Fifty Mice Part 24

"I dont think so."

"Jay-"

"No, listen-"

"Jay-"

"-I read somewhere that kids who go through serial relationships, foster care, whatever, can grow up to be sick puppies. You know? Serial killers and stuff. Sociopaths. Theyve done studies. You must know about them. You guys have a huge responsibility here."

"You understand our position, then," Magonis says evenly.

"No," Jay says. He does, but he cant.

Magonis takes the electric cigarette from where hes tucked it behind his ear. Rolls it between his fingers, no intention to smoke, just a prop, for effect. He says, "I thought you werent the family kind of guy." He looks up into Jays eyes and holds them, level, piercing, unblinking. For some reason he wants Jay to say it.

Jay drops all pretense. "I want them back," he admits. "Okay? Yeah. You took away my life, I want the one you replaced it with. Its only fair."

"Fair."

"Thats right."

Magonis bursts out laughing.

Public is less amused.

"Jay," he says, as a sigh, exhaling it. "This arrangement. It was never intended to be-"

"-permanent. I know. No s.h.i.t. Well, guess what?"

Public studies him. At Magoniss instruction, Jay has found the head Fed at Big Es, waiting on a triple latte and chatting up Penny, c.o.c.ktail waitress from the Garrulous Parrot who, from her easy body language and casual sharing of Publics chocolate croissant, fingers brushing his, appears to have let the Fed introduce some measure of doubt into her fealty to the boat babysitter husband, Cody.

"Bring them back," Jay says simply, "and Ill tell you the truth."

"This dislocation, your state of flux, its perfectly natural to form attachments. All the adjusting. It takes time." Public finishes his thought before Jays offer fully lands. "What?"

"Ill tell you what I saw, everything," Jay says, playing his trump card, and straightens up, stubborn.

Silence. Public is, for once, flummoxed. And skittish: the way he sent Penny off when Jay showed up: brusque, impatient, unhappy. A man in flux? He repeats the offer aloud, frowning, as if trying to make sense of it.

Reading the tea leaves of Publics distraction, suddenly understanding that maybe this has been Publics folly and crusade, and hes gone all-in on it, Jay is gambling that its the conundrum in the Glendale strip bar that they crave unwrapped: the flower girl: the mermaid: the shooting that happened there: Jay, girl in his arms, running away, running away. It cant be anything else, can it? Hes making this up as he goes along, hoping it will be enough, hoping that he can make it enough.

They stand at the seawall, looking out at the rows and rows of boats and yachts moored, white, bright, promising, in the morning sun. The reek of fish and petroleum is almost overwhelming. A brace of high-school kids in yellow kayaks and orange life vests paddles out around the tongue of Casino Mole toward the kelp forests of Lovers Cove.

"Everything," Jay says again, impa.s.sive, waiting. "You got me. I give up."

Public tilts his head to one side, a dog hearing a weird frequency, or wondering where you hid the squeaky chew toy. "I dont understand, though. Why were you holding back from us all this time?"

"Maybe you didnt offer me the right incentive."

"But-"

Jay, honest: "I dont know. I dont know."

Public seems to accept this. Hes pensive for a while, staring out at the harbor. Then: "What if they dont want to come back?"

Jay says nothing. In this experiment, the parameters are fixed, there are no variables.

"Ginger and her daughter. You know . . . we cant just force them to-"

"-Yes, you can. You can do whatever you want. Youre G.o.d."

Public doesnt deny it.

27 .

AN ENDLESS PARADE of whitecaps paints a watery tessellation as far as the eye can see.

Unruly waves swell over the rocks of Abalone Point, sending cotton spumes of mist skyward with a rumbling, hissing symphony of indefatigable yearning.

Then, head thrown back, momentarily deafened by the rotor roar, Jay watches the helicopter arrive and spiral down to the helipad, settle, and go quiet, doors opening to release Helen and Ginger.

They step unsteadily to solid ground. Helen runs to Jay, leaps, arms wide, for him to catch, and she hugs him, hard in a silent bliss.

Ginger hangs back, her hair a mad tangle, her eyes dark and chary with that wacky 90s grunge-rock art-school mascara hes come to expect when she tries to doll herself up, her expression flat and unreadable but possibly p.i.s.sed off. Her eyes find Jay for an instant before flicking away, and Jay follows her worried gaze to Barry, just turning and stepping, like a forgotten promise, into the shadows of the heliport terminal hangar, where Sandy has chosen to stay. Public declined to attend the happy reunion, explaining he had preparations to make with Doe. Jay doesnt know what he expected from Ginger, but hes understandably uncertain, apprehensive: its a strange feeling, where something matters.

His mouth is dry, he can feel his pulse in his head. Hes spent so long being well defended, immune to loss.

They decide to walk back along Pebbly Beach Road. Everything is gauzy, as though theres been a slow-smoldering fire inland, but its only the midday brume, hilltops ablur, sky scrimmed slate. Helen takes the concrete stairs down to the sh.o.r.e and throws stones in the ocean, while Jay and Ginger find a place among the jagged rocks to sit, already in the blue shadows of the naked cliffs, and watch her.

"What are you doing?" Ginger asks finally, faintly.

For the moment, Jay stays silent. It seems like Ginger knows what hes doing, she just doesnt want to ask why.

"What happened in L.A.?"

"Pretty much my whole life," he says, tentatively, answering a different question, "Ive never really wanted anything. Ive never really had the courage to care about anything. You think you float? I invented floating."

Ginger looks unconvinced. "Huh."

"I did what you said. I ran. But that was the plan, right? Did they tell you to say it to me, or-"

"I meant run and keep running. If youd kept going, what they wanted, or expected, wouldnt have-"

Jay cuts her off, "And I saw what I didnt have. And now my friend is missing, and a girl is dead, and Im still clueless what these guys want from me, but I decided what I want. I decided."

"You dont know me," she says. "You dont know anything about me." Up on the road, not so discreet, a stationary golf cart holds Barry and Sandy, who arent talking. Ginger tries to keep her voice low: "What we had was not a relationship, it was not a family, it was, I dont know, what, an accident, a kind of theater."

"I dont care. Its what I want. Can you understand that?"

Ginger watches Helen dance along the waters edge. "I can," she says softly.

"I dont care what the world is, as long as youre in it."

He can see how this rocks her; in truth, it rocks him, putting the words one after another and saying it. Ginger slits her eyes and lifts her chin, almost defiant, and runs one hand through her hair to get it out of the way: "That doesnt make any sense."

"I am way past the idea of things making sense," Jay says. "Nothing makes sense. Emotions are all thats left." He hesitates, then continues. "So, I figure, h.e.l.l, let them anchor us."

He hunts for Gingers eyes under the curtain of her bangs. "Let emotions rule."

Helen tosses a huge boulder into the sea, so big that she has to use two hands and almost goes into the water with it, and the splash comes flopping back on her. She screams, happy, and glances back at them. Theres nothing coy in her look. Ginger smiles, brittle.

"Im a marshal, Jay. Im a Fed. Deputy U.S. Marshal Virginia Blake. Im part of the team that put you here. And kept you here."

"The inside guy."

"Yeah. Put there just in case you want to, you know . . . confide to me what you wont tell . . . the others."

Now its Jays turn to be rocked by her words.

As she says them, as he reacts to them, thoughts rear-ending each other as he tries to re-calculate everything he knows, and expects, ruefully blinking back astonishment he chides himself for feeling because, waiting for Ginger and Helen to return to him, Jay had run through all the variations on the Ginger theme, and Ginger the Fed was one of them, sure, but hed dismissed it as way too pat and paranoid. It certainly helps explain why she told him to run (or he hopes it does), but it isnt the version of the story he was yearning for. And, potentially, it makes things that much more difficult, going forward.

Or does it?

Ginger stares intently down at Helen, to avoid looking at him, a fragile uncertainty in her cant and posture.

"All that stuff about your boyfriend . . . ?"

"Husband. Hes dead. He was an a.s.shole and hes dead, and I dont miss him." She stops there, suggesting shed decided theres nothing more to explain.

"Did you-?"

"-Kill him? No. Public loves his fictions. I told you. It makes him feel like Zeus. Looking down on us mere mortals."

"And Helen?"

"What about her?"

"She a Fed?"

Ginger cant help but laugh. "No."

"But not your daughter."

Theres a long hesitation before she admits, "No. No shes not." She starts to tell him the story, how Helens parents were bad guys, bad people, killed by some other bad people, Helen saw it, and because of what she saw and because the killers fled the country and are still at large and know she saw them Helens at risk, and under the protection of the Marshal Service. But Jay hears only half of it; he watches as Ginger sweeps the hair back off her face again, gathers it at her neck, and ties a fat knot with it to hold it there. She doesnt look like a Fed. None of the steady cast of appraising eye, shes all over the place, nervous, shy, vulnerable. She looks like a work in progress, mercurial, a young woman who got to be a mom before she thought she was ready, discovered she was good at it and enjoyed it so much she doesnt want to think about what might happen if someone decides to un-mom her.

"Does she remember what happened?"

"The doctors say maybe, maybe not, she was too young. But she hasnt talked since it happened, either, so . . ."

"Right." Jay cant help adding, for the irony: "Maybe she does remember, and shes just not saying."

Evidently, Ginger doesnt like the easy familiarity of this. She stands up, hands on hips, hair flowing: half a G.o.ddess, at least.

Jay stands up with her. "You love her," he says, finally.

"I was a.s.signed to her," Ginger says, evasive.

"Oh. Is that all it is?"

"To protect her."

"Right. Like a mom," Jay says.

"Yeah."

"And one thing led to another."

Ginger snaps at him: "Its not the same, okay? Its not the same thing as . . . this. You and me. Its not."

Jay waits for her to calm. She unknots her hair, and combs at it with her fingers. She smooths her jeans with her palms. There are tears in her eyes, and she doesnt wipe them away.

"Theyll take her away from you," he says quietly. "Sooner or later."

Its a cheap shot, and he regrets it the moment after he says it. Ginger goes very quiet. She nods. "I know."

"I just mean-"

"I know what you mean," she interjects, without any bitterness. "Dont make me choose, Jay," she says. "This was a sweet, sweet dumba.s.s gesture, to be sure, and maybe, I dont know, heroic, even, but . . . Theres no happy ending here. Not for us. Im just the inside guy, waiting for you to tell me what you know."

"Why dont I believe that?"

Her smile breaks his heart. Waves lap the rocks, brittle-sounding. Helen has drifted farther down the sh.o.r.e, out of earshot. Jay glances over at the grim Feds in the golf cart.

"What do they want from me, Ginger?"

Jay has to wait again. Hes not sure if shes filtering what shes going to tell him, or simply organizing it into a form h.e.l.l easily understand. "They? We? Me?" She sighs, big sigh. "Last year we had this . . . problem. One of our guys, an unhappy marshal, went into business for himself. He had this list, of names-"

"-on a flash drive."