He remembered her foot, her ankle, her thigh. He set the little yellow sneaker on his truck's dashboard, a shiver of misery going through him. Oh, God, I miss Jin Li, Ray thought, every part of her. He sat parked in the lot of a check-cashing operation across the street from Victorious Sewerage, which was no more than an odd-shaped muddy lot surrounded by a twenty-foot fence topped with concertina wire, all this protecting a battered construction trailer at the rear and ten enormous, virtually identical sewage trucks parked in a haphazard line, including the one that Richie had driven into the lot twenty minutes earlier. A hulking cement-block building lay behind the trailer but it wasn't clear whether this was part of the operation. The day was done, past six p.m., and time was passing, he knew, clocks ticking everywhere, one on Jin Li, another on his father, a third on how long it would take Richie to get deeply paranoid.
A small Mexican man-a boy, really-with a red hose was standing atop one of the trucks, running steaming water into a valve. Murky water ran out of another valve at the bottom. Richie emerged from the trailer, walked over to a pickup truck, a certain spring in his step, like he was a man with a plan, and rolled out of the lot — with Ray following him. At the light, Ray pulled up close enough to jot down the license plate number. Then he saw Richie looking up at his rearview mirror. Ray pulled down his windshield shade. The idea was to follow Richie home.
The light was still red but now Richie sped across the intersection, barely missing three teenage girls on foot, each talking on a cell phone. Richie turned at the next corner. Ray was disgusted with himself. When the light changed he sped to the corner, turned, looked for Richie's truck-it was gone.
His father opened his eyes dully. "The report, please."
Ray ran through it.
"I thought you knew to sit back on a tail."
"At least I got the plate."
"Give me the phone. No, first get me some illegal coffee."
A few minutes later, his father had on his old half-frame glasses that he hadn't worn in a month and pointed a bony finger at a phone number for Ray to dial. He held the phone near his head and closed his eyes, summoning a voice he hadn't used in a long time. "Ellen, this is Ray Grant… no, no I'm doing great, thanks." The coffee sharpened him up fast, thought Ray. "A little chemo and that's it, but thanks for asking. Listen, this is the thing, I'm on a private job here and could use a little… we got a plate number and need the registration address. Yeah, yeah, sure." He read her the plate number then waited. "I've known her thirty years," he said to Ray. He returned to the phone. "Number two Sixth Street? South Jamesport? All the way out there?" He nodded. "Great. Hi to everyone."
His father dropped the phone, panting now. "This guy lives way the hell out on the east end of Long Island!"
"That's where I'm going, then."
He looked accusingly at Ray. "These Chinese guys want the sister, not some bullshit sewage-truck guy!"
What was wrong? "Dad, Dad, I'm going to break into her apartment tomorrow morning."
"What took you so long to have that brilliant idea?" But his father didn't wait for an answer. "Anyway, it's not good enough! You got to start figuring out what that girl is thinking." He pointed his finger at his own head, shaking it like it was a loaded gun, and stared ferociously at Ray, eyes unblinking, teeth bared. "Either you or somebody else! Fact, let me tell you something, you gotta go like hell, Ray, you go twenty, maybe twenty-one hours at a time now, drink coffee, get ahead of it, see, things are-this Vic, I keep almost remembering! I don't get it, something-" His father looked around wildly, like there were other people in the room, shades at the door. "Hey! Hey! Get out of here!" He looked back to Ray and beckoned with his hand, his voice in a low conspiratorial whisper. "I got a feeling that together you and I, we can — " His eyes shot over Ray's shoulder, became terrified. "No, no I can't!" he yelled, "Not yet! I got my gun here!" He pawed the covers frantically. "Ray, Ray! Get them!"
But Ray had reached for the Dilaudid machine and pumped two boluses straight into his father, who in a minute or so looked at him with sudden passivity, his mouth munching in wordless speculation-before his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped backward into the pillow, hawing the breath-the stench-of the near dead.
Ninety miles, rainy road. Long Island, the largest island in the United States, split at the end, the South Fork leading to the swankfest Hamptons, filled with people who wore white clothes to expensive summer parties, and the North Fork, which was traditionally more working class, populated by farmers, tradesmen, retired NYC cops, and firemen. South Jamesport was one of the first few towns on the North Fork as you drove east. Ray found the house, a little bungalow ranch on a corner, Richie's pickup truck in the driveway. Hell of a drive into the city every day, but then again, you get to leave the city every day, too. Guys like Richie lived in their trucks, anyway.
Ray parked next to some woods and walked back to the house along the dark road. What exactly was he going to do? Not sure. He carried a short crowbar in his jacket, mostly as a weapon. He also had a battery-powered speed drill with a carbide saw attachment. Two-inch rotary blade, goes through anything until it gets dull. He slipped along the road. It was a quiet neighborhood, which meant people minded their own business. Ray edged along the back side of the house, found a window. Richie was sitting in front of his television in clean clothes, hair wet. He had a beer and a bowl of oatmeal on the arm of his chair.
Can you tell if a man is a murderer just by watching him? Of course not. So his father would say. If you know a hundred other things about him, then maybe.
The phone rang. Richie muted the television, kept watching. "Yeah," he said. "About ten minutes."
Ray eased around the side of the house. A moment later Richie came out, smelling of some kind of aftershave, climbed into his truck, and drove away. On his way out for the big date.
Now or never, Ray thought. He considered going through a window, but a neighbor, or even someone driving by, could easily see this. Same with the front door. Instead, he hunched down among some unkempt boxwoods and thought about breaking into the metal ground doors leading to the basement. You made a four-inch box cut, then reached in and pulled back the slide bolt. The carbide blade worked perfectly. A little noisy. Thirty seconds of noise. Couldn't be helped. The box of steel dropped away and Ray waited for the edges to cool, then reached in and opened the door. Then he lifted the door, slipped inside, and let the door fall soundlessly back into place. He found a light. The basement was jammed with boxes of mildewed clothes, broken furniture, sports equipment, and empty beer bottles. A weight-lifting machine sat in one corner. Ray turned off the light and scooted past a washer and dryer piled with dirty laundry-the smell of sewage distinctly noticeable-and up some internal stairs that led to a small living room dominated by a wide-screen television. All the lights were on. Why? This worried him. He kept moving. The small bedroom was taken up with a big bed. More dirty clothes. A couple of golf clubs on the floor. In the bedside table drawer he found four dirty pistols and several ammunition boxes. He didn't touch them.
He poked his head into the bedroom closet, meeting a strong whiff of shoes. What am I doing, he asked himself, what am I looking for? Even assuming Richie was the guy who killed the two Mexican girlsjust a speculation-what connected him, a meatball who lived in this low-rent dump, to Jin Li, a highly educated, stylish Chinese woman who worked in midtown Manhattan ninety miles to the west?
I need to find something, Ray muttered to himself. In the kitchen he opened Richie's refrigerator: beer, milk, orange juice, batteries, a baggie filled with unidentified pills, several cartons of muscle powder, perhaps $200 worth of nice steaks, and, in the freezer, what appeared to be a giant frozen rat wrapped in a plastic bag.
A sound?
No. Yes! A truck had pulled into the driveway, speakers booming. Ray wasn't sure he could make it to the basement stairs. He back-pedaled blindly and was confronted with a choice of the bathroom or Richie's bedroom.
"… shoulda cleaned up," he heard Richie say, coming inside the house.
"I like it," came a girl's voice. "It's cozy-like."
He chose the bedroom, nearly tripping on a golf club. Where to go in such a small room? The closet. He opened it and stumbled atop a pile of golf shoes and balls. He pulled the door shut. The crowbar was tucked by his side. It was a good weapon but not in a closet.
The minutes passed and Ray felt himself becoming stiff. Maybe he should have tried for the basement stairs. He could hear a low murmur of voices, a little music. The bedroom light, he realized, was on. Had he turned it on? He couldn't remember.
"… waiting for?" came Richie's voice, as he walked in to the bedroom. He flicked off the light.
A girl followed.
"I redid your totally terrible drink." She giggled.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I made it better, too."
"So I never went to bartending school. Come here."
"I will," she sang back. "I like this bed. Wait, let me just smoke. The train was so slow! I really needed a cigarette. Drink your drink and I'll smoke one."
"I thought that was for after."
"Gets me in the mood. You guys are always in such a hurry."
Ray could smell the cigarette. He felt a golf ball under him and quietly put it into a shoe.
"How long you lived here?"
"Four years."
"Rent or own?"
"Rent. Shoulda bought a few years back."
"Tell me about it."
"But you know, I pull down some good dollars, make a little on side jobs."
"You haven't told me if you like the drink."
"I do, I do."
"Good, or else my feelings were gonna be hurt."
"So this is kind of nice," Richie ventured. "This isn't in a hurry."
"That feels good," came the voice a few moments later.
"Want to roll over there?"
"You seem pretty relaxed," she said. "I mean, most of you is relaxed. Some guys, you know, they get nervous… first time out of the gate."
"Yeah, you know, whatever." The great lover, shrugging humbly at his own talents of seduction. "Plus, I got the home field advantage."
"I guess. Why don't you lie back, let me start relaxing you."
"Can't argue with that."
"First finish the nice drink I made you. I worked hard on it, too, just so you know."
"— right?"
"Yeah, that's it. Just lie back… good… take a breath.. so, you been living here long?"
"Four years, remember? Come on, give me a little action here."
"Keep your pants on, guy, I'm getting there."
"Thought you wanted my pants off."
"I do, definitely."
"I'll take them off."
"You go, boy."
Sound of clothes, a belt buckle.
"So you were saying about living here?"
"That's better."
"Good."
"You're good at that."
"Just relax, Richie."
"I am, very."
"Good, good."
"You?"
"Right here."
"Sleepy, kinda."
"It's okay, it's nice to lie here with you."
The room was quiet. A minute passed.
"You-" came Richie's voice.
"Shhh, it's okay."
"Wait, wait… fuckin' sleepy."
"Shh, don't worry."
"Did ya-? I'm very…"
Ray could hear Richie breathing. It slowed, deepened, and a rasp of a snore introduced itself. He hadn't heard the girl move. Maybe she'd fallen asleep, too.
Then came trill of a cell phone. It scared him and he had to stop himself from reacting. She picked up quickly, after just one ring.
"Hey. He's asleep… you owe me. I had to touch his dick! Goddamn disgusting. What? No, the door is open. I'm not moving, in case he wakes up. Just get here fast, okay?"
She hung up. More cigarette smoke.
The snoring had become a deep sawing gasp that reloaded and gasped again.
Ray tried to slow his own breathing and concentrate on not moving. Someone was coming to the house, and it made him nervous. If the girl left the room, he could run for it-maybe. Golfballs all over the floor. The room had a window. Maybe it opened easily, maybe not. He felt one foot slipping, pulled it back. Once the girl stopped watching the drugged man on the bed, her attention would begin to drift and she would notice Ray. She might not consciously hear him but she would feel him. It was a proven thing. Tibetan monks with their ears plugged and eyes covered with a satin sash could be led into a room, breathe a few times while turning in a circle, and identify in which corner of the room another monk sat motionless on a prayer rug. You see that once, you never forget it.
The girl was just sitting there in the dark. He heard her slide open the drawer.
"Guns!" she whispered aloud.
Then the door to the kitchen opened. Ray heard the heavy footsteps through the walls.
"Hey, Sharon?" came a man's low voice.
"Here!" she whispered loudly. "In here!"
The steps approached the doorway. "He's really out?"
"Think so."
"Get in the car."
"Let me put on my shoes."
"Did you let him fuck you?"
"No."
"I think you did."
"No way, he's disgusting."
"You touched his dick, Sharon."
"He made me. I was doing it for you."
"Blow job?"
"No, I swear."
"You're fucking lying."
"No, no-"
"You just better get in the car."
She left. Ray could hear the unconscious man breathing loudly. He thought he smelled something like cinnamon.
"Fucking douche bag."
"Come on," came the girl's voice down the hall, "what are you doing? There are guns in the drawer, by the way, mister jealous motherfucker."
"You touch them?"
"No."
"Get in the car!"
She left. Ray could hear the back door open and close. The lights flicked on. A line of light ran between the closet doors now. He heard the drawer slide open, the clatter of the pistols being taken, followed by the boxes of ammo.
"Hey, hey, fuckwad," came the voice. "Look at you, Richie, try to fuck my girl. Plus you fucked up, which means now you're going to fuck me up."
There came the lowest groan in the bed, as if Richie had heard this accusation and was trying to respond.
An ominous silence followed. Then came a whipping crack.
Richie gagged out a delirious, inchoate howl. The golf club, thought Ray. Another crack, this time wetter, more awful.
"Fucking made her touch your-!" Then came two, three, four, six, eight blows, in rapid and savage progression, each making the same wet cracking noise, the assailant breathing quickly, panting in a frenzy, grunting at the effort, the splatting blows ending after twenty seconds at most, whatever ability to respond that Richie might possess now obliterated.
"Ugh, fuckin'… fucked up," breathed the voice. "I fucking told you, Richie. Somebody calls me, then some guy is looking for you! You blew it, you fucked up!"
No answer came back.
There seemed to be a deliberative pause-as if the assailant was weighing what he wanted to do next versus what he needed to do. Ray heard him shift his weight from one foot to the next, lining up the swing. Then the blows came, another savage series, wet-wet-wet, so fast Ray knew the club was being whipped up as fast as it was whipped down, ten-fifteen-twenty blows or more, the assailant grunting in spasmodic exaltation, taking pleasure again and again-and then, just as abruptly, the wet whipping sound stopped, the club flung heavily against the wall.
Footsteps disappeared through the doorway, through the kitchen, and out the door. Ray heard a car start up and disappear.
Silence now.
He smelled blood.
Just wait another minute, he told himself. Be sure. Finally he pushed open the closet door and stumbled out to the floor, legs numb, pulling golf balls and shoes with him. On the bed lay Richie, his face a bloody mass-no nose, no cheeks, a hole that had been a mouth. His smooth chin had been driven into his windpipe, and in general the oblong spherical shape of the head had been flattened. Nearly every blow had hit Richie's face, cratering his skull. The few errant swings had glanced off the wet mass onto the pillow, leaving golf-club imprints. For the brief period that Richie's brain had continued to deliver information to the heart, the left ventricle had kept pumping blood up through the aorta and out the crushed face, leaving Richie's head in a pool that now faithfully followed every wrinkled depression in the bedspread, soaking downward as it went. After the heart stopped beating, lividity occurred-the seepage of fluids from the highest part of the body to the lowest, which meant in this case that blood and other fluids would continue to leak from Richie's ruined head for some time to come. Indeed, Richie's crushed forehead had now paled to a purplish white, the flesh drained. His popped eyeballs seeped blind tears of viscous matter.
Richie had never had a chance, his shirtless body still sprawled in the position of deep sleep, hands out, shoes off, his boxer shorts askew, belly soft, a tattooed lightning bolt adorning his hip bone. Next to him, the bedside table drawer had been yanked open. On the floor lay the bloody golf club, bent in the middle now. Blood had sprayed the walls and ceiling. The police would have no difficulty re-creating what had happened.
The police. The Suffolk County detectives knew what they were doing, would be all over the place sooner or later. No doubt Richie's killer and the girl had left all sorts of indicators of their presence-her prints on the edge of the glass, etc., but maybe there was an explanation for that; they visited Richie earlier in the evening. It was Ray who was the anomaly in the life of Richie. So now he took the trouble to find the Clorox in the basement, wet a rag with it, and wipe every surface he had touched. Clorox destroyed DNA. Nerve-racking as hell; he had to remember every one of his steps in the house. He felt a thin trickle of sweat begin under his arms. Of course he'd left skin cells and hair fibers around, especially in the closet. The cops would swipe hundreds of different surfaces. His DNA was on file, too, somewhere. The department took it in case they needed to identify your remains.
He forced himself to find a vacuum cleaner and vacuumed out the closet, every golf ball and shoe, and then threw them in again. The problem was that flecks and spots of blood were all over the floor and he was walking in them. Blood on my shoes, soaking into the minute scratches in the soles, he thought, I have to get rid of them. Didn't help to have the dead Richie behind him, watching, sort of. He flicked off the bedroom light, in case a neighbor looked in and saw the faceless body on the bed. He pulled the bag out of the machine, then dropped it, the Clorox, and the rag into a trash bag and took it with him, right through the basement again and out the ground doors.
He let the door close quietly, aware that he had not turned out any other lights in the house or checked to see if the front door was locked. Was that good? He wasn't sure. But the fact that he had broken into the basement doors disturbed him. It suggested the entry point of Richie's murderer. The police would examine the minute edges of the place where the metal was cut and see no weathering, that it was fresh. Ray had accidentally created a false clue-one that could point at him. He knew that the paint on the carbide blade would match the paint of the metal ground doors. Another thing to get rid of, he told himself. Shoes and saw blade. Also get rid of the saw itself; the matching paint dust would have been sucked into the motor; they'd find that in five minutes, match it using gas chromatograph tests. Wait! he thought. There would be matching paint dust on his clothes, too. Shoes, bag, saw, all clothes, he told himself, get rid of them.
He retreated into the woods again, half expecting police cars to pull up any minute. The night breathed a soft warm breeze. He slapped at a mosquito. A car passed. He had not seen Richie's killer. Maybe I should have jumped out of the closet and stopped him, thought Ray. But the guy was swinging a golf club with murder in his heart. Ray wasn't quite satisfied at this line of rationalization. He would've had a moment of surprise. It was at least possible he could have saved Richie. But then what? He'd have to have fought the guy. He thought he remembered the guy taking guns out of a drawer, the sound of it. Yes, the girl told the guy about the guns and opening the drawer was the first thing he did. Were the guns loaded? If so, Ray could have jumped out of the closet and the guy could have wheeled and shot him in the face.
Maybe it was better he'd stayed in the closet.
When he reached his truck, he took off his boots so as not to wipe blood on the pedals and floor mat. I'm being careful, Ray thought, but something is bugging me, something I missed. He put the shoes and the saw in the big plastic bag, along with his coat, and tied it off, then dropped it in the back of his truck. He could dump the bag here but preferred to do so elsewhere, maybe separate the items first.
I'm thinking like a criminal, Ray realized. He sat in his truck and forced himself to take long breaths. I might have stopped it, he thought. He couldn't tell the police much about the murderer. I don't know his name, I never saw his face. But the girl was called Sharon. They could find Sharon and then the murderer. But Sharon could just say she was elsewhere the whole night, with the murderer. Ray was the one without the alibi. Even if the cops believed him, he would have to tell them everything, back to the Chinese guys and then crawling in the pipes. They'd probably arrest him, too, since he'd then also be connected to the deaths of the two Mexican girls. The stranger your story, the more likely the police would put the cuffs on, get the wacko off the street. He wondered whether he should tell his father about Richie. The advantage would be that his father would understand the situation better, how dangerous it was. But it might make him worry. It also might make him want to kick the whole thing over to his old NYPD colleagues and be done with it. And then they'd arrest Ray, no matter who his father was.
No, no, he thought, I can't tell Dad about this. The man can't be lying in his deathbed thinking that his son is a murder suspect.
He started the truck and turned it around on the dark road, unable to resist driving by the house on the way to the highway. It had been, what, an hour or more since he'd crawled out of the closet? He approached the house-not sure why he wasn't seeing it.
Then he did see it. The lights were out, every one.
Ray pushed the accelerator in fear, sped past. The lights. He'd left all the lights on and now they were out. But wait-he'd turned off one light, in the bedroom. If it was the killer who had returned to the house to turn off the lights, had he noticed this? Or smelled the Clorox? Seen the blood smears on the rug? Maybe even seen the cut basement ground door?
I know about him, Ray realized, but now he knows about me.
He was exhausted from his drive back to the city and he was anxious, too-unusual for him. Seeing Richie dead like that had shaken him up, loosened up some old stuff he'd thought he'd carefully tied back together a while ago. The old loose fucked-up stuff in his head. The bad stuff. He needed to soften it fast, blur it out. And to do that he wanted something more than getting quietly buzzed on a few beers, something deeper. He'd smoked opium a few times in Pakistan, never got hooked. At midnight, he remembered, Gloria cleaned the Dilaudid machine.
So he waited, sitting next to his father, who was asleep. She went into the kitchen to prepare and, in that moment, Ray quickly pulled out the shunt that was inserted into the intravenous line that went to his father's arm and slipped it into a needle line he'd stolen from the nurse's box of supplies and put into his own wrist. Then he punched the drug delivery button. The machine gave him the last discretionary dose of the twenty-four-hour period. The machine kept track of how many times the patient pushed the button, and if the nurse had been checking, she might notice.
He felt a warm pressure go into his arm, the dose delivered. Then he pulled out the shunt and slipped it back into his father's line. There was no danger of contamination for him or his father because the shunt itself never touched anything other than sterile plastic. He gently pulled the line from his own arm and slipped it into his back pocket. Gloria returned, gave him a second look, unplugged the machine, disconnected it from the line going into Ray's father, and took the machine to the kitchen.
Ray dropped heavily into the deep chair next to the bed. A faraway thought came to him that his father had built up a tolerance over the weeks he'd been taking Dilaudid, whereas Ray had no such preparation.. but so what? The thing was hitting him now… a warm wash that dropped him into collapsing pools of stupefying pleasure…
What phantasms dance in a man's head while clutched in a morphine dream? Does he witness what never happened? Or does he redream what he otherwise wishes he'd forget? Does the mind billow florid sweetness or release its darkest horror? Do the most recent images (Richie, dead before him) and thoughts (I could have saved him) and smells (blood) find their antecedents within his memory? Does one nightmare recall another? It must be possible… Do the sounds come back… the roaring above them as they searched the subbasement for anyone trapped behind fire doors? Wickham in front, Ray shining his flashlight along the dark corridors, all electricity turned off, walking in their heavy boots and unbuckled bunker coats and helmets in the sub-basement looking for people trapped behind jammed fire doors… those sounds of footsteps always in his mind, the last footsteps before everything, before Wickham had stopped, cocked his head…
Hear that?
No. Wait. I do.
A roaring had begun.
Let's get out of the footprint.
Wickham nodded. He shined his light down a long hall filled with pipes. That way.
The roaring increased. The concrete ceiling was cracking.
It's collapsing!
They ran as fast as they could in their heavy, clinking equipment, their flashlight beams bouncing crazily up and down. The horizontal pipes on the ceiling started snapping like sticks, water bursting from them. A wave of dust hit their backs, then smoke. They pulled on their air masks.
Ray followed Wickham. They turned a corner. It was blocked with concrete.
The header had collapsed. Wickham swore behind his mask.
They stopped. Ray switched on his radio.
Company Ten, Team Alpha, we're trapped down in the service hall running west on the sublevel.
No answer.
Now a wave of dust and debris was blowing steadily at them. Somewhere above them was enormous downward compression.
Wickham said something in the noise… pulled him close and yelled in his ear.
Under a T joint. Reinforced.
Ray nodded. They trained their lights along the ceiling. The dust was so thick that both flashlights were necessary. Ray grabbed Wickham and they held each other close until they found a T joint in the corridor. They squatted under it. Ray turned on his radio. All he could hear from it was roaring. No voices. Just an open mike somewhere.
The ceiling collapsed ten yards away, right where they had been standing, pancaking flat against the floor. Then five yards away the ceiling collapsed and hit the floor with such force that debris spat at them like shrapnel. They lay flat on the floor under the beam.
It's coming!
They could hear the roaring above them, the tremors shaking the floor. Then the floor collapsed beneath them and Ray grabbed for Wickham and they fell together, holding each other, spinning as they dropped through the darkness. Ray landed on something hot that burned away his overalls and T-shirt. The hot thing slid along the muscles of his stomach, instantly charring his flesh. He moaned in shocked agony, as did Wickham, and they fell off the hot thing and tumbled another six feet, Ray landing flat on his back, Wickham facedown on top of him, heavily, crushing him nearly, pinning him, Ray's nostrils filling now with the smell of burning rubber and burning flesh, his belly a flank of torment, the pain of a thousand knives hammered into him.
Atop him Wickham writhed. Oh! No! No!
A hissing sound.
A groan. Panting. Groaning. No. No, please, no.
Wicks…
Ray was pinned with his left arm under his back, Wickham on top of him.
Something burning in the darkness, hissing.
Meat burning.
Oh, God, please, please… No more, please, God. Mother of God
… I'm begging!.. No, no… Molly, I'm-I'm sorry… oh.. oh.
Wickham's head lay on Ray's chest, his body jerking. Ray moved his right hand down to Wickham's head, felt for the helmet, the visor, then slipped his hand down the neck, found the shoulder, ran his hand along Wickham's upper arm, and pulled on his arm. Ray squeezed Wickham's hand.
Molly!
I'll tell her, I promise. Don't worry.
He let go of Wickham's hand and tried to feel what was pinning them. His ribs hurt. He worked his gloved hand down over Wickham's back until he came to the metal pipe that had crushed Wickham's backbone. It was so hot it seared through Ray's insulated glove just at the touch, and he yanked away his hand even as his fingertips began to burn. He worked his hand back to his torso and found the flashlight jammed beneath him. Then he switched it on, only to see a cement girder four inches from his face. By crooking his neck he could see the top of Wickham's helmet, his shoulder, and beyond that, the pipe, which wasn't a pipe at all but a heavy-duty electrical cable that had fried off its insulation and was still burning downward into Wickham's back, cooking the bone and flesh as it sank through him.
Every movement an agony, back, ribs, stomach, Ray brought his hand to Wickham's. He squeezed it again.
No response.
Oh, Wicks. What will I tell Molly?
He realized his goggles were dusted over. He brushed them off. He found the flashlight again and lifted his head just enough to see that he and Wickham were trapped between two giant cracked slabs of concrete sandwiched atop one another. Sweeping the beam back and forth, he saw an immense horizontal landscape of debris: what looked like part of a car, electrical wiring and panels, popped and flattened drums of unknown content, dripping water pipes, all compressed within the irregular two-foot gap between the slabs. Anything higher than two feet had been crushed to that depth, a depth that, when you thought about it, would just about accommodate the thickness of one man lying atop another.
He found his radio using the flashlight and turned it on.
Company Ten, Team Alpha.
No response. He switched it off. What is left of my stomach? he wondered. He closed his eyes. A tightness in his lungs. Ribs hurting. The air was bad, filled with dust. He wiggled his right foot, then his left. He couldn't feel his left arm pinned behind his back, though the pain in his left shoulder told him the joint was being stretched beyond capacity. The pressure of Wickham… he couldn't get a deep breath. He felt himself get cold, the onset of shock. He might have internal organ damage that he couldn't feel yet.
Had he passed out?
It seemed so. He felt wetness between his legs. He had urinated while he was unconscious.
Wickham was soft now on top of him. Ray felt down toward the hot cable, touched it with his glove. It had cooled.
He tried to wriggle out from beneath Wickham, but it was no good. The space was too tight. He wasn't quite getting enough air. He could not fully expand his chest; he wasn't getting full use of his lungs. If the rubble above them settled another inch, Wickham would crush him to death. His flesh would split. Well, maybe that was already happening. He felt a claustrophic anger toward Wickham now, a fury to survive. The other problem was that the circulation in his left arm was impeded; eventually this would cause swelling and even tissue death.
He had to assume that part of the tower had collapsed from the plane hitting it, which was surprising; the building was engineered to take a direct hit. The squad had gotten there right away, helped the thousands streaming down the fire stairs dazed and panicked. The women who had taken off their pumps and were walking through glass. Then the bodies had started to land on the street.
That seemed like a long time ago now.
It would be many hours, perhaps days before they dug him out, if they ever did so.
He realized that he was dehydrated. There was a water bottle in the pocket of his bunker coat, but it was trapped beneath him. Another reason he had to get out from beneath Wickham. He worked his left arm free then hugged Wickham upward, like a man lifting a sagging dance partner, and after many minutes of effort, dragging the weight inch by inch against the resistance of the cement beam above, he was able to shift the heavy, nearly severed torso to the side, where there was enough room to slide it wetly a few feet away. The flashlight showed Wickham's open eyes, their surface already glazed dull by dust.
He felt the pressure against his chest and burnt stomach release. A tremendous difference.
He could actually breathe now. He panted with his eyes shut. His ribs hurt. His head pounded as the blood came back to it. Now perhaps he could work his legs out. He pulled on his legs one at a time, bending his knees upward to see if they worked. They were fine, right? No, one leg hurt. In fact, a lot of him hurt, he realized, especially where the front of his stomach was burnt away.
The pain rode up and down and through him and he had to tell himself not to give in to it, but he did nonetheless, feeling himself falling toward unconsciousness. He needed water badly, he realized. Water would save him, if he was to be saved. He awkwardly pulled up Wickham's bunker coat and found the water bottle there, a full liter. He drank half of it. He felt around in the pocket some more and found two packets of peanut butter crackers. That was Wickham, always ready. He ate the crackers slowly and washed them down with the rest of the water.
Then he examined his burn, holding the flashlight above him. The flesh was seared down to and into the muscle and wept blood and lymphatic fluid that itself had mixed with the fluids of Wickham and the dust that covered everything. I don't know what to do about this, Ray thought. He found his own water bottle and considered washing out the wound. But he might need that water, he realized. He could clean the wound and find it still became infected. In burn victims, he knew, survival was based on the total percentage of skin area affected. His burn was deep but not wide. He decided to save the water.
Now he turned on the radio.
Company Ten, Company Ten, go ahead.
No answer.
Had there been a complete loss of radio transmission?
It appeared so.
He wondered if he could hear voices above him, faint sirens, something. Maybe not.
He glimpsed at Wickham. If Ray had been on top, he'd be the one dead now. It was that simple. Because he landed below Wicks, he'd survived.
Lucky, thought Ray. I can't be luckier than that.
The limp fireman recovered from the rubble sixteen hours later was rushed by police escort to St. Vincent's Hospital, intravenous saline lines inserted in both wrists and both ankles. His nasal passages and esophagus were plugged with cement dust. His heart was beating weakly once every two seconds. In addition to his severe third-degree burn and the sepsis that had quickly set in, he was found to have a collapsed lung, fractures of the tibia, nine ribs, one vertebra, and a finger on the left hand, cartilage damage to the left shoulder, and a ruptured spleen. When he awoke two days later, his mother and father were seated next to him. The president was going to attack Afghanistan, they told him, the war against terrorism had begun.
An hour later the deputy fire commissioner for legal affairs appeared in his room and shut the door. The short fat man with white hair pulled up a chair close to Ray's head. We need to have a little talk, Firefighter Grant. I apologize to you for pressing this matter upon you only hours after you have regained consciousness. But it's an impor tant matter that we need to get straight. Ray nodded vaguely, not knowing what else to do. We see no reason why his wife, Molly, needs to know how much Firefighter Wickham suffered. She saw most of the body. That was difficult enough. We had our own people work on him before the funeral home came. She was told he was killed before he was burned so badly. We had to tell her something. But we don't want anyone knowing the particulars. This department lost more than three hundred men, Firefighter Grant. We will be finding bodies for weeks to come. I am ordering you as a fireman in the brotherhood of firemen and I am asking you as a man of honor that you never discuss Firefighter Wickham's suffering and injuries. The men who found you and Wickham are all sworn to secrecy on this matter. You do not need to fear that others will speak of it. And if they somehow do, the fire department will never comment on it except to say that Wickham was killed in the heroic line of duty. No one needs to know he was nearly burned in half by a hot cable. It would hurt individuals and it would hurt the morale of this department in a time of great suffering. In addition to your injuries and trauma, this will be an extra burden to you. I recognize that, the department recognizes that. Furthermore I ask that you never tell your father, not because he is your father and from what I understand a very honorable man but because he is a policeman, and you know of the very difficult relationship between the two departments in this city. You should also know there was one newspaper reporter who was nearby when Firefighter Wickham's body was recovered and had a question, but we had a little talk with him. I expect that this information will perish with you. That you will never tell anyone, ever. Especially the news media. Are we agreed about this, Firefighter Grant?
Yes.
Firefighter Wickham's suffering was a sacred sacrifice that must not be polluted or cheapened by public discussion of it. Are we clear about this?
Yes.
You're sure. Including your father?
Yes.
They shook hands.
He stayed in the hospital six weeks and was unable to attend Wick-ham's funeral, the flag-draped casket carried on the back of a pumper truck, as was the tradition, followed by row upon row of his brothers in their dress blue uniforms.
Had he been in the chair all night? He opened his eyes, felt stiff in the chair. Did I wake up before? wondered Ray. I thought I woke up. His head felt light. He needed coffee, sugar, something.
"Did you enjoy your trip?" asked Gloria, about to go off duty.
"My trip?"
"Your little drug trip."
He shook his head, blinked. "You knew?"
"Of course."
"But said nothing?"
She was waking his father, breakfast ready on a tray. "Nothing to say, once the juice was in your arm, except that if you do it again, I'm going to report you."
Ray sat up.
"Plus it wasn't like you were going nowhere on me."
He sat up some more. His head felt filled with sand.
"Very unfortunate," croaked his father, eyes open.
"What, why?" Ray answered.
"This house has many nice beds upstairs that I worked hard to pay for," his father said. "I wish you'd slept in one."
"I'm fine."
"Well, while you were sleeping I did a great deal of work for you."
"You did?"
"Sure."
"Well?"
"She gets mail at her apartment?"
Ray thought. He remembered locked mailboxes inside the apartment house foyer. "Yes."
"Did she have a regular phone there, a landline, we used to call it?"
"Yes. Mostly for international calls to her mother."
"And a cell phone? She's not calling China on a cell phone."
"Yes."
"Two phone lines," observed his father. "Billing cycles every thirty days. Two bills in thirty days. Cell phone and regular bills tend to be separate, they are for me."
"She's been missing something like five days."
"If the bills were perfectly distributed fifteen days apart, you have about a one-in-three chance that there's a fresh bill sitting in her mailbox showing who she was calling. Might be very useful information. Only other way to get it is with a court subpoena."
"One in three aren't bad odds."
"They could be worse or better."
"Maybe she had her mail forwarded."
"No." His father winced. "People running for their lives don't do that. Plus it generally requires a trip to the local post office. You have to give a new address. She didn't have a new address."
"Maybe she had the post office hold her mail."
"No!"
"I'm just trying to think of-"
"No! She was attacked at night. She fled. The post office doesn't open until eight in the morning. She was long gone by then."
Maybe, thought Ray. But one-in-three odds were pretty good.
"So I get into her building. I've got my old fireman's keys."
"Make sure you break into her mailbox."
"Just break into it."
"Yes," his father said, waving at Gloria now for breakfast. "Hell, man, this girl's life could be on the line here."
"I know, Dad."
He waited for his father to respond. But he didn't, and instead just stared into space, eyes unblinking and mouth tight, like a cop confronting a suspect for the first time, knowing he was guilty.