“Get away from him,” Dallenbach ordered.
Zak and I knew who he meant. We moved away. Lippo looked almost ridiculous seated there on his ass in his dirty coat. The fact that he was still holding the Glock made him seem a bit less silly. It was Mexican standoff time between Dallenbach and Lippo. Lippo didn’t wait to discuss it and squeezed off a few shots. Dallenbach crumbled. The door flew open and an endless stream of state policemen flew in behind Detective Fazio. Lippo wasn’t an eloquent speaker, but he could compute the odds. He immediately tossed the Glock at Dallenbach’s body and started screaming something about self-defense. Gino moaned, opened his eyes, and went back to concussionville.
Fazio, his crooked nose shiny with sweat, just stood there shaking his head at us. He was out of breath and thought smoking a Kent was the best way to catch it. He looked at MacClough’s cuffed hands and John caught his gaze.
“That one’s got the key,” MacClough nodded at Dallenbach.
Fazio dutifully went about collecting the keys and undoing the cuffs. MacClough spent the next five minutes rubbing his wrists. Gloved hands were pushing and prodding my shoulder and the back of Zak’s head. The general consensus was that we’d live.
“Did you get all that?” MacClough asked, pulling a small microphone off his inner thigh.
“Every word,” Fazio said. “Every fucking word.” He turned to me. “Sorry about the girl.”
I had nothing in me to say to him just then, but he smiled at what he must have seen in my eyes.
“What the fuck took you so long?” MacClough griped.
“These tunnels, I’m not an ant for chrissakes! I can get you from the IND to the BMT to the IRT, but anywheres north of Syracuse I’m no good underground.”
“How the-” I started the question.
“We’ll talk about it some other time,” Fazio winked.
A vaguely military looking gentleman in aviator sunglasses, a blond brush cut, and cheek bones higher than K2 introduced himself to me as DEA Field Supervisor Robert Rees. I shook his hand.
“Good work,” he said. “Good work.”
Whatever that meant. Too many people on both sides of the issue had died to make something good of it. I asked him if I might be allowed to leave now. He muttered something about my shoulder and a hospital. I told him the hospital could wait. He told one of the state troopers to take me wherever I wanted to go. He shook my hand again. Maybe he was as much in shock as the rest of us.
I asked MacClough how he was feeling. He sort of laughed at me and said that he’d live. I guessed he would. Life is a hard thing to take away from some people.
Zak put his hand out for me to pull him up. I pulled him up. There were tears in his eyes and when he began to beg forgiveness, I said he had nothing to beg for. Forgiveness wasn’t my province. He had to forgive himself. My anger had all vanished in a pool of other peoples’ blood. I kissed him, told him I loved him, and ordered him to go visit his grandfather’s grave.
“No one’ll ever call me the family fuck-up again,” he vowed.
“Yeah, Zak, I know. And they don’t play stickball in Milwaukee.”
It fit somehow.
When I was almost through the door, MacClough called out for me: “Where you goin’?”
“There’s a man at the Old Watermill Inn who I need to talk to.” I didn’t look back.
Poltergeists
Once again, the swimming pools and split ranches were rushing by beneath the belly of my plane.
Although it was only several weeks ago that I had flown home for my father’s funeral, Hollywood felt like ancient history to me now. That’s the trick of time, isn’t it? It’s not how much passes by, but how much happens as it passes.
As the flight attendant floated on by my row, I thought of Kira. She resembled her in only the most superficial ways-the almond eyes, the luminescent black hair. She smiled at me, checked the back of my seat to make certain of its upright position, and continued down the cabin. It was little moments like these that hurt the most, the unexpected flashes of her and the thoughts of what could have been. Sometimes it is a curse to have an active imagination.
It was also moments like these that made me wish I could believe in the God of my parents. I thought it must be a great comfort to have the faith that everything happened for some greater reason, that deaths, no matter how cruel or untimely, had a purpose we just could not understand.
I neither believed nor understood. I was alone.
Japan had been good for me. Kira’s parents treated me like family and introduced me to everyone as Kira’s fiance. There was no anger in any of the family, no ugliness about the violence in America. No one felt inclined to blame me. It seemed everyone had the ability to make sense of things but me. Kira’s mother, fierce and stoic, took me for a walk one day to a Shinto shrine. As we sat in a rock garden under the cold sunlight, she spoke to me about her only child. She never once looked at me, talking instead to the few birds that landed on the rocks to sun their plumes.
“My girl was never happy,” she said. “To my shame, she had no footing. At first, we tried to make her too traditional. It is not an unnatural reaction, I think, to being in a foreign land. Our feet, my husband’s and my own, were on wet rocks themselves. America can be overwhelming to people who are raised on sacrifice.”
“You have nothing to explain to me. I should be the one,” I confessed, “to explain.”
“Thank you for your graciousness. These are hard things to say, but a mother has the right to say them. She was an unhappy girl; no friends, no family, moving all the time. My husband’s career was consuming. So, when Kira decided to stay behind, I was. .” She began to cry. “I was almost-”
“-relieved,” I finished for her.
“Her unhappiness and our guilt was easier to deal with a continent away. In my awkward grief, what I am trying to say is that you must be a special man to have made Kira want to love you. It seemed she never wanted to love her parents.”
“Mine was the easier role. You had already made her perfect.”
With that, I stood and walked back to the house alone. I left Kira’s mother by herself to sort things out amongst the rocks and birds. At one point, I turned back to look at her. She was my age, maybe a year or two older, but was, I thought, wiser than I would ever be and far more courageous.
At the airport, Kira’s father gave me a family photo album, a handshake, and a bow. We knew we would never see one another again.
As always, MacClough was waiting for me outside customs. He was still heavy, but frail-looking somehow. His skin was jaundiced as it had been in Riversborough. He was worn out and looked like shit. I probably looked worse, having spent the better part of a day in the air. Although considerable creature comforts were available on board, no one would ever mistake twenty hours in a 747 for a weekend at a Palms Springs spa.
We embraced. His handshake was firm as ever. There was relief in that. We exchanged some small talk on the way through the parking lot. I continued walking even after MacClough had stopped.
“This is it,” John said, pointing to a rented car.
“Where’s the T-Bird?”
“I decided to finally get it fully restored. It’s at a place out in Montauk that specializes in ’60s Fords. It’ll be done in a coupl’a weeks. Already paid for.”
I thought that was an odd thing for him to tell me, but I just loaded my bags and myself inside. Near the airport, it was difficult to judge the season. It always seemed cold at the airport and the air always smelled of hot metal and spent kerosene. But with my window down slightly as we hit the Cross Island, I could smell spring coming. I could read it in the orange face of the setting sun. My eyes set more quickly than the sun.