Unhinged Read online

  “Big Brother strikes again,” Darren said. He handed me his coffee.

  “He has his uses, that Big Brother,” I said. I stared at the image in front of me. I was calm. We knew that Michael Vernon Smith had flown into Toronto, but nobody had been tracking him in real time. He could be anywhere now. He could have driven up north to Thunder Bay, or he could be standing on the sidewalk outside by now. I felt lightheaded for a moment, somewhere between euphoric and deflated.

  “I didn’t spend much time with the man, unlike you and Fred,” Darren said. “I wouldn’t know him if he was standing in the room with us, other than the pictures I’ve seen.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll get the boys moving.”

  “If you could wait a minute please, Darren,” Rosen said. He was unfailingly polite and courteous, despite the fact that we had drilled it into him that he wasn’t a servant. “There’s one last bit Dave flagged for us all to see.” He opened a new video file, one of Smith wheeling his suitcase out of the arrivals hall. At the door, Smith took off his cap and looked directly up at the camera, and smiled. He held the pose for a couple of seconds, put the cap back on, and left the building.

  “Play it again,” I said. Rosen played the short video again.

  “Did he just wink?” Darren said.

  “Yes,” Rosen said. He said it slowly, like he said most things. “I think so.”

  “Motherfucker,” I said.

  “Do you think it was for law enforcement?” Fred said.

  “No, Fred,” I said. My heartbeat had finally gone up. My spidey senses were definitely tingling. “That was for me.”

  We were silent for a minute, all of us staring at the screen. Then, from upstairs, we heard a glass break. I was moving before the sound had even registered in my brain. After a second, Marta’s mother started yelling in Spanish, and the sound of Marta placating her filtered through the ceiling. Darren laughed first, and then we all did.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t think about better soundproofing,” I said, for the tenth time since we’d moved in.

  “It’s good security,” Rosen said, as he did every time I complained about how everybody on the main floor, the gym floor where Rosen lived, could hear Marta’s mother’s tirades.

  “She’s better than a guard dog, that lady,” Fred said. The tension in the room had eased a notch. “So what do we do now?” he said.

  “I make coffee, and call Dave,” I said. I could see Rosen and Darren give each other a meaningful look. I blushed and hated myself for it. None of the men in my life could understand why Dave and I hadn’t paired off already, formed some kind of romantic vigilante duo, fighting evil and making babies, or something. Only Darren had some idea of what had happened between Dave and me. What a coward I’d been. What a coward I was.

  “I’ll go see what’s eating Mama Estela,” Darren said. He was the only one who could get her to smile. “And then maybe Marta and I will see about getting space ready for the crew.” He was heading for the stairs.

  The atmosphere was odd, almost manic. Since that day back in Maine when Fred and I had faced down Michael Vernon Smith and one of his followers, we had all been waiting for confirmation that Smith had made it out of the Maine woods alive, one of his eyes destroyed by the corkscrew that Fred had stabbed him with, and that he was coming after us.

  Knowing he was here, in our city, after all this time, was almost a relief. Almost.

  “You said they’re in Asia,” I called to his back. “There’s nothing they can do here. We’ve got things covered, Darren.”

  “I’d say we need all the help we can get, Danny,” Fred said. He pointed at his own face. “I’m no help to you. And these are our boys.”

  “Mr. Lindquist is right, Danny,” Rosen said. He stood up, and put his hand gently on my shoulder. “This is not a time to put personal grievances ahead of the mission.” His nostrils were flaring a bit, which in Rosen-land meant that he thought he was being funny.

  He may not have been a Cleary, but he had joined the ranks of men in my family who seemed to find making fun of me irresistible.

  “Stop calling him Mr. Lindquist. Call him Fred,” I said automatically, for the hundredth time. “And this isn’t funny, Mr. Rosen.” I called him that when I was peeved. He hated it almost as much as he hated when we called him “James”.

  “No, it’s not,” Rosen said. No nostrils flaring now. He was looking me straight in the eyes. “We are all here – all of us are here – to make sure that those boys upstairs have a good life. In our different ways, we all failed them. And we are going to do everything we can, use all of our individual strengths, whatever we have at our disposal, to keep them safe and happy.”

  I nodded, chastened. I did forget, sometimes, that I wasn’t the only person under this roof who felt responsible for what had happened to Ginger, and to the boys after that. Rosen had watched them grow up from toddlers, and when they had been kidnapped from school, part of his role in my sister’s household had been to keep an eye on the boys’ welfare.

  “Wellll, strictly speaking, Marta didn’t fail anybody,” Darren said from behind me. He hadn’t gone upstairs yet. “That woman is blameless. I’m thinking of marrying her.” Rosen smiled, a rare enough thing.

  “You’re an ass,” I said to my brother. “And don’t let Mama Estela hear you. She’ll have the priest here, and there will be no backing out of it.”

  “I could do worse!” Darren yelled over his shoulder.

  “You have,” Fred and I both replied, and we grinned at each other idiotically.

  “It’s raining,” Rosen said, nodding at the window above his computer desk. “We’ll keep the boys inside today. Some sparring, movies.” He shrugged. He had just described his favorite day, though he would never admit it. Rosen was a fan of 1980s American teenage films, and from what I could gather, he and the twins were currently working their way through John Hughes’ oeuvre. As I loathe both romantic comedies and movies about teenagers, I generally opted out.

  “Let me know when you get to Cameron Crowe,” I said. “Say Anything… is the only film of that genre I will watch.”

  “It just came in on Blu-ray,” Rosen said, trying not to seem excited. “We can change the schedule. You should join us.”

  He’s here, my brain kept repeating. I am standing here talking about eighties films and Michael Vernon Smith is somewhere close by.

  “Maybe I will,” I said. “Let’s see where we are later.” I wanted coffee and breakfast before calling Dave. Oh, and maybe a bump of coke. Ha, ha. “See you at Marta’s, if not before. We’ll tell everyone about this,” I nodded at his computer, “and talk about safety.”

  “Again,” Rosen said.

  “Again,” I agreed.

  We had a routine throughout the summer since school had let out for the boys, though none of us had day jobs, per se, other than the gym. Each floor was self-contained with its own kitchen, and for the most part we all came and went as our individual schedules dictated. But one of us, usually Fred or Darren, would make sure the boys were up and dressed by ten-thirty or eleven in the summer. No one with the Cleary gene is a morning person.

  At five p.m., whoever was home would congregate in Marta’s kitchen for food. It was the only meal we always ate together, unless we were out, and it often lasted the entire evening, with some of us draped onto the fire escape out back to catch some early evening sun. Marta would sometimes set up a grill on the makeshift patio she’d created outside, and she might have chicken or shrimp going, leaving one of the boys to tend to it while she stood in the kitchen, slowly sipping her one cerveza of the day while she chopped and stirred and chided and cooked. Darren could often be persuaded to go grab a guitar, and the boys would, less often, grab theirs. Darren had been teaching them to play, though neither had picked up the music gene. Fred would sit with Marta’s son Eddie to practice his Spanish, and I was trying to learn how to cook. Well, I was trying to learn to chop things.

  There had been some
memorable nights this summer, nights I hoped the boys would keep with them always. When Laurence came to visit at the end of July for a week, and he and Darren had played guitars and sang Celtic folk songs very late into the night, until finally Mama Estela started trying to teach them some Mexican ones. The boys and I had laughed so hard that night, my abs were sore the next day. Or the night Rosen and Fred had engaged in an epic Scrabble tournament – just the two of them; none of us could possibly compete with either – and the boys had fallen asleep on either side of me on the couch Marta kept in her kitchen, Luke’s head on a pillow on my lap and Matty’s on my shoulder. I’d stayed there until dawn, long after everyone else had gone to bed, tears streaming down my face.

  We were making a life for them, the best life we could. Darren had left his band, which I railed against. Certainly the boys did; they were proud of their uncle, the rock star. He shrugged it off, saying he’d start another one someday; that he was going to write and record his own stuff; it was no big sacrifice. But I knew better. Darren had never had a life away from the road, not really. He’d certainly never had any passions other than his music. But I knew that being shot in his lung back in Maine by one of Michael Vernon Smith’s people had also affected his ability to sing. Or at least, to get up on stage and sing all evening the way he used to. He didn’t have the stamina anymore. He quite literally didn’t have the lungs for it.

  Michael Vernon Smith had a lot to answer for.

  And now he was here. He was in Canada. He was in Toronto. As I walked slowly back up to the third floor, I could feel the desire to get to him, to hurt him, to make him suffer as he had made my family suffer – I could feel it down to my fingertips. My skin was nearly on fire with the desire to kill him. And I was happy.

  This was what I’d needed. He was here. I would find him. I would do what needed to be done. And, by God, I would enjoy it.

  SIX

  “Danny,” Dave said. He sounded very far away. He was very far away. I was sitting on my bed with the door shut. “I take it you got the message.”

  “And the video,” I said.

  “You saw the wink?”

  “I saw it.” There was a pause. “Where are you?”

  “East,” he said. He sounded like he was outside. I heard car horns, traffic. A city, then. “Very east.” Bangkok, maybe? Shanghai?

  “Okay,” I said. No more questions about that, then. “Dave,” I started, and he stopped me.

  “Don’t, Danny. Please,” he said. “We’ll talk about it another time. Okay?” He sounded tired. He had just finished doing God knows what in God knows where, and did not sound like he wanted to have The Talk. Which, of course, suited me down to the ground.

  “Good. Well – good.” That’s me, the scintillating conversationalist.

  There was a pause. “Listen, it’s stupid o’clock here,” Dave said. “Well, midnight or something, but I’ve been up for two days.”

  “Right, sorry, I didn’t think.”

  “I’m flying into Toronto in a few days,” Dave said.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. I realized I was pacing in front of my open window, and I jerked the blinds shut. “Next steps. What we do now, that kind of thing.”

  “We’ll hash it out when I get there,” Dave said. “But, Danny, there isn’t much we can do, for the time being.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “He’s here. Smith is here.”

  “Probably. But unless he checks into a hotel under his own name, or the name he used to get into the country, it’s unlikely we’ll find him.” He said something loudly in a language that could have been Thai, could have been Indonesian… hell, it could have been Greek, for all I knew. “Someone’s waiting for me. But for the time being, the only thing you can do is wait.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait for him to come after us. After the boys. Because I’ve always been known for my patience.”

  “It’s not ideal, Danny, but it’s what you’ve been preparing for. Just turn the alert level from orange to red, and sit tight.” A car horn beeped, loud and tinny, very near him. He yelled something and it sounded like he was running in a rainstorm. “I’ve got to go. Two or three days and we’ll be there. Be vigilant, and call me if anything happens.”

  “Like what,” I said, but he’d hung up.

  Fan-fucking-tastic. I had somehow missed this possibility, in my mind: the torture of knowing that Michael Vernon Smith was close by but being unable to find him. I almost wished we didn’t know he was here, because, effectively, nothing had changed. My only comfort was the knowledge that when Dave got here, things would probably move along.

  I was surrounded by people I loved, and people I was very fond of – even Mama Estela had grown on me. But their safety was my responsibility. Rosen was smart, dedicated to the boys, handy with weapons, and certainly a fighter. I’d studied Krav Maga with him, and had the bruises to show for it. But he was also a paid employee as well as being a member of our tribe, and I could and would never expect him to put his life on the line for us. Darren was a good shot and in decent shape for a man in his thirties with one lung, but he was more of a nurturer than a warrior. Fred – well, Fred was Fred. Though after watching the speed at which he’d gone after Smith with the corkscrew back in Maine, he shouldn’t be totally discounted. It showed he had more courage than I would ever have given him credit for, and I knew he would do whatever he needed to do to protect the boys. His careless chat with Zuzi the Stripper notwithstanding.

  As for Marta and her family, they were here to help make this place feel like home for the boys, and for all of us. But as far as I could tell, Marta’s greatest weapon was her ability to produce copious amounts of very moving tears. Her son was younger even than the twins. Regarding Mama Estela – well, there had been much late-night chatter about her on my floor. Darren claimed to have seen her passport at one stage, and said she was in her late eighties. I thought she could be anywhere from sixty-five to a hundred. When she wasn’t holding her back and claiming – according to Marta, who had to translate – to be close to her deathbed, I didn’t doubt that she had the heart of a warrior in her five-foot frame.

  We were a motley crew, alright.

  Within the confines of the law – well, mostly; I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’d rather face a weapons charge than face Michael Vernon Smith without a gun in my hand – we were as prepared as we could be with the time we’d had.

  In a few weeks, school would be back in session for the fall. The plan was that the boys would be taking the subway to school like most other kids their age did, but not now. Now, they would be driven there every morning and picked up again by one of us. We had gone over all of this the last time Dave and his crew had been in town, all the security procedures we should employ to keep us safe. Some things had slackened a bit – we’d let the boys ride their bikes to the beach in the summer. It seemed cruel, on some of the hot, idyllic summer days we’d had, to have them chaperoned by one of us twenty-four seven.

  I paced around the room, feeling like a caged animal. Waiting for something to happen? Not my strong suit. Feeling powerless? Even less so. I wanted this to be over. I wanted Michael Vernon Smith to crash through my window that very minute, so I could have done with it. With him.

  Instead, I changed into old jeans and a t-shirt and went down the hall to make coffee. As it was brewing I began cleaning out the fridge, tossing yogurt that was probably fine and what looked like Chinese takeaway that Darren had probably only ordered last night. I had to do something. My brain was awash with thoughts of revenge, mixed with shame and confusion about my feelings for Dave, and what I’d done, leaving him alone in the hospital without so much as a note. I would get through the afternoon, and at dinner we’d all have a pow-wow and tell the boys what we’d learned. I hated that they had to worry about these things, that they even had to know about them.

  Ginger, where are you? I thought. She used to be with me. I used to feel her wi
th me. The times I sensed her presence had grown fewer and fewer, and now she seemed nearly gone. She’d given me strength when I needed it, when I didn’t think I could do what needed to be done, or when I was fantasizing too much about retreating into a life of crack cocaine and solitude. She’d kept me in the world, and I needed her now.

  “What’d you throw that out for?” Darren said from behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “It’s, like, two days old.” He was looking at the Chinese takeout cartons at the top of the trash can, which I had taken from underneath the sink and put on the floor behind me where I could dump the contents of the fridge into it more easily. “Everybody knows that left over Chinese lasts a month. I believe there have been studies to prove it. Something about the MSG interacting with the takeout containers. Very scientific.”

  “Take it out,” I said. “It’s at the top.” The coffee was ready and I poured some for both of us.

  “Danny, I am not eating from the garbage,” he said. “I know I’m unemployed, but there are lows to which I will not sink.” He proceeded to pluck the carton from the trash, open it, and stick it in the microwave.

  “You know you’re a moron, right?” I said.

  “Yes, but don’t use that word.”

  “You’re intellectually challenged, then.” We drank our coffee, leaning against the counter, and grinned at each other.

  “So, what’s the plan then?” Darren said. “You talked to your boyfriend?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” I said. “He’ll be here in two or three days.”

  “In the meantime?”

  “In the meantime, nothing. We keep an eye out.”