The Midnight Road (17 page)

Abruptly he managed to gasp through his tears. No one else had seen Raidin’s move. It looked like Flynn was having an anxiety attack. Jessie was on her cell phone calling in the story. She stared anxiously at him but didn’t come over to help. She turned away so she could focus on what she was telling the copy desk.

While Flynn was down, Raidin reached in and unclipped the .38 from its holster on Flynn’s waist. He pulled out the pistol and held it up admiringly, cracked it and checked to see if it was clean. It was. He nodded and stuck it back on Flynn’s belt. “You think you’ll be able to use it when the time comes?”

Flynn couldn’t even choke out an answer. He tried to get to his feet again and couldn’t make it. All at once he felt a warmth and respect for Raidin, even though he still wanted to throw down and smack his little face in. It had been a cheap fucking shot.

He wasn’t going to get the chance. Raidin looked at the poster of Burt Lancaster on the wall behind Flynn and said,
“The Killers.
I’ve never seen it.” Good time for a comment about murder, but Raidin passed it up. Flynn knew it was coming. He held on, waiting for it, his chest heaving, breathing painfully through his teeth. “Lancaster was impressive in
From Here to Eternity
though. Regardless, he paled in comparison to Montgomery Clift, but still excellent for what he had to do. Besides all the rolling around on the beach. Did you know he started out in the circus?” Raidin noted Flynn’s furious expression and said, “Cheer up. Maybe your bad guy will finally put the tap on you next time and stop killing these other people.”

TWELVE

Jessie Gray sprang for a cab and Flynn stared out the window at the frozen city around him. They got out at Penn Station and walked downstairs to the L.I.R.R. waiting area. Their train wouldn’t be here for another twenty-five minutes. They hadn’t exchanged two full sentences since before finding Flo’s body. For the first time since he’d met Frickin’ Alvin, Flynn wanted a drink. He tugged Jessie along with him and hit the nearest restaurant that served liquor.

The Wall Street shakers of the universe were out in force. Their suits and smiles and flash haircuts offended him. He leaned up against the bar, slapped some cash down and threw back two double shots of rum. The bartender gave him the eye, picking up the moody vibe.

Jessie sat beside him and ordered a stinger. Flynn downshifted to beer and the bartender lightened up. Anybody could have a bad day.

Emma Waltz got right up in his face again. He stared into her eyes. He couldn’t get rid of her. She went around and around in his head now, making up for lost time. The note was from somebody who had a connection to him, who was suffering and expected him to be suffering in the same way. Maybe he was. He couldn’t think of anyone else from out of his past who might be tied to him through such a shared, important agony.

Jessie Gray sat with a kind of satisfied but grim set to her lips. She’d broken a major story first. He had no doubt she’d reported the facts perfectly, with a literate quality to her write-up.

“You certainly know how to show a girl a good time,” she said.

It took him a while to look up from his glass of beer. His jaw tightened. The veins in his throat snapped so hard they brushed his collar. He swung around on the barstool to face her. He gave her a dismal smile even though he couldn’t feel his lips. His eyes were no more than glimmering slits.

“Is that a joke?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been so casual. That was terrible of me. It was foolish.”

She meant it, but didn’t mean it quite enough. Some of the yups were staring at her, passing remarks Flynn couldn’t hear. He could guess the comments. What’s a babe like that doing with an old creep like him?

“It’s all right,” he told her. His anger had subsided and left him worn-out. “You shouldn’t be with me.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t. You should stay away. You’re in danger.”

“I don’t think so. He’s already given you his message for today. Now he’ll let you live with it for a while.”

Flynn said, “Or die with it.”

“He doesn’t want you dead. He wants you alive. He wants to keep communicating with you for some reason. He has a tale to tell, but he only wants to tell it to you.”

“And you want to be there when he does?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I
am
a reporter. It’s my job.” She took a sip of her drink. He waited for her to finish the minor speech he knew was coming. He’d heard it before and given it before. Everyone had. It was a part of how people defined themselves. They couldn’t help speaking it aloud. “It’s what I do. It’s who I am.”

“I see,” he said.

“It’s sweet, you being frightened for me. I’d almost think you cared.”

“That’s a rotten thing to say.”

“I say a lot of rotten things around you. Maybe that means I like you. I tend to marry men I speak rudely to. Of course, they don’t put up with it for long.”

You wouldn’t think it was much of a romantic opening, but there was just enough of an honest invitation.

Without fully meaning to, he parted the curtains of her long straight hair and reached for her, reaching for something else. Maybe his youth, or all his lost love as she wound against him, and they kissed.

It went on for a while. Plenty of need in it. Heat, lust, but no passion in any real sense. He still couldn’t feel his lips. With their tongues still pressing together he opened his eyes. In a few seconds she did the same. They stared at each other and finally broke apart. It was the best and worst kiss he’d ever experienced.

They made the train with half a minute to spare, and they moved against the crowd to find an empty seat at the back of the car. They were holding hands. He didn’t know when they’d started doing that. A surge of confusion be gan washing through him, so absolute that he was even confused about what he was confused about. Some days you couldn’t get the ground back under you.

“Let’s go to your apartment,” she said, slipping into his arms again. He’d always been rather stupid about acknowledging a woman’s lust, but this time there was no mistaking it. Getting the story had turned her on. Seeing death reinvigorated you for life. He felt it himself. Aroused but unsettled. He supposed it was normal, or as normal as it could be.

“How have you changed?” he asked.

“Changed? In what way? Since when? I thought you were a man of precision.”

“Since before you got the story on Florence’s murder.”

“You’re still angry with me,” she said.

“Maybe. But see, I—”

“You’re a naturally cautious person, and you’re even more sensitized because of your wife and because of what’s been happening to you. You don’t trust me. That’s all right, I can accept that. I’m not after a wedding band. I just thought I could comfort you. I thought we could have something…distinctive.”

It was a good word.
Distinctive.
It bestowed no emotional content except what someone was willing to give it. He still didn’t think he was entirely on her radar. He might never quite make it even if he did get her into bed. The train pulled in and out of tunnels and Jessie Gray slumbered contentedly against Flynn. His gun pressed against her, but she seemed to find it comforting. Eventually she fell asleep. He turned his face to her hair and stared out the window at the Queens townships rolling by.

On the floor, seated between his feet, Zero looked up and said, “You’re never going to figure this out. It’s going to keep happening until someone walks up behind you, taps you on the shoulder and stabs you in the eyes with an ice pick.”

Flynn thought it might be true.

When the train pulled into his station he gently awoke Jessie Gray and they disembarked among the rushing yups. He looked out over the parking lot and saw the rental car. He was having a little trouble remembering the early part of the day. It took him a second to get back to it—Jessie had met him at his apartment and they’d driven to the train station less than a mile away together. He held her close while they walked down the stairs to the lot.

“You’re worried about me,” she said.

“I’m worried about everybody.”

“I mean, you’re bothered. You’re ill at ease. I came on too strong for you. It’s all right, I do that sometimes with certain men. I chased my first husband around the university campus for almost two years. We met as freshmen in a journalism class, and even though he didn’t like me much, I eventually wore him down. I have a habit of doing that. I told you I’m compulsive. I’m very self-aware. My therapist has reams of notes on the subject; but for some reason, despite my understanding, I fall back into the same pattern.”

“It’s what makes us who we are,” Flynn said. “Our habits and methods. Our ruts. The ineradicable flaws in our character.”

“You remember me saying that.”

“Yeah.”

He unlocked the car door for her. She didn’t want to get in, she wanted to talk. “And this relationship is already tangled enough.”

Is that what they had? Did they skip into a
relationship
on the first date? A date that could be considered some what tainted, what with a murder occurring in the middle of it.

“What’d you do to your second husband?”

“Ran after him too. I got pregnant a couple of dates in. We shotgunned it. I lost the baby a few months later, and him a few months after that. I missed the baby more, even though I’d make a terrible mother. I know that. I shouldn’t have children. But I probably will, isn’t that awful? Of course it is, you see that all day long.”

She slid into the seat and he closed the door, got in, started it up and waited for the heat to get going. She got up close to him again and he turned his face to her, went in for another kiss. It was sweet and friendly and altogether meaningless. She drew away and smiled at him.

“You don’t really want me, do you?” she asked.

He didn’t know how to answer, which was an answer itself. She seemed to take it in stride. She must’ve expected it. It was part of her rut. She liked men who turned her down. It fired her obsessiveness. He should say he loved her and watch her run for it.

The complexity of his own emotions had never been quite so obvious to him before. He wondered if he’d always been like this, even with Marianne.

“It’s going to snow again, I think,” Jessie said. “They’re going on and on about how it’s the worst New York winter in thirty years. I’m friends with the Channel Two weatherman, the guy who does it at eleven o’clock, and he says people aren’t paying enough attention. Cases of frostbite are way up. The homeless are freezing in the streets. You don’t hear about it much.”

Flynn drove back to his apartment. She got out with out a word but gave him an expressive look.

He didn’t know what the expression was supposed to mean, but thought his own face might mirror it. Interested, excited, a little wary. She came in close for a last kiss, and he turned his face to her, his lips parted. She drew away and left him like that, got into her car, started it up, and hauled out of there.

Flynn had to be honest. He was glad she was gone. He wanted to work on the Charger some more before the next snow came. Driving the rental weakened him. He needed to get back his horsepower.

That night he called Sierra and told her everything that had happened. He laid it out with more detail than he meant to and was startled to hear himself discussing Jessie Gray’s kisses.

Sierra made gagging noises on the line. “You couldn’t listen to me. I told you to knock wood, right? Didn’t I tell you?”

He didn’t pick up on it. He thought it was a sexual reference. “You told me to knock wood?”

“When you talked about whoever making another move.”

He remembered. “Yeah, you did. You told me not to call down the whirlwind, but it’s here anyway.”

“And she was a friend of yours, this lady.”

“Yeah. Feels like he’s getting closer.”

“He’s been close. He could’ve aced you either time. But don’t worry about me. He tries to get close to me or my crew and I’ll put a bullet in his ass.”

“I think the proper street slang is
cap.”

“Cap?
Where the hell have you been for the last fifteen years?”

“Okay, so what is it now?”

“How the fuck should I know? You think I stand on street corners talking about shooting people?” She covered the phone and shouted something to one of the kids. He thought it was late for them to be up. She called Kelly’s name and said something about putting on pajamas. “The media been hounding you again?”

“They keep calling, but not so many this time. Jessie broke the story. It’s already out of their hands. I also kind of think they care less because the victim was an old lady this time.”

“Warms the cockles of my heart to hear that.”

“Have you been taking Kelly to see her father?”

“Once. It was enough for her. She didn’t cry, but the image of Shepard with tubes going into his chest, the machinery damn near devouring him, was enough. It gives her nightmares. I hear her. She doesn’t say anything.”