Defender Read online

  In the lobby, Celia is sitting on the bench by the mailboxes, gazing out at the street.

  “Hey, Celia. You’re up early.”

  “I get up early and stay up late. Don’t want to miss anything.”

  Her smile makes about a thousand wrinkles in her ninety-one-year-old face. Her skin is deep brown and her hair has gone all snowy, as white as the false teeth she’s flashing at me. She likes to watch the world go by, from here or at the coffee shop on the corner. She’s like our local historian and nosy neighbor, sitting by her fourth-floor window and keeping track of the comings and goings. She’s been living here forever. Older than the building, older than pretty much everything.

  “Can you feel it?” she asks, her thick glasses making her eyes look big and owlish.

  “Feel what?”

  “The building. It’s settling in for winter. Creaking and cracking all over, like an old lady. Like me. Bracing itself for the deep freeze.”

  “You talk like it’s a living thing.”

  “It is, supergirl. With a steel skeleton and cement bones. Pipes for veins, wiring for brains. Dusty ventilation shafts for lungs. And windows for eyes.”

  She makes me smile for the first time in days. Celia’s always hanging around telling stories to anyone who cares to listen.

  “Where’s its heart?” I ask.

  “We’re its heart. You and me, and everyone within these walls. Without us, it’s dead and dusty.”

  Her words make me shiver. If this place is alive, with all of us a part of it, Celia must be its memory.

  I wonder what she knows.

  “You remember the old super? My grandfather?”

  She frowns, spawning more wrinkles, dark eyes huge behind her lenses. “Mad Dog?”

  “Yeah.” Guess his wild temper was no secret. “How bad was he?”

  She shakes her head. “Nasty and rabid. Crazy as they come.”

  Crazy enough to kill?

  “How do you mean?” I ask.

  “He knew how to hide it behind a laugh and a grin. But he was rotten to the core. He was a handsome devil, but a devil first. And…well, I don’t like to gossip.”

  I hold back a smile. That’s her favorite hobby. Life in the Zoo is a big soap opera, where every floor has its dramas, scandals and heartbreaks. And Celia knows them all.

  “But since it is your family, your blood, I guess I can tell. Your grandmother, Maggie, was a friend of mine. She went through hell with that man. Maggie was pretty, in a fragile kind of way, a breakable beauty you might say. And Lord, how he broke her. Not so it would show, he was careful about that, left her face alone. She always wore long sleeves and scarves to cover the bruises.” Celia rubs her arms, like she feels a chill. “He controlled her. But she sneaked out now and then and we’d have coffee. She never talked about how he hurt her. Anytime I tried to bring it up, she’d shrug it off. Maggie knew I knew, and I guess that was enough for her, so she didn’t feel alone in it.”

  Celia sighs. “Maybe I should have said something to somebody. But I didn’t want to make it worse. He would have been the death of her, if he hadn’t dropped dead himself. Sooner or later even the devil gets his due. I miss her. We had some good talks. She kept a little secret garden up on the roof, and we’d sit up there with a thermos of coffee. Been ages since I saw her, but I understand why she never comes back here. Guess it’s haunted for her.”

  So my grandfather was a monster. But was he a murderer? How mad was he, and how far did he go?

  Celia leans back to look up at me. “You’re so much like her—long and tall, the both of you.” She reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze with her cool dry fingers. “When you see her, give her my love, supergirl.”

  She calls me that not just because I’m the superintendent’s daughter, but like she’s told me before, I see big things in you, big girl.

  “See you later, Celia.”

  “I’ll be here. Always have been.”

  Stepping out into the sun, I wave back to her in the shadowy lobby of our haunted house.

  ME AND STICK are shooting hoops behind the Zoo, in the back alley court Dad set up a couple of years ago when I started playing. Our court, with lines sprayed on the asphalt, is bordered by a row of Dumpsters and parked cars.

  I take a midrange shot that clangs off the rim and Stick chases it down.

  “Damn, I’m rusty.”

  “You’ve been out a few weeks. Just got to get your touch back.” Stick dribbles around some potholes. “What did the therapist say?”

  “I’ve been resting it too much. I need to keep exercising, and focus on my flexibility.”

  My last MRI showed the partial tear was healing nicely. But if I try to jump or pivot, my knee feels like it’s going to buckle and give out. My physical therapist forced me into some wicked stretches and twists.

  “It’s a good hurt,” she told me. “The hurt of healing.”

  And I laughed, wincing. “Does that line actually work on your other patients?”

  “Not really. But you need to hear it.”

  So I’m working out, feeling the good hurt.

  Stick passes me the ball. “You know, Ty, I can help with your flexibility. You need a massage, I’m there. These hands are at your service. I squeeze to please.”

  “Sorry, Stick. Not in the mood. You’ll have to squeeze yourself.”

  I try from the three-point line, but my shot goes wide.

  Truth is, I’m not much of a shooter. I’m a blocker and a banger. The beast you have to move to try and score.

  Coach wants me back in the game. We’re getting beat down low, outmuscled in the paint. That’s Tiny’s turf. But worse than that, with me out, we’re getting beat up—pushed around and intimidated. Because there’s more to my game than guarding the basket. I guard my girls.

  When the other team takes a cheap shot at us—throws an elbow, or slams one of our players to the hardwood, nailing us with a flagrant foul, they need to know there’s going to be payback. That’s my job. Not to go dirty, or to get ejected. But to foul them hard enough that they get it: take my girl out, I’ll take you down.

  Stick fires one from long range and sinks it. “And the crowd goes wild.”

  By crowd he means our audience of pigeons and crows scavenging from the Dumpsters.

  “So, I was thinking, Ty. And I’ve got some theories.”

  “Yeah?”

  “About the girl. Why your dad went and buried her.”

  I stand by the free throw line, with Stick under the hoop to feed the ball back to me as I practice my foul shots.

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Maybe your dad was scared he’d get blamed. I mean, he’s the super in charge of the place. It’s even in the log how he was helping out on the job back when the body got sealed in.”

  My throw clangs off the rim, and Stick tosses it back to me. “An innocent man doesn’t do what he’s done,” I say.

  “Okay, so he’s covering for his old man, then. Why? Who knows. He was only a kid himself when it happened, and like you say, his dad was a beast. So maybe Teddy knew what his father had done but kept quiet because he was terrified of him. And now the body shows up, and he feels guilty for keeping the secret all this time. Worried he might get charged as like an accessory or something.”

  I just shake my head.

  “You know your father didn’t have anything to do with what happened to the girl. That’s evil stuff.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I say it, and I really desperately have to believe that. So I bury any doubts, telling myself I can’t have been that wrong about Dad.

  “Okay,” Stick says. “So, forget about why he got rid of the body for now. Let’s think about the way she was killed, how she got cut open. What’s behind that? Let me give you my top crazy ideas for motives.”

  I fire up another air ball, missing by a mile.

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Maybe it was like organ thieves. You know, when they drug you and st
eal your kidneys for the black market.”

  “That’s an urban myth.”

  “It happens. I read about it online.”

  “You fall for everything you see online. Besides, this wasn’t surgical. It was mutilation.”

  My next shot bangs off the brick wall.

  “How about if she was pregnant,” Stick says. “And somebody did it to steal the baby. Read about that happening too.”

  I shudder. “Don’t put that picture in my head.”

  I try to focus on the basket and block the image from my mind.

  “How about cannibalism?” Stick tosses the ball.

  I’m so stunned I miss the ball and have to run it down. Stick’s theory is so crazy, I have to laugh.

  “So you’re saying I come from a family of cannibals?”

  “You tell me why then. Why the overkill?”

  I can only shake my head.

  “Or she could have been killed because she was a snitch,” he says. “I mean, this all happened like twenty-five years ago, back when the old gangs ran the block. She could have been some kind of informant, so they shut her up and sent a message to anybody else who was thinking about talking.”

  Stick has a point. The neighborhood used to be a lot more dark and dangerous, before the cops cracked down and the gangs moved operations out to the burbs. It was a real shooting gallery back then. We still get smash and grabs with the cars in the lot, and there’s junkie debris in the alley, needles and broken pipes, but not like the bad old days.

  “Hey, Ty. You think there could be more?”

  “More what?”

  “Bodies.”

  I stop dribbling the ball, shivering. “Quit putting this stuff in my head. It’s like a whole photo album of atrocities you’re downloading to my brain.”

  I try a skyhook, and bang it off the rim. Stick snags the ricochet and walks the ball over to me.

  “How about if it was a satanic cult sacrificial offering?” he tries.

  I smile down at him, my shorty squeeze. “Well, this place is a portal to hell.”

  He shrugs. “I’m out of great ideas. Guess we got nothing.”

  “I’ve got you.” I bend and give him a kiss. “That’s something.”

  “And the crowd goes wild.”

  A car pulls into the lot, crowding our court. A black Cadillac with tinted windows that takes up two spaces as it parks.

  “Somebody’s got the wrong address,” Stick says.

  The driver gets out, a bull of a guy with buzz-cut black hair, a steroid overdose stuffed into a suit and tie. He opens the back door and we see our mysterious visitor.

  It’s Slimy. Sam Savard, our slumlord.

  He drops by only once or twice a year. Named number one on the city’s list of worst landlords, Savard owns other notorious dives in Regent Park and some postapocalyptic apartment complexes by Jane and Finch. He’s richer than God, and might be older too. He grew up around here, in old Cabbagetown, back when it was a black hole. Savard crawled out of that sewer to become king of the ghetto.

  He earned the name Slimy because he’s such a sleaze, and too slippery to catch. Charged over the years with every housing code violation, with loan-sharking his tenants and letting drug dealers set up shop, with twenty kinds of fraud and miscellaneous misdemeanors. He gets away with everything, because of whatever deal he made with the devil.

  Stepping out of his car, he doesn’t look like much. At five foot nothing, bald and skinny, he could be just another fossil from a nursing home. Till you see his eyes. Quick, bright, blue ice. The kind you can feel on you, like I do now—a visual dissection. I try to hide the shiver as he takes in my height.

  “You must be Teddy’s girl.” His voice is a raspy whisper.

  I nod. He reminds me of something slithery that you find under a rock and want to look away from but can’t. Revolting and fascinating at the same time. He wears a little gold crucifix necklace that winks in the sunlight. Him wearing one is a bad joke, as if he’s just daring God to smack him down. His leathery fake tan gives those eyes a laser shine.

  “What are we feeding you?” he says, looking up at me with a thin smile. The guy’s got no lips, like a lizard.

  He doesn’t wait for a reply, just heads for the back door of the building, with his driver trailing.

  What are we feeding you? As if I’m just another animal in his zoo.

  Savard waits as the driver gets out a key and opens the door for him. Slimy will get in and out without leaving a single fingerprint.

  “Stay with the car,” he rasps at the driver.

  Stick’s dribbling the basketball as the goon walks past us.

  “That ball better not touch this car,” the driver rumbles.

  Me and Stick glance at each other. Game’s over.

  “Let’s go eat,” Stick says.

  “Pizza?”

  “Paradise.”

  “Let me just put the ball upstairs.”

  As we reach the door, Stick looks back at the glaring driver and gives him a little wave.

  “Stay,” he says. Like the guy is Slimy’s dog.

  I hustle Stick inside.

  “You got a death wish?”

  “He’d never catch me. I’m speedy as a roach.”

  “We stomp on roaches all the time. They’re speedy but dumb, like you, boy.” We head for the elevators in the lobby. “If you get in a fight, I’m in it too. So that’s a death wish for two.”

  We hear voices coming from the manager’s office. Dad’s almost shouting. That stops me. He never yells. Then there are the lower tones of Savard. I step closer. Hard to get what’s being said. It’s muffled by the door.

  “Can’t…no…,” Dad’s saying.

  Slimy talks, inaudible.

  Dad responds. “You’re not the one who…no more…it’s on me.”

  Stick’s leaning in close when the knob turns. I yank him around the corner, out of sight.

  The door opens and shuts. Footsteps, then someone jabbing the elevator button.

  “I don’t want any part of it,” Dad grumbles, low.

  “Don’t worry, Teddy. I’ve got it covered.”

  There’s tense silence until the elevator comes. When the doors close, Stick and I come out of hiding.

  “What the hell was that about?” Stick asks.

  I watch as the readout above the elevator shows it going down to the subbasement.

  “What are they doing down there?” he says.

  I shake my head.

  “Can we sneak around and check?”

  I think about it. “Not without them knowing.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Nothing we can do. Let’s just get out of here.”

  Outside, I stop on the front steps.

  “Wait a sec.” I hand him the ball, take out my cell phone and flip through my photos.

  “What is it?” Stick asks.

  I find what I’m looking for. “These are the pictures I took of the pages in the logbook, the ones that show when the chute was sealed up. See the initials beside all the different jobs. TG for Dad. DG, my grandfather. But look at this.”

  I point to the top of the page, where all the work done and repairs made are authorized with a signature of approval from the man in charge.

  SS. Sam Savard.

  WHO WAS SHE, the girl in the wall?

  Stick’s got an idea how we might find out.

  We’re sitting in the Starbucks on the corner of our block. He brought his old laptop—“craptop” he calls it because it’s a twitchy piece of tech.

  After Slimy’s visit gave us more questions and no answers, we go back to basics. Who was she?

  “How does this work?” I ask.

  “It’s simple. We build a face.”

  Stick found an app online, a digital sketch artist.

  “This is based on the program the FBI developed for facial composites. Instead of giving a description to a sketch artist so they can work up a picture of a suspect, the progr
am lets you construct your own, choosing from a catalog of features.”

  “Like Mr. Potato Head? Stick on some lips, a nose and ears?”

  “Exactly. I wish I’d thought of taking a photo of the girl. I was just too freaked. But between the two of us, we should be able to reconstruct her.”

  “But what are we going to do with a sketch? Go knocking on doors asking if anybody knows her? Put her up on street posts?”

  “If we’ve got a sketch to work with, I could check it against the missing-person notices the police department has online. They’ve got a link where you can go through years of missing people, and see their pictures. It goes back decades with old cold cases. You don’t get much colder than our girl.”

  “Stick, you got brains.”

  “And a killer body, don’t forget that.”

  “How could I forget your bony butt?”

  “So what do you say? Want to play crime scene, Potato Head?”

  “Let’s play.”

  “Can you see her in your mind?”

  “I can’t stop seeing her,” I tell Stick. “But she would have looked a lot different when she was alive.”

  “I know, but the basic features are still the same.”

  The program is a multiple-choice kind of thing, where you pick out the parts. We start with the shape of the face. Stick brings up the options.

  After studying them, I go with oval. The screen shows a blank mannequin face.

  “Now the nose. Very important.”

  Who knew there could be so many noses? Not just wide or narrow, big or small, but pug, hawk, flat, pointy, bent, with large or thin nostrils.

  I get lost in the nose gallery. “I don’t know.”

  “Close your eyes and try to picture her.”

  I shut my eyes. I do see her.

  “There. That’s it.” I pick one of the flatter ones with a slight flare to the nostrils.

  “Good, that’s the one I would have gone with.”

  We move on to the mouth. A tough choice. I saw it stretched open, lips pulled back. How would it look normally?

  “Wide,” I say. “Full lips.”

  Stick scrolls through dozens of types till one fits with my memory. It’s amazing how much is coming back to me now, and how clearly.

  “Her ears were pierced, with a little gold cross in one. And they stuck out a little.”