Live Wire (18 page)

“We need to talk.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What . . . how did you find me?”

“Where’s Brad?”

“Wait, how did you know I’d be here? I don’t understand.”

He spoke quickly, wanting to get past this. “I found Crush. I told him to call you and set this up. Where’s Brad?”

“I have to go.” Kitty started past him. Myron stepped in her way. She moved to her right. Myron grabbed her arm.

“Let go of me.”

“Where is my brother?”

“Why do you want to know?”

The question made him pull up. He was unsure how to answer. “I just want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? He’s my brother.”

“And he’s my husband,” she said, suddenly standing her ground. “What do you want with him?”

“I told you. I just want to talk to him.”

“What, so you can make up more stuff about me?”

“Me make stuff up? You’re the one who said I—” Unproductive. He made himself stop. “Look, I’m sorry about everything. Whatever I said or did. I want to put it in the past. I want to make amends.”

Kitty shook her head. Behind her, the merry-go-round started up again. There were maybe twenty children on board. Some parents joined them. They stood by the horse, making sure that the offspring were secure. Most watched from the sidelines, their heads moving in small circles so they could watch their child and only theirs. Each time the child circled around, the parent’s face would light up anew.

“Please,” Myron said.

“Brad doesn’t want to see you.”

Her tone was that of a petulant teenager, but the words still stung. “He said that?”

She nodded. He tried to meet her eye, but her gaze was everywhere but on him. Myron had to take a step back and put his emotions on hold. Forget the past. Forget the history. Try to connect.

“I wish I could take it back,” Myron said. “You have no idea how much I regret what happened.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. I have to go.”

Connect, he thought. You have to connect. “Do you ever think about regrets, Kitty? I mean, do you ever wish you could go back and do one little thing differently and then everything, your whole world, would be something else? Like if I made a right turn instead of a left at a stoplight. If you hadn’t picked up that tennis racket when you were, what, three years old? If I didn’t hurt my knee and then I wouldn’t have been an agent and then you would have never met Brad? You ever wonder about stuff like that?”

It may have been a ploy or line on his part, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. He felt drained now. For a moment they both just stood there, their world gone quiet while the mall rush raged about them.

When Kitty finally spoke, her voice was soft. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Everyone has regrets,” she said, looking off. “But you don’t want to go back. If I made a right instead of a left or if I never picked up a racket, well, I wouldn’t have met Brad. And we would have never had Mickey.” At the mention of her son, her eyes welled up. “Whatever else happened, I could never go back and risk that. If I changed one thing—even if I got an A in sixth-grade math instead of a B—maybe that chain reaction would have changed one sperm or one egg and then there would be no Mickey. Do you see?”

Hearing about the nephew he never met worked like a lasso around Myron’s heart. He tried to keep his voice even. “What’s Mickey like?”

For a moment the drug addict was gone, the tennis player was gone—and color came to her face. “He’s the greatest kid in the world.” She smiled, but Myron could see the devastation behind it. “He’s so smart and strong and kind. He awes me every day. He loves playing basketball.” A small chuckle escaped her lips. “Brad says he may be better than you.”

“I’d love to see him play.”

Her back stiffened, and her face shut like a slammed gate. “That’s not going to happen.”

He was losing her—time to change tacks again, keep her off balance. “Why did you post ‘Not His’ on Suzze’s wall?”

“What are you talking about?” she countered, but there was no conviction in her voice. She opened her purse and started reaching inside. Myron peered over her and saw two crushed packets of cigarettes. She withdrew one and put it in her mouth, looking up at him as though daring him to say something. He didn’t.

She started toward the exit. Myron stayed with her.

“Come on, Kitty. I already know it was you.”

“I need a smoke.”

They walked between two restaurants, Ruby Tuesday and McDonald’s. The McDonald’s had the most garish Ronald McDonald statue sitting in a booth. Ronald had a big smile and was too brightly painted and looked as though it might wink as they passed. Myron wondered whether it gave kids nightmares because, when Myron was unsure of his next move, he wondered about things like that.

Kitty already had her lighter at the ready. She inhaled hard, closing her eyes, and let loose a long ream of smoke. Cars slowly cruised around in search of open spaces. Kitty took another hit. Myron waited.

“Kitty?”

“I shouldn’t have posted that,” she said.

So there it was. Confirmation. “Why did you?”

“Good old-fashioned revenge, I guess. When I was pregnant, she told my husband it wasn’t his.”

“So you decided to do likewise?”

Puff. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

At 3:17 in the morning. Little wonder. “How high were you?”

“What?”

Mistake. “Never mind.”

“No, I heard you.” Kitty shook her head, tossed the rest of the cigarette onto the walk, and stomped on it with her foot. “This isn’t your business. I don’t want you to be part of our lives. Neither does Brad.” Something again flicked in her eyes. “I gotta go.”

She turned to head back inside, but Myron put his hands on her shoulders.

“What else is going on here, Kitty?”

“Get your hands off me.”

He didn’t. He looked at her and saw that whatever connection he had made, it was gone now. She looked like a cornered animal now. A cornered, spiteful animal.

“Let. Go. Of. Me.”

“There’s no way Brad would put up with this.”

“With what? We don’t want you in our lives. You may want to forget what you did to us—”

“Just listen to me, okay?”

“Get your hands off me! Now!”

There was no talking to her. Her irrationality enraged him. Myron could feel his blood boil. He thought about all the terrible things she had done—how she had lied, how she had made his brother run away. He thought about her shooting up at the club and then he thought about her with Joel Fishman.

His voice had an edge now. “Have you really burned through that many brain cells, Kitty?”

“What are you talking about?”

He leaned in so that his face was inches from her. Through clenched teeth he said, “I found you via your drug dealer. You hit up Lex hoping to score drugs.”

“Is that what Lex told you?”

“For crying out loud, look at yourself,” Myron said, no longer disguising his disgust. “Are you really going to try to tell me you’re not using?”

Tears flooded her eyes. “What are you, my drug counselor?”

“Think about how I found you.”

Kitty’s eyes narrowed in confusion. Myron waited. And then she saw it. He nodded.

“I know what you did at the club,” Myron said, trying not to lose it. “I even have it on videotape.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know a thing.”

“I know what I saw.”

“You son of a bitch. Now I get it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “You want to show it to Brad, right?”

“What? No.”

“I can’t believe this. You videotaped me?”

“Not me. The club. It’s a surveillance video.”

“And you tracked it down? You goddamn bastard.”

“Hey,” Myron snapped, “I’m not the one going down on a guy in a nightclub so I can shoot up.”

She stepped back as though he’d slapped her. Dumb. He had forgotten his own warning. With strangers he knew how to talk, knew how to interrogate. With family, it always goes down the wrong road, doesn’t it?

“I didn’t mean . . . Look, Kitty, I really do want to help.”

“Liar. Tell the truth for once.”

“I am telling the truth. I do want to help.”

“Not about that.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kitty had the eerie, cagey smile of, well, a drug addict looking for a fix. “What would you say if you saw Brad again? Tell the truth.”

That made him pull up. What, after all, did he want here? Win always cautioned him to keep his eyes on the prize. Accomplish the goals. One: Suzze had asked him to find Lex. Done. Two: Suzze had wanted to know who posted the “Not His” to her profile. Done.

Didn’t Kitty, drug-addled and all, have a point? What would he say if he saw Brad? Sure, he would apologize and try to reconcile. But what then?

Would he just keep what he’d seen on the videotape a secret?

“Just as I thought.” Kitty’s expression was so smug and triumphant that more than anything in the world, he wanted to wallop her right in the face. “You’d tell him I’m some kind of whore.”

“I don’t think I’d have to tell him anything, Kitty. The tape kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

She slapped him across the face. The drugs hadn’t dulled the former great athlete’s reflexes. The smack stung, the sound echoing. Kitty started to push past him again. With his cheek reddening, Myron reached out and grabbed her elbow, maybe a little too roughly. She tried to pull away. He tightened the grip, hitting the pressure point. She winced and said, “Ow, that hurts.”

“You all right, ma’am?”

Myron turned. Two men from mall security were there. Myron let go of Kitty’s elbow. Kitty dashed back into the mall. Myron started to follow, but the security guards stood their ground.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Myron told them.

They were too young to truly roll their eyes in the world-weary way such a line deserved, but they tried. “I’m sorry, sir, but we—”

No time to explain. Like a halfback, Myron juked right and then ran past them. “Hey! Stop!”

He didn’t. He sprinted down the corridor. The security guards gave chase. He stopped by the merry-go-round’s cross section, looked left toward Spencer’s Gifts, straight ahead toward Macy’s, right toward Starbucks.

Nothing.

Kitty was gone. Again. But maybe that was better. Maybe it was time to reevaluate, figure out what he should really do here. The security guards caught up to him. One looked ready to make a flying tackle, but Myron raised his hands in surrender.

“It’s over, guys. I’m leaving.”

By now, eight other mall security guards had appeared, but none wanted to create a scene. They escorted him outside of the mall. He slipped into his car. Way to go, Myron, he thought. You really handled that so well. But again, when he took a step back, what was left to do here anyway? He wanted to see his brother, but was it right to force the issue? He had waited sixteen years. He could wait a little more. Forget Kitty. He would try to reach out to Brad via that e-mail address maybe or through their father or something.

Myron’s phone buzzed. He gave the nice security guards a little wave and reached into his pocket. The caller ID read: LEX RYDER.

“Hello?”

“Oh God . . .”

“Lex?”

“Please . . . hurry.” He started sobbing. “Wheeling her out.”

“Lex, calm down.”

“My fault. Oh my God. Suzze . . .”

“What about Suzze?”

“You should have left it alone.”

“Is Suzze okay?”

“Why didn’t you just leave it alone?”

More sobbing. Myron felt icy fear in his chest. “Please, Lex, listen to me. I need you to calm down, so you can tell me what’s going on.”

“Hurry.”

“Where are you?”

He started sobbing some more.

“Lex? I need to know where you are.”

There was a choking noise, more sobs, and then three words: “In the ambulance.”

 

 

It was hard to get more out of Lex.

Myron managed to learn that Suzze was being rushed to St. Anne’s Medical Center. That was it. Myron texted Win and called Esperanza. “I’m on it,” Esperanza said. Myron tried to plug in the hospital on his GPS, but his hand kept shaking and then the GPS kept taking too long, and when he started driving the car, that damn safety feature wouldn’t let him plug the information in.

He got caught up in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, started laying on the horn and waving people over like a madman. Most drivers just ignored him. Some, he could see, picked up cell phones, probably calling the cops to warn them about the crazy person losing his mind in traffic.

Myron called Esperanza. “Any word?”

“The hospital won’t say anything over the phone.”

“Okay, call me if you learn anything. I should be there in another ten, fifteen.”

It was fifteen. He pulled into the hospital’s full and rather complicated lot. He circled a few times and then just figured the hell with it. He double-parked, blocking someone in, and left his keys. He ran toward the entrance, past the huddled smokers in the hospital scrubs, and into the ER. He stopped at the front desk, three people back, bouncing from one foot to the other like a six-year-old needing to go potty.

Finally, it was his turn. He told her why he was here. The woman behind the desk gave him the implacable “seen it all” face.

“Are you family?” she asked in a tone that would need technological help to be any flatter.

“I’m her agent and a close friend.”

A practiced sigh. This, Myron could see, was going to be a waste of time. His eyes started darting around the room, looking for Lex or Suzze’s mother or something. In the far corner, he was surprised to see Loren Muse, head county investigator. Myron had met Muse when a teenager named Aimee Biel vanished a few years back. Muse had her little cop pad out. She was talking to someone hidden behind the corner and taking notes.