If I Die Tonight Page 14

  “You a cop?”

  Somehow, Pearl knew that yes was the wrong answer. She played with her drink stirrer, stared into her glass. “He’s my little brother,” she said.

  “Your brother.”

  “He’s been getting in a lot of trouble lately. Trying to head this off at the pass.”

  Joy sighed heavily. Not buying a word of it. The Sweatshirt Twins started laughing about something and Pearl noticed for the first time how quiet the bar was. No music playing. “Like a library in here,” Pearl said. “You got a radio you can turn on?”

  “I didn’t see your little brother.” Joy retreated to the other end of the bar and started wiping it down. Conversation over. Great job, officer. Pearl sighed. Whatever. It had been a long shot anyway.

  Pearl’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She glanced at the screen and saw a new text from Paul: S’up.

  She thought about texting him back but not for very long. He was somebody she could talk to, which wasn’t a good thing. And besides, she didn’t feel the slightest bit horny. She sucked on an ice cube. Stared at the voice mail icon with her finger hovering over it, daring herself to tap it.

  The phone rang. The finger hit accept before she fully registered the return number—same as the one on voice mail. Her father’s number. She wanted to end the call, or at least to say something, but she just sat frozen on the barstool. Unable to do either.

  “Is this Pearl?” said the voice on the other end, a male voice. Younger sounding than she’d have thought.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry . . . I guess I didn’t expect you to pick up.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Did you get the voice mail?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes. Yes, probably. I haven’t checked my voice mail.” She winced. This wasn’t going well. Music exploded out of the bar’s speaker system—Joy’s sarcastic delayed response—and it was all she could do not to fall off the chair.

  “Am I catching you at a bad time?” said the male voice.

  “What? No.” Pearl clamped a finger over her ear to shut out the song—“Naked Eye” by Luscious Jackson, one of those melodies that brought her back to being a kid. The universe does have a sick sense of humor. She said, “Is this my father?”

  “No. It’s James.”

  “Who?”

  “James. Your brother.”

  Pearl’s phone felt hot in her hand. She shut her eyes for a few seconds, sorting out her thoughts. She hadn’t spoken to her brother since . . . Well, not ever. He’d been a baby when their father had sent her away. “James,” she said. And then, “How did you get this number?” Most pointless question ever.

  “I called the station. They gave it to me. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” she said. “Don’t be, I just . . . James. Wow.” The music roared at her. She wanted more whiskey. “Why are you calling?”

  “Listen, Pearl,” he said. “Dad’s sick. We’re not sure how long he has.”

  Pearl opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  “He wanted me to tell you. I know this is . . . well, it’s weird, I know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway . . . You don’t have to. But if you do decide you want to visit, to say good-bye . . . I think he’d like that. You know . . . He said he wants closure.”

  Pearl gritted her teeth. She listened to Luscious Jackson sing about seeing the falling rain and tried not to hate James for saying what he’d just said. He doesn’t know better. He was only a baby. “I’ll think about it,” she said and ended the call quickly.

  “Dad,” James had called him. As though the man wasn’t a stranger.

  Joy was back again, looking at Pearl with something that actually approached concern. “Bad phone call?”

  Pearl nodded.

  “You want another?”

  She nodded again.

  Joy took her glass, dropped a few more ice cubes into it, and poured her a fresh drink, this time to the brim. Pearl lifted it slowly to her lips so as not to spill any. She drained half of it too quickly, her head swimmy now, vision starting to blur.

  “One sec.” Joy went back to the end of the bar; then she brought the bottle over. She topped off Pearl’s glass, poured a shot for herself. “Cheers.” She clinked the shot to Pearl’s drink, then downed it.

  “Cheers,” Pearl repeated, planning on just a sip but gulping too much, again. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who’s the stupidest man you’ve ever met?”

  Joy snorted. “Actually, that’s quite a contest.”

  Pearl took another long swallow. “Yeah I know,” she said. “But I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill douchebags who . . . like . . . spell wonderful with two l’s.”

  Joy gave her a small, tentative smile. “I dated a guy once who wanted to know how far a drive it was between Miami and Florida.”

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “Right?” she said. “He also thought Rosetta Stone was a civil rights leader. Thank God he was cute.”

  “Okay, that is really good.”

  “Don’t judge me.”

  “Of course not,” Pearl said. “But I hate to tell you, I’ve got you beat.”

  “No way.”

  “No, no. I do.”

  Joy started to pour her more, but Pearl put her hand over the glass. “The thing is, everybody thought this guy was smart. He was a career police officer up in Albany . . . totally respected.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I kid you not,” Pearl said. She finished most of the glass, Joy’s face blurring into two faces, but only briefly. She waited for it to settle back into one before she spoke again. “So this respected officer. What he does is, he leaves his personal firearm out. Doesn’t lock it up. Even though he’s got a baby and a three-year-old daughter. Jesus, I mean this guy is so dumb he doesn’t even engage the safety.”

  “Wow . . .”

  “Right? And so his daughter, the little dickens . . . she picks up the gun and she’s curious, right? She was always very curious. She’s still that way. Can’t help herself.”

  “Oh,” Joy said. “Oh no . . .”

  “Yep. The little dickens picks it up and she pulls the trigger and she shoots her own mother dead.”

  Joy stared at her, those seen-it-all eyes going soft.

  Pearl lifted the glass to her lips, sucked down the last few drops. “Now, how is that for a stupid, stupid man?”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Joy said softly. “It wasn’t the little girl’s fault.” Which was the same thing a therapist had once told Pearl. “It wasn’t your fault.” It hadn’t helped. Not with Aunt Ruth’s words always in her brain and her father so completely out of her life and that dark voice inside her, telling Pearl that she’d been no good from the start. “Black Pearl.” A murderer before she’d been old enough to read.

  One of the Sweatshirt Twins said, “Miss! Can we settle up?” But Joy didn’t even turn in their direction. She just kept watching Pearl with her head shaking, that infuriatingly sad look in her eyes.

  “Anyhoo,” Pearl said. “You might have to call me a cab.”

  Joy exhaled. “Look . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “I did see that kid here.”

  Pearl gaped at her. “What?”

  “Your brother or whoever the hell he really is. I saw him here during the Aimee En show.”

  “You did?”

  “First you need to know that I did not serve him. He had the crappiest fake ID I’ve ever seen.”

  “Fine. I don’t care about—”

  “Seriously. I remember because he literally tried to change the numbers on his driver’s license with a Sharpie.”

  The room was swimming, some other 1990s pop song—Smashing Pumpkins. Or was it The Smashing Pumpkins, she’d never been sure—blasting too loud over the speaker system, scrambling Pearl’s thoughts. Do they mean “smashing” as an adjective or a verb? She blinked a few times, wishing she
could will that third drink back into the glass. “Was he alone?” she stammered. “The boy?”

  “I think so,” Joy said. “But I also think he might have been planning to meet someone because he kept walking outside into the parking lot. Then coming back in again.”

  The parking lot. Where Amy left her “baby” . . .

  Pearl gripped the bar. Why hadn’t she chosen beer instead? She was no good to question anybody right now. But as her aunt Ruth always used to say, “If you can’t consume a drink without letting it consume you, you shouldn’t be drinking.” Boy, talk about a hypocrite. Pearl closed her eyes, collecting her thoughts. Come on . . . you can do it. Come back to the present.

  “You okay?” Joy said.

  And then it came to her. “The driver’s license,” she said, words still slurring maddeningly, but the idea itself in sharp focus. “You said it was a real one that he’d tried to change himself.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. And apparently, he figured he could pass for twenty-nine.” She laughed a little.

  “Do you remember the name on it?”

  At the end of the bar, one of the Sweatshirt Twins threw some money on the bar, and both of them headed out the door in a huff. “Thanks for the great service!” one of them yelled.

  Joy just rolled her eyes. “Weirdly enough, I do,” she said. “Well, the first name, anyway, because I called him by it a few times—you know, trying to see whether or not he’d naturally answer to it.”

  “And did he?”

  Joy nodded.

  “So,” Pearl said. “What name did this twenty-nine-year-old answer to?”

  Joy smiled, wide enough to show her teeth this time, the tiny diamond affixed to her front incisor. “Wade,” she said. “The kid’s name was Wade.”

  “HI, MOM. I’M at Jordan’s,” Connor said to his mother’s voice mail. “I’m getting a homework assignment. I’ll be back soon.” He ended the call as he watched Jordan disappear into the spreading darkness, orange reflector glaring at him from the back of his bike.

  Connor wasn’t at Jordan’s. He was on the edge of the Kill, where he’d found Jordan after losing Wade. He’d spoken to him here, both of them hiding from the few cops that remained, both of them shivering from the cold, Jordan telling him what he’d learned through chattering teeth, white puffs escaping his lips with each word. “Dude. Seriously. The detectives were talking. I heard everything.”

  The last of the police cars had just pulled away, and now Connor stood here alone, hanging on to the cold metal of his bike with Jordan’s words swirling through his brain. He wished he’d never left the house.

  The sky was a deep purple now, the Kill dark and still as a pool of blood. Once, when he was little, Connor had come here with Wade and a couple of his then-friends. Guys from Little League who rolled their eyes at the thought of the baby brother tagging along. It had been a hot summer night and they’d stayed long past dark in one of the abandoned fishing cabins on the other side of the Kill, the older boys sharing a stolen pack of cigarettes and snickering. They’d told Connor about a sixteen-year-old girl who had escaped to that very shack thirty years ago after slaughtering her entire family. By the light of the full moon, the girl had slit her own throat. They’d pointed at the floorboards, insisting that if Connor looked close enough, he could see traces of the dead girl’s blood. “She returns when the moon is full. She comes for more souls. She drags them to hell.”

  Connor could still remember how he’d trembled at the words and how small and powerless he’d felt. Like a baby. Like Arnie in his cage.

  He’d never felt quite like that again until five minutes ago, when Jordan had told him what he’d learned about the carjacking. And this time, it wasn’t just a stupid ghost story. His brother wasn’t there to say, “Cut it out, you guys,” like he had back then.

  This time, his brother was the ghost.

  Connor got on his bike and headed back to town, legs working harder than they needed to, sweating into his heavy jacket, the ugly moon lighting his way. Jordan’s words floated through his brain: “So listen, just a little while ago, they found her purse with everything in it.” When Connor finally reached Orchard, he swung onto the wide street. “See that tree? That’s where they found it. One of the guys in uniform. I saw him with the purse. Heard him talk about the wallet.” The streetlights stared down at him. He wheezed and lurched, lungs aching from the cold.

  “But this is the thing. Whoever took the car and killed Liam. He got rid of everything, the car, the purse, all the lady’s money that was in the wallet, which makes me think it’s not a gangsta, because then he would have taken the money, right?”

  The lights were still on at the Lukoil station. Connor headed fast for the red-and-white sign, without bothering to think of what he’d say if anyone caught him there. “I heard that detective say it, the girl one . . .”

  Once he reached the Dumpster, Connor squeezed the brakes and jumped off his bike without making a sound. “She said . . . only thing missing is the phone. The lady’s phone. She wanted them to keep looking for it. She wants the divers back in the Kill because the phone is missing. She was on the phone with her boss. I think the boss said it was too much money or something because she was fighting over it, saying there could be pictures on the phone . . .”

  Connor clutched the side of the Dumpster, pulling himself up, up, arms aching, cold metal cutting into his palms, rust flaking off of it like bark. Up, until the garbage fumes filled his nose and he wanted to puke, up, until he could finally see over the side . . .

  It was empty. Of course it was. Wade must have known the trash would be picked up soon, back when he’d asked Connor to throw out the bag.

  But really, it didn’t matter. Connor knew. He held it all in his mind—the shook-shooking sound as he’d walked to the Lukoil station on his brother’s orders, the lightness of the bag and the shape he’d seen when he’d raised his hands in the air—a rectangular shadow through the thin plastic. A phone. It was with him, that knowledge, whether he wanted it or not.

  Hours after Liam Miller had been hit, Wade had asked Connor to get rid of a phone.

  Connor pulled his own phone out of his pocket. For a few moments, he scrolled through his Instagram feed, almost every picture on it a shot of Liam: Liam laughing with his buddies; with Jordan’s sister, Tamara, at last year’s prom; Liam in his football uniform, the padded shoulders like a costume, as though he’d gotten dressed up as the man he would never be.

  Connor needed to get home. It was dark now and he didn’t want his mother worried enough to call Jordan’s mom and ask where he was. Connor told me he was getting the homework assignment. Was that a lie?

  Connor’s eyes started to well up at the thought of Mom, of all the awful things she didn’t know and hopefully never would . . .

  He clicked on his texts, wrote a quick one to Noah, then inhaled sharply, the hot air escaping his lips in a puff of white. I’m sorry I hit you, he’d typed. And then he sent it. There was nothing else he could safely say.

  JACKIE WAS WORRIED the mums might die in the cold. An odd thing to be concerned about at a shrine for a dead boy, but that’s the way her mind was working right now, lasering in on small worries, scuttling away from the big ones. The pot was heavy and her back hurt from carrying it these few blocks to get here, to the spot where Liam Miller was hit. But she knew she couldn’t come to a shrine empty-handed, and these mums—the glorious orange mums Helen had given her—were all she had.

  She’d noticed the shrine driving home this afternoon, but it had been much smaller then—just a few bouquets. Since then, it had grown exponentially. And as she knelt down to place the pot of mums, she took it all in: the bouquets of roses and fresh carnations and Day-Glo gerbera daisies; the stuffed animals and glittering sports trophies; the old photos and high school yearbooks and Mylar balloons; all of it spreading like a rash, like a disease, this overgrown grief, taking over the sidewalk, spilling over the curb, edging into the intersection.<
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  It terrified her.

  Jackie didn’t want to think about what she’d seen on Wade’s phone—though that had been what had brought her here: the vague notion that she might be able to sense her son’s energy in this place. Or not. Please. I don’t want to feel it. She looked up at the streetlamp, wondering if it had been this very light shining through the raindrops in the car photo. Wondering because she had no way of knowing. Even if she asked Wade about the pictures, he probably wouldn’t tell the truth. He was a teenager and a boy, and a painfully private one at that. And so all she could do was feel.

  No. There had to be an explanation for the photo taken inside the car that didn’t involve this intersection, that stolen car, that poor boy, Liam. Wade might try to scare people, the way he scared his father with his art. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He couldn’t. She remembered the other picture of him—that look on his face, that boy she’d never seen before. And she repeated the words in her head like a prayer, said them out loud: “Wade wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  A fat teddy bear glared at her. A football trophy figurine took aim at her with his ball. And Liam Miller’s face stared up at her from what she now saw were dozens of photographs, some framed, some scattered: Liam as a child and as a young man, alone and with his friends and . . . God . . . his parents. Handsome, teenage Liam and his parents, standing in front of a Christmas tree. A Christmas card photo, probably from last year. Just the three of them. Liam was an only child.

  She heard the slam of a car door. “Mom?”

  Jackie stood up. Her eyes were blurred from tears and so she blinked them away, blinked all the thoughts out of her mind and walked toward her son, her Wade, standing across the street next to his parked car, arms folded across his chest, his eyes sad and glistening in the light from the streetlamp. “Mom,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Paying my respects.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said.

  She moved closer to him, thinking, Tell me. And then, Don’t tell me. “Why?” she said.

  “I’m sorry for getting so mad. Back at the house.”