Smoke

Twenty-Six

Jesamyn climbed into the cold interior of her Ford Explorer, gunned the engine, and blasted the heat. She had three stitches on the side of her face, right beneath her eye. She turned down the rearview mirror so that she could take a look at them; she kind of liked them. Like the bruises she often got in kung fu, big purple and brown flowers of blood beneath her skin, she saw this as a badge of honor, the mark of a battle fought and survived. She was glad Dylan had agreed to leave and go to her mom’s to help her get Ben ready for school in a few hours. Her mother hated Dylan with the passion only a mother can muster for the person who hurt her child. But she was able to stay civil for Benjamin’s sake.

She felt fatigue tugging at the lids on her eyes as she backed the Explorer out of Matt’s driveway. Matt’s parents and Theo had come out in the commotion and she had had to tell them that Matt was on the run. Detective Bloom had found the files Matt had left on the kitchen table, and Matt’s mother had wept inconsolably. Now she saw the living-room light glowing in the row house next to Mount’s. She wanted more than anything to bring him back to that place, safe and sound, proven innocent.

She hoped Bloom wasn’t just paying her lip service about talking to the suspect. But she suspected he was just trying to get her to shut up. She was going there anyway; she’d make a huge scene if she had to. She was about to merge onto the highway when she saw the darkness in the backseat shift. Her heart thumped as she pulled onto the shoulder suddenly with a screeching of her tires, ripped her gun from its holster and thrust it behind her, slamming the vehicle into park with her free hand.

“Hands where I can see them,” she yelled, motivated by her own fear rather than a desire to intimidate.

“Take it easy,” said the darkness. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep or I would have said something before you started driving.”

Her fear drained away and she sank back into her seat, the adrenaline rush leaving her shaking at her core. “Jesus Christ,” she sighed, leaning her head back against the upholstery. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mount.

“You are a major, major fuck-up, you know that?” she said, turning to look at him. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking, I guess. I was acting. I saw her. I saw Lily.”

“What? Where?” she said. He looked exhausted, pale with blue canyons of fatigue under his eyes, dark stubble on his jaw. There was something in his eyes that didn’t thrill her. For a second she wondered, has he lost it?

“On my street, in front of my house. I went out after her but she was gone.”

“Were you dreaming?”

“No. I saw a woman. I’m sure of that. I’m not sure it was Lily. But I was certain of one thing when I saw her: that someone was fucking with me and if I didn’t do something about it, I was going to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

“So you went to see Clifford Stern?” she said, guessing, because that’s what she would have done.

“I didn’t know where else to go. They cleared out the church in the Bronx. Jude Templar was gone. I knew Stern was lying. There was no other reason for him to lie or to be a part of that set-up unless he had a connection to The New Day. I figured I could scare him into telling me the truth.”

He leaned back in the seat, put his feet up, and rested his head against the glass.

“They knew,” he said. “That’s the scariest thing. They knew enough about me to know that I’d show up there, trying to get the guy to come clean. They sent that girl, whoever she was, to make that call, and knew it would cause me to act. Don’t you think that’s frightening?”

Jesamyn watched her friend and partner. He met her eyes for a second and then closed them, fell silent. She was about to say something when he went on.

“They were waiting there for me. I came in through the back. The door was unlocked, that should have been my first clue. Stern was in a La-Z-Boy, half asleep in front of the game.

“I walked right through his dining room and stood twenty feet away from him before he turned to look at me. He smiled. ‘Man, you are predictable,’ he said. But he looked stoned, I mean high as a kite. It was more like he was talking to someone he thought was a figment of his imagination than me, standing by his recliner with a gun in my hand. But there was something crazy in his eyes; I think now it was a warning. I moved in close to him until I was standing right over him. He smiled again.

“There was this deafening sound and his chest kind of exploded and splattered all over me. He died immediately with that crazy, stoned expression still on his face. He never even knew what hit him. There were two shots and they came from behind me, so I spun around and found a man as big as I am, a little taller even, slightly wider. He held a thirty-eight identical to my own in a gloved hand. I drew on him when I heard something behind me. I turned and there was another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another guy all in leather, bald, big. Like it was a uniform, some kind of look they were cultivating.

“He fired on me and I ran. I knew what they were trying to do. They wanted it to look like I broke into his house and that Stern and I shot each other. Case closed. They’re rid of me and they don’t have to worry about Stern either. Nice and neat.”

“We arrested one of them,” she said. “One of those men you saw.”

“Just now?”

“Yeah, I came to your place to get your porn,” she said with a smile. “And he came in after me.”

“You took him to the mat?”

“You bet your ass.”

“You’re a tough bitch, Detective Breslow.”

She smiled. “If I’d known he was such a bad shot, I wouldn’t have been so scared.”

“Bad shot?”

“Yeah, he fired at you and missed. You’re like the proverbial side of the barn.”

He coughed a little. “Who said he missed?”

“Oh, shit,” she said, leaning over the seat. “You’re shot?”

He nodded. “I was coming home to die like a wounded old grizzly,” he said with a smile. “But it was too crowded at my place. I thought I’d do it in the back of your car.”

“How bad is it?” she said, unzipping his jacket and seeing that the tee-shirt beneath was red with his blood.

“Not that bad, I don’t think. I think it went straight through.”

She looked at him more closely; he was fading, his lids lowering over eyes that seemed to be having trouble focusing. There was so much blood, she couldn’t see where the wound was. She saw that the waistband of his jeans was black with his blood. She quashed the rise of panic down hard. No time for that.

“Mateo Stenopolis,” she said loudly, pulling on his legs to get him to slide all the way down. She didn’t want him falling over during the mad dash she was about to make for the nearest hospital. “You stay with me.”

He looked at her and nodded weakly.

“Don’t make me pull out the kung fu,” she said when he said nothing. He raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, then winced at the movement.

“Jez,” he said, as she turned and threw the car into drive, roared onto the highway. “Just be careful.”

“Careful of what?” she said, pushing her foot heavily on the gas. “You worried about my driving?”

“The other one. You only got one of those guys. I think they travel in pairs.”

She thought of her vacant-eyed leather-clad assailant and wasn’t thrilled that he had a partner. Then she saw a pair of headlights behind her, square and bearing down quickly.

“Mount,” she said.

He didn’t answer and she looked up in her rearview mirror, saw only darkness in the backseat and the hot, high beams of the white van on her tail.

Lily felt like she could crumble to dust in Lydia’s arms, she was so fragile. She clung to Lydia like she was a