I, Alex Cross

don’t get this important water bill moving today, it’s not going anywhere. Assuming there aren’t any charges here, you’re going to have to excuse me."
    "How long is your meeting?" I asked.
    He flipped a card from his pocket and held it out between two fingers for me. "Give Grace a call. We’ll get you on the schedule," he said.
    I could feel the firewall starting to rise, higher and higher, faster and faster.

Chapter 71

    I BROUGHT SOME music to Nana’s room that night, a mixed artist CD, the
Best of U Street,
with a lot of the big names from when she went to the clubs there with my grandfather and friends — Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, and Sir Duke himself, the great Mr. Ellington.
    I let it play quietly on Bree’s laptop while we visited.
    The jazz singers’ weren’t the only familiar voices in the room. I’d also brought along Jannie and Ali. This was the first night the nurses had allowed Ali into the room. He was so quiet and respectful, sitting right next to Nana’s bed. Such a good little boy.
    "What’s this for, Daddah?" he asked in the younger-sounding voice he used when he was a little nervous and unsure of himself.
    "That’s the heart monitor. You see those lines? They show Nana’s heartbeat. You can see that it’s steady right now."
    "What about that tube there?"
    "That’s how Nana gets food while she’s in the coma."
    Then, suddenly, he said, "I wish Nana was coming home soon. I wish it more than anything. I say prayers for Nana all day long."
    "You can tell her yourself, Ali. Nana’s right here. Go ahead, if you want to say something."
    "She can hear me?"
    "She probably can. I think so." I put his hand on Nana’s and my hand on top of his. "Go ahead."
    "Hi, Nana!" he said as if Nana were hard of hearing, and it was difficult not to laugh.
    "Inside-the-house voice, buddy," Bree said. "But good enthusiasm there. I’ll bet Nana heard you."

Chapter 72

    JANNIE WAS MORE reserved with her grandma. She moved kind of awkwardly around the room, like she just wasn’t sure how to be herself. Mostly, she hung back by the door until I motioned her over.
    "Come here, Janelle. I want to show you and Ali something interesting."
    Ali hung on my arm, and Jannie came to look over my shoulder. It was tight in the little space next to the bed, but I liked us pressed in that way, a unit, hopefully ready for whatever came our way.
    I took a picture out of my wallet. It was the one I’d found in Caroline’s apartment, and I’d been carrying it with me.
    "Now, this is Nana Mama, your uncle Blake, and me. Way back in 1976, if you can believe it."
    "Daddy! You look ridiculous," Jannie said, pointing at the red, white, and blue hat jammed onto my seventies Afro. "What are you
wearing
?"
    "It’s called a boater. It was the Bicentennial, America’s two hundredth birthday, and about a million people were wearing them that day. Very few looked so jaunty, though."
    "Oh, that’s really too bad." Jannie sounded somewhere between embarrassed and filled with pity for her poor, clueless father.
    "Anyway," I went on, "about five minutes after this picture was taken, a big Washington Redskins float came by in the parade. They were throwing out mini footballs, and Blake and I just about lost our minds trying to catch one. We ran after the float for blocks without even a second thought for poor Nana Mama. So you know what happened next, right?"
    This was mostly for the kids, but also for Nana — like we were sitting around the kitchen table and she was over at the stove, eavesdropping. I could just imagine her standing there, stirring something good and pretending not to listen in, getting a wisecrack ready for me.
    "It took her hours to find us, and let me tell you, when she did, you have never seen Nana that mad in all your life. Not even close."
    "Ali stared at Nana, trying to imagine it. "How mad was she? Tell me."
    "Well, do you remember when she quit us and moved out for a while?"
    "Yeah."
    "Madder than that, even. And remember when a certain someone" — I poked Ali in the ribs — "’drove’ the vacuum cleaner down the stairs and put scratches all over the wood?"
    He played along and dropped his jaw wide open. "Madder than that?"
    "Ten times madder, little man."
    "What happened, Daddy?" Jannie chimed in.
    The truth was, Nana had slapped both of us across the face — before she hugged us silly and then bought us a couple of red, white, and blue cotton candies, as big as our haircuts, on the way