Keeper (12 page)

The sky continued to color, and it was just before six when the phone rang inside. It hadn’t been ringing for long, I know, but for a moment my memory had a gap I couldn’t fill, and I answered it with the fear and guilt of someone who may have nodded off to sleep.

“Atticus?”

“How’s it look, Natalie?”

“Someone tried to crowbar the back door, mangled the locking plate, but didn’t get inside. I’m trying to get Felice out of here, but she won’t leave until she’s positive that nothing is missing. Dale’s with her, now. Fowler’s coming down, so we’re waiting on him right now. How’s things there?”

“Quiet. Rubin got a call after you two left, no voice, just a disconnect. He thought it might be a probe, so he asked me to come down here.”

“Anything to it?”

“He went to the window and took the glance, says that there was somebody in one of the windows of the opposite building, looking out. He said he thinks it was a male, perhaps my height, but it was all in silhouette.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“I’ve already identified the apartment, and it seems safe. When Rubin’s up I’ll head to the clinic. You guys aren’t going to be coming back down, I assume?”

“At this rate, no, we’ll be staying,” Natalie said. “All right, I’ll see you when you get here. Any other orders?” 

“Keep her safe,” I said.

“I am my sister’s keeper,” Natalie said, and hung up.

Katie started moving a little before seven, coming down the stairs to where I was reading on the couch, yawning. Her heavily lidded eyes looked even smaller, and she rubbed them several times before they appeared of use to her. Her nightgown was yellow with small blue prancing horses printed on it, and it made her look fat. At the bottom of the stairs she stopped and looked at me.

“Where’s my mommy?”

“She had to go out.”

“The phone, who was on the phone, calling here?” 

“That was Natalie. Your mommy’s all right.”

“I know that, I know she is,” she said. She pointed to the drawn curtains, where daylight was showing. “Breakfast time, what’s for breakfast, ’Cus?”

“What do you want?”

“I want waffles, want waffles and syrup.”

“Go get dressed and I’ll make you waffles with syrup.” 

“Okay. I’ll do it. ’Cus, where’s my mommy? Where is she?”

“She had to go to the clinic. She’ll be back before too long.”

“My mommy works, that’s right,” she said, turning back up the stairs. “Mommy works so people don’t like her because she does a job.”

She disappeared into the bathroom above and I stepped around the counter into the kitchen, looking for a skillet or waffle maker. The light in the kitchen wasn’t strong enough to cast shadows on the curtains. After some rummaging, I eventually discovered a waffle iron at the back of a cabinet, hidden behind an automatic juicer. It took another few minutes to get everything together for the batter, and I started to worry that the waffles wouldn’t be ready by the time Katie was dressed. But the water in the bathroom continued to run, and I had finished a first batch and was working on the second before she came down, wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt with the cover of Madonna’s “True Blue” album printed on it. When she turned I could see concert dates on the back.

“Did you change pads?” I asked.

She looked angrily down at her bare feet, saying, “He shouldn’t talk about that. He shouldn’t be talking about that, to me. I did. I did it.” She looked at me again and said, “I did.”

“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll bring you breakfast.” She headed for the television, in a line across the glass doors, and I said, “Katie, sit at the table, please.”

She changed her course without protest, settling into a wicker chair that creaked, then looked to me expectantly. I brought her a plate of three waffles, stacked, and a glass of orange juice. She went for the orange juice first, and when she drank she placed her tongue inside the glass. It seemed a slow and difficult way to drink, but pointing that out seemed petty. If it made her happy, why criticize? I returned to the table with a bottle of Log Cabin and a cup of coffee for me.

“How did you sleep?” I asked.

“Fine. I slept fine.” She opened the bottle of syrup and held it in both hands, pouring the contents onto her waffles. She poured a lot of syrup.

“Katie, don’t you think that’s enough?”

She looked at me, honestly surprised, then said, “Oops, oh no! That’s too much!” She turned the bottle quickly right side up and the syrup line suspended between bottle and table turned, too, getting all over the side of the bottle and her hands. “Yuck,” she said. “Yuck, oh, oops, yuck.” I started to take the bottle from her but she clung to it. “No, I can do it. I can do it. Get a towel, go get a towel to clean it up.”

So I got a paper towel from the roll over the sink, wetted it, and returned to her. The bottle was upright and capped in the middle of the table, still drooling a strand of syrup. Katie was licking her fingers, but she stopped to use the wet towel. She cleaned her hands vigorously. “Elaine died,” she told me. “She died all sick and David couldn’t help her.” She looked down and rubbed the towel over the table, concentrating on the spot where the syrup had fallen. “It’s very sad.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She dropped the paper towel and took up her fork and knife. As she cut the first waffle to pieces she said, “It’s only a television show.”

I used the mug to hide my smile, drinking coffee and nodding at her. “Yes, it is.”

“It’s only a television show,” she repeated. “Elaine didn’t really die and Bixby Bill and she can get married now. That’s not sad, it isn’t.” 

“No.”

She went through the waffles quickly, barely stopping to breathe between bites. When the last scraps were gone, she coated her fork with the remaining syrup and took care of that, too. Finished, she put the utensils back on the plate, saying, “Is there more?”

“Are you sure you want more? It’s awfully fattening.”

“No, don’t get fat. I’m not fat, I’m pretty. Don’t get fat,” she said. “ ’Cus, I don’t want anymore syrup.”

“How about waffles?”

“No, I don’t want waffles. I’m finished. I’ve got to exercise, after breakfast, I’ve got to exercise. Can I do my tape?”

“Sure, where is it?”

The tape was a workout video, and I rewound it and started it on the VCR. Katie took her position in front of the television, hands on her hips, grim determination in her eyes. Waffle crumbs stuck to the comers of her mouth, and I pointed them out to her. She thanked me, licking them off, and began her workout while I removed the dishes from the table and started cleaning up. From where I stood behind the kitchen counter, I had line of sight straight to the window. Katie stayed, clear of the doors as she exercised. Hers wasn’t an efficient workout, but she took it seriously, following the movements as best she could, never once slacking off or taking an unauthorized break.

When the videotape ended she went to the television and switched to MTV, staying on her feet for a few more minutes, dancing to the forced beat. Eventually she sat on the couch, wiping imaginary sweat from her brow.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Where is he? Where is Rubin, ’Cus? Where is he?”

“He’s getting some sleep.”

“No, he’s not,” Rubin said. He was wearing boxer shorts and looked marginally better than last night, a towel in his hand. “He’s taking a shower.” He went down the stairs to the entry bathroom.

Katie laughed, and announced that Rubin was silly.

We sat together, watching MTV. Katie seemed to have absolutely no musical preference, although the one Madonna video we saw captured her attention completely, and she sang along with it heartily. The video was an older one, I think, but I’m not a real fan of the medium, so I could be mistaken. Madonna paraded in front of incredibly handsome, incredibly well-defined men and women, coaxing them to sexual frenzy. Not only was Katie attentive, she was beatific in her awe.

The phone rang and I went to answer it. It was Lozano.

“Natalie said you were there,” he told me.

“What? Hold on,” I said and set down the phone, going back to the television and turning it down.

“Use the remote,” Katie said.

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know, no. Turn it down, he’s turning it down. There, who is it? Is it my mommy?”

“No, it’s the police.”

“It’s the police, looking for Melanie B. Is it my mother?”

“Is Dr. Romero all right?” I asked Lozano.

“She’s fine. I want—”

“Hold on,” I said. “Your mother’s all right, Katie.”

“Good, that’s good that she’s all right. The police call when people are dead,” she said. She rose and began hunting around the couch. “I’ll get the control, the control for the television for you.”

“Sorry, Detective,” I told Lozano. “What can I do for you?”

“Just wanted to let you know what we’ve got, which is practically nothing. A unit found a crowbar in the alley, but there were no prints on it. Fowler’s sending it to D.C.”

“A crowbar?”

“Don’t ask me, Kodiak. I just work for the city, not the Mighty Federal Machine,” he said. “You going to the clinic?”

“When my guard here is ready, yeah, I’ll be going uptown. He got a call last night that might have been something, but it’s looking okay now.”

Rubin came up the stairs at that point, freshly scrubbed and wearing clean clothes, and the change had affected his personality. He was smiling, and flicked the end of his towel at me. I failed a halfhearted dodge, turning toward the far wall. He’d have to attack me from behind, and Rubin wouldn’t do that.

“Conference is tomorrow?”

“Day after,” I said.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better, bud,” Lozano said.

“Well, that’s just what I wanted to hear,” I said, turning back around. Rubin was in the kitchen, drinking orange juice out of the container. He caught my eye and I shook my head and he set down the carton on the counter, hunting for a glass. I heard him ask Katie if she wanted one. She said yes, and continued searching the cushions on the couch.

“It should never have been made legal,” Lozano said.

“But it is,” I said. Katie turned on the standing lamp in the corner to get more light.

“Yes, it is. And until the law changes—”

The glass door, the sliding portion, shattered and fell, a translucent wall that tore the curtain as it collapsed into the room, pulling the fabric off its runners. Glass hit the carpet intact but burst on impact, singing as it broke. Out of my hand fell the phone and to my left Rubin was dropping the orange juice. The carton hit the kitchen floor bottom first, then pitched to a side. Juice splashed on the tile floor and Rubin’s pant leg. The report was next, full and ugly, large caliber. Katie jerked where she was standing in front of the light, beside the couch, just inside what was now the kill zone, and she fell, her chest leading, hitting the side of the couch and then bouncing off it, soft and buoyant, hitting the carpet on her side, and I was diving to her, shouting for cover and police and an ambulance and thinking quite clearly that it was a very good thing, a very good thing, that Lozano was on the phone, because all he had to do was turn around and shout and there would be an ambulance and the police and it would be all right, everything would be all right.

Another report, the second or maybe the third, just after I got to her, and I slipped my hands underneath her shoulders, pulling Katie back to the kitchen, around the counter, and Rubin was helping me, grabbing her shirt, his head low, and I had the awful sensation that none of this was real; it was a practical, a live fire exercise; certainly not real. When we dragged her we smeared a red stain on the carpet, a bloody snail’s trail that became wet and shiny on the tile floor. Rubin was crawling out to the phone already, grabbing the hanging receiver and barking into it, scurrying back to our cover as he did so.

Another shot and I heard it punch hard against the counter as I knelt over Katie, her eyes open and filling with tears. She was speaking and I strained to listen while running my hands over her, trying to find the wound. The blood kept coming with a mind of its own.

“My mommy,” Katie Romero said, and it was hard to understand her, and it hurt her to make the words, but she kept repeating, “Mommy, I want my mommy, where is she? I want my mommy.”

The hole had been punched in her side three inches below her armpit, just inside her right breast, and the blood coming out was candy-red arterial issue, and I covered the wound with my hand, pushing down hard trying to get a seal to stop the bleeding and Rubin was shouting to get an ambulance fucking now, we were taking fire.

And Katie stopped calling for her mother, no air available to do it, and I was still looking for an exit wound, not finding one, wondering where it had gone, if it was still inside. I tilted her head back, my palm on her forehead, and put my cheek beside her mouth and two fingers on her carotid, waiting for air to come out, for blood to move, for a breath. Fifteen slow seconds, certain I counted too fast, and there was nothing coming out, her chest wasn’t moving.

With one hand I sealed her nostrils and then covered her mouth with mine. My lips surrounded hers, she had a small mouth, and my seal was absolute. Two full breaths, Katie’s chest rising. The air rustled out past my cheek.

“No pulse, no breathing,” I said.

Rubin was landmarking, his hands already sliding up Katie’s rib cage to find the xiphoid. I gave another two breaths and he starting compressing and I started breathing and that was it, with Rubin quietly saying “One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five and—” breath breath, “one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five and—” breath breath. Compressions, breaths, and the air wasn’t going down, I was tasting waffles and syrup and orange juice and jerked my head back, spitting, turning Katie’s head. I opened her mouth and swept the inside with an index finger, scooping out chewed breakfast and clearing her airway, then repositioning her head. Two breaths.

“Continue.”

Compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax, and two breaths, and again, we weren’t perfect, we were going too fast, I knew that, the air was going in and coming out, and again compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax. Stop. Check for pulse. One one-thousand two one-thousand three one-thousand four one-thousand five one-thousand no pulse
where the fuck is the ambulance
“No pulse, continue,” breath, exhale, breath, exhale, compress, relax, compress, relax
where the fuck is the ambulance
compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax, breath, exhale, breath, exhale, and again compress, relax, compress, relax
if she took the shot in the lung where’s the exit wound
compress, relax, compress, relax
two shots or was it three shots or was it four shots only one shot hit her the second shot rifle
compress, relax, breath, exhale, breath, exhale
where am I in the count should I check pulse God don’t let her die
compress, relax, compress, relax, compress, relax, more breaths compress, relax, breath, compress relax breath
ten minutes irreversible brain damage where the fuck where the fuck where the fuck the door’s locked oh fuck me the door’s still locked. . . .