is touching sometimes.”
Mooshie leaped for Albert, who clicked something in the palm of his hand, freezing her with a faint groaning noise.
Puppy stepped back, dazed.
“Excellent, don’t you think? She’s the highest quality we have.” Cheng fluffed Mooshie’s hair. “An A2. They’ll last forever. We can create millions more with a snap of the fingers, now that we see how well they work. Thank you for helping us stage this trial run, Puppy. Maybe we can’t turn out thirteen million just yet, but definitely there’ll be enough to finish the job. Speaking of which.”
As Albert pointed the pistol, Puppy dove to the floor. The bullet shattered a lamp. He reached for a piece of Grandma’s skull and threw what he thought would be the last fastball of his career, hitting Cheng in the forehead; the First Cousin fell over the table.
Puppy scrambled to his feet. Alarms went off. He stroked Mooshie’s still warm face and kissed her tenderly on the mouth.
“Oh Moosh.” He clenched his groin.
Puppy knelt beside Grandma and squeezed her hand, pressing her fingertips to his lips, then flung his blood-splattered jacket onto the floor and hurried to the elevator. BTs stormed past. Puppy nodded politely, slipping into the elevator. He strolled down the staircase as if off to a gay party and through the white-trimmed double doors, where hundreds of thousands of children lined up waiting for Grandma and her honorees to come onto the patio beneath the huge purple “We Will Survive” banners.
“How’s everyone?” Puppy pressed through the kids, who swarmed over him. Shaking hands, he walked with controlled hysteria around the far side of the House, ducking beneath the rose garden. Charged with keeping people out, not in, a diffident BT nodded at Puppy’s badge and waved him along.
Sirens wailed. The 178th Street subway station was closed. He walked opposite the spectators, a puzzled murmur sweeping the crowd, and toward the 181th Street station, also closed. BT armored trucks roared past, knocking aside increasingly terrified people and dragging a woman ten feet before she fell off, dead.
Puppy lowered his head and ran down the steps of the station, leaping over the turnstiles and trotting along the tracks. He had no idea where he was going. He passed several shuttered stations before taking an emergency exit off to the left, up the filthy steps and shoving open a rusting manhole cover.
Hysterical crowds screamed and cried. Overhead a vidscreen flashed his face.
ASSASSIN.
“Puppy Beisbol.” Clary jumped into his arms and smothered him with kisses.
“Well, you really did it this time, Pup.” Annette shook her head.
He was stunned. “What the hell are you doing here?
“Barcelona wanted to see you give your speech.”
Cheng’s voice boomed “…a treacherous murder by the terrorist Puppy Nedick…”
A couple siblings looked at him in growing recognition. Puppy pressed Clary against his face for cover and they pushed into the pulsating crowd. His face flashed everywhere, his name almost chanted. Puppy. Grandma. Murderer. He stopped Clary from applauding.
Near Fordham Road, Clary scrambled out of his arms like a twitchy dog. She waited until a gray-wigged A24 vendor commiserated with grieving siblings, then snatched three sunglasses off the lower shelf. Clary happily fussed with the oversized glasses, turning every which way to see the world in this new way.
Annette lowered the shades down her nose and gave Puppy a look that said don’t even begin to ask about this child.
“We have to get off the streets,” Puppy whispered over another deafening wave of anguish as Grandma’s face filled the screens. Clary hummed the Grandma Muertas song.
Down the block, three BTs jumped out of a truck and ran toward them, rifles raised.
Puppy pulled Clary onto his back and grabbed Annette’s hand.
“We have to hood.”
“We’re too old.”
Three shots missed them, but hit some siblings. More panic as the crowds ran from the BTs.
Puppy hopped on the first car hood, Annette grudgingly throwing away her expensive heels. As they jumped onto the second car, Clary suddenly bounded ahead, squealing with delight. They hooded five cars, before finally losing the shooting BTs on Sherman Avenue.
• • • •
CLARY PUT HER fingers to her lips as they walked into Zelda’s living room.
“Quiet. Or polizia.” She made soft machine gun noises.
Annette tossed the keys on a chair and wearily gestured to keep the lights off, lighting a couple pine-scented candles. Clary made some sad looking sandwiches, which Puppy greedily ate, while Annette laid out an oversized shirt and baggy pants.
He returned to the living room in Zelda’s clothes; Annette stared at the vidnews.
“You never told me about your father.”
Puppy slowly turned. Alvin Nedick’s face wasn’t the drunk, dissipated Alvin Nedick, but a confident, slightly scary man in his thirties with cold eyes.
“…Nedick’s father Alvin was a member of the Blue Wigs, a cruel sub-group of Miners responsible for a series of armed robberies,” the somber presenter said.
Puppy shook his head. “Can’t be.”
“Why would they say it?”
“To make me look worse. He was a drunk. A useless fucking drunk.” Except when he was a Marine; the thought made him angrier. He knocked the last of the sandwiches onto the floor. Clary swore in Spanish.
“Honey, why don’t you play games in the other room?” Annette picked up the food.
Clary frowned. “Puppy’s Papa?”
“Si.”
“No,” he yelled. “Fake Puppy’s Papa. Lies.”
Annette gave him a warning yank on his sleeve. “Clary, go play. We’ll talk about Puppy’s Papa later.”
Clary saw she could only take this so far and skipped into the bedroom, adjusting her sunglasses. Annette waited until she heard the sound of screeching tires of a vidgame and pulled him onto the couch beside her.
“Tell me one more time you didn’t do this.”
“I’m not answering that question, Annette. You above all people should know better.”
“People do
