Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,73

to stop him, Mama Esther,” Riley says, straining his voice toward sincerity. It’s not hard to see we’re both in over our heads.

Mama Esther makes a sad attempt at a smile. “I know you will, boys. I know.”

* * *

It’s daybreak when I walk out of the diner on Vanderbilt. I head south, past the plaza with all its shadowed memories, through the still-gray park to Flatbush. I find a comfortable stoop out of sight and perch there, sipping the dregs of my to-go coffee, and ponder.

Sasha appears after the sun has fully risen and pushed long shadows across Ocean Avenue. The air smells fresh, the promise of a warm day ahead. I tail her to the Q train; keep one car back and hidden within a crowd of morning commuters. We switch twice and then rumble out of a tunnel and up over the Brooklyn skyline. We’re at a stop near the shipyards when she steps onto the platform and then disappears down some stairs. I slip out just as the doors are closing, earn some scowls from a group of old Russian women, and follow Sasha to the street level.

There are so many words inside of me. They bristle and burn in my throat, beg to be let out. Usually, when I’m trailing someone, it’s to send them back to Hell. If the mark swings around suddenly, I just skip to endgame and that’s that. But this . . . I step out of the station just as Sasha crosses the dirty street beneath the tracks. If she turns around, I don’t know what I would do. There’s no script. Probably, all these words would tumble out, these stupid, useless words I’ve been carrying everywhere like a bouquet of delicate, beautiful, stupid, useless flowers.

If she turns I may crumble.

A car screeches its brakes and swerves around me, but Sasha doesn’t look back. I’m almost disappointed. She shoots a glance to one side, eyes squinted, and then turns down an alleyway. I wait a beat, then lean my back against the corner and peek out. Halfway down the block, Sasha talks to a bearded man in a fedora. His skin is ashen, a deathly pale that lets me know he’s one of us. The Survivors, they call themselves. She hands him a package. I duck back out of sight.

I need to know more about this man, but Mama Esther’s right: Sasha’s bound to vanish at any given moment, especially if she’s exchanging strange packages with strange men in some strange backwater Brooklyn alley. I hole up behind a concrete pillar beneath the tracks and wait.

And wait.

And check back around the corner. The street is empty. I curse. Walk halfway down it, curse again. Storm back out. And wait.

The sky grows dark.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

It’s been going on every night for the past three or four weeks.” Mrs. Overbrook squints up at me like I might have something to do with it. I don’t.

“Just bumping or other noises too?”

“No, singing, clapping. Tambourines.” Her hands wave small circles. “All kinds of things.”

“I see.”

“Are you going to file a report, Detective?”

“Sure. Any recent deaths in the family, ma’am?”

“What’s that?”

“Deaths. Have you lost any family members recently?”

“Come.” She takes my cool gray hand in her warm little brown one and walks crookedly beside me into the next room. I’m still getting back into the swing of things, tidying up these sad little crinkles in the life-and-death continuum. Sasha hasn’t shown up for more than a week. Sarco’s shadow waits for me around every corner. And my wound itches every time I think too hard about either of them. Mrs. Overbrook hobbles along through the forest of old newspapers and random knickknacks cluttered to the low ceiling. It’s too hot in here. Outside the window, the sun does glorious things to the Manhattan skyline. “Pretty, right?”

“Beautiful,” I say. Then I realize she’s not talking about the view, which she’s probably more than used to at this point; she’s talking about a small shrine set up in a wooden bookcase beside the window. Four adorable little kids smile out of a framed picture in the middle. Around it, Mrs. Overbrook has stapled some squiggly marker drawings and a short thank-you letter written in careful, looping script. A fake gold necklace hangs off one shelf, and a tiny ballerina music box sits on the bottom.

“They died in a fire, down south.”

“How long ago?”

“It’ll be two years in June. Their stupid cow of a mother was smoking in bed.