Gideon's Sword (32 page)

Gideon brought the boat in, angling it through the reefs, moving slowly. A moment later he cut the engine, hopped out of the boat into the chop, and, wading, pulled it up on the beach.

He checked his watch: one o’clock.

61

G
ideon walked up the beach, climbed over the low seawall, slipped into the cover of some trees, then paused to take stock. To his left lay an open field, beyond which stood the ruined power plant. On the right, set back from the shore, stood a neighborhood of modest bungalow houses, complete with streets, streetlights, driveways, and sidewalks. It looked like an ordinary, old-fashioned suburban neighborhood—except that everything lay in ruins, the houses crumbling, window frames broken and black, roofs caved, vines smothering the streetlights and choking the houses, the street itself a web of cracks through which sprouted weeds and stunted trees.

He waited, senses on high alert. In the distance, toward the end of the island, he could hear the faint rumble of the backhoe digging a mass grave. But this middle section of the island seemed deserted. He took from his pocket a Google Earth image he’d printed and spent a few minutes reconnoitering. Then he began moving cautiously along an overgrown street and across the broad field toward the ruined complex of buildings he’d noticed earlier. A carved limestone block set into the brick façade of the first building announced its purpose and the date:
DYNAMO ROOM 1912
. Through the shattered windows, he could see massive pieces of equipment: iron flywheels, rotting belts, broken gauges, steam pipes, and a giant, riveted iron furnace and boiler wrapped in vines that grew up and out of a roof open to the sky.

Gideon walked northward toward the burial grounds, keeping hidden in the brush and trees along the side of the road, moving slowly, checking the Google Earth image and taking notes, committing everything to memory. It was a postapocalyptic landscape, an entire community left to rot. Nothing had been boarded up or secured; it was as if, perhaps half a century ago, everyone had just walked away and never returned. There were parked cars sunken in weeds, a general store with moldering goods still on the shelves, houses with sagging door frames, inside of which he glimpsed decaying furniture, peeling wallpaper, an umbrella sitting in a stand by the door, an old hat on a table. He passed a ruined chapel, gaping and open to the elements; a butcher shop with rusting knives still hanging on a pegboard—and lying in the central square, an ancient, headless Barbie doll. At the edge of town he came to an old baseball field, bleachers draped in vines and the field a small forest.

Gideon skirted the ruins of a tubercularium and rows of dormitories for a juvenile workhouse, with the motto
GOD AND WORK
carved into the decaying lintels. There were several pits in the ground, old basements and foundations, some exposed, others covered with rotting flooring. Everything was on the verge of collapse. Consulting the Google Earth image again, he located, beyond the dormitories, a huge, circular open area covered with concrete with several decaying metal trapdoors—the subterranean remains of the old Nike missile base.

As he neared the northern end, buildings gave way to large overgrown fields, dotted with cement markers, numbered and whitewashed. The sounds of the backhoe grew louder. He crept into some dense woods bordering the fields and continued moving north. Within a quarter mile, the woods petered out into yet another overgrown field, and here Gideon dropped and crept forward on his belly, peering through binoculars at the scene of activity, about a hundred yards away, in a freshly dug area of the field.

Rows of coffins had been lined up on the edge of a long trench, and the convicts were busily handing them down to others within the trench, who were stacking them in rows, six deep and four across. He watched as they laid down two courses of coffins, forty-eight in all. Each coffin had a number scrawled on the side and lid in a black felt-tip marker.

A trusty with a clipboard kept track of the work, backed up by several guards armed with pistols and shotguns. When the coffins had all been lowered, the men climbed out, laid pieces of corrugated tin over the top layers, and stood by as the backhoe fired up, ejected a dirty cloud of diesel smoke into the air, and pushed a wall of earth onto the tin, covering up the fresh coffins with dirt to ground level. The wind was blowing hard, tossing the treetops, and Gideon could smell, from time to time, the scent of fresh earth, mingled with an acrid odor of formalin and decay. At the far end of a field stood an open-sided brick shed, in which sat a second backhoe.

Gideon circled the field, seeking a better vantage point, trying to locate where the small boxes containing limbs might be buried. He found what he was looking for in a second, parallel trench, farther down the field. It had been partially covered with dirt, keeping the most recent boxes exposed and ready for more stacking; his binoculars revealed that these boxes were small—the right size for body parts—and also marked by scrawled numbers. A piece of corrugated tin had been laid over the exposed rows of mini coffins, weighed down with dirt at one end, evidently protecting them from the elements until the stacks could be finished.

He would need a better inspection. The trench was deep, and from his vantage point he couldn’t see to its bottom. He’d have to get close enough to peer in—very close. And there was no way to do that without being caught.

He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and casually strolled into the open field.

62

T
hey spotted him immediately.

“Hey! Hey, you!” Two of the guards drew their guns and came running toward him across the field. Gideon kept walking, moving quickly to the trench before they could stop him. By the time they reached him he was standing at the edge, looking down.

“Hands in sight! Keep your hands in sight!”

Gideon looked up, as if surprised. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t move! Hands in sight!” A guard dropped to one knee and covered him with his service pistol while the other approached cautiously, shotgun at the ready. “Hands behind your head.”

Gideon obeyed.

One was white, the other black, and both were pumped up and fit. They wore blue shirts with
NYC CORRECTION SSD
printed on the backs in white letters. One of the guards patted him down and emptied his pockets, removing the Google Earth map, the notebook, his wallet, and a piece of parchment Gideon had prepared earlier.

“He’s clean.”

The other officer rose, holstered his Glock. “Let’s see some ID.”

Gideon, his hands still raised, spoke in a voice high with panic. “I didn’t do anything, I swear! I’m just a tourist!”

“ID,” the guard repeated. “Now.”

“It’s in my wallet.”

The man handed the wallet back and Gideon fumbled out his New Mexico driver’s license, handed it over. “Am I not supposed to be here or something?”

They examined the license, passing it back and forth. “You didn’t see the signs?”

“What signs?” Gideon stammered. “I’m just a tourist from—”

“Cut the crap.” The black officer, who was evidently in charge, frowned. “The signs on the shore. Everywhere. You telling me you didn’t see them?”

The officer’s radio burst into life, a voice demanding to know what was going on with the intruders. The guard unholstered his walkie-talkie. “Just some guy from New Mexico. We got it under control.”

He holstered the radio and stared at Gideon with narrowed eyes. “Care to tell us how you got here and just what the hell you’re doing?”

“Well, I was…just out in the boat fishing, decided to explore the island.”

“Oh, yeah? You blind or something?”

“No, I really didn’t notice any sign…I was worried about the chop, I wasn’t paying attention, I swear…” He made his whine singularly unconvincing.

The white guard held up the parchment. “What’s this?”

Gideon turned red. He said nothing. The two officers exchanged amused glances.

“Looks like a treasure map,” said the white officer, dangling it in front of Gideon.

“I…I…,” he stammered and fell silent.

“Cut the bullshit. You were hunting for buried treasure.” The officer grinned.

After a moment’s hesitation, Gideon hung his head. “Yeah.”

“Tell us about it.”

“I was here on vacation from New Mexico. This guy down on, um, Canal Street sold me the map. I’m an amateur treasure hunter, you see.”

“Canal Street?” The two officers exchanged another glance, one rolling his eyes. The black officer struggled to keep a straight face as he examined the map. “According to this map, you’re even on the wrong island.”

“I am?”

“The
X
on this map here is on Davids Island. That’s the island over there.” He jerked his chin.

“This isn’t Davids Island?”

“This is Hart Island.”

“I’m not used to the ocean, I must’ve gotten mixed up.”

More laughter, but it was more amused than derisive. “Man, you are one lost dude.”

“I guess so.”

“So who’s the pirate who’s supposed to have buried this treasure? Captain Kidd?” More chuckling, then the black guard’s face became serious again. “Now look, Mr. Crew, you knew you were trespassing. You saw the signs. Don’t bullshit us.”

Gideon hung his head. “Yeah, I saw them. I’m sorry.”

His radio burst into life again, another voice inquiring about the intruder. He responded. “Captain, the guy was hunting for buried treasure. Got a map and everything. Bought it down on Canal Street.” He paused and Gideon could hear the crackle of laughter on the other end. “What should I do?”

He listened for a while and then said, “Right. Over.” He grinned. “Today’s your lucky day. We aren’t going to arrest you for criminal trespass. Where’s your boat?”

“On the beach down by that big smokestack.”

“I’m going to escort you back to your boat, understand? For your information, this island is totally off-limits to the public.”

“What, ah, do you do here?”

“Landscaping,” said the guard, to more laughter. “Now let’s go.”

Gideon followed him across the field and down to the road. “Really, what are you doing back in that field, burying all those boxes? They look like coffins.”

The officer hesitated. “They are coffins.”

“What is this, some kind of burial ground?”

“Yeah. It’s the public burial ground for New York City. Potter’s field.”

“Potter’s field?”

“When someone dies in the city, and they don’t have any family or money to pay for a burial, they get buried here. We got Rikers Island inmates doing the work, so we can’t have visitors landing in boats, you understand?”

“Yeah? How many bodies are there?”

“Over a million,” said the guard, with no little touch of pride.

“Holy cow.”

“Largest burial ground in the world. Been going since the Civil War.”

“That’s incredible. And you give them all a Christian burial?”

“Interfaith. We got all kinds of religious figures coming here blessing the dead—priests, ministers, rabbis, imams. Every religion gets its turn.”

They walked past the old power plant. The ruined Dynamo Room loomed above the tangled vegetation, adjacent to a broad field.

“Where’s your boat?” asked the guard, peering across the field toward shore.

“It’s down on the beach over there beyond that seawall.”

Instead of walking straight across the field, the guard walked north along the road, making a loop.

“Why are we going this way?”

“That field’s off-limits,” said the guard.

“What for?”

“Don’t know. There’s a lot of places on the island that are dangerous.”

“Oh really? How do you know where they are?”

“We got a map, shows the no-go areas.”

“On you?”

The guard pulled it out. “We’re required to carry it.”

Gideon took the map and scrutinized it for as long as he dared before the guard folded it up and put it away. After making a broad detour around the field, they arrived at the beach and walked over to the boat.

“Um,” said Gideon, “can I have my stuff back?”

“Guess it isn’t a problem,” the guard said, pulling the map, notebook, and other papers from his pocket, handing them over.

“Is Davids Island open to the public?” Gideon asked.

The guard laughed. “It’s a park but, ah, if I were you I wouldn’t go digging holes over there.” He hesitated. “Mind if I give you a little advice?”

“Please.”

“That map you bought? It’s fake.”

“
Fake?
How do you know?”

“Canal Street? You see all those Rolexes, Vuitton bags, Chanel perfume, and Prada shit they’re selling down there? That’s counterfeit central. Although I got to admit a fake treasure map is taking it to another level.” He issued a not unkindly laugh, laying a friendly hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “I’d hate to see you waste your time and get into trouble. Trust me, that’s no treasure map.”