Underground Airlines(55)

When the space was too tight for carrying I put him down, and I pulled him and pushed him. I might have f*cking rolled the kid. I went the other way, opposite the way I came in, following the underground creek where it flowed back, away from the trailer park and Slim’s decrepit little dynasty, figuring there had to be an exit to this tunnel somewhere, and I dragged Jackdaw until I found it.

We popped out on the other end, where the water spilled itself out into the muddy roll of the White River, south of downtown. I scrabbled with the boy down the swampy banks till we fell together by the river. There was no promenade, no sidewalk, just the embankment, just patchy scrub grass and loose stones covering fifty feet of graded slope from the water’s edge up to the roadway above.

The scene was lit, barely, by a sliver of moonlight and a pair of dim streetlights on an overpass bridge some distance downstream. I laid him gently by the water’s edge and hunched over to breathe and to think.

I didn’t know what I was doing—I didn’t know if I was bringing him in or rescuing him and if I was rescuing him what I’d be rescuing him from.

He crawled over onto all fours and spat a long trail of yellow spit, and it clung to his lower lip. He bent forward and gagged.

“Go on, then. Get it over with.”

“I am not here to torture you.”

“So,” he said. “So shoot. Shoot me, nigga. Just—” His bravado wavered. A tremor ran through him. “Just…just not in the face, okay? Don’t—and just…tell my parents I’m sorry. Okay? Can you do that?”

“Listen to me.”

“They’re in Brightmoor, okay, in Detroit? That’s where I came up, and they’re still up there. Okay?”

“Jackdaw.”

“My name is Kevin,” he said. “It’s Kevin.”

I wanted to slap him. I wanted to embrace him. This poor boy, pleading with me under the sliver of moonlight. The river was swollen from the rain, and it churned beside us. “You tell my parents I was tryna do good, okay? Tryna—” He was weeping again now, big tears rolling down his cheeks. “Just tell ’em. Charles and Chandra, okay? In Brightmoor, in Detroit. Tell them—”

“Stop it,” I said. “Stop. I’m not here to kill you.”

He looked up and gaped at me.

“So what, then? What? What?”

And I had no answer. I looked at him with imploring grief, like it was for him to tell me what the f*ck to do, and we gaped at each other like that, like two dumb fish. But it was already late, too late already. Somewhere on the roadway above a car screeched and stopped, and I could hear the doors slamming closed, hear fast footsteps on the scrub grass, coming down fast.

It was Cook. I saw the brown of his cop’s shoes, and I grabbed the boy. Monster that I am, instinct kicked in, and I leaned into the one thing I knew, which was that this kid, whatever he was, whatever had happened, he knew something these people were after, and they weren’t going to kill him till they had it. I seized him and dance-stepped him backwards, one step, and my feet splashed in the river as I hung him before me as a shield.

“Stop there,” I yelled, and Cook—gun out as he tripped down the slope—he did as I said, and I kept it going: “Throw down your gun and raise your hands.”

I could barely see him, but I saw a flash of white teeth as he snarled, and I saw the gun where he tossed it, between us, into the bush.

Jackdaw was frozen in my arms. His heart was beating, a rabbit against my body. Slowly I took out my own gun and held it to his temple.

The others were already coming. First big Maris, then Barton, too, gliding through the darkness, and they arrayed themselves around us in a semicircle, halfway up the slope, looking down at us standing in the water. Barton was the smallest of the three, small and pale and ghostly, black cassock on black night. But it was Barton who made Jackdaw terrified and brave. When he saw the priest he became a tight wire in my arms, fearful and defiant and taut.

“It’s okay,” I heard myself tell him, murmuring brotherly in his ear, even as I held the gun to his head. “It’s gonna be all right.” And then, to Maris, “Weapons on the ground, please.”

“I do not carry a weapon,” he said forcefully, coldly, meaning he did not need a weapon. Would not need one to kill the likes of me.

“How do you sleep? How do you f*cking sleep, Jim?” said Officer Cook, sneering on the name.

But I did as Bridge did. I answered his question with a question.

“Who is this boy?”

“Go to hell,” said Cook.

But I was the one with the gun. I was the one with the hostage. I directed myself to Father Barton.

“Tell me who this is.”

“The young man can tell you himself,” said Barton, and Jackdaw—Kevin—reacted to his voice with a fresh jolt of energy, jerking in my arms. I purred “Hush” in his ear and said to Barton, “No.” I said, “You tell me.”

“He is a soldier in the army of the Lord.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ask him,” said Father Barton, and just as my own eyes had not left the priest, the priest’s eyes had not left Kevin. “Ask the boy.”

“Goddamn it,” I said. “I’m asking you.”

Mr. Maris, meanwhile, his face bronze in the dim light, was still playing catch-up. “Who is this man?” he said.