Neal stirred his coffee. Allie sat on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hung her head on her hands. She started to rock, slowly at first, then faster and harder, back and forth. Neal barely heard her crying, and when he looked over, he had to look hard to see the tears wetting her face. The pain in his chest felt like his heart breaking.
He fought it. It was like his body was wrapped in barbed wire and he couldn’t move. It was like being ten years old and watching his mother fight it and lose, and walk out of the apartment and come back stoned. It was the rage he felt, and the hatred and the contempt, and the heartbreak, and it wrapped him up so tightly, he wanted to scream. He remembered stroking his mother’s head with a wet cloth, and holding her hand and telling her it was all right, she could do it. But she couldn’t. Not for him, not for her, and he hated her for it. For leaving him. For loving it more than him. For what she did to get it. He heard Allie’s quiet, choking sobs, and saw her hugging herself, holding on to herself, and he couldn’t move. Damn it, why couldn’t he move? Grief and anger kept him pressed into the chair, and he couldn’t breathe, and he wanted to scream, to yell, to shout out his fury, and he couldn’t. Instead, he got up, and went over to her, and sat down beside her, and held her while she rocked. She grabbed his wrist and he rocked her then, back and forth, saying “I know, I know.”
He left her a little while later to build a fire in the oven to heat water for tea. He couldn’t find any sugar, but there was a large jar of honey in the cupboard. He spooned a large dollop into the tea, and held the cup while she sipped at it. Then he rocked her some more.
26
Colin was in trouble.
He knew it as soon as he wheeled his bike down the old home street and saw two Chinese hanging around the corner. They were Dickie Huan’s boys, and no mistake, and Colin flashed on the meat cleaver doing its bit on his fingers, and he turned the bike around. The two lazy effin’ bastards hadn’t seen him, and he headed toward East London and the old neighborhood, hoping Crisp would have the sense to do the same thing.
He didn’t, of course. His first instinct was to find Colin, so he trudged dutifully back to the flat. Some good hash and a pint had helped to soothe his pains, and as he turned the corner to home, he was even thinking that the new facial arrangement might make him more interesting-looking.
“He won’t be here,” Vanessa said, pouting. Her head hurt, her man looked as if he’d been at a football game, and she figured that Cola had fucked everything up, anyway.
“We’ll wait.”
They didn’t notice the leather-clad Chinese kids on the corner. Chinese usually just fought Chinese and stayed in their own neighborhoods, so Crisp had no problem with them. He just wanted to quaff a couple more pints, toss some dollers, and go to bed. It just wasn’t his night. They were good, these Chinese kids. They gave the two kweilo, the shitty-looking boy and his strange girlfriend, enough of a head start and then followed them into the building and up the stairs, timing it so they arrived at the door just as Crisp was opening it.
The larger one jumped Crisp from behind, hauled him through the door, and landed on his back. He drew the knife out and stuck it in Crisp’s neck, just enough to bring a trickle of blood. The other one put a revolver to Vanessa’s head and pulled the hammer back. She kept her mouth shut.
“Where’s Colin?” the big one asked, edging up the pressure of the blade.
The day had really gone to shit, Crisp thought, it really had. “Dunno.”
“He owes money.”
“I dunno where he is.”
“He owes money.”
“I’ll get some. Let me up.”
“You know where he is.” It wasn’t a question.
“No, I don’t.”
The Chinese kid stuck the point of the stiletto into Crisp’s ear, just short of the eardrum.
Crisp wondered whether the incredible thump of his own heart pounding was the last thing he’d hear.
“You know where Colin is.”
“He’s on a bike chasing some Americans who stole his money!”
The sound of Vanessa shouting this surprised Crisp, who was trying to lie absolutely, perfectly still. He breathed a little, then he felt the blade slip out of his ear.
What might be described as a heavy silence ensued. Finally, the aural surgeon asked, “Colin doesn’t have the money?”
He didn’t sound real pleased.
Colin wasn’t exactly filled with delight to be skulking back to the old neighborhood, either. But he could go under here, get lost and stay lost, at least until he could figure out a way of finding Neal and getting his money. Because, if he didn’t, he was finished in London.
It isn’t easy trail someone who knows you, especially when your mark also knows you’re a detective, and especially when you’re working on the same case. It makes for a long day.
However, Joe Graham didn’t care how long the days were, or the nights. He did care that the last tune he had heard from Neal Carey, the boy was trapped and about to get it but good. And he also cared… cared a whole lot… about what Neal had told him on the phone. That he’d been set up-by their old buddy Ed Levine.
From some angles, it made sense. There were no files in the office on Allie’s previous adventures and there should have been. So maybe Ed had destroyed them. And Ed was working real closely with John Chase, and Ed was ambitious. And Senator Chase had been diddling his stepdaughter, which didn’t make good campaign material So maybe it was possible that Ed had sent Neal to London not to make sure that Allie came home but to make sure she didn’t. And Ed hated Neal. So maybe it was possible that old Ed was cleaning a bunch of troubles off his desk, and settling an old score. Maybe.
But then from other angles, it just didn’t fit. He’d worked with Ed for over ten years, and in ten years you get to know a guy. And Ed had a good career going already; why fuck it up to go with a prick like Chase? And Ed wasn’t the sort of guy who stands for somebody abusing a kid… he had proved that in an alley years ago. Which was another thing-Ed liked to settle his scores in person. If he wanted a piece of Neal, he’d take it himself.
No. Neal was wrong. It wasn’t Ed.
Unless Ed was following orders. From Kitteredge, who got them from Chase. No, that wasn’t possible. The Man wouldn’t do that, not for a crummy Vice-Presidential candidate, not for the Prez himself. It couldn’t be Kitteredge, either.
So who else? Who had access to information? Keyes’s address?
The answer was where it always was: on the street.
And it wasn’t easy staying on the street with a guy who knows who you are, but now they were dealing with me, Joe Graham thought, and I’m the best there is. I taught Neal Carey everything he knows.
27
“How did you find me?” Neal asked Graham. Neal was nineteen then, and disgusted. Graham had given him the simple assignment to get lost. In a city of some 13 million people, Graham had found him- in two days.
Graham smiled his filthy smile and looked around the small third-floor apartment on Waverly Place. “Easy. I told you to get lost, and you didn’t. So you got found.”
Neal wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit. Spring break was too short and he had a paper on the Romantic poets to write. He had seen this stupid training exercise as an opportunity to get some work done. “Are you going to be cryptic, or are you going to tell me?” he asked.
“What’s ‘cryptic’? Does it mean smart? Smarter than a stupid nineteen-year-old who picks a classmate’s apartment to get lost in? Are you going to get me a coffee or anything?”
“I’ll have to grind some.”
“Oh, yeah, this is the Village, I forgot.” He pointed to his crotch. “Grind this. Just make some coffee. You know, if you were the Fugitive, that series would have been over after the first episode. You’re easier to find than rice on Mott Street.”