The High Notes: A Novel(54)

“Your friend is one lucky guy,” the doctor told them. He looked like a butcher, smeared with blood. “He was grazed by a bullet, it did some minor damage. It entered and exited his chest without injuring any vital organs. We did some minor repair work and he lost a lot of blood, but he’ll be okay.” He was the person the gunman had been aiming at in the wings, because one of the boys said the gunman had spotted them and Boy shouted to try and stop him, and the shooter had gunned him down. Star sobbed in Iris’s arms. Boy was in the recovery room, but they said he was stable and would be in a room in a few hours. The surgeon was right. He had been lucky. Others weren’t. And Iris kept thinking of Pattie. What was Jimmy going to do? And how would they tell her mother what had happened? She was in no condition to take care of her grandson and step into her daughter’s shoes. She couldn’t even take care of herself. Iris called Pattie’s home number, and spoke to the sitter, who was a neighbor, and told her what had happened. She sobbed when Iris told her the terrible news.

“What do we do about her mother?” Iris asked her.

“I’ll tell her,” the sitter said.

“I gave the police Pattie’s home number,” Iris told her. “What’s going to happen to Jimmy?” She knew Pattie had no relatives, other than her mother.

“He’ll have to go into foster care, and her mother will have to go into hospice. She’s in the final stages. I’ll do what I can from here, but I can’t take Jimmy. I’m seventy years old, I work, and I can’t take on a child his age. I’ll take a week off from work. But after that, they’ll have to take him. Do you know when they’ll send the body home? Will they?”

“I don’t know,” Iris said, choking on tears. “I’ll try to find out,” she said, and went to tell Clay what the neighbor had told her.

“There will be other cases like that,” he said sadly. They were both haunted by everything they’d seen that night.

They went to Clay’s apartment then, and sat in the kitchen in their bloodstained clothes.

“I’ll call the police about Pattie tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll take care of it. It doesn’t sound like they’re in a position to pay for sending her home.” She nodded, and as she fell asleep next to him an hour later, huddled close, she looked at him with an idea.

“I want to do a memorial concert, to benefit all the people who were injured or killed, to start a fund for them.” He nodded, and then they both drifted off, trying not to think of the nightmare. He kept dreaming of seeing Iris at the edge of the stage when he grabbed her. And then he woke up, and was up for the rest of the night.



* * *



—

By morning they knew that the shooter was an ex-marine who had a long history of psychiatric problems. There was no particular reason anyone knew of as to why he had done what he did, but he had a history of violence, and a collection of automatic rifles. He had worked at the Garden briefly as a janitor and knew the underground passages that had given him access into the auditorium. Two more people had died during the night, so he had taken forty-four lives, and lost his own. It was a major tragedy, and photographs of the victims were being shown on TV.

Clay called the number he had for the police and they told him Pattie was at the morgue, waiting for family arrangements. He promised to call back, and called a reputable funeral home to have her body sent to Biloxi for burial. And then Iris called Pattie’s neighbor again. She said that she had told Jimmy and Pattie’s mother about the shooting. Jimmy was devastated, and her mother was despondent. They were waiting for the hospice people to come for her that afternoon, and Jimmy was going to stay at the neighbor’s for a week. She said she’d call the local funeral home to arrange the funeral when they knew when the body would arrive. Clay called to inform the New York mortuary about where to deliver the body. It was gruesome, and Iris couldn’t believe they were talking about Pattie, who hadn’t been able to arrange for a weekend away since she’d been home and got killed the first time she did. And she knew how much Pattie loved her son. She would have died to think of him in foster care with families who might not care about him or treat him well. She thought of all of Boy’s stories about how badly he’d been treated in foster homes until he was sixteen. Jimmy was eleven, nearly twelve, and still a child, who had been lovingly cared for all his life, and now his grandmother was dying and his mother was gone.

It was overwhelming, and she was shocked to see footage of herself and Clay in film clips from the night before on the news, helping people out of the building. They were referred to as heroes, which didn’t seem like the case to her. They hadn’t saved a single person, only assisted the injured, and consoled them.

They went to see Boy that morning, and he looked much better than they had feared. He’d had two transfusions, and the wound wasn’t too deep. He looked at Iris and shook his head.

“I am one lucky guy,” he said. Star sat by his bed, looking worse than he did. “He could have killed me.” Clay was equally unnerved by Iris almost getting shot.

“I want to do a memorial concert,” Iris said somberly, “in the same place, to raise money for the victims and their families and honor the dead.”

“I’ll organize that,” Clay volunteered. “Or my office will. Let’s get a star-studded lineup, more than just you two.” They liked that idea, and Clay could already think of at least twenty major performers who would sign on to do it, who were generous with their time for good causes. It was one thing he could do. And he decided to pay for the venue as his contribution if they wouldn’t donate it. He thought of that, as they talked about it. Iris had told Boy about her friend Pattie. She was still in shock over it, and could just imagine how her mother and Jimmy felt.