The Skill of Our Hands--A Novel Page 31

  Frio grunted, letting his eyes slide closed, but not relaxing at all. His cheekbones, always hard and prominent, stuck out harshly from his gaunt face, and Irina wondered how long it’d been since he’d eaten. Or since she had.

  “That pissed you off,” Phil continued. “SWAT might be fucked, but that doesn’t mean gangbangers and junkies should be allowed to do what they want. You went undercover to catch the little shits who’d been nipping at the heels of Arizona lawmen for way too long. Then what happened?”

  Frio’s eyes flicked open and searched, landing on Sam’s face where he sat with Jane, Ren, and Jimmy.

  Phil caught it. “Then you met Sam.”

  Frio locked his gaze onto Phil’s face and Irina could see him wondering how much Phil knew, and how much he was just feeling his way. He knew Phil had been in his head. Irina watched, trying to puzzle out the same thing. If what Phil said next was wrong, he’d never get Frio back. And they needed him back. Irina and Oskar exchanged a “here’s hoping” look over Phil and Frio’s heads.

  “I knew a guy once,” Phil said, crossing his legs. “Fellow named John Brown.”

  * * *

  Ren had followed Jimmy and Phil down the stair into the tiny, dank storage cellar to find Frio looking like he’d just sat wherever he’d been standing. Irina knelt next to him, pale and haggard, holding Oskar’s shirt to Frio’s bleeding leg. Oskar stood over them both with a predatory closeness. Jailor or bodyguard, he was ready to kill Irina, or to die for her, Ren couldn’t tell which. Probably both.

  “Want me to take a look at your leg?” Phil had asked Frio, and she and Jimmy had gone to talk to Sam and Jane.

  “Sam, my friend!” Jimmy clapped a hand to Sam’s neck in a manly cuff, and Ren pulled her eyes away from Phil. Jimmy gave Sam one of his brilliant, white-toothed smiles that made the rubies in his ears wink blood bright, even in the dim light. “So, Frio was still a cop after all. Undercover. How did you work it out?”

  Jane had her arms around Sam, her chin resting on his head, and his hands, clutching her arm, were the only sign he had given that he knew anyone else was there. He looked at Jimmy with haunted eyes. “You knew?”

  “No, no. Not until Phil spent some time in his head, and came back and told us. When did you?”

  Sam wiped his face with one hand, and took a long, shuddering breath. “I work at the library during the summer,” he said.

  Jimmy nodded encouragingly, radiating approval of libraries, and work, and summertime.

  “There’s a room there, an old community room, where the Hourlies meet. I was there today and Frio came in. I couldn’t get him to make sense.” Sam scrubbed at his nose with the knuckle of his thumb. “He looked like he’d been in a fight,” Sam went on, “but he sounded like a Harry Potter story. Fire-eaters and ruffians, saying he had to talk to me in private. I told him no one but our people ever came in there, but that wasn’t good enough for him. We had to get out of the library. ‘Just til I get it figured’ he kept saying.” Sam heaved a dark sigh. “So I came here with him. Why wouldn’t I? He was my friend. One of my successes.” He snorted. “Hell, maybe my only success. I left a note for Santi, in case he came in early, and—”

  Jimmy cut him off. “Once you were in the bar, did Frio tell you everything?”

  Sam laughed too loudly and without humor. “He didn’t tell me anything. But when he started unpacking shortwave radio gear and MREs from a Canadian Club box, I figured it out. I’m not such an idiot that I don’t know a bug-out bag when I see one.”

  “And?”

  “He wouldn’t let me leave. I knew he wouldn’t shoot me. Even when he pulled on me, telling me to back off, to have a seat. Then little kid feet were coming down the stairs, and all I could think was to get the gun away from Frio. It went off.”

  Sam took a shuddering breath, but he was involved enough in the narrative thread to keep at least some fraction of his analytical mind tethered, which was what Jimmy was working for. Planning is a leash on despair. You just have to collar it first.

  “Go on,” Jimmy prompted.

  “I thought Frio had shot Manuel.” Sam’s voice was flat. “It would have been my fault. But Frio was bleeding and the kid was still standing there, shaking, staring at me. I don’t know him, really. I’d just seen him around. Frio told him to leave, and he took off, and all I could think was how every good thing I’ve ever tried to do has always had some kind of terrible backlash. This was just one more colossal fuckup with me at the center of it.”

  “That’s not true.” Jane put her hand on Sam’s arm.

  “Isn’t it?” Sam’s voice was acid cold. Ren would hate it if Phil ever talked to her that way. “Name one wholly good thing I ever did.”

  “You married me?”

  “And I did such a super job as your husband that you’re ready to trade me in—to donate my body to these people.” He jerked his thumb toward Phil and Irina, still sitting on the ground by Frio.

  Phil had Matsu’s athletic legs folded in Phil’s long-shanked X shape, crossed at the ankles, knees in the circle of his arms. He was telling a story, if he were sitting like that, and a flood of relief tumbled over Ren that Phil had Matsu’s body, not Sam’s. Phil would have been as allergic to Sam’s helpless despair as he’d been to his own blood on Frio’s hands.

  “Fellow named John Brown,” Ren heard him say.

  * * *

  “Who?” Frio sat with his back against the filthy wall, legs sprawled in front of him, Irina’s hand keeping pressure on his bleeding leg. Phil couldn’t really mirror someone in that position. He didn’t even try, just stayed sitting near him, making sure their eyes were at a level.

  “Anti-slavery crusader, killed some folk, tried to incite a slave revolt, got hanged. I knew his son, Fred, better, but yeah, I knew Captain Brown, too. Tried to meddle with him.” A chuckle came up from somewhere and Phil let it escape and do its work. “Failed utterly,” he said. “But I tried.”

  Phil’s next move was to reach into his back pocket and turn on the iPhone; but just as he was about to, he remembered Frio was a cop; seeing Phil reach for his back pocket would put him on alert, and give him all sorts of brain chemicals Phil didn’t need him to have. Dammit, that’s the sort of thing he would have thought of if they had had time to plan this properly. Maybe later he could hit the switch; for now he needed to move on.

  “Anyway, yeah, Frederick Brown. Fred. Believed in what his father was doing, you know? I mean, believed that slavery was wrong, and that it would take violence to end it.”

  “Right on both counts,” said Frio. “Is there a point here?”

  “He was with his father at Dutch Henry’s Crossing.”

  “Don’t know that place.”

  “Pottawatomie Creek. Where they murdered a bunch of pro-slavery settlers.”

  Nothing from Frio.

  “Fred couldn’t take it. I mean, he was in favor, but not cut out to pull the trigger. Or swing the sword, in this case. It just wasn’t in his character to kill.”

  “Yeah,” said Frio. “Some people are like that.”

  “And these were, well, it wasn’t like a fight, where things happen, and you’re so busy trying to stay alive that you don’t put it together until after. It was—”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been just about everywhere. Anyway, it drove poor Fred right off his rocker. People would see him wandering around, or running nowhere in particular, talking about how they’d never done the killings, or the killings were justified, or talking to the air. Just, you know, nuts.”

  Frio nodded. “Believed in the ideal, couldn’t live in the reality.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  Frio focused on Phil, his eyes narrowing.

  “You shot me to protect Sam from the cops, while you were a cop,” Phil said.

  Frio looked at him, and Phil could see him weighing, deciding how much to tell. “Want a drink? I have a flask of whiskey,” Phil said, and reached f
or his back pocket.

  “No, thanks.”

  Phil flipped on the iPhone. It was so low he could barely hear it, and he doubted Frio was even aware of it, but Enrico Caruso’s “Serenata” came on nevertheless, and he’d managed to turn it on without making Frio jumpy. In any case, the desert lavender cologne he was wearing would certainly be in the air by now.

  So, yeah, Frio. Remember those times you and your friend Pete would sneak off to that empty lot filled with desert lavender? And remember afternoons with your mother’s father, his scratchy old opera records going in the background? Remember how that felt? Well, no; it isn’t what you’re thinking about. But it’s there, Frio. Good memories. From back before everything was so complicated. Back to when your mama used to say your legs were too short to get you where you wanted to go fast enough, when your papa’s friends would call you Cerveza Floja because of how you choked and coughed the first time you talked them into letting you have a sip of beer. I’m here, and I signify those memories. Trust me. Trust me.

  “You weren’t under orders,” Phil said. “You made the call to shoot me.”

  Nothing.

  “Not an easy choice to make. You must have thought you were pulling the trigger for a pretty good reason,” Phil went on.

  Frio met Phil’s eyes.

  “Either the cops or the Hourlies had something big planned.” Phil kept the question out of his voice.

  “SWAT raid on the library. Tonight.”

  “And you thought Sam wouldn’t get out of it alive.”

  “He might have,” said Frio. “He’s white.”

  “That was part of why you like him, isn’t it? It made the whole organization safer. But that wasn’t all, was it? You wanted to save him because you like him, and respect what he’s doing. But it isn’t just him. He’s a symbol; it’s everything he stands for.”

  Frio didn’t answer.

  Phil was silent a moment for the Caruso, the cologne. He helped himself to some licorice candy. Frio, almost unconsciously, did the same.

  “You know damn well what they’re doing in Maricopa County is wrong. And how much better is it here? It’s a long way from what it should be, and you want to change it. You want to make it better.”

  “You don’t fucking know—” Frio’s forearm twitched, and the gun nestled into his palm, natural as silverware.

  “Of course I know what you want,” Phil said. “You want to be good. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. Ever since your mama told you, ‘I love you, Iro, be good,’ when the ICE cops took her away.”

  Frio hissed, somewhere between shock and fury. Not the best place for the Focus to be, or anyone with a gun in his hand, but Phil might be able to use it, if Oskar would just keep his mouth shut. He looked to be grazing. Phil worked fast.

  “It’s why jail felt like freedom to you,” he told Frio. “Jail taught you how to be good. The COs gave you the recipe, and didn’t you follow it! You were so good you got out early and joined the good guys. Be a cop. Catch a robber.

  “But the good guys turned out to be assholes. Cruel and arrogant, and mean as any kid you ever knew in the barrio. Then you found Sam, and he was good. A truly good man, with all the happiness and peace that accompanies virtue. But he had no chance. So you set yourself to protecting him. Because that’s what cops do, right? Protect and serve?”

  Oskar opened his eyes, but Frio transferred the gun to his left hand, and pressed his right hard against his bleeding thigh. Phil took that as a sign that he could continue without getting Matsu’s body stubbed the same day he’d been spiked into it.

  “You know the state doesn’t get to sacrifice its citizens for its own security—not even for theirs.” Phil talked to keep Oskar from helping. “Before that happens, the state should fall. The state, particularly this state, is corrupt and should fall. But you knew Sam and his tiny rebellions weren’t going to topple it. Or even rock the boat. The masses aren’t ready to rise, and the state has tanks and drones. Hell, so do the county and the town, even a few school districts, for the love of God.

  “How did we let that happen? Who cares. It’s too late. We have to accept it as reality. You knew that. You knew revolt would be suicide or martyrdom, and you weren’t going to let Sam die.”

  * * *

  How about that? Phil makes a long, impassioned, moralizing speech, and I agree with it. Most of it. I don’t agree that it’s too late, and I certainly don’t think revolution is off the agenda, but he was still basically right, and that certainly wasn’t the time to argue about the rest of it.

  —Oskar

  * * *

  “So you shot me,” said Phil. “Then what?”

  “Sam gave up.”

  “And that kept him safe,” Phil agreed. “But it didn’t solve your problem.” Phil waited for Frio to acknowledge how futile killing him had been, but Frio didn’t move. “Then what?” Phil prompted.

  “Then Irina found him,” Oskar said.

  Phil waited, letting the rest of it sort itself out. “Irina offered you a way to do more than the Hourlies could: take my stub and keep your job. Sam would go back to teaching, inspiring kids, giving them the revolutionary ideals you didn’t have growing up. And you could involve yourself on their behalf from behind the scenes. Illegally serving and protecting the people whose rights are being destroyed by our new laws. It was a good plan.”

  “And it almost fucking killed me.”

  “Yeah,” Phil said. “Me too.

  Frio met Phil’s eyes and Phil saw something break in him, just a little. “Then what happened, Frio?”

  “You left me there like that. Maybe dead, maybe not.”

  Irina let out a ragged sob.

  “That’s true,” Phil said.

  “And when I didn’t turn up for work, my boss searched my place.”

  “What did they find?”

  “Hell if I know, but it was enough to send SWAT to Sam’s.” Frio sagged.

  “Just what you’d killed me to prevent,” Phil observed.

  “Fuck you.”

  Phil looked from Frio to Oskar to Irina. “No,” he said “Fuck them. We’ll help.”

  * * *

  “Sam?” Ren said gently, picking up the Starbucks cup. “Jane didn’t try to trade you in. She thinks there’s something in you that, in the right circumstance, could be heroic. She didn’t want to be in the way.”

  “Jane?” The weight of hope in Sam’s voice almost broke it. “Is that true?”

  Ren shifted on the uncomfortable pallet with a cough that masked the sound of her thumb mashing into the bottom of the cup, atomizing heated cocoa steam.

  “That’s who you were when you met me,” Jane said.

  “I was an idealist when we met,” Sam corrected her, but he took a deep breath, and sniffed.

  “I know,” Jane whispered. “It was pretty sexy.”

  “Embittered realist not so much?”

  Jane shook her head and pushed the tears away.

  “You don’t love me anymore.” Sam wasn’t asking and Jane didn’t answer. “I failed at everything I tried. It changed me.”

  Jane let go of Sam and wrapped her arms around herself.

  Sam didn’t look at her. “I got angry,” he explained to Ren.

  “Yeah,” Ren agreed. “If only you could have accepted that high school kids were getting married just to stay in the country. If you could have made peace with people afraid to go to the doctor when they get sick, living like slaves in the land of the free, maybe if you hadn’t tried to help them, they wouldn’t be in jail, some of them, or deported. Maybe it would have been better just to say ‘that’s the way things are’ and to leave them. It would certainly have been easier.” Ren gave a dry cough and Jimmy handed her the sake-laced water.

  Ren took a drink, and offered the bottle to Sam who took a long pull on the taste of misplaced pride.

  “Maybe those kids would have been happier with no one taking risks for them,” Ren said. “I don’t think, if we asked them, t
hat they’d say that, but you may know better.”

  Sam swallowed. “Maybe not,” he said.

  “Maybe Jane was right?”

  “I don’t know.” Sam sounded hollow.

  “You don’t have to know,” Jane said. “You have to hope.”

  “How can I?”

  “Because things are getting better,” Ren told him. “Over all. Worldwide.”

  Sam opened his mouth, but Jane talked over him. “Sam won’t believe that, Ren. He has no faith.”

  “I don’t either,” Ren said. “But I have history.” She pushed the rigged coffee cup and water bottle out of her way and pinned Sam the Civics teacher with a stern eye. “Sam, when Celeste, my last Second, was recruited, judicial torture was legal and well-attended as sport. England had over two hundred capital crimes including defaulting on a loan and cutting down a tree. Slavery was legal in every nation on earth. Every one. Do you know how many places it’s legal now? None. Do you know why? Because people’s minds changed. They stopped accepting it.”

  Ren held up her hand to stop Sam’s objections. “You’ll say that our own country still tortures and executes, that human trafficking still exists, and I’ll say you’re right. We’re not done. But I have been flogged for kissing. I have been executed by impalement. I have been a slave.

  “So yeah, you fucked things up. We do it all the time. It doesn’t matter. What matters is you learn and you do better next time. And I do not care how trite that sounds. It is simple, pure, practical truth. Because people see what you do. People like Frio. And then they try too. And maybe they win where you lost. Maybe they fail too, but Sam, these little victories or failures, they aren’t what make history. Or heroes.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Jane said, unwrapping her arms, but still not touching her husband. “Ren’s right about Frio seeing what you do. He quit the police force because he wasn’t going to keep being used by men who wanted other men dead, but couldn’t bring themselves to be killers out of some kind of easy idealism and blind loyalty,” Jane said.