“I’m just looking for a killer in New York. And I hear they have good bagels.”
G. William regarded him in silence for a moment, then sighed. “Bring me back a knish,” he said at last. “Haven’t had a decent one in ten years.”
Going to New York should have been as easy as packing a suitcase and heading to the airport, but Jazz didn’t even own a suitcase. The closest thing in the house was a dusty, mothball-reeking valise that Gramma had probably used on her honeymoon back in 1887. Or whenever she’d been young. The idea of accompanying an NYPD detective to New York with Gramma’s beaten, smelly brick of a suitcase was a nonstarter. So Jazz did what he always did when he needed help.
“This here,” Howie said, hefting a sleek black roller bag as if it contained purloined diamonds from some fantasy kingdom, “is the latest and greatest in travel technology. Guaranteed not to tip over. Mesh pocket for water bottle. Separate exterior compartment for laptop—”
“I don’t have a laptop.”
“—single-post handle construction for pushing or pulling,” Howie went on, undeterred. “Extra-lubricated ball bearings for smooth gliding action.” Howie waggled his eyebrows. “That’s what she said.”
Jazz took the roller bag from Howie, unzipped it, and peered inside. “Plenty of room, and I won’t be embarrassed with it in the airport. That’s all I care about.”
“ ‘Who’s going to watch your grandmother while you’re gone?’ he asked, knowing the answer already,” Howie said drily.
“Yeah, about that…”
Jazz had thought long and hard and then longer and harder about what to do with his grandmother for the next couple of days. He had actually considered bringing her to New York with him, but the thought of being in a confined space with her for the duration of the flight was enough to make him want to bail out of the plane without a parachute. And then there was the idea of Gramma on her own in the biggest, craziest city in the world while Jazz was off prospecting the prospector for the NYPD. There was a slight chance that Gramma’s crazy would complement New York’s just fine, but he wasn’t going to bank on it. Images of Gramma attacking tourists capered in before his mind’s eye, and he could almost hear her shrieking, “Tell that bitch to stop staring at me!” while pointing at the Statue of Liberty.
No, Gramma would have to stay in Lobo’s Nod. And he couldn’t rely on the usual suspects to take care of her—it was one thing to let Erickson sit with her for a couple of hours, but if he had anyone on G. William’s staff looking after her, it would take no time at all before the sheriff had Jazz’s case with Social Services expedited right up the priority list… and bounced Jazz into a foster home and Gramma into an assisted-living facility. He’d already dodged that bullet once when Billy—in a fit of parental protection like no other—had horrifically tortured and slaughtered Melissa Hoover and conveniently deleted the files she’d accumulated on Jazz’s situation. It would be months before the Social Services people reconstructed anything incriminating. Jazz hoped it would take until he turned eighteen, at which point it would become moot.
In the meantime, the cops—friendly to Jazz, but honor bound to report Gramma’s attenuating connection to planet earth—were out as babysitters. And Howie was willing but too weak. Gramma could cause some serious damage if she went on one of her crazed slapping and punching benders.
Jazz had had no choice but to call his aunt Samantha.
It felt strange to think of her as “Aunt Samantha.” He’d never met the woman in his life—Billy’s older sister had moved away from Lobo’s Nod right after graduating high school and never looked back. In the years since Billy’s ravages had become nighttime news fodder, she had done her level best to stay out of the limelight, avoiding the press at every turn. Her only comment had come at the end of a long day of being hunted by the media, stalked with the same precision and tenacity Billy evinced when prospecting. A reporter with a camera crew had finally pinned her down in a mall parking garage, where she struggled with a recalcitrant door while trying to balance her purse, a shopping bag, a precarious cup of coffee, and a plastic hanger sheath with a red dress within. As the reporter pestered her for a comment, Samantha gamely and repeatedly said, “I have nothing to say,” as though it were a protective mantra shielding her from a demon.
But then the door finally came open, jerking her back, and the beautiful new dress slid off the hanger onto the grimy parking garage floor, with the coffee landing on top of it. To prove that the universe loves synchronicity—whether good or ill—this happened at the exact moment that the reporter asked, “What do you think should happen to your brother?”
And poor Samantha had had enough. Enough of her brother. Enough of the reporters. Enough of the damn dress it had taken her all day to find. She’d kicked the car door and screamed, “There isn’t a hell in the universe hot enough for my [bleep]damned brother! If they wanted to kill him, I’d flip the [bleep]ing switch myself!”
The bleeps, of course, were courtesy of network censors. Obviously, they found her justifiable “mature language” too offensive and shocking for the delicate sensibilities of the same viewers who regularly tuned in to hear details of Billy’s extensive career of raping, torturing, and murdering mostly young women.
“I’ve got some coverage,” Jazz told Howie, “but I need you to backstop.”
“So that Social Services doesn’t go medieval on you,” Howie said, with what he thought was the air of some Far Eastern mystic. “You could solve all of this, you know, with some paperwork….”
Jazz groaned. He didn’t want to have this conversation again. Howie had been bugging him recently about filing the paperwork to become an emancipated minor. It would mean no more looking over his shoulder for Social Services and would give him more latitude in taking care of his grandmother.
“No. We’ve been through this before—”
“You’ve dismissed it before. Not the same thing, bro.”
“You sound like an idiot when you say ‘bro.’ And it’s too complicated. The background checks and interviews alone would have them swooping down on the house. She’d end up in adult care somewhere, and I’d spend my last few months before I hit eighteen in a foster home while the freakin’ emancipation paperwork was still being processed. No, Howie. Forget it. It’s easier just to lay low until I’m eighteen.”
“Well, first of all,” Howie said, ticking off points on his fingers, “I totally sound like Ice-T when I say ‘bro.’ Second of all, it’s still your best move. You can’t keep this up forever.” He gestured to the house, encompassing with that one motion the entire complexity of Jazz’s life.
“I don’t have to. I just have to hold on a little longer. And all you have to do is spell me for a couple of days. Gramma likes you.”
“Usually she likes me,” Howie said darkly. “Sometimes she thinks I’m some kind of giant skeleton come to eat her soul.”
“Sometimes you look like a giant skeleton,” Jazz reminded him.
“Yeah, but the soul-eating part is tough to get over. Very well, then. I will be your Sancho Panza once more.”
“I don’t think that exactly means what you—”
“But there is, of course, the small matter of my babysitting fee to discuss….”
“For God’s sake, Howie! How many more tattoos can you put on me? I’m running out of space!”
“Au contraire, mein freund. You have your legs and your forearms, for example.”
“I’m gonna look like a complete freak by the time you’re done with me. Can you at least make it something cool?”
“A flaming basketball is cool!” Howie protested.