He was walking down one of the paths in the courtyard of the Nellie Bly Houses, only the green paint patches had been replaced by grass so green and thick it might well have been carpeting. But the overwhelming scent of cut grass put a lie to that notion. The sun was out everywhere except over the four towers, whose beige brick had turned blood red. A dense, gray layer of fog hung over the buildings and when he looked up at the fog, it descended slowly down to the ground. He could not move as the fog washed over him, settling at his feet. He could not see the grass through the veil, but when he looked back at the buildings he saw they were once again beige; the blood washed off in the fog.
He smiled. As he smiled, the fog rose. As it rose, it lifted him up. Oddly, there was no sense of movement, no noise, no wind. He did not look down, but he was more curious than terrified. Passing the fifth floor, his mouth watered at the smell of frying bacon. He saw Evelyn Marsden standing out on the terrace, flanked on her right by Edgerin the little boy and by Edgerin the teenager on her left. None of the apartments had terraces, yet there they were. Evelyn and young Edgerin were smiling and waving. Teenage Edgerin was angry, thrusting his right arm skyward. He waved back to the Marsdens and their eyes followed him up. When he looked back at the terrace, teenage Edgerin was gone as were the smiles from his mother and younger self.
When the elevator of fog had risen to the rooftops, he finally looked down and noticed two graves in the new carpet of grass. He was too high to read the names on the headstones, but he knew them just the same. He stepped off the fog onto the roof of Building #4 and followed footprints that had been painted on the tar like dance steps. They led to the edge of the building that Bogarde DeFrees used as a launching pad or from which he was launched into a better world. He felt someone close behind him and he spun around from the ledge. It was the teenage Edgerin Marsden. He was furious, his eyes raging as he made stabbing gestures with his arm. “Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!” he screamed, “Look!” He could hear himself asking Marsden what it was he was supposed to look at, but got no reply.
Healy knew it was a dream, but didn’t fight it and tried not to get in the way of it. Sick with worry, he hadn’t slept at all last night. He wasn’t so much worried about Joe Serpe. Serpe could handle himself. The lies Joe told Keyes were his alone and if there was a price to pay, Joe would pay it. No, he was more worried about Raiza Hines. She could handle herself too, but the bump and sudden transfer were wrong. He could feel it. Healy had seen what happened to cops whose careers were built on a convenient lie or a favor. The NYPD was enormous and there were a few hundred places to bury mistakes or potential stars who got too far too fast and whose rabbi had since fallen out of favor. Merit and performance were no guarantees either, but they didn’t evaporate as fast as lies or favors.
He had a lot of coffee and got through the morning pretty well, but by noon he was finding it nearly impossible to keep his eyes open. At Gigi’s suggestion, he’d gone into the spare office in the trailer and stretched out on the old couch they kept there for occasions such as this. It wasn’t ten minutes before he was deep into sleep. When the dream had come to him, he could not say. It morphed into something else, something about his wife Mary, and then there was nothing but the womb of sleep itself.
At about four, Gigi came in and shook him awake. Joe had called and said he was headed back into the yard. Healy felt rested, if not better. He thanked Gigi and called Serpe on the truck.
“So nap time’s over?” Joe said. “Gigi told me you were out like a light.”
“She did, huh?”
“I’ll be in in fifteen minutes. What is it that couldn’t wait?”
“Can you cash everybody out tonight? There’s something I gotta take care of.”
“What?”
“I made a mistake that I think I’ve still got time to fix.”
Healy did it right. He called his brother and asked what kind of champagne he should buy. George knew about stuff like that. Bob didn’t need any help with the flowers. He always had a good eye for flowers. Driving in, he kept finding little pieces of windshield stuck in the folds if his seat. He wasn’t angry about it. He knew that no matter how thorough you were, there were always cracks and crevices and things just small enough to hide in them. It was like the dream he’d had that afternoon. Pieces of it came back to him as he made his way into the city. He still had no idea what the hell any of it meant beyond an expression of frustration and grief. As he pulled his car into a legal spot, he wasn’t much concerned with grief or frustration. He was too busy feeling like a sixteen-year-old on a first date.
She looked stunned when she saw him standing in the hallway, an arrangement of two dozen white and yellow roses and a cold bottle of Mumm’s in his hands.
“Congratulations, Detective Hines. These are for you,” he said, handing her the flowers. “This is for us.” He waved the bottle. “Do I get a second chance?”
She put the flowers down, reached out for his hand, and pulled him in.