The Red Hunter(65)

Raven heaved a sigh.

“Let’s forget it,” she said. “There’s nothing down here but junk.”

Claudia wasn’t looking for the money, though. There definitely wasn’t a million dollars of stolen drug money in her basement. Her life did not work that way.

The kids headed up the stairs, but Claudia stayed a minute in the dim quiet, surrounded by the mess. Raven’s and Troy’s heavy footfalls upstairs caused a light shower of dust from the ceiling—not a good thing. If the beams were unstable, did that mean that the floor above was, as well? It was the dining room above her, the room that probably got the least foot traffic. Would the next sound she heard in the night be the table crashing through the floor?

All around her was debris, old junk that no one wanted piled high, the piece of beam that had fallen tilting in line with the staircase. It was an exhausting mess, something that seemed utterly beyond her abilities to fix or clean up. She tried not to see it as an allegory for her life. But, of course, it was. That was the whole point of the blog. She took her phone out of her pocket and snapped a few pictures. Then she headed upstairs to write it all out.





twenty-three


When I got to the hospital, the room was dark and Paul was on oxygen still. Mike wasn’t there, but a slim nurse stood over Paul’s bed, her fingertips resting gently on his wrist. I moved inside and waited for her to finish writing in his chart.

“Are you his daughter?” she asked.

She was young with caramel skin and a pile of curls tied up on the top of her head, deep-brown eyes. The whirring of the machine, the beeping of the heart monitor was a strange, sad song.

“Yes,” I said. What was the point in trying to explain when that was as close to the truth as I could get?

“He’s stable,” she said.

“Better?”

“Stronger,” she said. “Yes. He’s fighting.”

I looked at him, narrow in the sheets, still. The most important battles are fought within.

“He was awake earlier?” I asked.

“For a little while,” she said. “Your friend said he would get in touch with you.”

“I got here as fast as I could.”

She nodded, put a comforting hand on my arm. She looked at me, those eyes connecting with mine. She knew things about life and death that other people didn’t know; that knowledge had gathered somehow in the kind, crinkled corners of her gaze. There was a light there, a flat dark, too. I kept myself all wrapped up, held everything inside the shell of myself. But some people give off energy, something warm, positive. She was one of those. Her nametag read: Rose. “He should rest.”

“I won’t stay long.”

I pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

I was buzzing with a million questions. But he seemed far away, his hand limp in mine, the mask over his face. He was on the moon and I was on the earth looking up at him.

“He loved her,” said my father from the corner. “You know that.”

“Everybody loved her,” I said.

“No one more than he did,” he said. “I always knew, of course. I didn’t blame him.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we were all people,” he said. “Young once like you are now, full of bad ideas, mistakes, errors in judgment.”

“Did you rob those men?” I asked. “Did you take that money? When they came, did you know where it was?”

But, of course, he didn’t answer me because he wasn’t there. John Didion had taken his place; he was bleeding from the wound in his heart. Black blood was a river down his shirt; it dripped slowly into a pool between his feet. His face was blank, eyes looking off into whatever place it was beyond. He didn’t accuse or stare at me.

“Who hired you?” I asked him. A smarter person would have asked that question before I drove the knife deep into his heart. The Red Hunter isn’t known for her patience. But maybe the truth was I didn’t really want to know the answer.

John Didion gave nothing. Just stood there.

I sat with Paul for a while waiting for some flicker from him.

“I have questions, Uncle Paul,” I whispered. “And I have some things to tell you. I need you. Please.”

But there was nothing, just his labored breathing, not even the faintest squeeze of his fingers, and finally I left.

? ? ?

I WAS SO OUT OF it, so in my own head that I never heard them coming. Some street fighter I turned out to be.

I parked the truck in a lot near Nate Shelby’s loft and walked the distance back. I was watching the video screen in my head—Boz, Seth, the pictures on Seth’s board, the old house, the Beckhams’ place, the things Seth had said—all the pieces turning, jumbled, never coming together. It was right there, wasn’t it? I couldn’t or didn’t want to see how it all gelled.

The first blow came hard from behind, taking me down to my knees. There were two of them, masked, much larger than me. A foot to my back lay me flat on the concrete, chin scraping hard, head knocking. The next blow was a merciless kick to the ribs that left me breathless, a scream lodged somewhere deep in my throat, no air to push it out. All I saw were stars, two masked faces, white eyes, holes for mouths. Silent. Hands on me, arms pulled behind my back. I couldn’t even move, stunned, pain exploding white and hot inside. A blow to the stomach, and the hard black point of an elbow coming in fast, connecting to my jaw. And that was it. Black.