Andrew Gross - The Blue Zone

They lowered their mother into the grave.

The rabbi handed out white lilacs. One by one, each of them stepped up and tossed a flower onto the casket. Grandma Ruth, who was eighty-eight. Aunt Abbie and her husband, Dave. Kate’s cousins, Matt and Jill, who came in from college. Everyone tossed a flower in, until the blooms became indistinguishable, a quilt of white.

Kate was the last. She and Greg stood silently over the casket. She squeezed his hand. Her eyes lifted for a second, and in the distance, out on the road, she spotted Phil Cavetti and two agents waiting down by the cars. Her blood grew tight.

I won’t give in, she promised. I’m going to find out who did this, Mom.

She tossed the final flower.

I’m going to find out what you wanted to tell me. I’m going to get these bastards. You can rest on that, Mom. I love you. I’ll never forget you for a second.

Good-bye.

Two weeks passed. Kate’s shoulder slowly healed. She wasn’t ready to go back to the lab. She was still too angry, the wounds inside too raw. It seemed only yesterday she had watched as her mother died in her arms.

Kate still had no idea if her father was dead or alive. Just that a new world had exploded in her face. A world she hated. It had been a year since her family had gone into hiding. Her mother was dead. Her father was missing. Every truth had been turned into a lie.

When she felt strong enough, Kate went up to Bellevue to check in on Tina.

Her friend was still in a deep coma, 9 to 10 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. She was being kept in a long-term trauma ward now. She was still connected to a respirator and receiving mannitol through an IV to relieve the brain swelling.

But there were moments of hope. Tina’s brain activity had increased, and there were signs of alertness in her pupils. Occasionally she would even stir. Still, the doctors said it was no more than a fifty-fifty chance that she’d recover or be the same person she was before the shooting. The left side of her brain had suffered damage, the area that controls speech and cognition. They just didn’t know.

There was one piece of good news, though. Tina’s killer had been found.

Amazingly, it turned out to be a gang killing after all. A random initiation rite, just as the police had said. No link to Kate’s situation whatsoever. They had the seventeen-year-old kid who did it in custody. A renegade gang member had turned him in. The evidence was ironclad. It could have been anyone on that street that night.

This took a ton of pressure off Kate’s mind.

Today she stayed with Tina in the cramped private room while Tom and Ellen went to lunch. The monitors emitted their steady, reassuring beeps, one IV for keeping the swelling down, another for nourishment and hydration. A thick breathing tube went through her mouth into her lungs. There were a few pictures taped to the walls and on the bed table, happy ones: family trips, Tina’s graduation. One of her and Kate on the beach at Fire Island. The respirator marked the time with a steady whoosh.

It still hurt deeply to see her like this. Tina looked so frail and pallid. Kate wrapped her hand around her friend’s curled, inert fist. She told her about what had happened, how she’d had to go away for a while, the narrow escape on the Harlem River, then Sharon.

“See, Teen, check it out. We both got shot. It’s just that…”

Her voice cracked, unable to finish the sentence. It’s just that my wound will heal.

“C’mon, Tina, I need you to get better. Please. ”

Sitting next to her, listening to the monitors beep and the respirator contract and expand, Kate felt her mind rush back in time. What was it her mother needed to tell her? Now she’d never know. The picture…Kate was starting to feel that Cavetti might well be right. Maybe her father did kill that agent. Maybe he was alive. Her mother was gone. That answer had died with her. What was he doing in that photo? How deep was his connection to Mercado? How many years-?

Kate heard a soft groan. Suddenly she felt a tug on her finger. Her heart leaped up into her throat. She turned.

“Tina.”

Tina’s eyes were still shut, the monitors beeping steadily. The tube in her mouth didn’t move. It had only been one of those involuntary reflexes. Kate had seen them before. It gave them hope, falsely. Maybe she’d been squeezing Tina’s hand a bit too hard.

“C’mon, Teen…I know you can hear me. It’s me, Kate. I’m here. I miss you, Teen. I need you to recover. Please, Tina, I need you to come back to me.”

Nothing.

Kate let go of her friend’s hand.

How could she just put it away, Kate thought, the drive inside her? How could she just pretend that there wasn’t something horrible behind what had happened? Go on with her life. Let them win. Never know. It always came back to the same question, and now that question needed to be answered.

Who had turned her father in? How had he first come to the attention of the FBI?

But there was one person left who still knew.

“Everyone says I should let it go,” Kate said, “but if it were you, you’d want to know, wouldn’t you, Teen?” Kate stroked her friend’s hair. The respirator wheezed. The brain monitor beeped.

No, they don’t get to win.

Kate knocked on the door of the dreary, seventies-contemporary house in Huntington, Long Island. It was desperately in need of a coat of paint. The heavyset man in thick glasses came to the door. As he saw her, his gaze shot past her toward the street. “You shouldn’t be here, Kate.”

“Howard, this is important, please …”

Howard Kurtzman glanced at her arm in the sling, and a more submissive look came over his face. He opened the screen door, letting Kate in. He took her into the living room, a dim, low-ceilinged room with dark wood furniture and faded upholstery that looked like it hadn’t been recovered in years.

“I told you in New York, I can’t help you, Kate. It’s not good for either of us that you’re here. I’m giving you a minute, whatever it is you want. Then you can leave by the door in the garage.”

“Howard, I know you know what happened. You have to talk to me.”

“Howard, is someone there?” His wife, Pat, stepped out of the kitchen. When she saw Kate, she stopped dead in her tracks. Kate had met her a few times at office gatherings over the years. “ Kate …” she said. She looked at the sling. Then back at Howard.

“We were both sorry to hear about Sharon,” Howard said. He motioned Kate to sit, but she just leaned against the padded arm of the couch. “I have nothing but fond thoughts of your mother. She was always pleasant to me. But you see it now, don’t you? These are bad people, Kate.”

“You think they’re just going to forget about you, Howard? You think they’re just going to let you walk away, or that it ends just because you glance around the street both ways before you open the door? My mother’s dead, Howard. My father, I have no idea where he is or if he’s even alive. It didn’t end for him. ” Kate picked up a framed picture of Howard’s family-grown kids, smiling grandchildren-from the side table. “This is your family. You think you’re free? Look at me. ” She thrust forward her sling. “You know something, Howard. I know you do. Someone pressured you to turn him in.”

Howard adjusted his glasses. “No.”

“Then you were paid… Please, Howard, I don’t give a damn what you did. That’s not why I’m here. I just need to find out about my father.”

“Kate, you don’t know what you’re even stepping into,” he said. “You’re married now. Move away. Rebuild your life. Start a family-”