Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

Phil took Angie’s hand and it looked so small in his.

“Ange?” he said.

“She’ll be asleep for most of the day,” the nurse said. “There’s very little you can do for her now, Mr. Dimassi.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Phil said.

The nurse looked at me and I gave her back nothing but a flat stare.

At ten, I came out of ICU and found Bubba sitting in the waiting room.

“How is she?”

“They think,” I said, “she’s going to be okay.”

He nodded.

“We’ll know more when she wakes up, I guess.”

“When’s that?”

“Late this afternoon,” I said. “Maybe the evening.”

“Anything I can do?”

I leaned over the fountain, gulped water like a man come in from a desert.

“I need to speak to Fat Freddy,” I said.

“Sure. Why?”

“I need to find Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy and ask them some questions.”

“I don’t think Freddy’ll have a problem with that.”

“If they don’t answer my questions,” I said, “I’ll need permission to shoot them until they do.”

Bubba leaned over the fountain, looked at me. “You’re serious?”

“You tell Freddy, Bubba, that if I don’t get his permission, I’ll do

it anyway.”

“Now you’re talking,” he said.

Phil and I worked in shifts.

If one of us had to use the bathroom or get a drink, the other held Angie’s hand. All day, her hand was enclosed in one of ours.

At noon, Phil went looking for the cafeteria, and I lifted her hand to my lips and closed my eyes.

The day I met her, she was missing both front teeth and her hair was cut so short and so badly that I thought she was another boy. We were in the gym at the Little House Recreation Center on East Cottage, and it was a free-for-all for six-year-olds. This was back before there was much official after-school care in my neighborhood, but parents could drop their kids at the Little House for three hours for five dollars a week, and the staff pretty much gave us free rein as long as we didn’t break anything.

That day, the floor of the gym was littered with maroon dodgeballs and orange Nerfs and hard plastic footballs and floor hockey sticks and pucks and basketballs and maybe twenty-five uncoordinated six-year-olds running around and screaming like maniacs.

The pucks were in short supply, and after I picked up a hockey stick I honed in on the short kid with the bad haircut as she pushed one awkwardly around the edge of the gym. I snuck up behind her, lifted her stick off the floor with my own, and stole the puck.

And she tackled me, punched me in the head, and stole it back.

With her hand to my face in the ICU unit, I could remember that day as vividly as any in my life.

I leaned in and placed my cheek against hers, pressed her hand tightly to my chest, closed my eyes.

When Phil came back, I bummed a cigarette off him and went out to the parking lot to smoke it.

I hadn’t smoked in seven years, but the tobacco smelled like perfume as I lit it and the smoke that filled my lungs felt clean and pure in the frigid air.

“That Porsche,” someone on my right said, “is one nice ride. Sixty-six?”

“Sixty-three,” I said and turned to look at him.

Pine wore a camel hair topcoat and burgundy twill trousers and a black cashmere sweater. His black gloves looked like a second skin over his hands.

“How’d you afford it?” he said.

“I pretty much bought a body only,” I said. “Acquired parts over several years.”

“You one of those guys who loves his car more than his wife or friends?”

I held up the keys. “It’s chrome and metal and rubber, Pine, and it couldn’t mean less to me right now. You want it, take it.”

He shook his head. “Far too ostentatious for my tastes. Drive an Acura myself.”

I took my second drag on the cigarette and immediately felt lightheaded. The air danced in front of my eyes.

“Shooting Vincent Patriso’s only granddaughter,” he said, “was an extremely uncool thing for someone to do.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Constantine has been informed that two people he ordered to cooperate with your investigation did not.”

“That’s correct.”

“And now Ms. Gennaro lies in ICU.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Constantine wants you to know that he had nothing to do with this.”

“I know.”

“Mr. Constantine also wants you to know that you have carte blanche when it comes to whatever you have to do to identify and apprehend the man who shot Ms. Gennaro.”

“Carte blanche?”

“Carte blanche, Mr. Kenzie. If Mr. Hurlihy and Mr. Rouse were never seen again, Mr. Constantine assures you that neither he nor his associates would have any desire to look for them. Understood?”

I nodded.

He handed me a card. Scribbled on one side was an address—411 South Street, 4th floor. Scribbled on the other side was a phone number I recognized as Bubba’s cell phone.

“Meet Mr. Rogowski there as soon as you can.”

“Thanks.”

He shrugged, looked at my cigarette. “Shouldn’t smoke those things, Mr. Kenzie.”

He walked off into the parking lot and I stubbed out the cigarette and went back inside.

“Angie opened her eyes at two forty-five.

“Honey?” Phil said.

She blinked and tried to speak but her mouth was too dry.

As instructed earlier by the nurse, we gave her some chips of ice but no water, and she nodded gratefully.

“Don’t call me honey,” she croaked. “How many times do I have to tell you, Phillip?”

Phil laughed and kissed her forehead and I kissed her cheek and she slapped feebly at both of us.

We sat back.

“How do you feel?” I said.

“Real stupid question,” she said.

Dr. Barnett dropped his stethoscope and penlight back into his pockets and told Angie, “You’re going to be in ICU until tomorrow, just so we can keep a close eye on you, but it looks like you’re coming along well.”

“Hurts like hell,” she said.

He smiled. “I’d expect so. That bullet took a particularly nasty course, Ms. Gennaro. And later we’ll discuss some of the damage. I can promise you that there’s a whole lot of foods you’ll never be able to eat again. Just about any liquid besides water is going to be out of the question for a while too.”