Morgan didn’t even blink as she continued to hold the phone to her ear, waiting. She was frighteningly good at maintaining composure and restraint. “Hello, Captain?” she said smoothly into the receiver. “It’s Dr. Jacqueline Morgan… Yes, we have another issue…”
Nick growled again, low and guttural. Sam sensed that this time it wasn’t just for show.
Kendall stepped in front of Sam and her dog. “Not here, Sam. Not now.” Part of Sam understood that she was only making things worse—and they were bad enough—but a larger part just wanted to unload on Morgan in every human dimension they shared. “Sam?” Kendall gently touched her arm. “Let’s just go.”
Sam nodded in defeat and whistled for Nick. In a moment she was on the sidewalk holding a dead dog.
Kendall came up beside her. “Sorry about all this,” he said. “I really didn’t have anyone else.”
“Yeah, well.” Sam struggled for calm. “I figure people come into each other’s lives for a reason, you know?” She noticed a group of grade school children walking toward her on their way to Riverside Elementary School. Six of the youngest kids were sporting surgical masks over their tiny noses and mouths. “What the hell?” Then she remembered.
The virus.
The CDC had reported the first case at the beginning of the week, and soon there had been four. The disease started like the common flu, but then the symptoms became frighteningly neurological: tremors, memory loss, speech deficits, followed by paralysis. All the victims were kids and all the kids lived in Riverside. Besides those two facts, the children had no other obvious connection.
Kendall followed her stare. “You heard the first kid died early this morning?”
Sam shook her head. “How old?”
“She was only four.”
“Christ. Those poor parents. Did you know them?”
“Just by sight at the playground. They seemed nice enough. Regular folks… you know?” Kendall shrugged.
Sam did know—not the kind of people who deserved to experience an unimaginable life-altering loss. No words would offer comfort, let alone hope. Their lives, like their hands, were now forever shrouded in the odor of freshly turned soil.
Kendall brought her back. “Another case reported too.”
“What the hell is this thing?”
Kendall often learned things at roll call that wouldn’t break publicly for hours, if at all. Some of it was just gossip and rumor, but the “blue telegraph line” was usually accurate and Kendall had realized long ago that he could trust Sam. “State department of health thinks it’s zoonotic.” Kendall dropped his voice. “They’re assuming avian source. I wouldn’t want to be a pigeon in Riverside right now.”
“You mean like West Nile?”
“Something like that. But I’m hearing lots more questions than answers. They’re thinking about closing the schools in Riverside for a few days until they’ve got a better idea about the source.”
“Sounds a lot bigger than the city is letting on.”
“They’re always worried about panic. Me too. The timing sucks with the convention coming to town in two weeks. People might start making poor choices if they think the virus poses a serious risk to their little presidential show.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, feeling the weight of the dead dog in her arms. She had seen too often that frightened people do frightening things.
“I’ll stop in later and let you know what I hear.” Kendall dropped a hand down to Nick’s head. The dog licked it. “You watch her back,” he told Nick, and headed down the street.
Sam watched him go and experienced a deadening fatigue that she knew no amount of coffee could relieve. She really believed what she had told Kendall—people did appear in your life for a reason. What she questioned, though, what made her grind her teeth through the night so hard her jaw ached in the morning, what made her furious when she passed the Mother’s Day card section at Duane Reade, and what regularly sucked the life right out of her, was the utter lack of reason for all the exits. Sam had yet to find any logic on that side of the life equation and feared she never would.
But she did know one thing for certain—the day was still coming to get her, whatever she believed.
3
A New York City subway station is a dirtier, darker (in both light and energy), warmer (in temperature only), and smaller microcosm of the street above. There are shops, cops, riders, beggars, thieves, con men and women, preachers, schoolchildren, roaches, rats, performers, and lost pigeons. It is both an overwhelming and a numbing country, where all interactions explode against a soundtrack of rattling trains and a melody banged out by some musician praying for a few dollars dropped in a case, box, or hat.
Most humans do not linger in a subway station unless they hope to be saved, need to be saved, or are trying to do the saving. Andy was none of these today. His short blond hair, lanky frame, smooth face, high-top sneakers, and bulky backpack could have put him in high school, but something about his vaguely feral demeanor, piercing green eyes, and assured gait made him seem older.
Andy was about to exit the station with five hundred other self-absorbed riders when something familiar but wrong caught his eye.
The beggar with the one leg who often sat on a mat near the stairs had a new addition—a sickly-looking dog with a narrow face and dirty-blond coat from its Doberman/yellow Lab ancestors. A soiled rope that served as both leash and collar secured the dog to a railing while a sign on its neck completed the humiliation: “Help feed my dog! Please!!!”
The dog was panting hard, but not from thirst—the beggar had at least thought to provide the animal with a plastic dish of water.
“Your dog’s sick,” Andy said.
“Nah, man, just hungry.”
Andy shook his head. He knew the dog was ill as surely as he knew his own name.
“C’mon, kid. Help feed him and a Vietnam vet. I fought for your freedom.”
“I know you, don’t you remember?” Andy said. “The closest you’ve been to Vietnam is the noodle shop on the corner.”
“Leave me alone, kid… not bothering anyone.”
“Where’d you get the dog?”
“A guy I know couldn’t take care of it anymore. So he gave it to me.”
“Him, not it,” Andy corrected.
“What?”
“Never mind. You’re only keeping him because he helps bring in the cash, right?” The beggar shrugged and looked away. “Well, now he’s sick. I need to take him.”
“But it’s mine. We… we care for each other.”
“Right. So what’s the name of this dog that you care for so much?”
The beggar hesitated for a moment. “I call it Brutus, and if you lay a finger on it, I’ll start screaming.”
“And assuming I don’t put my foot down your throat first, what do you think that’s gonna accomplish?”
“The cops’ll come.”
“Yeah…”
“And when you can’t prove you own it, they’ll take Brutus away.”
“Then you won’t get to keep him either. So nobody wins.”
The beggar shook his head in mock sadness. “’Cept we both know that in the pound they’ll kill Brutus. And I think that might weigh heavily on a nice young man like you.”
Andy wouldn’t be put off. “I know people. I could get him saved before that happened.”
“Go ahead then. Take the chance.”
Andy didn’t need to do the math. Although good and caring people worked at the regular city shelters, it was a question of overwhelming numbers. Once the dog went into the central system, he would be lost for days or longer in a river of creatures flowing downhill to the garbage chute. Andy knew about that too well from his own journey down a parallel course. He leaned into the beggar close enough to smell his urine. “You know I can end you right now and no one would even care.”
“Oh, I know you could. But I know you wouldn’t. You got the smell of the system all over you. You don’t w
anna go back, do you?”
At the beggar’s words, Andy heard the clang of cold steel doors locking for the night. He saw himself shivering on a mattress so thin he could name each bedspring. He smelled the slightly sour odor of overcooked vegetables and undercooked meat. He felt hard and unforgiving hands on tender skin.
Andy had a problem with memory. His entire personal history since the age of eleven was a constant physical presence in his life. He could recall specific memories with photographic clarity at any moment—what he’d worn to school on November 12, 2009, where he’d had lunch on June 5, 2010, and what he’d eaten, the combination of every lock he had ever used, and the number of stairs in every foster home that had swallowed him. He “saw” his past the way other people watched old movies. And because each memory connected to another, he often became lost in the theater of his history, like some musician trapped in an infinite loop of a twisted version of “And the Green Grass Grew All Around.” When that happened, it required all of Andy’s emotional and physical strength to return to the present.
The scientific name for Andy’s rare condition is highly specific autobiographical memory or HSAM. Andy just called it “piking.” HSAM sounds like a remarkable gift… unless your life has sucked. Then, as Andy would have quickly acknowledged, it was like being trapped in a cage made out of razor wire.
Andy bit into the top of his own hand to bring himself back to the present. He left new teeth marks, but stopped before breaking the skin. These would quickly fade. Other marks he had previously posited on his hands and elsewhere would remain with him forever.
Andy’s eyes found the dog’s. He saw intelligence there, as well as pain and desperation. He was about to make a move for the dog that undoubtedly would end with yet another police interaction, when the beggar said, “Of course you can also buy it from me.”
“Right,” Andy answered. “Because he means so much to you.” The beggar smiled in response, showing his gray teeth. “How much then?”
“Fifty.”
Andy clenched his fists, but forced himself to remain still. He knew he couldn’t allow this to end in violence. Too many people were starting to slow as they passed him. A few had stopped, waiting to see what would happen. He dug his hands into his pockets and pulled out three five-dollar bills and four singles. “All I got is nineteen. You’re gonna take that.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. I’m not.” With one eye on the growing crowd, the beggar announced, “You can’t take my dog.” Then louder for the audience, “It’s all… he’s all I’ve got in the world.”
Andy knew the bastard had him. He was down to one choice. He shook off his backpack, pulled out an old, battered violin case, and removed his violin and bow. Then he yanked an almost clean paper bag from the nearest garbage can and propped it open at his feet. “Not the Mendelssohn,” Andy mumbled. “Please not the Mendelssohn.”
Andy lowered the bow to the strings and closed his eyes, bracing himself for the searing pain of recollection.
The Mendelssohn. Of course.
Many believe that the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Although perhaps not as technically challenging as the Bartók, it is more melodic, more layered, and more inward-looking. For Andy, for reasons having little to do with the piece itself, this particular composition was transporting; the music turned him into a tourist in his own ruins.
Memory blasted through the thin veil of Andy’s reality. Every note drew him away from the station with its petty cruelties and toward the edge of a large lake floating in the purple dusk of winter. Andy stopped resisting the pull of time and gave in to the power of remembrance.
Huge snowflakes drifted down and covered him, but they were oddly warming. She was beside him and soon covered too, laughing at how incredibly soft the snow felt in her hands. Then she wrapped her hands in his. Andy and the girl both held the bow. The notes belonged to the two of them, alone in the world, as the snow swirled about. She kissed him.
Those in the station heard those same notes and they found they couldn’t move away. They opened their purses and wallets and dug inside their pockets to offer coins, dollars, and even fives. People who had never given a dime they didn’t owe threw fistfuls of change into Andy’s paper bag.
In less than ten minutes, the strings stilled and Andy opened his eyes. The lake and snow were gone. The girl had returned to her home in his past and he was back at the station alone among the fetid odor of underground Manhattan and pressed bodies. He tasted blood; he had chewed his lip open again.
The crowd stared at him. He noticed the violin and bow in his hand and tried to remember how they’d gotten there. This temporary lapse in his immediate short-term memory often occurred after he played, sometimes even accompanied by a brief inability to form words. It was as if his mind could not simultaneously hold the embers of his past and the ashes of his present, forcing his most recent memories to give way.
An elderly man with round spectacles and a white beard approached him. “You cannot keep this gift to yourself,” he said, and gestured to the violin. “You owe it to him.”
“Who?”
“The One. He gave you this talent—Elohim. Adonai. The Creator.”
“Oh. Him,” Andy said dismissively as he returned the instrument to its case. “No, I don’t think I owe him anything anymore.”
Ignoring the stares of the old man and the others who had watched him play, Andy grabbed the bag of money, took out twenty for cab fare, and tossed the rest to the beggar. Andy waited, but the beggar didn’t try to count the money or even meet Andy’s stare.
Andy shoved the violin case back into his pack and untied the dog’s rope. “C’mon, Little Bro. I’m gonna take care of you,” he said.
The boy and his dog climbed the filthy stairs out of the subway and onto the trash-strewn street.
4
Kendall was terrible at names, but he had a knack for faces. As he walked back to his precinct house, he constantly scanned the sea of eyes, mouths, noses, cheekbones, foreheads, chins, and eyebrows for those he had seen before. There were many. These were Riverside faces… his faces… comforting faces, except for the ones obscured by surgical masks.
Riverside had been a good move for him. After he lost Phoenix, he could not bring himself to partner with another dog. The guys in K-9 understood, but no one else did—not even his wife, Ellen. He was too young to retire, too old to start over at the bottom, and too self-aware to pretend he didn’t understand the gap between the two. So Kendall had bounced around from one precinct to another, never quite finding that fit he was seeking.
He had landed in Riverside two years ago as part of a new patrol initiative for recently gentrified areas. The mayor and the NYPD top brass were establishing small, dedicated units under the street supervision of an experienced cop to help certain neighborhoods deal with the complex issues created by socioeconomic change. Kendall couldn’t speak for the other community units in the city, but for him and his team, the concept had worked. He felt as if he belonged again, and believed the neighborhood had accepted him. He had a good team of patrol cops under him, liked most of the people he met, and enjoyed the steady rhythm of the neighborhood at daybreak. He had even moved his wife and nine-year-old daughter from Brooklyn to a co-op in Riverside.
Once Ellen had called him her “Jedi Knight.” When he looked at her quizzically, she added, “You know, you go around resolving disputes and dispensing street justice before things escalate. Just don’t forget that you can still get shot.”
And, as stupid as it sounded, in his own head Kendall began thinking of himself in that way. But finding that dog today in the park, together with the virus hurting his people, brought him too close to the guilt-ridden stairwells and sudden silences of his memories.
Kendall and Phoenix had been together for six years when they were called out to a domestic disturbance in Brooklyn. As they charged up to the top floor of t
he five-story walk-up, Kendall heard a man yelling and a woman and children screaming. He remembered the woman’s voice: “Just put it down.”
By the time they got to the fourth floor, he heard only the sound of kids wailing.
They made it to the fifth floor as the fullness of the silence hit.
Kendall crashed through the door, his gun drawn, shouting, “NYPD.” His voice was the only sound, but there were blood-spattered little bodies everywhere. Phoenix pulled out of Kendall’s grip and leaped for the man who had just murdered his family. The murderer dropped his knife and raised his arms in surrender.
Kendall immediately gave Phoenix the order to return to his side. He had given this order a thousand times before. Phoenix always complied. Compliance was not just about obedience; it was part of their bond. On duty, they were one integrated whole. And after six years together, their off-duty relationship was little different. Phoenix began where Kendall ended—and sometimes, with an ever-growing frequency, it was the other way around.
Except this time.
Phoenix growled as he dived for the man. When the man raised his arm in defense, Phoenix bit down on it so hard Kendall heard the bones crack. The man screamed but Phoenix held on.
Kendall yelled the return and stop commands, but Phoenix ignored him. Maybe the dog got lost in the scent of blood, or perhaps whatever separated the dog from his human counterpart had finally dissolved and Phoenix in that instant became a vessel of Kendall’s honest but base desires. Whatever the reason, voice commands would not work. Kendall grabbed Phoenix by the neck with his free hand and pulled. The dog finally released the arm.
Phoenix backed up, disoriented, like an epileptic just coming out of a seizure. The dog glanced around the room and whimpered. The man on the floor bled heavily from his arm and moaned.
Before Kendall understood what was happening, Phoenix lunged again, this time for the murderer’s throat.
“Nooo!” Kendall screamed.
Just Life Page 2