Дж. Хатчинс - Personal Effects - Dark Art

She grinned and nodded. “Papa-Jean” was our nickname for her dad. “It” was Spindle’s thirty-year-old surprise.

Last week, I’d discovered that the locations of three bodies—and the buried treasure she and her two friends had vowed to hide—had been lurking in plain sight for years, sewn into Gertrude Spindler’s quilt designs. I’d gone on a field trip, traveling to the “X” on the map—a rat-infested kitchen in a long-closed Chinatown restaurant, of all places—pried up some floorboards, and unearthed an arm-length metal tube. Ida Jean-Phillipe had opened the container in the NYPD forensic laboratory and extracted a sword in a stitched cloth scabbard. Her research revealed that the sword had an ancient, blood-soaked—and apparently “mystical”—history.

Ida didn’t care for those silly malchans stories, and I agreed that we needed scientific evidence. Working off the books, Eye confirmed that Spindle’s fingerprints were on the treasure. Using that information last Friday, I’d coaxed the rest of the story from Spindle. NYPD now knew what I’d discovered, including the identity of her dead cohorts, sans Eye’s contributions.

“Papa’s got some people looking into it,” Eye said to me. “I know them. They’re good cops. I think a few of them were a little embarrassed by that write-up in Saturday’s Post, though. ‘30-Year-Old Murders Solved By Brinkvale Therapist. Crazy Quilter In Custody.’”

“Dude, you made the papers?” Lucas asked.

My face flushed red. I changed the subject.

“So yeah, Eye. I owe you some beer for this, next time we’re at Stovie’s.”

“Ohhh, honey. Some? Some beer?” Eye took a quick step away from me, wedged herself between Rachael and Lucas, and playfully tossed her arms around their shoulders. There they were, my little family. I wished I had a camera. “Not some beer, cooyon . ALL the beer.”

Beside her, Rachael giggled. “Girl, you are so my best friend,” she said. She glanced at me, her expression pure, ah, geek chica snarkitude. “That’s right, Z. All the beer.”

I laughed quietly. “Fine, fine. All the beer.”

Lucas beamed. “Katabatic,” he said.

I glanced at my watch. A half-hour had passed since we’d arrived. We had another thirty until the memorial service. I looked back to the doorway, past Eye’s father murmuring into his phone, to the hall. Was Dad really going to be late for this? Was he—

Huh.

A nearly bald man with a long silver ponytail stood next to the memorial cards. In his mid-fifties, he wore jeans, Chuck Taylors, and a photographer’s vest over a black T-shirt.

I squinted. The T-shirt read: Not All Who Wander Are Lost.

As I watched, the man bent down to fill out a card. I saw the reflection of the creamy stationery in his round Lennon-style wire rims. Each wrist sported half a dozen bracelets. The guy was part flower child, part punk rocker. His face was twisted with worry, or dread.

I nudged Lucas.

“You know that guy?” He shook his head. I frowned. “You think Gram would’ve known that guy?”

“Hellzes bellzes,” Lucas said. “No way, bro. Gram was Upper East Side, all the way. You know that. Unless…” He paused. “Unless she was moonlighting at the local Freak Flag Manufacturer’s Union or something.”

“ Luc -as,” Rachael hissed. “Shut up. Uncool.”

My brother shrugged at her innocently. I turned back as the man sealed the envelope and placed it in one of the pockets of his vest. He walked past Papa-Jean into the room, walking toward…

Toward me.

“Are you Zach? Zach Taylor?” His voice was high, almost feminine. I glanced at my friends—they looked just as perplexed as I felt—and back at him. I nodded. He extended his hand.

The glittering charms on his bracelets clinked and chittered as we shook hands. Several crucifixes hung from leather straps. A Star of David. A Buddha. A pentagram. A mandala. The Virgin Mary. Other symbols, so many others that I couldn’t place, including an armor-covered woman cradling an infant. His calloused palm squeezed mine, hard.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. His eyes glimmered with tears. “You’re… you’re grown up. And you ”—he was now gazing at my brother—“little Lookie-Luke. Unbelievable. ”

The man was now emphatically pumping my hand with both of his. I didn’t like this at all. My shoulders tensed. I tried to pull away. He wasn’t letting go. I opened my mouth to speak.

“Listen,” the man said. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother. You have no idea what she gave up for you two. She really protected—”

A hand slammed onto the stranger’s shoulder from behind. The man did a full-body start as the atonal shink-shink-shink of his bracelets tailed off in a discordant jangle. I yanked away my hand, stepped backward, felt Rachael’s hands steady me.

My father towered behind the stranger. His blue eyes were narrow slits. Eustacio stood beside Dad, like a club bouncer.

“Get out,” Dad said.

The man turned and looked up, up, up at my father’s face.

“Will.” The man’s tone evoked a showdown from a spaghetti Western. “Fancy meeting—”

Eustacio’s dark fingers snatched at the man’s forearm, his thumb digging into the tender meat just below the elbow. The skin went alive there, blossoming red. The stranger sucked in air.

“Take a walk with me,” Papa-Jean said.

The cop didn’t wait for a reply. Eustacio shoved the man away from us, toward the parlor door, his thumb still digging into the man’s flesh. A heartbeat later, they were gone.

I looked at my dad, uncomprehending. I watched the haughty, frigid expression in his blue eyes glimmer, then vanish… and saw the quivering muscles along his lean jaw line smooth as he unclenched his teeth. I knew this version of Dad. He wasn’t merely angry. He was Defcon One, thermonuclearly furious.

“What was—”

“Drop it, Zachary,” Dad said. I must’ve telegraphed that I was going to ask again, because he cut me off again, shaking his head once. I flinched. It was the nonverbal gavel bang. Court was adjourned.

My father has always been emotionally chilly—in fact, he wasn’t present through much of our childhood; Gram did the lion’s share of raising us cubs after Mom died—and he’s never been one to tolerate backtalk. I suspect this hails from his ambition, and being the uberhardass his job demands. A half-decade ago, when things were at their worst for me ( giddy-giddy pardner, let’s get the posse and raise some hell ), his low threshold for defiance was pushed beyond its limits. He was the one who sent me away. Indirectly, he was the one who introduced me to my passion, my art… and eventually, my career.

I don’t think I could have disappointed him more. He once told me this “art therapy thing” was a phase. He offered me a “more respectable” position at his office, starting as a mail clerk. No disrespect to the profession, but I politely declined.

But this —this haughty, ice-cold snarling Dad—was a more recent development. For the past few years, he’s been mean-spirited, high-strung, obsessed with work. He’s changed. I didn’t care for the man he has become. I guess we’re even in that regard.

I closed my mouth, acquiescing. And with that, my dad became normal again. He hugged Rachael and Eye, tousled Lucas’ hair, commenced with small talk about my girlfriend’s writing and my brother’s film classes and my friend’s gig in the NYPD labs. My tribe wasn’t stupid—they’d been around long enough to know that the wisest thing to do was humor New York County District Attorney William V. Taylor—so they smiled back, and answered his questions. Our eyes flitted to each other’s, though, sending near-telepathic transmissions.