City on Fire (111 page)

“I’m not long for this world anyway, darlin’. Cancer of the nut.” He gives the front of his gown a gratuitous squeeze, but winces. “Got the old snip snip tomorrow. Maybe they’ll do the left one, too, just in case. But you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you? ’Cause I’d have to kill you. Or leave town, one or the other.”

She studies him.

“Then again, what do you care, right? That ain’t your jurisdiction, just like this ain’t mine. I’d better get back downstairs like a good boy and gargle my barium.”

“No,” she’s surprised to hear herself say. “You stay. You need to stay.” Here in 817B, this flaw of light above a dark city, she feels like a mollusk unhoused from its shell. A quivering gray life. One more meeting of the eyes or collision of skin and skin and this rude and twinkling man will know all the things she goes around trying to hide from the world, and from herself. How she felt when she’d stuck the butcher knife in her first husband that night he’d beaten her so bad. How she felt every day after that, knowing what she’d done. Wake up, a voice says somewhere, quite clearly. And she is trying. She is trying. “We need to see if there’s any damage. Someone’s got to work the pump while I go get the doctor.”

Of course, Bullet could be the one to go, but she shows him proper technique on the bag, where to put your thumbs so you won’t strain the muscles of your wrist. Only from the doorway does she allow herself a full glance at this big octoroonish biker-type with his tattoos and his long chain of an earring. She wants to warn him to remove it before he submits to any scans, but the words are stolen from her by the metamorphosis she’s witnessing. With what impossible daintiness does he check again the seal on the mouthpiece. With what seriousness does he watch the wall clock’s lagging second hand, waiting for the next squeeze.

MIDTOWN—NOT ACTUALLY 9:27

“TWENTY MINUTES, THEN I’M CALLING IT,” the inspector says, shutting Charlie’s door behind him, but it’s hard to know anymore what “twenty minutes” means. The clock on the bank across the way is stuck at 9:27. Inside the car, whose radio has once again died, the siren spins mutely. Bands of blue sweep uncollected garbage on the curb. Otherwise the dark is undisturbed until, a few feet shy of the lobby, Charlie sees a red flash above. And there they are, three football fields up: those birds last glimpsed from the townhouse miles away. It’s like time itself has been suspended. And this isn’t how a mystery is supposed to end, he thinks. But what if he’s right? How many tons of rock crashing down, leaving a stadium-sized crater in Midtown? How many people in surrounding apartment buildings taken out by the rubble, or the flame? He can almost hear the air ringing up there in alarm. At ground level, the inspector’s having no luck with the building’s revolving door, which any idiot could have told him would be locked. He flips open his badge, raps metal against glass. His flashlight barely penetrates. “Police!” Charlie fidgets, glancing around, another slurp of inhaler. These blocks are creepily quiet, without buses or motorized loading gates or a single plane overhead. Then there are feet, hard soles on a hard floor, and the answering eye of a light inside.

The light-bearer, when the door opens, is a fat guy with a crappy moustache. Lint on his velvet monkey-suit. These uniforms used to seem so sharp back when Charlie would come here for his annual tooth-cleaning. He can remember standing by the elevator bank, trying not to panic, Mom squeezing his arm. It’s Pulaski squeezing now, muttering for Charlie to keep his mouth shut. Then something cracks as the little inspector draws himself up to his full height. “We need to inspect the premises.” No way they’d get away with this by daylight.

“What are you, reporters?”

“NYPD.”

The inspector pulls the badge back as a hand reaches for it.

“So what’s with the camera?” Indicating Charlie.

“My partner here is undercover—”

“We need to see the fortieth floor,” Charlie says. It takes nerve, in the face of Pulaski’s dirty look, but he’s recalled something else: the brass directory board, and, a few spots above Dr. DeMoto, The Hamilton-Sweeney Company, Suite 4000. It’s as if, he thinks, nothing’s ever really gone—as if the shards just hide somewhere inside, waiting to be put back together. He might find this comforting, given time to linger on it, but the fat attendant’s still blocking the way.

“I’ll have to go get the building manager.”

“I’m afraid there’s no time for that,” Pulaski says.

“Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to show me a warrant.”

The deal with this city’s functionaries is, you want to keep them from establishing position, because once they do, they’ll defend it to the death. But the inspector is unsnapping something up near his armpit, flashing his beam there. His words stay courtly, but their timbre is tougher. “It seems to me there are extenuating circumstances. Our typewriters downtown are all electric. Not to speak of how hard it is to reach a judge at, what is it now, quarter to twelve? So let’s say in the spirit of civic cooperation you show me and my partner the fastest way up to the top floor. No, I mean physically guide us. And don’t fret about your boss. When the time comes, I’ll tell him what a stand-up guy you were.”

A skyscraper turns out to be a lot like a person. There is the outward face, with all its impressive ornament, and then suddenly vulnerability: in this case, a hinged maple panel behind the security desk. It swings open at the attendant’s touch. The two flashlights loop and dart over patches of unpainted concrete, ashtrays and scattered playing cards, a bucket of custodial orts. A stairwell leads up into a dark that might be infinite. Charlie’s lungs tighten again. “You mean your elevator’s not hooked to a generator?”

“Pal, if there was a generator, would I be dicking around with a flashlight?”

It’s a solid point, but then how to explain that warning light up top? That is, unless it really is the signal Charlie’s been waiting for all these months, summoning him in to begin his climb.

BETH ISRAEL HOSPITAL—CA. 11:50 P.M.

BUT MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE GONE TO ST. VINCENT’S. The man in the cart is so much heavier than she’s assumed, and the crosstown blocks so much longer. They’ve just come through one of the city’s two Lighting Districts; she’d thought it wonderful, once, that there should be enough of anything to constitute a district (enough flowers, enough fashion, enough diamonds). But tonight there was no light in the Lighting District, only dark, vaguely hominid shapes moving singly or in pairs, and then, drawing close behind, sirens, smashing, the odor of flame. The faster she and Mercer pushed, the more the sidewalk jolted the cart, until it almost seemed the body inside was stirring. There have been periodic pauses, too, to bicker. But now there is relief, trees, rustlings of leaf no longer quite invisible in their boxes—and above, the massive hospital, windows stacked and fully lit, the only real light in sight.

What she wasn’t expecting was the line. It seems to stretch all the way back to Second Avenue. Men in uniform flank the doors by the ambulance bay. Paramedics, with clipboards. “I’ll be back,” she tells Mercer, and goes to talk to them. She passes wheelchairs, splinted arms, clutched stomachs, a person leaning over to retch into a bush, another with what appears to be a club-wound to the head. The medics, by contrast, are crisp and untroubled. They could be twins. Where were you an hour ago, she wants to ask. And now, with all these people … ? She figures the ER must be understaffed—a supposition the medics confirm. Every exam room, every stretcher, every seat is full. Unless you’ve got something high up on the triage list, you could be out here till dawn. “It’s not me,” she says. “It’s one of the guys with me. A car hit him. He’s been unconscious since.”

“You saw the collision?”

How to put this. “In a manner of speaking.”

“He bleeding?”

“Not that I can tell, but—”

“As long as he’s breathing, he’s doing better than anyone inside. We’ll send someone over to do an assessment, but most likely he’s going to have to wait.”

Walking back toward the corner, she imagines a campaign to swap out the city’s entire disaster-response apparatus with conscripts, like jury duty. Well, not the fire department. Show her a firefighter, and Jenny will reach for her heart and sing you “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But just as she’s trying to explain to Mercer why they’ll have to stick around for a while, there’s a small electronic beep.

“What’s that?” Beeep. “It’s your watch, isn’t it?”

An indictment. She hands it to him. Her tongue feels stuck to the roof of her mouth. “It’s the little button on the side. But midnight doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Mercer. Don’t you think we’d hear it if a bomb went off in the East Village?”

“I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what we would have heard.”

“The timing was a guess, remember, and someone could have gotten there first to stop it. Didn’t you say—”

“But not the target, that wasn’t a guess! We’ve known all along William was in danger. Yet here we are, with this other guy.”

“Wait, listen—are those sirens?” Again, if she hadn’t known better, she would have said the figure in the cart had stirred. “No, sorry. Same one. As long as there’s not some big exodus of ambulances from the line up there …”

Another siren keens. Another pause. Five seconds. Ten.

“This has been a farce,” he says, “this whole expedition. I have to go.”

“Mercer, we can’t just leave this guy to suffer. At least not until a doctor comes.”

“Don’t you dare act like I’m indifferent to suffering. I’m telling you, I have to find William. I have to know, one way or another.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” she says, already hearing he’s right. How selfish it sounds. “But I guess that’s not your problem. I know you need to find out. Just be careful, okay?”

Mercer is almost to the corner when she notices that the white guy in the shopping cart is sitting up, watching him go. “You’re awake!” But by the time she looks back to Mercer for a reaction, he has passed beyond the light.

“Who are you?” the guy asks. “Do I know you?”

“Damn … You can talk, too! You’re at the hospital.” Maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t seem to remember why. “There was an accident, a car. Look. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I can’t see for shit. What did you do to the light?”

“It’s a blackout. Wait, stop moving, you’re not supposed to move.” But he is already standing, so tall in the cart that others on line turn and gape. He looks nothing so much as surprised at their sheer number—the way a ghost might on discovering there’s an afterlife after all. Which in a sense is the case, Jenny just has time to think, before he leaps to the ground, falls. Rises and begins to lope off down the street. He is graceful in the air, but less so on the hoof. When he collapses again, a half-block south, she is only a few yards behind. Deeper back, people watch, mystified. “Hey. Hey.” She takes his arm. “Are you familiar with the phrase ‘the triumph of hope over experience’? Somebody practically drove over you. We’ve got to get you checked out.”

In the light of a passing car, he looks younger than before, his mouth as sensitive as a child’s. It pinches in concentration. She can hear the machinery of his brain ratcheting into gear, until that turns into someone trying to start another car stalled down the block. Ayuh yuh yuh. “I’ve got to get home.” He has a little twang, like Mercer. Git. If I can’t physically compel his return to the ER, she thinks, I can at least out-talk him, but then a further voice speaks up again—or not actually a voice so much as an idea, implanted in her head. How does she know it isn’t her own? Because it is to Let it drop, and Jenny’s never done any such thing in her life.

“Well, how is that going to happen? You can’t walk unsupported, obviously.”

He tries to demonstrate he’ll do just that, but his knee crumples again after a few more yards. “Damn it!”

She waits for him to ask for help, lets him hang there a minute. Does she have to do everything herself? Then she sighs and pulls his arm over her shoulder. It will be much later in the night, or at least seem to be, before it even occurs to her to ask where they’re going.

UPPER WEST SIDE—EARLIER

DEEP DOWN, WILLIAM HAMILTON-SWEENEY has always believed that were he ever to give his father an honest accounting of his feelings, the world would spontaneously combust. What happens instead is precisely nothing. The library’s walls do not collapse, nor is there even any change in Daddy’s audible breathing. He presses on. “It’s true. I’m sure Regan’s come up with a million reasons why I stayed away, she’s the champion rationalizer, but the reality, Daddy, is just that simple: you’re an asshole. And if I’ve got to sit up here—which I only agreed to do as a favor to her, by the way—I don’t want there to be any temptation for either of us to pretend not to know what’s in the other’s heart.”

A dozen little beads of flame glimmer behind the divan where his father perches. Unless the word is settee. The domestics seem to have jumped ship before Amory did (assuming he didn’t have them whacked as well), so Daddy must have been the one to settle himself like this, propping expensive cushions under his elbows in the manner of some Old Testament judge. No candles having been lit on his side of the room, though, his grimace at William’s impropriety remains barely perceptible. “Although that would be the Hamilton-Sweeney way, wouldn’t it? I should have known you’d just sit here and not say a word.”

And in a sense, silent disapproval is worse than any explosion. William moves toward the chest of drawers on the north wall, ostensibly looking for more light, but actually awaiting another infusion of courage, or candor, or whatever this is. It’s as if a great inscrutable force, the higher power to whom he’s been addressing himself these last few weeks, has steered him back to where everything started, and now he badly needs it to tell him what to do. He cocks his head, tries to lose himself in the spines of books. Amends, is the word Bill W. uses in the Big Book. Maybe he’s supposed to use his own silence to wrench from Daddy the amends he wants, but all he gets is Daddy’s cleared throat, this cartilaginous tic that was always annoying as hell.