A Lily in the Light(8)

Every light in the building was on except Birdman’s. It gaped like a missing tooth.

Detective Ferrera spread a map over the hood of a patrol car and marked streets with a red Sharpie. The ink stained his thumb and looked like blood in the streetlight. Lily would be in so much trouble when she came home.

“Spread out, starting here, block by block, until you get here.” His finger looked heavy and bloated against the delicate line that marked Queens Boulevard and the tiny boxes that surrounded it in every direction: houses, apartment buildings, big giant things that didn’t seem anything like boxes in real life. It felt like a complicated, grown-up game of hide-and-seek. Esme wondered how they’d ever find someone so small when the city spread out in every direction, above the street and below.

Hours passed. The neighborhood was its own kind of symphony now: barking dogs, helicopters spinning, a chorus of voices calling orders over steaming cups. Someone brought Esme a coat. She didn’t remember slipping her arms through the sleeves or tucking her hands in the pockets. She only realized, suddenly, that she was warmer, that the shivering had stopped, and she was so still she felt more asleep than awake. It scared her. She shook her arms and legs to wake the nerves under her skin.

“You.” Esme’s head snapped up. Detective Ferrera was pointing at her, walking quickly toward their house. “Come with me.”

Her parents were huddled side by side. Her father’s shoulder was much higher than her mother’s, asymmetrical, like a fever dream she had had once where her fingers were too thick or too small to pick things up. Cerise’s fist was pressed against her lip. A helicopter hovered in the distance, throwing light circles over the city. Her parents looked like they’d woken up from a nightmare and were waiting for it to ease away before going back to sleep. Esme followed Detective Ferrera. While her parents looked lost, Detective Ferrera buzzed, like he enjoyed this and Lily was an excuse to push around dogs and toys as big as helicopters.

Inside the lobby, Mrs. Rodriquez was standing in the corner, wearing her husband’s old camel coat. It came down to her bare ankles, where a web of blue veins met a leather slipper. It was odd that she still had her dead husband’s clothes. She had rosary beads wrapped around one wrist, and the cross at the end swung wildly as she shook her fist. Madeline was listening, chin pointed, eyes narrowed, pale but determined.

Mrs. Rodriquez wasn’t even five feet tall, but she had sharp, beady eyes that darted from place to place until she found a target. Mrs. Rodriquez didn’t walk like other people did. She swooped, landing in a rush of air and latching on like a hawk, spitting opinions on all the scurrying prey beneath her.

“You understand?” Mrs. Rodriquez glanced between Madeline and Detective Ferrera, wild hair pushed back with a headband where a rim of gray hair under dyed black poked out. Madeline nodded. Mrs. Rodriquez reached her small hand forward. Esme thought she was going to make the sign of the cross on Madeline’s head, but she pushed her forward instead.

“Go,” she whispered. Like magic, the cross stopped swinging at her side.

“Mrs. Rodriquez.” Detective Ferrera stopped. The lights in the lobby were unusually bright. He was so much taller than Mrs. Rodriquez and made a point of looking down at her. He threw one hand on his waist casually, but it was enough to pull back the gray suit jacket and flash the holster attached to his belt. “How is our friend Denny?”

Mrs. Rodriquez stared back, lips pressed tightly together, tipping her chin up to glare at him. If she’d been sleeping on the sidewalk in that old coat under a pile of cardboard, she’d look more at home than she did now, eyes puffy and shiny with night cream. Esme sensed she might spit right onto Detective Ferrera’s suit jacket if it wasn’t for Lily.

“My son is just fine,” she shot back instead. “Clean and sober.”

But Esme didn’t think sitting on the stoop and drawing new tattoos with pen ink on the backs of his hands was an especially clean thing to do, even if she wasn’t sure about sober.

“Want one?” Denny’d snickered from the stoop recently while Esme had fumbled with her keys. “Of course not. Not for the precious princess who’s going to dance her way out of this shithole.” He’d thrown his arms over his head in mock ballet, and Esme had slipped inside without answering.

Esme stared between them, curious who’d turn away first, wondering if this was the cop Mrs. Rodriquez had been ranting about months ago, arms flying, ice cream melting in Cerise’s grocery bags while she’d told them about some cop who’d dragged Denny out of a warehouse and broken his arm. “To make a point,” she’d said so fiercely Esme had worried she would crack the mug she’d been holding. “No one gives a shit about kids who make mistakes.”

Esme didn’t understand how robbing a bodega was a mistake, not in the same way spilling milk was or coloring out of the lines, but Mrs. Rodriquez clearly thought so. How could anyone rob a store by mistake?

They wouldn’t send the same cop, not for someone so small. Someone so good.

“Glad to hear it,” he said, turning toward the elevator, footsteps echoing on the marble floor. Madeline’s eyes were wide and glassy, darting between Esme and Detective Ferrera’s back. The hem of Madeline’s pajama pants dragged behind her. Her hair was pulled into a knotty, lopsided ponytail from not being brushed.

“What?” Esme mouthed, knowing Madeline wanted to tell her something, the way she always knew, even late at night when their bedroom was dark.