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Anne gave me a sharp, shrewd look that made me rethink my initial impression of her. “Can I ask you something? While you were gone I was looking at that picture, and I had a thought. Please don’t think I’m a bad person, okay? But my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s is very advanced. Sometimes when I visit, he calls me by my mother’s name. He doesn’t always know what part of his life he’s living in, if that makes sense. I know you don’t know me, but would you help me? Will you come with me to see my grandfather?”

  This was exactly what I didn’t want. I wanted to escape all these strands of obligation and care and heartbreak. After five years of grief and mourning, when I was finally ready to lie down and rest, I deserved to be left alone. She must have seen something in my face because she stood up and put one hand on my arm.

  “I know it sounds horrible, lying to an old man, but at this point I’ll try anything. He was always there for me and my mom after my dad left. I need to do this if there’s any way at all it could help. Please?”

  I closed my eyes, thinking of what I owed Patty “Cake” Wolinsky. Some debts, no matter how much we may wish otherwise, must be repaid. No matter the cost.

  “I’ll come. Let me pack an overnight bag, and I’ll meet you at the VA home tonight.”

  “Thank you so much.” She stood a little taller as some of the tension left her.

  She wrote down directions and an address for me, as well as her phone number. She thanked me two more times on her way out the door, and then waved as she drove off. I watched her little blue Japanese sedan disappear down my quarter-mile-long driveway in a cloud of dust.

  Just one more day, one more obligation, and then I could rest. I went back inside and closed the door. For the first time in a year, I noticed how silent and empty the house was.

  3

  I threw my duffel bag on the floor of the truck and put my gun in the glove box. I don’t travel unarmed, I guess that’s out of fashion these days. The house had only needed to be locked, having been ready for a long absence for weeks now. I turned the key in the ignition and the truck jumped to life like a dog hearing the pantry open.

  The house receded in the rearview mirror, blurred by the vibration of the gravel driveway passing under the tires. Getting back on the road was an unexpected pleasure, one that I savored with the windows down and the radio on. I hadn’t asked for it, but now that it was here, I couldn’t see a reason not to enjoy it. I wasn’t planning to check out because I was sad, just because life as I knew it had ended, all my friends, family, and world were in the past. I was just the last one, turning out the lights. I could enjoy this last road trip and still finish up tomorrow.

  It was late afternoon by the time I crossed the Minnesota border and dusk when I rolled into Eyota. Anne’s directions got me to the Brightwater Retirement Village, which turned out to be a collection of small bungalows clustered around a large central dining hall and medical facility. The low buildings were tidy and brown, surrounded by a carefully tended landscape looking desperately cheerful with too many holly bushes and small evergreen topiaries lining the walkways, all laboring in vain under the gloomy feel of the place. I saw Anne’s car in the otherwise empty parking lot and pulled into a nearby space.

  She came out of the lobby and hurried to meet me as I locked up the truck. Looking anxious and relieved at the same time, she took my hand in both of hers and squeezed. “Thank you so much for coming, Abe. I really appreciate it.”

  “Happy to do it.”

  We walked down one of the wide concrete paths that crossed the lawn to Patty’s place, one of the many detached bungalows on the property, which he had to himself. Anne stopped me once we reached the door and her manner became crisp.

  “Just go inside and let me introduce you as a visitor. Let’s see how he’s feeling, and if he recognizes you. I don’t want to lie to him and tell him that you’re his old army buddy, but if he thinks it on his own then we just won’t correct him. Sometimes he’s not very lucid, so if that’s the case, we can try again in the morning, okay?”

  She sized me up with her eyes, as if trying to decide if I could be trusted to follow instructions. It was a look I hadn’t seen since my Army days.

  “Got it.”

  “All right. Let’s give it a try.” She opened the door and ushered me into the miniature house. The tidy kitchen we passed through had bright, flowery wallpaper and unused appliances. The living room had a large oil painting of a sunny field suspended over a couch that was barely larger than a loveseat. It was a half-hearted attempt to make the place feel like a home, but the smell revealed its true nature.

  Strong antiseptic cleaners and bleached linens announced “hospital” loud and clear, as did the stainless steel rails at hip height on every wall. Everything was spotless and unused looking, like a vacant hotel room. I followed Anne down a dim hallway done in lime green carpet and dark wood wainscoting.

  At the end of the hall, we entered a tiny bedroom that was dominated by a large hospital bed in the center, with the usual array of monitors and incomprehensible beige blocks with blinking lights behind it.

  The man in the bed looked shrunken and anonymous until he turned his head and saw me. Then his eyes brightened and his face animated, stamping his real face onto those withered features. I could see Patty looking out at me from that face. “Sarge! You came!” His voice was high and thready.

  “Hey Patty, good to see you.”

  He raised one of his large, skeletal hands and I shook it gently, feeling the soft, watery flesh around those brittle bones. His body was frail, but his eyes were piercing as always. I could see the resemblance between grandfather and granddaughter in that gaze.

  “I been looking for you, Sarge.”

  “That’s what I heard. What do you have for me, Cake?”

  During basic, the DI’s assigned everyone the most demeaning nicknames they could think of, and more often than not, they stuck. Patrick Wolinsky became Pattycake on the second day. As so often happens, as he became one of the men, it turned into Cake, and was a term of familiar endearment. He became the guy who could take a tough job and make it look easy. Cake. He had another talent, too, which is how he ended up holding the short straw that got him lumped in with the rest of us leg breakers.

  His eyes widened, and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “At first they only came every couple of days, but now they’re here all the time. They’re always here.”

  “Who?”

  “Baitbags, Sarge. I can smell ‘em.”

  I’ve spent sixty years and more, living with my memories of the war. I won’t lie and say I don’t wake up every now and then in a cold sweat, but, by and large, the past is just the past and no longer has the power to terrify me. But at those words, the past pressed close to me, and electricity leaped up my spine, making my hair prickle and stand up.

  Every man in our squad bet his life on Patty’s nose because he was never wrong. He was our sensitive, and he was aware of things that the rest of us weren’t. He always said it was a smell, but it was one that nobody else could ever scent. I found that my faith in this man had not diminished one jot in sixty years. Adrenaline made me weightless.

  “Like Warsaw?”

  He nodded jerkily. A thin, silver rope of spittle escaped his thin lips. “Close now!” His eyes snapped to a point past me. “Here!”

  The sound of breaking glass was loud and distinct over the hum of the monitors next to the bed. It came from the parking lot, right in line with Patty’s gaze. I jerked, startled. Then I headed for the door at a run.

  “What was that?” asked Anne, pressing the back of her hand to her nose. “Does it have something to do with this horrible smell?”

  “Don’t leave the room.” I flung open the door and bolted around the side of the bungalow.

  When I want to, I can move pretty fast. I was quick when I was a boy, racing through the corn with my buddies, but in that strained, jolting way people have when they’re pounding along as hard as they can. I run differen
tly now, and much, much faster.

  Maggie always said I ran smooth as a cat, and that’s how it felt. Smooth and supple, even over rough ground. It always felt good, like one of those early morning stretches when you first get out of bed. The more I ran, the more I wanted to run. I realized then that I hadn’t really run for years, perhaps because it was impossible not to feel exhilarated and alive when I did it.

  I shot across the dark lawn and hurdled the decorative bushes that bordered the parking lot without breaking stride. A heartbeat later, I was standing in front of the source of the noise. My truck.

  The front windshield was smashed in. The side and back windows were just empty holes. All four tires were punctured, and the last one still had a screwdriver sticking out of it. The hood was standing open, and I could see bits of plastic and hose sticking up every which way in the engine compartment by the dim light of the hood bulb. I opened the door and stuck my head inside to survey the damage. A large rock sat in the middle of the bench seat, surrounded by glittering chunks of safety glass.

  Anne screamed. More shattering glass.

  The truck had been a goddamn diversion, and I fell for it like an amateur. I lost a few precious seconds as I snatched the 1911 out of the glove box, and then raced back to the room. A greyhound wouldn’t have beat me across that lawn. I heard Anne’s scream change from one of surprise and fear to rage, even as I burst into the room.

  Shards of glass from the shattered patio door littered the floor. The pale green curtains writhed fitfully, curling into the room and falling back with the breeze. Anne’s eyes were locked onto a whip-thin man who was stabbing Patrick in the face and neck over and over again. His eyes were glassy and feverish, but his expression was gleeful. His top lip had risen to uncover his top teeth, and he was panting as his arm plunged up and down in short, jerky movements, but not with exertion.

  The second man was taller with an enormous beer gut that strained at his overalls. His huge, meaty hands were ripping drawers out of the lone dresser in the room. His lips were pursed in concentration as he worked, his eyes as hot and unfocused as his partner’s.

  I raised the 1911 with two hands, flicking off the safety at the same time. The gun boomed twice, deafening in the small room. The thin man jerked and twisted as the .45 caliber slugs hammered into the center of his chest and his right shoulder. The slender boning knife he had been using spun across the floor.

  “Motherfucker!” With his good arm, he shoved the bed towards me. He was far too strong for his skinny frame. The bed’s locked wheels skidded over the thin carpet and then grabbed tight, tipping the bed over and spilling Patty out like a rag doll.

  I dropped the gun and caught him in my arms before he could hit the floor, ending on my knees. The bedrail hit me in the head, splitting the skin over my right eyebrow. The bed ended up on its side, between myself and the intruders.

  The big one said, “I’ve got it.”

  I gathered Patrick to me as gently as I could and stood up in time to see both men turning to dash out of the smashed patio door.

  Anne dove for the gun, came up in a neat roll, and fired, all in one smooth motion. She hit the fat one right between the shoulder blades. My eyes widened in surprise. I couldn’t have made that shot. Apparently there was more to Patrick’s granddaughter than I thought. Of course, the bag never slowed down.

  A second later, they were gone.

  4

  I knelt down next to Patrick. He was dead, and probably had been before I even got back to the room. The wounds were terrible. Black blood pooled in weeping oval slits all over his neck and upper chest. His face was worse, with long rips across his jaw and cheekbones, the skin flayed open away from the bone underneath.

  None of those wounds killed him. He had been stabbed through both eyes with that long, slender knife, penetrating deep into the brain. I hoped it had been an instant, painless death.

  I pulled a sheet over Patrick’s remains as reverently as I could. When I stood up, I bumped into Anne, who had been standing inches behind me, one hand covering her mouth and nose, the other still holding my gun. She was staring at the dark stains that were already seeping through the sheet, so I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her away. With one arm around her waist, I guided her gently away from the body and tried to gently take my gun out of her hand. She resisted me at first, but reluctantly let it go.

  We crossed the room to the couch where she pulled away from me and hugged herself tightly, her hands locked around her biceps in a white-knuckled grip. She was shaking, struggling not to make a sound, while tears made silent tracks down through the crease of her nose to her lips. Not knowing what else to do, I took a step towards her, but she turned her head and moved back.

  I’ve seen a lot of grief over the years and decades and it never changes. Even after all this time, I can close my eyes and be right back at Maggie’s bedside the moment she died. I watched Anne struggle under the weight of it and felt small and helpless.

  We stood like that for as long as it was bearable. Eventually I walked back into the bedroom, both to give Anne some space and also to look for something that I didn’t want to find. I stepped respectfully around Patty and the bed and moved closer to the window.

  I know I hit the thin one twice, and even though he didn’t drop, he bled. As I expected, there were dots and strings of blood on the floor where he had been standing. The blood felt sticky when I dipped a finger into it, and when smeared against my thumb, left a black smear. Normal blood looks black if it’s thick enough, but if you smear it flat when it’s fresh, you’ll see that it’s really a shockingly bright red. This blood stayed black.

  I sniffed at my fingers and quickly blew the bitter stink out of my nostrils. It made me want to spit. Patty had said it was bags. His peculiar ability to know things, to sense them, had never once let me down. Looks like he went out with an unbroken record.

  Over by the wall, Big and Tall’s handiwork was clear. The contents of the top two drawers were scattered all over the floor. The drawers themselves were tossed to the side, and I could see where the rails had been pulled completely out of the dresser, wood screws and all.

  I remembered him telling Skinny that he had “found it.” On the ground, lying in the broken glass and wood splinters, were all of Patty’s remaining possessions. A picture of his departed wife Hazel, broken. His Victory Medal and Purple Heart. His wedding ring. A dozen ribbons in a medal box. Some change and a couple of pens.

  Looking through the remainder of my friend’s life, I could tell that these were things that other people had decided to keep for him, once he was put in this place. Patty didn’t care about medals. Except for the wedding ring, all of this stuff would have been stored away in an attic somewhere and only taken out at someone else’s request.

  The picture of Hazel would have been displayed, rather than packed in a drawer, and there would have been a pile of old drawings and knickknacks made by his great-grandkids kept close at hand.

  The last time we spoke, ten years ago or more, Patty didn’t have any more interest in the war than I had. We talked about the Packers, his great-grandkids, our mutual friends, and then his great-grandkids some more. Whoever packed this drawer saw Patty only as a vet, something that probably would have surprised the old man.

  The only other thing on the floor was an old wooden La Prosa King cigar box. It was empty, but Patty had glued felt down on the bottom of the box, and I could see the dents where something heavy had lain for many years. I brought the box out into the living room.

  Blue lights were strobing against the hallway walls as police cruisers pulled up to the nearby private drive, reserved for ambulances and other emergency vehicles that made their too-frequent trips to the home.

  Anne was sitting on the couch, a wadded up tissue in one hand. Her eyes were cold and hard now, furious. “Why?”

  I wish I could have told her I didn’t know, because I knew damn well that being connected to this in any way was going to make
me a target for her anger. But it was better that she was angry at me instead of being eaten up by the thought that her grandfather had been brutally murdered for no reason. “You ever see what was in this box?”

  “That? They killed him for a souvenir? It was just a goddamn piece of metal he picked up in the war! He said it reminded him of his last big fight. It was worthless. Why would they want that?” It was more of a challenge than a question.

  Faint sirens filtered in through the broken glass in the other room, growing louder by the second. “It was a piece of metal, right? Curved like a one-quarter of a flat ring, about six inches long? Kind of like a metal ruler, but curved. And it had two sharp spikes sticking out from the back?”

  Before I could say anything else, the front door slammed back against the wall and two police officers entered the room with their weapons drawn. They took one glance at the two of us, and then both of them swiveled to point their guns at me, the guy with the blood all over his shirt.

  “On the ground! Now!”

  Hands out and fingers spread, I got down on my knees, then on the ground. I said, slowly and clearly, “I have a weapon behind my back, under my shirt, and a license to carry in my wallet.”

  “Mike, he’s okay, his grandfather knew my grandfather. He came here with me,” said Anne. “He’s … he’s in there,” she said, pointing at the bedroom. She turned away and her shoulders shook, fury melting into grief in the space of a heartbeat.

  “Both of you stay here.” The officer that Anne had spoken to walked to the bedroom, while his partner kept me covered. He came back a minute later and nodded to his partner, who removed my pistol and wallet. He looked at my ID and my concealed carry license, and then backed up.

  “Okay, sir,” he said, “you can get up now.”

  I stood up, and both men holstered their weapons.

  Anne’s friend held out a hand. “Sorry, but you can’t be too careful these days. Mike Miller.” He had a round, boyish face and a mustache that looked like he spent a lot of time on it. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. I shook his hand.