It was raining. Again.
There was no open spot near Patty’s store, so Monk double parked with his flashers on and hustled her inside. Somehow helping her—and the need to truly be there for her—was sobering him up fast. The effect might not last, and he was likely to crash hard later, but he was okay with taking the short-term lift.
Once inside, Patty went immediately to one of the barber chairs and sat down as if the effort of walking from the car to there had sapped what little strength she had.
“Beer me,” she said, waving a hand in the general direction of the fridge.
Monk stared at her. “You out of your mind? You drank a whole case of—”
“Give me one now or I’ll just wait until you go.”
“Patty—”
“And you look shitfaced yourself, Monk. And don’t even get me started on how you smell.”
The standoff lasted for half a minute. It felt longer, and Monk knew he was going to lose unless he ankle-chained her to the bed. Chief Crow would love that. But there was nothing in the box except a Diet Dr Pepper, a tub of hummus, and a mass of leafy greens that was evolving into something vaguely threatening.
“Sorry, Pats,” he said, “but you’re dry.”
“Will you go get me something? There’s a beer place a couple blocks down.”
Monk went over and sat in the adjoining chair. He looked around the place, seeing it in daylight, listening in his head for an echo of the vague feeling of threat that was there yesterday. That sense someone was watching, or waiting. It wasn’t really clear if that feeling was gone because there was never a reason for it to be there in the first place, or because whatever it had been was no longer there. Or no longer looking. He said nothing about it, though.
“Look, I saw a pho place on the way into town yesterday, I could get us something.”
“I want a beer.”
“Well, that’s just tough,” he said frankly. “Christ, Pats, look at yourself. Have you eaten, like, anything since you came here? You were borderline malnourished before you bugged out of New York, but now … shit … I’m surprised they kicked you loose from the hospital. Kind of expected them to put in a feeding tube.”
“You know how to charm a girl.”
He snorted.
She looked away. “I don’t want pho.”
“Chinese?”
“No. You going to run through the whole of Asian cuisine?”
“What do you want, then? Pizza? A steak? Every other store around here’s a takeout. Or we could go to that big diner, what’s it called? The Scarecrow? Get some eggs. You need a protein hit and a crap-ton of carbs.”
“And you need to stop being my mother.”
“Okay, fine. Skip the food for now. How about we sit here and talk about what happened? How about we talk about Tuyet?”
She gave him a withering look. “You can really be a cruel bastard sometimes, Monk.”
“And you can be evasive as fuck. How ’bout we stop playing games?” He stabbed a finger in the direction of her bandaged hand. “Let’s not forget that I was there when you inked Tuyet’s face on your hand. I was there for all of it.”
“Don’t…”
“I know what that art means to you, what it’s always meant to you. You can spin some bullshit to the cops and the doctors, Pats, but you can’t lie to me. Not to me. We don’t do that. Neither of us. Ever. That’s the deal and we don’t break the deal. Not once in all these years.”
She looked down at the bandage on her hand. Time seemed to stall. Monk sat there, watching her, watching the way her shoulders painted a picture of total defeat. When he glanced at the wall clock he was surprised that time was actually passing. Outside it was raining again. Was that all it ever did in this town?
Patty said, “Monk, do you love me?”
It was a sudden question. Full of sharp edges, and yet spoken in a voice that was completely calm.
“You know I do,” he said, not moving from where he sat.
She nodded.
“I know something’s wrong with me,” she said after another long silence.
Monk did not dare speak. He did not dare contradict or try to make it better with some encouraging bullshit. Patty was telling her truth and they both needed him to be her witness.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” she said. “I wouldn’t. I wasn’t trying to do that yesterday, in case you’re wondering. The shrinks at the hospital grilled the hell out of me and they let me go because they can tell I’m not a danger to myself. Well,” she glanced bitterly at her bandaged hand, “not to my life. Turns out there’s no actual law to prevent people from banging themselves up. I got Twitch on the phone to explain that to them. Even so, they wouldn’t have let me out unless they believed me. You can believe me, too. I’m not going to kill myself. Not now or ever. And me not eating isn’t some kind of subtle slow suicide. Nothing like that.”
“Okay.”
“But I’m not okay, either.” Patty wiped at her eyes and studied her fingers, looking a little surprised to find them dry. “I know this is killing you, baby. You want to save me and I don’t know if I can be saved. If I’m worth the effort—No … no, let me finish.” She cut a look at him, saw that he was merely sitting there. She nodded. “I went to the Fire Zone last night.”
Monk’s heart jerked sideways in his chest, but he held his tongue.
“I went looking for her. For…” She paused and had to take a breath before she said the name. “For Tuyet. It was so weird, because we could hear and see people. Laughing, talking, singing with the Music. I saw this woman. Lady Eyes.” She told him about the encounter. “But then there was this sound. A buzzing. At first I thought it was my ink gun, like some kind of flashback to either me doing that original tattoo or what … I, um … did last night.”
“Take it slow, Pats. It’s okay.”
She nodded and sniffed. She was panting as if she’d run up three flights of stairs. “The more I heard that sound, the harder it was to even remember why I was there. Who I’d come to look for, you know?”
He nodded.
“And that lady kept asking me to say a name.”
Monk leaned forward. “What name? Tuyet’s?”
“No. She wanted me to say someone else’s name. And—you’re going to think I’m crazy here, but … I think it was the name of the person who … who…”
“Give me a noun, kiddo.”
“She wanted me to say the name of the person who stole Tuyet.” She cut a pleading look at him. “Am I crazy?”
Monk managed a smile. “Patty darlin’, I’m an ex-soldier who has dead faces tattooed on his skin and who sees ghosts. You do some kind of weird magic with your tattoo gun, and more than half of what’s inked on me is stuff you did. Somehow your most precious tattoo, the one with five thousand times more meaning than anything else, has started to fade and it’s taking with it memories of your little girl. Crazy? No, sweetheart, the world is bugfuck nuts and we’re stuck in the madhouse.”
Patty started to say something, but he held up a hand.
“There’s more,” he said and told her about Andrew Duncan. Patty’s eyes grew wider and they filled with a deep, deep dread.
“What … what…? I mean … what?” she stammered.
“And it gets worse,” said Monk. He stood up and shucked his jacket and grabbed the hem of the Minor Threat T-shirt he wore. He had to steel himself to do what he did next. Then with one abrupt move he pulled the shirt over his head and dropped it on the chair, standing naked to the waist in front of her. The eyes on all those faces were open and awake as they always were when he was alone with Patty Cakes.
“I don’t…” began Patty, but then Monk touched the bare spot over his heart. Her face slowly lost all color, all muscular tone, and she slid slowly—very slowly—out of her chair and onto the floor. Monk caught her before her bony knees could hit the hard tiles. He pulled her close to him and held her.
“They stole her from me, too,” he said.
They held each other, clung to one another. Patty screamed and Monk wept and their heartbreak filled the whole world.