Kill the Messenger

36

I know JayCee!” Boo Zhu said, his tiny eyes bright with excitement. He laughed and snorted. His nose was running. Instead of wiping it, his abnormally long tongue swept across his upper lip.

“JayCee Ty! JayCee Ty!” Boo Zhu looked proudly at Chi, who was standing to one side on the dock trying to look as if he hadn’t had a hand in Boo Zhu’s announcement.

Detective Kyle turned to Madame Chen, standing just outside the doorway to the other part of the building. In the bright light she looked as pale as the white clapboard behind her.

“Who is this?” Kyle asked.

“The son of a cousin,” Madame Chen said, crossing the small parking area. “He is challenged, as you can see.”

Kyle looked up at him. “What’s your name?”

“Boo Zhu! Boo Zhu know!”

“You know J. C. Damon?” Kyle asked.

Boo Zhu began to dance with all the grace of a bear, beside himself with pride that he had the answer to a question no one else seemed to have.

“Boo Zhu likes to please,” said Madame Chen.

“Are you saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”

“He knows that it will please you to say what he believes you want to hear.” She flashed a glare at Chi. “He will tell you he knows the president if you ask him.”

“JayCee Ty! JayCee Ty, ma’am!” Boo Zhu said, pointing a stubby finger toward the door to the office. “Yes, ma’am? Yes?”

Tyler darted back from the doorway. His heart was galloping so fast, he thought he might faint. Carefully, he dropped to the floor on his knees and crawled along the wall to the open window, then slowly raised his head until he could just see over the edge of the sill at the side of the window.

“Calm yourself, Boo Zhu,” said Madame Chen.

“I good boy!”

“You’re very good,” Kyle said. “You know the answer, don’t you?”

“Detective, please,” said Madame Chen. “He is only a child in his mind. He doesn’t understand.”

“Who’s Ty?” Kyle asked.

“Ty R! Ty R!” Boo Zhu exclaimed.

“Tyler?”

“Ty R, JayCee!”

“J. C. Damon?”

Boo Zhu had begun to sing a nonsense song to dance to, his euphoria blocking out all else.

Kyle turned to Chi. “What about you? Do you know J. C. Damon?”

Tyler’s eyes filled with tears. He was so afraid, he thought he might wet his pants like a baby.

“If you don’t already know this,” Kyle said, “J. C. Damon is wanted for questioning in relation to a homicide, among other crimes. If you’re protecting him, you’re harboring a criminal. If he used your vehicle in the commission of a crime, you can be charged as an accessory.”

Chi stared for a moment at his aunt. When he spoke, he spoke in Chinese. “You cannot risk yourself and the business, Aunt. Lying to the police is a serious offense.”

“So is betrayal of family,” Madame Chen returned.

“He is not family.”

“You betray me, Chi. If you do this thing, I do not know you. I will not know you.”

“We can go downtown,” Kyle said. “I can get an interpreter. If I believe you’re withholding information, you can be detained as material witnesses.”

Madame Chen turned on him. “Do you think me a fool, Detective Kyle? I am an intelligent woman in two languages. You are a bully in only one. I am calling my attorney, who, as it happens, is the attorney for my business and for my family, including my nephew.”

“You can’t stop your nephew from talking to us,” Kyle said. He turned again to Chi. “Do you know J. C. Damon?”

Chi looked at his aunt.

Tyler held his breath.

“I defer to my aunt’s wisdom,” Chi said humbly, bowing his head. “As matriarch of our family, she knows best. It is her wish we consult with our attorney.”

Kyle turned once again to Boo Zhu, still locked in his own little world of bliss, singing to himself. “Boo Zhu? You know J. C. Damon?”

“This is outrageous!” Madame Chen said. “You will stop this immediately!”

“Yes,” said Boo Zhu, but his smile of pride melted on his round face as he looked at Madame Chen. “Ty R bother? Yes, ma’am?”

Kyle ignored Madame Chen. “Tyler is J.C.’s brother?”

Boo Zhu looked at Madame Chen, his face mottling red as he began to worry he had done something wrong. “Yes, ma’am. Yes?”

Kyle turned to his partner. “Where’s the kid?”

“He went inside.”

“I want him out here. Now.”

The big detective started toward the office.

Tyler bolted like a rabbit. On television the cops did all kinds of things they weren’t supposed to do. Jace had always told him he couldn’t trust them. He couldn’t trust anyone but family. The life he knew depended on it.

Like a shot, he was down the hall and up the stairs. He ran like a whirlwind through the apartment, grabbed his backpack, grabbed the walkie-talkie Jace had given him.

He ran out of the apartment and up the last of the stairs, to the roof. The garden was empty. Grandfather Chen had gone to meet his cronies for their daily gossip.

Tyler crept on his belly to the edge of the roof, and looked down on the scene. The lot was empty. Only Boo Zhu remained, sitting on the edge of the loading dock, rocking himself and wailing.

Tyler felt bad for him. There was no doubt in his mind Chi had put Boo Zhu up to it, telling him everyone would be happy and proud of him if he told the policemen he knew Jace. Now Boo Zhu was upset and frightened. He wouldn’t understand why everyone hadn’t been delighted by his revelation. Or why Chi had abandoned him.

His heart pounding against his ribs like a hammer, Tyler strained to hear footsteps or voices below him, on the stairs or in the apartment. Maybe they were still looking for him downstairs. He would wait. Count to a hundred, maybe. When he could hear them getting close to the roof, he would go to the ground.

He swiped a hand across his face to brush away the tears that panic had brought to his eyes.

One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight . . .

What if he didn’t hear them coming? His pulse was pounding in his ears.

Ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five . . .

Could they hold him as a material witness? In jail?

Ninety-four, ninety-three . . .

Would they call Children and Family Services right away?

Ninety-two . . .

If they took his walkie-talkie, he wouldn’t be able to reach Jace.

Ninety-one.

If CFS took him, Jace would never be able to find him. Ever.

The tears beginning to come faster, Tyler scrambled back from the edge of the roof, ran to the other side of the building, and started down the fire escape. The iron was rusted. Some of the connections to the building were loose, the old bolts sheared off. It could hold Tyler’s weight because he was small, but it rattled and shook, and he hoped no one could hear it.

His feet moved as fast as they could. He was quick, but he was scared, and fear caused mistakes. He stubbed the thick rubber toe of his sneaker and stumbled once, grabbing at the railing as he fell, scraping his knuckles, banging his elbow, then catching hold.

The last part of the escape was a ladder pulled up a dozen feet from the ground to stop people from climbing the stairs from below. Tyler grabbed hold with both hands and tried to force it down, but he wasn’t strong enough, and it didn’t move.

Without stopping to think about the danger, he climbed like a monkey to the other side of the ladder, the ground a long way below him. He would have been scared if he’d had time to look. Hanging on above his head with both hands, he jumped up and down on the rung below him. The ladder dropped a couple of inches, a couple of inches, then shot downward to its full length so fast, it took his breath away, then stopped so abruptly that Tyler kept falling, his momentum yanking his hands away from the ladder.

He fell the last five feet and hit the ground with a thud on his backside, his breath leaving him in one big huff.

Rolling over onto his hands and knees, Tyler pushed to his feet and braced himself against the brick wall until the earth stopped tilting beneath him.

The cops had gone inside. The alley was the only way to go. If he turned to the right, he would be on the street quickly, but he didn’t trust that there wouldn’t be a police car waiting. That was the direction the black-and-white cop car had come from earlier. If he turned left, he would have to dash past the lot. If Detective Kyle had come back outside . . . or Chi . . .

He turned left and crept along the back of the building, peering carefully around when he reached the corner. The lot and the loading dock were empty except for Boo Zhu, still lost in his misery. Tyler took three deep breaths and ran across the opening as fast as he could. He ducked behind the stack of wooden pallets where the other detective had found him. Detective Parker.

Tyler wondered why Kyle and Roddick had come and asked the same questions all over again. They hadn’t even known the Mini Cooper had been taken away. Maybe they weren’t real cops. Maybe they were bad guys. Maybe they had killed the guy Jace had been accused of killing.

Whoever they were, Tyler didn’t like them. Parker had seemed like a nice guy, even if he was a cop. Kyle was just what Madame Chen had called him—a bully.

Sticking against the buildings like a tick, Tyler moved down the alley to the parking lot where Parker had caught him. He retraced his route down the narrow space between the two buildings, where Parker had lost him. His backpack scraped against the sides here and there.

At the opening to the sidewalk, Tyler crouched down and looked back toward the fish market. People were walking up and down the street. No one noticed him in the narrow opening, half hidden by a chalkboard sign advertising the specials of the day at the dim sum shop.

He saw Kyle and Roddick step out onto the sidewalk, making the people flow around them like a stream around boulders. They were discussing something, arms gesticulating. Kyle pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and started a conversation with someone on the other end. Roddick planted his hands on his hips, turned and looked down the street, directly—it seemed—at Tyler.

Tyler held his breath. A thin woman with long dark hair and movie-star sunglasses was coming down the sidewalk walking a roly-poly pug dog. The dog’s bug eyes spotted Tyler and bulged even larger. His nails scraped the sidewalk as he strained at the end of his leash, barking, trying to pull his owner closer to the dim sum sign.

The woman frowned and tugged at the leash. “Orson, no!”

Roddick was still staring down the street.

Orson the Pug kept barking. Tyler tried to shush him. The thin woman spotted him then, and hopped back, startled. Tyler stared up at her with imploring eyes and a finger pressed to his lips.

Roddick took a couple of steps, then Kyle said something and stuck the phone back in the pocket of his suit coat. They went to a car parked in front of a fire hydrant and got in.

The woman with Orson the Pug dismissed Tyler as unimportant, and kept walking. Orson tried to linger, but had to give in to the leash and move on. The detectives pulled into traffic and drove past without looking.

Tyler let his breath out in one big puff. His head swam and big spots swirled before his eyes. He leaned sideways against the building to his right and wondered how long it would take for his heart to stop going a hundred miles an hour.

He pulled his backpack off and dug around in the front pocket for the walkie-talkie.

“Scout to Ranger. Scout to Ranger. Do you read me?”

Nothing.

“Scout to Ranger. Are you out there, Ranger?”

Silence.

Tyler pressed the radio against his cheek and closed his eyes. The rush of urgency and excitement had bottomed out, and now a dark, oily kind of fear crept in to take its place. A kind of fear that made his stomach hurt and made him wish he weren’t too big to crawl into a warm lap and feel strong, protecting arms around him.

The safety he had felt with the Chens was gone. Just like that, his home, his only family, had been found out and threatened. The only other safety he had ever known in his life was with his brother. Suddenly he had neither.

He had never felt so alone in his life.

He stared out at the street, where everyone else was going on with their day, unaware that he was alone and afraid, and maybe nothing in his life would ever be the same.

Why am I me, instead of that guy delivering packages across the street? Why am I me, instead of that woman pushing the shopping cart? Why am I me, instead of that man getting out of his car?

He drove Jace crazy when he asked questions like that. Why am I me, instead of someone else? Why was this his life? No mother, no father. Why was the family he knew someone else’s family? Jace told him there was no sense wondering things like that, but Tyler wondered anyway. Some questions didn’t have answers, Jace said. Life was what it was, and all they could do was live it the best way they could.

Tyler wiped his nose on his sleeve and blinked back the threatening tears. He believed in his brother. He would try his best to do what Jace would do. No time for crying now. He had to clear his head to use his brain. There was no sense having an IQ of 168 if he wasn’t going to use it when he needed it most.

So he closed his eyes and imagined locking all his fears in a box, and burying the box deep inside him. He needed to think like a hero now instead of waiting for one that might never come along.