And so he stayed at the window. He did not move. He breathed through his mouth and gazed out at the airshaft.
Could be wrong, he thought again.
He stood in the dark and gazed at the airshaft. He saw Jessica. He saw her lying on the floor in her valentines nightgown. He saw her hair—the same color hair as his—tangled and matted about her face. He saw her glassy eyes staring at him through the strands of hair.
Why didn’t you come, Daddy?
He thought of Elizabeth’s blood.
Daddy?
Conrad nodded. He whispered back, “I’m coming.”
Aggie and Elizabeth
The policemen surged toward Elizabeth. They surrounded her. Aggie lost sight of her in the crush of them. She moved slowly toward the closing circle of dark suits.
“Give her air,” one of the men said.
“She’s coming back around,” said another.
Aggie was now at the edge of the circle. Men’s backs blocked her way. Across from them, she saw men’s faces, stern and thin-lipped. They called to each other curtly..
“Hold on to her.”
“Watch she doesn’t hurt herself.”
Then, from the midst of the circling men, from beneath the sound of their voices, Aggie heard the woman’s voice rise to her. It started softly, thinly. “What? What? Please, please, I …”
“Please,” said Aggie. She reached out and touched a man on his shoulder. The man turned to her, an oliveskinned detective with carefully waved hair. “Please,” Aggie said. The detective stood back to let her pass. Aggie pressed into the circle of men. She heard the woman’s voice growing louder.
“I can’t … I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with this, please, I can’t deal with this, please …”
The words came faster and faster. The same thing over again: “I can’t deal with this.” Aggie heard it rising to a shrill note of panic.
“Please,” Aggie said. “You’re scaring her. Let me …” She tried to shoulder her way between two men, to get deeper into the cluster.
The woman’s voice grew still more shrill. “Oh, God, oh, please, I’m scared now, I’m scared now, right now, please … please …”
Agatha touched the man just in front of her. He moved aside and she pressed in toward the circle’s center. She could see the woman now—Elizabeth, his Elizabeth—she could see the top of her head, her golden hair, then part of her face, her blood-streaked brow. She was thrashing around, pulling back and forth. Her eyes were wide, darting everywhere as the men pressed in close to her.
“Please,” Agatha said loudly. “Please. Give her some room. You’re terrifying her. Can’t you take those handcuffs off?”
As she pushed finally into the center of the men, Agatha saw the woman fully. She was on her knees, the skirt of her shift spreading out around her. Men were holding her upper arms, their fingers pressing into the flesh. Her head was lashing from shoulder to shoulder in her panic. Her hair whipped about her cheeks and eyes.
“I’m scared now, I’m scared, I can’t deal with this, I can’t, please … ,” she kept saying.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Agatha.
She knelt down in front of the woman. One man moved toward her as if to stop her. Another touched her shoulder, then let his hand slide away.
“Please,” Agatha said. And then she spoke more sharply, “Please! Someone take these handcuffs off her.”
The policemen looked at each other over the head of the struggling woman. Then they looked over Agatha’s head, up at D’Annunzio. D’Annunzio shrugged.
One patrolman knelt down behind the woman. Agatha heard the cuffs come loose. Other cops still held the woman’s arms firmly. Her hands were still forced behind her back.
Now Agatha reached up to the woman’s left shoulder. A burly plainclothesman had his two hands wrapped firmly around the upper arm. Aggie touched his hands, pushing at the fingers gently. The plainclothesman looked down at her. His grip on the woman loosened. Slowly, the woman’s arm came free. It settled beside her.
Elizabeth’s thrashing began to subside. She made frightened grunts, her eyes lowered.
Agatha turned and looked up at the man who was holding the woman’s right arm. It was one of the young patrolmen. He looked down at her.
“Please,” Agatha said.
The patrolman glanced around at the other men. No one said anything. The patrolman let the woman’s right arm go. The woman brought it around in front of her. She clutched her right wrist in her left hand.
She had stopped thrashing altogether now. She was breathing hard. Her chest was heaving. Her chin had fallen forward. Her face was hidden in her hair. She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her wrist and sat quietly.
After a while, she raised her face to Agatha.
“We’ve got to help him,” she whispered.
Her face wrinkled. She began to cry.
She cried like a child, her face contorted, her mouth opened wide. She bawled loudly, holding her wrist in front of her. Christ, Aggie thought. She put her arms around her. The girl let out a wet gasp and leaned toward her. She lay her head against Agatha’s breast. Aggie looked up at the ceiling. Jesus, she thought, where the hell did you get this one, Doc? She was just a kid, just a teenager.
The girl cried and Aggie held her. The men hovered above them in a circle, looking down.
“All right,” Agatha said after a moment. “All right. That’s enough now. Listen now. Listen …” The girl snif fled against her. She trembled in Aggie’s arms as she cried. Agatha shook her head, touched the girl’s hair. She felt the stiffness of the dried blood in it. “All right,” she said gently. “Listen to me. Tell me about Dr. Conrad. How can we help him? Try to tell me.”
The girl sobbed. She struggled to sit up. She pulled away from Agatha’s hold. Her face was mottled, painted with blood, shiny with tears. She waggled her hands in front of her urgently.
“You have to find Terry,” she cried. “Terry’s real. Dr. Conrad said so. I saw him.”
“Who’s Terry?” said Agatha.
“I don’t know. He was the Secret Friend but then he wasn’t. The Secret Friend was with me but Terry was real. He was the one who wanted the number, just like the red-haired man said. But he wasn’t magic. Only the Secret Friend was magic.”
Oh, boy, thought Aggie. She glanced up. The faces of the men hung over her. They turned and looked at each other. They looked down at her. Oh, boy.
“All right,” said Agatha. “Come here. Come on, stand up, Sweetheart. Your name’s Elizabeth? Come over here, Elizabeth.”
She took the girl by the elbow. She helped her to her feet. The crush of men opened a little as they stood.
“Excuse me,” Agatha said.
She started walking the girl over to the sofa. The men stood aside to let them pass. Then they edged after them in a half circle.
“Look at you,” Aggie said softly as she guided the woman across the room. “You’re covered with blood. Are you bleeding? Are you hurt?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No. I’m thirsty, though.”
“You’re scratched. You have scratches all over you. Look at this. What happened to you?” She looked up and saw D’Annunzio. He was watching her, his hands in his pockets. He was standing next to Special Agent Calvin. “Would you get me a damp washcloth please,” she said. “And a glass of water.”
“You can’t wash her, ma’am,” Calvin said. He had a sharp, thrusting voice, ridiculously forthright. “We’ll need to take samples from her face and clothing for evidence. We’ll have to have one of our team examine—”
“All right, all right,” said Aggie. “Just bring her some water then.”
Calvin fell silent. D’Annunzio went tromping away.
Aggie sat the girl down on the sofa and sat down next to her. The girl stared at her with big green eyes. Aggie wasn’t sure she knew where she was.
She took both of
Elizabeth’s hands in hers. “All right,” she said. “Elizabeth. Now, tell me. You were in the hospital, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes. That’s right.”
“And you left the hospital with Dr. Conrad.”
“Yes. Yes. He hit Dr. Sachs with a chair.”
Aggie almost laughed. It was an odd sensation. “All right,” she said. “Do you know where Dr. Conrad is now?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. No. He … He went around the corner. He didn’t come back. Terry came.”
“Terry.”
“Yes. He’s real. He’s not the Secret Friend. He took Dr. Conrad’s daughter, your daughter, so Dr. Conrad would ask me for the number. They knew I would give him the number because I … I know him. Dr. Conrad. We … I know him.”
Aggie narrowed her eyes. “Know him?”
D’Annunzio came back with a glass of water. He handed it to Agatha. Agatha handed it to Elizabeth.
“Drink it slowly,” she said.
Elizabeth put the glass to her lips. She raised it quickly, sucked off a long draft. Agatha had to pull the girl’s hand down finally.
“Elizabeth,” she said. “Do you know where Terry is now?”
She nodded quickly. “Yes, yes. He went to take my mother out. Now he has the number.”
Agatha took the water from her and put it on the coffee table. Goddamn it, she thought as she turned away. She couldn’t make any sense of this. The girl was crazy.
Goddamn it, Doc. What did you do? What did you get us into?
She took a breath against the tightness in her stomach. When she looked at Elizabeth again, she continued to speak calmly.
“Where is your mother, Elizabeth?” she said.
“She’s dead.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes. And worms are coming out of her.”
“And Terry wants to take her out.”
“Yes. Yes.”
Agatha looked into the girl’s earnest eyes. “You mean, he wants to take her out of her grave,” she said.
“Yes. Yes.”
“Why the hell would he want to do that?” asked D’Annunzio. He was still standing beside them.
“What?” Elizabeth looked up at him. Looked back at Aggie. “What? Why … ? I mean, I don’t … What?”
“Never mind,” Agatha said. “Just never mind that now, all right?”
“All right,” said Elizabeth. Her eyes moved over Aggie’s face frantically. “All right. Is it all right?”
“Ssh,” said Aggie. She patted the girl’s hand. “It’s fine. Just tell me now: Do you know where your mother’s grave is?”
“Yes. It’s on the island. Where they take the poor people.”
“Hart Island?” said D’Annunzio.
“Yes.”
“That’s a big place,” he said. “A hundred acres. A lot of people buried there. How would he know where your mother is?”
Elizabeth pulled her hands away from Aggie. She shook them up and down. “The number!” she said. “I had to tell Dr. Conrad the number!”
“The number of your mother’s grave,” said Aggie.
“Yes! Yes!”
The rest of the men in the room had now moved close to them. They were pressing up against the back of the sofa, grouped together. They were watching the two women.
“So now he’s going out to Hart Island to take your mother out of her grave?” Aggie asked.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
“Did you see him go out there?”
“Well … yes. I mean, I saw him leave. He came out of the big building with the clock on top. I hid. I was looking for Dr. Conrad. You see, first, Dr. Conrad went around the corner; and then the man was in the back of the car—he put a knife on my neck, a knife … . And then, after that was over, after the man was … gone, I …” She swallowed hard. She talked faster and faster, moving her hands. “After the man was gone, I was scared and I went around the corner where Dr. Conrad went. There was a building. A big building with a clock and I saw Terry coming out of it. I hid behind the other building, the big black building. And I watched him. Terry. I saw him get in a car and drive away. But Dr. Conrad didn’t come. He didn’t come.”
Aggie felt something drop inside her. She had to steady herself before she could speak again.
“What did … ?” D’Annunzio began.
But Aggie was already saying it. “What did the car look like, Elizabeth?”
“Uh …” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “It was white. It was white, like, a big white car with four doors. And it had a big long scratch on the side of it, and one of its back lights, the red lights in back, was broken, smashed.”
“Put it on the radio,” said D’Annunzio.
Agatha felt a small flurry as the men in back of the sofa started to move. She kept her eyes on Elizabeth. The girl looked at her eagerly.
“Now you said a man put a knife on your neck,” Aggie said.
“Yes,” she said. She nodded.
“Do you know where that man is now?”
“He’s … there was a big … one of those garbage things …”
“A Dumpster,” said D’Annunzio. “Jesus Christ.”
Elizabeth glanced up at him. “He put a knife on my neck and he said he would kill me. But then he didn’t kill me, he … he came up into the seat, the seat next to me, Dr. Conrad’s seat. He had a piece of paper, a note for Dr. Conrad, he said. He put it … he put it on the front, on the dashboard of the car … And then he said, he said, ‘Now we’re, we’re just gonna tilt the bucket seat back here and have some fun.’” She nodded. “And then … He said that and then he … he put his hand on me, on my breast, or whatever.” Elizabeth looked up at the men standing behind the sofa. She looked at D’Annunzio. And finally she lowered her eyes and looked at Aggie. She shook her head—almost sadly, Agatha thought.
“That,” she said softly, “made the Secret Friend mad.”
Digging
In the end, Sport’s face showed no trace of emotion. As the cruiser cut back toward City Island, he was expressionless. He stood at the stern again, at the rail again. He peered out over the turbulent sound. His eyes were dull, his mouth was slack. His hands rested on the rail and were still.
When the machinery man had finished with the backhoe, Sport had gone out to the spot with a pick and shovel. He had set his flashlight at the edge of the fresh hole. He had stepped into the hole himself and started digging.
He had dug quickly but gingerly, using the shovel to scrape off the top layer of the earth beneath him. He had stared intently at the earth as he lifted it. He had not looked up at the bending trees. He had not heard the wind in their branches or the waves lapping on the beach. He had heard that chuck and scrape of dirt and pebbles, over and over in the freshly dug hole. He had heard that, and he had heard a voice in his head, repeating: All or nothing at all. All or nothing. All or nothing at all.
He kept turning the earth over. Chuck and scrape. There would be nothing left of the pine box now, not after nine years. There would only be bones. He kept digging.
What were you, crazy? he thought. You crazy, stupid fuck. How could you have believed this? How could you have believed in this, you brainless toad? You murdering piece of nothing. You’re nothing.
All or nothing. All for nothing.
He dug in the earth. The shovel chucked and scraped.
Nothing is what you are! Nobody, what you always are! Mr. Big Superstar, and you’re shit, you’re nothing, you’re nobody, a dead man standing in a dead man’s hole.
He kept digging. The hole had been six feet wide and two feet deep when he started. He was down almost three feet now. And all the while he was thinking:
All for nothing. All for nothing.
All for nothing at all.
When the cruiser returned to City Island, Sport went into the Correction Department shack. He used the little bathroom inside to clean up and change his clothing. He washed the dirt off his hands and sprayed h
imself with deodorant. He stuffed his old clothes in a garbage bag. He put on a denim jacket, a blue-and-white striped T-shirt, and fresh jeans. Then he combed his hair carefully. Only a faint trace of dirt ground into the flesh of his fingertips showed that he had been digging.
When he came out of the shack, he found the guard and the machinery man waiting at the edge of the pier. He handed each of them an envelope with a thousand dollars in it. Each of them shook his hand solemnly.
“So long, Sporty-boy,” the guard said. “Hope you found what you were looking for.”
The machinery man said nothing.
Sport left them and walked off the department lot to Fordham Street. His white Chevy was parked there, just beyond the fence. He loaded the car with his things and slipped inside behind the wheel. He drove up to the corner and turned onto City Island Avenue.
The Chevy moved slowly down the empty thoroughfare. Sport stared out through the windshield at the boatyards, the seafood restaurants, the sailors’ clapboard homes—all standing dark by the side of the avenue. The red and green of the traffic lights seemed very bright up ahead of him. He stared at them blankly, his lips parted.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered after a while. “Jesus Christ.”
At three feet, he’d begun to hit the bones. The shovel gave a squeaky thud and the earth went hard with them. Soon, Sport was turning over broken chunks of dirty ivory; unrecognizable shards; a sudden section of arm or leg. The earth was suddenly thick with worms and centipedes. They wriggled in and out of the black loam.
Dem bones, dem bones. Sport was sweating hard. The sweat carried grime down the sides of his face. The shovel kept spearing the earth, bringing it up. Sport kept thinking: All for nothing, all for nothing at all …
And then the shovel hit something that would not yield.
Sport stopped, staring down. In the outglow of the flashlight, his eyes burned. He worked the shovel around the hard object, cutting it out of the earth. Then he dug down again, furiously now, grunting with the effort.
Look, he was thinking suddenly. Look, look, look. Look at this!
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