A Measure of Blood (15 page)

A holiday weekend. Everybody's schedules are off; tomorrow and Monday many things will be closed.

He begins walking.

He walks down Fifth Avenue and when he gets to Wilkins, he turns onto it and begins the long stretch to Squirrel Hill. He has the address for R. Arthur Morris burned into his brain. The day seems odd, the traffic light, as if everyone, almost everyone, is away somewhere. He finds what he wants, Beacon Street.

He fingers his bus pass in his pocket, wondering if many buses are running today, and he keeps walking on Beacon until he finds the address. In there, somewhere, his son is there.

A large house. A nice house. He passes it and is almost at a street called Shaw when something tells him to look back. A car is pulling into the driveway. A square car, a foreign car. Lexus, Volvo, he can't see from where he is. He has to keep moving. He turns toward Darlington, but from his sideways glance he can see, yes, his son and then a man and then a young girl getting out of the car, going into the house.

THEIR HOUSE IS
REALLY NICE
—Meg knew it was going to be. She's seen it from the outside before; Commander Christie drove her and her siblings by because he wanted to place her whole family with these professors. When Professor Morris picked her up today, she met him at the door so he wouldn't have to come in to her poor little place. Now she's in the land of Oriental carpets and shiny floors and things on the walls. Her eyes skim over wall sculptures that are like masks, paintings, small sculpted figures, decorated boxes—interesting things.

Meg wears jeans and her very best top. On the way here Professor Morris asked her about CAPA, what she was studying. And then he talked about books, Shakespeare, what he was writing about Shakespeare, and she got memories of how she used to listen to her father talk about Dickens.

She's supposed to spend three hours with the boy. She's brought a deck of cards and two books in her backpack. And he'll have his own books of course. So—

“This is Matt.”

“Oh, hi.” He's Susannah's age. He should meet her sister sometime. “You kind of ready to go?”

“I guess.”

“Your father said you'd show me the way to the park.”

“I googled it. It's really close. Just near where I used to live.”

She says good-bye to Professor Morris and she and Matt start out.

Meg is afraid of silence. She thinks Matt might get lost in it and not be able to find words, so she asks him all kinds of things—how many steps to his old school, who the class bullies are, what he does when he can't get to sleep at night. Everything and anything. They keep a good pace, reaching Beechwood and then turning onto it.

“Are you going to be my babysitter?”

“Sometimes. When the times work out.” They walk for a few moments. “I understand you've been through a lot. My mother died, too,” she said. “And then my father a couple years later. It's hard at first. Then you start to get better. Pretty soon you want to do all kinds of things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Just regular things.”

“Who do you live with—friends?”

“No, my stepmother.” Meg sighs. “She's kind of odd, not too motherly. Here's the park. Do you know where the jungle gyms are? Do you like to climb?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let's do some of that. Do you know how to play poker?”

“My mother said that was a grown-up card game.”

“It is, kind of. My brother likes it a lot and he's younger than I am. You have to have some strategy to play. I'll show you later.”

Whatever they did, she was supposed to keep an eye on him at all times. “How's everything working out with the professors?”

“Okay, I guess. I don't know what to call them.”

“Oh, that would be hard. I see what you mean. Nothing seems exactly right.”

“The lawyer said I should take my time.”

“That sounds like good advice.”

All afternoon as she spends the three hours with him, she winds in talk about the recent events of Matt's life. She thinks maybe he is edging toward dealing with his feelings, but that he isn't quite ready. About other things, he gets more and more talkative. “I'm going to be eight in October.”

“Oh, terrific. You know what kinds of gifts you want?”

“Definitely. I want
Red Dead Redemption
.”

“I heard of that. It's good?”

“It's the best. They have prairies, caves, bars, shootouts, everything.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Do you play other games?”

“I have some, not the best ones, but some.”

“Want to show me later?”

“Yeah.”

So it seems to be working. She is making friends with him.

CHRISTIE AND MARINA
SPENT
the afternoon questioning people all around the area of Zacour's old Second Avenue address. Not one person knew him or where he'd gone. The boy might have given a false name to the clinic. They found a local post office, but no forwarding order on record. The way people disappear! They worked all afternoon and Christie couldn't help noticing Marina was energized by the task.

They had hardly any time to make love in the big hotel bed, and when they did, it was all right, but just that. Then they had to hurry to dinner. And through dinner. “Wife of a policeman,” he said, taking her hand. “I warned you. Not easy.”

“Well, what else can you do?” she teased. “You're not an actor.” She'd ribbed him most of the afternoon about his faulty performance as a stranger to her at the fertility clinic.

“Right. What else can I do?”

Once upon a time he thought it was going to be social work or the priesthood. He knew he'd work
with people
. It was all he knew how to do—talk to people. He hadn't thought
police
until Will Stilton, a friend at the time, proposed they both go to the police academy. By then he was living in Pittsburgh, pushing papers for the Pittsburgh Diocese and not very good at it.

The bill arrived at the table, but Christie was thinking of things he could do to help Matt, and Marina had to say, “Richard? Are you okay? We should go soon.”

“Sorry. Yes.” His own father had left when he was seven. Never came back. Died somewhere in some other town when he was nine, or was it ten? So Matt's plight gets to him.

Marina gives his hand a squeeze. “Thanks for this. Today.”

Good. He's done right. Something she wanted.

They sit in the theatre, in the back, perfectly good sightlines—he knows about sightlines from Marina. Christie is trying to remember what he knows of
South Pacific
.
Like most folks, he saw the movie once a long time ago and that was that. Beaches, war, rousing music. He reads his program as if studying for an exam.

She apologizes. “This isn't cutting edge. It's old, you know, dated.”

He frowns. It cost enough. She wanted to see it.

“It's romantic.” She taps her heart.

The music begins and the lights dim and then the play begins. Ah, yes, old-fashioned good stuff: resistance to love, differences, can't live with, can't live without. Exotic man, American woman. Prejudice. Children needing love.

The music insists on his attention. The world is full of this story tonight. This is the story. It seems the only story.

NADAL WAKES FROM
A DREAM
that is so delicious and lush, he does not want to open his eyes, or get out of bed, or go to work, or ever attend school again. In the dream, he was how old? Not man, not boy, something in between and he was back in Puerto Rico, out on the land his grandfather owned, out of the city, one of the last rural outposts, a place with cows, goats, chickens, and … beans—oh, other things in the garden, too, but beans he remembers. In the dream, he felt the sunshine, the itch on his skin from spending his time outdoors, and he ate something in the dream. He could almost smell the food.

This is where he wants his son to be. The farm doesn't exist anymore, but there'd be other ones.

He could live, he could work, he could do away with school happily. Computers he'd miss, yes, for a while. He sits up in bed, confused. He needs both—the country, the home base, the real life in Puerto Rico plus a city with its traffic and wires and computers.

He has done a terrible thing to the mother of his son, he knows this. The temper that flares up in him sometimes, the temper that made him turn the knife on Maggie—how can he explain it? Nobody will ever understand him or know the real Nadal, a good person.

If they catch him, he will go to jail. He will never get to know his son.

If he can get his son to Puerto Rico, they can disappear. He knows exactly how to do it. Get down to Florida, get to know some fishermen, pay them or, better yet, get work on the boat, and when he's home, disappear from the docks into the city and then into the country.

The more he thinks about it, the more possible it seems. His prof couldn't care less if he never showed up in class. People bail out on a class all the time. His roommates—they might report him missing unless he left a note. He can say he has a sick relative in Florida and that he must give up his room. No. He'll say Texas.

He could go by bus.

No. His mother's car. He'll have it. What to do with it is a problem he can't solve. Think, think, think.

He gets up out of bed, puts his feet on the floor, tentatively. Yes, the floor is solid. He's awake.

He stumbles to the bathroom, confronts himself in the mirror, surprised to see that he is not the whiskerless youth in the dream, but a grown-up who needs a shave and whose face is creased with worry.

The police don't know who to look for; that's the positive thing to keep in mind. He reads the news every day now. They have no idea.

He starts running the shower, but by the time he gets in, his face is wet with tears, his body weak and trembling again. More than anything now, he is aware of how a human being can control thoughts. If he tells himself he is all right, if he wills himself not to think of what he has done, he moves through a day like an ordinary person, and he feels almost okay. If he lets it in, if he says the words to himself,
I am in trouble
,
his stomach drops, his hands shake, his knees buckle, his eyes slam open wide, and his breathing feels like gasping through a fog or a net.

The sweet, familiar smell of the shampoo assaults him when he pours it into his hand.
Scrub,
he thinks, digging into his head, rubbing, as if he can clean out the inside.
Think, calm down, be logical,
he instructs himself.
Keep everything normal while you figure things out.

Puerto Rico. Grandfather dead. Nobody he knows there. So it will be hard.

But then he gets the image of his son. The perfect child. His. And more than anything in the world, he knows they are meant to be together.

Sunday

MATT IS DRESSED, BUT
sitting on the edge of his bed, kicking his feet up. Breakfast is going to be pancakes because he said he likes them. Mrs. Morris—Jan—standing at the door, says, “I haven't made pancakes in ages. I'll take you out if I botch them. Give me ten minutes. You want to come down and watch?”

He nods but says, “I want to play with Felix,” because the dog has just come into the room.

“Okay. That's fine.”

The dog gets happy every time he sees Matt. Once Felix even stopped eating to come and sniff him. “You and Felix are going to be a great team,” Mr. Morris said. Arthur.

His room is okay, but still without his own things. They don't want to give him his TV and video games, he can tell. They look at each other when he mentions them. They don't like to leave him alone much either; they take turns doing stuff with him. They have put up a big calendar in his room so he can write on it and keep track of what's happening when. Today, Sunday, he gets to go to the zoo with Mr. Morris. It's on the calendar. And for Monday, Labor Day, it says,
picnic!
And
new school
on the square for Tuesday. And
rehearsal
below that. His new father, Arthur, promised to drive him to his school today so that he can see it from the outside. It's for real; it's on the calendar, penciled in:
Drive by Falk.

The picnic tomorrow is at Lake Arthur because he mentioned having a good time when his real mother took him there a couple of times. The plan is to meet up with the detective and his kids. They're going to rent a pontoon.

The rest of the week is school and rehearsal, all week long.

He asked, “Is there going to be a funeral?” because he looked and looked and it wasn't on the calendar.

“Not exactly,” Arthur said. “The memorial party we had at Sasha's house was in place of a funeral. Sasha was sure it was what your mother would have wanted. Right?” he asks Jan.

“Yes.”

“Does anything else happen?”

“We'll be able to say good-bye to her when we have the cremation.”

“When?”

“Next Saturday. We think. Should we put it on the calendar?”

“Yes.”

Jan wrote it down for Saturday, September 8th.

Now he hears Jan's footsteps in the hall. He's not playing with Felix, just petting him.

“Look how Felix loves to be with you,” she says, coming into his room again. She hugs him. Felix licks his hand. “I'm just now starting downstairs in earnest. Come down in a couple of minutes, okay? We'll have those pancakes.”

“Okay.”

He studies the calendar, all the empty spaces, wondering what will go in them.

NADAL, IN HIS
ROOM
with the door closed, hears whispers. “He's not in there.”

“Yes, he is. I know he is. Shhh.”

“Okay. Yeah. Don't talk.”

Then a bunch of stuff in Korean. Then they laugh. Are they talking about him? He is afraid to move, to make noise.

MR. MORRIS, ARTHUR,
SAYS, “COME SIT WITH ME
. I'm almost finished. Then we go see your school and go to the zoo.”

“Can I play with the laptop when you're done?”

“Sure. I've ordered you one—your own. Should be here Tuesday.”

Mr. Morris, Arthur, hits
save
and hands it over. Matt sees words.
Joy. Final act. Tri-bu-la-tion.

“You can just close that out. It's the red button.”

“I know.”

“Aha. You do?”

“Is this work?”

“It's a book I'm writing. I'll try out some ideas on the students.”

He can read the top line.
Final Acts.
“It's a book?”

“Oh. I hope. Someday, yes.”

Matt looks up at him, aware of whiskers, nose hairs, ear hairs. He closes out Mr. Morris's book.

“I'm looking forward to today,” his new father says. “It's been a long, long time since I went to the zoo.”

Matt nods. But right now he's worried about seeing his school, and he's not sure how he gets there tomorrow.

“You can play with that later. We should be off.”

His new mother comes to the door, followed by Felix.

“Are we taking Felix?”

She smiles at him. “No. Unfortunately dogs aren't allowed at the zoo. It … I guess it confuses the other animals. But, he'll be here with me when you come back. He'll be waiting for you. We'll both be waiting.”

She kisses Mr. Morris and then she kisses Matt on the top of the head and walks with them to the car. She smells nice, like food and soap.

Arthur. Jan
.
They like him.

“She's going to work on the play today,” Arthur explains. “So she can come to Lake Arthur with us tomorrow.”

“Rehearsal?” he asks her, getting into the backseat. “The calendar says Tuesday.”

“Tuesday is right,” she answers. “I'll be getting ready for rehearsal. Blocking in my head and on paper. Blocking is how you move the actors around. I'll make some plans and then see if they work when I have the actual actors. You'll see. It's fun. It's hard work, too, for everybody.”

They get into the car, which is black, a Volvo. Through the screen door, Felix yips, wanting to come along.

And they're off.

“What's
Final Acts
about?”

His new father looks at him, blinking, surprised looking.

“Was that a bad question?”

“It was a wonderful question. It's … about Shakespeare and about the feelings at the ends of the plays, some of the plays anyway, a feeling that not too many other playwrights can master.”

“What?”

“Joy. Not exactly happiness. But
joy
. It's bigger than happiness. Maybe more temporary, but also more spiritual. But here's my question for you. You could
read
all that on my computer?”

Matt shrugs. “I'm a good reader.”

“Wow.”

“I didn't know
tributation
.”

“Tribulation. Troubles. Suffering, woe.”

Suffering, woe.

They drive down several streets, then past the university where Mr. Morris and Ms. Gabriel teach. There are students everywhere, a big party on the lawn. A rock band playing. It seems they go up one hill after another, and then when they are surrounded by mud and cranes, Arthur announces they are at his school, a square building behind a lot of construction vehicles.

“And do I walk here?” he asks, trying to remember the way.

Mr. Morris puts an arm around him and hugs. “Never! We will drive you and pick you up. Every day. Rain or shine. And we'll go in with you on the first day, Tuesday, and help you meet everyone.”

He is relieved even though he doesn't
want
to come up this hill to this square building with big construction tractors and mud all around.

They start out for the zoo.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON,
hardly anybody at the office except Potocki to search out info on Thomas Zacour for Christie. Boss and his wife are continuing to ask questions in New York, going to places where musicians hang out. The universities are closed, so they can't do much at the schools, but he is supposed to work on the school connections when things open again on Tuesday—unless he finds something before. He sets up his computer and then calls Colleen.

“Just reading,” she says. “I'll come in. Keep you company.”

Potocki gets a lot of praise from Christie for finding needles in haystacks. Praise is addictive. So … Thomas Zacour.

He uses plain old Google at first out of curiosity, adding and subtracting
piano
and
jazz
and
music
and
CUNY, NYU, Juilliard
. No. Nothing. He messes around for a while with searches for
jazz
and
New York music
and then address databases, but nothing hits him as the right Thomas at the right age to be Matt's father; finally he gets serious with Lexis.

If this were an older guy, Potocki would go straight to the Social Security death index, but this guy, unless he was heavy into drugs, is probably still alive. And probably, possibly, long gone from the country.

With Lexis, he tries the last name, reading bios, listings. Sixty-five years old, forty-two years old, two years old. Nobody looks right.

Colleen arrives, gives him a squeeze from behind and goes to her cubicle.

He tries the public records search. Real estate. Unlikely that the guy bought a house or apartment if he was a student from another country, but on the other hand, if he stayed in the States, maybe he did. Some foreigners have a lot of money and New York apartments were the way to go for a while, until all buying fell apart. Still, a person who sells sperm is probably not rich. On the other hand, who can guess all the motives?

He eventually looks for court filings and finds himself looking for jury verdicts, applications for professional licenses. Thomas Zacour doesn't show up.

Voter registration? Did he perhaps become a citizen and vote? Or more likely—did he go back to Lebanon? It sure looks like he's gone, but Potocki checks seven years' worth of voter registration just to be thorough and finds no Thomas Zacour of the correct age.

Colleen comes up to his cubicle again. “Anything?”

“Not yet.”

“You'll find something.” She wanders back to her own work­station.

He logs on to Westlaw and he's reading through Criminal Records. There is a John Zacour, thirty, who robbed a few grocery stores in Connecticut. He traces this guy back a bit. Nah. Born in the country. Registered to vote.

He stops to consider. Who's to say anything in the guy's folder at the Family Fertility Clinic is the truth?

Back to Lexis and the public records wing of the engine. He remembers a menu item he saw there once and locates it again—the Watch/Risk List. He types in Thomas Zacour. The name comes up. Listed in early 2002, New York. No evidence of crime or wrongdoing, just a name on a list. He messes for a while longer. Things were crazy in 2001 and right after. But what does it all mean that, after his efforts, he can't trace the guy beyond that? A young Middle Eastern man with a New York apartment in the East Village on the watch list. Big news. That's it.

COLLEEN SITS IN
HER CUBICLE
during some of this, typing, thinking. In the victim's apartment, there was a lot of music—CDs, and a good number of them were Middle Eastern. The police haven't confiscated any of the CDs. She could go back up to the apartment. Or … she taps her foot restlessly … she could go out and find an open music store and look through the racks. Did Maggie Brown know the donor was a musician?

Colleen calls out, “Taking a break.” After she gets a grunt of acknowledgment from Potocki, she drives into Shadyside because that gives her the funky record store above Pamela's, home of world-famous hotcakes. The guy behind the register upstairs in the music store knows every CD ever made. The second option is no longer—the large Borders, now defunct, where nobody knew anything but there were plenty of plastic cases to examine. Colleen heard some Middle Eastern jazz in her car once and liked it. Worst-case scenario, she'll have some new music.

The slender, goateed man at the store lifts himself from the low hassock where he sits reading a trade paper. “Traditional? Contemporary?”

“New stuff.” What she saw in Maggie's apartment seemed contemporary.

“Play you some,” he offers. And soon he does. “This the kind of thing you're looking for?”

It is. “Could I see the sleeve?”

He hands it over, saying, “The group is made up of a piano, oud, drums, and guitar. But sometimes the guitarist plays French horn.”

The sounds are fresh, new—the whole influence of the Middle East in contemporary music is training American ears to hear something different.

Colleen studied Maggie Brown's paintings at the memorial. Maggie liked Middle Eastern looks. Her son is a beautiful example of the look. Now as she listens to the music on the store's system, she examines other CD sleeves that promise Middle Eastern sounds. She reads about duos, trios, quartets.

“What are you looking for exactly?”

“Not sure.” She feels foolish, about to give up.

She almost misses it. A duo—piano and bass. She is about to put it aside when she notices the piano player's name.
Ziad Zacour
. She feels a huge stir of excitement. A tiny photo in the corner of the sleeve shows two men. One looks the right age to have been a student some eight years ago.

The man slides up from his hassock to ring her up, asking, “You don't want to listen first?”

“I think I'll just get it. You know this CD?”

“That one I don't know.”

She has it opened and on her car stereo in minutes. Traffic is light. She is able to zoom to the office where Potocki is still working.

“Ziad Zacour,” she tells him. “Let's try that name. See what you get. Duo with this other guy, Tom Tremont.”

“Wow.”

“Gut feeling.” She shows him the sleeve of the CD. “Tremont looks sort of colonial.”

Potocki sits up, starts typing. Colleen leans over and reads
Ziad Zacour piano Tom Tremont
bass.
The CD comes up. But better yet, down the list of Google entries, an ad for a duo: “Parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, reasonable rates.” With photos and brief bios.
Tremont. Born in Connecticut. Attended CUNY. Ambition: Jazz musician.
Phone number for the duo. Email address.
Tremontt58420
. Yahoo! Might still be good.

Then the other, the one that thrills them.
Ziad Zacour. “Thomas.” Born in Beirut, Lebanon. Music student at CUNY. Piano. Ambition: Jazz musician
. Phone number. Email address.
ZTZACOURZT
. This one is EarthLink. Might still be good.