Traffic on the Kennedy was steady, so Jason fumbled his phone out and tried all of Michael's numbers again. The same thing – voice mail, voice mail, technical difficulties. He cursed under his breath, then shut the phone. Beside him, Billy stared out the window.
"Kiddo?" Jason tried for a gentle, avuncular voice, the kind that belonged to someone who hadn't woken with a hangover and a woman whose last name he didn't know. "You feeling any better?"
The only response was Billy's fingers tightening on the armrest.
Twenty minutes ago, when Jason had yanked open his apartment door, he'd found his nephew trembling, clothing filthy and torn. A small leaf hung orange in the tousled mess of his hair, and it made him look like a corpse, some broken thing washed up on the banks of a desolate river. The boy hadn't said a word since, not as Jason took in the enormous pupils and shaking hands that meant his nephew was in shock, not as he'd run his hands over Billy's thin limbs to check for wounds, not even as Jason had gathered the boy into a bear hug and told him everything would be all right.
It was nothing, Jason told himself for the hundredth time. Some sort of kid stuff, some miscommunication or accident. Maybe Billy had been with a friend and they'd gotten in a fight. Or maybe he'd somehow gotten lost. Chicago would seem an enormous and scary place to an eight-year-old alone. Hell, sometimes it seemed that way to him.
"I met with the cops."
"You mean you informed on a gang?"
Jason heard Michael's words again, clear as broken glass, but pushed the thought aside. Michael was fine. He had to be. Everything had to be.
He turned onto Damen, driving though déjà vu. Not twenty-four hours ago he'd ridden this same route, past the same closed shops and narrow crooked houses, the same boys on the corner daring him with their eyes. Cracked pavement and exhaust haze, broken glass firing glints of too-bright sun. Damen Avenue, just like yesterday.
Then he reached his brother's block, and realized that it was not at all like yesterday, that everything was not fine.
Everything was a thousand miles from fine.
Over there was the extensions place, Lauretta's, the African queen on the sign slightly darkened. Lauretta who babysat Billy from time to time, who liked Jason because both her boys were Army, too. Then, on the other side, the little storefront diner, one of the front windows spider-webbed so that you couldn't read the specials, something about two eggs and ham on the bone. Michael's bar was supposed to sit between them.
But somehow it had been exchanged for a reeking ruin.
Timbers twisted and scorched into bubbles of ash lay amidst bricks licked black by flaming tongues. Fire had eaten everything, left behind only a charred carcass. A twisted gothic cathedral decorated with spires of cinders and rubble. Firemen moved through the debris like acolytes of flame.
Some part of Jason expected to hear foreign tongues, the alien wailing of the women. He'd lost count of how many burnt-out buildings he'd seen, of the missions to secure-and-contain, of triaging tiny broken bodies and calling for the medics. For a moment he found himself back in it, boots on the ground in the desert's wrathful heat. Sulfur in his nostrils and sweat in his eyes. That was the world to which this kind of destruction belonged. Half a world away amidst people who spoke a different language, worshipped a different god. That was where buildings burned out, where survivors were left to gape at the ruins of what had been real.
Not here. Not his brother.
And on the heels of that thought, another. Billy.
Idiot!
He jerked to the curb, screeching to a halt in front of Lauretta's shop. Scrabbled at his seat belt, then unbuckled his nephew. "Don't look." He pulled the boy out of his seat, dragged him into an awkward embrace. "You don't have to." Billy was light as rags, warm and shuddering rags. His breath came heavy and wet, spit and snot and tears soaking the shoulder of Jason's T-shirt. They sat in the rattle of the air conditioning, Jason holding his nephew, stroking his hair. Telling the boy not to look even as he himself stared.
The tattered heap of dense charcoal running down the center must have been the bar, where yesterday he'd shared a beer with his brother. The ash sparkled, and it took him a moment to realize it was shattered glassware. And there, in the back, he could make out the brick wall, now half demolished, that marked the storeroom. Somewhere back there was the trap-hatch that led to the basement, from the days of bootlegging, when the place used to be a speakeasy. He remembered sitting in that basement after a day's work hauling shit out of it, Mikey pulling out a bottle of Black Label and toasting-
The rap on the window threw him into combat mode. He spun with one arm up, the other tightening protectively around his nephew.
A woman, big, in a sundress of turquoise and bright orange. Lauretta, owner of the salon and part-time babysitter. She was squinting, her face drawn with concern. He shook his head to clear the memories, his own traces of clinical shock. Understanding could wait. Now he had to act. He rolled down the window.
"You all right, honey?"
His head felt light, like it might float away. "What happened?"
She gestured at Billy, and then shook her head. "Why'n't you come inside?" She gave him a sad smile. "Get William here a Coke."
He nodded. Sunlight splashed like molten iron as he stepped out, hoisting Billy with him, careful to keep his nephew's face buried in his shoulder. Inside the shop, barber's chairs ran along a mirrored wall. On the other side there were tubs that looked like you might put your feet in them. A customer relaxed while her stylist wove extensions into her hair.
Lauretta led him through a curtain to a narrow room where a couch faced a television, the sound on mute. Jason lowered the boy, Billy's grip on his neck tightening at first and then loosening as Lauretta came alongside. Billy sat upright, the muscles of his body rigid, his eyes darting. When they settled on Lauretta, he seemed to relax.
"There you are, baby." She changed the channel to the Cartoon Network, opened a minifridge and came up with a can of soda. "You just watch the cartoons, okay?"
A sudden look of terror swept across his face, but she spoke immediately, her voice honey. "Don't you worry. We'll be right here." Jason followed Lauretta to the curtain, marveling at her ease, how in control she was. He was Billy's uncle, supposedly a guy who could take care of him, but she was the one who knew what the boy needed. Jason wanted to thank her, but what he said was, "What happened?"
"I don't know," she said, her voice low. "Po-lice wouldn't tell me much."
"Is…" He hesitated, afraid to ask the only question that mattered, terror slopping like water against a weakening dam. "Is Michael okay?"
She stared, her eyes soft and sad, and he knew the answer. The levees inside him broke. He heard a faint whimper and was surprised to realize he had made it.
His brother was dead.
Michael had needed help, Jason hadn't been there, and now his brother was dead.
The world tilted. He felt dizzy, put one hand against the doorframe. An iron voice sounded inside of him, a voice he hadn't heard in months. Telling him straighten up, soldier. Telling him this wasn't the time. He took a deep breath, and wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand. "Will you… can you watch Billy for a little while?"
She gave him a look that made him wish he were five again, could hug himself to her dress and feel safe. "Of course."
He knelt beside the couch, his face level with Billy's. The boy was obviously still in shock, but his pupils seemed a little less dilated, the tension in his shoulders a bit looser. Familiar surroundings.
"Buddy, I'm going to go out for a minute. But Lauretta's going to sit with you. Is that okay?"
Billy looked at him, then up at Lauretta. He nodded. Jason squeezed his shoulder, stood up and stepped through the curtains.
"Jason." She fiddled with the belt of her dress, then raised her eyes to meet his. "Your brother, he was a good man, and careful. It don't seem right that he'd have fallen down drunk in his own bar, let it burn around him."
A chill ran down his spine. Again he heard the words in his mind.
I met with the cops.
You mean you informed on a gang?
"No ma'am," he said, his hands clenching to fists. "It doesn't."