Manhattan Mayhem (16 page)

The little girl who’d been the object of Maddox’s murderous intent was now a grown woman with children of her own, and I had only to look across the table to reassure myself that I’d done the right thing in sending Maddox away. To have done otherwise would have put Lana at risk. Other children had done dreadful things, after all, and that searing episode in the subway station convinced me that Maddox was capable of such evil, too. She had declared what she’d wanted most in life and then ruthlessly attempted to achieve it. I had no way of knowing if she would make another attempt, but it was a chance I wasn’t willing to take, especially since the intended victim was my own daughter.

“Maddox had to go,” I repeated now.

Lana didn’t argue the point. “I remember the day you took her to the airport,” she said. “It was raining, and she was wearing that sad little raincoat she’d brought with her from the South.” She looked at me. “Remember? The one with the hood.”

I nodded. “That coat made her look even more sinister,” I said dryly.

Lana looked at me quizzically. “Sinister? That’s not a word I would use to describe Maddox.”

“What word would you use?” I asked.

“Damaged,” Lana answered. “I would say that Maddox was damaged
by life.”

“Perhaps so,” I said, “but Maddox had done some damage of her own.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that she stole an answer sheet at Falcon Academy,” I said. “One of her classmates saw her.”

“You mean Jesse Traylor?” Lana laughed. “He just got caught himself. Cheating on his taxes.” She took a sip from her cup. “Jesse was the school apple-polisher, a tattletale who would have done anything to ingratiate himself with the headmaster.”

Cautiously, I said, “Even lie about Maddox?”

“He’d have lied about anyone,” Lana said. She saw the disturbance her answer caused me. “What’s the matter, Dad?”

I leaned forward. “Did he lie about Maddox?”

Lana shrugged. “I don’t know.” She glanced toward the street where two little girls stood outside a theater. “She apologized, by the way,” she said. “Maddox, I mean. For slapping me. Not a spoken apology.” She looked as if she were enjoying a sweet memory. “But I knew what she meant when she did it.”

“Did what?” I asked.

“Nudged me,” Lana answered. “It was a way we had of telling each other that we were sorry and wanted to be sisters again.” She smoothed a wrinkle from her otherwise perfectly pressed sleeve. “After we had pizza at Jake’s,” she said. “In the subway. We were running for the train, and Maddox gave me that hostile look she used when she was joking with me, and then she just nudged me, and that was her way of saying that she was sorry for hitting me, and that she knew I was sorry for what I’d said to her.” She looked at me softly. “And since we were both sorry, things were going to be okay.”

With those words, Lana finished her coffee. “Anyway, it’s quite sad what happened to Maddox.” She folded her napkin and placed it primly beside her plate. “The way she never got her balance after she left us.” She smiled. “And so she just … finally … stumbled into the pit.”

“Into the pit,” I repeated softly.

Shortly after that, we parted, Lana returning to her husband and children, I back to my apartment, where, with Janice out of town, I would spend the next few days alone.

I passed most of that time on the balcony, looking down at the tamed streets of Hell’s Kitchen, my attention forever drawn to families moving cheerfully toward the glittering lights of Times Square, fathers and mothers with their children in tow, guiding them, as best they could, through the shifting maze. I saw Maddox in every tiny face, remembered the tender touch of her small hand in mine, her quiet “Thank you,” for the little refrigerator magnet she had returned to me; the last bit of kindness I’d shown before sending her out of our lives forever.

Had she been a liar, a cheat, a thief? I don’t know. Had I completely misunderstood the little nudge she’d given Lana that day as the two girls raced for the train? Again, I don’t know. What children perceive and remember years later can be so different from what adults know … or think they know. Perhaps she’d already been doomed to live as she did after she left us, and to die as she did in that bleak, unlighted space. Or perhaps not. I couldn’t say. I knew only that for me, as for all parents, the art of controlling damage is one we practice in the dark.

THOMAS H. COOK
is the international-award-winning author of more than thirty books. He has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award eight times in five different categories, and his novel
The Chatham School Affair
won the Best Novel Award in 1996. He has twice won the Swedish Academy of Detection’s Martin Beck Award, the only novelist ever to have done so. His short story “Fatherhood” won the Herodotus Prize for best historical short story. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

It was seven a.m. in Times Square, New York, on Wednesday August 15, when Leon Foss slowly maneuvered the trash cart—with its huge wheels and two brooms—along the sidewalk near the intersection of Seventh Avenue and West Forty-Sixth Street, shaking his head at the sheer amount of trash that was facing him and the other street sweepers from the Department of Sanitation. He had on the usual “white angel” uniform of white slacks, jacket, and cap—which was stiff and felt new—and never had he seen so much trash. It was almost up to his knees.

Traffic moved slowly through the square—Packards, Oldsmobiles, old Ford trucks making deliveries—tossing up plumes of torn paper,
tickertape, and newspapers that had been tossed around with such glee the day before, on V-J Day—Victory over Japan Day—the end of the war.

His eyes darted along the sidewalk, taking in the Rexall Drugstore, a bar, a restaurant, and a joint called Spike’s Place. It had dark windows and an unlit neon sign overhead, and a small alcove with a closed door.

A few pedestrians were moving along the cluttered sidewalks, but it seemed like most of New York was taking the day off after yesterday’s events, the biggest party since … well, since anyone could remember. And what a party, and he had missed every single second of it. Instead, he had listened to NBC Blue via his RCA radio in his third-floor walk-up in Washington Heights; he had no interest in catching the subway south to join the party. He had sat there in the tiny room, smoking a Chesterfield, listening to Truman’s flat Missouri twang go on and on, nothing like FDR’s cultured way of talking. Months after FDR’s death, he still missed That Man’s voice.… As he had smoked that cigarette yesterday and listened, his phone rang.

“Leon?” had come a woman’s voice.

“Yes, Martha, it’s me,” he had said, speaking to his sister. In the background were sounds of machinery. Martha worked at a war plant out on Long Island. “How are you doing?”

“Taking a break, wondering how much longer I’ll have a job. Are you listening to the radio?”

“Yes.”

“It’s finally over, then, isn’t it.”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“Leon … you’re too old to keep at it. Let it go. It’s all over now. Please, stop working.”

“Martha, it was nice of you to call,” he had said. “Don’t be late going back to the assembly line, okay?”

And he had hung up and smoked the Chesterfield and listened to Truman some more.

Now he started with his morning’s work, taking the big broom, pulling stuff off the sidewalks so the larger street sweepers could pick it up. Paper, broken beer bottles, broken gin bottles, copies of the
Daily News
and other newspapers, with their
EXTRA
headlines.
Sweep, sweep, sweep.
More torn pieces of paper. A uniform cap for a Marine. He picked it up, looked inside the brim, saw a hasty scrawl of some kid’s name on a piece of cardboard stuck behind the plastic. He walked down the sidewalk a bit, carefully placed the hat on top of a blue and white mailbox, just in case the boy came back later to retrieve it.

Just in case.

Broom in hand, he went back to his cart to see another sanitation worker standing there, older, heavier, his white uniform stained. His face was covered with black bristle, and Leon figured that, in the rush to get to work this morning, he forgot to shave.

“Hey,” the worker said.

“Hey,” Leon said right back, and the worker said, “Christ, who the hell are you? You don’t belong here. I know all the regulars.”

Leon lowered his broom, went back to work. “Look around, Mac. More trash here than any other place in the world, and it’s gotta be cleaned up.”
Sweep, sweep, sweep.
“I usually work on Staten Island. Boss called me yesterday, said to get to Times Square this morning, and here I am.”

“Oh.” Then the guy leaned over and peered into Leon’s cart, and damn, Leon almost had a fit at that. But the guy leaned back without noticing anything and said, “Shit, you must have just started.”

“That’s right.”

The other sweeper started pushing his cart and stopped. His head rose to take in all the tall impressive buildings rising up from Times Square. “Greatest city in the world, ain’t it?”

“No argument here,” Leon said.

“Think about it. All those cities around the world, bombed, flattened, or occupied. London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo. Only one city didn’t get hit. Ours.” The man spat on the ground. “I spent a couple of years in Civil Defense. Got an armband and a white helmet. Did
some drills about how to do first aid and put out incendiary bombs. Also knocked back a few beers. Christ, we was lucky. You know, I’m not much of a religious guy, but it makes you think God spared us, you know?”

“Good point,” Leon said, still working.

“All those lights back on, rationing ending, the boys coming back. My boy, too … he was stationed over in Belgium, and he’ll be back home soon. This place is gonna jump in the years ahead. Mark my words! Jump!”

Leon gave the guy a cool brush-off smile. “Yes. Jump.”

The worker shrugged, started pushing his cart. “See you around, bud.”

“You, too.”