Secondhand Souls (3 page)

He barely heard the sound, just a spine-wrenching white-hot pain that started at the back of his neck and bolted to his extremities. Through the sizzling disruption of his thoughts he remembered he’d left the stun gun on the counter behind him. When he came to, Cavuto was kneeling over him.

“How long was I out?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen seconds.”

Rivera rubbed the back of his head. Must have hit it on the edge of the counter when he fell. Every joint in his body hurt. He rolled to his hands and knees and looked back to where the raggedy woman had been lying.

“Gone,” said Cavuto. He dangled his handcuffs in front of Rivera’s eyes. They were still locked. “I heard her scream again, ran in, she was gone.”

“The back door is locked,” said Rivera. “Go after her.”

“Not going to matter. She’s gone.”

“What’s with all the smoke? She start a fire?”

“Nope. Just a cloud of smoke behind the counter where I guess she was standing when she zapped you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Cavuto. “You’re going to need to call someone with more experience at this than me.” He picked up the phone receiver from the floor, held it to his ear. “Yeah, did you get that order? Two double burgers, medium well, everything but tomatoes, curly fries.” He looked at Rivera. “You want anything?”

3

Something About Sophie

S
ophie Asher was seven years old. She lived in San Francisco with her aunties, Jane and Cassie, on the second floor of a building that overlooked the cable-car line in North Beach. Sophie had dark hair and blue eyes, like her mother, and an overactive imagination, like her father, although both parents were gone now, which is why she was looked after by her aunties; two widows who lived in the building, Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev; as well as two enormous black hellhounds, Alvin and Mohammed, that had simply appeared in her room when she was a toddler. She liked dressing up like a princess, playing with her plastic ponies, eating Crunchy Cheese Newts, and making grandiose declarations about her power over the Underworld and her dominion over Death, which was why she was currently in a time-out in her room while Auntie Jane was frantically chattering into the phone out in the great room.

From time to time, Sophie popped her head out the door and fired off another salvo of flamboyant nonsense, because she was the Luminatus, dammit, and she
would
have the last word.

“I am become Death, destroyer of worlds!” she shouted, her passion somewhat diffused when the pink ribbon holding her pigtail caught in the door as she ducked back into her room.

“So, that’s what we’re dealing with here,” said Jane into the phone. “She’s gotten completely out of hand.” Jane was tall, angular, and wore her short platinum hair sculpted into various unlikely permutations, from angry spikes to soft finger waves, all of which played counterpoint to the tailored men’s suits she wore when she worked at the bank, making her appear either fiercely pretty, or frightfully confused. Right now she wore a houndstooth tweed Savile Row suit she’d inherited from Charlie, waistcoat with watch chain, and a pair of eight-inch patent-leather red pumps the same shade as her bow tie. She might have been the result of a time-travel accident where Doctor Who parts were woven into the warp with those of a robot stripper.

“She’s seven,” said Charlie. “Finding out that you’re Death—it’s hard on a kid. I was thirty-three when I thought
I
was the Luminatus, and I’m still a little traumatized.”

“Tell him about the tooth fairy,” said Cassie, Jane’s wife. She stood barefoot by the breakfast bar in yoga pants and an oversized olive-green cotton sweater, red hair in loose, shoulder-length curls—a calm snuggle of a woman, a chamomile chaser to Jane’s vodka and sarcasm shooter.

“Shhh,” Jane shushed. Sophie didn’t know that Jane was talking to her father, thought, in fact, that he was dead. Charlie had wanted it that way.

“She doesn’t play well with others,” said Jane. “I mean, since she’s this magical thing, she has unrealistic expectations about other magical—uh, persons. She lost a tooth the other day—”

“Awe,” said Charlie.

“Awe,” said Bob, and the other Squirrel People in the room with him, who were gathered around the speakerphone like it was a storyteller’s campfire, made various awe-like noises.

“Yeah, well, the tooth fairy forgot to put money under Sophie’s pillow that night—”

At “tooth fairy,” Sophie popped her head out the door. “I will smack that bitch up and take her bag of quarters! I will
not
be fucked with!”

Jane pointed until Sophie retreated into her room and closed the door.

“See?”

“Where did she learn that? Little kids don’t talk that way.”

“Sophie does. She just started talking like that.”

“She didn’t when I was alive. Someone had to teach her.”

“Oh, so you’re fine that she all of a sudden becomes Death incarnate without so much as seeing a
Sesame Street
segment about it, but a little light profanity and it’s all my fault.”

“I’m not saying that, I’m—”

“It’s Jane’s fault,” said Cassie, from across the room.

“You traitorous dyke.”

“See,” said Cassie. “She’s uncouth.”

“I am couth as fuck, Cassie. Who has cash anymore? I was going to pay the kid for the tooth the next day. Sophie has unrealistic expectations.”

“What do you want me to do?” Charlie asked. “I can’t exactly discipline her.”

“That’s the point:
no one
can discipline her.”

“Fear of
kitty
?” Charlie asked. When Sophie was just learning to talk, and Charlie had bought her dozens upon dozens of pets, from hamsters to goldfish to hissing cockroaches, only to find them dead a few days later, he discovered, quite by accident, that if Sophie pointed at a living thing and said the word “kitty,” said thing would immediately become unliving. The first time it had happened, to a kitten, in Washington Square Park, had been a shock, but the second time, only minutes later, when Sophie had pointed at an old man and uttered the dreaded k-word, only to have him drop dead on the spot, well, it had become a problem.

“Thing is, I’m not sure she does the k-word anymore,” said Jane. “I’m not sure she hasn’t lost her, you know, powers.”

“Why would you say that?”

Jane looked across the room to Cassie for support. The petite redhead nodded. “Tell him.”

“The hellhounds are gone, Charlie. When we got up yesterday morning they were just gone. The door was still locked, everything was in its place, but they were just gone.”

“So no one is protecting Sophie?”

“Not no one. Cassie and I are protecting her. I can be pretty butch, and Cassie knows that karate for the slow.”

“Tai chi,” said Cassie.

“That’s not a fighting thing,” said Charlie.

“I told her,” said Cassie.

“Well, you guys need to find the goggies! And you need to find out if Sophie still has her powers. Maybe she can protect herself. She made pretty quick work of the Morrigan.” Charlie had chased the raven-women into a vast underground grotto that had opened up under San Francisco, and was engaging them in battle when little Sophie showed up with Alvin and Mohammed and more or less vaporized them with a wave of her hand. Not in time, however, to save Charlie from the Morrigan’s venom.

“Well, I can’t have her just
kitty
someone,” said Jane. “That may be the one bit of your training that stuck.”

“That’s not true,” said Cassie. “She puts her napkin in her lap and always says please and thank you.”

“Well, try it,” said Charlie. “Do an experiment.”

“On Mrs. Ling? Mrs. Korjev? The mailman?”

“No, of course not, not on a person. Maybe on a lab animal.”

“May I remind you that most of your friends are lab animals.”

“Hey!” said Bob.

“Not them,” Charlie said. “I mean an animal that doesn’t have a soul.”

“How can I be sure of that? I mean, look at you—”

“I guess you can’t,” said Charlie.

“Welcome to Buddhism,” said Audrey, who had moved to the corner of the room to allow space for the Squirrel People to gather around the phone.

“That’s not helpful,” Jane called.

“Just find the hellhounds,” Charlie said. “No matter what is going on with Sophie, they’ll protect her.”

“And how do I do that? Put up posters with their picture.
Lost: two four-hundred pound indestructible dogs. Answer to the names Alvin and Mohammed?
Hmm?”

“It might work.”

“How did you find them?”

“Find them? I couldn’t get them to go away. I kept throwing biscuits in front of the number 90 Crosstown Express bus to get rid of them. But she needs them.”

“She needs her daddy, Charlie. Let me tell her you’re alive. I understand if you don’t want her to see you, but we can tell her you’re out of town. You can talk to her on the phone. Your voice is kind of the same—a little scratchier and squeakier, but close.”

“No, Jane. Just keep pushing through like you have been. You guys have done a great job with Sophie.”

“Thanks,” Cassie said. “I always liked you, Charlie. Thanks for trusting me to be one of Sophie’s mommies.”

“Sure. I’ll figure something out, I need to talk to someone who knows more than me. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Jane said. She disconnected and looked up to see Sophie coming out of her room, a hopeful light in her eyes.

“I heard you say ‘Charlie,’ ” she said. “Was that Daddy? Were you talking to Daddy?”

Jane went down on one knee and held her arms out to Sophie. “No, sweetie. Daddy’s gone. I was just talking to someone about your daddy. Seeing if they could help us find the goggies.”

“Oh,” said Sophie, walking into her auntie’s embrace. ”I miss him.”

“I know, honey,” Jane said. She rested her cheek on Sophie’s head and felt her heart break for the little kid for the third time that day. She blinked away tears and kissed the top of Sophie’s head. “But if I’ve fucked up my eyeliner again you’re getting another time-out.”

“Come here,” Cassie said, crouching down. “Come to
nice
mommy. We’ll have ice cream.”

Over at the Three Jewels Buddhist Center, Bob the Beefeater looked at the dead phone, then at Charlie. “Lab animals? Little harsh.”

The Squirrel People nodded. It
was
a little harsh.

“Jane’s a very damaged person,” Charlie said with a shrug of apology.

Bob looked at the other Squirrel People in their miniature finery and mismatched spare parts. “We’ll be under the porch if you need us,” he said. He trudged out of the dining room. The Squirrel People fell in behind him. Those with lips pouted.

When the last of them was out of the room, Charlie looked to Audrey.

“Something’s going on.”

“Apparently.”

“My daughter needs me.”

“I know.”

“We need to find her dogs.”

“I know.”

“But she can’t see me like this.”

“I can sew you a different outfit,” said Audrey.

“I need a body.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Something’s happening,” Charlie said. “I need to talk to someone else in
the business
.”

M
ike Sullivan had worked as a painter on the Golden Gate Bridge for twelve years when he encountered his first jumper.

“Stand back or I’ll jump,” said the kid.

He wasn’t a kid, really. He looked to be about the same age as Mike, early thirties, but the way he was clinging to the rail made him seem unsure and less grownup. Also, he was wearing a gold cardigan that was two sizes too small for him. He looked as if his grandmother had dressed him. In the dark.

Mike had been on the bridge when there had been jumpers before. They lost about one every two weeks, on average, and he’d even seen, or more frighteningly, heard a couple hit the water, but they usually went over by the pedestrian rails at the road level, not up here on top of one of the towers. This was Mike’s first face-to-face, and he was trying to remember what they had taught them during the seminar.

“Wait,” Mike said. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not with you. What are you, a bridge painter?”

“Yeah,” said Mike, defensively. It was a good job. Orangey, often cold, but good.

“I don’t want to talk about my life with a guy who paints a bridge orange. All the time, over and over. What could you possibly say that would give me hope? You should be on this side of the rail with me.”

“Fine, then. Maybe you can call one of those hotlines.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

Who goes out without a phone? This guy was a complete loser. Still, if he could get closer, maybe Mike could grab him. Pull him back over the rail. He unhooked the safety line from the left side, rehooked it over the upright, then unhooked his right cable and did the same thing. They had two safety lines with big stainless-steel carabineers on the ends so one was always clipped to the bridge. Now he was within the last few feet of the top of the tower. He could walk up the cable and reach the guy in the stupid sweater. One of the guys on the crew had reached over the pedestrian railing and caught a jumper, dragged her by the collar to safety. The Parks Service had given him a medal.

“You can use my phone,” Mike said. He patted his mobile, which was in a pouch attached to his belt.

“Don’t touch the radio,” said the sweater guy.

The maintenance crew used the radios to keep in touch, and Mike should have called in the jumper before he’d engaged him, but he’d been walking up the cable more or less on autopilot, not looking, and didn’t notice the kid until he was almost to the top.

“No, no, just the phone,” said Mike. He took off his leather work glove and drew the cell phone from its canvas pouch. “Look, I already have the number.” He really hoped he had the number. The supervisor had made them all put the suicide hotline number in their phones one morning before shift, but that had been two years ago. Mike wasn’t even sure if it was still there.

It was. He pushed the call button. “Hang on, buddy. Just hang on.”

“Stay back,” said the sweater guy. He let go of the rail with one hand and leaned out.

Hundreds of feet below, pedestrians were looking out over the bay, strolling, pointing, taking pictures. Hundreds of feet below that, a container ship as long as two football fields cruised under the bridge.

“Wait!” said Mike.

“Why?”

“Uh, because it hurts. They don’t tell you that. It’s seven hundred and fifty feet from here to the water. Believe me, I think about it every day. You hit at a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour, but it doesn’t always kill you. You feel it. It hurts like hell. You’re all broken up, in the cold water. I mean, I’m not sure, but—”

“Crisis hotline. This is Lily. What’s your name?”

Mike held up a finger to signal for the kid to wait just a second. “I’m Mike. Sorry, they were supposed to connect me with the suicide hotline.”

“Yeah, that’s us. But we don’t call it that because it’s depressing. What can I do for you?”

“I’m not calling for me, I’m calling for this guy who needs some help. He’s over the rail on the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“My specialty,” said Lily. “Put him on.”

“Stay back,” said tiny sweater guy. He let go with one hand again. Mike noticed that the kid’s hands were turning purple. It was a nice day, but up here, in the wind, it was cold, and hanging on to cold steel made it worse. All the guys on the crew wore long johns under their coveralls, and gloves, even on the warmest days.