Lost (40 page)

Tito Lang scores on both counts, his liver slowly failing, his brain irreversibly damaged by a thirty-year immersion in alcohol.

“Look who’s here, Daddy. Your grandchildren! Did you ever meet them? I been trying to recall, but it seems like maybe you were already too far gone. Doesn’t matter, today we make up for lost times. Say hello to your grandfather, children. Daddy, this is Alicia, Reya and Tyler. See how they’re all dressed up? They’re going to a costume party. Little Tyler, he really wanted to be a pirate but I said, no no, children, no more pirates or princesses, no more dressing up as white people. Today you dress up as Nakosha people.”

Ricky smiles down at his children, who flit around in such a way that it’s difficult to see all three at once.

“Kids, do me a favor, go play on the porch. Your grampa Tito and I need to have a grown-up conversation. Alicia,
honey? Don’t let Tyler go outside, I want you all together, okay? For the party later, that’s why. Good girl. Go on, shoo.”

Ricky shaking his head and smiling, pleased that his father has finally had a chance to see his beautiful grandchildren. From the scent of shampoo and soap, he knows his father has already had his morning bath, and that the hospice aids will not be back to check on him for at least twenty minutes.

Plenty of time for a conversation.

“I been thinking, Daddy. That’s what’s wrong with me, too much thinking. All the time, day and night, awake, asleep, always thinking. Is that why you drank so much, to keep from thinking?”

His father’s eyes skid away, unable to hold focus for long. The diagnosis, rendered months ago, was unequivocal. Neuronal damage to the cerebral cortex with serious cognitive impairment, resulting in a borderline vegetative state. Nominally conscious or wakeful, but no longer able to form or hold thoughts, and verbally unresponsive on all levels.

Tito Lang, once a big talker, speaks no more. His awareness comes and goes. He likes it when the nurses sponge him, and will swallow soft food spooned into his mouth. When spoken to, his eyes at first respond, then quickly drift away. The lights are on, dimly, but he’s rarely at home in any meaningful way. Perversely his heart remains strong. No one has been able to say how long he will linger in his present condition. Could be weeks, months, maybe longer.

“What have I been thinking about?” says Ricky, sitting on the edge of his father’s bed. “I’m glad you asked. I’ve been thinking about the old times. Before I was born, before you were born. The long-ago times, and how our people lived back then. You ever think about that? Yeah?

“You’re right, Daddy. In those days when people got old, too old to contribute to the community, they went away. They got left behind. The people would give them a weapon and maybe a little water and a blanket, and the people would move on, leaving the elder behind. Sounds cruel but it ain’t, not really. It’s natural. My guess, it didn’t take long. And next year when the people came back they’d gather the bones and bury them in a big jar. They call it an ossuary. That’s the white word. We’ve forgotten the Nakosha word, isn’t that sad?”

Out on the screened-in porch the children are playing cowboys and Indians. Despite his native costume, naughty Tyler is pretending to be the cowboy, which means he gets to chase his big sisters around, shooting them with his make-believe gun. They indulge him, being sweet girls. Look how they pretend to die, writhing on the floor. Ricky smiles indulgently. They’re good kids, he’s lucky to have them.

“You know what, Daddy? Lately I’ve been thinking maybe it would be better if
all
of us got left behind. All the Nakosha people. Our cousins and brothers, all of them. Time has come to let the other people move on, leave us behind. That would be the kindest thing. No more fighting, no more betrayal, no more pain, no more suffering. Wouldn’t that be better? We’ll all of us go where the spirits go, and we’ll be together. The world will be clean and new and it will last forever.”

In the end, after the conversation is over and Tito agrees, Ricky uses the pillow.

Sally Pop finds it more than a little weird to be back on the reservation, hanging out with so many cops and federal agents. Some are polite, some choose to aggressively ignore
him. Mostly they’re focused on coordinating the search for Mr. Manning’s son and the pretty lady’s daughter, so he tries not to take offense.

Back in Jersey he avoided cops and Feds like the plague. Not because he was in any great danger of arrest or prosecution, but because guys in his situation were expected to avoid the company of cops and Feds. Tough guys. Guys of a certain size and heft, useful in casino establishments as a kind of enforcement decoration. Okay, sometimes he got a little rough, maybe accidentally fractured a limb or kneecap while encouraging payment obligations. But really it was all an act, part of the routine that kept him employed. Act a certain way, talk a certain way, they’d fall for it because he looked the part, courtesy of not being able to avoid a punch in the boxing ring.

Sally thinks of it like the old joke about not being a doctor but playing one on TV. He’s not really a tough guy, but he plays one in real life.

Edwin Manning, being a very smart dude, seems to have figured this out. He’s dismissed the others and is no longer relying on Sally for security—who needs private security when you’re surrounded by cops and Feds?—but has decided to keep him around to serve as an extra pair of ears. Sally performs that function quite willingly—the pay is still good, and he likes being around all the action. So when Manning calls down from the chickee hut—the official visitor’s hut, whatever that means—Sally obediently trots up the steps, finds his boss standing at a railing, staring out at the nasty big wet grassland or mosquito breeding ground or whatever. A freaking swamp is what it is.

“Coffee?” asks Sally. “They brought in a fresh urn.”

Manning declines the offer. Looks like hell, his eyes sunk so deep in his head it’s a wonder he can see. Still eating himself up over the decision to level with the Feds, admit his boy got snatched. For what it’s worth, Sally thinks he made the right choice. When you’re dealing with Indians, especially ones who confiscate your guns, sometimes the best thing is to call in the cavalry.

“What are they saying?” Manning wants to know.

“Nothing new. They got the chopper thing going, they’re hoping to spot something from the air, just like yesterday.”

What they’re calling the “forward deployment area” is in fact a couple of portable trailers, with room in front for an improvised helicopter pad. The choppers can touch down and pick up, but refueling has to be done off the rez, at the Dade-Collier Training airport, north of the Everglades.

The whole business of helicopters is way too noisy, Sally has decided. So far lots of flash but no result.

A resupply station has been set up for the ground-based effort. The “boots on the ground” troops. Since the area is far too large for any generalized search, the volunteers have been divided into units and are presently tramping through likely quadrants, as directed by the tribal police in coordination with federal agencies. Checking out various hunting and fishing camps, other places Ricky Lang has been known to frequent, as well as so-called anomalies identified from the air, which have so far turned out to be things like animal carcasses.

Basically everyone is guessing, from what Sally can tell.

“No word on Lang?” Manning wants to know.

“Nothing since he burned the airplane.”

“I don’t give a shit about the plane,” Manning says, grimacing. “Enough about the plane! They got five hundred
people out there and they can’t locate one man? What the hell are they doing?”

“They’ll find him, sir.”

“Based on what? Putting on a big show? What if he’s already dead?”

Sally blanches. “Excuse me, sir?”

“Ricky Lang. He’s off his rocker, maybe he killed himself. What if he killed himself and left Seth out there to die? No water, no food. Exposed to the elements. Have they considered that? Have they?”

Sally gets why Healy and Salazar and the other agents are avoiding Edwin Manning. Ostensibly they’re supposed to be informing him of every step of the investigation, but in practical terms the little guy goes ballistic when they bring him anything but good news. Questioning their competence, insulting them and so on, but all along really second-guessing himself. Plus just being on the rez seems to piss him off, since he considers himself betrayed by the tribe.

Which is why Sally decides not to mention the dogs. Waiting in line for coffee as the sun came up, he heard this one guy let it slip they had corpse-sniffing dogs ready to go. Sally figures Mr. Manning doesn’t need to know about the dogs. Not at this particular juncture.

“I heard one of the agents say they get good results eighty percent of the time,” Sally says. “Those are pretty good odds.”

“Oh yeah? It’s bullshit. In a situation like this there are no odds. They either find him alive or they don’t. So please don’t bring me any more happy talk, or stuff you overheard. Just facts.”

“Yeah, of course,” Sally says affably. “You sure you don’t want coffee? It ain’t half-bad.”

“No.”

“How about some pastry. They got this Cuban stuff is really tasty. You gotta eat something, boss. Keep up your energy.”

The bodyguard’s hand instinctively slaps at a particularly nasty mosquito feasting on the back of his neck, and is startled to find some sort of dart protruding. He’s thinking he needs to say something, warn Mr. Manning, but the thought never triggers the words because a great, warm numbness flows out from the dart, paralyzing his jaw.

Funny, he has no recollection of falling but there he is on the floor, looking sideways at Edwin Manning, who lies sprawled nearby, a dart protruding from
his
neck.

Amazing. What happened exactly? Sally’s thoughts have become vague. Is he dying? If so, it’s not so bad. So far.

A big, meaty fist comes into his angle of vision. For some reason it reminds Sally of one of those coin-operated games on the boardwalk, the one where you try to snatch a kewpie doll with a little crane. The big fist locks on Mr. Manning like he’s a kewpie doll, and from behind comes a haunted voice that says, “I decided you and your son should be together.”

And then the boss is gone.

18. Events In The Sky

Even as an adult, whenever I got seriously out of whack my mother had a favorite song she would hum—”Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.” She always did it with a smile—the idea was to kid me into straightening out, or at least accepting reality—but she had it right, believe me. For many years I

was
the queen of denial. Something about the world I didn’t like, I’d tune it out, ignore it to the point it no longer existed.

Best example, getting pregnant. I’m sixteen and my periods have always been somewhat irregular. So it’s fairly easy to not pay attention when the time comes and goes. And okay, I did pretend to use and dispose of tampons, so Mom wouldn’t catch on, but that was just to avoid embarrassing questions about menstruating, not because a pregnancy was possible. No way. Couldn’t be. Don’t even think about it.

I tucked away the fear—it was a terrifying notion, me having a baby—and went on with my teenage, high school life. A life in which I was the shy girl without a boyfriend. There were plenty of girlfriends and friends who were boys, but no actual hang-out, take-you-on-a-date, try-to-make-out boyfriends, because either my father chased them away or I did. He because of a deep belief that all teenage males were basically evil and me because the whole idea of sex and boys was scary.

I wasn’t ready, didn’t have a clue.

Amazing attitude, considering that I was pregnant. The queen of denial, floating on a river of lies. One month went by. Two months. Three.

My body cooperated with my brain, hiding the truth. I put on a few pounds, but not many, and besides, my weight was fluctuating then, as I lost baby fat and put it back on, dieted and binged. My belly muscles tightened rather than expanded. Most women, healthy women, when they get pregnant they want to show, and they do. Not only did I
not
want to show, I refused to admit the reality of what was happening. If I didn’t have a protruding belly I couldn’t be pregnant, therefore I didn’t allow myself to have a belly. That was good for about five months and then my seamstress skills came in handy, altering blouses and skirts, making
sure the cut and drape of the fabric concealed what I continued to deny.

Amazing what a few blousy frills can hide. Not even Fern suspected, although to be truthful at the time she was pretty busy with her own new baby, and fighting day and night with her future ex-husband.

Bottom line, nobody knew, not until I was well into the seventh month. I’m lying on the couch because my “tummy” aches. Too many damned potato chips, according to my stern and disapproving father, but in reality the infant in my belly is kicking with both feet. We’re watching
Seinfeld,
my father and me, while Mom is in the kitchen polishing the dishes with a special cotton cloth so as to avoid my father’s wrath about spots on the dishes, one of his numerous pet peeves. Anyhow, I must have groaned in a certain way because Mom came flying out of the kitchen and before I could stop her she put her hand to my belly. She knew.

“Maybe it’s her appendix?” my father suggests, backing away from the couch as if fearful his inexplicable daughter might explode.

Mom reminds him that I had my appendix removed at the age of eight. Her immortal, marriage-ending words: “She’s pregnant, you asshole.”

Kelly was born three weeks later, a preemie but strong and healthy despite that. It was a very long labor, with several starts and stops, and when I finally got home from the hospital, shocked and thrilled and terrified of the tiny infant in my arms, my father had moved out of the house and from then on it was just Mom and me. And Kelly, of course, who ruled from day one. What a pair of fists that little girl had! Grabbing at anything within reach and refusing to let go. Tiny, impossibly small hands, of course, but amazingly strong. First time she latched
onto my nose and wouldn’t let go was also the first time she laughed. Gleeful. An actual grin of triumph. She was ten weeks old. Way early, according to the pediatrician, but Kelly always got there early. High-speed crawling at seven months, walking at nine. She never toddled. She walked and then she ran.