Brothers and Bones (8 page)

He turned at the next corner, moving faster than I thought at first, with deceptively long strides, and I hurried to keep up with him. When I reached the corner, he was already turning into an alley halfway down the block. I broke into a jog and reached the mouth of the alley a moment later. Through the darkness I saw him nearing the other end, moving with surprising fluidity, almost gliding through the shadows, then he turned down what must have been an adjoining alley. Before he vanished from view, I could have sworn he shot a glance my way.

To my shame, I hesitated. Entering that alley, as black as it was and dripping with shadows, seemed like a rotten idea. Following this guy, who might not even have been the man I was looking for, down dark alleys in a dangerous, unfamiliar part of town, seemed insane. But the homeless guy in the Harvard sweatshirt might have been my last chance to find out what happened to Jake. If there was a possibility the man I just saw was him—and even the slightest chance that the man, against all odds, actually
was
Jake—then I simply had no choice.

I stepped into the darkness and moved quickly down the alley, eyes straight ahead, avoiding the shadows pressing in all around, like a six-year-old kid who believed that pulling the covers over my head would keep the monster in the dark corner of the room from getting to me.

I reached the end of the alley and turned right. This time I saw only a swish of fabric—it looked like the tail of an overcoat—disappear down another side alley. After coming this far, I had no intention of losing him, so I broke into a run. I skidded around the next corner into yet another alley—shadow-drenched, filled with dark shapes and plenty of hiding places. Then up ahead I saw a flash of movement as the homeless man slipped around yet another corner.

And so it went, with the guy somehow staying just ahead of me no matter how fast I ran. Up ahead I could hear his footsteps, an occasional sound of a bottle or piece of trash being inadvertently kicked, the scrape of a shoe. But I couldn’t catch him. Man, that guy could move when he wanted to.

Meanwhile, without realizing it, I’d become hopelessly lost in a labyrinth of deserted streets and alleys. Once or twice I thought I’d lost the homeless man, only to find myself suddenly on his heels again. I was getting tired and starting to slow. Fortunately, he seemed to be as well. After a while, we were walking most of the time, with a periodic jogging dash here or there. Every now and then I’d get a glimpse of my quarry and, I thought, every now and then he stole a glimpse of me.

I was leaning against the corner of a building, spending a few precious seconds to catch a much-needed breath, when I heard his footsteps suddenly quicken. They began to fade away faster than I would have imagined they could. I broke into a panicked run, fearing my last chance was slipping away from me. When I turned the next corner I found myself in a litter-strewn alley, much like the others I’d been touring all night. But this one had several offshoots. I stopped and listened. The footsteps ahead of me were gone. The homeless man was gone. The alley was silent. I’d lost him. I knew I could randomly choose one of the offshoots before me, but I realized it wouldn’t matter. I’d never catch the guy. These were his streets, not mine. He probably could have lost me whenever he wanted. It was time for me to go home.

I turned around and looked back the way I’d come. Or was it the other way? I saw a Dumpster I remembered passing. Of course, there was a Dumpster the other way, too. Then I thought about the merry chase I’d been taken on, through empty streets, down forgotten alleys, even through an abandoned warehouse. I had no idea how to get home. And I was in a bad, bad place. I had to find a main street, and fast.

I chose what I thought to be the most likely direction to lead me back to civilization and started off at a brisk walk. The shadows seemed to breathe all around me. I imagined dozens of eyes watching me from their depths. My pulse quickened, probably dangerously so. I heard shifts, scrapes,
slithers
from the darkness.

After a few minutes I heard the first footsteps. Or I thought I did. I hoped it was the homeless man, suddenly following
me
for a change. Then I realized there were several sets of footsteps. First, they were behind me, but when I turned I saw no one. Then I heard them off to my left, and my right, tracking me from the abandoned buildings, doorways, alleys.

I could feel eyes on me again. I heard whispers. And always the footsteps. I walked faster and my unseen followers quickened their pace to match.

I thought about using my cell phone to page Dr. Fielding. He’d make me feel better. He’d offer again his diagnosis of my paranoia. He’d remind me of all the times I was dead certain I was being followed when, of course, I hadn’t been. He’d make me realize that these things I thought I saw and heard were in my mind.

I was just starting to make myself feel a little better when an enormous guy with a baseball bat stepped out of the shadows in front of me.

EIGHT

“Boys, you’re looking at the stupidest guy on Earth,” the behemoth with the Louisville Slugger said. The two guys behind him laughed. So did the two behind me. I didn’t see the humor.

I was surrounded by scarred, tattooed, pierced thugs, one of them brandishing a baseball bat, the others brandishing hard muscles and harder scowls. I was armed with only my wits, which left me horribly outgunned. I figured the only chance I had to come out of this with my facial features arranged as God originally intended would be to play it cool.

“Well, I always wanted to take a tour of Chinatown. Figured it would be less crowded at night.” I smiled. They didn’t. Tough crowd. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I got a little turned around here. Which way leads back toward the financial district?”

“That way,” Baseball Guy said, pointing. I turned and looked and immediately felt a solid blow on the side of my head. Since he’d pointed with the bat, I figured he must have hit me with his other hand. Still, I can’t imagine the bat would have hurt much more.

I’d never been really struck with a fist in my life. Even in grade school I’d managed to avoid serious confrontations. So this was my first real punch. It hurt like a son of a bitch. A hollow, clanging sound rang in my head, followed by little bursts of red, dozens of tiny roses blooming in the air in front of my eyes. A second or two later the clanging gave way to the sound of laughter. Not mine, either.

I turned back to see Babe Ruth, as I’d already come to think of him, looking a little surprised. I think he expected me to be sprawled on the ground, facedown and unconscious. But he actually looked pleasantly surprised, as if he realized that he and his buddies might have more fun if I wasn’t knocked senseless too quickly.

“That hurt,” I said.

“That was the point,” the Babe said. “Give us everything you have, including your clothes.”

Having lived my life primarily as a man of intellect rather than action, my first instinct was to try to talk my way out of this. Then I looked into the eyes of the Sultan of Swat and didn’t like what I saw—a combination of cruelty and apathy, a look reflected in the eyes of each badass around me. I realized they had no intention of letting me out of that alley in one piece. I had no choice. I had to take bold action. I had to go on the offensive, hopefully taking them by surprise, then run like hell. I sucked in a deep breath, then threw a big roundhouse punch, sending my fist into Babe Ruth’s chin with as much of my weight behind it as I could manage.

My plan had been to start running as soon as the guy hit the ground. Sadly, I hadn’t had time to come up with a backup plan in case the guy barely felt my punch, which was what happened. And any such plan certainly would not have included me falling to my knees beneath an avalanche of punches and kicks, which was also what happened.

I’m not sure how long they beat me before they took a break, but soon the Babe was standing over me, smiling again.

“That punch was a stupid idea, buddy.”

“I see that now,” I mumbled through rapidly swelling lips.

“Want to give us your stuff now?”

My response was a bad one, the worst I could have given, I think. I vomited on his lily-white sneakers. A split second later, it was raining pain again.

After a while I opened my eyes. A fog seemed to have descended on the alley, making everything a little hazy. The fists and boots pummeling me looked blurry now. Fortunately, I was growing numb. Couldn’t feel a thing anymore. I could just quietly slip into sleep, or a coma, or death. I closed my eyes again.

Soon I became aware of a new quality to the sounds around me. The sadistic chuckles were replaced by surprised grunts. There were some angry words. Then shouts. Then scuffling, more grunts, cries of pain, wooden boards snapping sharply—though they might have been bones cracking.

Slowly I realized that no one was hitting or kicking me anymore. I willed my eyes to open. Everything was still fuzzy. The first thing I saw through the fog was a body on the ground beside me, writhing in apparent pain. The sounds of a wild, frenzied struggle still echoed off the walls of the alley.

I was on the verge of drifting off. I fought to keep my eyes open, to focus on the figures around me. All I could see were indistinct shapes, people falling, jumping, dodging, kicking. At the center of it all was a single silhouette, a shadow dancing, moving like a blur, arms and legs flying, connecting with the figures surrounding him, dropping them one by one to the pavement.

The sounds around me were beginning to fade away and the images had lost focus. I saw the shadow dancer twirl one last time, sending the final figure spinning to the ground, and I heard what sounded like a baseball bat bouncing across the pavement. Just before I closed my eyes, knowing I’d never open them again, a shadow loomed over me. Then darkness dragged me down into its depths.

NINE

Jake is alive. I’m eight years old and he’s ten, and he’s defending me against a dozen bullies that have surrounded me on the playground at school. They’re all bigger than me, bigger than Jake even, but he isn’t the least bit scared. I’m dreaming, though. I know it. The age difference isn’t right between us—in reality, he’s eleven years older than I, not two—so I know it’s a dream. But it’s wonderful to see him again anyway. One by one the bullies advance, and one by one he pushes them away until we are alone. He turns to me and smiles and suddenly he isn’t ten anymore; he’s thirty-six, the age he was when I last saw him alive. The sun is setting quickly behind him now, though it was noon recess only a moment ago, and he soon becomes a silhouette against the blood-red sky of the horizon, but though I can no longer see his face I know he’s still smiling, and he looks like the hero in an action movie, and I expect him to turn and walk off into the sunset but he doesn’t, he just stands there, smiling, until suddenly he’s simply not there anymore, though I don’t remember seeing him leave, and then, oh, God, the nightmare begins. A face hovering mere inches over mine—a wild-eyed, bloody, grime-covered face framed by dark, matted hair and a dirty beard. Then darkness again, followed by other faces peering down at me. Bright lights burning my eyes. Things poking me, sticking me, pinching me. Unpleasant odors and strange noises that are somewhat familiar but that I can’t identify. And voices speaking a language I can’t understand. And the one constant through the entire nightmare is the pain.

Gradually sleep faded but the nightmare remained. After a time I knew where I’d smelled those smells, listened to those noises, heard that language. It was just after my parents died. The language was English, but a dialect peculiar to medical personnel—filled with abbreviations and shorthand jargon and the names of various procedures and drugs, spoken in confident, intense tones. With a fair amount of effort, I opened my eyes and saw a fluorescent light surrounded by white acoustical ceiling tiles.

“He’s awake,” a woman said nearby.

Then I fell asleep again. A while later—how much later I’ll never know—I was staring at the ceiling again when a face about the same age as mine blocked my view of the fluorescent light. The man introduced himself as Dr. Henshaw. He checked me out, apparently wasn’t horrified by what he found, then proceeded to tell me how lucky I was to be alive and how truly miraculous it was that I wasn’t more seriously hurt. I tried to sit up, nearly vomited as the room tilted on its side, and slumped back onto the bed. As I did, pain flared in my ribs on both sides of my body, like someone with a giant pair of pincers gave my torso a cruel squeeze. Despite the able young doctor’s opinion, I didn’t feel terribly lucky and my eyes must have reflected that thought, because he assured me that, given the extent of the beating I suffered, it was incredible that I had nothing more serious than some badly bruised ribs on each side. They’d done X-rays and a CAT scan and a few other scans and these tests all confirmed that I was pretty much okay. I was bruised nearly from head to toe, he said, but that was merely cosmetic damage. Of course, I’d be sore as hell when the painkillers wore off.

I croaked something, cleared my throat, and finally said, “What time is it?”

“A little after ten o’clock.”

“A.m. or p.m.?”

“A.m.”

I nodded and things in the room grew wavy and indistinct, as if everything, including me, was underwater. A moment after I stopped nodding things returned to normal. “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“How’d I get here?”

“A good Samaritan left you on our doorstep during the night.”

“Who?”

“He or she didn’t stick around. We found you outside the ER. Your wallet and federal credentials were on your chest. They’re in the nightstand there. The wallet was empty, by the way.”

Apparently, it was a
good
Samaritan but not a
great
Samaritan. A quick image flashed through my mind of a whirling shadow. “Where’s here?”

“Massachusetts General Hospital,” Dr. Henshaw said. “I should tell you, a policeman was here earlier. We called when we found you. He stayed around for a few minutes until it became clear that you weren’t going to wake up anytime soon. He says to call if you want to file a report. I put his card there on the table by your bed.”