Also by TESS HUDSON

DOUBLE DOWN

And writing as ERICA ORLOFF

DO THEY WEAR HIGH HEELS IN HEAVEN?

MAFIA CHIC

THE ROOFER

DIVAS DON’T FAKE IT

DIARY OF A BLUES GODDESS

SPANISH DISCO

Invisible Girl
Tess Hudson

www.mirabooks.co.uk

With great love, to my mother, Maryanne

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A long time ago I was befriended by a Vietnam-era veteran who taught me a great deal about writing and art and even faith. I was an impressionable twenty years old at the time, and I glimpsed a different side of the war from what I remembered on the evening news when I was a little girl. I owe a great deal of the imagery of this book to Ed. Far away, but still in my thoughts.

As always, I thank my agent, Jay Poynor, for his support. And I especially must thank, from the bottom of my heart, my editor Margaret Marbury. For some reason, I have never written about the mother-daughter relationship, always choosing in my books to write about fathers and daughters. Margaret urged me to add the character of Mai, and when that happened, it was like a dam bursting. This novel is really the story of mothers and daughters and bonds that are never broken.

I must thank my own mother, whose friendship is one of my adult life’s most precious gifts. I also pause to remember my grandmother, Irene Cunningham, whose absence never stops being a great emptiness in my heart. I also want to thank Alexa, Nicholas, Isabella and Jack…by loving my children so totally, the story of Mai was able to come to life.

My father…somehow his stories of Manhattan are always interwoven in my books. This one is no exception.

My sister Stacey Groome is one of my biggest cheerleaders. She has read every one of my books, and I am so lucky to have her as a friend.

Other family and friends: my sister Jessica, Kathy J., Kathy L., Nancy, Cleo, Pammie.

I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful team at MIRA, my publisher. I especially love my cover. Thank you to Sasha Bogin for her insights and editorial direction, and for her enthusiasm for this book. And the members of Writers’ Cramp. I began this novel three times, always agonizing about weaving the past and present. Jon, especially, encouraged me to travel deeper into the past and into Vietnam and Laos as I wrote, and the book is better for it.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge J. D. He patiently let me read aloud to him, and felt every tear and heartbreak that my characters did. I love you.

If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him.

—Buddha

In war, truth is the first casualty.

—Aeschylus

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

—Jimmy Carter

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

—Lao Tzu

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

—George McGovern

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Prologue

To Mai, the East River was as mysterious as the moonlit river near her childhood village in Vietnam, but it was colder—and more dangerous. In New York, she didn’t need to fear snipers or a sudden assault from American helicopters, like hawks circling above, waiting to swoop, the smell of napalm burning. She needed to fear the river itself, as if it were alive, living, in the way Buddhists taught that all things were living and connected.

Mai knew no single current controlled the river, no orderly flow ordained by the moon and the tides. Instead, currents fought against each other, colliding and viciously warring with each other, waiting to pull anything into the river’s depths. Beneath the surface were cars and old appliances, trash, worn tires, the silt making visibility impossible. NYPD scuba divers who came to search for jumpers couldn’t see their own hands inches from their faces. Mingled in the waters, too, down in the silt, were bodies. Murder victims and jumpers in the East River were as much a part of New York lore as alligators in the sewer system. Mai knew bodies lurked.

No one survived the East River. No one. The currents would drag a body down deep, as if claiming it for some unseen angry god. She feared the bodies. The dead luring her, their skeletal fingers beckoning, whispers in the night, join us.

Mai tried not to think of her children. She longed for a last hug, to hold them tightly on her lap and breathe in their innocence. She felt her resolve weakening. Then she pictured Jimmy. He was her brave soldier, her hero, and from the first day she saw him appear through the tall reeds into her village, she loved him. Thoughts of Jimmy, of his fearlessness, like a tiger in the grass, stalking, patient, courageous, filled her.

The air whipped at her silk dress, the one he loved best, and her hair, long and black, flew about her face. She almost lost her balance. Then, with a mournful glance skyward, she whispered.

Forgive me.

And Mai Malone, her thin body lithe and graceful, arms stretched wide, stepped off the pier and into the ebony waters swirling below her.

Chapter One

Clinton.

Not for the first time, Maggie Malone shook her head in wonder at how trendy Hell’s Kitchen had become. They’d even rechristened the area Clinton, after DeWitt Clinton, a New York governor from over a hundred years ago. Everyone knew Clinton Court and the old DeWitt Clinton school, but face it, Maggie thought, the name Clinton allowed real-estate developers to make this part of the city sound more attractive. Who wants to pay a million dollars for a co-op in Hell? The yuppies had invaded like bacteria spreading through an infected sore. They made Clinton fashionable. But for her, it would always be Hell’s Kitchen.

Emphasis on Hell.

Down at the end of the bar, a guy with an expensive haircut waved an American Express platinum card and snapped his fingers. Maggie took her time strolling over to him and the three girls—two brunettes and a blonde, all in low-slung jeans and expensive tops—hanging all over him.

“I’d like a bottle of your best champagne,” he said loud enough for pretty much anyone in the bar to hear, though the crowd was thinning out.

“First, we don’t carry champagne, and second, we don’t take AmEx.”

“Fine, I’ll put it on a different card.”

“We don’t take cards, period.”

“What?” He looked at her incredulously, then he shook his head. “Fine. Give us four sour appletinis.”

Maggie gave a slight nod and moved down the bar a couple of feet to mix the neon-green concoction. When she’d been a little girl, the Twilight had been a hellhole. You didn’t even walk in if you weren’t neighborhood. Not if you knew what was good for you. She’d started out running the register, standing on a wooden crate. Her brother Danny had cleaned tables. They’d both graduated to bartender before their eighteenth birthdays. But back then the drinks had been beer, bourbon, scotch, vodka, boilermakers. Not appletinis and cosmos.

The yuppies had started coming in a few years before. Danny was rude to them. Maggie was ruder. She felt desperate to hold onto the Twilight the way it was. The way it had always been. Her familiar alcoholics. The ones she drank with, the ones she threw out at 3:00 a. m. The ones who knew her father.

She served the appletinis and then went down to the far end of the bar to refill the beer in front of Charlie—no last name that she knew of—an old-timer.

“What’s eatin’ you, Maggie? You look like you lost your best goddamn friend.”

She shrugged. “I just hate seeing the place like this.”

“What? Crowded? Making money hand over fist?”

“You know what I mean,” she snapped at him. His nose was like a road map of crisscrossed blood vessels, and he had a way of curling over his beer, lest someone should steal it.

“So sell.”

“I keep thinking about it. Got another offer this week. Haven’t talked to Danny yet.”

“What’s the old man think?”

She shrugged. “We haven’t heard from him in months.”

“Wanna know what I think?”

“Sure.”

“Sell the fuckin’ place. I don’t know what the hell you’re holding onto it for. Take the money, go retire to friggin’ Florida or something. Get out of the winter. Al Roker said it was minus ten with the windchill this morning. That’s colder than a witch’s tit.”

“Point taken, Charlie.” Maggie noticed how the spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth, and his teeth were stained with tobacco, like the ceiling of the Twilight itself. He was one of the last of the old-timers. They were dying off.

God, despite its patina of hopelessness, she loved the place. In the midst of Hell’s Kitchen, it was her oasis. Her temple and shrine to all that she loved.

They raced into the Twilight.

“Hi Daddy!” Maggie squealed, both her front teeth missing. He picked her up and kissed her nose, depositing her on a bar stool and filling a highball glass with Coke.

“Don’t tell your mother I’m giving you Coke. If she asks, tell her I gave you milk.”

Danny climbed up on the stool next to Maggie. Their father tousled Danny’s hair and poured him a soda, too. Then their father leaned two elbows on the bar and asked them about their day.

A few stools away from Maggie, she noticed a man with prison tattoos on his forearms. She waved at him, and he winked at her.

Danny told their dad about his class’s field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Maggie couldn’t wait to be in third grade and take that trip, too.

“Dad…the elephant had tusks that went up to the ceiling!”

“Did it try to eat you?” their father joked.

“No. It was stuffed.”

“Oh…well, you two better get upstairs to Mom before she stuffs the both of you. Finish your sodas, and no telling.”

Maggie dutifully sucked the last of her Coke through a straw, slid down from the stool, and ran back outside with Danny to the double doors leading to the apartments above the bar. They took the stairs two at a time to apartment 2B.

The door was open before they even got there. “Take your shoes off!” their mother scolded them.

Maggie, in the tartan plaid skirt, blue kneesocks, white blouse and blue blazer of Saint Bernadette’s Catholic School, complied and slipped off her Mary Janes. Danny untied the laces of his shoes. He wore his blazer but had loosened his tie the second the last bell had rung.

Only with shoes off did they run into her arms.

“How was your day?” she asked them. Her accent made her cut the endings off words sharply, slightly. “You have good day?”

They both nodded.

“Come.” She took them each by the hand and led them to the shrine to Buddha in one corner of the living room. A white altar cloth covered the table. A pewter bowl contained fruit, an offering for him. A vase held flowers.

Out of habit, in the ritual they did each day, Maggie and Danny bowed deeply. Then they lit incense. It was Maggie’s turn. She withdrew an incense stick—jasmine-scented—and took a wooden match and lit it.

“Thank you, Buddha, for my good test score in science, and for Mark Callahan getting the chicken pox,” Maggie said.

“Why you thank Buddha for that?” Her mother asked.

“’Cause then he wasn’t in school to pick on me. He pulls my hair.”

“Oh,” her mother said and smiled. “Your turn Danny.”

“Thank you, Buddha, for my trip to the museum. I got to see a woolly mammoth.”

They bowed again with their mother. Maggie loved their Buddha shrine. They had a few statues of him, some solemn and meditative, but one was a big, fat Buddha with a round belly. She liked how happy he looked, like he was laughing.

“Come,” their mother commanded. Next they moved to a small shrine of Jesus and Mary, the Blessed Virgin. “You tell him thank-you. Thank his mama, too.”

So they went through their thank-yous again, this time adding an Our Father and Hail Mary. Maggie didn’t like praying to Jesus as much. Compared to Buddha, he was sad, his statue plastic and in Technicolor, with painted-on red blood dripping from his palms and feet and side. The stations of the cross at St. Bernadette’s were even more graphic—to remind the children of our Lord’s pain and suffering, said Sister Patricia.

Maggie had never told the Carmelite sisters at St. Bernadette’s about Jesus and Buddha being best friends, according to her mother. “Best to cover all your bases,” her mother had said. “Keep you safe.” Somehow, Maggie didn’t think the sisters would approve of covering their bases.

Maggie, Danny and their mother made the sign of the cross. Then it was homework time. Around five, Maggie’s father came up from the bar for his dinner break. That was always her favorite part of the day. Not because she got to see him and spend time with him, although that certainly pleased her. It was the strange thrill she got from watching her father walk through the door and the expression on his face when he saw her mother.

Maggie tried to capture the moment in her mind, but it never was the same as seeing it, being there with them. But Maggie was convinced the earth stopped moving—just for a split second. He opened the door, shut it, took off his shoes, lined them neatly next to Maggie’s and Danny’s. Then he came into the dining area, and when he first caught her mother’s eyes, it was there—you could feel it. Her mother’s breath left her and her father’s heart stopped. Maggie was sure of it.

Her mother was always calmer with Daddy around, certain they would all be safe now. She would serve him supper, but she always made sure to touch his hand, to rub his arm as she put his dinner on his plate. And Maggie’s father would not curse, he wouldn’t raise his voice, not even a tiny bit. He wouldn’t do anything loudly. For that time, that meal, he was under her mother’s spell, and they weren’t in Hell’s Kitchen. They were someplace else. They may have been above the roughest bar on Thirty-ninth Street, but inside was a piece of heaven, watched over by Buddha and his brother, Jesus—because, Maggie’s mother said, someone as wise as God would have a lot of children.

Maggie walked away from Charlie and prepared to break down the bar. It was late; she was tired. The phone rang, and she picked up the extension by the register.

“Angel?”

“Hi Bobby,” she said.

“I’m just getting off work. I caught a case. Some guy killed with a pickax. There’s no end to the creativity in this city.”

“You sound tired.”

“I am. I was thinking of coming by, though. I just need to see you.”

“Sure. I’ll be here.”

Maggie hung up and continued breaking down the bar. She had the lone cocktail waitress start stacking chairs on top of tables. The loudmouth with the three girls wasn’t taking the hint, so Maggie raised the house lights and turned off the music. Finally, the creep raised his hand and wrote on an imaginary check in the air.

“Thank God,” she muttered.

She took his money, gave him his change, sent Charlie home and told the waitress she could go. She collected the tips on the bar—the rich guy had left her a single dollar. Charlie, who lived from disability check to disability check, had left her a five.

She was alone. She went to the register to count the till. On top was a big happy Buddha. He smiled at her and she at him. She rubbed his belly for good luck.

Next to the register, taped to the mirror behind the bar, was the first twenty-dollar bill the Twilight had ever earned. It was signed by Uncle Con, who, as the story went, had bought her father a shot of bourbon to celebrate the opening. He’d then signed the bill and up it had gone. Next to that was a photo of her father and brother and her from three years before. Danny was smiling; she was open-mouthed, squealing with laughter. Their father had just told them a dirty joke and someone had snapped the picture, right there behind the bar of the Twilight.

She hadn’t heard from her father in a while. She hadn’t seen Danny in three weeks.

The worry made her want a drink.

She looked at Buddha. “What cosmic mind fuck has a recovering alcoholic owning a bar?” she asked him. Then she patted his belly and poured herself a Coke and waited for Bobby to come. He was the one, and they were right for each other. Like her mom and dad. Every time she saw him, she felt the earth stop for just a moment. When he was near her, she felt safe.

Chapter Two

Danny Malone felt around his mouth for the loose tooth. It was the last molar on the right, and if he moved his tongue against it, the thing wiggled, the unique, slightly salty taste of blood intensifying. He couldn’t use his right arm at all. He guessed that shoulder was dislocated. With his left hand, he felt his face and discovered it had the texture of raw hamburger meat.

He slumped over in the driver’s seat of his somewhat battered Lincoln Town Car. The pain was so bad he felt as if he were going to pass out. He looked up at the six-story red brick building and could see the light on in his sister’s apartment on the second floor. All he had to do was get up there. Just get to her, Danny. Like a penitent man on a pilgrimage, he thought only of reaching his Mecca. The one place where his world made a little sense.

All his life, Danny’s sister Maggie had fixed everything. He was older—by two years and change—but she was the one who kept out of trouble—and tried to keep him out of trouble. She was like their mother. After their mom had died, Maggie had been the one to retain the rituals, the Buddha, the crucifix. She was the one who made sure he and his father ate home-cooked meals and had clean clothes.

Danny’s head pounded and he struggled to focus. From the time they were little, Maggie would check out all his scrapes and bruises, surveying the damage. Once they were teens, and then adults, she would look for more serious scrapes. Like bullet holes and knife wounds.

She was like his other half. Anyone with a set of eyes could see they were related. They both had the same jet-black hair, which sometimes, in the right light, took on a bluish sheen, black eyes, slightly almond-shaped and exotic, and pale skin. He was well built, muscular, and had a pair of dimples that belied his toughness; she was delicate, with high cheekbones that carved out hollows beneath them, just like their mother, and hair that fell nearly to her ass. His nose had been broken twice, so it leaned a little to the left, but they were clearly siblings.

Danny opened the car door with his functional hand and climbed out, slamming the door behind himself. He looked up and down the street through the slits of his swollen eyelids. He turned up the collar of his army jacket—his father’s old one, threadbare, with an ancient maroon-brown stain of blood on the arm, either his father’s or a Vietcong’s. Danny knew if anyone saw his face, he’d scare the shit out of them, and they’d call the cops, so bending his head into the wind, he started toward his sister’s building.

Each step sending shock waves of pain through his body, he made it to the building’s heavy door and then up to the second floor and her apartment—2B. He fiddled with the lock, pulling the copy of her apartment key from his pocket.

Suddenly, the door flew open, a male voice shouted, “Freeze, asshole,” and a gun was pointed at his head. He saw Maggie, her beautiful face ashen by the sight of him. He pulled his collar down, letting her fully see his face—what was left of it. She screamed, and then Danny knew he could safely give in to the pain. He fell to the floor and let sweet oblivion overtake him.

Maggie knelt on the floor by her brother, oblivious to the blood that was smearing the flannel pajama bottoms she had just changed into. She took his head in her lap and cradled it, brushing a lock of blood-soaked hair from Danny’s face as she rocked ever so slightly.

Bobby Gonzalez shouted at her to get away. “You don’t know who this fucker is. Call 911. Jesus Christ!” He kept his gun drawn.

“No!” Maggie looked up at him, her chin quivering. “This is Danny.”

“Your brother?”

She nodded.

“Christ!” Bobby put his service revolver back in his ankle holster, his hands shaking from the adrenaline rush, and leaned down next to her. “He needs an ambulance.” Bobby put two fingers on Danny’s neck, feeling for a pulse, then reached for the cell phone at his waist.

“No.” Her voice was etched with panic. “No, no…Look…I don’t know why he’s in trouble, and I can’t really explain it all right now, but you have to trust me. I have to handle this here at home.”

“Handle this? Angel, we need to get him to a hospital and then find out who did this to him. You can’t take care of this. You’re in shock. Look, just stay calm and let me call an ambulance.”

Maggie recognized his “cop voice”—authoritative, soothing in an emergency, talking to her as if she were a child. “No…look, I’m begging you. Begging you. Please let me take care of this.”

“Here? Jesus, Maggie, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t have time for this, Bobby.” Her voice careened and changed to one hostile and strong, equally authoritative.

“Fuck! This has to do with your family shit.”

Maggie nodded, wincing a second at Bobby’s anger. “Stop being a cop for a minute and be my friend. Help me.” She looked up into his face. His eyes were so dark, she couldn’t see the pupils for the irises, and she watched him clench and unclench his jaw, then pass his hands through his hair. He paced back and forth a few times. Finally, his anger seemed to be replaced with worry.

“Maggie, what kind of trouble is your brother in? What kind of trouble are you in?”

“Please…We can talk more when he’s in better shape. I need boiling water. I have a sewing kit in my bedroom closet. Gauze and tape in my bathroom closet. I…think there’s an Ace bandage in there. Towels. Um…Shit…um, I need rubbing alcohol. Neosporin.” She tried to picture her medicine cabinet, mentally scanning each shelf from left to right, to see what she had that could help Danny. “Oh, and there’s a bottle of Tylenol No. 3, top shelf, medicine cabinet. I need that and some applesauce and two spoons.”

Bobby looked at her. “You’re serious about this.”

“Look, please just do what I ask and I swear I’ll tell you everything later.”

He hesitated, then finally stood and walked past her and Danny. Maggie heard Bobby rummaging through closets and the medicine cabinet, slamming doors, spilling things onto the floor, hurrying. He returned with most of what she asked for and then went to boil water in her small kitchen.

Maggie looked down at Danny, who was unconscious. She wondered if kitchen-table stitches were anything like riding a bicycle, that once you learned how to do them, you never forgot. It wasn’t all that different from sewing cloth. And the Malone men were never ones to worry about leaving a scar. She told herself it would all come back to her.

She was fourteen, and after Jimmy Malone had locked up the bar, he called upstairs to their apartment. She answered on the first ring.

“Mags?”

“Yeah, Daddy?”

“I need you to come down to the bar. Danny’s doing some things for me…won’t be home until late.”

Things. Maggie knew that could mean anything from driving out with Uncle Con to New Jersey to bury something, to hiding money in a hole in the wall behind the toilet where there was a loose tile. It also meant not asking questions.

“Be right down.”

The Twilight bar was in Hell’s Kitchen, which itself was bound by the Hudson River. Eventually, if you walked west, you’d hit the water, as black and ugly and foul-smelling as it was. When she was very little, she’d imagined the Hudson River as the sea, mystical and grand, carrying the scent of fresh water and the sounds of sails whipping into the wind. But she was older now and realized it was just the dirty, brown Hudson. Hell’s Kitchen’s other border, depending on who you asked, was Eighth. Either way, it was a haven for the Westies and addicts, and the streets were harsh. But Maggie had never felt unsafe. She knew everyone in a thirty-block radius was aware of her father’s power in the small jungle of their neighborhood. He’d fought two tours in Vietnam, and some people said he’d flown for the CIA in Laos. Or maybe it wasn’t for the CIA, but for some shadowy arm of the government that had condoned paying him $10,000 cash each month back in 1973. Maybe he’d flown for Air America. That was the rumor, at least, and she had no reason to doubt it, collecting small clues like a hungry bird snatched up bread crumbs. She stored the information away in her mind, hoping to one day understand all that her father was. After he’d come back from Laos, some of the money—from whoever had paid it to him—had gone to buying the bar.

Maggie’s teeth chattered. Her father’s mysteries always made her nervous. He was the antithesis of what she remembered of her mother. Where she embodied the rituals of incense and quiet and candles, her father and Uncle Con immersed themselves in the never-spoken threat of violence—not against her or Danny or her mother when she’d been alive, but against anyone who dared to even breathe on them. Maggie pulled a sweatshirt over her head and looked around her bedroom. The far wall was lined with shelves on which perched at least a hundred Buddhas, maybe more. Some had been her mother’s, some her father had bought her in Chinatown. And some, she knew, came from faraway places in Asia from before she was born. On the opposite wall was a crucifix, a pretty wooden one with a pewter Jesus. On her dresser were the spilled secrets of a teenage girl—hair clips, lip gloss she had just been allowed to start wearing, earrings and rings and fortune-cookie promises of good luck and prosperity, movie stubs and cutout pictures of movie stars she planned to stick on her bulletin board.

She took a deep breath to settle her nerves and left her bedroom and then the apartment, locking the door behind herself. She descended the metal staircase to the back entrance of the bar, the scent of beer as familiar to her as her own name, as her reflection in the mirror.

Maggie walked through the back of the bar and then made her way to the cluttered office, where she assumed her father would be waiting for her. He was, though he was slumped over his desk. He looked up, with effort, as she came in the door.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, even as she saw the wet crimson stain on the back of his shirt.

“Nothin’,” he said, winking at her, his face sweaty and ashen. “I just need you to do me a favor, baby girl, and dig this stupid thing out of my shoulder, out of my back.”

“What stupid thing?”

“A bullet. I’d do it myself if I could reach, but I can’t.”

Maggie felt queasy, not because he’d been shot, but from the idea of sticking a knife, tweezers, anything, into a hole in someone’s flesh, let alone her father’s.

“Daddy…” she said in a whisper, laden with the question, there in the way she spoke his name, do I have to?

“I can’t ask Danny. He’s doing something for me. And I can’t get Uncle Con on the phone. Please, I’m asking you. I’m starting to run a fever, and I’ve got to get it out of me. I’ll talk you through it. Piece of cake. You’re a Malone.”

Maggie nodded. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I promise. And you know I never promise unless I can deliver the goods. Please, baby.”

She breathed deeply, not sure if she would pass out or not. “I’m going to get me a drink.”

“Sure. Get me one, too.”

Maggie went out to the bar and pulled down a bottle of scotch. She took two fat water tumblers and set them on the bar. She hated scotch. Although her father had let her and Danny drink beer since they were small, she never drank anything uglier than peppermint schnapps. But she wanted something powerful and nasty. She poured two generous scotches as if she were pouring water. She took one and downed it in a few gulps, fighting the retching feeling in her throat and gut, emitting an audible gag. She put the tumbler on the bar and literally shook her shoulders and head, trying to keep the vile liquid inside her. Then she refilled her glass and brought it along with her father’s drink into the office.

A first-aid kit was open and his shirt was off. The kit looked like an army-issue one, and she imagined it had come home from Vietnam with him, long before she had even been born.

“Thanks, darlin’,” he said, taking the scotch from her and downing it without shivering or even making a face.

Maggie stood behind him, staring at the bullet wound. Its edges were clean, and it looked deep. She could only see dark red blood, but she knew that in the hole, layers of skin gave way to muscle and below that bone. Steadying herself, she peered into the hole of flesh and blood, smelling the bitterness of burned skin, again feeling a violent convulsion in her stomach.

On her father’s desk was a scalpel. A real scalpel, not a knife. She didn’t ask where he’d gotten it or why he had it. She never asked about anything. Not about the loaded gun that always sat on his nightstand, or about the occasional 2:00 a. m. visitor, men with whispered secrets and file folders and photographs. Next to the scalpel was a pair of very long tweezers with pointed ends.

“Okay, Maggie,” he said as he handed the scalpel to her. “Now, the scalpel is really sharp, so don’t cut yourself. Just poke this into the hole and dig out the bullet a little. Use the tweezers when you can finally see it. Get all of it. Make sure of that. If it’s hit bone, you’ll have to dig more.”

She gritted her teeth, hands shaking. Gingerly, she entered the back of his shoulder with just the very tip of the scalpel, feeling as if she were going to throw up.

“Honey, don’t be afraid to hurt me. I’ve taken way worse.” He laughed. “Ain’t nothin’ to an old soldier like me.”

By now, the scotch was having its effect. Feeling as though she were in a dream, watching someone else stick a scalpel into the wound, she dug deeper, blood oozing from the hole and dripping in small rivulets mixed with sweat down his back. She finally saw the bullet’s gray-black color. She switched tools, and Maggie’s tweezers emerged minutes later with the bullet, which she scooped into her hand and then placed on the desk. Her father visibly relaxed, his back tense from effort of steeling himself against the pain.

“Now the stitches.”

He talked Maggie through cleaning the wound with peroxide, which sizzled and bubbled. Then she sewed the edges of the wound, packing gauze into it, and then covered it with a large square piece of gauze, and finally she taped all around it.

When she was done, her father turned around. He had the solid jaw of a soldier. His eyes were a peculiar blue-green, nothing like his children’s. His hair was a dark shade of brown, speckled with a little gray. Freckles scattered across his nose and deep lines surrounded his eyes, from squinting, he’d told her once, as he’d marched in the sun. His body was still as taut as when he’d been in the service, with rock-like biceps covered in tattoos, and then the old scar from the war. She had pictures upstairs of him in the grassy fields of Vietnam, a youthful soldier, but still something about him, an air of toughness, that came through even in the grainy photographs. He looked nothing like Danny and her. They would always look, to strangers, like adopted children, their features so much their mother’s.

“I’m sure you left a pretty scar.” He winked at her. “A new one that I’ll always know you fixed up.”

“Are you going to tell me what happened, Daddy?”

“Nope. I’ll tell you what, though…Did I ever explain why I named this place the Twilight?”

“About a hundred times.”

“I know. I just like that story.”

“I still like hearing it.”

“Well, then. It was because in Vietnam, twilight was beautiful. I mean, we were in a shit hole of mosquitoes and humidity, but that sky turning orange and pink sometimes, it was…humbling. And off in the distance, it’s like you’d hear fireworks. Of course, it wasn’t fireworks. It was war. I used to watch the burst of flames rising up from the treetops.

“For pilots, twilight can be dangerous. Sort of that world between night and day. Between heaven and hell. I didn’t think I could feel that aware, every muscle twitching. And one twilight, we’d landed near this village. It seemed okay. Peaceful. I waded through the swamp, and me and my guys, we walked toward some huts, and I saw a girl carrying a basket. She was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And in that second, in that minute, my whole world changed. Vietnam went from being a place I hated to being the place where the person I loved was from. When I finally got back to America, I bought this place and named it after my alive time, when I realized I never wanted to live so much as when I saw her. Twilight. When the sky was pink.”

“I wish I knew you then,” Maggie whispered. She wished she knew him now. He was her father, but he was a stranger.

“I remember the day you came home from the hospital. I was alive then.” He shrugged his shoulder a bit, moving it around. “This is gonna be a bitch tomorrow.”

“Sure is.” She grew silent for a minute. They both did. “Okay then,” she said softly. “I’m going back upstairs.”

“Thanks, kiddo. You really came through for me. I love you, bright eyes.”

“Love you, too.”

She left the office and grabbed the bottle of scotch off of the bar, taking it with her to their apartment. As soon as she got up there, she ran to the bathroom and threw up, the scotch burning her throat a second time as it seared her on its way out. She leaned her elbows on the toilet seat and felt her lids fill with tears, but she refused to cry. She stood and washed her face in the sink. The hole in her father’s shoulder kept coming into her mind. She left the bathroom, took the bottle of scotch and put it on the dining-room table. She fetched a mug from the kitchen and began drinking, forcing herself to keep it down, drinking the hole of flesh away. That night was the first time Maggie ever drank herself into a blackout.

“You’re making me nervous,” Maggie snapped at Bobby, who leaned over her and was staring at her handiwork, occasionally offering advice.

“How did you learn to do that?”

“It’s like riding a bicycle.”

“Sure it is. Only you would use that analogy.”

Danny’s face now vaguely resembled Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Black thread wove crookedly through loose skin, but she had closed up the slice in his cheek, cleaned off the blood and sewn up the cut above his eye—it was deep and ran through the eyebrow. She bandaged his arm, hoping perhaps it wasn’t a break, but setting it as best she could. She had tried to jam the dislocated shoulder back into place the way she’d seen her uncle Con do once for her father.

She applied a warm washcloth over and over again to Danny’s face, slowly easing off the caked blood. She cleaned along his hairline and wiped his hair. He looked better than when she’d first seen him. Swollen, turning an eggplant-purple, but with some of Danny’s “luck o’ the Irish and blessings of Buddha,” as their mother used to say, he’d still have a semi-beautiful face when it was all healed.

Maggie mashed some Tylenol No. 3 into the applesauce and roused her brother enough to feed him three tablets. Then, with Bobby’s help, she got him onto the mattress they’d taken from her pull-out couch and had placed on the floor.

“Now we watch him,” she whispered, getting up from her makeshift operating room.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“The first time I did this, I had half a bottle of scotch in me. Actually, the second and third time I did this, I had scotch in me.”

“Drinking wouldn’t have made this night any easier.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Look, Maggie, I just watched you stitch up a man on your living-room floor like you work in a fucking MASH unit. I’m part of this whether you like it or not.”

She sat down on the love seat, and Bobby took the chair opposite her.

“I’m sorry, Bobby.”

“Don’t be sorry. How about telling me the truth? Let’s start with that.”

“Truth depends on who you talk to. But I know I owe you as much.”

Maggie looked down at her hands and tried to decide where to begin.

Chapter Three

“Courageous and crazy. It’s a volatile cocktail. That’s my father. That’s my brother. My father was drafted during Vietnam. He became a pilot. He tested so high, they’d never seen scores like that. He’s smart, with nerves of steel. Courageous and crazy, both of them.”

“I know a few cops like that.”

“He’s always been like that. My dad has two brothers. One was murdered after a stint in prison, and was supposedly as violent as they come. The other is the dean of Manchester University in Boston. He has two PhDs. They were like the twin sides of my father. Brilliance and violence. And secrets.”

“Secrets?”

She looked at Danny. “It’s as if there was a different life before the war. And then there’s this brick wall of Vietnam. He ended up volunteering for another tour. We know he met my mother there, and that he somehow got her out. Danny and I think he was recruited into the CIA.”

“What do you mean you ‘think’? You never asked him?”

“We don’t ask a lot of questions in our family. But even if we did, he wouldn’t talk to us. The CIA was involved in Laos after the war, during the war. My father flew planes for them—for someone. Someone with a lot of cash. You know, the CIA isn’t the only secret branch of the U. S. government. It could have been them, it could have been another shadow organization. It could have been Air America. All I know, which is nothing, just street knowledge from this neighborhood, is that he was pulling in a lot of untraceable cash from some government organization that wanted missions flown in Laos. And they were willing to pay a crazy-courageous man a lot of money to risk his life over and over and over again.”

“He made it out alive.”

“Yeah. But I’m not sure that he ever made it out,” she said softly, her eyes darting to Danny, almost involuntarily.

“What do you mean?”

“My whole life, my father has been a phantom. I don’t know whether he works for the good guys or the bad guys, or if he plays both sides, or whether he just works for himself. When my brother got to be, I don’t know, seventeen, eighteen, he started getting in deeper with my father. But I was always invisible, always on the outside of whatever it was that they did, whatever it is that they do.”

Bobby leaned back in his chair and ran his hands over his face, giving a weary sigh. “So what happened to your brother tonight, Maggie?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know who did this to him. I don’t even know if he started it or not.”

“Have you ever told your brother not to come to you when he’s in trouble, not to drag you into whatever crazy shit he’s involved with? For all you know, it’s drugs or murder for hire. You don’t know anything, Maggie. You could be in danger. Whatever he and your father are into, they shouldn’t be putting you in the middle of it.”

“I know, but they’re all I’ve got.”

“You have me.”

“I know,” her voice relaxed. “But growing up, this apartment was a place where only good things happened. It was like us against the evil spirits my mother was always talking about. This was a place just for the four of us, and I knew that my father would kill anyone who tried to mess with us, with our sanctuary. After my mother committed suicide, my father went crazy for a while. He never got over it. None of us did. But it only made us closer. I don’t know what my father does. Maybe because I don’t really want to know.”

“That’s pretty severe denial.”

“You’re not my shrink.”

“No,” he said as he leaned forward and looked her in the eyes. “Do I really have to be to see that there’s something very seriously fucked up going on here? You stitched up your brother. And you don’t want to file a police report or take him to the hospital?”

“You don’t know what happened, Bobby.”

“Maggie, don’t play me. Even if Danny didn’t commit a crime tonight, the fact that you apparently have done this for him and your father more than once…that’s not normal.”

She curled her legs underneath herself. “I’m tired, Bobby. Can we just talk about this after I’m sure he’s going to be okay?”

“You’re putting this off again, Maggie. I’ve been with you for two years now, and I feel like I know next to nothing about you. I’ve never met your brother until now. I’ve never met your father. It’s like I’m living with a phantom of my own.”

Maggie looked away. “I’ve lived a lifetime of secrets. It’s like lifting up a rock in the woods and watching all those creepy-crawlers scatter when the light hits them.”

“Fine. You go get some sleep. I’ll watch your brother.”

“No. You sleep. Please. I wouldn’t be able to anyway.”

Bobby nodded. “I’ll be right in the next room. You call me if you need me. And look…we don’t know how much blood he’s lost or what’s up with that arm. If he doesn’t seem like he’s going to pull through all right in the next couple of hours, we’re taking him to the hospital.” He was silent for a minute. “I’ll try to pull some favors, see if we can’t keep it under the radar.”

“Thanks.” Maggie smiled wanly. Bobby walked over and leaned down, tilting her chin to kiss her.

“I wish I knew what went on behind those eyes of yours.”

“So do I sometimes. Good night, Bobby.” She kissed him back and watched him go to the bedroom. He was the first good man she’d ever dated. She’d known that the first time she’d met him, as surely as she knew one day his world would come colliding with hers with a fury like nuclear fusion.

Two years earlier, she had quit drinking, cold turkey, on her own, white-knuckling it. For three days, she’d ridden out the shakes and the endless clenching and unclenching of her jaw by eating Valium she’d taken from her brother’s stash of drugs in the medicine chest. They all hoarded pills from years of “home repair,” as their father called their questionable medical skills.

By day three, the Valium had done its trick. She had slept until she ached, and she was through the worst of it. She sat in her apartment in the dark, staring at the emergency bottle of scotch. She had brought scotch up from the Twilight, an old habit. She hated scotch and had figured that if all she had was something she truly despised, she’d be less inclined to break the seal. She had brought it upstairs with the idea that if quitting got truly unbearable, she’d change tactics and wean herself slowly, decreasing her intake of alcohol day by day until she was clean.

Now, she had gone without alcohol for three days. Three whole days. Not great days, glorious days, or even halfway decent days. Three of the most god-awful, soul-sucking days of her life.

A thought came into her mind: AA. She’d never been to a meeting, not even out of curiosity. She knew a regular or two at the Twilight who were in and out of AA, on the wagon for months at a time, falling off when life just got too damn hard. Teddy, a good guy, a plumber, had a son die about five years past. He walked a wobbly line, not unlike the straight line cops made people walk to see if they were drunk. Some days, Teddy walked it well. Others, he just plain toppled off to the side and lost his balance completely.

Maggie sat in her apartment and, for reasons she didn’t understand, she felt tears come. They weren’t like her occasional drunken tears. These came with a racking ache. So she picked up the phone, called information and, the next thing she knew, she was at a meeting in a church basement not eleven blocks from her apartment. The first person who said hello to her was Bobby Gonzalez.

“New to the rooms?”

She never liked admitting being new at anything to anyone. “No. First time here, though.”

“Bobby.” He stuck out his hand and smiled. He was about six foot two, and dressed in a black sweater and jeans. She took his hand, looking into his eyes, searching for something. Later, she realized it was the elusive serenity they talked about in the rooms and basements of AA meetings. Did he have what she was looking for? The secret to peace of mind?

“Maggie.”

“Hi, Maggie.” He seemed so gentle. He directed her to the coffee urn and poured her a foam cup of the worst coffee she’d ever tasted in her life. He chatted about the program. She didn’t really remember much of what he said because she still felt like she was under water, foggy. Then he guided her to a metal folding chair. Bobby took a seat at a table at the front of the room, next to an older man. The older man, who said his name was Gus, started the meeting off, and Bobby was the speaker.

“Hi, my name’s Bobby,” he began softly, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Bobby,” came a chorus of a voices.

Maggie listened as he spoke.

“Most of you know me from the rooms. I’ve been coming here about ten years, sober for eight straight. I’m a cop, a detective. I used to think it was my job that made me drink. Now I realize I drank because. Just because. Because I’m an alcoholic.

“I started drinking when I was maybe eleven, copying my older brother and his friends. But they were typical teens looking to be cool, to rebel a little. I wasn’t. I couldn’t stop drinking once I started. I had my first blackout at fourteen. Smoked a lot of pot. I was a mess through high school. By the time I was twenty, I knew something was seriously wrong. I became a cop, met a lot of alcoholic cops. Man, if you’re looking for validation for your drinking, law enforcement is one profession you’ll find it. Everyone needs a drink to settle down after a tough night, a tough call, a tough tour. You see the worst, the dregs. You see wife beaters and child abusers and rape victims. I needed a drink to shut my brain off at night.

“So why did I get sober? I hit bottom. I got lucky. I didn’t think I was lucky then, but I was. Everybody has their bottom—DUI, jail, divorce, whatever. Mine was waking up with a prostitute and having no memory, none, of what happened the night before. I felt such a sense of shame that I went to my first meeting that day, and then that night, and then the next day. I screwed up a couple of times early in the program, but then I got it. It’s one day at a time. I get that now. That and the promises of AA. If you get sober, life gets better. I went back to school, made detective…. I have so much more now than I ever did before. I’m not going to mess up. Thanks for listening, and now we’ll go around the room and share.”

There were about forty people in the room. They applauded. Maggie felt mesmerized, and she wasn’t sure why. His voice was soothing. He looked so confident, so calm. She wanted that.

She listened to others share, thankful they ran out of time before they got to her. After the meeting, Bobby approached her.

“Um, do you want to get a cup of coffee? I usually go to a coffee shop a few blocks from here. It’s open until four in the morning.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

They walked together to the Blue Moon Diner. They didn’t say much, but the way they walked, they fell into a rhythm with each other, finding a stride. The diner had a bell that jingled over the door when they opened it. The tables had little jukeboxes on them, and they sat in a back booth. He put quarters in their jukebox and played some Elvis.

She stared at him across the table. She was pretty sure she looked like someone who’d just white-knuckled it for three days, but she was grateful Bobby hadn’t seemed to notice.

Their waitress came over, and Bobby ordered their coffee. When it came, Maggie wrapped her hands around her mug, hoping the heat would calm her.

“Much better coffee than at the meeting,” he said as he leaned into the table and smiled at her.

“You can say that again.” She sipped the coffee. “And you remembered—two sugars and lots of milk.”

“I’m a detective. I’m paid to notice details like that.” He winked at her. “How come I’ve never seen you before?”

She looked down at her coffee. “I’m…kind of quiet. I blend in.”

“You don’t blend in anywhere. I spotted you the moment you walked in.”

“Well, I go to meetings all over. I haven’t really picked a home group.”

“I almost always go to the one at St. Michael’s. And I pick up a lunchtime meeting in Manhattan sometimes.”

“A cop, huh?”

He nodded. “Does that turn you off? A lot of women just don’t want to date a cop, or even be friends with a cop. Too stressful.”

“Doesn’t bother me.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a bartender.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Isn’t that kind of hard with your sobriety?”

“Not really.” She wasn’t about to admit her “sobriety” had lasted all of three days.

“Well, I guess you must be able to twelve-step a lot of people.”

She looked at him blankly.

“You know, refer a lot of people to the program. Talk about the steps.”

“Um, yeah. Mostly I listen to people’s problems. Bartenders are paid to listen as much as pour drinks. So…do you like being a detective?”

She had a bartender’s psychology, a way of asking a question and then shutting up. Most people, she had come to discover, weren’t really looking for a bartender’s advice any more than they expected a shrink to tell them what to do. They just wanted to talk out whatever it was that was bothering them.

Sitting in the diner across from Bobby, his life story spilled out in more detail, and he told her about being a detective, about what drove him. “My best friend was shot when I was twenty-two. We were together at a bar down in lower Manhattan. He walked one way, I walked the other and went home. He ended up dead. Luck of the draw, I guess. His wallet was missing. Maybe it was a mugging gone bad. They never caught the person who did it, and I have this feeling like he’s following me all the time. Until a case is solved, that’s what ghosts do, you know. They follow you.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

He cleared his throat. “Not like seeing spirits and stuff, but I feel like the soul isn’t at rest until the case is solved. Do you believe in ghosts?”

“I think so.” She thought of her Buddhas and lighting incense and speaking to her mother. She thought of how her father was a ghost even if he was flesh and blood.

They talked—Bobby doing most of the talking—until after midnight. She found being around him comforting.

“I don’t want to say good night,” he said as he helped her from the booth. Their waitress had been sighing each time she passed their table, and they knew they’d overstayed their welcome. Maggie watched him put down a twenty-dollar tip, and as a bartender, she appreciated someone who did that. Their bill was less than nine dollars. He’d ordered a slice of pie.

“Me either. I live near here. Do you know the Twilight?”

“Rough place.”

She laughed. “I own it. Well, my father does. I live above it. If you want, I can make more coffee.” She looked at him intently, willing him to come, not sure why she was so drawn to him.

“Sure.”

When they left, a winter chill blasted them and, almost involuntarily, she leaned toward him, nearly against his arm. They walked the twelve blocks or so to the Twilight. At some point, he grabbed her hand. It was an intimate gesture, holding hands tightly, as if they were a couple.

When they got to her building, she opened the door and they climbed the stairwell to her apartment. She unlocked the door and moved to the side to let him in.

Turning on lights, she said, “I’ll make some coffee.”

“To be honest, I’m all coffeed out. If I have any more, I’ll never get to sleep.”

“Okay. Would you like a soda? Water? Juice?”

“Nah.” He took off his jacket.

“Here, I’ll put it on the coatrack.” She took his jacket from him and hung it up, placing hers on the hook next to it.

She turned around and looked at him, feeling peaceful for the first time in days, but now nervous. He walked closer to her and put his hands on either side of her face. Without saying anything, he leaned down and kissed her gently. She kissed him back.

The next thing Maggie knew, they were moving toward the bedroom. She felt as though she wanted literally to pull him inside of her, as if she wanted to hide within him, to find refuge somehow in that calm voice of his. The sex between them, even though he was a stranger to her, was incredibly intense, leaving her breathless and holding onto him.

“I wish I knew why I…I never do this,” he said. “I just felt like I knew you.”

“Me, too,” she whispered. He was in no hurry to leave. An hour later, they were making love again, and he curled himself around her, holding her tight to him as they fell asleep. She slept without Valium. She slept without dreaming, which was the point, she guessed. Dreams were always scattered, uneasy images to her.

In the morning, she rolled over and watched him sleep. There was something angelic about him, innocent. It was something missing from her father’s face, from Danny’s. The minute Bobby opened his eyes, he grinned widely. “I was hoping I wasn’t dreaming about last night.”

They stayed in bed, made love, and had coffee and eggs and read the paper.

“This is kind of crazy,” he said, sliding under the covers after breakfast and clutching her to him, her head nestling perfectly against his shoulder. “Getting involved so fast. They tell you not to do that in AA.”

“Sometimes you just know.”

She never told him she was embarking on day four without alcohol. After that night, they rarely slept apart. And Maggie rarely craved alcohol after that. Bobby was her pacifier. He was the way the night made sense.

Chapter Four

Saigon, June 11, 1963

Mai Hanh’s mother grabbed her daughter’s hand and urged her along the crowded street near the opera house. They made the trek to Saigon once a year to shop for a few items and to visit Mai’s aunt, who had left their village with a Frenchman some years before and now lived in an apartment that Mai thought smelled of a strange mixture of clove cigarettes and dumplings.

The streets were filled with pedestrians, and Mai frequently bumped into people as her mother tugged and pulled, demanding her to walk faster than her ten-year-old legs could carry her.

Ahead of them, an enormous gathering of people stood, blocking the way, as they formed a circle. Mai couldn’t see what was going on, but she heard chanting.

“Ma, what is it?”

Her mother, who usually walked with her head bent forward and down, as if expecting to confront a strong wind, lifted her face. Mai noticed how tired her mother appeared. She was always tired when they visited Tante, as her aunt insisted Mai call her. Tante wore a silk dress the color of emeralds, stiletto heels and stockings with a black seam down the leg, red lipstick, her hair in intricate braids with tortoiseshell combs. Ma wore plain black pants and a loose top, both made of coarse cloth and flat black cloth shoes. Ma never wore lipstick, didn’t own lipstick, and the years of working in the fields had taken their toll on her hands and the skin on her face.

“I don’t know,” Ma said.

Mai craned her neck but saw nothing but the backs of the people in her way. Then she decided to crouch. From her new vantage point, she could glimpse the center of the circle. Crouching further still, she saw Buddhist monks and nuns. They were speaking about charity and compassion.

“What is it?” Ma asked, looking down at Mai.

“I don’t know. Monks.” Mai squinted as an elderly monk with a smooth face sat down, his saffron robes gleaming in the midday sun, his eyes serene and determined. The nuns and monks around him were speaking, reciting from books, but Mai couldn’t make out what they were saying. The sitting monk remained calm. Tranquil. Mai watched as they poured a liquid on his robes and then his head. Something was shouted from the crowd and she heard a scream.

The sitting monk set himself on fire. They had been pouring gasoline, Mai realized as the intense smell of burning flesh assaulted her nostrils.

“Ma!” She grabbed at her mother’s legs and clung to her, unable to look away from the image of the burning holy man, waves of nausea sweeping over her as her stomach fell and shuddered.

“What is it, Little Mai?”

“He’s on fire, Ma.”

Her mother quickly swooped Mai into her arms, though Mai was too big to be held like that anymore, and her spindly legs trailed down her mother’s body. Protectively, her mother pushed Mai’s face against her shoulder, forcing Mai to look away.

“Why, Ma?” Mai cried, tears rolling down her face.

Her mother shook her head. “Vietnam is like grain that the hens peck. First this one wants her, then that. France, America. Pecking at us. Pecking.”

The crowd had grown restless and angry over the immolation. Mai’s mother insistently pushed and maneuvered until they were down a side street, moving away from the commotion.

Later that night, Mai tried to sleep. But in the flames of the cooking fire, she kept seeing the monk. She wondered if Buddha had given him the courage. Because even as he’d burned to death, the monk her mother said was named Thich Quang Due had never flinched. He had burned alive without moving a muscle, without uttering a single cry of agony.

Chapter Five

Sometime near dawn, Maggie watched as her brother stirred. She crossed the room to his side and knelt down.

“Danny?”

“Hey,” he said, squinting up at her, his voice hoarse and gravelly.

“Want a sip of water?”

“I’ll take a shot of J. D. if you have it,” he said as he winked his good eye.

“No, you won’t. I’ll get you some water.”

She stood and went to the kitchen, returning with a small glass of ice water. She helped Danny lean up on the elbow of his good arm so he could take a sip.

“Hope I didn’t scare you too much.”

“I’m used to it by now.”

“Yeah, but last time you told the old man and me you’d had enough of this bullshit.”

“I was angry. Forget about that. How do you feel?”

Danny leaned back down on the mattress and felt along his face, his fingers tracing the ragged line of the home-sewn stitches. “I bet as bad as I look. Even my eyelashes hurt, bright eyes. My earlobes hurt. There’s nothing on me that doesn’t hurt.”

“Want some more Tylenol with codeine?”

“Yeah. But I better eat something with it. Toast.”

“How’s the arm?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if it’s broken.”

“I think it was just a dislocated shoulder. I hope it was, at least. You going to tell me what happened?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Come off it, Danny.”

“I’m serious. Three guys came into the warehouse we got out in Jersey. I was just getting ready to lock up. From the looks of them, I knew they didn’t want a pirated DVD.”

“Have you ever seen them before?”

He moved his head very slowly from side to side.

“You owe any money around?”

“I’ve been laying off the betting. Nothing. I got a bad feeling as soon as they walked in, and I started to walk toward the desk, where I keep a gun in the top drawer. One of them, a huge cement wall of a guy, blocked my way.”

Maggie winced. “Christ, I know where this is going.”

“Exactly. They locked the door and beat the living shit out of me. I put up a fight. Smashed a chair on somebody’s head. But three guys, Mags. I didn’t stand a chance.”

“And did they tell you what they wanted?”

“No. They just kept saying I knew what they wanted, which I didn’t. They flipped the warehouse from end to end. Went through my lockbox. They didn’t take the cash or find what they were looking for, either. They left me half-dead on the floor and said they’d let me think about it, and that they’d be back. I barely remember getting up and driving here.”

Maggie’s teeth started chattering from nerves and she pulled her knees close to her chest as she sat on the floor. “You have no idea who they were?”

“No. But they mentioned Dad. And from how they looked…you know the type.”

“Christ, what is he into this time?”

“I have no idea, and if we don’t figure it out, I’m a dead man. And frankly, I’m not too sure you’re safe, either.”

Bobby Gonzalez’s deep voice called out from the bedroom doorway behind them. “What do you mean Maggie’s not safe?”

Maggie startled and whipped her head around, and then she turned back and exchanged a look with Danny.

“Listen, if you two are in trouble, I can help.”

“Maggie told me you’re a cop. And cops, in general, don’t help the kind of trouble we’re in,” Danny said.

“And what kind of trouble is that?”

Danny glanced at Maggie. “It has to do with our father.”

“So ask him. Whatever these guys wanted, find out what it is and give it to them.”

“We can’t ask Dad.” Maggie didn’t look directly at Bobby. “We don’t know where he is. He took off over a year ago. He wouldn’t say why. Said it would be safer if we didn’t know where he was. We didn’t ask questions.”

“What kind of father leaves his kids in danger like that?”

“We’re not kids. We can take care of ourselves,” Maggie snapped.

“As evidenced by you having to stitch your brother up last night? Look, if you don’t want to report this, fine, but I hope you have a better plan than sitting here waiting to be killed for whatever it is these jerks wanted last night. What’d these guys look like anyway?”

Maggie saw the answer in Danny’s eyes before he even said anything.

“Feds,” he whispered.

“What was that?” Bobby came closer to the two of them. Instinctively, Maggie touched Danny, as if he were a talisman of reassurance. She fingered his shirtsleeve, almost absentmindedly.

“Feds,” Danny said again, louder this time.

“I don’t get it. What are feds doing beating the crap out of you?”

“Whatever our father did in Laos,” Maggie said, “he had friends in high places.” She paused. “And enemies in even higher places.”

“So we put out feelers. I can find someone to trust in the bureau. We can get to the bottom of this discreetly, put you into protective custody if we have to.”

“You don’t get it, pretty boy,” Danny said, shutting his eyes. “You won’t find our father anywhere in the bureau, or anywhere, period. He doesn’t exist.”

Bobby looked at Maggie, who nodded in agreement. “You could reach out all you want, Bobby. He doesn’t exist. He’s a phantom, and by birthright, so are we.”

Maggie watched as Bobby’s eyes revealed a struggle to understand. He paced back and forth a few times before he turned back to them. “I don’t accept that you’re just going to stay here and wait for them. You have to be able to do something.”

“We can call Uncle Con,” Maggie suggested.

“Who’s he?”

“Our father’s best friend,” Danny replied.

“And he’ll know where your father is?”

“Maybe. We have another uncle, Dad’s brother. He lives in Boston. But Con is more likely to know where he is.”

“What’s Con short for? Conrad?”

“No. Con artist.”

“This just gets better and better.”

Maggie got up to go make Danny some toast. As she neared the kitchen, Bobby approached her. “Can we talk in private?” he asked.

She followed him into the bedroom and shut the door.

“Are you out of your mind?” he asked her.

“No.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have no idea?”

She sat on the bed. “From time to time, men would come to the Twilight. They looked like CIA. Feds. I didn’t ask questions. Then maybe two or three years ago, things started to seem dangerous. I can’t put my finger on it, but my father changed. He began moving things to safety deposit boxes. Became paranoid, which wasn’t like him. Maybe paranoid isn’t the right word…just very secretive.”

“Sounds like the guy was already pretty damn secretive.”

“This was worse. Then he took off.”

“Just like that?”

“In a way, yes.” She looked up at Bobby, aware for the thousandth time since their first night together that he was good in a way the shadowy world of her father would never be.

“I don’t know what to say, Maggie. Let’s call this uncle Con of yours and see what he thinks.”

Maggie went to the phone, then thought better of it, not wanting to use her land line. “Can I use your cell?”

Bobby picked up the phone, which was next to his wallet on the dresser. He handed it to her.

Maggie dialed the number, praying Con would answer even if he didn’t recognize Bobby’s number on caller ID.

“Yeah.” His voice came over the line in the vaguely hostile way he had of answering the telephone.

“Con, it’s Maggie.”

“Oh, bright eyes, I’m so sorry.”

“You heard about Danny?”

“Danny? No. Don’t tell me those fucking bastards got to him, too?”

“Too?”

“Is he dead or alive?”

“Alive, but just barely. What are you talking about Con?” Fear seeped into her voice and around the edges of her brain. Bobby came and stood behind her, pulling her backward against his chest and wrapping his arms around her.

“Your father, Maggie. I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” she asked, but felt the answer down in her stomach, in the way it tightened.

“He’s dead. The bastards finally got him.”

Chapter Six

Somewhere near the seventeenth parallel, North Vietnam, July 1972

Our Father who art in heaven…

Jimmy Malone was surprised at how quickly the words leaped to his tongue. The short one, the one with the bad teeth, kept poking at Jimmy’s broken arm. Tears of pain filled his eyes. The short one poked harder, his finger touching bone through the deep gash that ran from Jimmy’s elbow to his shoulder. The short one said something unintelligible to the taller one with the lazy left eye, and without even knowing their language, Jimmy could tell they were angry.

Bile rose in his throat. Six months ago, out of shame or politeness, he would have turned his head. Now, sweating in the jungle, insects swarming around his eyes, making blinking a necessity to ward off insanity, he merely leaned forward and retched from the pain. He felt his own vomit warm the front of his shirt.

Hallowed be thy name…

The prayer was there. On the edge of his consciousness. He repeated it over and over in his mind. A mental salve on the open sore of being twenty-two and hopelessly bent and broken in a jungle farther from New York’s west side than he had ever imagined he might go. Farther than he’d ever wanted to go.

Thy kingdom come…

Sometimes Jimmy thought about the words.

Thy will be done…

How could this be God’s will? This war, his arm, the short one with the bad teeth. The hunger. The bugs. The fucking bugs. God, how can this be your will? Death. Cowboy McMann blown to smithereens right in front of him. The land mines. The bugs. The infection spreading up his arm. Malaria. In two days, I will be dead. If I make it that long. God’s will. Jimmy wanted to weep, but that wasn’t how he was raised—his father would have just as soon punched him in the face than allow a son of his to cry. His mother was the same, a tough old woman, always a bourbon away from passing out.

On earth as it is in Heaven…

Hell. Fucking hell. Hot as hell. That’s what this place is, he thought through the pain, so intense at times he thought he was floating above himself. When had the short one left? He couldn’t remember. It all ran together. Day and night. Bugs and stickiness and pain and bugs all the time. Same day. Different day. All the same.

And lead us not into temptation…

And sometimes he didn’t think about the words but just the sound of them. Like a mantra, he repeated the prayer. I am still alive. I am still alive. Our Father. Our Father. Our Father. I am still alive. Not that he was sure being alive was a good thing. Dying far from home on the floor of a hut, gooks poking him, swollen mosquitoes too fat to fly from drinking the blood clustered on his wound. Young North Vietnamese—no more than boys—hitting him with sticks. All he could think of was relief. Death or rescue. One way or the other. Relief.

But deliver us from evil…

And that line, when he thought about it, was for the Washington assholes. The politicians whose own sons would never see the war, or if they did, it’d be as paper-pushers somewhere. Fucking evil motherfuckers. You come die here.

Amen… Fucking evil.

He tried to imagine the antithesis of evil. He thought of Mai. He had a rule when he was flying. He wasn’t allowed to think of her. Men died when they let down their guard, fragments of thoughts of home or their girl making them careless. Instead, he put Mai in a box in his mind. Then, when it was time, when he was on the ground, when he was safe, he would shut his eyes and open the box and take her out.

Their moments together were rare. It was hard to get away, to get to her village. And she came to Saigon infrequently. But when he saw her, Vietnam was bearable. He couldn’t believe he was content to do as little as hold her hand. But he was. He liked to bring her things to make her smile. An American camera, candies, bottles of Coca-Cola, a Timex watch. He kept a picture of her inside his helmet. Mai. His Mai. She was smiling at him in the picture, sunlight on her face. He would look at her photo and almost forget the war. Maybe what she said about Buddha and reincarnation was true. Maybe he’d known her in another life.

He hoped she was safe. Mai’s father was dead. Killed a year ago. Determined to keep Mai from harm, Jimmy had brought some buddies and they’d dug a hiding spot big enough for her and her mother and baby sister in case their village was raided. Between the hiding spot and the money Jimmy was able to give Mai, he’d even won over her mother. He wished this fucking war would be over and he could bring them all to America.

Jimmy thought of Mai and the pain eased a tiny bit, replaced by an ache in his heart. He would never see her again. Sometime between dusk and dawn, in the darkness, the rats came. He named the first one, a fat son of a bitch, Cass, after Mama Cass, and he felt a twinge of pride at his bravado. Humor in the face of an amazingly hopeless situation. When the second and third and fourth rats showed up, a tidal rush of pity and fear swept over him. Cass bit his ankle. A second prayer entered his mind.

Hail Mary, full of grace…

Then he abandoned the prayers and spoke to God from the very depths of his soul. He spoke with the abandon of an angry man, not much out of his teens, in despair. Without artifice. Without bargaining. He had nothing to offer God. He whispered in the darkness. God, if you get me out of this fucking shithole, I’ll do something with my life.

In a flash, an explosion rocked the earth and sent the rats scurrying. Gunfire, screaming. The sound of choppers in the distance. The ground beneath him shook, and he screamed as his arm jostled. But God—or Mai’s Buddha—had just delivered Jimmy Malone his first miracle.

The door to the hut flew open. The jungle was on fire. The short one had returned with a large knife.

No! Not this way! Please…

Gun blasts. The short one’s eyes bulged, his face illuminated by orange flames behind him. He fell forward. Dead. God’s second miracle.

Two Americans burst through the door, guns in hand. They saw Jimmy tied to a wooden post.

“Holy Christ. Get him, Mac. I’ll cover the doorway.”

The one called Mac cut Jimmy free. “Buddy, your arm’s in bad shape. What’s your name, soldier?”

“Malone,” he managed to shout above the sound of gunfire. Then he saw stars as the circulation of blood suddenly returned to his mangled arm. From somewhere far away, he heard himself scream, and then he passed out cold.

He was lucky. He wasn’t going home missing a limb, like some freak. His face was still good-looking, he had all his limbs—he’d go on to fight another day…back in Hell’s Kitchen

He was lying in bed, squeezing a tennis ball he’d somehow managed to trade for a pack of smokes. He squeezed it with his bad arm maybe ten thousand times a day as he listened to the morphine-addled screams of other patients.

Sometime near midnight, as he lay awake, a shadowy figure approached his bed.

“Malone?”

“Yeah?” He looked up at the tall man, whom he didn’t recognize, the man’s face backlit by the bare bulb in the hallway.

“You up for a walk?” His accent was homegrown U. S. of A.

“Sure,” Jimmy said, lengthening the word with uncertainty.

Jimmy climbed out of bed, leaving the tennis ball on the mattress as he followed the American man out into the hall and then downstairs into the courtyard. He had no idea who this guy was, but something about him spoke of power, as if he didn’t hear the word no too often.

In the center of the courtyard, the man turned to him. “I hear you have steel balls. You’re scared of nothing.”

“Have we met?”

“No.”

“Well, where the fuck did you hear that from?”

“Fingers O’Reilly.”

“What the fuck?”

Fingers O’Reilly wasn’t in Vietnam. Last Jimmy had heard of him, he was in Sing Sing Correctional serving ten to twenty for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

“Do you?”

“Look pal, do I what? What’s with the head games?”

“Do you have steel balls?” The man was dressed in khaki pants and a white cotton shirt that looked custom-tailored. He had silver hair and the coldest eyes Jimmy had ever seen—a pale gray. His face was unlined, tanned, strong looking, with a scar on his left cheek that looked like a tiny sunburst.

“Maybe. Listen, you see this arm? It’s my ticket out of this fucking hellhole.”

“What are you going back to? You don’t have a girl back home. She’s here.”

Jimmy fought his temper. Whoever this asshole was, he knew a lot about him, so he wasn’t going to ask how he knew. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“So what? I’ll get her home somehow.”

“Not likely. Not in this political climate. And what are you going back with?”

“What do you mean? I’m going back with both my fuckin’ testicles, all four limbs, and my mind, which is more than I can say for most.”

“How’d you like to go back with a few hundred thousand dollars?”

“Yeah, okay. You’ve been here too long pal, whoever you are.”

“I have a proposition for you.” The man didn’t smile. Jimmy realized he also never said what his name was. “I have an offer to make you, Malone. A gamble, if you will, for a pilot like yourself. Maybe a quarter million in untraceable money”

“U. S. dollars,” Jimmy said disbelievingly.

“Yes.” The man still didn’t smile. “Cash.”

Jimmy didn’t speak for a long time. He could hear the honking of car horns and the noise of soldiers out in the streets on R & R. He looked up at the night sky, and then finally turned to face the man in the shadows of the courtyard.

He took a calculating breath. “I never said I wasn’t a gambler.”

“Excellent,” the man replied. “That’s exactly what I heard.” Then, for the first time since he’d appeared on the hospital ward, the man grinned. But Jimmy noticed the smile never reached his eyes.

Chapter Seven

Bobby had a headache. It was concentrated on the right side of his head, near the temple, then snaked up around the top of his skull and down the base of his neck. His temple throbbed. He never used to have headaches. Not even when he was a drunk and woke up each day shrouded in the fog of a hangover. But ever since he’d met Maggie, he’d started getting headaches. Often.

When Maggie’s uncle had delivered the news that her father was dead—murdered, according to Con—she had crumpled to the floor in slow motion. She didn’t cry. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out, and she rocked back and forth for a while.

Bobby had knelt down next to her, pulling her to his chest, and then she’d whispered, “My father’s dead.”

He’d stroked her hair, not really knowing what to say. He knew her father was a Vietnam vet and that he owned the bar. He knew even less than that about her brother, until he’d shown up the previous night, his face smashed in.

Now Bobby was following Maggie’s directions and taking her and Danny to Con’s house, which Maggie said was down in Jersey somewhere, out in the backwoods, down a dirt road. A dirt road that was booby-trapped.

“I’ll tell you how to get around the traps,” she said, patting his leg as he drove, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. His headache, which was a dull throb, started to pulse with more intensity.

Bobby glanced in the rearview mirror. Danny was leaning against the window, mouth open, sound asleep after a tall shot of Jack Daniel’s and three Tylenols with codeine. Danny hadn’t blinked when Maggie had told him about their father, but looked resigned, as if he’d half expected it. Danny was pale, and Bobby guessed he should have had a transfusion or something. What the fuck did he know? He wasn’t a goddamn doctor, but a cop—who was now driving his girlfriend to some booby-trapped old farm down in Jersey.

“What does your uncle need booby traps for?”

“To keep poachers away,” she said calmly.

His head throbbed more. She could lie so easily that if he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was a sociopath. She’d been lying since the moment he’d met her. She’d tried to give him a line of shit that she’d been in AA a while, had some sobriety under her belt, but he was certain she hadn’t been telling the truth. He’d seen her hands shake those first few mornings he’d slept over. He’d seen her in the bar where she worked, the look of longing in her face for a drink, almost a hungry look. The longing in her eyes had disappeared eventually, but he knew she wasn’t as strong in her sobriety as he was.

He stared straight ahead at the road. It was a windy fall day, gusts of air occasionally swirling amber and gold leaves onto the highway. He thought back on his first encounter with Maggie. In all the years since he’d quit drinking, he hadn’t had a vice. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t gamble. He didn’t sleep around. Then he’d met Maggie and, inexplicably, she’d become his one obsession. Because whenever he was with her, he had this ache that started in his chest—that sometimes wormed its way upward and turned into a headache later—but an ache to make love to her, and to keep her safe. He wasn’t sure how he knew she wasn’t safe, but he just did. Cop instinct, he figured.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.