Death By The Riverside Part 27

I started running. Cordelia was still beside me somehow, catching my urgency.

The sound of the motorcycle got louder and louder as we all converged on one point. The motorcycle got there first, its roar apexing with the thunderous blast of a shotgun.

I grabbed Cordelia's hand and pulled her along as fast as I could.

Frankie needed her now more than he needed me.

What's black and white and red all over? A scared young man, in a set of tails, with a shotgun wound in his chest.

Cordelia and I reached him first. We seemed to be the only people in motion, everyone else was frozen in time. The two of us and the blood pouring out of Frankie's wound.

Cordelia started working on him immediately, barking orders for someone to call an ambulance and to get her black bag.

I cradled Frankie's head, trying to tell him it would be all right, that the finest doctor in New Orleans was working on him. Blood was * 181 *

coming out of his nose and mouth. I wiped it away, trying to let him breathe without the wet pull of the blood. But it wasn't the blood in his mouth that was causing his labored gasps, but the blood in his lungs.

"Micky," he wheezed.

"Don't talk," I said. "Later. Talk later."

"No, it's okay," he said slowly in gasps. "The informer," he coughed up blood.

"Shh," I cautioned. I don't give a d.a.m.n about the informer. Stay alive, Frankie.

"Don't know name, but..." He gasped for breath. "But wounded in action, likes jazz, Billie Holiday, and R in name. And...the leader...the real leader. I heard his voice...he's here." He coughed again, spitting blood. "Can't do more." He stopped talking, his breath shallow and rapid.

"Frankie," I said. He stopped breathing. "Do something," I yelled at Cordelia. She ignored me. She was already doing all she could.

"Frankie," I said again. Cordelia looked at me and told me to try mouth-to-mouth. I had already begun.

I concentrated on forcing air into his lifeless body. I could hear the sickening wheeze of my breath slipping out of his punctured lungs.

I kept on breathing for him until I felt Cordelia's hand on my arm.

I looked at her. She shook her head no.

"Frankie," I said one more time. But no one was there.

I didn't move. I couldn't let go and leave Frankie on the cold February ground. Someone finally lifted me away from him. It was Cordelia. The other onlookers stood back, keeping the blood and gore away from their expensive formal clothes.

Someone handed Cordelia several tablecloths, which she evidently had asked for. She used a big one to cover up Frankie's body. Then handed one to me. I stupidly held it, staring at the blood creeping through the cloth covering Frankie. What was left of him. Cordelia was wiping off the blood with a tablecloth. I finally started to do the same.

"Come with me," she said and took my arm for the second time that evening. She led me around the corner of the house and to a back staircase. I heard a woman scream when she caught sight of us. We must have been drenched in blood. Cordelia ignored her.

She led me up the stairs to a bathroom on the second floor. It was * 182 *

huge, probably half the size of my whole apartment. It must be nice to be rich, I thought. And to have servants to clean up any b.l.o.o.d.y mess.

Cordelia was running water and washing herself off with the efficiency of someone who washes off blood every day.

I sat down. I guess there were several chairs in the bathroom.

I hadn't noticed them before, but I was sitting in one of them. I felt sick. I wanted to throw up or to cry. I couldn't decide which, so I did neither.

"Stay here," Cordelia said. She had finished washing up. "I'll be back." She left, shutting the door behind her.

I heard a siren in the background, voices on the lawn yelling and screaming, a cacophony outside my silence.

"How many more?" Ranson's voice echoed in my head. How many others would die because I touched them? Why the h.e.l.l did I think I could change the world? Maybe Aunt Greta was right. I f.u.c.ked up everything that I did. Not that she ever said f.u.c.k. She was always very polite when she told me what trash I was.

I looked at my arms. The florescent light of the bathroom turned the drying blood a brutal purple. I could feel the damp stickiness of the blood everywhere, covering my arms, speckling my face and hair, soaking my dress. Torbin's dress.

I started laughing hysterically; somehow the thought of his dress led to the red dress and our promise that we would wear them to the next family Christmas. I had an image of myself walking, for the first time in over ten years, back into Aunt Greta's house. In a red dress that dripped blood. And the whispers of my family. "That Michele, always in trouble. Look at her, she doesn't have the common courtesy to bleed in private. Well, what do you expect of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d child like that. Always a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. She's not really family."

That was how Cordelia found me when she came back in. Laughing hysterically and staring at my b.l.o.o.d.y arms.

"Come on, stand up," she said, taking hold of one of my arms and helping lift me. She unzipped my dress, then pulled it over my head.

"I'm sorry, your dress is ruined," she said, tossing it into the bathtub.

"That's okay. It's Torbin's and he doesn't want it anyway." I realized how strange that sounded. "Good thing I didn't wear the red * 183 *

one. He wanted that one back." I started laughing again. I was out of control. I couldn't cry, so I was laughing.

Cordelia tossed the rest of my clothes into the bathtub with the ruined dress. Then she got a washcloth, wet it, and began washing the blood off me. I noticed that she had changed clothes and was now wearing a sweatshirt and old jeans.

"Here, I can do that," I said, taking the washcloth from her, attempting to regain some of my control. I used the cold washcloth to wipe the blood off my arms, my face, and my chest and stomach where it had soaked through the dress. "I'm sorry, I don't know what happened to me," I said.

"Don't worry about it," Cordelia said. "Shotgun wounds are gruesome. You're doing okay for having seen one that close."

I stopped. Nausea took over. I started throwing up. Cordelia put a wet washrag on my neck as I hunched over the toilet.

This wasn't the first time I had seen what a shotgun does to a man's chest. When I was ten years old, I had seen a man shot in the chest with a shotgun.

"Take it easy," Cordelia was saying.

My stomach was empty. There was nothing more to retch up. I still hunched over the toilet, not knowing how to face her. She handed me some water and I washed out my mouth.

"Can you stand?" she asked, gently brushing the damp hair off my forehead.

I nodded and slowly stood up.

"I'm sorry, Micky."

"It's okay. I'm all right," I said, wanting it to be so.

She put her arms around me, holding me tight.

I didn't move. The man twenty years ago with the shotgun hole in his chest was her father. And if she knew that, she wouldn't be standing here holding me.

Someone opened the door.

"Cordelia, I've been looking all over for you. I...oh," Th.o.r.eau said. He was seeing his fiancee embracing a naked woman behind a closed door.

"Shut the door," Cordelia said.

"But I need to..." he sputtered.

"Shut the door," she repeated. She didn't let go of me, but turned * 184 *

slightly so that she was completely blocking my nakedness from his view.

He shut the door.

I put my arms around her. She would know someday and regret this. But for the moment I needed to be held. I buried my face in her shoulder. I felt her grasp tighten about me and I stole what comfort I could from the warmth of her touch.

"I need to find out what's being done," I said finally, breaking away, remembering Frankie. I wanted to find out if they had caught the motorcyclist. I wanted to know what the h.e.l.l Ranson and her big shot FBI agent were doing.

"I brought you some clothes," Cordelia said, handing me a bundle.

"Make sure you don't want any of these," I said as I was dressing.

"I seem to be very hard on other people's clothes." She had gotten me a sweatshirt and some running pants.

"Don't worry. Ready to face the world?" she said sardonically.

She must have been thinking how she would explain to Th.o.r.eau what he had seen.

I nodded. She opened the door. The hallway was empty.

"Let's find reality," I said "Or what pa.s.ses for it out here," she added. She led the way to the grand staircase into the ball room, the one I had first seen her on. We looked incongruous among the formality of the other guests. But the party was over.

We were descending the stairs when I saw Ranson. She ran up to us and we met halfway.

"Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" she demanded of me.

"Joanne," Cordelia started.

"What's the police motto these days, Sarge? Too little, too late?"

I remarked acidly.

"f.u.c.k you," Ranson yelled.

"I kept him alive. How long did you manage it? An hour, if you include the time he was still breathing after the shotgun blast," I screamed back at her.

"Don't you think, if I could wave my badge and bring him back, I would? You're not helping."

Ranson had made a fist. I got into stance. We were about to come to blows. To hit anybody, even the wrong person.

* 185 *

"I'm not helping? You let a scared kid be murdered and I'm not helping? You f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h." I regretted it even as I said it, but it was too late to stop. I could see the throbbing vein in Ranson's temple. She was clearly furious.

"Stop it, both of you," Cordelia said, stepping between us and putting her hands on our shoulders to physically restrain us.

"Arrest her," Ranson responded.

"Who?" Cordelia asked.

"Her." She pointed at me.

"What for?" I yelled.

"Anything," she replied. And she meant it. "Perversion will do."

"f.u.c.k you," I shot back.

"Joanne...Micky. Stop it," Cordelia said. "You're not fighting the right people."

"Hutch," Ranson said to one of the people in the crowd now on the stairs. "You're going to take Ms. Knight with you. Lock her up and keep her there. I don't care how."

"Joanne," Cordelia started, but Ranson cut her off.

"You're next, Micky," she said to me. She stepped around Cordelia, so that she was next to me. "If I have to put you in jail and keep you there so you don't get hurt, I will. You weren't very safe before. You're definitely not safe now. Understand?"

I nodded. I did. I had been too worried and then too angry about Frankie to think about myself.

"Did he tell you anything, say anything, that we might use?" she asked.

I suddenly had a cold feeling down my spine. What kind of music do you like, Joanne? I wanted to say.

"No," I replied. "Nothing at all."

She nodded, disappointed.

"Cordelia," a voice broke in from the crowd. "Cordelia. I'm very sorry." It was Alphonse Korby, and he had a very concerned look on his face. "It's your grandfather. You had better come with me."

Cordelia gave us a quick glance, then turned to go. She touched my hand as she pa.s.sed. Korby took her arm at the foot of the stairs and led her hurriedly away.

"What about the motorcycle? Did you catch him?" I asked.

"He got away," Ranson replied tersely.

* 186 *

"s.h.i.t. Can't you-"