Oh, she would give him enough for a bus ride maybe as far as Philadelphia and for a Big Mac at a highway rest stop, but that was it. She wouldn’t give him what he needed to get where he was going, to set himself up with a room for a couple of weeks in case the job didn’t come through right away, and to eat like a human being during all that time. His mom was a major disappointment. Then again, he wasn’t surprised at all. Why should he be? This was the way she had always been. You couldn’t pry money out of her with a crowbar.
Now she was sitting across from him at the kitchen table in her goddamn house dress, a hair net on her head, the cordless phone at her elbow like a faithful dog. That was her big hobby, talking on the telephone. Any minute now, she would pick up that phone, dial a number and start her gabbing. She was a world champion talker and not much of anything else. To Foerster, she looked old and tired, like a hag. She didn’t even bother to get dressed anymore. For a moment, he studied the lines of her face. He decided she should have a wart on the end of her nose. That would complete the picture.
‘But Davey, why don’t you just get a job? I’d let you stay here if you were working.’
He reached for the hard pack of Camels he had placed next to her on the table. She didn’t allow smoking in the house. He didn’t care. He slid one out and lit up. ‘No way, Ma.’ He pointed the lit smoke at her. ‘No way, you understand?’ He laughed, and for a moment the depth and breadth of her stupidity, the sheer grandeur of it, delighted him. His mom was the Grand Canyon of dumb, and he could finally see the humor in it.
‘What kind of job am I supposed to get? Everybody’s out of work around here, the whole city’s going out of business, and you tell me to get a job. That’s a big help, Ma. A big, big help. Anyway, I have a job. I told you that already. It’s a good job and it pays good money. OK? It’s just that if I want the job, I have to get to South Carolina, and I need money to do that. What am I gonna do if I stay here, flip burgers for $6.50 an hour, if anybody’s even hiring? How am I gonna live like that? Why would I want to?’
She seemed on the verge of crying. Again, no surprise there. Tears were her favorite weapon. ‘For one thing, you’d be living here, eating my food. That way you could save your money. For another, you wouldn’t be a criminal. I don’t want a criminal in my family, Davey. I can’t stand it anymore.’ She looked up at him, looked into his eyes. ‘Aren’t you tired of dealing with the police? Aren’t you tired of being afraid? I know I am.’
He smiled, a modern Jesse James. ‘I’m not tired, Ma. I’m just getting started.’
With that, he left her. He went down the hall and began climbing the wooden steps to the second floor. He remembered how those steps used to give him splinters when he was a kid. All these years later, and she had never done anything about them. The wood was still raw and rough. Well, at least he wasn’t dumb enough to go around barefoot anymore.
Halfway up the stairs, the doorbell rang. He turned and glanced back down at the door. Doorbells gave him a nervous feeling. They always had, but especially so in the last twenty-four hours.
Below him, his mother shuffled into the foyer, and Foerster continued up the stairs.
His escape set-up here was good – not nearly as good as it had been at his apartment, but good. He had put the whole thing together years ago, and when he looked at it last night, he decided it could still hold water. His room was on the second floor and he had a twenty-foot fire ladder, called the Res-Q Ladder, coiled on the rug by his window. It was a chain link ladder with metal slats. It hooked to the window sill with big iron hooks. If a fire started, you were supposed to throw the ladder out the window. It would uncoil itself on the way to the ground, ready for action in a couple of seconds. He had taken it out of the closet last night as soon as he came upstairs. He had even tested it, and it worked just as it always had.
Fire ladders weren’t just good for fires. As a kid, he used to climb out to go smoke a joint without alerting the parents. Now, if the shit happened to hit the fan again, he would be ready. He hadn’t yet worked out what his escape route on the streets would be, but he still had some time to put that together. He was thinking he would run for the vacant lots down by the waterfront esplanade, maybe even the ferry to Manhattan if a boat was in and the timing was right.
He reached the top of the landing. He listened. His mother was there at the front door now, just chatting away, probably with some crone from down the street.
He started toward his room, relaxing a bit.
Then the old bat screamed. ‘Davey, help! Help me!’
‘God is love!’ a man shouted. ‘God is love!’
Foerster bolted for his window.
***
Jonah ran toward the house. He went hard and covered the distance in no time, flying across the tiny front yard and vaulting up the three steps.
The door gaped wide and he flew through the opening.
The old woman sat on the floor, her back to the wall. Gordo must have knocked her down. Jonah noticed her thick legs, which had support hose pulled to just above the knees – she had the legs of an elephant. Her hands were splayed out on the floor. Her breath came in sporadic gasps. That worried him. The last thing they needed was a heart attack or a stroke victim on their hands.
‘Ma’am, are you all right?’
‘I’m OK,’ she said, gazing back into the house. ‘There’s a man in here,’ she started, but then turned to Jonah and screamed. He followed her eyes and was surprised to discover the microphone in his hand. He had forgotten about it and torn it loose from the cassette recorder.
‘Don’t kill him,’ she said. ‘Please don’t kill my son.’
‘Jonah!’ Gordo shouted from the top of the stairs. ‘He’s coming out! He’s coming out the window.’
Jonah turned and darted back outside. The blood roared in his ears. He leaped down the stairs and went around to his right, running down the narrow grassy space between houses. The grass was spare and brownish green. He looked up at the windows on the second floor, but saw no sign of Foerster. He stopped and glanced back out at the street – just in time to see Foerster chug past, arms and legs pumping up and down like the pistons of a steam engine.
‘Shit.’
Jonah ran back up the alley to the street.
Foerster’s slight figure dashed ahead toward Richmond Terrace. Jonah wouldn’t underestimate him this time. Foerster had a head start and he knew the neighborhood. All the same, there was nothing to do but chase him.
Gordo came out onto the front steps, but Jonah paid him no mind. He tore off after Foerster instead.
At the corner, Foerster turned right.
Please, Jonah thought, please don’t let him be gone when I reach the corner.
He turned and Foerster was up ahead, bursting across the street through the traffic. Jonah followed, mike still in hand. He cut across the street, eyes pinned on his prey, too much so. A woman in front of Jonah stopped short. She wore a kerchief on her head and a long coat, and she had an old supermarket cart piled high with rags and aluminum cans and chunks of scrap metal. Jonah crashed into it, knocking it over, but stayed on his feet. A car screeched and a scooter zig-zagged around them. People yelled.
Jonah kept running.
Foerster weaved through the milling pedestrians. He turned left and headed along the walkway toward the Staten Island ferry terminal. Jonah saw his head bobbing and weaving through the crowds. Jonah made the turn five seconds behind him.
The ferry was there. Its horn gave a blast, signaling it was ready to leave. The last stragglers were getting on board.
Shit! Could he have the ferries timed too?
Foerster ran past a fat couple and disappeared into the crowd. Jonah kept moving, waiting for Foerster to resurface. A moment later, he passed the fat couple himself and entered the terminal building through a double doorway. He stopped running and walked through the dismal waiting room. Foerster must have come through here, but now he was nowhere in sight. Damn! He had lost him
.
He couldn’t have turned right or left, Jonah was sure of that. He must have gotten on the ferry. There was a bottleneck of people up by the ferry entrance. Jonah joined the line. A man did a double-take when he saw Jonah’s microphone. Jonah flowed along behind him and climbed on board.
The ferry was the Samuel I. Newhouse, commissioned in 1982. Jonah shuffled past a plaque commemorating its namesake. Random thoughts flashed. The boat was old, and still plying its trade. Was that good or bad?
He didn’t know whether to go right or left. If he went the wrong way, and Foerster doubled back, they were sunk. No, he had to assume Gordo had followed them to the ferry terminal. If Foerster climbed off the boat, Gordo would get him. Unless Foerster had made himself invisible, which now also seemed possible. The horn blasted again. The boat was leaving. Jonah went right, flowing along with the crowd. He moved slowly through a corridor with padded chairs arrayed along the big windows.
He felt the boat lurch, then begin to move.
He walked slowly to the end of the corridor. The ferry had left the terminal and now he was going to Manhattan. He glanced out the door at the end of the corridor. Another sitting room, filled with people. He turned around.
And spotted Foerster.
Thirty yards back, Foerster slid between people up a flight of stairs. Jonah had gone right by without noticing the stairs or Foerster. Now there was a thick knot of people, a crazy New York stew-pot of races, colors and creeds between Jonah and those stairs, between he and Foerster. The people were all trying to follow Jonah into the next compartment, but Jonah wasn’t going that way anymore. He was swimming against the tide.
He pushed a small Asian man out of his way.
The man pushed Jonah back with both hands, getting his body into it. He shouted something into Jonah’s face. Jonah shoved him hard, knocking him towards the window. The man fell into a woman’s lap. But the two men behind him were also Asians. They were together. All three started yelling now. One of them punched Jonah in the chest.
Jonah had no time for this.
‘Gang way!’ he shouted. ‘Police!’
He blasted through the two remaining Asians, and the rest of the crowd parted in front of him. He burst up the stairs, went through some doors, and came to an outdoor deck. Foerster waited out there. His head swiveled, surveying the whole deck, but there was nowhere left for him to run. He stood and gaped at Jonah.
‘Let’s do this the easy way,’ Jonah said.
But Foerster didn’t do anything the easy way. He moved toward the edge of the deck. Suddenly he vaulted up onto the safety railing. A woman nearby gasped. Foerster squatted on top of the railing like an insect, watching Jonah carefully.
The railing was to Jonah’s left. He looked over it, down to the water. The boat was really moving now. It had to be a three-story jump to the harbor. The water was foaming down there as they motored along. The whole scene gave Jonah vertigo, but it didn’t seem to bother Foerster. When he was young, Foerster should have run away and become a circus freak. It would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.
A breeze had kicked up. Jonah took a couple steps toward his quarry.
Foerster grinned. His face was sweaty and pale.
‘Don’t come any closer. Take one more step and I’m out of here.’
Foerster would jump. Jonah knew he would. And there was no way Jonah was going after him. Not from this height. Not into that water. He glanced down at the microphone in his hand, and an idea struck. Foerster was less than ten feet from him. Jonah brandished the microphone like a gun. He moved into a two-fisted crouch. He hoped Foerster didn’t watch much football.
‘Freeze, Foerster!’
‘Get away from me!’ Foerster shouted.
A crowd had gathered around them.
‘You climb down off there or I’ll let you have it with this.’
‘I’m gonna jump. I swear it, I’m gonna jump if you don’t get the fuck away.’
‘This is a stun gun, motherfucker. I give you a pop, you’ll be useless. You ever get a blast from one of these? This is a new one. It’ll put you in shock. You don’t want to go in the water like that. I promise you’ll drown. You want to drown over this? Is that what you want?’
Foerster gazed down at the water below him, then back at Jonah’s stun gun.
‘Climb down RIGHT NOW. Let’s go. Climb down. On the deck.’
Foerster eyed the stun gun.
He eyed the water.
The light went out of his face. His jaw sagged.
‘That’s not a gun,’ somebody said. It was a man’s voice, coming from just a few feet behind Jonah.
‘What?’ Foerster said. His eyes focused on a point just over Jonah’s left shoulder.
‘It’s not a gun. It’s a microphone. You never seen one of those before?’
Jonah glanced in the direction of the voice. Mr Know-It-All was chubby, maybe thirty years old, with a heavy beard and wearing a Yankees windbreaker jacket. Jonah heard his own voice, coming as if from someplace else. ‘Foerster, you’re gonna die, understand? This guy has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. In another second, I’m going to shoot you and you’re going to die in that water.’
‘Then I’ll see you in hell.’
Foerster dove off the railing. Someone in the crowd – a man or a woman, Jonah couldn’t tell – screamed as Foerster’s skinny body carved a graceless, tumbling arc through the air, then splashed into the water below. Jonah rushed to the railing and saw Foerster disappear beneath the surging foam.
Jonah closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He looked again.
Foerster’s body appeared, bobbing off to the right and already well behind the boat. Jonah watched it closely, looking for signs of life. An arm moved. Then the other arm moved. A moment later Foerster was swimming, pulling hard, growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Soon he was a speck, then maybe he was there and maybe he wasn’t – a tiny spark on the water, a ray of sunlight reflecting off a discarded beer can.
The S.I. Newhouse motored along, passing the Statue of Liberty.
Up ahead, the tall buildings of lower Manhattan drew nearer. They seemed to launch themselves heavenward, like bamboo shoots springing up out of the ground.
‘Shit,’ Jonah said. ‘That’s twice now.’
He turned and faced the guy who knew what a microphone looked like. Five feet away, the guy stared at him blandly.
‘Was that any of your goddamn business?’ Jonah said.
The guy shrugged. The beard looked like it came from a costume store and was just glued right on there. ‘I made it my business. You have a problem with that?’
Jonah stepped into the punch, landing it solidly across the guy’s chin. The guy’s head swiveled to the right and he took two stumble-steps backward before falling on his ass. His head bounced off the ironwork of the floor. He was down and his eyes said he would stay down. A woman from the crowd kneeled by him and glared up at Jonah, not saying anything. All around them, people murmured.
Jonah could feel it already – the dull ache in his hand and in his wrist that by tonight would travel the length of his arm up to his shoulder. Instant karma – you paid a price for hitting people in this world. Still, punching that loudmouth felt good. It felt right. It felt like something Gordo would do.
***
‘I don’t know how it happened,’ Foerster’s mother said between heavy gasps for air. She had sobbed for a time and had only stopped a few minutes before.
‘I don’t know how Davey got so bad. I can’t tell you how smart he was as a boy. He was the smartest boy in his whole school. Everybody said so. He won big prizes for science and math.’ She shook her head. ‘And now this. In and out of jail. Beat up by the police. Always on the run.’ A long, world-weary sigh escaped her. ‘You know, his poor father must be rolling over in his grave.’
Gordo put his big hands on top of hers and let them rest there a moment. They sat at her kitchen table. Jonah had
come in a few minutes before and shook his head – missed him again. Now he hovered around, not saying anything, and in general making Gordo nervous. Gordo was working here.
He glanced around the kitchen, really noticing it for the first time. The wallpaper was peeling away in several places. The ancient cabinets were half-falling out of the wall. There was almost no counter space. The linoleum on the floor was scuffed and ripped. The plastic tablecloth was sticky with age. Through a doorway he could see into the living room. The furniture was old – old, and not in a good way – and covered in plastic. Hell, back here in the kitchen the refrigerator was five feet tall. Gordo hadn’t seen one of those in ages. If he opened the icebox, he knew what he would find. Caked ice, five inches thick on every side, with a few frozen dinners stuffed into the dim tunnel remaining.
In the aftermath of the raid, he had managed to charm her. Even after bursting into her home, even after accidentally knocking her over – thankfully, she was a sturdy woman and hadn’t broken a hip or some vertebrae when she went down – he had managed to win her over to his way of thinking. With a maniac like Foerster for a son, she must have been halfway there already.
He had helped her up, brought her here to the kitchen table, and told her that he worked for the courts. He deliberately kept it vague, allowing her to believe whatever she wanted to believe about that. It seemed she had come to the conclusion that he was a court officer of some kind, maybe a special detective who reported directly to the judges. That was a fine thing to believe. He had also told her that he was trying to help her son, not hurt him. He had told her that if the police got to Davey first, her son might not get off as easily. You could tell by the bruises and the stitches in his head that the police had very little compunction about the use of force, even deadly force. The court system was a great deal more humane than the police.
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