Heart of the Assassin

CHAPTER 36

The woman who answered the door wore a bad wig atop her wrinkled face, a shapeless blue cotton dress hanging on her bony frame.

"Mrs. Harrison," started Moseby, "I'm John-"

"I remember you…" The woman chewed her lip, revealed her few remaining teeth. "We talked a while ago…you were driving one of the Colonel's trucks."

"Couple weeks ago, yes, ma'am," said Moseby.

"Couple weeks? Seemed longer." She peered at Moseby. "You got a touch of it, didn't you?"

"Ma'am?"

"D.C. fever," said the woman. "I can see it in your eyes. Told you not to go there. No place for an outsider." She looked at Rakkim. "That your owner?"

"No, ma'am," said Moseby. "I'm not indentured. This is my friend Rikki."

"Good morning, Mrs. Harrison," said Rakkim. "Pleasure to meet you."

"I bet," said the woman. "What do you boys want?"

"Can we come in, Mrs. Harrison?" said Rakkim. "I'd like to talk to you. My wife, Sarah, had dealings with your late husband."

"You're Sarah's husband? That girl in Muslim country? Come on in. Make sure you wipe your feet." She shuffled into the house, feet slapping on the wood floor. "Darryl! We got company." She waved at a sagging sofa. "Sit yourselves down, I'll fetch you boys something to drink."

A man walked from a side room, skinny as the woman, equally toothless, his hair in patches on his scalp.

"The white boy's Sarah's husband," Mrs. Harrison shouted from the kitchen.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," said Darryl, pumping Rakkim's hand. He hesitated, did the same for Moseby. "Howdy."

Mrs. Harrison emerged from the kitchen carrying two bottles of Coca-Cola between the fingers of her left hand, a bottle opener in the other. Rakkim saw Darryl's eyes widen at the bounty. She popped the tops, passed the bottles to Rakkim and Moseby. "Didn't figure you boys would cotton to cold well water," she cackled. "Go ahead, drink up."

"What about you?" said Rakkim.

"Darryl and I aren't thirsty," said Mrs. Harrison.

"No…no, we ain't," said Darryl.

"I want you to know," Mrs. Harrison said to Moseby, "the reason I didn't invite you into the house last time wasn't 'cause of your skin color. We're not racists in this family, not like some I could mention." Darryl nodded. "Just that my brother-in-law here was away, and it wouldn't be right for a woman alone to have a strange man in the house."

Moseby sipped his Coca-Cola. "No offense taken."

"Where were you, Darryl?" said Rakkim.

"Away." Darryl didn't take his eyes off the pop bottle in Rakkim's hand.

"Your wife has been a good friend to this family," Mrs. Harrison said to Rakkim. "She bought things from my husband for years, big things and little things, always paid top dollar. Asked about his health too. Only one who ever did. Are you a historian too?"

"No, not me." Rakkim took a long drink, the coldness and carbonation numbing his tongue, trickling down his dry throat. Nothing like it. He looked around the living room, surprised at the cleanliness and relative opulence of the surroundings. Hand-crafted furniture, a hutch filled with china, wallscreen TV. Even a piano in one corner. He checked the rad counter on his wrist-relatively low radiation count too. Credit the new-looking air scrubber on the roof. He looked at Darryl. "I'm not that thirsty and I'd hate to see the bubbles go to waste. Would you mind sharing this with me?"

Darryl glanced at his sister. "Okay…that would be good. No sense wasting."

Rakkim handed the bottle over.

Darryl started to snatch it, forced himself to slow down.

"Rikki and I are going back into the city, ma'am," said Moseby.

"That's foolish," said Mrs. Harrison. "You're going to poison yourself."

"We've got a better vehicle this time," said Moseby.

"I noticed," said Mrs. Harrison. "Seems like I saw a man named Corbett driving a van just like it."

"We bought it from Corbett," said Rakkim.

"That so?" Mrs. Harrison massaged her gums with a forefinger. "Well, you might have paid him, but the Corbett I know would sooner give up his balls than that war wagon."

"He's got no need for the van now," said Rakkim. "Or his balls."

"Glad to hear it." Mrs. Harrison examined her forefinger. "Honest…like your wife, that's saying something, but you still don't know where you're going, and the war wagon's not going to change that," she said. "Couple of outsiders driving around the city thinking treasure's going to call out to them."

Rakkim walked over to the family photographs that lined one whole wall. Photographs, not holograms, some of them ancient black-and-whites too. Poor folk in their Sunday best, kids behind the wheels of trucks, hard-eyed men and suspicious women, two young men in homemade rad-suits pretending to hold up the Washington Monument.

"That's me and Eldon on our first trip into the city together," said Darryl, standing beside him. "We hammered out an FBI insignia from inside a federal building a day later. Sold it for almost eight hundred dollars. Would have got twice that much but we chipped it."

"You chipped it," said Mrs. Harrison.

Rakkim checked out a grainy snapshot of a tired young man with a cigarette dangling from his lip, an automatic rifle slung in front of him. His jungle camouflage uniform blended in with the dense green foliage around him. A medal under glass was on the wall next to him. "Who's the soldier?"

Darryl stood beside him. "That's Eldon Harrison the first," he said, his gums whistling slightly. "Our great-grandpa. We got an Eldon in every generation since. My brother was the fourth in the line."

"Looks like he saw clear to the other side," said Rakkim. "That's a Silver Star."

"Yup. They don't give those out in cereal boxes."

"Where was that photo taken?"

"Vietnam. First war we ever lost. Not the last, though." Darryl sipped the Coca-Cola, offered it to Rakkim.

"You finish it," said Rakkim.

"Obliged," said Darryl, as fixed on the photo as Rakkim. "He was killed in action eighteen days after that picture was taken. A real hero. The best of us. Never even got to see Eldon Harrison Junior."

"I'm sorry," said Rakkim.

Darryl nodded.

"You had any more time to think about what we talked about, ma'am?" said Moseby.

Mrs. Harrison sat across from him, knees pressed together. "I've tried my best, but I can't come up with anything else. I'd tell you if I could."

"I know that," said Moseby. "It's just that sometimes things that you don't think are important turn out to be."

"I made Eldon three fried eggs the morning he left for the city and there was a spot of blood in one of the yolks," said Mrs. Harrison, her hands in her lap like they didn't even belong to her. "Just the tiniest spot of blood, but that's bad luck. I was going to throw them all out, start fresh, but Eldon told me I was crazy to waste good food." She blinked back tears. "That was the last meal I ever cooked for my husband. You'd think what I cooked or didn't cook wasn't important, but I think of that fried egg sizzling away in a dab of bacon grease, and I see that spot of blood…and…and I just want to die."

Darryl looked over at his sister-in-law, then at Rakkim. Shrugged.

Rakkim stared at another photo, a wedding photo, the young couple holding hands, grinning shyly at the camera. The slender bride seemed lost in the folds of her wedding gown, the groom stiff. He squinted at the date on the bottom.

Darryl tapped the glass over the photo. "That was a happy day. God, me and Eldon got so drunk the night before I didn't think he was going to make it through the ceremony."

"I didn't have any doubts," Mrs. Harrison said. "He knew what I had waiting for him that night. Both of us sixteen and raring to go."

"He was happy, Bernice." Darryl took a swallow of Coca-Cola. "No matter how bad things got, he was happy. Made me jealous, I'll tell you the truth."

Rakkim stared at the date on the wedding photo. If they were sixteen when they got married, Mrs. Harrison was only thirty-six. She looked like she was in her sixties.

"Do you love your wife, Rikki?" said Mrs. Harrison.

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

"You have children?" said Mrs. Harrison.

"A son."

The mister and I had nine," said Mrs. Harrison. "Three of them alive and well, praise God."

Rakkim pointed to another photo, three children in neat blue school uniforms with white piping on the sleeves and trousers. "Is this them?"

Mrs. Harrison rose from her chair, crossed over to him. Moseby followed her.

"That's my angels." Mrs. Harrison tapped the biggest child. "That's Eldon the fifth." Tapped the girl. "That's Evelyn." Tapped the smaller boy. "And that little dickens is Zachary. Named him after the Colonel, greatest man who ever lived after Jesus Christ and Eldon the first."

"Nice-looking children," said Rakkim. It was the truth. They looked radiant.

"They're at the Bush Academy in Ottawa, Canada," said Mrs. Harrison. "Your wife got them a full scholarship. I guess you didn't know that."

"No, ma'am…I didn't," said Rakkim.

"Cost a pretty penny to go to that school," said Darryl. "All those rich kids…they're never going to want to come back here."

"I hope they don't," said Mrs. Harrison. "I most definitely hope they don't."

Rakkim couldn't take his eyes off the holo of the three children. "They…they look like they fit right in to that fancy school."

"You seen them a year ago, you wouldn't a' said that," said Darryl.

"They had the usual problems…usual for around here," said Mrs. Harrison. "Then my husband made a big find about a year ago. Everything changed after that."

"Eldon was always the lucky one," said Darryl.

Mrs. Harrison blushed, turned to Rakkim. "With the money we got from his big strike we were able to send the children to the clinic in Montreal. Bought them new kidneys, new pituitary glands, complete blood wash, of course. I visited them in the hospital afterwards and hardly recognized them. They were as fresh and beautiful as the day they were born."

"What did your husband find in the city?" said Moseby.

Mrs. Harrison shook her head. "I let the mister take care of business, and he let me take care of the home. Worked out pretty well all these years."

"He never told me either," said Darryl. "His own brother. Said it was none of my concern."

"He never brought this treasure home?" said Moseby.

"No," said Mrs. Harrison. "I guessed it was too big to carry."

"And too valuable to share," said Darryl.

"Why don't you take the Coca-Cola and go back to your room," said Mrs. Harrison. "Go on now." She waited until Darryl left. "He's not a bad man. Just always thought he got hind tit."

"Did your husband ever tell you what he was looking for on that last trip?" said Moseby.

"I told you, he kept his business to himself," said Mrs. Harrison.

"We know he made several trips for Sarah, before he found what she wanted," said Rakkim, looking over the other photos, trying to imagine the man who would leave all this and go into the dead city, time after time, even as his children sickened and died, even as he was eaten up with death. The sense of history and place that held them here…Rakkim didn't have it. Neither did Moseby; he had left the Republic and the Fedayeen for love and never looked back.

"He must have at least told you what he saw along the way…some building, some landmark," said Moseby. "We just want to know where to start looking, Mrs. Harrison."

"I'd help you boys if I could," she said. "Your wife…she's been a blessing to our family," she said to Rakkim. "She done things for us we could never repay. Getting the kids into the Bush Academy, that wouldn't have happened without her. So, you'll have to believe me when I tell you, when the mister left that last morning…all he said was he was going somewhere bound to break his heart."

"The whole city makes me want to cry," said Moseby.

"That's you, and your outland ways, bawlin' over a stubbed toe or a runover kitten," said Mrs. Harrison. "My husband was made of stronger stuff. We lost our first three babies…I never seen him shed a tear when he broke ground for their graves, just cursed the earth for taking them. I can't imagine what it would take to break his heart, but that's where he said he was going."

If burying your children didn't break your heart, Rakkim didn't know what would…but Eldon Harrison had found it in D.C. Rakkim stared at the soldier in the jungle. Eldon Harrison the first. The best of them, Darryl had said. The noble dead. He took a deep breath, then walked over to Mrs. Harrison, embraced her, and she was all sharp bones and startled femininity. "Thank you for all your help, ma'am."

Mrs. Harrison nodded. "You give our love to your wife."

They were almost at the war wagon before Moseby spoke. "Why are we leaving?"

Rakkim turned and waved to Mrs. Harrison, who stood on the porch watching them. She didn't wave back, instead turned and went back inside. "She told us enough," said Rakkim. "I think I know where the safe room is."