A Measure of Blood (16 page)

He is the one. A real heartthrob of a guy, too—deep, dark eyes you could drown in. Biological father, yes, yes, was her guess. Killer?

“You did it,” Potocki exclaims, “you did it.” He searches the directories for Ziad Zacour in New York. But he doesn't find him there. Not until he does a national search does he find a Ziad Thomas in Baltimore.

“That's it. I know it. I feel it.” Colleen kisses him. “Let's call Boss and tell him we have a line on the supposed father. At least his last address in Baltimore.”

They get hold of Christie who is just getting ready to make the trip back home.

“Wow,” he says. “Both of you. Wonderful. Amazing work.”

“We didn't try to call him. We didn't want to warn him.”

“You did right.”

MARINA IS STARING
OUT
the passenger window at the cars in the next lanes. “Pontiac,” you said.

“Maybe Pontiac. He's a seven-year-old. I don't know.” Christie wonders if he might be having an attack of some sort. He doesn't feel right. It isn't exactly dizziness. More like a lightness, a removedness.

“Lots of maroon cars …”

“You said it.”

She makes a game to occupy herself as they negotiate the tunnel and get onto the major highway: to find maroon cars and study their drivers. Good, good, she's entertained.

This morning, she wanted to work, too, said she wanted to go back to canvassing the kid's old neighborhood. Christie was still deep in sleep and she woke him, whispering, “You need me for anything right now?”

He simply could not come awake.

She was worried he might be sick. She felt his forehead. “Just sleep, honey. I'm going out.”

He groaned. “Where?”

“Just out.”

He didn't care. He just wanted to bury himself back down under. He had dreams that were more like thoughts, glimpses, little commas. He was a boy, young, seven maybe, wandering streets, yards, playground, alone, no parents. Easy to see where that dream came from. Though indeed he'd once been seven. And he had had a mother, but felt alone.

Now, in the car, he rouses himself to be a companion. He told her when he got the phone call earlier, as they were climbing into his car, how Potocki and Colleen, working on Sunday, had found the next lead. He said, marveling, “Greer just went to a music store and found us a name.”

“That's what I wanted to do!”

“What?”

“When I went out this morning. I walked up and down the streets, looking for a music store. Same idea Colleen had. A computer, a clerk who knew things and could also look up musicians by name.”

He felt irritated that Marina so much wanted to do this work, his work. “You are a good detective,” he said, knowing she craved the compliment.

“See, I mean I knew Tower Records was dead, closed, but I thought there'd be
something
. You know, there wasn't a music store that was open wherever I walked or I might have found your guy, the supposed father of the kid.”

He told her that she could have, with a little luck and a headstrong will, been the one to find him. Or the next step in finding him.

Traffic getting out of the city was choked up. He wished he could climb back into that hotel bed and sleep again. Find that dream again. What was it trying to tell him?

“So there's somebody out there somewhere,” she says now. “And I guess, in a way, we're lucky Maggie Brown didn't simply tell her son and everybody else his father was dead. It's like she wanted to keep the hope out there, in the mix.”

Christie feels a wavering dizziness. He remembers the miniature dream, the thought, the comma.

He shakes it off. It was just a dream.

There is a misty rain on the road, the dusk is falling, and the glare from all sorts of lights hurts his eyes.

Marina runs a hand along his thigh. “Want me to drive for a while?”

“Yeah. I'm drowsy.” He veers too much to the left. A passing car lays on the horn. “I'll look for a place to pull over. Keep talking to me.”

And so she talks.

IN THE QUIET
,
SECRET, DARK
cell of his room, Nadal counts his money.

He hears the sounds of the three Koreans coming and going, eating this and that. He can tell a little of what they're saying. “He's not here. I saw him go out.” He's right because Shin repeats in English, “I saw him go out.”

“Nate?” Gab-do calls. “Are you in there?”

“Shhh. Maybe he has a girl in there.”

Gab-do laughs. He says something. Nadal guesses it means, “No. I don't think.”

For a long time, Nadal lies still, afraid to move.

After a while he hears the others saying good-bye to Gab-do. Odd. They are almost never separate. But someone is still in the apartment—footsteps. Gab-do, he supposes.

Nadal still doesn't move.

Then he hears the tiny beeps of a phone being dialed.

Gab-do's voice is loud and clear. “Claire. Is this Claire? Hello. This Gab-do.”

She says something because Gab-do replies, “Yes. Good to have holiday.”

Again there is a silence while she apparently speaks.

“No. Better you come over here. Nobody here. I cook Korean for you.” Gab-do pauses. “How quick? What time? I am here now. Good.”

Pots and pans clatter. Gab-do's footsteps shuffle hurriedly. He could come out now, say he's been asleep. The more time he allows to go by, the more awkward it will be when he does his sleepy act. Yet he can't move, lies there as if dead, until a blessed thing happens, and he falls asleep for real.

When he awakens he can't tell how much time has elapsed, but there are two voices in the kitchen and also the smell of food. Rice and chicken? He begins to sit up but his creaky bed makes the slightest whisper and moan, so he lowers himself back down.

The sound of conversation comes through and he can hear and understand everything this time because Gab-do speaks English to the woman. “We think we will ask him to find other place. We have other friend who wants come to this apartment. Better with all Korean. He don't talk. He don't eat sometime. Very strange. Maybe not student.”

“You mean you don't know?”

“We try to be nice. He very … I don't know.”

“Weird?”

“Weird. Okay. Weird.”

“Does he pay his rent?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“But nobody feel okay, not relax, not … comfortable? Comfortable.”

“You should ask him to leave then. I'm for cutting bait.”

“ ‘Cutting bait?' I don't know what—”

“Oh, right. Fish or cut bait? It's an expression. It means like to just do the damned thing you came to do or change your mind and get out. It means make a decision without dawdling.” She giggles. “Without waiting. Man, how does anybody ever learn English?”

“Not easy. Cutting bait? You think yes.”

“Kick him out. You have to live.”

“We try to be nice. We ask him out. Go to club.”

“He sounds hopeless. Don't stress yourself. It's a small thing to change a lease.”

“Don't have lease. Not for him. Extra room. Extra cash.”

“Just tell him then.”

So fuck them all. He planned to leave anyway. Now he will for sure. He hears the way things get quiet, hears kissing, then murmurs. Still he doesn't move. He hears the girl say, “I don't know. Three beds in the room. It feels icky.”

“Icky?”

“Not right.”

“Okay, okay, other room,” Gab-do says.

That can only mean
his
room.

“I think okay this time.” He can hear that Gab-do sounds uncertain. But footsteps approach and the door opens anyway. Nadal rolls over away from them, feigning deep unconscious sleep.

“Oh my God,” she says.

“Close door. Hurry. Close door.”

He listens to their sounds, their whispered entreaties and negotiations. Because he's not sure how to pull off his sleepy act, he lies there through Claire's departure and through dinner when the others return. His stomach growls, but he's missed meals before. He listens to the hushed conversation in Korean, trying to guess what they are saying about him.

Monday

POTOCKI HAS IT TOGETHER.
He's got a clean shirt at Colleen's place. Later he will pick up his son, Scott. They'll grill together in Colleen's yard, watch a flick, and then he'll take his son back to Judy. A nice, long Labor Day together. Like living together. They have it backward, he and Colleen. She's supposed to want marriage; he's supposed to be the edgy divorced guy not wanting to get stung again. But he loves marriage, no matter the troubles, the stresses; he sees mainly the warmth and reliability of it. He wants it again.

And today—because she feels good about finding Ziad Zacour, perhaps—she is all softness, warm and pliable, sweet with kisses. He doesn't want to get out of bed. Ever. “Too bad I have my son today,” he jokes.

“Too bad,” she sings.

CHRISTIE WAKES THAT
MORNING FROM
a dream so deep and dark, he again does not want to get out of bed. The dream was an old one, recurring, the one he had as a boy, though it has several variations.

This time someone whispers to Christie that his father is living down in the bad part of the city. This person, a stranger, tells him his father never really died, but only had people put out the word that he was dead. In the dream it turns out to be true; his father is alive, still living in the same town as Christie—Akron, Pittsburgh, wherever the dream maker sets the dream.

His father is very sick, looks to be on the point of death throughout the dream film, but does not die. He greets Christie hesitantly.

His father wanted to get away and be unknown. That becomes clear somehow, and Christie, understanding this, finds him anyway—in the dream, he finds him—and usually in spite of understanding that his father is trying to run, he asks him to come home for a day, for a meal, and his father grudgingly accepts. In last night's dream, as usual, the dinner didn't turn out well. Christie sat at a table knowing his father didn't really want to be there. They talked hopelessly, falsely, about another visit in the future—Christmas, birthday, something.

His mother told him when he was nine, or was it ten, a little more than two years after his father left, that his father had died in some other town. There was no funeral. She showed him no newspaper notice. No insurance checks ever arrived.

Had she wanted to free Christie of longing?

He climbs out of bed, heavy with the dream, unable to shake it.

He shaves, showers, sits down to breakfast. Marina is packing things for a picnic. They have to pick up his kids.

He thinks,
I'm a detective. Why did I not ever look?
He swallows a piece of toast, scratchy.

He almost laughs to think it. Is his father still alive, a phantom in a seedy part of some city? His mother passed on a long time ago, so he can't ask her.

“You could help a little,” Marina says, frustrated, trying to lift a heavy cooler from chair to floor.

NADAL SLEEPS LATE
and when he wakes he lies in bed for a long time. Then he walks to Squirrel Hill and past the Beacon Street house. There are no cars in the driveway. He goes up to the door, walks around the house. They are out. He can tell. It's a nice house, but those things don't matter. Blood matters more.

It's after noon. He wonders where they are.

He doesn't miss his car. He doesn't miss anything.

AT ELEVEN WHEN
THEY GOT
to the park, they found a picnic table that was unoccupied with an outdoor grill next to it. Marina brought fried chicken, potato salad, green salad, and drinks of various sorts. Jan Gabriel brought Fritos and dip, a couple of pies, the hot dogs and hamburgers to grill, buns, mustards and ketchups and onions. It was quite a classic picnic.

Christie liked to hear the women talking. About the play, about clothing, about teaching. He was aware that Jan's eye kept going to Matt, who held himself apart from the other kids.

Finally Christie's daughter, Julie, got Matt to play badminton. The boy played hard, almost angrily. He needed to win, and Julie, sensing it, backed off from trying herself and played without commitment.

Matt won the game.

Christie doesn't want his daughter to cave in like that. He plans to talk to her about it later, but at that moment, Christie flags Matt down. “Let's go look at the water. See the boats.”

A whole fleet of rental boats bobs on the water. Christie points out the pontoons, one of which, at that very moment, Arthur is plunking down his Visa card to rent. In front of them, two young men wearing yellow vests and sporting bare feet, are towing in boats of various sorts and sending other ones out. The workers are good at gauging docking speed—they know right away when they have to reach out to pull a boat in the last couple of yards or slow it down.

“Make sure you wear your life vest,” Christie says. “Very important.”

Matt doesn't say anything.

Christie asks, “You understand about the life vest.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Christie says, “Talk to me, Matt. Tell me what you're thinking.”

“Nothing.”

“I know you had some time with Meg Philips on Saturday. Did you like her?”

“Yeah.”

“That's good. You seem angry today. I just wondered if there was something specific.”

“No. Just everything.”

“Everything is a good enough reason.”

There is some noisy shouting from the workers to a motorboat that is coming in too fast. Christie shakes his head at the show-offs steering it. The motor is loud and the workers keep shouting, “Slow it down!”

The boaters, no doubt drunk, laugh as they bring the boat in too fast with an eighth of an inch to spare. Criminal material. Criminals in the making. Unfortunately, Matt seems to like their daredevil act.

“You like picnics?”

“Yeah.”

“Boats—they can be beautiful, don't you think? Those guys were being jerks, huh?”

“Um-hum.”

“Which pontoon do you like best?”

Matt points to a red pontoon nodding like a big-footed red frog.

Marina and the kids and the Morrises all walk toward them.

“Just so you know. You can tell me anything. I'm totally in your corner.”

“What do you mean?”

“Any questions you have, anything you want … if it's in my power to help, I will.”

“Can you find out if that man that … did it … is really my father?”

Christie is caught off guard. He answers slowly. “That's something I hope to find out.”

“If he isn't, can you find out who is?”

Christie feels as if he's on a boat, tipping. “I will try.”

“I remember once my mother said he was a musician.”

Now the kid tells him! Corroboration. Better late than never.