Into the Dark (11 page)

Brenna frowned, her thoughts casting back into the Forest Hills apartment, Hildy rushing
for the kitchen to take her call. At the time, Brenna assumed she was simply trying
to avoid her questions, but replaying it again, Brenna recalled the spark of fear
in her eyes when the phone rang, the quaver in her voice as she spoke.
Oh, hello Mr. Pokrovsky. No, no, I’m fine . . .
“Mr. Pokrovsky is your boss?”

Bo said, “Yeppers. And he wants his investment back, with the interest incurred. Pronto.”

“Robin Tannenbaum borrowed money from him? What for?”

“Pull over, Veronica, and bear left.”

At the side of the highway, Brenna saw a row of white Greek columns. “Greek columns.
Where are we? Inwood Hill Park?” She thought of the phone wedged into the seat behind
her—her only hope and it such a frail, dim one.
Probably a telemarketer, probably long off the line . . .

“You ask a lot of questions, for someone who don’t know how to answer any.” It was
Diddley talking, the voice quiet, purposefully menacing.

“Mr. Pokrovsky invested in RJ’s business venture back in October,” Bo said, as Trent
made the turn. “Your buddy hasn’t paid back a dime. And with interest, he now owes
. . . Tell us how much he owes, Diddley.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot,” Brenna said.

“Bet your sweet, skinny booty, that’s a lot,” Bo said. “So either you two bring us
to him . . . or we’re going to have to make ourselves more convincing.”

“Oh God,” Trent whispered.

“Hang a right, Veronica sweetheart. We’re gonna take that path all the way down to
the river.” He chuckled a little, then began to sing, very softly. “Take me to the
river, drop me in the water . . .”

“Nice,” Diddley said.

“We sing the blues, too, don’t we, Diddley?”

“Uh-huh.”

Brenna glanced in the rearview and saw the Magnum following, at a distance.
Outnumbered
.

“Washing me down, washing me down . . .”

“Look,” Brenna cut in, “we’re not friends of RJ’s. We’re private investigators, and
we’re looking for a woman he may have had contact with, and that’s why we have his
computer. We never met Hildy Tannenbaum in our lives before today. We’re trying to
find RJ. Just like you.”

“You know what? You are really starting to piss me off.”

“Now Diddley, they’re just scared is all. You kids oughta quit lying, though, if you
don’t want to—”

“
We’re not freakin’ lying!
” Trent yelled.

“Easy there, Veronica.”

“The name’s not Veronica. It’s Trent or TNT if you were a friend instead of a total
jank-ass fat loser
which you are
.”

“
Trent
,” Brenna hissed. “
Stop
.”

“No! I’ve had enough of this crap. If this dickwad wants to shoot me in the head just
because I don’t know where friggin’
RJ
is,
he can just go ahead and do it! I’m tired of the mind games!
”

Brenna heard a click—the safety releasing again.

Diddley’s grip loosened. “Don’t shoot him while he’s driving,” he said, his breath
at the back of Brenna’s neck, and in seconds she was back into October 2, the stitches
fresh in her abdomen, lying in the hospital bed in Columbia-Presbyterian,
and the soft knock on her door as Trent pokes his head in, holds up Brenna’s suitcase,
smiling at the wall behind her. She knows he’s trying not to look at her wounds. And
it isn’t out of politeness—Trent’s hardly ever polite. He doesn’t want to look because
he doesn’t like seeing her hurt.

“Don’t hurt him,” Brenna said, back in the car now. “Please.” Diddley wasn’t being
as diligent with the knife and so she shifted around in the seat, looked at Bo. “We
don’t know where RJ is, but you can take the computer. That’s gotta be worth close
to the amount he originally borrowed, right? Before interest? Just let us pull over
so you can take it.”

“Wait—
what?
” Trent said.

“You can take the car, too.”

Trent said, “No friggin’
way
!”

“Excuse me?”

Trent made a sudden hard right. The car jumped the curb and careened over the grass,
throwing Brenna back into her seat. Bo’s gun exploded in a sudden, shattering roar.
No
, Brenna thought,
No, no, no, no . . .
Brenna closed her eyes as the car veered off to the side and began to roll down the
hill in slow motion, the thought becoming a prayer, the prayer becoming everything,
the gunshot ringing in her ears so she couldn’t hear.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no . . .

Brenna felt a thud and the car came to a stop. She opened her eyes and saw the cracked
windshield, the trunk of a tree. And then the air bag deployed, socking her in the
face. She didn’t feel it, though. She was numb, outside herself.
Trent
, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t speak, until finally her ears stopped ringing
and she struggled to move.

She heard a moaning behind her. Bo. Or Diddley. She wasn’t sure which, didn’t care.
Trent, oh God, Trent, I’ll kill them, I swear, if they hurt you. Kill them with my
bare hands . . .

Brenna struggled around the air bag. The left side of her face was tender, the whole
of it a bruise radiating from the half-closed eye, the vision blurred—a shiner.
Where are you, Trent . . .
She needed the thick bag out of her way, needed to touch him to check his pulse, to
see his face
, please let him have a face . . .
“Trent, are you there?” she said.

Nothing.

“Trent . . .”

Brenna heard movement in the backseat, a door opening behind her. Bo or Diddley. Moving.
Alive. She hated them both.

Brenna pushed at her own door. She fell out of the car and onto the wet grass, her
knees buckling, eye throbbing, but still the hate coursed through her, pressing against
her skin until she vibrated with it, making her stronger.
Kill them with my bare hands
.

She stood up, and he flew at her. Diddley—that’s who it was. His face full of blood,
clumsy from his injuries, his teeth glistening red, knife still clutched in his hand.
He was bigger than she, but all that lost blood made them equals. Shiner or not, Brenna
was grateful for the air bag, grateful for Diddley pressing that knife to her throat
before the car rolled, because no one could have done that while wearing a seat belt,
and if he’d been wearing a seat belt she wouldn’t have a chance.

An animal sound came out of him—a gurgling howl. He slashed at her left shoulder,
but the hate was so strong, she barely felt it.
Trent
. She brought her right hand back, jammed the heel of it into his eye. Diddley screamed,
his arm dropping.

She balled the hand into a fist and socked him in the gut. He stumbled back. Her hand
hurt. Dots of light swam in front of her eyes. He still had the knife. She stared
at it in his hand and a memory tugged at her—
October 2 . . .
but Trent was enough to bring her back. The thought of him in the car, his silence . . .

She heard another car door.

Bo
.

Diddley was stumbling toward her with the knife, worse for the wear but still deadly—him
and the knife both, the blade dark with Brenna’s blood, and now Bo coming. Fat, grinning
Bo and his gun, she couldn’t see him but she knew.

The car door slammed.

A voice said, “Drop it.” But it wasn’t Bo’s voice. It was Trent’s.

Diddley froze, dropped the knife.

Brenna turned to see her assistant, alive, standing next to the wrecked car. His face
was pale, blood trickling down the side, staining the collar of his cowboy shirt.
He was unsteady on his feet, but the gun made up for his weakness—Bo’s gun, held straight
in front of him, just the way she’d taught him to hold a gun on April 5, 2003.
You can’t shoot, fine. At least let me show you how to look like you can . . .
Brenna bit her lip hard enough to come back from the memory. Trent gave her a tired
smile. “Hi.”

Diddley said, “Don’t shoot, please.”

“Blow me.”

Relief washed through Brenna.
You’re still here. Trent’s still here.
“Are you okay?”

Trent looked at her. “You hurt your eye, Bonnie.”

Bonnie?
Okay, so Trent needed a doctor. But he was alive and he could stand and he could
speak . . .

“Check it out.” He nodded at the front pocket of his bloody cowboy shirt. “I got the
phone back, too.”

Brenna saw the rectangular outline. RJ’s cell phone.

“Fell on me when the car rolled. How’s that for irony? The gun, too. Got me in the
head.”

Brenna took a breath, but before she could use it to say anything, she heard an engine
approaching and remembered the Dodge Magnum. “Trent, listen to me.”

“Who else am I going to listen to?”

“Don’t let go of that gun, okay? Don’t move.”

Brenna spun toward the sound, the left whole side of her body aching as she did. The
eye, the cheek, the stinging slice at her shoulder.
Get ready . . .

But it wasn’t the Magnum approaching. It was Morasco’s Subaru Impreza. It was Morasco
screeching to a halt, Morasco jumping out of the car, shouting, “Police!” Morasco
rushing up to Brenna, taking her in his arms—Morasco saying, “You’re okay.” Saying
it, again and again, like a prayer.

Chapter 10

T
here was a reason that Trent hadn’t been able to speak for so long in the car. It
was the same reason that he’d called Brenna Bonnie, and it was why, when with the
help of one of several uniformed cops who had shown up moments after he did, Morasco
had taken the gun, put an arm around him and helped him into a waiting ambulance,
Trent had looked at the forty-year-old, childless detective and said, “Dad? What are
you doing here?”

He had suffered a concussion, apparently caused by Bo’s gun flying out of his hand
and hitting him in the back of the head. The paramedics said it was probably a grade
two—not very serious, seeing as Trent hadn’t been unconscious for more than a few
seconds, knew who the president was, and could count to ten without any help. But
it wasn’t wise to underestimate a head injury, and so they were taking him to the
hospital anyway for observation, probably an MRI. Brenna, too.

“Maybe I just happen to look like his dad,” Morasco said to Brenna, as they rode in
the back of Trent’s ambulance to Columbia-Presbyterian.

Brenna held an ice pack to her black eye. Adrenaline gone, her whole face ached, the
ice about as worthwhile as a Band-Aid. But it could have been worse. Everything could
have been so much worse. “You don’t look like Trent’s dad,” Brenna said. “Believe
me.”

“Dude, I’m right here and I love my dad.”

“I wasn’t being insulting.”

“Tell that to your tone of voice,” Trent said.

The paramedics shushed him. “You really shouldn’t talk or get agitated right now,”
said one of them—a young, serious-looking woman in delicate, wire-framed glasses.

Trent turned to the paramedic, noticing her for the first time. “Hot librarian alert!”

She actually smiled at him, which only proved how much you can get away with when
you’re an injured person in an ambulance. Well, an innocent injured person, anyway.
Bo and Diddley had been rushed to the hospital as well, but in their case, cops were
riding along to arrest them once they were patched up and released.

Amazing
, Brenna thought. Because life rarely worked out like this. More often than not, life
was random, brutal, unfair. It passed from one moment to the next without rhyme or
reason, the good suffering just as much as the evil, usually more so for the shock
of discovering that the world is not a safe, just place. Children disappeared, innocent
people died, young girls got into blue cars as their sisters watched, and the cars
drove away, never to be seen again . . .

That said, Brenna was alive. Trent was alive. And of all the people who could have
called her cell phone when she hit send and hoped for the best, it had been Morasco.
Not a telemarketer from Idaho or India. Not Brenna’s mother or some half-sane potential
client or Kate O’Hanlon wanting another five-thousand-calorie breakfast or anyone
else who might have just sat there on the other end of the line, frightened and confused
and doing nothing to help. She had hoped for the best, and that’s exactly what she
had gotten.

“You do realize you saved our lives,” Brenna told him.

“Nah.”

“No, seriously. Those two idiots got out of a Dodge Magnum to jack our car, but the
Magnum kept following us. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, whoever was in that
car would have finished us off pretty easily.”

Morasco said nothing.

“So what I’m saying is, it’s a good thing you called.”

“No, Brenna.”

Trent said, “Jeez, take a compliment, dude.”

“No you don’t understand,” Morasco said. “It wasn’t me who called.”

“You’re right,” Brenna said. “I don’t understand.”

“Maya called your cell phone.”

Brenna stared at him. “Maya?”

“She got home from her sleepover and wondered where you were,” Morasco said. “She
was worried, and so she called you.”

“Maya was on the other end of the line.”

“She called me from her cell phone while she stayed on with you on the landline. She
could barely hear what you were saying—something about Inwood Hill Park. But I called
the 34th Precinct and they pinged your cell and got a location.”

Brenna swallowed hard. “I was going to call Maya when we got to the hospital. Come
up with some excuse so she wouldn’t have to know . . .”

“Well, she knows.” Morasco stared straight ahead. “Your daughter loves you,” he said,
“very much.”

“Does she know I’m all right?”

“I told her you were,” Morasco said. “I don’t know if she believed me, though. At
the time, I wasn’t sure myself.”

Brenna tried to sort all this out in her head—her daughter on the other end of the
line, her daughter, who shouldn’t be exposed to scenes like the one in the Taurus,
not ever. Maya, who still kept her copy of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
and clomped up the stairs in her high-tops, Maya, who loved to draw and was still
a child and shouldn’t know fear like that. She never should know.

But then they were arriving at the hospital, Trent chatting up the paramedic as she
helped him into the stretcher. “You sure you haven’t done any modeling?” he was saying
now, such a child himself—risking his life, as he had, for RJ Tannenbaum’s computer,
a high-priced toy. Morasco and another paramedic helped Brenna out of the ambulance,
and she realized how much she ached—the bandaged shoulder wound, the swollen eye.
“Let me see,” Morasco said.

Brenna removed the ice bag. He flinched.

“You need to work on your poker face.”

He brushed a lock of hair out of her eye. “I’ve seen worse,” he said. “On you, in
fact.”

Brenna smiled. It hurt. She flipped open her phone to find a text from Maya:
R U OK???
All caps. Three question marks.

She texted back:
I am fine. At hospital with Trent. Will be home soon.

“You can’t use your phone here, ma’am,” said another paramedic, leaning against a
wheelchair—a big, olive-skinned guy with glossy black hair and sweet eyes. “Hey, wait.
I know you.”

“You can’t possibly.”

Morasco said, “She doesn’t forget a face.”

“Me neither,” he said.

“Yes, but she’s infallible.”

“You were unconscious,” the paramedic told Brenna as he helped her into the chair.
“Knife wound, early October.”

Brenna looked up into his face, and fell back into October 2, when, so close to figuring
out the Neff case, she’d gotten stabbed near Pelham Bay. Again she felt the blade
as it socked into her abdomen, the damp pavement against her body, the slicing pain
beneath her ribs as the life drained out of her. She felt it all and smelled the brine
of the bay in the air, until she was devoured by the memory, fear coursing through
her and then that same weird stillness . . .
Breathing is hard, now. Brenna’s breath frail like a baby breathing, her body needing
more air than she is able to give it. She puts her hand to her pain and feels her
shirt—wet, sticking to her. She brings the hand up to her face and sees blood—so much
of it, it looks black, like oil on her skin.
I’m dying
. The cell phone. She reaches for it, touches it . . .
Call 911
.

Brenna’s cell phone vibrated in her hands—just once. A text—and it brought her back
to the present. She gasped, the pain fading, the face of the paramedic coming back
into focus. “My name is Angel, by the way,” he said, which made Brenna smile.

“Of course it is.”

She glanced down at the text, from Maya:
WHEW!!!!
All caps. Four exclamation points. Maybe life wasn’t completely brutal and random
and unfair. Maybe some things did happen for good reason. Not to get too sappy about
it, but how could Brenna
not
feel this way when, in just three months, her life had been saved, twice?

Maybe some girls get into blue cars and live.

“Okay, let’s get you into the ER,” Angel said.

Morasco said, “I’m coming with her.”

Brenna gave Angel a pleading look. “Just one more quick text? For my daughter.”

He sighed.

“Thank you,” Brenna said. She typed up the one-sentence text as fast as she could,
hit send, and obediently turned off the phone. As Angel wheeled her into the ER, Brenna
imagined Maya reading it, and stifled a grin. She could practically see the eye roll,
but also that shy little smile—unchanged since she was a toddler.

The text had read:
You are my hero.

A
fter their wounds were treated, Trent and Brenna were both given MRIs. Both came out
normal—well, free of brain injury, anyway. But predictably, Brenna’s made the doctors
do a double-take. Because of her hyperthymesia, more than a dozen parts of her brain
were larger than usual, some extraordinarily so. She’d been told this three years
ago, after participating in the California study that finally put a medical name to
what her mother always claimed was God’s will. (
Don’t you see, Brenna? It’s God’s will. With that memory, no one will be able to truly
leave us again
.)

At any rate, Brenna knew what to expect. What she hadn’t planned on was reliving the
MRI she’d had on June 23, 2006, as part of the study. It had been the first and only
MRI she’d ever had, and the first time Brenna had realized—palpably—that she was a
lot more than mildly claustrophobic. No sooner was the MRI tech at Columbia-Presbyterian
giving her the earphones than Brenna was back on the table at the City of Hope Medical
Center in Duarte, California
,
in that white room with the vague chemical smell . . .
Her heart pounds as the technician, Doreen, hands her a pair of puffy black earphones.
“Are we gonna listen to some Black Sabbath?” Brenna tries. Her throat is dry.

Doreen doesn’t smile. “They’re to protect your ears. Ever had an MRI?”

“No.”

“Well, without these, the sound is even more unbearable than ‘War Pigs.’ ”

“Hey, I like ‘War Pigs.’ ”

Still no smile. “Then maybe you’ll enjoy this.”

Brenna slides into the tube. A series of shrieking beeps slices into her brain. Test
of the Emergency Broadcast System from Hell.
Where’s “War Pigs” when you need it
, Brenna thinks. The beeping stops.

Doreen’s voice comes through the speakers. “Please stay still, Ms. Spector.” Brenna
opens her eyes, but the walls of the tube look closer. The space is getting smaller.
She wants to push against the walls. She wants to scream.

“Four score and seven years ago,” started Brenna.

And then the voice of the Columbia-Presbyterian MRI tech boomed through the speakers
around her. “Please don’t move, Ms. Spector.”

. . . and she was back at the City of Hope again
. In her mind, she sees Edward G. Robinson in
Soylent Green
watching peaceful scenes on a movie screen as he is forcibly euthanized
.
She opens her eyes and the tube is smaller still
 . . .

“Will this be over soon?” Brenna said now.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Thankfully, it was. After giving lip service to the chief surgeon—who talked about
her brain in the same way that Trent talked about particularly well-endowed girls—Brenna
met up with Morasco in the waiting room. “Hey, your eye looks better,” he said.

Brenna touched her hand to it. It felt better, too. Just a dull throb and nowhere
near as swollen. “You think Maya will freak out when she sees me?”

“No way,” he said. She couldn’t tell whether it was a white lie.

“So . . . Brenna?”

“Yeah?”

“You want to tell me how you got acquainted with . . . Man, I feel like a schmuck
even saying their names out loud.”

“Bo and Diddley.”

“Don’t you feel like a schmuck now?”

“Yes,” Brenna said. “Yes I do.”

“So, how did you wind up with those cretins in your car?”

“Trent doesn’t lock his doors.”

“Okay. Let’s go a little further back than that.”

Brenna sighed. “It’s a long story,” she said. But she gave him the fast-forwarded
version, taking Morasco from her breakfast with Kate O’Hanlon to Hildy Tannenbaum’s
apartment, complete with the call from Mr. Pokrovsky, to her and Trent’s wild ride
with the two dorkiest named enforcers in the history of organized crime. One of the
good things about a perfect memory: So long as you don’t get distracted, you can retell
a story very well and very quickly, without stumbling to recall facts.

“So, Tannenbaum was in debt to this Pokrovsky guy?” Morasco asked. “What for?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

“Incredibly dated reference,” he said. “How old are you, anyway?”

Brenna grinned at him. Same thing she’d said to him in Lydia Neff’s kitchen on October
1. He’d just quoted her directly. “Way to a woman’s heart,” she said, “is through
her memory.”

Morasco looked into her eyes. His smile dissolved and in his eyes she caught a hint
of it—that same ache she’d seen there the previous night, as he watched Lula Belle
talk about the wounded bird . . .
If Mama were to see me, she’d have been amazed. She thought I was crazy like my daddy.
She thought I couldn’t take care of nothin’ without breakin’ it. Mama said that gift
for destruction ran through my veins.

“What’s wrong, Nick?” she said quietly.

Someone called out, “Get a room!”

Trent
. Brenna turned to see him, getting wheeled through the waiting room by the young
bespectacled paramedic, a large white bandage on his forehead.

“Heading home?” Brenna asked.

“Yep. The doctors have officially declared my brain awesome.”

“Great,” she said. “But I want you to promise me something.”

“Sorry, my heart belongs to Claudia here.”

The paramedic smiled again.

“You are very tolerant, Claudia.” Brenna leveled her eyes at Trent. “I mean it. As
soon as you get out of here, I want you to go straight home and rest. Get a good night’s
sleep tonight. And by getting a good night’s sleep, I
don’t
mean—”