We Know

Chapter 25

I drew my hand across the nape of my neck, and it came away with blood. Branches had whipped my skin as I'd flung myself back into the bushes at Echo Park. I'd sprinted away in a stooped combat run, doing my best to get tree trunks and outcroppings between me and the sniper rifle. Now, crouched in the darkness along Callie's big white house, I waited and watched for headlights. They came, boring into the night, and then an Explorer turned in to the driveway.

I'd raced to Pasadena, figuring that Steve would spend at least a little time trying to track me down at the park. He wouldn't expect me to hurry back to the snake's nest. Through my jittery drive, the ramifications had begun to settle in. A conspiracy so serious they'd had someone marry Callie just to keep an eye on her.

Steve parked the big SUV in the driveway and hopped out, brazenly carrying his rifle case with him. He had his handgun in a hip holster, as I hoped he would. As he headed for the door, I sneaked up behind and, unsnapping the thumb break, tugged the Glock from his holster. I pressed the barrel to the back of his head. Satisfying.

He dropped the rifle and raised his hands.

I could barely hear my voice over the blood rushing my ears. "Not an inch."

"Nick? You gonna shoot me?" "Should I?"

"What are you into?"

"You tell me. Is Emily home?"

"She's at her mother's. Why the hell do you-" He jerked around, so I hit him on the side of the head with a stock-enforced fist. He reeled but didn't go down, and then he put his hands on his knees and coughed. A spot of drool hit the pavement.

"Because she doesn't deserve to see you like this," I said.

I marched him up the walk and rang the doorbell. He was as wiry as I remembered, but more dense. A powerful little guy. After a time I heard footsteps, and then the porch light went on. I hid the gun in the small of Steve's back in case Callie looked through the peephole, but instead she called out in a worried voice, "Who's there?"

"It's Nick," I said. "And Steve."

She opened the door, and I shoved Steve in past her and followed. "Nick. Are you okay? What are you doing?"

Steve staggered a bit and leaned against the wall. Then he bent over and dry-heaved. He wiped his mouth. "I need to sit down."

Callie swooped to his side, glaring at me. "What did you do to him?"

We moved into the family room, a bizarre little procession, and Steve slumped on the couch and held his head. I felt a stab of concern, so I aimed the gun at him to shore up my ill will. "Your husband was pointing a rifle at my face a half hour ago."

Callie held up her hand, firmly, as if stopping traffic. "Wait. What?"

"Jesus," Steve said, "I'm dizzy."

I was breathing hard, revving up instead of calming down. "He hired a girl to spy on me. I tricked him into coming to a drop site. I got there early, with night-vision binoculars, and caught him set up with a sniper rifle, about to shoot me."

Callie said, "No he wasn't."

I moved the gun away from Steve, aiming at the carpet between him and Callie. "Are you in on this, too?" It felt awful giving in to myself that way, but there was also an odd feeling of release, of yielding to something sweet and tempting.

Callie looked at me, stunned. "You're losing touch, Nick. You're more paranoid than Frank ever was." She started to say something else, but she stopped, her mouth slightly ajar. Then her whole body began to shake. She hugged herself around the stomach and bent over a bit and took a few deep breaths. Then she straightened up and said, "Nick. Look at me. You have to choose. Sanity or paranoia. Life or death. Look at me. Think what you just asked me."

"This is real, Callie."

"What's real?"

I jabbed the gun at Steve, and he flinched away.

I was yelling through my teeth. "He came after me tonight. He had a sniper rifle aimed at my head"

"I asked him to follow you, Nicky!"

"What? Why?"

"Em told us what happened. Your stopping by. It sounded like you got yourself into something awful. I asked Steve to keep tabs on you. I was worried. You're my son"

Steve was pressing both hands to his head.

"So he took that to mean he should come shoot me?" I said.

"I'm LAPD SWAT, Nick. How do you surveil someone at night if you're SWAT?" Steve raised his face. A blood vessel had burst in the corner of his eye. "Through a night-vision scope."

Doubt wormed its way in. "You just happened upon me? In the bushes at Echo Park?"

"No. I tailed you from your apartment. I didn't really care to, but your mother and Emily talked me into it. I was watching from the moment you set up in the bushes. You took a leak on your way in. If I was gonna take you out, I could've shot you whenever."

Was there anywhere I'd been in the past three days that I wasn't being watched by one party or another?

My conviction wavered. Could it be true? That Steve had followed me and we'd chased each other out of Echo Park before the puppet master showed himself? "Okay," I said, imploring Callie, "he also cleared Frank's stuff out of the attic, a picture tying Frank to someone the government doesn't want to admit exists. It's all missing."

"That's part of this… this fantasy you've concocted about Steve?" Callie said, "/moved Frank's boxes to the garage after you left. For the trash and Salvation Army. They'd been up there, untouched, for so many years. And then you came by, all the old ghosts

… I figured it was time."

For a few crushing moments, I regarded the Glock in my hand. Then I walked over and set it on the couch cushion beside Steve.

He was still holding his face, and he didn't look up. "Any other questions?" he asked.

"Yeah. How's your head?"

"Not fucking good."

"I'll get you some ice, honey." Callie glared at me as she swept past. "I think you can leave now."

"Can I wait to make sure he's okay?"

"I'm dandy," Steve said. "Now, get the hell out of here."

"Can I at least get you some Advil, something?" I asked.

Steve was murmuring under his breath. Callie came back with ice wrapped in a dish towel. She pressed it to Steve's cheek and temple. "Our medicine cabinet, upstairs."

I ran up the stairs, fumbled through the cabinet. I got the blue and yellow bottle and turned to go when a framed sketch above the towel rack stopped me cold. Callie's portrait of me was incredibly lifelike. Soulful eyes. Smooth, youthful skin. A heavy mouth-more pensive than sad, but still, not the mouth of a seventeen-year-old. Had I really looked like that? Finger smudges on the glass showed where someone-Callie-touched my face from time to time. How could she keep the sketch up? And right here, where she'd see it every day? Stepping out of the shower. Brushing her teeth. A part of her life. What did that do to her?

I heard her shout for me, and I ran downstairs with the Advil. Steve was on his feet, shaking off Callie. "I'm fine, honey. I promise, I'm fine." He grabbed the pills out of my hand and walked by, smacking my shoulder with his. I stared at Callie as the sink ran in the kitchen, and we heard him slurp down the pills. She stood erect, chin slightly raised, like an English actress's. She did that sometimes with her posture, used it to hold herself together. Stray hairs caught the light from behind her. That tough, pretty face, made tougher and prettier by the years. I thought about what it would be like to have an estranged son pistol-whip your husband and shove him through your front door. The accusations I'd made. I couldn't get that sketch out of my head, how she'd hung it where she had to see it every goddamned day.

"What?" she asked sharply.

I just shook my head, not trusting my voice.

Steve trudged out of the kitchen and through the front door, returning a moment later with the rifle he'd dropped in the front yard. Without slowing he said, "I'm gonna shower off this fucking day." His footsteps thudded up the stairs. Callie and I looked at each other some more, and then at the walls, and then at each other again. A car drove by outside, the engine fading.

She said, "You want to be like Frank?"

I looked away. I couldn't meet her eyes. But I felt that stare coming on, still coming on. "I could never be like Frank."

"All these years the stars are still in your eyes, blinding you to what's right in front of your face. Frank wasn't Clint Hill. He never jumped on the trunk of a limo. Never held the president's head together. Never got a Purple Heart in Vietnam. You know what Frank was great at? The day-to-day. Showing up. Knowing when to give space. The quiet heroics. And you. You didn't show up for his funeral. You didn't show up for your own graduation. You didn't show up for college. You haven't shown up for a damn thing in seventeen years."

The edges of her words seemed to ring off the walls for a while, and then the silence of the house reasserted itself. The pipes feeding the shower upstairs hummed gently in the walls.

"Well," I said, "I'm showing up now."

She studied me a long time, but her face didn't soften. Not a bit. "Frank's box with the pictures is in the garage." Her voice quavered, but only once.

It took me a moment to get the feeling back in my body, to take that first step. She followed me, angrily, through the kitchen, to the door to the garage. By the trash can, I found the cardboard boxes. After a quick search of the others, which held nothing of relevance, I carried the photo box back out, through the entryway, Callie behind me. I stepped down onto the walk. My face was burning. My hands, poked through the handholds on the box, felt numb.

Her voice, behind me. "Wait… I-Just wait." She'd been drawn a few steps out onto the porch. "You should've come to me, Nicky. When they arrested you. I would have done anything for you. You were everything I had left. Why didn't you just talk to me?"

I readjusted my grip on the box. "They made clear they'd hurt you if I did."

Callie took a half step back. Then she leaned one hand against the pillar and sort of collapsed, her hair down over her face so I could see only her downturned mouth. Her sobs seemed to rise up from some cracked-open place inside her. I stood dumbstruck, holding the box, watching her, unsure what to do.

She kept crying, her hair tangled in her eyes, her tears, and then I was running, the box kicked aside on the concrete walk, but I wasn't running away, I was running to her. I stepped up onto the porch and bent to her, and she pulled at me, hard. My shoe slipped, but I held her weight, and she rose, and then she was gripping me, sobbing, the crown of her head pressed into my chest, and she was shaking and sobbing, and I was holding her.