Black Heart

Page 18

“I don’t know.” Her gaze slides away from me as she contemplates the grooves of the plaster wall. “I guess a man is entitled to a few secrets.”
I give her a long look.
“Just not very many,” she says, and smiles. “Now come and give your mother a kiss.”
Lila’s in the hallway when I leave. She’s leaning against the wall, near a modernist painting that’s probably worth more than the entire contents of my mother’s house. Lila’s arms are folded against her chest.
I take out my phone and make a show of typing in the doctor’s information from the card he gave me. It was just a number with no name attached, so I call him Dr. Doctor.
“I should have told you,” she says finally.
“Yes, you should have told me,” I say. “But my mother can be very convincing. And she made you promise.”
“Some promises aren’t worth keeping.” Her voice drops low. “I guess it was stupid to think that I could just drop out and be gone from your life. We’re all tangled up together, aren’t we?”
“You’re not sentenced to me,” I say stiffly. “This thing with my mother will be resolved, you’ll talk to Daneca, and then . . .” I make a vague gesture with my hand.
Then I’ll be out of her life, more or less.
She laughs abruptly. “That’s how it must have felt—me following you everywhere, begging for attention, obsessing over you—like you were sentenced to me. I even screwed up that on-again, off-again thing you had with Audrey, didn’t I?”
“I think I screwed that one up all on my own.”
Lila frowns. I can tell she doesn’t believe me. “So why, Cassel? Why tell me that you loved me, then have Daneca work me so I couldn’t feel anything for you, then tell me you love me all over again? Why come here and kiss me up against a wall? Do you just like messing with my head?”
“I—No!” I start to say more, to give her some explanation, but she keeps on going.
“You used to be my best friend in the world, and then, suddenly, you’re the reason I’m a caged animal and you’re acting like you don’t even care. I know they took your memories, but I didn’t know it then. I hated you. I wanted you dead. Then you were the one who freed me from my prison, and before I could come to terms with any of that, I was forced to be desperately in love with you. And now, when I see you, I feel everything, all those things, all at once. I can’t afford to feel like that. Maybe you were right. Maybe I would be better off if I couldn’t feel anything at all.”
I don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” is all I manage.
“No, don’t be. I don’t mean it,” Lila whispers. “I wish I wished that, but I don’t. I’m just kind of a mess right now.”
“You’re not,” I say.
She laughs. “Don’t con me.”
I want to reach for her, but her crossed arms keep me from it. I walk toward the stairs instead. At the top I look back at her. “No matter what happens, no matter what else I feel, no matter what else you believe, I hope you believe that I’ll always be your friend.”
One side of her mouth lifts. “I want to.”
As I descend, I see Zacharov standing near the mantel talking to a boy. I recognize his braids, pulled back from his head like horns, and the flash of gold teeth. He looks up at me with dark unfathomable eyes and raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow.
I freeze.
Today he’s dressed differently from the hoodie and jeans I saw him in when I chased him through the streets of Queens. He’s got on a purple motorcycle jacket over jeans, and has tapered gold plugs in his ears. He’s wearing eyeliner.
Gage. That’s the name he gave me.
Zacharov must see the look that passes between us. “Do you two know each other?”
“No,” I say quickly.
I expect Gage to contradict me, but he doesn’t. “No, I don’t think it was him.” He circles me, lifting a gloved hand to my chin, tilting my face toward him. He’s a little shorter than I am. I pull back, jerking free of his grip.
He laughs. “Hard to believe I’d forget a face like that.”
“Tell Cassel that story you told me,” Zacharov says. “Cassel, take a seat.”
I hesitate, glancing toward the elevator. If I ran, I think I could make it, but who knows how long it would take for the doors to open. And even if I got to the ground floor, I’d probably never get out of the building.
“Sit down,” Zacharov says. “I asked Gage to come over because the more I thought about your brother working for the Feds, the more I was sure that if it was true, you’d try to cover it up. Especially since I threatened his life. I take that back. But after Philip turned out to be a rat, I think we both understand that we have a lot to lose if your other brother started squealing.”
I suck in a breath and sink onto one of the sofas. Flames flicker in the fireplace, filling the massive room with eerie shifting shadows. I can feel my palms start to sweat.
Lila looks over the edge of the railing. “Dad? What’s going on?” Her words echo through the big room, bouncing off the wooden ceiling and stone floors.
“Gage stopped by,” Zacharov says. “I understand he ran into some complications the other day.”
Gage looks up at her and grins. I wonder how long they’ve known each other. “I did that job like you wanted. It was quick. He was in the first place I looked.”
Lila’s face is shadowed. I can’t read her expression.
“Charlie West didn’t give you any trouble?” Zacharov asks.
Lila starts down the stairs.
Gage sucks his teeth, making a dismissive sound. “I didn’t give him a chance for trouble.”
Lila walks onto the black and white marble. Her bare feet make almost no sound as she pads across the floor. “Should Cassel be hearing this?”
It strikes me that once upon a time I thought of her as part of the class of people with magic. I knew that there were regular people and there were workers, and workers were better than regular people. That’s what everyone in Carney believed, or it’s at least what they told me. When I was a kid, Lila’s cousin, my own brother’s best friend, didn’t even want me to be around her, because he thought I wasn’t a worker.
But even among workers there are different roles. Lila is inheriting Zacharov’s position, where you order murders but don’t actually have to carry them out. She doesn’t hold the gun, she just calls the shots.
“Let Gage tell his story,” Zacharov says. “We trust Cassel, don’t we?”
She turns her head toward me. The fire highlights the curve of her jawline, the point of her chin. “Of course we do.”
Zacharov once asked me whether I would mind taking orders from his daughter. At the time, I said I wouldn’t. Now I wonder what it would really be like. I wonder if I would resent it.
Gage clears his throat. “After I tap him, some psycho do-gooder decides to chase me through the streets and nearly breaks my arm.” He laughs. “Guy picks up a plank and knocks my gun right out of my hand. If I was a couple of seconds faster, he would have got himself shot.”
I concentrate on not reacting. I try to keep a vaguely interested expression on my face.
“You described him looking a lot like Cassel, didn’t you?” Zacharov asks.
Gage nods, his gaze on me. He’s laughing with his eyes. “Sure. Black hair, tan skin, tall. Cute. Stole my gun.”
Zacharov crosses to where Lila is standing and puts his gloved hands on her shoulders. “Could it have been his brother? They look pretty alike.”
“Barron is no do-gooder,” I say.
Gage shakes his head. “Without a picture I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.”
Zacharov nods. “Tell him the rest.”
“I have to climb a fence to get away,” Gage says. “Three blocks later I get grabbed by guys in black suits. They hustle me into a car, and I think I’m done for, but they tell me that if I tell them what happened, they aren’t going to investigate the hit.”
“And did you tell them?” Zacharov asks, although I can tell he’s already heard the story and knows the answer.
Lila pulls away from her father to perch on the edge of the couch.
“Well, at first I tell them no, I’m no snitch, but it turns out that they don’t really care about who ordered me to do the job or even what I did. All they want to know about is the psycho do-gooder. They let me go, just for telling them about some guy I talked to for a couple of seconds. I said he took my gun.”
I feel an odd sense of dizziness. It’s almost like falling.
“They wanted to know if we knew each other. They wanted to know if he identified himself as a federal agent. I said no to both. Then, when they turned me loose, I came to Mr. Z, because I thought maybe he’d know what was going on.”
“That sounds nothing like my brother,” I say, giving them the steadiest look I can manage.
“A man can’t be too careful,” says Zacharov.
“Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Gage says. “If you need anything else, let me know.”
“I’ve got to get going,” I say, standing up. “That is, if we’re done here?”
Zacharov nods.
I start toward the elevator. My shoes tap a sharp rhythm on the stone tiles. I hear sudden footsteps following mine.
“Wait up,” Gage says. “I’ll ride down with you.”
I look back to see Zacharov and Lila, across the room, watching us. Lila raises a hand in a half wave.
I get into the elevator and close my eyes as the doors shut.
“You going to kill me?” I ask in the silence that follows. “I hate waiting.”
“What?” When I look at him, Gage is frowning. “You’re the psycho who attacked me.”
“You’re a death worker. I figured you lied back there because you wanted some kind of personal revenge.” I sigh. “Why did you do it? Why not tell Zacharov it was me?”
“No big thing. You let me go; I pay my debts.” He’s got sharp, almost delicate features, but he’s muscled under his coat. I can tell from his shoulders. “All I want is my gun. It’s a 1943 Beretta. A family heirloom. It belonged to my grandmother. She got it from some Italian boyfriend after the war—and she gave it to me when my parents kicked me out. I slept the whole bus ride to New York with that thing under what I was using for a pillow. It kept me safe.”
I nod. “I’ll get it to you.”
“Just give the gun to Lila and she’ll pass it along,” he says. “Look, whatever those agents wanted you for, I figure it’s none of my business. It didn’t sound to me like you were one of them, and Lila wouldn’t thank me for getting you in trouble with her father.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the youngest Sharpe brother, right? Cassel. Lila’s been talking about you for forever.” He grins appraisingly, raising both his eyebrows. “I didn’t think you could possibly measure up, but it’s the rare boy who can catch me.”
I laugh. “How long have you known her?”
“I did a job for her father when I was thirteen. I guess she was about twelve at the time. We got along like a house on fire. Used to go into her mother’s room and try on her clothes and sing in front of her big double mirror. We were going to start a band called the Skies over Tokyo, but neither of us could play an instrument and neither of us could sing.”
It takes me a moment to put it together that he means he killed someone for Zacharov when he was just a kid. I’m shocked before I remember that I was doing the same thing for Anton.
Then I realize that I’m going to do it again, for Yulikova this time. Yulikova, who knows I’ve already lied to her once.
My stomach sinks as the elevator doors open. I feel like the bottom is dropping out of the world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING I am called into Dean Wharton’s office right after morning announcements.
I stand in front of his burnished wooden desk and try not to think of the pictures I saw of him, with Mina’s bare hand parting the collar of his starched white shirt. I guess everyone has a dark side, but I don’t think I was prepared for that to extend to elderly Wallingford faculty.
Wharton’s not a guy that I’ve thought a lot about. He’s the dean of students, probably close to retirement age, with tufts of carefully combed-over silver hair on his head. He’s never much liked me, but I’ve always given him plenty of reasons to feel that way, what with my bookmaking operation, the sleepwalking, and my mother being a convicted criminal.
I feel like I’m looking at him with fresh eyes now, though. I see today’s newspaper, half-hidden in a stack of files, open to the crossword, a few shaky blue pen marks in the margins. I see the cap of a pill case under the desk and a single yellow pill. And perhaps most telling of all, I see the tremble in his left hand, which might be a nervous tic but shows how close he’s playing to the edge. But then maybe I am reading him backward—seeing what I want to see. I know he’s doing something bad, so I expect him to be nervous.
I just wish I knew exactly what he was doing.
“Mr. Sharpe, being in my office twice in as many weeks does not bode well for any student.” His tone is as sternly exasperated as ever.
“I know that, sir,” I say, as contritely as possible.
“You cut your morning classes yesterday, young man. Did you think there wouldn’t be any consequences?”