Iron House

CHAPTER THREE

Michael stepped in and Jimmy left him alone with the dying man who’d all but saved his life. A Persian rug stretched to far windows and a coffered ceiling rose fifteen feet above the floor. No lamps burned, and all the curtains but one were drawn, so that pale light ghosted in to touch a chair, the bed, and the wasted man in it. The space was long, narrow, and the gloom made it feel hollow. Michael had spent countless hours in the room-long months as the old man failed-but eight days had passed since his last visit, and change lay like a pall. Airless and overly warm, the room smelled of cancer and pain, of an old man dying.

He crossed the room, steps loud on wood, then soft when he hit the rug. The room looked the same except for a six-foot-tall cross that hung on the wall. It was made of smooth, dark wood and looked very old. Michael had never seen it before, but put it out of his mind as he stopped by the narrow bed and looked down at the only man he’d ever loved. Fluids ran into the old man’s veins through needles slipped under his skin. The robe he wore was one Michael had given him eight years ago, and in it he looked as light and weak as a starved child. His head was a death’s-head, with bones that were too prominent and veins that showed like thread through wax. Blue-black skin circled his eyes. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, and Michael wondered if the pain, ever-present, had become insidious enough to find him even as he slept.

He stood for long seconds, bereft, then took the man’s hand, sat in the chair, and studied the cross on the wall. The old man did not have a religious bone in his body, but his son professed to believe. In spite of his sins, and there were many, Stevan attended mass every week, a conflicted man twined in self-deception. He feared God, yet was too weak to sacrifice the things violence brought, the money and power, the pleasures of pale-faced models and society widows who found his name and good looks too compelling to resist. Stevan loved the notoriety, yet agonized over his father’s lack of contrition; it was for this reason, Michael suspected, that the old man had been resuscitated twice. Stevan feared that his father, unrepentant, would go to hell. Michael marveled at the depth of such hypocrisy. Actions had consequence; choice came with cost. The old man knew exactly who he was, and so did Michael.

He lifted a framed photograph from the table near the bed. Taken a decade and half earlier, it showed him with the old man. Michael was sixteen, broad-shouldered but skinny in a suit that could not hide the fact. He leaned against the hood of a car, laughing, the old man’s arm around his neck. He was laughing, too. The car against which they leaned had been a birthday present: a 1965 Ford GTO, a classic.

Michael put the photo where the old man could find it, then stood and walked to the wall of books on the north side. The shelves ran the length of the room and held a collection the man had been working on for over thirty years. They shared a love of the classics, and many of the books were first editions, including several by Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. Michael removed The Old Man and the Sea, then sat back down.

Through the window, he saw the river and then Queens. The old man had been born there to a prostitute with no interest beyond folding money and the next bottle it could buy. Shut up for years in a basement tenement, he’d been left alone for days at a time, unwashed and half-starved until he was orphaned at age seven. He told Michael once that he’d never known a childhood harder than his until their paths crossed. That fact made them family, he said. Because no one else could understand the loneliness they’d known, the fear. He said it gave them clarity, made them strong. And Stevan hated Michael for that, for having that bond with his father.

But Michael cherished it, not just because he was so otherwise alone in the world, but because the similarities did make a difference; because not even Stevan grasped the scope of deprivation that defined his father’s early days. He did not know that the scars on the old man’s feet came from rat bites in the crib, or that his missing fingers came from frostbite in the days before his mother died. The old man spoke of those things only to Michael, because only Michael could understand. He was the only one who knew the full story, the only person aware that the old man had chosen this room for the view, so that his last earthly sight would be the place from which he’d dragged himself one brutal day at a time. Michael found an undeniable elegance in this. The tenement house that almost killed the man was a river’s breadth away, and a lifetime apart.

The sun moved higher and light slipped from the old man’s face. So sunken were his eyes that Michael missed the moment they opened. One instant they were hidden, and the next they were simply there, pinched and deep and shot with red. “Stevan?”

“It’s Michael.”

The frail chest rose and fell in small, desperate pants and Michael saw pain bite deeper. Skin gathered at the corners of the old man’s eyes and his brows compressed at the center. “Michael…” His mouth worked. Something glinted in the sun that still touched his neck, and Michael realized that he was crying. “Please…”

Michael turned his face away from the thing he was being asked to do. For months, now, the old man had begged to die, so eager was the pain. But Stevan had refused. Stevan. His son. So the old man had suffered as Michael watched the illness take him down. Weeks stretched to months, and the old man had begged.

God, how he had begged.

Then, eight days ago, Michael had told him about Elena. He explained that life had become more than the job, that he wanted out, a normal life. And listening, his pain-filled eyes so very intent, the old man had nodded as hard as such a sick man could. He said he understood just how precious life should be. Precious. Fingers clawed into Michael’s arm. Short! And with those words still in the air above his lips, he’d told Michael that he loved him.

Like a son.

His fingers had tightened as he pulled Michael closer.

You understand?

A coughing fit took him then, and when he could speak again, he released Michael to live life as he wished, then asked him to take his own life in return. There was no irony in his request, just hurt; now he was asking again.

“I can’t.”

Michael’s neck bent because the words were insufficient. He’d killed so many times that this should be the simplest of things. A gentle pressure. A few seconds. But he remembered the day the old man found him, cut a dozen times and fighting for his life under a bridge in Spanish Harlem. He said he’d heard of this wild boy who lived with the homeless, and had come to see for himself. He’d wondered if the stories were true.

A sound escaped the old man’s lips but there were no words beyond anguish. Michael had come to assure Stevan that he was no threat. Failing that, he’d hoped to find enough strength in the old man to make certain that his orders were followed, even after death. But seeing the agony behind his haunted eyes, what Michael felt was ashamed. He was thinking of himself first, and the old man deserved more. Michael took his hand and looked at the photograph of them leaning on the hood of the car. His arm circled Michael’s neck, head tipped back.

They were laughing.

It was the only photograph in existence that showed them together. The old man had been adamant. Too dangerous to have more, he’d said. Too risky. And for seventeen years the photograph had never left his room. It was a moment trapped in time-pure joy-and Stevan hated what it said about the leanings of his father’s heart. Yet, the old man had been unapologetic. Actions and consequence, choice and cost.

Michael looked down on the old man’s face. He saw how it had been, and how it was now: the life he’d had and the one he wanted to quit. Torment wracked his features, but through the pain and fear, Michael saw the old man’s soul, and it was unchanged.

“Don’t be afraid,” the dying man whispered.

Michael could barely hear him, so he asked, “Are you sure?”

The old man nodded without words, and Michael’s fingers tightened on his hand. “They’ll come for me,” Michael said. “Stevan. Jimmy. They’ll try to kill me.”

He needed the old man to know the repercussions of this thing he asked. If Stevan came, Michael would kill him. The truth of this filled the old man’s eyes, but it was only when he said “Make a good life” that Michael truly believed he understood. There was such sadness in his eyes, and it had nothing to do with his own death. Whether the old man lived or died, Stevan would come.

And Michael would kill him.

“I knew…” His voice failed, and Michael leaned closer. “I knew when I released you…”

Michael forced despair from his face. He’d killed so many, and loved so few. “May I have this?” He lifted the photograph that sat by the bed. The old man did not answer, but his fingers moved on the sheet. Michael slipped the photo from its frame, and put it with the other in his pocket. “Elena’s pregnant,” he said, but it was unclear if the old man had heard. Tears filled his eyes and he was nodding as if to hurry Michael on. Michael kissed him on the forehead, then placed one hand on his chest and the other across his mouth and nose. “Forgive me,” he said. And as he shut off the old man’s air, their eyes remained locked. Michael made a gentling noise, but the old man never fought, not even at the end. His heart stuttered, then beat a final time, and through his hands, Michael felt a rush of peace so immense it had to be imagination. He straightened as monitors flat-lined, and alarms screamed on the landing below. He closed the dead man’s eyes, and heard loud voices, feet on the steps.

The old man was gone.

And they were coming.

Michael moved to the bookshelf, his eyes on the black rectangle that had until a few minutes ago held the old man’s copy of Hemingway’s classic novella. In the space behind, he found the two nine millimeters he’d put there three months ago. Each one had fifteen in the clip and one in the chamber.

Vision.

Foresight.

Michael’s replacement lacked both.

He came through the right-side door with his own gun low and his smile half-cocked. Michael gave him three steps and enough time to see what was going to happen.

Then he shot him in the heart.

By that time two more men were in the room, both armed. Michael recognized the grunts from the foyer. One yelled, whoa, whoa, whoa but both were bringing up guns, barrels going long to short. Michael took one step and shot them both in under a second. They dropped and he heard shouts from the stairs. Three men, maybe more. Fear in their voices. Michael said nothing, but crossed the room and stood four feet from the left-hand door, which remained closed. Fear was a cancer for those who were not used to this, so time was on his side, but not by much. He listened for steps on carpet, and when shoes showed through the gap beneath the door, he put two rounds through the wood, center mass.

A body hit the floor, and Michael rounded onto the landing, where he found three more men, two in full retreat down the stairs and another with a gun in his hand and pointed. But it takes more than a trigger finger to shoot a man. When someone is shooting back, it takes the kind of cool that rock stars can only fake. Michael had that cool, and so did Jimmy.

No one else in the house was even close.

Two bullets flew wide of Michael’s shoulder, and he tapped the shooter once in the forehead, stepping past before he was even down. The other men pulled up short, one shooting wildly, the other hands up and empty. Michael shot the first and kept both guns trained on the second. He was late-sixties, a street thug from the old days kept around for sentimental reasons. He was a gopher now: ran errands, cooked food. His hands were steady above his head, his face resigned. Michael stopped one step above him and put a barrel so close to his cheek he could feel heat from the metal. “Where’s Jimmy?”

“Gone. Ran.”

“How long?”

“Just this second.”

Michael glanced down at the open door, the hint of city beyond. He pressed hot metal against the man’s cheek. “If you’re lying, I’ll kill you slow.”

“I’m not lying.”

“What about the nurse? The priest?”

“Same thing.”

“Are they on the payroll?”

The man nodded, which meant they would keep their mouths shut. Michael looked again at the open door. “You have car keys?”

The man pulled a ring from his pants pocket. “The Navigator,” he said. “Out back.”

“Anyone else in the house?”

He shook his head. The smell of burned powder was everywhere, a gray haze under the chandelier. Michael studied his face and remembered a few conversations they’d had. His name was Donovan. He had grandchildren.

“Tell Stevan I’m out.” Donovan nodded, but Michael realized the lie even as he did. The old man was dead at Michael’s hand. Blood ran down the walls, the stairs. He was nowhere close to out. Not after this. Michael gestured with the gun. “Go.”

Donovan fled, and Michael went back upstairs. He stood by the bed and looked down on the husk of the man he’d killed. He’d been a hard man, but full of kindness for those he loved. Michael remembered a conversation they’d had on the morning of his fourteenth birthday. A year had passed since that day under the bridge, and the old man wanted to know why.

Why was I on the streets?

Yeah. The old man turned his lips, tilted his head. Smart kid. Good looking. You could have gone to the authorities, anybody. Why take the hard road? Why the streets?

I had my reasons.

That’s all you’re going to say?

Humor shone in the old man’s eyes, a kind of pride.

Yes, sir.

Whatever you were running from, Michael, it can’t touch you now. You know that, right? Not here. Not with me.

I know that.

And you still won’t tell me?

I have reasons for that, too.

He’d ruffled the boy’s hair, and, laughing, said, A man should have his reasons.

And in all this time, Michael had never told him why he’d chosen the hard road. Because the old man was right. A man should have his reasons.

And his secrets.

Michael straightened the old man’s arms and smoothed the blanket across his chest. He kissed one still-warm cheek, then the other; when he stood, tears burned hot in his eyes. He lifted Hemingway’s novella from the bedside table, then stood for a long while, looking down. “You were good to me,” he said, and when he left, he took the book.

He had reasons for that, too.