Chapter 19
Her tears are long gone, stained with ice and despair,
And no one knows why. ’Cause they sure don’t care.
A rose on her stone gave me grace from above.
The dirt on my hands is as cold as her love.
—Dirt and Stone
THE trip out to Zhang’s apartment building was a bust. Doug Zhang’s life was a bleak trail of blood and sorrow through the San Francisco foster system. Removed and returned to his parents more than a dozen times, he was in and out of temporary homes, a typical statistic made more depressing by the abuses he suffered under Carl Vega’s hands. According to his file, Doug was a simple but quiet child, unperturbed at living with strangers and obedient to a fault. The perfect gift for a man like Carl Vega.
Before his death, Zhang lived in a run-down cinder block former motel. Scraggly clumps of weeds filled most of the thin scrap of landscaping in front of the structure, and the building’s white walls were grayed from dust and peeling at the foundation. It was a depressing, lackluster place to live.
And surrounded by an elementary school and two day cares.
After nearly two hours of pounding the sidewalks, they found no one who’d cared enough about Zhang to pay attention to who visited him. Kane thought it was a sad commentary about the man’s life. Sanchez grunted in sympathy, then complained his stomach was empty.
Inching the unmarked sedan into a parking space in front of a taco shop, they both sighed with relief that the car made it back to the City. They’d secured the black Crown Vic from Motor Pool with a stern admonishment from the administrator to return the car in pristine shape. Kel grumbled they’d have to get someone to do body work on the Ford before they came back, and Kane resigned himself to a lifetime of motor pool rejects following the sour look they got.
The sedan wasn’t going to win any prizes. The backseat’s vinyl was cracked and smelled, strangely enough, of lavender and burnt chicken feathers, but the radio worked, and up until Sanchez took a bump in the road too fast, the onboard computer linking them to the SFPD database responded smoothly. After their reenactment of an old Starsky and Hutch car jump shot, the Crown Vic rattled back onto its tires and the computer screen turned blue, leaving a few lines of squiggling white code behind. It also hesitated a second when Sanchez hit the gas, as if it needed to contemplate going another foot forward.
“Odd place for someone like Zhang to live.” Kel slid a tray of chips and salsa onto a bright orange picnic table. Passing a carnitas burrito over to his partner, he opened up his Styrofoam container and inhaled the aroma coming from his carne asada fries. “Single guy. Place is crawling with kids. It was creepy.”
There’d been piles of toys in front of many of the apartments’ doors, and Zhang’s old place on the first floor faced the street. Anyone sitting in the living room would have a clear view of the schools’ playgrounds and the children who frolicked there.
“Just because he was molested doesn’t mean he passed it on down the line.” They both knew the stats and the high likelihood of Zhang reaching out to normalize his shattered world in the only way he knew how, but Kane wasn’t ready to hang Vega’s crimes on one of his victims. “Maybe he liked listening to kids laugh. Doesn’t sound like he had much of it when he was young. Neighbors said he was nice. Didn’t bug anyone.”
“Makes me want to shoot every single asshole who’s ever touched a kid, you know?” Sanchez’s voice was soft but hot with emotion. “Someone pull that kind of shit with my sisters, I’d kill him. I know it’s the job, man, and if this asshole wasn’t fucking with St. John, it’d be hard to hate this guy.”
“That asshole gutted a man just for smoking outside. Get some food in you so we can find Beanie Boy.” Kane bit into his burrito, sucking at the juices filling the wrapped tortilla before the liquid dripped down his hand. “Maybe we’ll be lucky and get someone who recognizes him from Vega’s neighborhood. We just need a damned name. Shit, anything. I just want Miki safe.”
“Have you thought about what you and him are going to do when this is all over?” Kel sprinkled spicy red sauce on his fries, not meeting his partner’s quizzical glance. “You know, when you go back to being a cop and he goes back to being a rock star.”
“We never stopped being those things,” Kane replied. “I figure we’ll eat together, have sex, and argue about him getting some physical therapy for that leg of his.”
“So you really think this….” The man waved his hand around in the air. “This thing between the two of you is going to last after this?”
“Yeah, Kel. I do.” Kane put down his food and leaned his elbows on the table. “See, I get it now. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out how my dad and mom stayed together. They’re too different. They like different things. Hell, they can’t even agree on what kind of Christmas tree to get, so it never made sense that they were… inseparable.”
“And now you do? Because of St. John?”
“Yeah, I do,” he replied softly. “People like my mom and Miki are like kites. They need the sky. They need the wind. Me and my dad? We’re the people holding the string. We’re their anchors to the earth. Miki and I can feel each other through the connection.”
“Huh, how does that work out? You’re… wait, you’re not the string. You’re holding the string.”
“Yeah, dude. I’m holding the string.” Kane laughed at Kel’s confused look. “I can feel the power of the wind catching Miki, lifting him up and dropping him down. He can feel the world beneath me, and he knows… he trusts me not to let go… not to let him drift off into the sky. And when he gets too tired of flying, he knows I’ll reel him in and take care of him. Just like my dad does with my mom.”
“And what do you get out of that? Huh?” Kel asked pointedly. “What the fuck happens to you when he flies off?”
“I have to trust him not to.” Kane smiled at his skeptical partner. “Trust has to go both ways. I love him, Kel. I love his singing to himself as he scribbles in the damned notebooks he leaves everywhere. I love kissing the ink stains on his fingers and the flush he gets when he’s had half a beer. I know him, Kel.”
“He’s fucked up, Kane.” Sanchez shook his head, worry creasing his forehead. “You’ve gotta see that. Hell, I was in that room with him for what? An hour? Hour and a half? And I could tell he’s messed in the head.”
“It’s what I was dealt, dude.” He shrugged. “It’s what he was dealt. We’ve got to deal with it. Vega and Shing? They’re the least of it. He’s missing part of his soul, Kel. When Damien died, Miki’s music died too. He writes lyrics and leaves the other side of the page blank because that’s where Damien used to score their music. Miki knows how to love and, damn, he knows how it feels when he’s lost it.”
“He and Damien Mitchell were together, then?” Kel made a face. “Shit, man. You’re screwed.”
“They weren’t lovers, Sanchez. You aren’t listening, man. They were… brothers. Hell, closer than brothers,” Kane said. “They got one another. I can respect that. Hell, I wish I could take that kind of pain away from him, but that’s going to haunt Miki for the rest of his life. But I’ve got his heart and soul, even the shredded pieces where his best friend used to be.”
“You, my friend,” his partner pronounced. “You are stupid in love.”
“Yeah.” Kane knew the grin on his face was silly, and it hurt to stretch his cheeks out that much, but he liked how he felt, even as Kel shook his head in mock disgust. “Kel, I’m lucky he lets me love him, and I’m going to take care of what he’s given me. I have to, Kel. Or I’ll be as dead inside as Miki used to be.”
“Sounds like you’re getting the raw end of the deal there, man,” Kel sighed, picking at his fries with a fork.
“Not if you never thought you could fly,” Kane murmured. “With Miki, I can feel the wind. He lets me have a taste of the sky every time I kiss him. That’s not something I even thought of before, and now I can’t imagine my life without it.”
“YOU’RE doing what?” Edie’s voice screeched out of Miki’s phone, and he pulled it away from his ear, shooting the taxi driver an apologetic glance. “Are you insane? Turn the cab around!”
“No.” Keeping the phone angled away from his face, he spoke quietly into the headset. “I kind of have to do this, Edie. It just feels right to do.”
“Right to do? You thought it would be okay to have chickens on the tour bus because you wanted scrambled eggs! You think this is the right thing to do, and I can’t get you to see a therapist to talk about your messed up head?” She ranted for a moment, and Miki spent the time tracing the snippets of a song in his mind. After he circled round to the chorus for the third time, he took advantage of Edie’s need to breathe.
He loved Edie. In a very real way, she’d been the only family he had left after the accident, but as she inhaled quickly and continued to disparage his decision to see the Vega house one last time, Miki remembered why it’d been so important to come back home to San Francisco instead of living in Los Angeles where she could watch him.
“Hanging up on her would be bad, right?” Miki leaned forward to whisper into the driver’s ear. “I mean, really bad, right?”
“Is she your wife?” the older Russian man asked. “Because if she is your wife, yes. If she is your girlfriend, maybe a little bad, but you can make that better. If a wife, then no. You listen and shut up.”
“No, she’s my manager,” Miki said, wincing as another round of berating began. “Kind of like an aunt.”
“Oh, then, no.” The gray-haired man adjusted his cap. “If your mother or aunt, worse than your wife. For them, you say yes and do what you need to do as a man behind their back. Then hope they do not find out.”
Sitting back, Miki slid his remark in between Edie’s admonishments. “Okay, I’m heading back to the Morgans. I’ll have the cab guy turn around.”
The Russian met Miki’s eyes in the rearview mirror, lifting his eyebrows in question. Shaking his head no, Miki made a face when the cabbie grinned widely at him, showing the large gap between his two front teeth. Edie wound down her tirade with a dark promise to descend upon San Francisco as soon as she finished filing lawsuits on his behalf. Ending the call, Miki turned off the phone and sank into the vinyl seat, tired out from the battle.
“Good! Well done!” The cab driver grunted. “You have no father, yes? Or he would have taught you these things.”
“Nope, but I know one now I can ask.” Miki’s mouth lifted at the corners as he thought of what Donal Morgan would have to say about Edie. “I think he’d have told me the same thing. Well, I hope so. He’s kind of the reason I’m heading up here. Just need to say… good-bye. To everything.”
“Good man, then.” He flipped off the meter. “You, I give you the ride for free. Then you call me when you’re done there. I’ll come get you.”
“Deal,” Miki said, taking the man’s card when the driver handed it to him.
After directing the Russian to drop him off at the corner, Miki gave the driver a hefty tip and another promise to call him back. Giving the man a friendly wave, he gripped the walking stick he borrowed from Donal, easing the weight off of his injured knee.
They’d tussled a bit about Miki heading to Vega’s house but in the end, Miki’s desire to put his ghosts to bed outweighed Donal’s apprehension. As a concession to Donal’s suspicious nature, he took the ancient walking stick Donal pulled from an umbrella stand.
The shillelagh was a gnarled piece of blackthorn Donal’s grandfather used while tramping through the wilds of Ireland, and Miki’d been reluctant to take it with him, but the older man scoffed at his reservations.
“That shillelagh there’s been through greater battles than you’ll find here in San Francisco, boy.” Donal’s lilting scold was light, a cheerful reassurance for Miki to take what seemed to be a Morgan heirloom with him as he climbed the hills of Vega’s neighborhood. “It’ll be good to have a piece of the family with you as you chase your boojums. If you want to do this alone, then at least have us with you in spirit. Now take the damned thing and go. Before the driver starts charging you for sitting there at the curb.”
“I feel like a goddamn leprechaun,” he groused. His knee gave him a little trouble, sending off a twinge or two as he walked up the hill toward Vega’s house, and the blackened, stout piece of wood made it easier to walk. “Or one of those hipster douches at the coffee shop. I could start a new trend. McPimp Mac Daddy fashions.”
It was too damned easy to reach the middle of the street. Miki suddenly found himself staring at his own personal hell. His fingers ached until he realized he was gripping the cane’s knob too tightly. He forced his hand to relax and the tension flowed out into his arms and shoulders, locking his legs with a rigid purpose.
Coming up to the house seemed like a good idea when he’d been cradled in the relatively insane warmth of the Morgan home. Surrounded by echoes of laughing children and steady adults, Miki found a longing inside of him, something whispering a promise that he could find a place at the table during the holidays or even a comforting word from a battered veteran of the fathering wars when he got too lost to find his way out of his head.
Donal asked him if he was ready to say good-bye to the past and step toward a better future. Miki couldn’t answer the man. There’d been too many shadows lurking behind him, and in that moment, Miki knew he had to make a clean break with his demons. He owed that much to Kane.
A tiny, frail voice in the back of his head whispered he owed that much to himself.
The house looked… smaller than he remembered, more worn down and tired around its edges. A bright orange paper was taped over the doorframe, warning people off the property. Fragments of yellow tape flapped their ragged edges from the hedge near the front stoop, more remnant of a tragedy than a warning against entry.
Time slipped away from Miki when he finally took a step forward and his foot hit the concrete walk. Within a blink of an eye, he was a child again, edging past the house in a slink. The boards fencing off the backyard were still loose, and he used the shillelagh’s heft to hold them to the side so he could slip past the splintery wood. Familiar scents assaulted him: a drift of pine from the trees bristling between the houses, a whiff of mildew from the partially open basement windows, and the odd pungency of the cheap paint Vega used to coat the house in its weary colors.
The ground beneath his sneakers was damp, and he nearly slipped when his foot hit a patch of lichen spreading outward in a black ripple. Miki slammed his hand against the house’s outer wall and hissed at the pain of his palm being scraped open on the rough paint. Shaking off the weeping sting, he picked his way through the weeds and recycle bins filled with empty aluminum cans to reach the ramshackle shed sitting at the back of the property.
At one point in the shed’s past, it served as a place to park a car. Adjacent to the alley running behind the houses, its single open wall had been boarded up, rendering it useless as a garage. Past owners made the space their own, either as a workroom or a space to tinker on mysterious projects, but the Vegas used the space for storage.
Miki had used it as a place to hide and dream.
He’d spent several afternoons moving boxes around until he carved out a good amount of space along the far wall. Now confronted by a wall of cardboard, Miki wondered if his hidey-hole was gone, but the flap of a washing-machine box remained in place. Slender windows cut along the eaves of the old garage let in enough light to see, and dust motes clotted the air, spiraling away in great waves as Miki moved about.
“Shit, I was a skinny kid,” he grumbled when he whacked his elbow against the wall trying to squeeze through the space. The shillelagh tucked under his arm rattled against the wood frame with each crab-walk step he took. A few seconds of dimness, and he was free of the tunnel and standing in what he’d always thought of as his lair.
It was as if time stopped and he was a kid again, trembling in fear at hearing Vega’s car rumble down the alleyway to park behind the house.
The painful-to-the-eye orange beanbag he’d rescued from a trash pile was still there, covered with a thin layer of dust. Strips of duct tape stitched together its torn sides, keeping its guts from spilling out. The edges of the tape were lifted up from age, and while he wouldn’t trust it to sit on, Miki grinned at the idea of it lying in wait like a vampiric tangerine blob. Shelves above the beanbag held what he came looking for, treasures he’d hidden away from grasping adult hands and judgmental eyes.
Pulling out a large box marked “roofing nails,” Miki eyed the beanbag suspiciously, deciding the decrepit vinyl probably wouldn’t hold its guts in if he sat on it. Squatting was another option, but an upside-down milk crate served readily enough as a stool. Miki opened the box flaps and stared down into his remains of his childhood.
A curled-up Playgirl held a prominent spot against a cardboard wall, and Miki laughed when he pulled it out and leafed through the pages. He couldn’t remember spending a lot of time on the images of the heavily endowed men between the covers, recalling only reading the sexual encounter stories, but the stickiness between the middle pages told him otherwise.
“Huh,” Miki murmured, turning the book so he could stare at the sculpted, muscular form of the blue-eyed centerfold model. “Guess this means I’m really gay. Kane’ll be happy.”
Emptying out the box took very little time. A few CDs he ripped off from the music store at the top level of the Japantown mall rattled when he drew them out. He set the L’arc disc aside, promising himself to go back and pay for them now he had money. A few papers boasting test scores low enough to qualify as Death Valley residents reminded Miki he’d hated school and an insect got to the string of gold stars he pasted together during a nearly funerary art class he had to take in the seventh grade. The art teacher showed up drunker than one of the unwashed men loitering down at the pier, and he’d taken great care to rub his leg against Miki’s thighs when he went around the class to look at their art projects.
“Maybe I can get Kane to shoot him too,” Miki sniffed. He reached down to stroke at a furry ear that wasn’t there and then sighed, suddenly missing his dog terribly. “Come on, it’s got to be here.”
It was under the papers. He’d not been careful with it, not as careful as it probably deserved because, like the beanbag, it showed the wear of time and the grimy effects of belonging to a little boy. Still, Miki drew it out with a special reverence, a tiny flicker of warmth flushing his cheeks as he uncovered his first friend.
Like the house, the plushie was smaller than he remembered, a little bit longer than his hand but squishable. With a black body constructed more like a flattened X than any similarity to an animal, its white head was topped with floppy round ears. Two black button eyes were set above its squished, dirty pink embroidered nose.
He’d been eight and at a street carnival, scrounging about between the booths for dropped money or game tickets. Fifteen tickets meant a small popcorn. Thirty gained him a hot dog with the works. Miki couldn’t remember how many he had when a woman shoved a handful of tickets at him but all of it been enough for cotton candy, two hot dogs, and the oddly shaped black and white plush dog-panda he spotted at the prize booth.
It wasn’t pretty, but it hung alongside the other toys as if proud of its cobbled-together appearance. The guy at the booth thought he was crazy for wanting it. Miki couldn’t imagine taking anything else home.
“Hey, Dude,” Miki whispered into the stuffed animal’s ear. “How about if I take you home now? There’s a guy I want you to meet. Oh, and I’ve got a dog, but I don’t think that’ll be a problem. He’s mostly into tennis balls.”
After stuffing the toy into the inside pocket of his jacket, Miki made his way out again, banging his elbow on the garage’s framing. He stumbled out of the shed and into the full daylight, blinking away the tears stinging his eyes at the bright sun. Patting his chest, Miki gripped the head of the shillelagh and dug its tip into the backyard’s scrabbling weeds. He took one step forward then the back of his head exploded in pain. The world spun around him, a battalion of stars swimming through the blackness edging around his vision.
He hit the ground face first, his stomach aching where the shillelagh dug into his side. The pain across the back of his head was nothing compared to the agony of his twisted knee, and Miki nearly threw up when he flipped over to face his attacker.
And saw nothing but the black muzzle of a gun as it was shoved into his open mouth.