The Hollow Ones(68)

The other nurse finished, and they each pumped sanitizer into their palms at the door. “He knows where the buzzer is if he needs anything.”

“Thank you,” said Odessa, turning back to Solomon, fearing he had declined further. He looked at her but he said nothing. “Mind if I raise you up?” she asked.

She raised the head of the bed, his face still turned toward her, away from the window and Hugo Blackwood.

“Are you too tired for a visit?” she asked. “There’s someone here you wanted to see.”

Solomon’s eyes rolled around in his sockets, seeing no one. Slowly, he turned his head so that his face was looking at the television…then further around until he saw Blackwood.

Blackwood cocked his head, looking at him. Odessa could only see half of Solomon’s expression from her side of the bed. This was the reunion the dying agent had asked her to facilitate.

Blackwood said, “Hello, Solomon.”

Solomon’s voice was raspy, his jaw stiff. “There you are,” he said. “You son of a bitch.”

Blackwood glanced past him at Odessa, then back to Solomon. “I was told that you asked to see me.”

Solomon pointed at him, his hand connected by tape and tubes to the infusion pump behind his bed. “Damn right,” he said. “One last look at the man who put me through hell.”

The awkwardness of Solomon’s confrontation made Odessa’s skin crawl, but Blackwood seemed unperturbed. “We’ve seen a lot together,” he said.

“Together.” Odessa started slowly around the foot of Solomon’s bed, toward Blackwood—enough so that she could see the sneer on Solomon’s face.

“It was important work,” said Blackwood.

Odessa moved into Solomon’s line of sight. “You asked me to bring him here, remember? I thought you wanted to say goodbye.”

Solomon looked at her with eyebrows raised, as though trying to remember who she was. “That’s right,” he said, looking back at Blackwood. “‘Goodbye.’ The irony is pretty sweet. I don’t want to die. You do.”

Odessa looked back and forth between them. This was nothing like what she had expected. Bringing Blackwood here was a mistake.

“I tried to arrest him,” said Solomon, speaking to her now, about Blackwood. “A few times. Early on. Bust his ass. When I saw what he was doing.” Solomon pointed at Blackwood again, so that Odessa would have no question to whom he was referring. “He’s an assassin. It’s evil spirits he’s after. But he will go through anyone and anything to do it. He has committed murder. I’ve seen it. To protect others, he says. To save the world. But at the cost of a human life.”

Blackwood listened without reaction.

Solomon found the angry strength to raise his head off the pillows, confronting Blackwood. “You’re running from something you can’t escape. And chasing something you can’t catch.”

The effort was too much for him, and Solomon sank back deeper into the pillows and mattress than before. He looked at the window beyond Blackwood and Odessa.

“All I wanted was to be a cop,” he said. “Since I was a kid. They said, ‘Black kid, you ain’t never gonna be no cop.’ I went to Morehouse College, and I told people, ‘I want to be a detective,’ and they said, ‘Why you want to waste yourself on that?’ And then the FBI announced they were taking black agents into the academy. I said, ‘I want to be an agent of the FBI.’ And I was. One of the first.”

He licked his lips, his tongue pasty and parched.

“I had a silver badge, all right, but I still had a brown face. I was still out on the fringes. An outsider. They didn’t know what to do with me. And he used that. He took advantage of that, exploited that. Made some sort of arrangement with the Bureau. Made me his ‘boy.’”

Odessa stood frozen. Solomon’s emotions were raw. She felt that most of this was due to his declining health, the stroke that affected his brain. He was so changed from when she’d first encountered him just a few days before.

Blackwood said, “You asked me to show you what was out there. You had a great curiosity for things that challenged your faith—”

“Maybe,” said Solomon, his jaw trembling. “Maybe at first. But all I ever wanted…was to be a cop.”

Odessa said, “You were a cop, Solomon.”

Solomon looked at her. “And now you. There’s a reason why he’s with you. No accidents, right, Blackwood? No coincidences. Everything is connected.”

In an attempt to settle him down, Odessa said, “You wouldn’t have sent me to him if you didn’t think he could help me.”

That made Solomon blink a few times. “I didn’t have a choice. You were assigned to me, Odessa Hardwicke. That’s no accident. That’s no coincidence.”

Odessa looked at Blackwood. So did Solomon—but with different eyes. Solomon looked back and forth between Blackwood and Odessa. “Maybe we were partners once. We had a…a special job to do. The two of us. I’ll give you that. But now, at the end…it all looks so different. What was it all for? I go off…and he stays. With a new partner to take my place.”

Solomon meant her. “No,” Odessa said. “You sent me to him for his help. In clearing my name. But I’ll never get my gun back. It’s only a matter of time before I’m let go.”