Later

55

“Which dead person am I supposed to talk to this time? Whoever it is and whatever they know, I don’t think it will keep you from going to jail.”

“Oh, I’m not going to jail,” she said. “I don’t think I’d like the food, let alone the company.”

We passed a sign pointing to the Cuomo Bridge, which everybody in New York still calls the Tappan Zee, or just the Tap. I didn’t like that. “Where are we going?”

“Renfield.”

The only Renfield I knew was the Count’s fly-eating helper in Dracula. “Where’s that? Someplace in Tarrytown?”

“Nope. Little town just north of New Paltz. It’ll take us two or three hours, so settle back and enjoy the ride.”

I stared at her, more than alarmed, almost horrified. “You’ve got to be kidding! I’m supposed to be home for supper!”

“Looks like Tia’s going to be eating in solitary splendor tonight.” She took a small bottle of whitish-yellow powder from the pocket of her duffle coat, the kind that has a little gold spoon attached to the cap. She unscrewed it one-handed, tapped some of the powder onto the back of the hand she was using to drive, and snorted it up. She screwed the cap back on—still one-handed—and repocketed the vial. The quick dexterity of the process spoke of long practice.

She saw my expression and smiled. Her eyes had a new brightness. “Never seen anyone do that before? What a sheltered life you’ve led, Jamie.”

I had seen kids smoke the herb, had even tried it myself, but the harder stuff? No. I’d been offered ecstasy at a school dance and turned it down.

She ran the palm of her hand up over her nose again, not a charming gesture. “I’d offer you some, I believe in sharing, but this is my own special blend: coke and heroin two-to-one, with just a dash of fentanyl. I’ve built up a tolerance. It would blow your head off.”

Maybe she did have a tolerance, but I could tell when it hit her. She sat up straighter and talked faster, but at least she was still driving straight and keeping to the speed limit.

“This is your mother’s fault, you know. For years, all I did was carry dope from Point A, which was usually the 79th Street Boat Basin or Stuart Airport, to Point B, which could be anywhere in the five boroughs. At first it was mostly cocaine, but times changed because of OxyContin. That shit hooks people fast, I mean kabang. When their doctors stopped supplying it, the dopers bought it on the street. Then the price went up and they realized they could get about the same high from the big white nurse, and cheaper. So they went to that. It’s what the man we’re going to see supplied.”

“The man who’s dead.”

She frowned. “Don’t interrupt me, kiddo. You wanted to know, I’m telling you.”

The only thing I could remember wanting to know was where we were going, but I didn’t say that. I was trying not to be scared. It was working a little because this was still Liz, but not very much because this didn’t seem like the Liz I’d known at all.

“Don’t get high on your own supply, that’s what they say, that’s the mantra, but after Tia kicked me out, I started chipping a little. Just to keep from being too depressed. Then I started chipping a lot. After awhile you couldn’t really call it chipping at all. I was using.”

“My mom kicked you out because you brought junk into the house,” I said. “It was your own fault.” Probably would have been smarter to keep quiet, but I couldn’t help it. Her trying to blame Mom for what she’d become made me mad all over again. In any case, she paid no attention.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though, Cha—Jamie. I have never used the spike.” She said this with a kind of defiant pride. “Never once. Because when you snort, you’ve got a shot at getting clean. Shoot that stuff, and you’re never coming back.”

“Your nose is bleeding.” Just a trickle down that little gutter between her nose and upper lip.

“Yeah? Thanks.” She wiped with the heel of her palm again, then turned to me for a second. “Did I get it all?”

“Uh-huh. Now look at the road.”

“Yessir, Mr. Backseat Driver, sir,” she said, and for just a moment she sounded like the old Liz. It didn’t break my heart, but it squeezed it a little.

We drove. The traffic wasn’t too bad for a weekday afternoon. I thought about my mother. She’d still be at the agency now, but she’d be home soon. At first she wouldn’t worry. Then she would worry a little. Then she’d worry a lot.

“Can I call Mom? I won’t tell her where I am, just that I’m okay.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

I took my phone out of my pocket and then it was gone. She grabbed it with the speed of a lizard snaring a bug. Before I had even quite realized what was happening, she had opened her window and dropped it onto the highway.

“Why did you do that?” I shouted. “That was mine!”

“I’m glad you reminded me about your phone.” Now we were following signs to I-87, the Thruway. “I totally forgot. They don’t call it dope for nothing, you know.” And she laughed.

I punched her on the shoulder. The car swerved, then straightened. Someone gave us a honk. Liz whipped another glance at me, and she wasn’t smiling now. She had the look she probably got on her face when she was reading people their rights. You know, perps. “Hit me again, Jamie, and I’ll hit you back in the balls hard enough to make you puke. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time someone puked in this fucking beater.”

“You want to try fighting me while you’re driving?”

Now the smile came back, her lips parting just enough to show the tops of her teeth. “Try me.”

I didn’t. I didn’t try anything, including (if you’re wondering) yelling for the creature inhabiting Therriault, although it was now theoretically at my command—whistle and you’ll come to me, my lad, remember that? The truth is, he—or it—never crossed my mind. I forgot, just like Liz forgot to take my phone at first, and I didn’t even have a snoutful of dope to blame. I might not have done it, anyway. Who knew if it would actually come? And if it did… well, I was scared of Liz, but more scared of the deadlight thing. Death, madness, the destruction of your very soul, the professor had said.

“Think about it, kiddo. If you called and said you were fine but taking a little ride with your old friend Lizzy Dutton, do you think she’d just say ‘Okay, Jamie, that’s fine, make her buy you dinner?’ ”

I said nothing.

“She’d call the cops. But that isn’t the biggest thing. I should have gotten rid of your cell right away, because she can track it.”

My eyes widened. “Bullshit she can!”

Liz nodded, smiling again, eyes on the road again as we pulled past a double-box semi. “She put a locater app on the first phone she gave you, when you were ten. I was the one who told her how to hide it, so you wouldn’t find it and get all pissy about it.”

“I got a new phone two years ago,” I muttered. There were tears prickling the corners of my eyes, I don’t know why. I felt… I don’t know the word. Wait a minute, maybe I do. Whipsawed. That’s how I felt, whipsawed.

“You think she didn’t put that app on the new one?” Liz gave a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding? You’re her one and only, kiddo, her little princeling. She’ll still be tracking you ten years from now, when you’re married and changing your first kid’s diapers.”

“Fucking liar,” I said, but I was talking to my own lap.

She snorted some more of her special blend once we were clear of the city, the movements just as agile and practiced, but this time the car did swerve a little, and we got another disapproving honk. I thought of some cop lighting us up, and at first I thought that would be good, that it would end this nightmare, but maybe it wouldn’t be good. In her current wired-up state, Liz might try to outrun a cop, and manage to kill us both. I thought of the Central Park man. His face and upper body had been covered with somebody’s jacket so the bystanders couldn’t see the worst of it, but I had seen.

Liz brightened up again. “You’d make a hell of a detective, Jamie. With your particular skill, you’d be a star. No murderer would escape you, because you could talk to the vics.”

This idea had actually occurred to me once or twice. James Conklin, Detective of the Dead. Or maybe to the Dead. I’d never figured out which sounded better.

“Not the NYPD, though,” she continued. “Fuck those ass-holes. Go private. I could see your name on the door.” She briefly raised both hands from the wheel, as if framing it.

Another honk.

“Drive the fucking car,” I said, trying not to sound alarmed. It probably didn’t work, because I was alarmed.

“Don’t worry about me, Champ. I’ve forgotten more about driving than you’ll ever learn.”

“Your nose is bleeding again,” I said.

She wiped it with the heel of her palm, then wiped it on her sweatshirt. Not for the first time, by the look of it. “Septum’s gone,” she said. “I’m going to fix it. Once I’m clean.”

After that we were quiet for awhile.