The Swing Voter of Staten Island (26 page)

After about ten minutes, Uli observed a strange white-wigged man in a black turtleneck and his memory released another bit of hostaged information: “You’re Andy Warhol!”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” said the man’s companion. “This is the artist Danny Varholski.”

“And who are you?”

“His dealer.” The oddball artist didn’t move a muscle or utter a sound. “Are you interested in buying a silk screen?” Uli shook his head no and the dealer and his artist promptly exited.

“Hey! You!” a large Afro-haired man shouted at Uli. “You’re that asshole who threw up on Allen Ginsberg yesterday.”

“It was an accident,” Uli answered, “and if
he
could forgive me, maybe you should try.” The man gave Uli a disgusted look and walked away.

Finding a solitary spot on an old futon couch, Uli sat down, exhausted, to collect his thoughts. In a moment, he closed his eyes. Despite the droning music, the filthy stench of the sofa, and his incomplete mission to find Mallory, his mind clicked off and he passed out almost immediately.

11/5/80

U
li awoke to something hard rubbing against his face. A hiking boot was pressing gently across his nose and cheek. Three large, scary men were standing over him, all wearing turquoise shirts and green do-rags around their heads. One of them, who had a deep and jagged scar running across his face, was rustling through the pockets of Uli’s army jacket. His head felt cold and he realized that his wig had popped off.

“You fellows with the Verdant League?” Uli asked, hopeful of their green gang colors.

“This is what they call a disguise,” said one.

“It’s also ironic,” added the scarred man. “We’re looking all over town for you, and we find you hiding out here.”

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Uli replied tiredly. The apparent leader’s scar was too perfectly proportioned to be an accident. It looked like a lightning bolt starting at the top right corner of his forehead and jaggedly cutting down his right eye, across his nose, ending at the bottom of his left cheek.

“Special Agent Uli,” said the man on his left.

“You’ve mistaken me for—”

The disfigured man crushed down on his kneecap. Uli screamed in pain.

“That ain’t cool, man,” said a hippie lounging nearby, who everyone ignored.

Uli swung his leg back, upending the scar-faced leader. One of the other thugs pulled out a large knife that looked like an artifact from the Bronze Age and placed it against Uli’s throat.

“Don’t!” Scarface yelled, grabbing the blade away. “They need him for something with Mallory.”

“Was she elected?”

“Oh yeah.”

When Uli tried to get to his feet, Scarface knocked him back down and a second man kicked him in the face.

“
ASSHOLE!
” the leader yelled at his comrade, shoving him away. Then he inspected Uli’s scalp. “If you’ve bruised him so they can’t use him, I swear I’ll give them
you
.”

Uli was dizzy and blood was coming out of his mouth and nose. He felt himself being flipped over onto his belly and his arms being yanked back painfully. A pair of plastic handcuffs were snapped on his wrists. He heard the familiar sound of the tightening loop as it zipped along the hard plastic catch. A few minutes later he was pulled to his feet and shoved out the door of the run-down brownstone. They marched him westward down 4th Street. Despite his aches and pains, what bothered him most was the searing morning sunlight. Two men walked in front and Scarface followed as they moved wordlessly down the street.

When the group crossed Avenue A, Uli glanced around for someone who might be of help. After all, this was a Crapper borough. A lot of the locals were out shoveling sand from yesterday’s storm.

Spotting a Council sand inspector, Uli momentarily hoped the man might intervene, but all he did was compensate the collectors loading the heavy cloth bags into the back of an official gray dumptruck. Everyone else who noticed Uli being led, handcuffed, through the streets, politely ignored him.

As they crossed an unswept intersection, a car turned the corner and skidded on the layer of sand, slamming right into the two goons who were leading Uli. They flew up over the hood and onto the pavement. The car screeched to a halt twenty feet ahead. Uli was about to dash off when he felt the leader’s large hand clamp onto the back of his neck.

“Oh fuck!” screamed the older blond motorist, visibly shaken. The two gangcops rolled in pain on the ground behind her.

“You stupid fucking bitch!” shouted Scarface, who now held Uli tightly by his cuffed arms.

“My god, what did I do?” The woman stepped out of her dented car to see if she could assist the two injured men.

“Get back in your fucking car!” the asshole leader shouted.

“Come on,” the woman said to Uli, ignoring the command. “Help me put them in the backseat. We can get them to the Beth Israel Clinic.”

“You stupid cunt!” Scarface yelled. She tried lifting the more injured of the two, until the leader pulled out the huge prehistoric knife.

“Watch it!” Uli tried to warn her as the man raced over.

Without missing a beat, the woman swung around, pulled out a small pistol, and pumped a single bullet into the man’s broad chest. He dropped the knife and fell backwards into a seated position.

“Fucking bitch!” Scarface looked down at his chest.

“Uli!” she shrieked.

Inspecting her closely, Uli realized it was the blond man who’d protected him from the angry mob at Greenwood Cemetary … but he was now a woman.

“Let’s get the heck out of here! Forget about these Piggers,” she urged, leading him to her car.

“Wait a second! I think he knows where Mallory is,” Uli said.

People were collecting on the curb now, staring benignly at the man with blood soaking the front of his shirt.

His two large assistants were still rolling in agony.

“You sure?” she asked, and picking up the large knife that Scarface had dropped, she cut the plastic bands off of Uli’s wrists.

“Yes, come on!”

Together they each lifted under an armpit and dragged the semiconscious leader into the backseat of the blond woman’s car. Uli got in next to him and compressed his chest wound as the woman sped off north.

“I don’t want to be rude, but when I met you before—”

“I was undercover as a man,” she replied.

“How do I know you?”

“I’m your sister, Karen. Remember?” She peered at him intensely in the rearview mirror. In shock, he dropped the rag he was holding against Scarface’s chest. A small fountain of blood shot out. He grabbed it back and continued compressing.

Uli saw the striking similarity—to himself. He instantly remembered that he had a twin.

“How the hell did you get in here?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I found myself stumbling along a street in Queens without any clue of who I was or why I was here, but then I saw your face at that funeral in Brooklyn …”

“I was working undercover. Listen, do you know anything about Vartan?”

“Who?”

“My son!”

“I don’t even know my own name. Maybe I came to rescue you.”

“Not likely,” she replied. “You put me here.”

“I what?”

“About four days ago,” she said, “I had this dream about some white-haired guy giving me instructions to kill Dropt, and I realized it was Newt Underwood. I thought I was hallucinating. Then I saw dogs racing at me and I knew I was connecting with someone, but I didn’t know it was you.”

“
You
were the one who told me to run,” he said, remembering the mysterious voice in his head.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t until I saw you at Father Berrigan’s funeral in Brooklyn that I knew it was you.”

“Why didn’t you meet me at Rock & Filler Center?”

“Oh, believe me, I tried. There were tons of Piggers in that funeral crowd. One of them heard what I shouted to you and I got delayed. I have an office at 30 Rock & Filler. I’ve been tracking you ever since. I sensed you hanging unconscious in some barnhouse and tried to wake you up. Then I thought they were holding you in the Bronx. While I was there looking for you, I felt this intense burning pain here and here.” She pointed to her chest and lower region.

“I was tortured at Rikers.”

“Here on the reservation, it’s not unusual for twins to have a psychic connection,” she explained as they sped uptown.

“Why did that preacher scream at me in Brooklyn?”

“You tried putting him and his brother away ten years ago.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, and when it was discovered that you had set them up, a jury acquitted them. But after the Manhattan bombing, they got detained here.”

He wondered what kind of a person he really was. How could he send anyone, let alone his own sister, into this hellhole?

Suddenly she slammed on the brakes, screeching to a stop on 16th Street in front of Beth Israel Clinic. Uli helped her as she pulled the severely wounded man out of the backseat. His shirt and pants were soaked in blood. Together they dragged him through the double doors of the emergency room.

T
he putrid stench hit Uli immediately as he entered the lobby. Just as Ernestina Eric had said, the conditions of the hospital looked completely medieval. The unwashed mix of dried blood and dirt covering the floor was a perfect breeding ground for endless bacteria. Off to one side, near the receptionist’s window, Uli noticed a blood-smudged spool of tickets that patients were supposed to grab upon entering. The rows of benches were packed with the sick and injured. Others were lying on the floor bleeding from assorted wounds and orifices. Some must have been dead.

Ignoring everyone, Karen pulled out a gold badge and explained to the nurse on duty that her patient was top priority.

Within minutes, a man who Uli figured was one of the few real doctors on the reservation came down to the reception area and began treating Scarface’s chest wound. The bullet had punctured his lung and was lodged in his right atrium. With a Crapper gangcop guarding the victim, Karen used the phone at the nurse’s station.

“We have a very tiny window of opportunity here!” Uli heard her shout. “Once the Piggers realize he’s in our custody, they’re going to either move Mallory or kill her!”

As she continued talking, Uli spotted a blood-stained newspaper on the lobby floor. The headlines of the daily screamed,
Assassin Assassinated!
To his surprise, there was a photo of his missing coworker, Patricia Itt. According to the article, she had shot and killed Daniel Ellsberg while he was being led out of the Astoria police headquarters.

The doctor stuck an IV drip into the patient’s arm, while an aide strapped a mask over his scarred face.

Five minutes later, the Pigger was carried into a small operating room upstairs. A team of Crapper gangcops arrived and further secured the area. Soon, four strange men rushed into the room, pulling on rubber gloves and surgical masks. There was something about them, in their dress and demeanor, quite unlike all others in Rescue City. Two of them were evidently nurses. One took surgical tools from a large plastic box and laid them out on a linen-covered tray. The other injected Scarface with painkillers, attached him to three portable monitors, and jerked his head back to slip a breathing tube down his throat.

“No,” the apparent leader of this medical group stopped him, “you can’t interrogate someone with a tube down his throat.”

Without even cutting the patient’s hair, the leader proceeded to run a small bone saw along the crown of his skull. Uli was about to mention that the bullet was in his chest, not his head, when he realized they weren’t trying to save the man.

“I didn’t know you had neurosurgeons here,” whispered Uli.

“We don’t,” Karen replied. “Technically they’re scientists: cleavings, incisions, and amputations.”

Uli grasped that her words formed the acronym
CIA
. “Where’d you find them?”

“They occasionally send these experiment memos to Pigger and Crapper headquarters. A couple months ago they put out a surgical memo to both gangs that in exchange for testing their latest procedure, they were willing to extract vital information from any hostile witness who is going to die anyway.”

“I guess that’s why they’re not worried about keeping sterile.”

One of the scientists opened what looked like a small wooden cigar box. Inside was an instrument that resembled a stainless steel yarmulke with dozens of long, thin needles pointing downward. Dozens of intricate wires shooting out of the top end were weaved together like a braid that ended in a single complex plug. The scientist secured it into the back of a small black control panel. The steel points were delicately inserted into the ruffled contours of the Pigger’s exposed gray matter.

“Revive the subject,” said the lead scientist to the one controlling the anesthesia and oxygen levels. Within moments, the patient started coming to.

“You can question him now,” the leader said, as if to do so himself would be somehow unethical.

“Where is Mallory? … Where is Mallory,” Karen inquired softly.

“Be more aggressive,” the scientist coached.

“Where the hell is Mallory!”

“Fuck you!” the guinea pig spat back with his eyes still shut tight. “I—Fuck you—She—”