Moonlight Mile Part 5

"I told you to shut up."

"No. You told me to sit the f.u.c.k down, and you're already running out of options."

The fat guy led Tadeo out of the room. Tadeo kept polishing the air in front of him, like a dog having a dream.

I lifted the paper towels off the floor. One side of them was clean, and I pressed that side to my face, came back with a red Rorschach test. "I'm going to need st.i.tches."

Science Teacher leaned forward on his bench, the gun pointed at my stomach. He had an open face with a light dusting of freckles the same color as his hair. His smile was bland and eager, like he was acting the community-theater role of someone who wanted to be helpful. "What makes you think you're walking out of here?"

"Like I said, your option-clock is ticking down to nothing. There were people on the street when that guy boosted my bag. Someone's already called the cops. The house next door isn't occupied, but the house behind you is, you dumb s.h.i.t, and there's a good chance someone saw Tadeo pop me with the pipe. So whoever hired you to deliver whatever message you're supposed to deliver, I'd get kinda peppy about delivering it."

Science Teacher didn't strike me as stupid. If he'd wanted to kill me, he would have put two in the back of my head when I'd been kneeling on the floor of the unfinished kitchen.

"Stay away from Helene McCready." He squatted in front of me, the gun dangling between his thighs as he gazed up into my face. "You snoop around her or her kid, you ask any questions, I'll bullet-f.u.c.k your entire life."

"Gotcha," I said with a nonchalance I didn't feel.

"You got a kid now, Patrick, a wife. A nice life. Go back to it and stay in it. And we'll all forget this." got a kid now, Patrick, a wife. A nice life. Go back to it and stay in it. And we'll all forget this."

He stood and stepped back as I made it to my feet. I walked into the kitchen and found the roll of paper towels on the floor. I pulled off a wad and pressed it to my face. He stood in the doorway, staring at me, the gun in his waistband. My own gun sat back in the desk at Duhamel-Standiford. Not that it would have done me any good after Tadeo hit me in the head with a pipe. Then they would have just taken the gun, and I'd be out a laptop, a laptop bag, and a gun.

I looked over at him. "I gotta go to an ER and get my face st.i.tched up, but don't worry, I don't take it personally."

"Gosh," he said, "you promise?"

"You threatened my life, but I'm cool with that, too."

"Darn white of you, too." He blew a bubble and let it snap.

"But," I said, "you stole my laptop and I really can't afford to buy a new one. Don't suppose you'd give that back to me?"

He shook his head. "Finders keepers."

"I mean, that f.u.c.ks me up, man, but I'm not going to turn it into something it ain't. Because it's just business. Right?"

"If it ain't, 'business' will do until the right word shows up."

I pulled the paper towels from my face. They were a mess. I folded them over and put the wad back to the side of my head for a minute, looked again at the redheaded science teacher standing in the doorway.

"So be it," I said and dropped the red wad of paper towels on the floor, tore off a fresh batch, and let myself out of the house.

Chapter Six.

When we sat down to eat, Angie looked across the table at me with the same controlled fury she'd been wearing since she got a good look at my face, heard about my trip to the health center, and ascertained that I was, in fact, not going to die tonight.

"So," she said, "let's start at the beginning." She speared a few pieces of lettuce. "Beatrice McCready finds you at JFK Station."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And she tells you her s.m.u.tty sister-in-law misplaced her daughter again."

"Helene's s.m.u.tty?" I said. "I hadn't noticed."

My wife smiled. Not the nice smile. The other one.

"Daddy?"

I looked over at our daughter, Gabriella. "Yeah, honey?"

"What's s.m.u.tty?"

"It's like kooky," I said, "only it rhymes with s.l.u.tty."

"What's s.l.u.tty?"

"It's like ooky," I said, "except it doesn't rhyme with kooky. Why aren't you eating your carrots?"

"You look funny."

"I wear big bandages on my face every Thursday."

"No suh." Gabriella's eyes grew wide and solemn. She had her mother's big brown eyes. She also had her olive skin and wide mouth and dark hair. From me she'd gotten curls, a thin nose, and a love of silliness and wordplay.

"Why aren't you eating your carrots?" I asked again.

"I don't like carrots."

"You did last week."

"No suh."

"Uh-huh."

Angie put her fork down. "Don't start this, the both of you. Do not."

"No suh."

"Uh-huh."

"No suh."

"Uh-huh. I got pictures."

"No suh."

"Uh-huh. I'll get my camera."

Angie reached for her winegla.s.s. "Please?" She fixed me with eyes as huge as our daughter's. "For me?"

I looked back at Gabriella. "Eat your carrots."

"Okay." Gabby dug a fork into one and plopped it in her mouth, chewed. Her face lit up around the chewing.

I raised my eyebrows at her.

"It's good," she said.

"Right?"

She speared another one and munched away.

Angie said, "I've been watching it for four years and I still don't know how you do that."

"Ancient Chinese secret." Very slowly, I chewed a tiny chunk of chicken breast. "By the way, not sure what you've heard, but it's kinda hard eating when you can't use the left side of your mouth."

"You know what's funny?" Angie asked in a voice that suggested something wasn't.

"I do not," I a.s.sured her.

"Most private investigators don't get kidnapped and a.s.saulted."

"The practice is rumored to be trending upward, however."

She frowned and I could feel both of us trapped inside ourselves, not sure what to do with today's violence. There was a time we would have been experts at it. She would have tossed me an ice pack on her way to the gym, expected me to be raring to get back to work by the time she got back. Those days were long gone, though, and today's return to easy bloodshed drove us into our protective sh.e.l.ls. Her sh.e.l.l is made of quiet fury and wary disconnection. Mine is made of humor and sarcasm. Together we resemble a comedian failing an anger-management cla.s.s.

"It looks awful," she said with a tenderness that surprised me.

"It only feels four or five times as bad as it looks. Really. I'm fine."

"That's the Percocet."

"And the beer."

"I thought you weren't supposed to mix the two."

"I refuse to bow to conventional wisdom. I'm a decider. And I've decided I want to feel no pain."

"How's that working out?"

I toasted her with my beer. "Mission accomplished."

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, sweetie?"

"I like trees."

"I like trees, too, honey."

"They're tall."

"They sure are."

"Do you like all all trees?" trees?"

"Every one."

"Even short ones?"

"Sure, honey."

"But why?" My daughter held her hands out, palms-up, a sign that she found this line of questioning of global importance and-lucky us-quite possibly endless.

Angie shot me a look that said: Welcome to my day.

For the last three years, I'd spent the days at work, or, as opportunities dwindled, trying to hustle up work. Three nights a week, I watched Gabby while Angie took cla.s.ses. Christmas break was approaching, however, and Angie would take finals next week. After the New Year, she'd begin an internship with Blue Sky Learning Center, a nonprofit specializing in educating teens with Down syndrome. When that was finished, in May, she'd receive her master's in applied sociology. But until then, we were a one-income family. More than one friend had suggested we move to the suburbs-homes were cheaper, schools were safer, property taxes and car insurance premiums were lower.

Angie and I grew up together in the city, though. We took to picket fences and split-level ranches like we took to s.h.a.g carpeting and Ultimate Fighting. Which is to say, not so much. I once owned a nice car, but I'd sold it to start a college fund for Gabby, and now my beater Jeep sat in front of my house, without moving, for weeks at a time. I prefer subways-you pop down the hole on one side of the city, pop back up on the other side, and you never have to hit your horn, not once. I don't like mowing lawns or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g hedges or raking the mowed lawns or the hedge tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. I don't like going to malls or eating in chain restaurants. In fact, the appeal of the suburban ideal-both in a general and a particular sense-escapes me.

I like the sound of jackhammers, the bleat of sirens in the night, twenty-four-hour diners, graffiti, coffee served in cardboard cups, steam exhaled through manhole covers, cobblestone, tabloid newspapers, the Citgo sign, someone yelling "Tax-i" on a cold night, corner boys, sidewalk art, Irish pubs, and guys named Sal.

Not much of which I can find in the suburbs, at least not to the degree I've grown accustomed to. And Angie is, if anything, worse.

So we decided to raise our child in the city. We bought a small house on a decent street. It has a tiny yard and it's a short walk to a playground (short walk to a pretty hairy housing project, too, but that's another matter). We know most of our neighbors and Gabriella can already name five subway stops on the Red Line, in order, a feat which fills her old man with bottomless pride.

"She asleep?" Angie looked up from her textbook as I came into the living room. She'd changed into sweats and one of my T-shirts, a white one from The Hold Steady's Stay Positive Stay Positive tour. It swam on her, and I worried she wasn't eating enough. tour. It swam on her, and I worried she wasn't eating enough.

"Our gabby Gabby took a breath during a discourse on trees-"

"Arghh." Angie threw her head back against the couch cushion. "What's with the trees?"

"-and promptly drifted off to sleep." I dropped onto the couch beside her, took her hand in mine, gave it a kiss.

"Besides getting beat up," she said, "did anything else happen today?"

"You mean with Duhamel-Standiford."

"With them, yes."

I took a deep breath. "I didn't get a permanent job, no."