Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

She recovered herself, ran the rest of it down for him-she’d kept track of, though not in touch with, her old comrades. Karl Armstrong picked up in Canada by the Mounties in ’72. Served seven years. Runs a juice stand three blocks from Sterling Hall. Dwight Armstrong picked up in Canada four years after his brother. Dwight served four years, drives a cab in Madison. Dave Fine was picked up in California. He only served three years-he’s a lawyer now, in Vancouver. “And they never caught Leo Burt.”

Hearing the names triggered Pender’s memory. “Or Karen Bannerman,” he said.

Dawson’s shoulders shuddered under the thin nightgown as if a whip had just come down across her back-she hadn’t heard that name spoken out loud for twenty years, she explained to the wall. Charlene Dawson was an identity the New York underground had fixed her up with in the seventies.

“You look more like a Karen than a Charlene,” said Pender.

“What happens now?” she asked the wall.

Pender was slouched back in the beanbag with his Panama tipped over his eyes. “I was thinking maybe a romantic candlelight dinner at Captain Wick’s tomorrow night, followed by me trying to figure out a way to get you into bed without you feeling like I’m blackmailing you or me feeling like I’m being bribed.”

Dawson’s spirits had been down to such depths, then risen so far so fast that she had the emotional bends. And she did so want to be held. So would she have slept with him if he weren’t a cop, just a good kisser? she asked herself. Or if she really were Charlene Dawson? She rolled over to face him. “Hey, Ed, you know what I think?”

He raised his head, tilted his hat back. He didn’t look quite so homely in the pleasant glow of the oil lamp. “What?”

“I think two ulterior motives cancel each other out.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” She sat up, reached over, cupped her hand behind the glass chimney of the oil lamp, and blew out the flame.

The lime grove reverberated. Three shots-Emily had placed the pistol in the whore’s hand for the third, and pressed the whore’s forefinger against the trigger so her hand would test positive for gunshot residue. Lewis had his back turned; he looked out over the grove, the low, tangled silhouettes of the trees, the sharp-smelling limes, the cold silver starlight. The grass was wet. He remembered coming there with his father when he was a boy, and being told the story of how his grandfather had given the grove away to the people of St. Luke.

“Lew, over here!” Emily, in a sharp whisper. “Hurry up.”

He was squeezing the bottle of rum by the neck. The cap was still screwed on, but somehow the bottle had almost emptied itself. He took a jolt, turned back. Shea’s body lay prone atop Angela, his head resting on her chest. She was still on her back. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was open-she was hyperventilating fiercely, but not otherwise struggling. Phil had stretched her right arm out and was pinning it to the blanket with both hands. Emily guided Lewis around, positioned him, kneeling, just to the left of Angela’s head. He turned his Dolphins cap back to front.

Angela opened her eyes, looked past Lewis. Instead of closing her eyes again when Bennie raised the machete, she looked straight up at Lewis. Their eyes met; her eyes seemed to sink into their sockets. They melted, they morphed, and in the instant between the moment the machete began its swift descent and the moment it struck bone with a dull thwack (the sound having been absorbed by the soft ground beneath the blanket), he saw the ram’s eyes staring up at him from her face. He moaned and tried to pull away, but Emily was behind him, forcing his head down with one hand, shining the flashlight on the severed wrist with the other.

“Wait for it,” she said. She’d learned to anticipate the dying exhalation by timing the arterial spurt. “Wait…wait…”

The spurt of night black blood slowed to a dribble. “Now!” Emily pinched Angela’s nostrils shut. Lewis closed his eyes and covered Angela’s mouth with his. There was no death rattle; he felt a gentle pressure, a puff of moist coppery breath, which he sucked into his lungs as if it were a toke of rain forest chronic or freebase cocaine. When he opened his eyes, the eyes staring up at him from the dead whore’s face were those of the dead whore again. Angela. Angela Martin. From Montserrat.

And Lewis felt…nothing. The experience was nothing. The dying breath was only a breath. Emily was crazy. They were all crazy. Going around killing people, hacking off hands. For nothing. For a breath.

He took the flashlight from Emily and climbed to his feet. The knees of his white duck trousers were wet from the grass. He shined the flashlight around, looking for the bottle of Reserve he’d dropped. Emily stood up, swaying slightly. Her cheeks were flushed, her decollete bosom was heaving, and she was grinning crookedly, showing her chipped front tooth and looking for all the world like a woman who’s just had a screaming orgasm. Beyond her, Lewis saw the bottle winking in the grass, reflecting the flashlight beam. Lewis pushed past Emily, picked it up. Empty. He started to throw it across the field. Strong hands grabbed his arm, forced the bottle out of his hand.

“I have a swell idea,” said Phil, his voice dripping with irony. “As long as we’re in this together, what do you say we not leave behind a bottle with your fingerprints all over it.”

In this together, Lewis’s mind echoed dully, as Emily broke off an overhead branch and began sweeping her way backward, away from the blanket, obscuring their footprints. Together. Bennie finished wiping down the gun and the machete. Together. Phil and Bennie placed the former in the dead woman’s left hand and the latter in the dead man’s. Together. The four of them left the grove, circled back through the periphery and around to the road, climbed back into the black Land Rover. Together. They drove south along the dundo road until the stars appeared overhead again.

Monday morning rolled around again. Holly slapped the alarm clock into submission. “Kids!”

No answer.

“Schoolday. Wakey wakey.”

No answer. She furled the mosquito net, grabbed her bathrobe off the back of the chair, slipped it on, padded barefoot across the cabin, peered into the kids’ room. They were both in Marley’s bed. Holly wondered whether she should say anything to them about phasing out this same bed stuff. And at what age would it no longer be healthy for them even to continue sharing a bedroom? Her instinct told her puberty, which for Marley was still a couple years away. Her instinct’s track record told her she’d better start asking around, gathering opinions.

“Aroint, you varlets,” said Holly. That was how her father (a public school English teacher, and as secular as his father had been religious) used to wake up Holly and her sister. Someday, she promised herself, she was going to look up aroint in the dictionary, see what the hell it meant.

Marley seemed distracted all through breakfast. He played with his cereal, stirring swirls with a spoon held between his toes, blowing bubbles into his hot chocolate (he could manipulate a cup or glass with his feet if he had to, but preferred to drink through a straw). When it came time to leave for school, he needed to be reminded twice to take his book bag, and during the ride he was uncharacteristically quiet in the backseat. Holly asked him if anything was wrong.

He caught her eye in the mirror, jerked his head toward Dawn, in the front seat. “Ater-lay,” he said.

When they reached the school, Dawn hit the ground running and joined her friends, who’d chalked a hopscotch square on the sidewalk at the base of the front steps while they waited for the doors to open. Marley climbed into the front seat.