“What do you want?”
Jimmy ignored the question. He crossed his legs, made a velvet sound. “Michael told you what he is, didn’t he? That’s why you left in such a hurry, why you were weeping in the shower of that disgusting motel.”
He lit a cigarette with a brass lighter, and then blew gray smoke at the open window. “Do you know who I am?”
Elena’s throat hurt when she swallowed. “Jimmy.”
“Michael spoke of me?”
“Yes.”
“And what did Michael tell you about me? Some overblown horror story? Something blood- soaked and gothic?” Elena grew still, and Jimmy nodded. “Lack of imagination has always been his great shortcoming. No sense of destiny. No sense of greater things.”
Elena saw Michael with paint on his hands: his excitement for the baby, the future. He’d always seen family as something greater than its parts. He’d described it for her so many times: how it would be when they were a family, the
“A small man with small ideas.”
“You’re wrong about him.”
“A little fire. I like it. But it is true. Probably my one great failing in how I raised him. Not enough sense of his own greatness.” Jimmy took a final drag, and then flicked the cigarette out the window. “A depressing lack of self-worth.”
Elena worked her wrists, felt tape bite deeply.
“I’ll tell you a story,” Jimmy said. “It’s a funny one. Did Michael tell you about the day the old man found him? How he was about to be killed under a bridge in Spanish Harlem and the old man saved him. You know that one? Did he tell you that?”
Elena felt her head move, and Jimmy laughed.
“’Course, he did. It’s his favorite story, his own personal mythology. It’s like the novels he reads. Dickens, I guess. Maybe
Jimmy made a flourish with his hands, and Elena knew she’d never forget the sight of the condescending smile that bent his face.
“Now, here’s the beauty of it.” Jimmy leaned forward. “You ready? Watch this. Otto Kaitlin hired those punks to cut Michael up. It’s beautiful, I swear to God. Otto wanted to see for himself if this kid was as tough as everybody said.” Jimmy lit another cigarette, leaned back, shrugged. “Turns out, he was.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, in spite of that, Otto Kaitlin didn’t make Michael what he is. I did.”
“And that matters?”
“Are you serious?” He laughed.
“I want to know why you’re telling me.”
“I’m telling you, you ditzy bitch, because Michael’s not some random killer. He’s elegant, like Mozart would be if playing the piano was killing, like da Vinci if the
“And you’re proud of that?”
“You don’t think God is proud of Jesus?”
A pale, still madness smoldered in the dark centers of Jimmy’s eyes, but something else burned in there, too, and for a second, it looked familiar. “What do you want with me?”
Jimmy shot his cuffs. “I want you to tell me about Michael. What his plans are. Where he’s going.”
“Just let me go.”
“No, no, no. Too late for that.” Jimmy rose, and then sat beside her, his hip narrow and hard against her leg. He dragged a finger along the sweat of her forehead, and then rubbed the dampness against his thumb.
“There’s nothing I can tell you,” Elena said.
“Of course there is. Where he’s staying. What weapons he has. Security issues. People around him. Where he sleeps and when.” Jimmy smiled, but it was small. “Little things.”
He licked his lips, pale skin flushed, and Elena had an epiphany. She realized what she’d seen in his eyes.
“You’re scared of him.”
She didn’t know where the certainty originated, but it was real. Jimmy’s talk of pride and fatherhood was bluster. He was frightened, and now that she’d said it out loud, it was all over him. His posture. His face.
“Don’t say that again.”
He made the words a threat, but Elena had been electrocuted and taped up, tossed in the back of a trunk and terrorized. This knowledge was the only power she had, and as small as it was, it was seductive. Her mouth opened, and Jimmy’s eyes went dead before the words had formed in her mouth. He caught a fistful of her hair and pulled her off the bed, the same deadness on his face as he dragged her across the floor.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
The words were glass in her mouth as he dragged her into the living room and across the filthy carpet. Men rose and stared. Skin burned off the backs of her hands and then she heard hollow thumps as Jimmy’s shoes landed hard on the boards of the porch. Sunshine struck her face, and he dragged her down the stairs and onto the soft, pungent dirt.
“Please…”
He hauled her to the back of the car, rolled her with a foot. Someone said, “What’s going on, Jimmy?” But Jimmy ignored him. The trunk popped with a small sound and Jimmy leaned in, pulled out a gasoline can and emptied it onto Elena. The smell hit some primal part of her, so that even as her eyes burned and her mouth filled with the bitter taste of it, she tried to crawl away.
“Who’s scared, now?”
His voice had an inhuman quality, an indifference that was too studied to be real. When he lowered the gasoline can, she saw nicks in the bright, red plastic, fine stitching in the seams of Jimmy’s leather shoes. Elena blinked against the burn in her eyes, saw the lighter in his hand. It was brass. He spun it between his thumb and four fingers, opened it, closed it. Bright metal winked and she saw the charred, black wick inside.
“Don’t.” She curled around the baby in her stomach.
“Don’t what?”
The lighter spun, clicked open.
“Please…”
Jimmy looked up, squinted at the high, blue sky. “Hot out today.”
Elena began to cry.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Julian disliked drugs, in general, but when he needed them that changed. When he was scared and cold in the darkness of his mind, he liked everything about the drugs. He liked the intensity of the doctor’s face as the needle went into the little bottle, the way light shone through the glass. He liked the sound of a fingernail tapped against the syringe and the sight of the narrow stream shot out into the air. His eyes went very still when the needle came out.
The needle made the voice in his head go quiet.
The needle helped Julian hide.
It started as a burn where the needle slipped in, but the burn was brief and faded to warmth
