And he loved them.
This wasn’t the way.
“I can’t,” he said, stepping back from the edge. “I can’t.”
“Just let God take you, Evan. I’m your angel. You know that, don’t you?”
“No.” He shook his head. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I want to go home.”
“You cowardly little shit,” the voice said, her tone hardening. “Do what you’re fucking up here for. Do what you have to do.”
“No!” He turned and stared, and suddenly saw an ugly, foreign face, a woman he had never seen before. Not his angel. Not his inner voice. “Who are you?”
“I’m not your little angel, you ignorant shit.” The woman’s face was now twisted in disgust. “I’m your hell, boy! And your hell is here. Now do it! You want to die? Well, I’m here to bring you to the promised land. There’s no turning back. Your parents don’t give a shit. They hate you just the way you hate them. Now do what you came here to do.”
“No-I see it now,” he said, the moon illuminating his face, slick with tears. “I came up here to see God. And now I’ve seen him.” He turned to the panoply of lights, the millions of candles assembled before him. “Look, I understand it now. I see-”
“You see nothing, you stupid, drugged-out worm! You wouldn’t know God if he was with you now.”
“He is,” he said, ignoring the taunts. “I can feel him. He’s-”
“Then let him save you,” the woman said. She threw her weight against him, forcing him toward the edge. His heart started to race. He tried to gain his balance, stumbling over a rock, his right foot coming out of his shoe.
“Dad!”
“Your daddy isn’t up here,” the woman said. “Just me. That’s all.” She pushed him again. This time he tried to grab on to her and spun his arms, teetering.
“You want your parents, little boy? You’ll be with them soon enough. Tell him that, Evan. When you see God. Tell him Mommy and Daddy are on the way.”
She taunted him again. He tried to latch onto her, the angel he had trusted, but found only air.
He stared down at the bottom, terrified. “Mom!”
She pushed him one last time, and he spun, seeing clearly now that the lights weren’t candles at all, but streets, homes, cars, and that the choir below wasn’t angelic voices, but waves crashing, hitting the rocks.
Yet, instead of fear, something else entered his heart as his arms fluttered, unable to stop his fall.
Something welcoming. For the first time, a kind of attachment.
Everything seemed to reach out to him in a friendly way.
Mom, Dad…
He reached out, trying to grab on to them.
But it was only the night he held, the endless starry night.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
“Y ou killed him! ” Gabby stared uncomprehendingly at Susan, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You killed my son.”
“I merely did what the gutless little shit didn’t have the balls to do himself,” Susan Pollack replied. “I showed him the way.”
I heard this, pressed against the front door, having crossed the courtyard to Charlie’s apartment. Susan Pollack’s spiteful re-creation of Evan’s death, and Gabby’s heartbroken reply.
I had the dead officer’s gun with me.
The curtains were drawn, but the door was still slightly ajar, and I could hear what was happening inside. I prayed that the cabbie had done what I’d begged him to and called the police. Through a slit in the curtains, I saw Dev and Susan Pollack holding guns on Charlie and Gabby.
I was the only one who could help them now.
“You’re not an angel,” Gabby said, her gaze blazing like a furnace bursting with hate. “You’re a monster. You killed him. You’re the one who should die. This monster killed our son, Charlie…” She was starting to lose control. “I cannot live with that.”
“Dev, please! ” Charlie turned to him. “You’ve got what you came for. Here I am. Can’t you see she’s suffered enough? She’s done nothing to you. Let her go.”
“Let her go? ” Dev cockily wagged his gun. “That’s where you’re wrong, old friend. She’s done everything to me. She’s your wife, Charlie. She’s the mother of your son.”
Helpless tears ran into Charlie’s gray beard. “ Please.”
Dev just shook his head. “Sorry, mate. No can do.”
“I waited thirty years,” Susan Pollack said with a gleam in her eye. She raised the gun to Gabby’s face. “You want your little boy so bad…” She cocked it with both thumbs. “Be sure and tell him hello from me.”
I couldn’t wait any longer. I burst through the door.
Susan Pollack spun, surprised.
I trained my gun on Dev, who sat there with neither shock nor real concern on his face. More like amusement.
In front of the hearth, Susan Pollack’s gun had fixed on me, her hands shaking.
My problem was, I couldn’t just start shooting.
They had Maxie.
“Drop the gun, ” I said to her, the dead policeman’s gun trained on Dev.
Dev just sat there, his gun dangling nonchalantly against his thigh, actually facing Charlie. “ Gonna kill me, doc? Bad policy, wouldn’t you say, all things considered…?”
“Get out of here, Jay,” Charlie said. “Please. Get out now. This is our fight.”
“It is my fight, Charlie. They’ve got Maxie. The police are on their way.” I looked at Susan, not knowing if she would respond to reason. “There’s no way out. You shoot me, I shoot him.”
“Loosey-goosey, huh, doc?” Dev grinned. “That’s how you want to play it? Well…” I saw him firm up his grip on the gun. “Just the way I like it, I guess…” He shifted toward me. “Though I was thinking, surely a guy with such a fancy degree would be smart enough to have been a long ways from here by now…”
There was a kind of chuckling, almost fatalistic quality to his tone, and it made me worry. Almost as if he sensed he had the upper hand.
We both knew I couldn’t shoot him dead.
That was when Gabby turned to Charlie, her cheeks tearstained, a kind of finality on her face. “I am sorry, my husband…”
Fear in his eyes, he suddenly realized what she was thinking.
“I am sorry…” She shook her head. “But I cannot live in this hell anymore.”
“Gabby, no, no!”
She lunged, surprising Susan Pollack, who brought her gun back in a defensive gesture. Gabby barreled into her, driving her back into the stone mantel with the fierceness of an enraged animal.
Susan uttered a horrific, garbled scream as she went backward. Her mouth parted in a frieze of disbelief and horror.
Her throat impaled on the jagged neck of Charlie’s guitar.
I heard the muffled blast of a gun firing, Susan’s gun, but not before Gabby wrapped her hands around Susan’s throat, forcing her harder and harder against the hearth, the splintered wood ripping through her larynx like a sharpened lance.
The gun fell to the floor amid her twitching, guttural rattles.
“You killed my Evan! ” Gabby kept her hands on Susan, her eyes ablaze, squeezing the remaining life out of her, looking directly into her face.
We all just stood there frozen.
