Chapter 2 #3
Aladdin sagged into the bed and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I… wow, copper, you don’t know it, but you hit me where I don’t live anymore.
” He took the deep shuddering breath of a man who was trying not to cry, because men weren’t supposed to cry, and kept his face averted. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to tell you that the boy—Tienne—is okay. I’d say fine, but—”
Aladdin swallowed. “He just saw his father practically beheaded in a back alley. No. Not fine. Poor kid.”
Listening to him now, Liam could hear the British accent he’d affected—fairly successfully—slipping. What remained was subtly American, although Liam wasn’t yet great at gauging from where. If it wasn’t a moviesque New York or Southern accent, he was at a loss.
“He thinks you’re a hero, you know.” Liam softened his own tone and, trying to appear non-threatening, sat down in the chair across from the reluctant patient and got a good look at his face.
He was breathing hard—Liam had heard he’d nicked a lung, although there’d been no pneumothorax, thanks to the quick treatment. But the flesh of his rib cage and concave stomach had been carved upon—literally a K, A, D and the beginnings of a J.
Liam could see blood seeping out through the bandages and thought with a sudden cold sweat that if he’d managed to get some scrubs and slip out the window—and it was obvious he’d been eyeing it the entire time as an exit—the young man might truly fulfill his wish and die. Quickly or slowly, it wouldn’t matter.
With a swallow, Aladdin dashed at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “He doesn’t know, though, does he?” he mumbled, almost to himself. “What a real waste of oxygen I am.”
“You saved his life,” Liam said. “And now we need your help.”
Surprised, the man glanced up, his eyes red-rimmed and shadowed with pain and exhaustion. The hand he moved to wipe more tears was shaking, and Liam had a sudden flash of insight. The boozy humor in the museum, the announcement of “trying to drink himself to death.”
He apparently almost had drunk himself to death. Now that he was coming down from the anesthetic, he was detoxing.
“I’m a wreck,” the man said, laughing bitterly at himself. “I’m not sure what I can do.”
“Do you know the boy?” Liam asked.
A shake of the head. “No. First time I saw him was in that alley. I tried not to pay attention when Kadjic was working.”
As long as the booze was good—the words remained unspoken, but the recrimination hung in the air.
“Well, we’ve got two options. One is to take him into custody as a material witness―”
“And sign the boy’s death warrant?”
Those puckish features suddenly sharpened, and Liam could feel it roaring out of the man: Protectiveness for a boy he’d never met.
“Or find someone willing to shelter him,” Liam said. Besides me mum, who would do it, too, but that’s a fine way to thank her.
“Shit,” Aladdin muttered. “Shit, shit, shit-shit-shit-shit-shit. Fuck. Goddammit. Fuck.”
Liam found himself chuckling in spite of the direness of the situation. “That was impressive.”
There was a roll of the eyes. “Is my bag of stuff still here?” Aladdin asked.
Liam found it on the side of the bed and handed it over.
Inside was a cell phone—but not a smart phone.
This was a dinosaur, a Nokia, the tiny coffin-shaped one that needed shortcut keys and a degree in cryptography to text.
The charge was dying on the thing, but there was a cord—as ancient as the phone—and an adapter in the bag too.
And enough cash to rent a flat for a year.
And a small silver flask. Liam checked it for an inscription.
Danny, to grand adventures. Love forever, Felix.
Liam swallowed, and then watched as Danny—it had to be his flask—plugged in the phone and hit a number. Not a preset, from memory.
“Dearest?” he said in a voice one might use for a beloved sister.
“No, no—don’t give him the phone. Don’t tell Josh either.
Just… goddammit, I had no idea you’d all be eating breakfast. Get up, apologize to Fox, and hide in the office for a minute.
I’ve got….” His voice fractured. “Julia, I have a huge favor to ask you, but it’s important. ”
There was a pause as Danny waited for the woman to do what he asked.
Then after a brief, tearful entreaty on the other end of the line, Danny replied in an equally fractured voice, “Sweetheart, I’m a mess.
I can’t come home like this. Do you think I want the boy to see me like this?
I can’t… I can’t come back to Fox when I’m looking up to see rock bottom. I… a man has his pride.”
He broke on the word “pride,” and Liam had a terrible sense of how much this conversation was costing him.
That tearful voice again, but with an edge of control. They were both pulling themselves together.
“There’s a boy,” Danny said. “Our boy’s age.
He’s… he’s seen terrible things. He needs shelter.
I… I have no idea if he understands family like we do.
He may prefer boarding school—” Danny paused.
“Art, I think. He and his father make—made—beautiful art. That is the only thing I know about him. But he needs home. Someplace that is home. You… I may not be able to come back, but he’s got no sins to repent.
He needs somebody, and I- I can’t be that somebody. Not now.”
There was a digestive silence, and then the voice, calmer now, in charge.
“I’ll give the phone to my young copper friend—” A sudden look of disgust. “No, I didn’t get nicked.
My God, woman, cut a man when he’s down.
He is….” Danny gave Liam a beseeching glance.
“He is a friend. And he’s doing this boy a big favor shipping him to you.
He’ll need another name and ID. I’ll….” Danny let out a breathy sigh and seemed to sag even more against the bed.
Gently, Liam took the phone from his fingers and gestured for him to lie down to rest. This man had just come out of surgery—and, as he’d told the woman on the phone, he had to look up to see rock bottom.
“Hello?” Liam said softly. “This is Agent Liam Craig, Interpol. Your friend here—”
“Danny?” she said, and while her voice was thick, it was also begging for confirmation.
“Danny,” he confirmed when the figure in the bed nodded. “He’s been helping us in an investigation, and the boy… he’s at risk. I don’t know if you’re equipped to deal with someone who needs a new identity—”
“Oh, you leave that part to us,” she said, so dryly Liam had to wonder at her background with Danny Lightfingers, the thief. “But Danny—”
“Please,” Danny said, shivering in what was probably his first shock of the DTs. “Please don’t tell her.”
“He needs to dry out,” Liam said. “Don’t worry. I can find him a place.”
“Tell her not to tell Felix,” Danny whispered. “Not anything. Just shelter the boy.”
“He….” Liam swallowed, realizing that here was when he put himself between two lovers. “He requests that you don’t tell Felix.”
“Fucking aces,” Julia said acidly. “Tell him….” Her venom only lasted four words. “Tell him he can come home anytime.”
“I’ll do that,” Liam said. “Here’s my number.” He rattled it off. “I’ll call you with travel information—”
“What does the boy have?” she asked. “Does he need anything?”
“He needs everything,” Liam told her, thinking of the backpack, which had been sliced by the murderer’s knife and had bled its contents, including the green paint, all over the streets of Morocco. “I don’t think he’s got a spare pair of skivvies to call his own.”
“Poor baby,” she said, and her compassion was real. “Contact me in an hour with a place to send money, and I’ll see that you get him kitted out and on a plane to Chicago. I’ve got to get my son off to school and speak to my husband, but we’ll get this sorted.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to warn her again not to speak to Felix, whoever he was to her, but she signed off, and the line went dead.
He handed the phone back to Lightfingers, who unconsciously cradled it to his chest.
“She’s… formidable,” he said and was amused by Lightfingers’s adamant nod.
“She is.” He closed his eyes. “I hate to turn the boy loose, but if anybody can offer him shelter, she and Fox can.”
“Is she your sister?” he asked. Something about their familiarity, their pained separation, spoke deeply of family.
Danny Lightfingers let out a fractured laugh.
“Lover’s wife,” he said, with a bitter smile at Liam’s surprise.
“It’s not as sordid as you’re thinking. She…
.” He shuddered. “She needed to escape. She was pregnant, and her father would have beaten her to death if he’d found out.
So we married her off to Felix.” And then, to Liam’s everlasting wonder, he saw Danny Lightfingers smile.
He was huddling in the bed, in pain and detoxing, and he smiled.
He looked like a fallen angel.
“And she had the baby, and we were a family. And it was really wonderful.” Then a tear escaped from eyes he’d squeezed shut. “The boy… he’s ten now. Just went to his party. Snuck in, hugged him, left him a gift, snuck out. So smart. Kind. Light of my life.”
“Why’d you leave?” Liam asked, his heart hurting.
“’Cause that’s all I ever was to them,” Danny whispered, and he was Danny now, whatever his last name.
He was young—Liam would find out later he was barely thirty—and he was sad and lonely and in pain.
“I was the thing that crept in their windows, made love to Fox, played games with the boy, hugged my sister… crept out. It’s cold in the shadows, young copper.
Pretty soon I needed the scotch to warm my heart so it would beat. None of it was any way to live.”
Liam’s eyes were burning. He didn’t know the whole of the story, but he knew enough now. He’d had a dalliance with a man who had lied about being married. It had hurt, but the thought of being in love, not only with a man but with a family, and being the dirty secret—the ache that would cause….