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  “About half. Once we realized you weren’t transmitting, we moved in, but we had to break the door down.” When she turned away from him, he said, “We had to arrest them. We had no choice at that point.”

  She slapped the mattress in frustration. “My cover’s blown, Harry. That’s it. I’m burned on this case.” She didn’t think she could feel any worse, but there it was, the helpless anger mixing with the pain and the fatigue, a hot, sharp slurry in her chest.

  “We arrested you too,” he said.

  “You what?”

  “We made them think we responded to a shots-fired call and we arrested everyone in the room, including unconscious you.”

  “Shots were fired?”

  He nodded, narrowing one concerned eye at her. “Your gun, Lane. You fired. You put a nice hole into the wall.”

  “I did?”

  He sighed and sat on a chair next to her. “Lane, your cover is most likely solid. But you’re done with this case. You can’t go back in. You’re going to go on medical leave for a few days at least. Okay?”

  She peered at him in confusion. His words made sense, but his tone was all off, and she was too exhausted, too enervated to understand the disconnect.

  “Do you think Hopper set me up? You think he was in on it?” Strange how much she wanted the answer to be in the negative.

  Harry moved his shoulders, something between a noncommittal shrug and a loosening maneuver. “Don’t know, Laney. We’ve brought him in. If he was, we’ll get it out of him.”

  Shifting sands. That’s what this felt like, without end. She needed at least one clear, solid thing in her life. “I’m not going to talk about this now,” she said. “I want to go home.”

  But even that wasn’t easy. She’d fired her weapon, albeit accidentally, and that precipitated a slew of paperwork and an interview. Internal Affairs took her gun for testing, and she had to wait for them to return it, and for everyone on the team to be questioned. Their stories were checked and cross-referenced, their radios examined, reports filed.

  By the time it was all done, the sky was morning-bright and she was nearly hallucinating.

  Harry had stayed with her throughout, and when she finally changed into her street clothes and staggered outside, he drove her home.

  CHAPTER

  36

  THE FIVE DAYS of medical leave passed as if in a fever. It had been so long since she’d spent so many consecutive days with Theo and Alfie that she felt a stranger, a visitor to their daily lives. When Alfie first saw her bruised face, he rushed to her and pressed his slight body against her, burying his forehead into her shoulder. Later, as they sat on the couch watching one of his favorite shows, he placed a small, cool hand on her swollen cheek, a surprisingly soothing gesture.

  Each day she woke early and made him breakfast, an indulgence of waffles and eggs, French toast, and hash browns he’d associated only with Fridays and Saturdays—her usual days off. Her first day home, Theo stayed by her side. They went for a long walk, chatted, cooked dinner together. They avoided the subject of her undercover career and she was grateful. Once they were sure their son was asleep, they had sex—a coupling first tender and cautious, then quick and heady, and finally violent in a way that left her panting, sore, and uneasy.

  On her second day, Theo was polite but taciturn, and she told him to go paint, he didn’t need to babysit her, she was fine, just needed rest. But she couldn’t rest, had lost the knack for it over the years of working long hours. By her third day she called Harry.

  “What’s the news?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about anything, Lane, just get better. We’ll talk when you come back.”

  “Jesus! Tell me, Harry. What’s happening with the case?”

  She heard movement, as if he were walking somewhere, then a door closing. “They had to let Djugashvili go,” he said. “We have the chocolate as evidence, ’cause it was obviously stolen and we know who it was stolen from, but we have nothing connecting him to the actual theft. He claims he had no idea where the goods came from and he was only trying to unload it. That brings it down to possession of stolen property. He made bail.”

  “You’re kidding.” She had gone outside, wanting the cold on her face after the stuffiness of the house. “What about the assault? And what about him telling me that he, or I don’t know, his guys, stole the truck.”

  “Technical malfunction, Lane. I told you. None of that got recorded. We have your word against his. That will have to do once it goes to trial, but for now he made bail. Even with the assault charge.”

  “And the money?”

  “Gone. We weren’t able to find the fifth guy or the cash.”

  “Fuck, Harry.”

  And it was all her fault. She’d allowed them to rob her, overcome her. The case was falling apart, stalled, going nowhere. All those years trying to prove that she could be as tough as any of the guys, that she could take on the effin’ mob. She closed her eyes. All she proved was that everyone who ever doubted her was right.

  “Look, try not to think about it, okay? Spend some time with your family.”

  She ended the call and walked back to her silent house. But she wasn’t used to being home, couldn’t think what to do with herself. Grabbing a bottle of wine from the rack, she knocked on Theo’s door, then turned the knob. When he didn’t respond, she knocked again.

  He jerked the door open halfway and stared at her from a gaunt, pale face, his thick hair messy and paint streaked. Over the years, his pretty-boy beauty had crystallized into a sculpted, linear handsomeness, the planes of his face long and sharp, austere. His lips were a dark, burgundy extravagance within all that pallidness, as if painted, wine stained.

  She held up the bottle. “Take a break?” she asked.

  He stepped back so she could come in, and there were those mouth paintings, moaning and screaming and gaping at her. She walked quickly toward the window, perched on the sill, waited for him to open the bottle, pour a few inches into a cloudy glass, and hand it to her.

  “What happened there?” She nodded toward a blackened patch of floor. Dirt? Soot? Had there been a fire? Alfie hadn’t said anything to her.

  He walked out, returned a few seconds later with another glass, filled it halfway, put the bottle down. “I spilled some lamp black,” he said. “I tried to clean it up, but it left a mark.”

  She peered at the dark smudge, about ten inches in diameter. When this room was her brother’s, it’d been carpeted cobalt blue, a color both electrically bright and cold. She’d been glad to see it go when Theo redid the floors. This was his room now, and if he was okay with paint on the hardwood he’d so carefully restored, then who was she to complain?

  “I think I’m off the case,” she said.

  He sat down on his painting stool and swirled his wine. “And you don’t want to be?” he asked, a clipped reproach in his tone.

  “It’s my case, Theo. I worked it and worked it. I know everyone in it.”

  “You were beaten and robbed, Laney.” He looked down, then at his latest painting. She could almost feel his need to pick up a brush and fix some error. He leaned toward the canvas, his eyes squinting. Soon he’d need glasses. He said, “You have a child, you know.” He pressed his thumb against an inch of paint and smeared it downward. “What should I tell Alfie about your black eye? Or the next black eye? Or when they shoot you to death?”

  She gulped the wine, barely noticing the rich bouquet, the velvety roll of it on her tongue. “You’d both be very well provided for if they shoot me to death.” They told Alfie she’d been careless, had fallen and hurt her head and now needed a few days to feel better. “Theo, I want to get those guys. Don’t you see? They’re bad.” Although those were her genuine thoughts, voicing them to her husband made her feel simplistic, and she elaborated, “They create addicts out of people. Out of children!”

  “Nobody is created.” He glanced at her, then back at his painting. Raised a brush and touched another i
nch of canvas. “Everyone creates themselves.”

  When she left the studio, he said, “Close the door,” and continued painting, a dab of vermilion on his cheek from where the thumb he’d used to blend the paint had brushed against his skin.

  CHAPTER

  37

  ALFIE’D NOT BEEN allowed out of the basement for two days. The only way he guessed at the passage of time was the content of his meals—Wheaties in the morning, canned soup for lunch, canned pasta for dinner, as predictable as a bus schedule. Mr. Blue had given him a freshly emptied bucket along with a roll of toilet paper, then shut the door in his face when he tried to object (beg, he was ready to beg, but didn’t get a chance).

  He felt filthy and thirsty, though not hungry. His anger was a hard, hot tumor in his stomach and food wouldn’t sit right, giving him cramps or making the return journey as soon as he managed to swallow some. Not that the food was anything great anyway: tomato soup, gelid in a pool of water meant to dilute it, microwaved SpaghettiOs, Cup O’Noodles.

  He wished he knew what the plan was. Not knowing what was in store tortured him more than not being able to wash or the enforced idleness, more than the loneliness, more than the lack of light and air. He thought he could handle anything as long as he knew what was coming down the bend.

  So when the door opened this time, he rushed it, shoving his body into the opening. “Please let me come up,” he said. “Please.”

  “Get back!” yelled Mr. Blue, and pushed him so hard he fell on his ass, gracelessly, painfully.

  “Please,” Alfie said again. “Please.” Maybe it was the way his voice broke, or the tears he fought to contain, or the way his whole body trembled, but Mr. Blue relented, his face darkening with emotion. His captor turned around, lurched upstairs without looking back and without locking the door.

  Alfie bounded after him, taking great, hungry gulps of fresh(er) air even as his soul seethed with resentment. He’d never begged anybody for anything his whole life. Not even the kids on the school bus when they shoved him around all through middle school. Not even his father when he packed his three suitcases.

  “May I use the bathroom?” Alfie asked. “May I wash?”

  Mr. Blue regarded him with defeated, hurt eyes, bottom lip jutting, then nodded. “Fuck it. Go. You’re too big for that window anyway.” His breath carried a familiar pungency, and it wasn’t until Alfie had stripped and climbed into the shower that he connected the odor to alcohol via half-buried memories of his father’s afternoon meanderings through their house. Mr. Blue was smashed.

  The hot water smelled nice—steam and a chlorine tang reminding him of swimming pools. He scrubbed his hair and skin, then stood under the shower head with his face upturned and eyes closed.

  When Mr. Blue banged the door open, Alfie jumped and clambered out of the bath, his skin immediately goose-pimpled. He clamped his teeth lest they begin chattering. Vicious drafts wafted through the tiny window, around the vanity, and from under the tub, blowing freezing air upward over his legs. The man peered at him, knit eyebrows at odds with his otherwise blurred, almost tearful expression, then turned away. Alfie barely had time to grab what he needed from the cabinet under the sink and fold it into his clothes before Mr. Blue looked at him again.

  “Enough of that,” he said. “Hot water isn’t cheap.”

  Alfie dressed quickly, managing to hide the item inside his pant leg, pulling his sock over it.

  “I’m s … sorry about the hot water,” Alfie said.

  In the hallway, Alfie contemplated the front door again, but the heavy bolt lock was still drawn and latched. He’d have to break through with an ax or find a key. Nothing had changed with the windows either—each of them nailed shut with plywood. The only reason he knew it was daytime was because the miserly bathroom window had allowed an anemic light through its frosted glass.

  Mr. Blue had rekindled a fire in the wood-burning stove, and the living room had a thin, grayish haze of smoke. Alfie bent toward the stove.

  “I think you used green wood,” he said.

  The man scoffed, then waved Alfie’s words away and sagged onto the couch, sipped from a can of beer. Clicked a lemon-yellow lighter and lit a joint. “What do you know from green wood. Huh?”

  “Well.” Alfie reached to the firewood strewn on the floor and lifted a heavy branch. The man flew at him so fast, Alfie barely had time to drop it, shut his eyes (involuntarily, embarrassingly) and raised both hands.

  “I just wanted to show you something,” he said quickly, but Mr. Blue had him pinned against the wall anyway, directing boozy fumes and skunky breath into his face.

  “You want to go back downstairs?” the man roared.

  Alfie shook his head. “No, sir.”

  Mr. Blue let go of him and took another sip of his beer from a can he’d miraculously held on to even while manhandling Alfie. The boy crouched and, without lifting the log, peeled back a bit of bark. “Look.” He pointed to the tender wood underneath. “See how it’s so smooth and kind of moist? Firewood needs to be seasoned for a while before you can burn it indoors.”

  Mr. Blue kicked the log out of his hands. “The fuck you know about firewood?”

  “I learned it in Boy Scouts.”

  The man sat back down. “Boy Scouts?” He eyed Alfie up and down as if trying to see evidence of Boy Scout material. Then he grabbed an unopened can, popped the tab, and extended it to Alfie. “Have a drink, Boy Scout.”

  Alfie took the beer and perched on the edge of the armchair. The stove was still smoking and the heat it generated was weak, unhealthy. Even this close to the fire, Alfie’s breath puffed out of his mouth like translucent gauze. The thing inside his sock hadn’t fallen out, was pressing against his calf, and his heartbeat slowed.

  The man cocked his head at Alfie. “You know,” he said, thick voiced. “I had a son. Once.”

  Alfie waited. He never knew the right thing to say under normal circumstances, and his circumstances lately had been anything but. Did Mr. Blue just tell him his son had died? Should he offer condolences? Maybe the son wasn’t dead. Maybe the son ran away, just like his mother probably thought he had. And anyway, he didn’t know this other boy, this son. How could he have a proper emotional response toward a person he didn’t know?

  The man said, “His name was Otto. He was about your age when your cunt of a mother fucked my life up good and proper.”

  The mention of his mother unsettled him, a collision of worlds that didn’t make sense, and he now knew even less how to respond. He sipped the beer. It was warm and rancid tasting, but he swallowed anyway.

  “Otto was a great kid. Never cried if he got hurt. Stoic, you know? A real little man.” Mr. Blue made a weird sound—like a choke and throat clearing all at once.

  “Mr. Blue?” asked Alfie. Somehow he’d sipped his way through a quarter of the can, and it seemed easier to talk now. “What is your name? I mean, it’s not really Mr. Blue, is it?”

  The man sucked his teeth, then shrugged. “Fuck it. It’s Owen. Call me Owen. Owen, Oksana, and Otto. The Triple-O family. That was us.”

  Alfie drank more. He was thirsty, and the beer was refreshing on his throat, though every time he stopped drinking, his thirst came back stronger. “Triple-O,” he said. What kind of thing is that to name your family? Although, for all he knew, everyone did this. Did his mother have a name for them? The Looney Birds?

  “The plan was, I’d move us. Somewhere out of the city, you know? Far away. Oregon maybe. Emigrate to Canada, I don’t know. Somewhere. And your mother was all for it. She said, you gotta get your kid away from here. Like she was all caring and shit about my kid.” He shook his head. “She said that. And you know what happened next? No? She didn’t tell you?” He threw his empty to the floor and picked a fresh can from the side table. Popped the tab. Sipped. Burped. “They arrested me. Waited until no one was home, went in, planted shit all over. Made it look like I was some kind of big-time crime boss. I swore up and down the stuff was
n’t mine, but who’s going to listen? Hell, I put my entire life on the line for those cop pigs.”

  Alfie choked down the warm dregs of his beer. He didn’t want to drink more, but he was still very, very thirsty. “Owen?”

  “What?”

  “What happened to Otto?”

  Owen stood on unsteady legs and tottered to the wood stove, opened the latch, releasing more smoke, and threw two logs inside. He did this without gloves, and Alfie saw ugly red blisters form on his palms. The man either didn’t feel the pain or wanted to feel the pain.

  “My boy.” Owen’s voice was small, phlegmy. “He died. That’s what happened. He died because I went to jail. I went to jail because of your mother.”

  He turned toward Alfie, burning branch like a torch in his blistered hand. “And here you are. Why should your mother still have a son when she took mine away?”

  He advanced, and Alfie stepped back. Strangely, for the first time since he met this man, he understood him. Grief and loss he got. Alfie tried to remember what people told him when his father left. But he didn’t think “it’s his loss” or “he’ll be back” would be appreciated (or accurate).

  Instead, he said, “It will be okay.”

  Owen swung the burning branch, the fire sputtering and thick, gray smoke coiling from the tip. “What? What are you talking about?” He coughed. “I have nothing to live for anymore!”

  Alfie considered using the thing in his sock right then, but he hesitated, and the moment passed. The angles were all wrong. It couldn’t work.

  And so Alfie did the one thing (he thought) helped his mother when she became upset. The one thing he’d done every night that entire first year after Theo left, his mother sobbing, sometimes in her bedroom, sometimes while cooking their dinner or sitting in the backyard. He stepped up to Owen and wrapped his arms around the man’s middle, then placed his head on his shoulder.

  Owen froze, arm lifted in midair, the fire on the log’s tip faltering, fading, turning black, then releasing more gray smoke. His chest rose and fell in ragged breaths.