Cold Springs(71)

In the next room, the DVD was still playing—bright and cheerful sounds, music from a fairy tale.

“The real account number,” John promised. “A password. The right one.”

The wound on his mouth was still bleeding—ragged and pink like a fishhook gouge.

Zedman told him the password, the account number, the name of the bank. He told him the exact amount, the agent who could make the transfer. And Samuel knew he wasn't lying this time. He was broken. He was ready for the next level of training—as pliable as his goddamn weak daughter.

“You can't remember all that,” Zedman muttered. “Let me out of here. I'll write it down. I'll take you downstairs—”

“Oh, I'll remember,” Samuel promised. “I'm brilliant, see? Everybody says so.”

Then he came over to the tub, knelt, pressed the gun to John's heart—imagining the pattern it would make, like red wings on the tiles behind him, imagining Katherine's pleading, the fairy-tale music going, evoking impossible images like Talia being alive, Samuel being in charge—realizing his dreams, getting through college, teaching kids, protecting his family once and for all.

John Zedman closed his eyes. His lips trembled so violently it was hard to tell if he was just afraid, or if his body was involved in some terrible, desperate prayer.

Samuel was filled with benevolence. Good old John. Paying his dues at last.

He said, “I'm thinking about letting you go, John. Would you like that? Would you give me anything for that?”

And they knelt there together, at a moment of endless possibility, the shower soaking Samuel's sleeve and running off John Zedman's thinning hair, John's heartbeat so strong Samuel could almost feel it in the grip of his gun.

17

Chadwick told himself he had no destination in mind, but it wasn't true. He fell back into a pattern as old as his adulthood—south on 101, exit on Army Street, up Van Ness to 24th.

He knew he shouldn't go to the Mission District. He shouldn't indulge in the past. But seeing John, then visiting the East Bay, had put him in a frame of mind for examining old wounds.

Some of the townhouses on San Angelo Street looked the way he remembered them—muddy facades, windows curtained with bedsheets, the stoops decorated with hubcaps and bilingual City Council election posters, Spanish graffiti. Other townhouses had been renovated by invading dot-commers—painted mauve and burgundy and teal, dandified with gingerbread trim and high-tech security systems. No cars out front—those would be parked in a guarded lot somewhere close by, safe from keying and window-smashing by angry blue-collar residents being driven out by the skyrocketing housing prices.

Chadwick pulled in front of his old home, which nobody could have mistaken for dandified. The street level, which had once been his father's clock repair shop, was boarded up, anarchy signs and gang monikers scrawled across bricks and plywood and window frames. The steps up to the second-story porch were littered with takeout wrappers. A beer bottle sprouted from the mailbox.

Chadwick slid his key in the lock—almost wishing it wouldn't work, but of course it did.

The green door swung open on the interior stairwell, the air dark and stale as sleeper's breath.

Chadwick tried the light switch. The electricity still worked—regulations required that of Chadwick. The management company must not have been changing the lightbulbs.

He climbed up to the living room, ran his fingers over the chocolate wainscoting, stared at the coal-burning fireplace that had not worked since he was a child. On the mantel, islands of light dust marked the places where clocks had stood, years ago.

Thin evening light filtered through the branches of the enormous bougainvillea in the backyard, making yellow streaks across the kitchen floor. Chadwick had always loved that bougainvillea—the pink snow of petals that had filled the yard every spring. He opened the window, stared past the empty clotheslines, the patch of weeds that had once been his garden, the toolshed, the broken fence, over the backs of the stores that faced Mission, their tar roofs painted silver and their vents pouring out the charred smells of cabrito and hamburger.

He thought about Norma at the oven, cursing her burned raisin bread. It was one of the few memories he could conjure about her that did not cause pain.

A portable stereo sat on the kitchen counter, a Brahms CD in the carriage from Chadwick's last visit, maybe three years ago. He'd dropped by between escort jobs, supposedly to inspect the property with a mind toward finally selling it, giving Norma her half that the divorce decree demanded. His property manager had begged him to do so. He'd tried to impress Chadwick with the incredible market, promising him an easy million for the old house. But in the end, Chadwick had decided nothing.

He could never live in this house again. But he couldn't bear to sell it, or even lease it. He certainly couldn't bear to give any money from the sale to Norma. She had hated this place, blamed it for her unhappiness, cursed him for trying to raise Katherine here. Their last argument as a married couple, just a month after Katherine's suicide, had been about this house.

And so the place stood heretically vacant in a zero-vacancy real estate market. Instead of making him lots of money, it took most of his meager income in property taxes. It was his one luxury—his one indulgence.

He pushed the button on the stereo, let Brahms play.

He walked into the front bedroom—his old childhood bedroom, later Katherine's. It was stripped now, the only piece of furniture a wooden chair where Chadwick had once sat and told stories to Katherine. A woman's red coat, probably Norma's, was draped over the chair back. Chadwick wondered how long it had been there.