The Red Hunter(107)
The new girl is in the corner sipping on ice chips.
You’re not really studying kung fu if you haven’t thrown up at least once, I told her in the bathroom.
Great, she said.
When she comes back of her own accord and joins the girls for the final striking drill, I smile. She’ll make it.
Then we’re done, and the girls collapse, laughing. They take turns at the water fountain, senior students letting the less experienced drink first.
“Don’t gulp,” I warn. “You’ll be sick.”
I’m still limping badly, tire easily, should really be using a crutch. But here I try to walk without it. When the elevator pings, I look up to see the guardian from the group home where the girls live. Melba is a tall black woman, fit and elegant in white linen pants and tank top.
“It’s an oven in here,” she says, bowing at the entrance and slipping off her flip-flops. She’s a student here, too.
I flip on the ceiling fans that literally do nothing except move the hot air around. The tall windows are open wide, just letting in the sounds of the city. There is no breeze.
“How’d they do today?” she asks
“Marisol got a little overexerted,” I say. “But she’s okay. They all did great. They’re getting stronger.”
She nods. “It’s a good thing,” she says. “What about you?”
“I’m getting stronger, too.”
She regards me with kind eyes, someone used to seeing beneath the surface. I am still getting used to talking to people, allowing myself to be seen. “You seem—well.”
“I’m—um—getting there.”
“That’s a lot,” she said. “Considering.”
? ? ?
WHEN THE GIRLS LEAVE, THE space is quiet except for the continuous music of the city streets—horns, and tires on asphalt, air brakes, and manholes clanking, construction and voices, the hiss of buses. I sit a moment in the center of the room, and draw in and release several deep breaths.
Inhale: I dwell in the present moment. Exhale: It is a wonderful moment.
I almost mean it.
? ? ?
IN THE BACK, PAUL IS doing the books. He is thin, drawn through the face, but stronger than he has been in years. A new cocktail of meds, stem cell therapy, and a new technology called an Aerobika Oscillating Positive Expiratory Pressure Therapy System has him stable and moving about more. There’s no cure for what he has, but he has more time than we thought. And none of us can ask for more.
“How are we doing?” I ask.
I sit in the chair across from my desk, which used to be Mike’s. I haven’t changed much in this space, though I did take down his display of Tibetan masks. I still see the one he wore that night in my dreams. Another nightmare among many that visit me when I am unquiet.
But I loved Mike, and that hasn’t changed much either. I hate what he did, what he would have done. But there was also a man who pulled me back from the edge and taught me everything I knew. He held me, bandaged me, massaged me, iced me, and taught me how to grab the harness of my power and never let anyone take it back, not even him. That was the real Mike, too. And I can keep that Mike, I decided. And I’ll let the other man—the dirty cop, the man who hired the Beckham brothers and Didion to take the money back from my father, the one who didn’t stop it when he could, who was responsible for all the horror in my life—whether he intended that or not—go.
Paul put a bullet through his heart in the warehouse. Mike is gone. That Mike is not going to be a part of my life moving forward—not in anger, or hatred, or thoughts of revenge. I’ve finally learned the lesson he tried to teach me. I wish it hadn’t cost so much to understand.
“You’re in the black, kid,” Paul says, looking away from the screen.
He issues a cough, and I brace to race for the inhaler, but he gives a quick wave to indicate he’s okay. “Last two months, you’re turning a profit.”
Mike left the school to me in his will, along with all its mountainous debt. When I recovered from my multiple injuries, including a bullet wound in the abdomen, I infused the place with the cash left in my account, hired some teachers and a marketing firm. We have an afterschool pick-up, some teen volunteers who get free instruction, a kiddie class on Saturday mornings, and the free Saturday afternoon for the girls from Melba’s group home.
That money. It will do some good.
We hear the elevator ping and I go outside to see Boz shuffling in, sweating like he’s run a mile.
“Christ,” he said. “Is there any place worse on earth than this city in the summer? I don’t know how you do it. And—hello? Air-conditioning.”
I get him a water in a paper cone from the fountain and take him into the back, where it’s cooler. We have an ancient air-conditioning unit that barely works in the window. He sits down hard across from Paul.
“I thought you might like an update,” he says. “I heard from my buddy at the precinct.”
Paul and I exchanged a look. It was tricky. There were things that I knew now, that Paul had always known, that Boz didn’t know. Boz didn’t know that Paul had organized the original heist. I had not been linked to Didion’s murder.
“Josh Beckham has been released with time served,” said Boz. “You probably heard that. Because he was a juvenile at the time of the initial incident and he was acting under duress from his brother. Your testimony that he tried to help you escape, and the testimony from Claudia Bishop that he came to the house to try to keep his brother from coming for the money helped him. Now he’s free to take care of his elderly mother.”