Legacies

2.

Jack bounded up the stairs and knocked on the sturdy oak door—or more precisely, on the countless coats of paint that blunted the details of the door's carved surface. Four A was spelled out in brass at eye level, and he wondered why the "A?" This was the only apartment on the floor.

He'd pushed to meet her here because he wanted to get more of a handle on the enigmatic Dr. Alicia Clayton—treater of children with AIDS, buster of child-molester skulls, and would-be burner of ancestral homes.

The door swung in and Alicia stood there, staring at him—a little tentatively, he thought—with those steely eyes. Her black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, giving her an almost girlish look. She was wearing dirty gardener's gloves.

"You're not breathing hard," she said.

"Well, I admit you're attractive, but I don't think—"

She smiled. "No-no. I mean, the walk up the steps. Most people are winded by the time they get here."

Winded? Why?

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Me too. Really winded. Can I come in and rest?"

She hesitated.

"I won't bite," he said. "Promise."

"Sorry," she said, and stepped aside to let him in. "It's just that you can't be too careful, you know?"

As she closed the door behind them, Jack popped the Semmerling out of his sleeve and held it out to her. She gasped when she saw the tiny pistol.

"Take it," he said. "It's loaded. The world's smallest four-shot .45. Keep it handy while I'm here."

She stared at it as if it were alive and going to bite her. "That's okay. Really."

"Sure?"

When she nodded, he tucked it into a pocket. He didn't know who was more relieved right then: Alicia, because he'd offered her the weapon, or himself, because she hadn't taken it. He didn't feature anyone else messing with his Semmerling.

She led him out of the foyer. "Come on. We can talk in here."

Jack followed her as far as the threshold, then stopped, staring.

A jungle. A high-ceilinged room, almost a loft, with big skylights, and green everywhere. Not houseplants. Trees. Little trees, yes, but trees. Some with their tops wrapped in clear plastic, like oxygen tents, and others with bandages around their trunks.

"What is this?" he said. "A tree hospital?"

She laughed, and Jack realized this was the first time he'd heard that sound from her.

"You ought to do that more often," he told her.

"What?"

"Laugh."

Her smile faded. "I might do just that… once the house is gone." Before Jack could say anything, she turned and waved a gloved hand at the room. "Anyway, this is my hobby: plant grafting."

"No kidding?" he said, stepping into the room and looking about. "That's a hobby?"

"It is for me. Or maybe it's therapy of sorts. Whatever it is, it gives me… pleasure."

For an instant there he'd had the strangest feeling she was going to say "peace."

"How'd you get into something like this?"

"I don't know, exactly. It started in college. There was this sickly tree right outside my dorm window. All the other trees around it were doing fine, but this one was stunted, had fewer leaves, and those it did have were shriveled and smaller than its neighbors'. I took it upon myself to save it. It became my mission.. So I watered it, fertilized it, but no good. It just got worse. So I asked one of the grounds-keepers what he thought, and he said, 'Bad roots. Nothing you can do about bad roots.' They were going to rip it up and plant a replacement there."

"Don't tell me," Jack said. "You started a save-the-tree movement."

"Yeah, right… 'Woodsman, woodsman, spare that tree.' " She shook her head. "Believe me, between my pre-med courses and my waitressing job, I barely had time to sleep, let alone become some sort of tree-hugging activist. No, I simply read up on grafting, took a couple of cuttings—they're called 'scions'—from the sick tree, and cleft-grafted them onto a branch of a healthy one, then I sealed the union with grafting wax. Shortly after that, they cut down the sick tree and replaced it. But it wasn't really dead, you see. Part of it was alive and well on its neighbor. By the time I graduated, the grafted limb was growing like crazy—easily the leafiest branch on the tree."

Her blue-gray eyes beamed at the memory.

"Congratulations," Jack said.

"Thank you. After that, I sort of got the bug. I go to a nursery—the plant kind—and pick out the sickliest-looking sapling. I buy it for a song, along with another healthier looking tree of the same or similar species, bring them home, and graft the runt onto the healthy one."

"Does that make you the tree world's Florence Nightingale, or its Frankenstein?"

"Florence, I hope. The graft union is actually stronger than the rest of the tree, and the scion usually grows faster and lusher than the understock's own branches. But maybe there's a little Frankenstein in me too. I've got what you might call a 'lymon' tree over there: I grafted a branch from a sickly lime tree onto a healthy lemon tree. In a few years it'll yield lemons and limes."

"Sure," Jack said. "And what are you asking for that nice bridge to Brooklyn?"

"No, it's true. You can cross-graft the same species, but you can't cross genera."

"You're losing me."

"Lemons, limes, grapefruit are all in the citrus group—one will usually accept another of the same species. But that lime scion wouldn't have taken if I'd grafted it to, say, apple or pear understock."

Jack walked around the room, checking out the recovering plants.

"So… you take two trees and make them into one."

"It's a strange sort of math," Alicia said. "As one of my grafting books put it: One plus one equals one. And the nice thing is, there's no loser. The understock's roots are getting fed by the scion's leaves."

"I bet you wish you could do that with people."

When Alicia didn't answer, Jack turned and found her standing rigid in the center of the room, staring at him. Her face was pale, and her voice sounded strained when she finally spoke.

"What did you say?"

"I said it would be great if it were that easy with people. You know, cut them loose from their crummy roots and let them grow free and uncontaminated by their past."

She seemed even paler.

"Is something wrong?"

"No," she said, but Jack couldn't believe it. "I just want to know why you said that."

"Well, I was thinking of your AIDS kids. I mean, they inherited their sickness from their roots… too bad you can't find a way to graft them onto healthy stock that'll allow them to grow up disease free."

"Oh." She visibly relaxed. "You know, I never thought of that. But it's a wonderful thought, isn't it."

She still seemed troubled, though, as if she'd taken a step back into another dimension, and only appeared to be in the room. Jack wondered what nerve he'd touched, what region of her psyche it sprang from, and where it led.

"If only it were possible," she said softly from that other place.

"Speaking of those kids," Jack said, "how's my man, Hector?"

And then abruptly, she was back. "Coming along," she said. "The antibiotic seems to be doing the trick." She clapped her hands once. "Now… I guess we have business to discuss."

"Uh, yes… and no," Jack said.

"Oh, I don't think I like the sound of that."

Might as well get it out on the table: "I checked out your father's house yesterday, and I think if you really want to get rid of it, you've got to find some way other than fire."

"No," she said stonily. "It's got to be fire."

"But the rest of the block could go with it."

"That's what the New York City Fire Department's for, isn't it—to prevent that from happening."

"Yeah, but fire's funny. You never know what it's going to do. The wind changes and—" He saw her expression and realized he was getting nowhere. "Maybe one of those demolition experts"—he was inventing this, right off the top of his head—"you know, the guys who can set charges just right so a building collapses in on itself? I can look around for you, see if one of them might—"

Alicia stood there, her face an alabaster mask, slowly, deliberately shaking her head.

"No. Fire. And if I'm willing to pay you, why won't you do it?"

Jack stared at her. This was not at all what he'd expected from Alicia. She seemed to care so deeply about so many things, why was she so blind about this? Almost as if her rational processes ducked for cover whenever that house was mentioned.

But whatever the reason, Jack wasn't about to get into a debate about doing the arson. It wasn't something he put up for discussion.

"Because who I work for and what I do for them is entirely up to me. And I choose not to do this."

After a moment of utter silence, during which Alicia's eyes blazed with such intensity Jack thought she might explode, she turned and walked back to the door to. her apartment, opened it, and stepped back.

"Then, there is nothing left for us to discuss. Good-bye, Jack."

She had that right. But as Jack passed her at the door, he said, "Just remember, there are other ways you can handle this. Take a few deep breaths and think about it before you go looking for somebody else to do the job."

"Don't worry," she said. "I won't be looking for somebody else."

And then she slammed the door.

Jack took the stairs down slowly. Maybe it was all for the best to cut loose from Alicia Clayton. That was one seriously overwound human spring back there in that apartment. He'd rather not be around when she snapped and started bouncing off the walls.

At least now he could devote himself full time to Jorge's problem. He'd already learned some interesting stuff about Ramirez.

Jack turned and glanced back at Alicia's door. Still… something appealing about her. Or maybe tantalizing was a better word.

What was that expression—something about a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma? That was Alicia Clayton: a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma within a thick coat of Semtex.

And a very short fuse.