Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

“Dub!”

“Hey, Marlon.”

“Buddy, how ya doin’?”

Willow kept walking. “Good! I’m well.”

“Man, I haven’t seen you in what, three years?”

“’Bout that.”

“I thought you overdosed!”

“Fuck you.”

“Just teasin’, man. How’s the leg?”

“I’m still using it.”

“Dude, how long you been sober?”

“Three years.”

Marlon knew it was a lie. He could sniff sobriety dates like dogs that sniff cancer. The lowlife knew everything; that’s why he’d been an invaluable informant. He wasn’t like other snitches Dubya had enlisted through the years—the man had a kind of morality code, which turned out to be a lucky thing for Willow. (A very lucky thing.)

“That’s awesome, Dubya. I’m here on a fucking court card, can you believe it?”

“Outrageous,” said Willow, deadpan.

“You still funny!” said Marlon, his face cracking open in a smile. “So—you a detective again?”

“I’m retired.”

Willow hadn’t stopped moving, hoping to shake him.

“Good on ya! I figured that, ’cause otherwise I’ma hear from you. Your shit went dead . Where you staying?”

“Staying?”

Marlon wide-grinned at his old employer’s superior, game-playing bullshit. “Downtown?”

“I’m staying in Maui.”

“Maui? No shit . Isn’t that where Woody Harrelson and all those rich, dope-smoking celebrities live? You hangin’ with Woody?”

“You ask a lot of questions. You should work for the TSA.”

“The TSA don’t ask shit . Hey, lemme give you my digits.”

“That’s okay, Marlon,” he said, wincing at the asininity of that word.

“Come on, man—we’ll cut up old times.”

Willow winced again as the CI pressed a slip of paper into his hand. He must have written his number down during the meeting.

“I’m into some shit that’s a little bit… inneresting .” Which was code for money. “When you burn out on all that smokin’ and surfin’ you’re doing with Woody, you should hit me up.”

Marlon was fishing. Willow could read the damning once dirty, always dirty in the snitch’s conspiratorial eyes.

“Later,” said Willow, power-walking away.

“Don’t lose that number! And say hi to Mr. Harrelson!” Then, after Willow was a hundred yards gone: “We owe each other! Forever!”

2.

“I’m sober, Rafael.”

“Good for you,” he said, genuinely glad. “For how long?”

“Three years—from about the time I left the department.”

May as well feed the lie. Besides, if they made him pee in a cup, he’d ace it. Willow had been clean a few months now and they hadn’t yet invented the test that measures for how long. Though they might be able to detect marijuana in the hair follicles, because THC hung around in the system.

“How’s Pace?”

“She’s good—she’s great. Perfect. Gave me a grandson.”

“Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Yes it is,” said Willow. “He’s really somethin’.”

“I’ve got a few of those myself now. Though ‘Grandpa’ on the CV can be a bit of a cock-block. I tend not to mention it to my Tinder hookups.”

“You’re on Tinder?”

“Can’t imagine life before it. ‘Love Me Tinder’—Elvis said it first.” Rafael took a harder glance at his old colleague. “What’s going on with your jaw there?” It had swelled like a tiny cantaloupe.

“Toothache. Haven’t had one since college.”

“Could be an abscess. They’re a bitch.”

Willow knew it was time.

“Rafael—I appreciate you seeing me. I really do. And I know you didn’t have to, so I thank you for that. Being sober awhile, I’ve had a lot of time to think. About my mistakes. And all my… horseshit.” Rafael cracked a smile and that was a good thing. “And a big part of why I’m here is to make amends to you—to the whole unit, really—but that’s not the only reason. Which you probably already know.” He took a long, reflective pause, footnoted by contrition, humility and steely resolve. “What I’m saying, Rafael, is I’d like to come back. It’s different for me now and I think I could be an asset. I know I could. I’ve done a helluva lot of growing up.”

Rafael nodded, hands clasped together, avoiding his eyes. In that moment, Willow still thought it could go either way. His old boss stared down at the desk, making minuscule adjustments to a letter opener and scorpion paperweight.

“I know that,” he finally said. “And I’d love to have you. Problem Number One is that we just don’t have any room. Not in Cold Case, anyway. We have a pretty tight group of folks right now, Willow, and you know how tough that is to achieve.”

“I do. I do. That’s fair.”

“Takes awhile to get the chemistry right.”

“And Problem Number Two?” asked Willow, trying to be wry and lighthearted about the whole fiasco. “Or would that be Problems Two through Ten?”

“Dubya… you were a terrible Cold Case guy.” Willow cringed at his candor. “Some folks just don’t have the aptitude.” The qualifier stung him more than the opening salvo. “Which I have to say was a surprise. What we do in that unit is kind of a black art. My gut told me you’d take to it more than you did. So that’s on me.”

As he sat there and faced the music like a hapless adult-child, he experienced an unexpected sense of liberty. He’d made his little play and got checkmated. A consistent theme in his life was that whenever a door closed—and they always did—he sighed with relief. Rafael, who was actually fond of him, took pity, offering the consolation prize of a promise to have a word with his cronies (all of them men with whom the remorseful detective once worked) about upcoming vacancies in the homicide division. Willow demurred, using the excuse of not being “street-legal” due to his leg injury, which he said had been acting up and might need a surgery (another lie)— leg injury being an unfortunate callback for the putative source of his addictions and the three rehab stints the union wound up paying for. Rafael, himself relieved, didn’t pursue. What they both “understood” was that homicide would never take him back. Toward the end of his eleven-year tenure in narcotics, Willow got ambushed by some dealers he’d busted. He killed two and was shot in the process, becoming some kind of hero—which was how he finagled his way into homicide, his dream gig. But life in that ecosystem quickly became insupportable. In-house suspicions that he’d ripped off said dead drug dealers (and had been doing that for years) began chasing him around like a cartoon storm cloud. Nothing was ever proven, but the “cronies” were glad when he finally asked for a transfer to Cold Case. He owed Rafael for making that possible; the man never believed the scuttlebutt.

Maybe everyone would have been better off if he had…

The mentor stood, reaching out his hand. Willow shook it and thanked him again.

“I’m going to give you a number to call,” said Rafael, scribbling something down. When he handed it to him, it made him think of Marlon, his old CI, doing the same. Willow’s head scrambled—it seemed a bizarre notion, but maybe Rafael wanted him to contact one of the influential investigators directly and begin a grovel-fest that might topple the dominoes of interdepartmental opinion that was set against him.

“What is it?”

“My dentist,” said Rafael. “She’s awesome. You oughta get that taken care of before you get an infection in your brain.”

3.

He came to New York on a Hail Mary pass but the Gods had other plans, decreeing him worthy of a root canal he couldn’t afford. Just another watery notch in the belt of shit around Willow Millard Wylde’s pasty, post-rehab paunch…