Canary (39 page)

“Ohmygod,” she says, and the tears stop. “You’re alive.”

“Think you’re the only one who knows how to play dead?” Ringo asks. “Ah shit.”

“I’ll call nine one one …”

“Really not a good idea, honey,” Ringo says. “Forget about me for a second. How about you? How’s your arm there?”

“I got shot,” she says quietly.

“You and me both. Come here and let me have a look.”

However, when Ringo takes a good look and wipes away some of the blood—the girl flinches like he’s touching her with a hot iron—he’s happy to inform her that the bullet only grazed her skin. A bleeder, but nothing serious.

“I wasn’t shot?” she says, almost disappointed.

“If you want bragging rights, I think you’ve got more than enough after tonight.” Ringo coughs. It hurts. “Ah, shit.”

They both watch the dark river flow down toward the Delaware, where it will eventually spill out into the ocean. Ringo thinks about just crawling off the edge of the pier and floating along with it. After a while, the cold would sink in deep, and he wouldn’t feel anything anymore. On the other hand, he’d probably wash up in Delaware, and he always hated that fucking place.

Then there’s the matter of this girl, who looks utterly and completely fucking lost. Ringo understands. He’s been there. Shit, he thinks he’s there now.

“Can you just go home or something?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ve got unfinished business, huh.”

She nods.

“You know which cop did this to you—this handler you mentioned?”

She bites her lip thinking it over. But yeah. She knows.

“Okay, good. This gives you a purpose in life, and with that, honey, you can do anything. Know what your purpose is? Go and do worse to him. Far worse. Right now you’ve got the element of surprise. You’re assumed dead. This won’t last forever, but if you’re smart I’d give it a day or so. Use that day.”

“Okay.”

“Sun’s coming up in a few hours. You’d better get going. I wouldn’t use that truck. That’s probably how they found us, with that GPS shit. You know how to get where you’re going?”

“I think so.”

“Good.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I’ll be right as rain.”

“Like hell you are—you were shot like five hundred times.”

Ringo smiles, rubs his ample belly a little. “Yeah, but I’m well insulated.”

Truth is, he has no idea how badly he’s shot up. There’s a lot of numbness in places that shouldn’t be numb. Whatever. He’ll figure it out later. Ringo feels strangely free, like he’s hopscotched away from the jaws of death enough times to go pro. If the Grim Reaper were to claim him now, then it would strike him as perfectly fair.

“You know,” Ringo says, “we should probably get out of here.”

“I want to do something for you,” the girl says abruptly.

Ringo, shot to hell so bad that when he smiles his teeth are streaked with blood, says, “Yeah?”

“There’s a man who killed a friend of mine. He’s a drug dealer with a goofy name. Chuckie Morphine. He has a boat down by Penn’s Landing. If you’re looking for a way out of the city, a boat’s not a bad way to go.”

Sometimes, Ringo thinks, gifts come in the most unexpected places. Now he had a purpose in life, too. He smiles. “This Chuckie Morphine guy, he a tough one?”

“You’re tougher.”

Ringo considers. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all. But then some dormant strain of chivalry kicks in.

“What about you? Don’t you want to escape on a boat, too?”

“No, Richie,” she says. “I’ve got things to do on land.”

Kevin glances over at his son’s face every minute or so on the ride home. Deep thoughts going through the boy’s mind, he can tell. Or maybe it’s just worry. Or lack of sleep. It is … what, quarter after two in the morning? The streets are deserted, and the Cavalier is pulling into a space in front of their house when Marty finally turns to face him, looking as if he is about to cry.

“I have to show you something, Dad. But don’t be mad.” The way Marty says it makes Kevin’s blood turn ice-cold. Kevin asks, almost yelling, what’s he talking about, what the fuck is it? Marty says he can’t tell him.

“I have to show you.”

As Marty leads the way down to the den in the basement, Kevin’s mind really starts having fun with him. What could his twelve-year-old son possibly show him? And why couldn’t he have done it before? You know, when they were searching his older sister’s abandoned vehicle? Marty leads him across the room to Sarie’s desk and pulls out a stack of blue exam books. The kind college professors hand out for a test. At least six of them.

“What is this?”

“Just open it. I’m not supposed to know about them, and Sarie doesn’t know I know about them. But maybe they can help.”

Kevin repeats,
What is this?
but he’s more mumbling the question to himself as he pulls the exam books from the Ziploc. He fans them out in his hands. They’re all dated, and they feel like they’re stuffed with other pieces of paper.

“What the hell
is
this?” Kevin asks again, but Marty urges him to just read it.

The first of the books is dated 11/27–11/30. Kevin searches the calendar in his head. Wasn’t that the day before Thanksgiving? When he was in San Diego? Flying back on a red-eye that night so he could be with the kids first thing in the morning? Yeah, that made sense. That was the night Marty slept over at his friend Ethan’s house, and Sarie went to a party on campus, promising to have no more than two beers over the course of the night. She’d picked him up the next morning at the airport, looking tired, but then again, so was Kevin.

Kevin flips open the front cover to the first page, which is filled with Sarie’s clean, perfect handwriting. The first line:

Hi, Mom. So I got arrested last night. (Sort of.)

Kevin looks at Marty. “What is this? Did you know about this?”

“About what?”

“About Sarie getting arrested!”

“I had no idea.”

Kevin scans his son’s face. Maybe Marty’s telling the truth. Maybe he knew about the hidden exam books, not what they contained.

For a moment, Kevin is utterly lost. He wants to absorb the contents instantaneously and know exactly what to do about his daughter’s situation. But he doesn’t even know the situation. He pulls the last book from the pile, the one where the cover date (12/11–) is open-ended. He flips to a random page near the end:

So tonight on my to-do list:

1. Get Chuckie talking business

2. Buy Oxys

3. Buy a gun

4. Prepare for my 8:30 philosophy final

None of these words make sense. Oxys, a gun? The part about the philosophy exam—now, that sounds like his daughter. The “Chuckie talking business” part, not so much. She’s an honor student, the most conscientious person he knows. She’s never handed in anything late, never accepted anything less than an A-minus. Exactly the opposite of the fuckup Kevin was back in high school.

But the stuff about the pills and the gun … a fucking gun? That seems like the words of an alien being that has taken possession of his daughter’s body. Yet the words are in her unmistakable handwriting. Just a few hours ago, his baby girl went out into the city of Philadelphia to buy drugs and a weapon.

From whom? Why? What in the fucking hell was going on?

Kevin flips through the blue books, searching for a meaning to emerge from the flurry of notes, cutout headlines from newspaper articles (
FEDS
; 2
PHILLY POLICE OFFICERS ROBBED CONFIDENTIAL INFORMANT, DRUG DEALERS AND NARCOTICS COP SUBJECT OF
18
COMPLAINTS
), scribbles on napkins. He sees a familiar name—Tammy.
Of course
she’s involved in this.

He dials her cell.

Tammy’s phone doesn’t ring because it’s been submerged in the Delaware River, along with the body of Peter “Little Pete” D’Argenio. Tammy Pleece has a decision to make, but right now she’s too drunk to be making any good decisions. So she stares out over the city for a while. From her vantage point near the top of one of the Society Hill Towers, facing South Philly, all appears calm. Way too calm. Deadsville.

Just wait at the place,
he told her.
I’ll call you.

Hours and hours ago.

Where could he be? Should she just sit here and wait for him?

Without her phone?

So she mixes herself another drink. There’s plenty of expensive Russian vodka, plenty of fresh-squeezed orange juice. She adds ice and mixes the two together, measuring by taste. Tammy takes a sip and realizes she put in way too much vodka. The alcohol tastes so sharp it hurts her teeth. Peter once made her a dirty martini, which sounded fun in the abstract but made her want to barf. She’s adding more orange juice when the door opens. It’s one of Peter’s employees—a guy she always sees around. But now he’s wearing a valet uniform.

“Come on, you gotta go.”

“I don’t think I should drive.”

“Then walk.”

“You asshole! I’m going to have you fired.”

“Yeah? Good luck. Now get out.”

“I want my phone.”

“Forget your phone. Just
go home.
”

Forget her phone? What the hell does that mean? This whole night is confusing. They were supposed to be partying. Then out of nowhere Peter asks to borrow her phone “for just a few seconds, babe” and promptly disappears.
With the phone.
So when he calls a little later it’s on the apartment landline, telling her the party’s canceled for tonight, he has to take care of some business, but just wait at the place, I’ll call you.

“I want to speak to Peter.”

“Listen, nobody’s speaking to Peter ever again. Forget you ever knew Peter. This is not your world. Go. The fuck. Home.”

Drunk as Tammy might be, she finally gets it. Oh god does she get it.

Oh god … Sarie.

“George,” Kevin says, “me again.”

“What’s up, man? Tell me you didn’t crash my car. … Ah, I’m just kidding, bro. You find Sarie?”

“Who do you know working narcotics?”

“What? I would think you’d know more of those guys than me.”

“I’m looking for a specific guy. Ben Wildey. Just something that came up during a counseling session. It’s important. You know him?”

“No. How about you tell me what this is about? Because you’re not exactly making much sense.”

“It’s confidential.”

“Like telling you personal shit about a cop isn’t breaking some kind of confidentiality thing?”

“George, I’ll tell you everything, but man, the clock is ticking. I need to find somebody who knows this guy.”

There’s silence on the line. Kevin can hear faint swallowing, which would be George, resuming drinking. The man claims to drink to fall asleep, but he never ends up sleeping.

“Who’s he with? Which unit?”

“Something called Narcotics Field Unit-Central South. NFU-CS. What is that?”

“Shit, Kev.”

“Don’t do this to me, Ponus. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t really important.”

Wildey flashes his badge, but it doesn’t yield him much except the basics, which he already heard on the police band. An older white guy and a girl—who depending on the witness was thought to be either his daughter or an escort—shot multiple times by a pair of masked killers, one of whom might be female. The weird part: The killers took the bodies with them, dumping them into the back of a waiting truck (tomorrow the headline will read:
DOUBLE MURDER TO GO
) before peeling away into the night.

To dump the bodies, Wildey thinks.

Honors Girl was a big fan of to-do lists. Now Wildey compiles one of his own. Real short and nothing fancy:

1. Find her body and bring it home to her family.
   
2. Make Kaz Mahoney pay for what she’s done.
   

Marty watches his father tremble and fidget and pace and curse under his breath, waiting for his cell phone to ring. So many questions race through Marty’s brain, and he realizes that pretty soon he may not have the chance to ask them. Especially when Dad’s friend George calls back.

Sometimes you just have to ask the question direct, see how your subject handles it. Marty has pieces of evidence—the immunity deal, the glamour photos—that he dug up out of those plastic containers. But he doesn’t have the whole story.

“Dad, was Mom a drug dealer?”

His father’s face falls. “No.
God,
no, Marty. Nothing like that at all. Where is this coming from?”

“But she testified against a cartel in 1995.”

“How did you …? Jesus. Fuck.
Fuck.
Yeah, she did.”

“So she was involved in the drug business.”

“Not by her own choice.” Kevin sighs. “Look, Marty, this is a long story and this isn’t the time to—”

Marty snaps.

“Screw
you,
Dad! It’s never the right time, because you think I’m too young to handle anything. Like Mom being sick with terminal brain cancer! When did you and Sarie decide to not tell me? Why did you wait until she was already dead before you told me?”