Requiem (28)   A man finds his shipwrecks, tells himself the necessary stories. Whatever gods are - our own fearful voices or intimations from the unseen order of things, the gods finally released him, cleared the way… What family? The question arrives, fully formed in his mind, the moment he opens his eyes - as if it had spent the entire night waiting patiently beside the bed. He doesn't know why he didn't see it before, or ask it before, even of himself. Might've been the Cassadine name he'd allowed to mislead him. That and his own firm determination to ignore any reference to Zander. So much easier to believe this was about an arbitrary exhumation, a bunch of embittered, money-hungry relations, the quack-quack-quack of distant, foreign aberrations with an administrative axe to grind. There was paperwork for that, and a proper channel too, he admitted to himself contentiously - owning his negligence, this facilitating ignorance with a disgust that had him stalking to the shower and shaving half an hour from his morning routine as he rushed to get to the office. Man says, Oh, by the way and you've got to know the second shoe's about to drop. But he'd ignored it, ignored it right up until today. Not because he didn't see it, but because he only saw how it worked for him. Those boxes were going. Finally. Finally, she'd be giving them away. But to who? To what family? There's a single sheet of paper sitting in a file, buried in the back of a cabinet. It's the first place he goes, the first thing he seeks when his office door closes and the noise from the PCPD detective's pen is muted to a more manageable degree; once the Monday morning up-to-speeds were done and he could carve himself some privacy. It's a single sheet of paper he needs to see - that one short form he'd forced Zander to fill out on the off-chance things went south. On the off-chance someone found themselves in the unenviable position of making a call. The call. That call no cop with a heart still pounding beneath his ten-pound Kevlar vest had any interest in facing. Part of the job. Just part of the job, ma'am. Whiskey all around. If memory served, Poole had drawn the straw on this one. And had he…? Yes. Yes, here it was. He'd returned the file. Mac took the folder over to his desk and sat down hard, thumping to his seat with a dejection born of having to tackle this mess one more time. It never got any easier. The misery never waned. And if it weren't for Maxie he doubted he'd have the strength to confront it all again. But she was part of it now, in the middle of it now, sinking deeper every minute. And he'd move heaven and earth to make sure she wasn't hurt; to spare her even the temporary weight of another ounce of pain. He opened the file and scanned the page, running a lone finger down to where the kid had listed his next-of-kin. Cameron Lewis - father. An old address, a disconnected number; the doctor passed away weeks before his son took that step beyond the cottage door and dared the response team to shoot him. The father was a dead end. Literally. Next? Mrs. Mercedes McClain Lewis - mother, divorced. Which explained the inclusion of her maiden name and the small scrawl of a disclaimer written out in Zander's hurried hand; the last known he'd tacked to her address. This was the parent Poole had had to hunt down to deliver the notification; a search that had led him up the sorry path to a Florida sanitarium and a referral to the woman's brother. Malcolm, his sergeant had scribbled in the margin of the page. Malcolm McClain, of McClain, Merrit and Maudry, law partner and conservator of his sister's trust. The same man Maximillian Cassadine had given him to call for confirmation; to verify his role as the family's representative here in Port Charles. That's it. That's all. Zander had an uncle. Extrapolate an aunt, a couple of cousins, and it still didn't meet the measure of family as far as Mac was concerned. A family he'd never met, never heard about; that Zander had never mentioned. A family that had never come to see him, save him, intervene in the downward spiral of his life. A family that, to his knowledge, he'd never once gone to visit. And a family that, by his daughter's own admission, hadn't bothered to come to the funeral. This was a family so tightly-knit they needed not only his possessions back but the stories that went with them? No. No, there was more to this, he could feel it all the way down to his bones. He reached for the phone and dialed the number Poole had circled on the form. "McClain, Merrit and Maudry." "Mac Scorpio for Malcolm McClain." "One moment please." She put him on hold and the acoustic cover of an old folk classic sprang to life in his ear. All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest… "Malcolm McClain's office. Sissy speaking. How may I help you?" "Mac Scorpio for Malcolm McClain." "I'm sorry, Mr. Scorpio. Mr. McClain is out of the office. Would you like to leave a message?" Damn. "Yes." He spelled the name, then provided his numbers, both office and home. "If you could have him get back to me as soon as possible?" "And this is regarding…?" "It's a family matter," he offered, disconcerted for an instant by the loss of a way to further explain. "You know, maybe you could help me out. Sissy, is it?" "Yes," she responded reluctantly. "I really don't think…" "Sissy, I'm looking for an easy answer here," he rushed to reply, inserting himself through the marked pause of her professional hesitancy. "And just so you know, you're speaking with the Police Commissioner of the city of Port Charles, New York. My interest is completely above-board and involves the representative Mr. McClain sent to my town to recover the belongings of Cameron Lewis and his son, Alexander." "Mr. Cassadine, yes. Mr…Commissioner Scorpio, it's really not my place…" "Then you know about this? Good," he countered swiftly, his tone enthusiastic. "That'll save us some time. It's my daughter, you see. She was a friend of Alexander's. In fact, when he died she was the one who cleaned out his apartment and helped arrange the funeral. She kept several boxes of his belongings and…well, the truth is she's grown attached to them. Suddenly a man shows up out of the blue and wants to take those things away. Now I understand they don't belong to her, and I've been working very hard to convince her she has to give them up. But she's a stubborn girl, Sissy. Stubborn as only a nineteen year old knows how to be. So in an effort to make this easier on everyone involved, it would help if we knew exactly where those boxes were going and to whom. If I could just give her a name. A relationship even. Give her the sense of a destination. That's not too much to ask now, is it?" "Well, no, but Mr. Cassadine could answer that. Mr. Cassadine…" "…is a busy man," enjoined Mac, maneuvering her into the closest corner. "I understand he's agreed to represent the family as a favor to the conservators of the trust. A favor's a favor, Sissy. It's a generous thing to do and I thought, rather than inconvenience him with the additional burden of a young girl's demands, I'd bring this question to Mr. McClain or, in his absence, to you. It would be awfully nice if I could go home tonight and give her an answer, you know? Just provide her the name of the person she's surrendering them to?" "Well yes, I guess," the secretary allowed, tentatively relenting. "But frankly, Commissioner Scorpio, I'm not quite sure who they're going to. The boxes we've been sent, and these would be Dr. Lewis' belongings, have gone straight into storage. I imagine Alexander's things will follow suit." "Oh. I see. They're not going to his mother, then? Since his father passed away I just naturally assumed…" "No, no, no," she negated on the crest of a tolerant laugh. "I can't imagine what she'd do with them. I'm not even sure the facility would allow it. She's in an institution, or didn't you know?" "Yes. Yes, that's what we were told. One of my officers spoke with the sanitarium when Zander…Alexander died, in his attempt to make the notification." "Poor dear. She had a tough time with that. Imagine having both your ex-husband and your child die within the space of a month! She needed to know, of course. But I don't blame Mr. McClain a single bit for allowing the doctors to orchestrate the telling. Right place, right time, right frame of mind if they could somehow manage to find one. That took months. And just when we thought she'd accepted it…" "She hadn't." "No, it doesn't seem so. Now I wouldn't want to be accused of telling tales out of school…" "I can promise you I'd never do that." "…but, well, it's astonishing really. The human mind, you know? Poor Mercedes is quite convinced her son comes to see her." Mac lurched up in his chair, his mind racing on the implication. It couldn't…no, it wouldn't be possible. "Zander? She's saying Zander…I mean, Alexander comes to see her?" "No, no. That would make sense in an odd little way, now wouldn't it? She hears he's dead and through the power of her grief somehow imagines him there? That I could understand. But no, it's not that son she sees. It's the one she lost a lifetime ago. She believes she's seen Peter." "You stole it," he accused through a wicked grin, flinging the pillow like a discus in the direction of her head. "I did not," she squeaked on the catch. "No one was using it. It was just lying around." "Oh, is that how it works? Good to know. I'll have to try that the next time I walk into a bank. Excuse me, Madame Teller, I'd like all the money no one's using. You know, just those bills you've got lying around." An arm shot up to block his face as the pillow came sailing back, her embarrassment injecting just enough force to set its tassels spinning. "Madame Teller," she jeered. "You're such a Cassadine." He lifted his palms and bobbled them before him in a devilish measuring gesture. "Cassadine, pillow-thief. Cassadine, pillow-thief. Hmm, I think I'll take Cassadine." She let loose a fearsome growl and launched from her seat on the steps, stalking over to the sofa to retrieve her embroidered treasure. "I'm not giving it back," she declared, hugging the pillow tightly to her chest. "I'm not even giving it to you, so there." "Fair enough," he conceded, tipping his head to the cushion at his side in an invitation that she sit. "So you ransacked the high school theater department for costumes, pillows, an oar and a gondola? And no one looked at you twice?" She sank to the couch with a wistful smile. "Hospital security tagged us at the service entrance. But, hey, we were kids. Of course, it didn't hurt that two of us were the daughters of Mac Scorpio and the third was the grandson of Edward Quartermaine. Then once we explained who we were doing it for, the dying daughter of the chief of staff, they let us go so fast. I think they even offered an escort." "That's a lot of trouble to go through to give a honeymoon to a woman you don't seem to like." Her head drifted down and she grew quiet for a moment, that silly pillow falling flat to her lap, a listless thumb crooking to run down the twisted cord of its trim. "Her dreams were his. That's how it was. If she wanted Venice and the Bridge of Sighs then that's what he wanted, too. I didn't do it for Emily. Dillon had her back, and I think Georgie was just in love with the idea. The tragic heroine exchanging her vows mere hours before her death. Like there was nobility in that or something. Don't get me wrong, I had sympathy and all, it was an agonizing situation. I just…I think the true nobility there belonged to the guy who stepped up to the plate. Nikolas was all 'Oh Emily, oh Emily, don't die on me' - just pleading with her to get well. Zander was different. He was doing something about it. He was pledging himself to share whatever future she had left. Even if she were sick or stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, he'd deal. Even if she died, he'd deal. He was telling her it was okay. Whatever happened, it was okay. That's what you need, you know. I mean, I've been there and that's what you need." "It's the difference between today and tomorrow." "Exactly," she confirmed with a grateful nod. "People get so focused on the minute they're in, on the war with the illness. The doctors, the nurses, your parents, your friends. It's all you hear, twenty-four seven. Sometimes somebody smart will come along and talk about the past. Remember that summer? Remember that spring? But no one ever talks about the future - that future they're afraid you haven't got. Oh, they'll do the whole 'when you get well' thing, but that's really just for them, you know? It's how they keep up hope. But it takes a brilliant person, a truly brilliant person, that one-in-a-million brilliant guy, to say something like 'I don't know how we're going to get you through Introductory Calculus now.' Or 'If you think I'm taking Brownie for his rabies shot you're crazy. He'll end up peeing all over me.' Or 'I'm tired of waiting. Get your ass off the fence and marry me.' Because tomorrow just might come, you see? And it's a good idea to be ready." There were times she left him breathless - the scope of her borrowed heart, the incalculable depth of its understanding. And he could mark its wisdom true, having been bound to his share of unendurably detestable hospital beds over the course of recent years. She was right, this was the way Djinn had bullied him through the days and the nights, the weeks and the months of his extended convalescence. Do you imagine the world waits on you, Zimi? Have you lost your senses? Should we send up a flare? No, no, no, sit down in that chair and eat your bloody breakfast. Then you can go out and get the mail. "This is the reason you work in a hospital," he concluded with a start; in abrupt revelation. "One of them, yeah. That, and the occasional chance to race a gondola down the hall." She fell back in the sofa with a merry grin, her face lighting up on the memory. "You should have seen it. We put the boat on a gurney and he lifted her inside, then climbed in to sit beside her. Dillon stepped up on the rear and started crooning O Solo Mio - off-key, at the top of his lungs - and we were off! We pushed them all over the hospital that day; pediatrics, geriatrics, the cancer ward. And everywhere we went people applauded. I've never seen so many smiles in that place, on so many faces, all at once. But Zander's? His was the biggest. He had this wild, delighted look that you just knew he must have had as a child." Her big, blue, satisfied eyes lifted to meet his, taking in his responsive grin. "I wish I'd known him then. When he was a little kid? Before his life got so…I don't know, complicated? He must have been adorable, don't you think? I bet he was a handful, though. I bet he got into everything." "Oh, he did," Maxim supplied ruefully, aware he was stepping out on a limb yet unable to offer her less. The sheer weight of her contribution to his understanding of Zander Smith made the bargain of the boxes seem grossly unfair; depressingly paltry and one-sided. The time she was taking here, the pain she was willing to retrace and revive, was a gift he couldn't begin to match with an equitable recompense. And so what little he had that it was possible for him to give, especially in this moment, especially to this person, he made the swift and conscious choice to give. He could see she'd caught the whiff of it by the tilt of her head and the sudden, sharp glint in her eye. She knew from the slip of this admission there was something there to share. He allowed himself a slight concessionary nod to confirm her suspicion, then committed himself to telling the tale. "There's an old family story about Zander. Of course, he was called Alexander then. This was when he lived in Florida with his parents and older brother. I think he was about ten," he conjectured, propping an arm to the sofa and resting his cheek on the back of its hand. "It was the week after Christmas, those free six days between Santa Claus and New Year's when all good children rip open their toys and seriously start to play. Alexander had received some books and clothes, a few games, a radio and a baseball mitt. But his favorite presents, those that genuinely caught both his eye and his interest, were the cap gun and the slingshot. As you can imagine, he spent most of his daylight hours that week outside taking aim. His brother, on the other hand, was a much more refined and intellectual boy - or so his parents claimed - and he was given among his gifts an erector set far beyond the skill of a child of his years, from which he was expected to build an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. A mat was placed in the corner of the floor just behind the Christmas tree where Peter could lay his pieces out; all the small silver girders, the arches, the bolts, the winsome flags and trim, and where one dutiful day after lunch he decided to make his start. "He'd just finished with his inventory, taking careful note of the pieces he had and checking these against the manufacturer's list, when a friend phoned up to talk to him. He set the big book of directions down, propped the empty box against a neighboring wall and vanished into the kitchen to take his call. This took roughly twenty minutes, perhaps thirty all told, before he finally hung up the phone. He was on his way back to the living room and the complication of his project when he jerked to a halt at the door, startled by what he saw. There, lying on his stomach on the floor in front of his precious erector set, was his brother Alexander. Alexander in his scuffed white sneakers, his frayed and filthy jeans, the slingshot dangling from a torn back pocket, the cap gun resting on the rug at his side, with his grubby little hands ranging all over Peter's pristine prize. "He was about to rush in, about to stride over and deliver what in those days they used to refer to as the mandatory brotherly beat-down, when his eye strayed to the progress Alexander had made in his absence. It shouldn't have been possible, and he was sure once he took a closer look he'd see where the mistakes were made, but from this distance it appeared his brother had the tower half-complete. Again, this was thoroughly impossible considering the instruction book was right where he'd left it, unopened and untouched - Alexander apparently contenting himself to work solely from the picture on the box. The level of his concentration was nothing less than prodigious, he was completely transfixed by the task-at-hand - the clutch of his tiny ten-year-old tongue at the corner of his mouth giving ample proof of this; it was a quirk his brother often evinced in moments of deep contemplation. And as hard as Alexander was fixed to the intricacies of that toy, Peter became fixed to him. "He spent an hour lurking in the entryway observing his brother's process, which was largely trial and error; seeing what fit and what didn't, but never forcing, never insisting, never demanding the pieces bend to his will. Where Peter would have fled for the directions at the first sign of trouble, Alexander simply traded one shiny part for another and patiently tried again. It was enough, it seemed, that someone had built the thing before - taken its picture, displayed it on the box - for him to know completion was possible; that he could get this tower done. And by-and-large he did. He had only his flags left on the floor when his father walked in. "Dr. Lewis flew into a rage, operating under the mistaken assumption his younger son was tampering with Peter's delicately-painstaking work. He hauled Alexander up by the arm and shook him for all he was worth. This was not his present, he had no right to play with it, damn it, where was his respect? Couldn't he see how much time and effort Peter had put into this? How could he even think about sabotaging that? He was a selfish boy, it was a selfish act, and since he didn't seem at all content to play with his own Christmas toys, he could just hand them over right now, just gather them up and give them back. Alexander reacted with a narrow glare and a stubborn thrust of his chin, refusing to explain or apologize or offer any hint he meant to give in. And when his father reached down for the slingshot peeking out at the hip of his jeans, he yanked his arm away, kicked the tower over and ran like the wind." "Omigosh! Poor Zander," cried Maxie, clearly aching to chase the boy down almost twenty years after the fact. "Poor Zander, indeed," he agreed, stopping the story there. That's all she needed to know, really. In truth, it was all he could bring himself to share. Best to forgo the sad closing act of a father finding his oldest son aghast in the shadows behind him. Best to forgo another sorry example of the great Dr. Lewis' penchant for jumping to precisely the wrong conclusion; of inevitably backing the wrong horse. He actually thought I was upset about the toy. "It's a small solace, I know," Maxim contended grimly. "But for all the pain little Alexander Lewis may have suffered that day, you can be sure his brother never looked at him in quite the same way again."       Requiem (29) An empty bag blown flush against the fence. A set of keys in the middle of an aisle. A flattened oil can, a lottery ticket, a paperback with no cover. There's a man in this picture. No one can find him. Marianna Picayune - April 11, 1998 Florida Teen Dies in Hunting Accident SNEADS - Nineteen year old Peter Lewis, vacationing in the panhandle with his family, was shot and killed today while hunting whitetail deer on the public lands of the Apalachee Wildlife Management Area. Initial reports indicate Lewis, his father and younger brother, experienced hunters all, had separated to search for a stand they'd built on the riverbank the year before when the shooting occurred. In a tragic twist, an anonymous source at the Florida Department of Fish and Game maintains the bullet that killed young Lewis came from his brother's gun. "The boy is understandably upset," states Lieutenant Leland Hicks of the Jackson County Sheriff's Department. "How- ever this shakes out, it ain't gonna be good." The brother's name has been withheld in light of his minor status. The investigation is ongoing. Mac fingered the clipping with dismay, then folded it up and put it back into the overnight envelope with the rest of the material that had arrived that day. He tossed the package to the kitchen table and buried his head in his hands. So much had gone unspoken; so many details unpursued. What the kid hadn't volunteered in the years since he'd hit town was nothing short of a nightmare. Reasons. There were always reasons. When had he stopped looking for those? When had he decided the only truths that mattered were the ones that led to a conviction? Zander had never been charged; the shooting was ruled accidental and the case closed in less than a week with sympathies extended all around. The boy had been cleared of culpability by every agency involved. Open and shut. Over and out. But Mac knew the back of that game. He was more than familiar with the anguished underpinning of municipal law enforcement's shuffle-through. Ten honest men in uniforms and suits can pat you on the back and send you on your way, stamp you with their incontestable imprint of a legally-certified innocence - it didn't make a difference, it wasn't done. The only finding that truly played, the only verdict that counted in the end, was the one you wound up pronouncing on yourself. And the verdict Zander had imposed on his act had been painfully, unshakably evident. In all the years following that awful April day - every hour, every minute, every hard and heartless second - he'd walked this earth a prisoner without a prison. A criminal pitched through the judicial cracks. A fiend. A felon. A fratricide who, by some yawningly egregious loophole in the law, had been released to the streets on his own recognizance and left to live out the rest of his days in bewilderment of his freedom. It explained so many things; answered questions he'd never even thought to ask. His fringe existence, his pessimistic world-view, his low opinion of law enforcement. The lack of ambition. His struggle to trust. The bitterness; the rancor; that harsh, hot, unremitting war he waged against every single figure of authority - against a society too blind to see him for the killer he knew he was. And as Mac stared into the darkness of the weathered palms of his hands, as his conscience called him to account for whatever unwitting complicity he owned in this, the vagabond jigsaw of Zander Smith's life began to slowly click into place… Not too bad. Just a light bruising at the side of the eye, the corner of the mouth. No blood, no cuts, no angry scar. His cursory gaze ran down the neck, the polka-dot pattern of the cotton gown, the crisp, white fold of the hospital sheet, until it came to rest where Zander's hands lay flat above the blanket. Those knuckles were clean; no evidence of swelling, not a single bandage in sight. Not much of a fight on either side it seemed, and a lot less trauma than would normally be required for an overnight admission; a lot less damage inflicted here than he deemed necessary for Nikolas' immediate arrest. The whole thing smacked of provocation - and he'd ask himself why if he thought it might matter, if he felt the answer would get him somewhere. It wouldn't. The kid's temper had a hair-trigger; he was always going off half-cocked. This was standard behavior where Smith was concerned. And now? Well, now it was a liability. He chuffed an audibly-aggravated breath and Zander stirred. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Mac seethed, attempting to keep his voice low and even. The kid's hand rose to his injured face, the plastic bracelet on its wrist rubbing against his chin. His features creased, his eyes opening to squint at this foreign object as he roused from sleep. "Same question every time. You know, I'd think I was in a hospital but nobody who walks through that door asks me how I am." "You've made a lot of people angry, Zander." "Yeah, and I'm guessing you're one of them?" "What do you think?" Mac spat back, gripping the rail at the side of the bed. "I'm going to get enough heat from the D.A.'s office when they find out I let Nikolas Cassadine be arrested for a crime I knew he didn't commit. His release on bail was a good thing, Zander. It lessened our liability. It was good for the case. Good for me. But you couldn't leave it alone, could you? No. You had to hound him from the minute he made bond. You had to follow him all over town, egg him on, beg for a fight. Well, you got what you wanted. His bail has been revoked. He's sitting in jail and I'm wondering what the hell I was thinking when I recruited you in the first place." "Hey, Cody McCall was murdered on his property. Nikolas found the body. He had means, motive and opportunity. He's a…whaddaya call it?" The kid made a show of searching for the word and snapped a finger when he found it. "He's a viable suspect. And it's not like he won't be cleared. So he spends a night or two in jail. I've been there. It's not that big a deal." "That's not your call to make!" Mac growled, his fists clenching white on the rail. "There's no room in this operation for your Cassadine vendetta. You're a loose cannon, Zander, and that's not going to work for me. It's time to pull the plug." "Hang on, hang on," the patient soothed, lifting his hands in the air between them, gesturing for calm. He pointed to the closet. "It's in my jacket. Exactly what you said you wanted. You've got him on tape." Unwilling to let the kid off the hook, or modify his glower, Mac kept a disgruntled eye on the bed as he backed toward the closet door. He turned the knob and thrust an arm inside, patting down the jacket for the lump of the recorder he withdrew from an interior fold. Zander sat back with a cocky grin and offered up an irritatingly complacent nod. "It's cued. Go ahead. Play it." His shoulders set on an intolerant grunt and he grudgingly closed his eyes, clearing his mind to listen as his thumb depressed the button and another conversation filled the room. "…What the hell just happened? I gave you the perfect opportunity to add assault to the murder charges and you just pat him on the head and send him home…" "…Did you not hear anything I said to you earlier? Huh? Rein it in, Zander. You stay away from Nikolas and this case or you're going to make it look exactly like what it is…the two of us conspiring against Nikolas to frame him for Cody McCall's murder…" "…All right, fine. You make the charges stick. I don't sign any papers until he's convicted…" Mac cut the recorder and cast a speculative glance toward the vindicated face of his wayward operative. He'd done it. They had Lansing on tape. "That's good. That's pretty good," he reluctantly admitted. "Thank you," Zander exclaimed, indignant it had taken this long for the man to concede he might know what he was doing. "But it's only a start," Mac asserted, moving back to the bed. "We're going to need some physical evidence. I want that forensic report. If I can prove Lansing transferred Nikolas' prints to the murder weapon…if I can show the court he's manufactured evidence…but he's got that file under lock-and-key. I need time, Zander. Time. And I'm not going to get it if you keep harassing Nikolas like this. I don't care what you think he deserves or how much you've decided he owes you - today is not the day to settle that score. Ric's got a point. At the rate you're going you'll end up blowing this operation right out of the water. The stunt you pulled this afternoon raised enough flags with Lucky to force Lansing to remove him from the case. Beck's sidled even closer. They're closing ranks. They're digging in. And all because you couldn't put your personal feelings to the side. You want payback? Then walk away. Walk away now, Zander, because I'm telling you we can't afford it. I can't afford it." He shook his head and turned his back, striding to the opposite wall. "I thought you could handle this. I thought you were smarter than this. Why? I don't know." A grim silence fell on that note of resignation, souring the air of the hospital room with the listless scent of defeat. Mac threw himself into a nearby chair and arched his neck to stare at the ceiling, lost of the move he'd make next. Finding no answers in the empty stretch of paint above his head, he closed his eyes and sighed. Contentious minutes unwound in the late-night hush of the hospital ward, so many, in fact, that he began to suspect the kid had fallen asleep. "Shakespeare. You familiar with him?" The sound of Zander's voice brought a dispassionate glance through the slit of a lid. He'd dropped back to the pillow, every muscle still save those he used to muse aloud; to relay this immaterial name that, for some unknown reason, had risen to the surface of his mind. "He used to read Shakespeare to us when we were little kids. Hamlet, Macbeth, a whole lot of Henrys and crusty old King Lear. He thought they'd make good bedtime stories. And I don't know, maybe they did - once you got past all the thees and thous, all the twisted tics of the whithers and the wherefores. When you're six, though, those stories? They don't pull you in. They don't even entertain you. All they really do is make you feel two clicks shy of stupid." His expression stiffened, his jaw growing sharper and more defined, and Mac found himself sitting up in the chair; angling himself to listen. "He liked being smarter. He always got a kick out of having something to explain. And Pete…well, you had to hand it to Pete. He'd ask all the right questions. He'd feed into it; just stroke that ego until Dad didn't care about the story anymore and he'd stop looking at us…at me…for a reaction we both knew he wasn't going to get." Zander's chin dropped to his chest and he brought his hands together; his fingers intertwining atop the blanket's fold. One thumb bent restively, slowly stroking the length of the other as his memory soldiered its way across that ancient childhood battlefield. "You hear enough of those stories, though, and a few things start to sink in. You come across a couple of truths you can actually relate to. Like the smartest people are the ones no one pays any attention to. They're always underestimated. Always pushed aside and ignored. Lear's fool had a lock on it all. Did you ever notice that? And Henry the Fifth? No one thought he'd win the war. Nice long speech but they still couldn't get past the fact that he was just this untested kid. And the French paid for that. Hamlet. Man, Hamlet knew everything. But who was going to believe him? Who gave a righteous rat's ass about the hard truth he had? Guy had to fake insanity to get anyone to listen. You gotta give it up to Shakespeare. He knew what he was talking about. People only see what they want to see, what fits in with their perception. It's the way of the world, Mac. It was then, and it is now." His hands pulled apart, the left one lifting to curl around his neck; to knead the soreness from its muscles as his weary head rolled. "I came to this town, what, a little over three years ago? And from the second that boot hit pavement everybody had me pegged. I was a thug. A hothead. A miscreant," he rendered, evoking Edward Quartermaine's favorite disparagement through the hitch of a tired grin. "And I get that. I understand why. I know it's who they see - who they'll always see every time they look at me. Ric's no different…Nikolas…Emily," he inserted somewhat awkwardly, as if startled to find her name added to the list, as if this inclusion were still up for debate. He seized a breath and blew it out sharply, thrusting that apprehension aside. "Now maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the reason you let me run with this is because that's how they look at me; because that's what they see. Who's going to believe Zander Smith, the resident screw-up of Port Charles, is part of a sting operation designed to take down the ADA and blow the lid off corruption in the PCPD? Nobody, right? Nobody's going to buy that; you knew it going in. You knew my reputation would work to your advantage. And it does. It gives us an edge. It gives this thing a shot. But it's only going to work if I fold to that impression, if I stick to the image they have of me. Do you really think Ric Lansing expects me to play this smart? Do you really think he won't get suspicious if I just fall in behind him and agree to shadow his every move? He wants Zander Smith, he's gonna get Zander Smith, and Zander Smith gets out of line." "Too easy," Mac sustained, rising from his silence to dispute that claim. "It's a convincing argument, I'll give you that - and you're right about your reputation. It's a plus, I won't deny it. But I'm not going to let you hide behind the convenient excuse of a history of bad behavior. You can't use prior bad acts to justify the choices you're making today; choices we both know have a lot more to do with persecuting Nikolas Cassadine than keeping your cover intact. I gave you an assignment, Zander, not a free pass to stick it to the guy who stole your girl." Zander's gaze narrowed, his features falling flat as his temper, always so close to the surface, tripped into gear. "Believe what you want," he replied defiantly. "All that really matters is whether or not I get the job done." He knocked his head in the direction of the recorder in Mac's hand. "You wouldn't have that confession if I hadn't put Lansing on the rack. Did I use Nikolas to do it? Yeah, you bet I did. And if you don't like it, if it's not clean enough for you, then maybe you're right. Maybe we should call it quits. Just shake hands and walk away. Because there aren't a lot of options out there, Mac, and there's no room to maneuver between what works and what's fair. If there were, you wouldn't need me." Mac looked down at the machine in his fist, this device that contained the first true proof of the ADA's abuse of office, and was forced to concede the kid had a point. There was no legitimate road to conviction in this. If there were he could have recruited an officer from the department or an agent from the FBI. But he'd set his sights on lawyers. Lawyers and cops. Cops who'd smell a fellow member of the brethren a hundred miles off. They wouldn't open the door to a man who couldn't flash a few crimes of his own, and they'd never drop their guard to a stranger who came surgically-attached to a principle or two, the odd ethical scruple, the whiff of a telltale addiction to the truth. There was no other way to bottom-line it. You had to play dirty to get clean. And as much as that annoyed him, as much as it rubbed against the grain, Zander Smith was presenting him with a golden opportunity he might never get again. "Okay, let's say you're right," he contended, ignoring the scorn that sparked in those eyes on this late-to-the-gate concession. "Let's say there's some logic behind whatever it is you're trying to do. It makes sense that you'd go after Nikolas to put the screws to Ric, but what about Emily?" "What about her?" Zander countered, his insolent glare slipping to the floor, his expression growing wary. "The way I hear it you told Emily you could get the murder charges dropped. You said you had the power to set Nikolas free if she'd just agree to play ball. That's a bold statement, Zander. That's a pretty outrageous claim, don't you think? Shocking, in fact. Because what you're really saying is that somehow, when no one was looking, the self-proclaimed screw-up of Port Charles managed to find his way into the catbird's seat. What's the strategy here? How do you rationalize that? I've got to tell you, Zander, no matter how hard I try or how much thought I give it, I still can't see how this works for me. Maybe you'd like to explain?" "It was just part of the game," the kid replied testily, refusing to meet his gaze. "Whose game, Zander? Yours or mine?" Mac boosted himself from the chair in a single, labored thrust and strode back to the bed. "You want to know what I think?" he advanced, halting just short of the rail. "I think you needed Emily to know you had some muscle now. I think you needed her to see that, for once, you had more clout than Nikolas. You were the guy with the juice. You were the man who could make it all go away, who could make everything better. The temptation to play the savior card was so damned overwhelming you just buckled to the urge and gave in. You weren't thinking about Ric or Nikolas, about me or the PCPD. You weren't even thinking about Emily when you come right down to it. This was about your pain, Zander. This was about what's broken inside you, what you're frantically trying to fix. And that's what worries me. Not your temper, not your recklessness, not the irresponsible path you invariably take to get from Point A to Point B. It's the pain, the injury that's ruined your life; this gaping wound that drives you. It's the pain you're so desperately afraid will never go away." "I can get past it." "The hell you can," Mac refuted softly, with more than a hint of compassion in his voice. "Nobody gets a grip on that kind of heartbreak - not you, not me, not Shakespeare, not any man who's ever been alive on the planet. The most you can do is find the means to manage it. And you're going to have to find the means. You understand that, right? Whether you continue to work this sting or not, you're going to have to locate a road that'll get you through. Do you think you can do that?" He saw Zander's jaw clench a little tighter, the shimmer of an unwanted tear rise to glisten in his eye, and politely turned away. "In the meantime let's lay off Nikolas, okay?" "Nikolas has nothing to worry about. Alexis has his back." "I heard she came to see you," Mac allowed, grateful for the change in subject. "I'm guessing she wanted you to reconsider filing the assault charge?" "That, and to tell me she couldn't represent me anymore. It's a conflict of interest. She's got to stick with her family on this." "That had to be hard to hear." "No," Zander insisted with the barely perceptible twitch of a shrug. "I get it. It's cool." "And what about your family, Zander?" The kid let out a dispirited laugh, tossed an errant lock of hair back and finally looked him in the eye. "If you'd been here a couple of hours ago you could have watched her walk out the door." "Hey, Dad." "Hey," he echoed in surprise, startled into the present moment by his daughter's sudden skip across the kitchen floor. He lifted his head from his palms, blinking in a fierce attempt to adjust to the late afternoon light. "What'cha doin'?" she asked from the sink, turning on the faucet to rinse her glass. "Just going over some files. Maxie, can I ask you a question?" "Sure," she said, rounding to face him, relaxing back against the counter's trim. "What do you know about Zander's family? Did he ever mention them?" Her eyes widened at the unexpected subject of the question, and not in an unpleasant way. "Well, you know his dad was Dr. Lewis." She waited for his nod. "I don't know anything about his mom, but he had an older brother. Peter. Zander said he died. He said his dad was pretty upset about that, I think because Peter was his favorite. I only heard them talk about him once, in the basement of the hotel, and it seemed like a really sore subject. That's all I know, sorry. Max might have a better idea. I could ask him if you want." "No. No, that's okay." The last thing she needed, or he planned to provide, was another reason to go driving up to that cottage. "You in for dinner tonight?" "I'm making dinner tonight," she trumpeted. "Oh! Then I better get out of your way." He drew the bulky overnight envelope from the center of the table and pushed back his chair. "I don't suppose you want to give your poor old dad a clue about what's on the menu?" "Are you suggesting we might need a back-up plan?" she retorted with a glint in her eye. "Not in a million years, sweetheart. Not in a million years," he vowed, lumbering out of the kitchen, shuffling down the hall and trudging up the stairs to make the now requisite check on his stash of antacid.   Requiem (30) I feel the dead in the cold of violets And that great vagueness in the moon… For days they'd kept it lying on a table, long days they'd kept it lying out in plain sight - this prize he'd made away with, this reward he'd won, this suspicion confirmed in a cabin, on a mountain, by a lake - as if somehow simply retrieving it, simply possessing it were the aim. No need to go further than gain his nine-tenths of the law. No need to make more of this than what it was. It's not like he was Moses stumbling down from on high with his stony notation of God's talking points. No. No worlds would be changed, no societies transformed by what he'd carried to the car and driven off that mountain. It held no consequence to anyone but him. And so it was with a blithe, if somewhat enforced disregard that he set it to the table when they walked through the door - and it hadn't moved since. Life had gone on all around it, as if proving that it could. And if eyes were averted, a wider berth borne, a concertedly deliberate inattention paid to what lay on that table, it was nothing either one of them would talk about. Djinn, he was sure, had been fighting off the urge to toss it every evening to the hearth. It was nothing she'd said, nothing she'd done, but he knew her love for him well enough to know the pleasure she'd take in watching Dr. Lewis' acidic little legacy curl up in flames. For his part, Maxim had spent those same quiet evenings hunting down the reasons she should not. And they weren't all that easy to find. He once thought bravery amounted to little more than an active leap of faith. It was the jump you took fired in the belief things would work out well, or if not well then at least for the best. It was an affirmational step forward; evidence of the confidence you had that Good could somehow be wrested from Evil; from suffering, from pain, from fear. Bravery, as he'd once imagined it, was the consummate act of optimism. But this wasn't true. It wasn't true at all. Bravery, in the final analysis, genuine bravery, was nothing short of the purposeful stride toward impending doom - the stalk, the stumble, the sink to a crawl toward whatever it was that held the power to kill you; to destroy you so completely you might never find the means to recover yourself again. And you knew this from the start; you were stripped of hope going in. Bravery didn't require faith, just a coldly-relentless determination. Bravery wasn't a stalwart step to a distant, rosier future; it was a buckle to base reality. What he'd learned over the years, and this last year more than most, was that bravery didn't come with a smile; it came with a grimace. It's bravery he ponders as he sits in the chair and stares at that prize on the table. It's bravery he needs, bravery he thinks about, bravery he tries to locate - not just in himself but in the character of those around him. He requires proof of its existence. He needs to know, today, if it is anywhere to be found. And as he sifts through all the faces in the mental crowd of the people he knows, one invariably emerges - steps up, steps out, stands apart with astonishing frequency in his mind. Throughout his inward search for a single, evident example of this grimly heroic trait, almost every time he closes his eyes, almost every time he looks, he finds himself confronted by the countenance of his innocuous little storyteller. Week after week she comes to him, day after day she walks through the door with her clutch of meaningful memories; these tales she tells that lead her to no finer place, no better bend, but march them both straight to a grave. Why relive this? Why recount it down detail by painful detail knowing, as they both did, where the road would end? Well, he had his excuses; this insufferable ignorance; his insatiable hunger for the hows and whys. Her motivation, though, seemed balanced solely on the merit of a human life. Dead or alive, right or wrong; none of it made a difference to her. All that mattered was the essential recognition she felt this man, this Zander Smith was due - and if marking his value, insisting on his life's inherent and intrinsic significance, brought on a tear or two? Made her hurt an hour longer? Cost her a few nights' sleep in the end? It seemed a price she was willing to pay, a penalty she was willing to endure. How many people had clucked their tongues at her? Derided her? Berated her? Cast a condescending eye to disparage her and shrink her mission to little more than a worthless act of sentimental indulgence? But on she walked, on she went, her heart torn open and bleeding out its need to find a way to honor her friend. My brother. Her friend. It was Max who pulled him from his seat, as surely as if she'd extended a hand to lift him to this purpose. It was Max who had him striding to the table, snatching up the prize, skipping up the steps and walking out the door. It was Max who drove him into the forest; these woods, more woods, the sylvan hell he'd never truly left; and it was Max who had him hunting down a glen, a glade, some grass; one old and lonely tree. It's here she leaves him; he can feel the force of her encouragement retreat as he stakes his palm to the bark and plants a knee to the earth. It's here he feels the strength of her diminish, the sway of her influence draw back and decrease, even as he sinks to sit at the root, in the hard, sun-dappled dirt. Bravery, after all, was a solitary business. Bravery, as she must have known all along, was something you summoned alone. Yet it is from the very residue of her lingering resolve, the echo of her everyday courage, that he finds the steel to go through with this - to take hold of the testament lying in his lap, throw back its leather cover, launch past its gilded flyleaf, and fix his eye in firm determination to its first, portentous page… Alexander. It would have to be you. No one else would think to look for this. No one else is left who would remember my habit of keeping a journal. Not that I imagine you give a damn about anything I've written here, why should you? By the same token, I wonder why I bother. We wrangle ourselves into nothingness, you and I. And for awhile that might have been best. No longer, though. I can no longer afford the comfort of this distance. There comes a time in a man's life when his thoughts turn to his legacy; when his conscience calls and his integrity demands he set the record right. That time has come for me. What you hold in your hands is your father's final, feeble attempt to wrestle his truth to the ground, to set it down in a relatively comprehensible fashion once and for all before he dies. As hard as it may be to believe, Death is closer to me now than I think it has ever been. The huff of a breath at my shoulder, a shadow dancing in the corner of my eye, the charge of a presence biding close; hiding among my ruins. I don't expect you to understand, just as I can't expect you to listen. I've earned every ounce of your distrust. But perhaps after I'm gone, as the years unfold to settle over all the pain we've inflicted - I to you, you to me, the both of us to your mother - you'll find some remnant of a childhood affection, some fragment of an ancient fatherly regard, that will allow you at least, and at last, to read. It is in this hope that I write to a son I abandoned, and who in turn abandoned me. Don't waste your time searching for the other journals; I destroyed them all last night. She'd have found them eventually, and it's one thing to have her after me…Alexander, I can't stress strongly enough how important it is for you to keep this safe. If you never read another word, if you never turn another page, hide it or burn it. Those are your choices. It's the only record left… "You called?" Luke didn't bother to look up from the ledger or the timesheets fanned out across his desk. He had an hour and a half left on the mat; ninety nasty minutes remaining to hunt down this forty-three dollar payroll discrepancy before his money-grubbing, boy band lovin', bastard of a barkeep threatened to go litigious on his ass. Forty-three smackers, forty-three beans, forty-three fish-eyed, green-gilled Georges he could have plucked from his pocket at any old time to permanently shut that piker's yap - but there was no way in hell he planned on giving this gritless, shiftless, glorified glass-hopper the smug satisfaction of a payoff in cash. Damn Quart-a-Morgan to a bulletless heaven, or another round with Carly - whichever hurt worse. Things went so much smoother in the way back when, with his blank stare fixed to the books. "Uh, Dad? You wanted to see me?" "Park your puckered blue buns, policeboy, and give me half a minute. I got a life goin' on here, in case you haven't noticed." The kid took the hit and the hint and snagged himself a chair, confident in the knowledge he wouldn't have all that long to wait. Paperwork burned down his father's fuse like lightening down a wire - faster than just about anything else he managed to stick his concentration to. Smoke to smolder, crackle to a burn; it sucked the oxygen of his tolerance away. "Whatcha workin' on?" asked Lucky, intentionally coaxing the spark to flame. "Ten more minutes and it's gonna be his final paycheck, you can bank on that." Luke swiped a thumb across his tongue and angrily flicked through the ledger, his unoccupied hand reaching for the open fifth of whiskey he tilted in the direction of his son. "Care to get a start on the retirement party?" "No thanks. You know, I can come back later." "Is that a promise or another one of those nick o'time escape lines you throw down to slide out the door?" The chair creaked as he leaned from the desk to hunt a stray glass from a cluttered shelf. He found one, blew out the residual dust, set it in front of him and poured. "We're father and son, son. Call me a sentimental old fool, but I'd prefer not to think of you as just another razor-cut spud with a badge. Talk to me, boy. Tell me who's who and what's what." Lucky eyed him suspiciously, his antenna going up. "You want something." "See? There ya go," Luke conceded genially, his grin breaking as he lifted his glass and tipped the whiskey in. He rinsed his teeth noisily, then sent the liquor down in a hearty gulp. "How many fat-fried Fannys on the force are gonna pick up on that? You still got it, don'tcha? That Spencer gene's just whackin' its cup across the bars of the law enforcement cage. It don't die easy, cowboy. Don't think it ever will." "Something big," Lucky revised, sitting a little tighter in the chair. "Aw, what's big? On the Richter scale of our family? It don't even qualify as a blip." He swirled the drink in his hand and leaned back, feigning an interest in its circular spin. His voice grew mildly sly. "You've taken the ferry to the Island of the Damned. What's on the activity list these days? Anything I should know about?" "You mean besides the brand-new Cassadine looking into Stefan's death?" "Yeah, besides him. Any increase in security? Has Nikkie pumped up the primate population? Any stray Chechen apes lumber in fresh from the provinces?" "There. See? Now that's what I don't get," his son complained, shaking his head in mystification. "I tell you there's a Cassadine - a Cassadine, Dad - who's come to town to investigate Stefan's death and you don't even bat an eye. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you the one left standing on the bluff the day he died? Wasn't there a struggle? A knife? A fall? Couldn't you be considered at least partially responsible for what ended up happening to him?" "Partially?" his father balked, quick to take offense. "Okay, totally," Lucky granted in earnest, nodding as it proved his point. "What if this guy comes after you? Are you ready? Do you have a plan? 'Cuz I don't see it, Dad. Looks to me like you don't care at all." Luke's gaze flattened to a stony glare and an ancient fury flickered, sharpening all the lines the last twenty years had etched into his face. "Bring it on," he charged restively. "If that bloodless wonder wants a reckoning you can tell him to bring it on. Until then, it's business as usual." He caught his son's crestfallen look, the clear disappointment in that baffled frown, and felt himself judged too suddenly old; too quickly obsolete in those eyes. Lucky's next-generation naiveté stung like acid to the crusted twist of every scar he owned. "I've bagged my share of Cassadines," he snarled, pitching the last of the whiskey back and reaching out to pour more. "I got the father, his brothers, his sons. The rest are yours." "And Helena?" "We dance." "You dance?" "We dance," he confirmed, lifting to tip his tumbler in salute. "Long as she's got two legs beneath her, I'm her cha-cha of choice. With your mother out of the picture, well…" A grinding ache settled in his chest with the ease of an old acquaintance. "Let's just say there's not much more she can take and leave it at that." He dipped his chin, brought the glass to his lips and knocked the drink down fast. A quiet minute passed; a handful of meaningless seconds they shared before his son grew restless. "So why all the questions about Spoon Island's security? You planning a heist?" "Less heist, more hoist," Luke maintained, rousing from his silence with the twist of a grin. "Couple of weeks ago you came to see me about Detective Doughnut. Remember that?" "Duncan, sure. You said it wasn't your problem." "Yeah, well little Nikkie Nitwit has made it my problem. I gotta tell ya, they watered down the old genetic stew when it came to that kid. Cut the pure product with a solid ounce of dense. How can he blow an exhumation hearing? What's the upside of stringing this along?" "So you have been keeping an eye on things." "Half an eye. A quarter of an eye. There's so little to keep an eye on here Magoo could take the case and scrap the glasses." "Magoo?" "Doesn't matter," his father sustained, skipping past the reference. "What matters is the decaying disposition of the corpus delicti. He's Renfield to Vlad's Drac as we speak, just ridin' that Cassadine's coffin. Anyone comes to take a peek at Uncle Stiff and, bang, Detective Decomp's right there to say hi. Time to put him in the Cadaver Relocation Program. Boy's gonna need a heave and a ho and I need to know if I can count on you." "Stefan's buried on the island?" Lucky squawked, his logic scrambled, his head in a spin. "This ain't Final Jeopardy, cowboy. Try to keep up. We're at the mercy of the moon now, and she ain't gonna wait for you to put all your dainty little ducks in a row. Here." Luke dug through a stack of papers on the left side of the desk, snatched out the tidal chart and tossed it into his son's empty lap. "Remember when young Prince Petulant sent his grandma flying over the bluff? They couldn't find a body and blew it off to the strength of the current that night? Well, Helena may not have surfed that wave but Duncan's gonna ride it all the way to China. What I need from you is a simple assist to get him from coffin to cliff. Are you in?" "I…you want…wait a minute," Lucky stammered, trying to wrap his mind around the deal. "It's not like I'm asking you to do the heavy lifting, son," he reproved, injured by his firstborn's failure to leap faithfully onto the bandwagon. "He's rolled in a carpet. I got a shoulder for that. But if a shoe drops off? Or a foot? Or a finger? I'm gonna need you at my back. Sure, the last time I saw him he was in one big, kinda ripe old piece. Now? Who knows?" Lucky recoiled at the image, his features screwed in disgust. "I don't know, Dad. I'm going to have to think about this." "Think fast," his father ordered. "The lunar goddess waits on no man. Drop a dime and I'll cough up a time. Oh, and before you go," he added, rising from his chair. A gnarled fist thrust into his pocket to pull out a wad of cash. He counted off the bills he needed and stuffed the rest of it back. "Give this to Claude on your way out." Lucky pushed himself up from his seat and accepted the money dubiously. "Do I want to know what it's for?" "Nah," Luke dismissed, rifling through his coat for a fresh cigar he lifted to run in a theatrical sweep beneath his blissfully sniffing nose. "Just tell him you found it on the floor." Poetic Attributions (The Introductory Lines): Chapter 28 - from the poem Odysseus's Secret, by the poet Stephen Dunn. Chapter 29 - from the poem Still Lives in Detroit: #2, Parking Lot, Ford Sterling Plant, by the poet Jim Daniels. Chapter 30 - from the poem I Feel the Dead, by the poet Sophia De Mello Breyner.