Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open

His pace picked up.

Now the police were really pointing their weapons at him and screaming.

“Don’t shoot, ” I hollered, “ please don’t shoot! ” getting up and putting out my hands to push them back.

Suddenly, a couple of them trained their weapons on me. I was almost crying. “Don’t shoot. He’s got my son. Please! ”

Dev got about five paces away. I never budged. I saw only Maxie’s fate in his mad eyes, slipping into darkness.

“Don’t! ” I screamed. “ Don’t! Please! ”

The next thing I heard was a deafening barrage of shots-maybe six, eight, ten echoing pops. Bullets tearing into him, ripping into his clothes with flashes of yellow and orange, the stench of cordite everywhere.

Dev was blown onto his back, the knife clattering against the pavement. From there, he just sort of raised his head and grinned at me. You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

That was all.

Panicked, I scrambled up to him, against shouted commands to stay where I was. He was making wheezing, guttural noises. Blood seeped out of his mouth.

“Please, Dev, please. Where’s Maxie?”

“Damn” was all he said. “I thought I would see him.”

“See who? ” I asked. “ See who? ” The cops were pulling me away.

His eyes rolled back and what he grunted last explained it all.

“Russ.”

A moment later I was surrounded by cops, their weapons still drawn, barking commands I didn’t hear.

As they pulled me away, it hurt like hell. I told them my brother was dying back inside the apartment and two additional bodies were in there.

After a quick explanation, they let me go back to the apartment.

Poor Gabby was slumped at the feet of Susan Pollack, dead. Charlie was resting where I had left him propped up against the wall.

“Charlie, ” I said, kneeling down next to him. There was blood all over his palm and a lot more congealed on his shirt.

“Where’s Gabby?” he asked in a hushed voice, staring glassily.

“She’s here, Charlie, she’s here.” I didn’t want him to see her. I didn’t want that to be his last sight.

“She’s dead, isn’t she, Jay? I know she’s dead.”

“Yes,” I said, even as the life slipped away from him. “She is.”

“Evan didn’t do it, Jay.” His eyes showed a sparkle of vindication. “He didn’t jump. She pushed him. He said he wanted to come back down. To be with us. It was just as I said all along, right?” He smiled. “I’m sorry, little brother, for dragging you into all this.”

“You didn’t drag me, Charlie.” Tears in my eyes, I squeezed his bloody hand. “I just wanted to help.”

“Help?” He smiled affectionately. “How could you possibly help me?”

“I know.”

“I want to touch her, Jay.” His hand fell to the floor and reached toward her body. “I need to feel her one more time. Please…”

I pulled Gabby’s arm toward him and he was able to press his fingers over her cold palm.

“She’s all I have. She’s the only thing in my life I didn’t manage to destroy. Because she loved me, Jay. And Evan too.”

“I know she did, Charlie. I know.”

“I hope your boy is okay, Jay. I really do. You know that Evan always liked him… He really-”

The sound of the phone ringing pierced the room. Suddenly I remembered I had told Kathy to call here. About Max. My heart picked up.

“I’ll be right back.” Holding my side, I went over to the table where the phone was. Nervously I picked it up. I was so scared, I could barely get a sound out of my mouth. “Kath?”

“I have him, Jay!”

“You what?”

“I have him. Maxie’s okay!”

“You do? ” My eyes immediately flooded with grateful tears. The words soared through me like the happiest thing I had ever heard, just as they had on my wedding day when Kathy said, “I do,” or when the doctor who delivered Max said, “Dr. Erlich, you’ve got a great-looking boy!”

“He’s here. He was just on his way back home. From Chris’s. I don’t know what you thought, honey, but Max’s safe. You want to hear his voice?”

“Yes,” I said tearfully. “ Yes. Put him on.” He’s safe.

“Hey, Dad.” I heard my boy’s uncomprehending tone, about as droning and impassive as if I had just stuck my head in his room and asked if he had a good day. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Max, I just-” I put my hand to my face and the tears started to come unchecked. Some were from absolute joy, at knowing everything was somehow going to be okay, at making it through it all alive. And some were from grief. For Evan and Gabby. How it had cost people I loved their lives.

For Charlie.

“Dad, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. I caught myself and sniffed against the sobs. “I love you, Max.”

“I love you too, Dad,” he said, unsure.

“Put Mom back on.”

I waited a few seconds, trying to regain my composure.

“Jay?”

“Some things have happened here, Kathy. Bad things. And I want you to be protected. Call the police. I’ll be in touch. I promise. Soon.”

Kathy pressed, scared. “What kinds of things, Jay?”

I didn’t know why Dev had said what he did, about my son, if he didn’t have him. Or why he had let me live with just a mark on my hand when everyone else had died.

Or what he meant by You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out. The jack of hearts.

I still felt fear.

“I love you, honey,” was all I said. “I gotta go. I’ll call you, I promise.”

I hung up and went back to see Charlie. “He’s safe!” I said, kneeling back down. “Max is okay…”

But Charlie’s eyes were fixed and still, strands of long, graying hair covering his face, a peaceful stare.

Peaceful, maybe for the first time ever. His fingers curled warmly around Gabby’s.

I started to cry.

“Oh, Charlie…” I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. I drew his bearded face gently down to me.

One of the policemen came over. He stood above me and looked at me, as if trying to sort it out. “Your brother?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. I stroked his face gently and spread the hair out of his eyes. “And my friend.”

I spent the next two days in the hospital, regaining my strength. That and undergoing about a dozen interviews with the police.

The bullet Dev had put in my side had gone clean through. Nothing vital damaged, like I’d thought. I had a grade-four concussion from the beating he’d given me and a bone was fractured in my jaw, which had to be wired. My hand required twenty stitches.

Other than that I was okay.

The rest of my time there was taken up with the police. Five people had died, and I was the only one who’d survived. I was deposed by the local detectives maybe a dozen times. Even the FBI.

I was very sad to learn what had happened to Don Sherwood. Over the past week, I had grown to look at him as a friend, and who knows, maybe he felt the same about me. I realized that if I hadn’t drawn him in against his will, he would still be alive. Of course, that would have been true for any of us-even Charlie, if he had gone early on to the police and told them all he knew. I allowed myself to feel some solace in the suspicion that the detective’s transplanted liver wasn’t altogether holding up and that he had, in the end, felt he was doing something right in being part of all this. I truly wished he was there to see how it all ended and to tell me, for the umpteenth time, that I could head home. In my thoughts, though I am not much of a believer in such things, I imagined maybe he’d been rewarded and had joined his wife and son. Maybe they were a part of his last thoughts-if they weren’t spent cursing me. I pictured that might have made him shake his head just a bit and smile.