“Right.”
Yale, the woman, the boy and I were the only people in the waiting room, which had to be rare. I looked at the big clock on the wall and saw it was just about eleven.
“Hey,” I said. “Didn’t Peter get off at ten? Why don’t you call him? You can use my cell phone.”
“Already spoke to him, after Tredwell finished crying at me. I mean, can you believe the absolute nerve of him—he destroys my valuables and I’m nice enough to drop the charges and then he expects me to feel sorry for him because Peter didn’t want to play spanky-spanks or drip candle wax on his skinny ass—”
“Mi hijo, mi hijo. Te amo. No llores.”
“I think you should go over to Peter’s tonight.”
“Well, my God if I wasn’t sitting here I’d never believe you just said that. Too bad I don’t have a tape recorder to document you of all people telling me to go over to Peter’s, the hostile, misogynist asshole as you put it—”
“I like him. I made a mistake. You need a rest, and I don’t think you should go back to your apartment.”
“Why, Sam? I don’t have a car. There have been four car thefts on Eighth in the past three weeks, two of them involving guns.”
“Then why didn’t they take Sal’s car? He got out of the fucking car and rang your buzzer after he got shot, with the keys still in the ignition.”
“They probably thought the cops would show up with all that hollering, and who could blame them? Good lord, that woman can project.”
I just looked at him.
Yale took his time, breathing between words as if someone were extracting them from his mouth. “Sal was hidden beneath your coat.”
“You figured it out.”
“I was hoping you hadn’t.”
It was the last thing he said for a long time.
“Give me a cigarette.”
“But you don’t smoke.”
“I don’t care.”
Yale raised his cupped hand against the wind, lit two cigarettes in his mouth and handed me one. The cigarettes glowed warm orange in the purplish night, and, for a second, I felt like the heroine in a noir movie. Only this was real, and the lighting was a lot worse.
It was nearing midnight, and we were just outside the emergency room door. It felt good to be there, or at least less suffocating. “Aren’t you freezing?” Yale said.
My coat was somewhere in the ER, covered in Sal’s blood and destined for an evidence bag. But I wasn’t freezing. The cold was there, of course, cutting through my thick sweater, biting my face and bare hands. But it didn’t touch me, not really. Maybe the woman at the river had felt this way in her short-sleeved red dress. Surrounded by cold, but somehow beyond it.
I brought the cigarette to my mouth, took a deep drag and held it in. The smoke felt like hot, toxic liquid in my throat, but I didn’t cough. I exhaled slowly, took another drag.
“My God, you’re smoking,” Yale said.
“Will wonders never cease.”
“Sam, please don’t start smoking. Between that and the way you eat, you’re going to—”
“Die early?” For some reason, I found that incredibly funny. Laughter bubbled in my throat and spilled maniacally out of my mouth, and the grave way that Yale stared at me only made me laugh harder. “Oh, come on. Where’s your sense of humor?”
I sat down on the sidewalk and leaned up against the emergency room window. The ash at the end of my cigarette extended at least an inch, so I tapped it and took another deep drag. “If you tell me it’s unsanitary to sit on the sidewalk,” I said, “I’m going to hit you.”
Yale sat down next to me.
I liked the feel of the warm cigarette butt between my cold, gloveless fingers. I decided I could get used to smoking, if I were to have the luxury of getting used to anything. The butt was down to the filter, though, so I took another quick puff and reluctantly stubbed it out.
I stared out at Seventh Avenue, which looked strange and haunted without any people on it. A car drove by, its stereo blaring, and the thumping bass hung in the air for a few moments after it disappeared. I recognized the song. The Beastie Boys. “Sure Shot.”
I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and handed it to Yale. “I want you to call Peter—now.”
“I . . . I don’t have his number.”
“Bullshit.” I reached into the side pocket of his sweats. “You talked to him just before Hermyn and I showed up.”
“Get your hand off my groin.”
At the bottom of his pocket, I could feel a sharply folded piece of paper.
“Jesus, cut it out.”
There was enough streetlight for me to read the printing on it: Peter, it said, along with a phone number.
“I know you so well.”
Yale waited a few moments before responding. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“That’s really sweet, but come on. What are you going to do? Jump in front of bullets?”
“Maybe.”
“Look. It would make me feel better to know you’re safe. I’m willing to pay you money to go to Peter’s right now. Don’t make me beg you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Spend the night in the waiting room maybe.”
Yale looked at me.
“I’ve spent the night in worse places.”
“You’re confusing yourself with me again.”
I smiled.
“I’ll call Peter under one condition—you have to call Detective Krull.”
“Oh, come on. There should be police arriving any minute to question Sal now that he’s stabilized. I’ll talk to them.”
“I want you to talk to Detective Krull.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . he’ll take care of you.”
I was too tired to stand up, let alone argue with him.
He pulled his own cell phone out of the other pocket, punched in Peter’s number with a huge, dramatic sigh.
I watched Yale ask, “Did I wake you?” watched him say, “I need a place to stay tonight. I’ll explain later.” Watched him listen as Peter gave him his address, no questions asked.
After he hit “End,” I said, “Was that so hard?”
“Now it’s your turn.”
“Sorry, I don’t have his number.”
“That’s not fair. Where’s that card he gave you?”
“At my apartment. And I’ll bet you fifty bucks he’s not listed.”
Next to me, I felt my friend’s body stiffen. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”
“Huh?”
“I want you to casually turn your head and look uptown. Across Twelfth and then half a block more.”
As slowly and subtly as I could manage, I turned.
“Please tell me you’ve never seen him before. Please tell me it must just be some guy cruising me.”
But I couldn’t reply, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Across Twelfth and half a block uptown stood a tall figure in a long trench coat, a thick scarf tied around the lower half of his face. It was too dark to see the eyes, but I knew what they looked like, and I knew where they were aimed.
In daylight, they would have burned us both.
“Get up, Sam. We have to go back inside. Please get up. He’s coming closer,” said Yale. “He’s walking towards us.” My body wouldn’t budge. I was the girl in the Pinto all over again.
“Move,” Yale breathed.
Easier said than done, I wanted to say. But that wasn’t easily done either. I could not open my mouth.
“He’s crossing the street. What is wrong with you?”
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t . . .
“Fuck, Sam. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He was now less than twenty feet away. Yale put both his arms around me, and was on the verge of lifting me off the ground when suddenly, the man stopped walking. Yale tugged at me, but I was deadweight, staring, as he removed something from the pocket of his trench coat and held it out at us, jiggl
ing it a little, like a treat: the naked, headless body of a doll.
“Whoa,” said Yale.
Then came the siren. A police car sped around the corner and pulled up to the curb in front of us. I’d never been so happy to see cops in my life. Saved by a kamikaze pigeon. As if a spell had been lifted, I jumped to my feet.
I looked uptown. The sidewalk and street were empty. I would have sworn he’d been a hallucination if Yale hadn’t seen him too.
Two uniformed officers—an orange-haired woman about my age and a young guy with a dewy, English rose complexion—got out of the car.
“Thank God you’re here,” Yale said.
“You know anything about the shooting?” she asked. As she took a notepad out of her pocket, I watched the back door open.
Yale was saying, “The man who shot Sal was just over there a minute ago, but now he’s gone. I mean, we’re positive he’s the man who shot Sal, because he was watching us and he just did the sickest thing.”
“Did either of you see him shoot Mr. Merstein?”
“No. Nobody did. Not even Sal. But this man . . . He was the same man Sam saw at the Hudson River on Valentine’s Day.”
Both cops stared at him. The redhead said, “Okay. That didn’t make much sense.”
“Who’s Sam?” asked Rosy Cheeks.
“She’s Sam,” said the man who’d been in the backseat. He slammed the door shut and turned around to face us. “Hello, Sam.”
“Detective Krull,” said Yale, as if he were at a cocktail party. “She was just about to call you.”
I said, “What are you, psychic?”
“No. Just a decent listener. When the report of the shooting came in, I recognized Yale’s address. And the description of your coat . . . You must be freezing.”
I had a nearly uncontrollable urge to fall into his arms, but I didn’t.
The cops searched the block, but found no sign of the man in the black coat. By the time we went back into the waiting room, it was well past midnight. The woman and the boy had left, there was a new nurse at the admissions desk and the place seemed quieter and hotter than ever.
The heat was something of a relief now. It was so thick and stultifying that it actually felt protective.
The uniforms, Red and Rosy Cheeks, questioned Yale and me, and we told them everything—from the “eyes” phone call to my visit to the theater to Sal’s shooting to seeing the man on the street—as Krull took notes. He didn’t ask us anything directly. He just sat there, writing on his notepad, shaking his head every so often. Finally, he paged more uniforms and sent them to the Space to pick up the severed plastic head.
The new admissions nurse—who looked more like a surfer girl than a health care professional—took Rosy Cheeks and Red into the ICU to talk to Sal while Krull remained with us.
Before she left, the deeply tanned RN told us it was past visiting hours and that Hermyn was planning on spending the night. “Why not come back tomorrow, when he’s, like, fresh?” she asked, as if Sal were a loaf of bread.
“Well, she’s certainly from California,” I said, after the nurse had left.
But Yale and Krull didn’t reply. I was about to remark about how so many people in this city seemed to be from somewhere else, even if that somewhere else happened to be New Jersey.
If no one responded to that, maybe I’d cap it off with some cliché of an observation like, How many so-called New Yorkers are truly from New York City anyway? just to fill the silence. But Krull spoke first. “I’m through yelling at you, but I really wish you’d called me before you went to the theater.”
Yale said, “Can Sam spend the night at your place, Detective?”
“Better go now, Yale, Peter’s waiting.”
“Yes, you can spend the night at my place. I don’t have much furniture, but I do have a couch.”
I looked at Krull and realized that when he’d said I’m through yelling at you, I’d actually felt disappointed. “Does the couch pull out?”
“No, but it’s comfortable. And I’ve got cable.”
“Sold.”
Yale gave me a light kiss on the cheek, waved to Krull, then left. Through the big windows, I watched him hailing a cab.
“John,” I said, “I know I should’ve called and told you about the e-mail before I went to the theater. I should’ve called you as soon as I found the magazine ad with the blood on it, and when I got the phone call from that freak, I should’ve called you again.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“This is going to sound weird, but it’s almost as if calling you and telling you would make the whole situation too . . . real. When I told you about the couple I’d seen at the river, the story solidified in my mind. And then it became true. The little girl was found in the ice chest, the messages I was receiving started getting worse, then Sal . . . I didn’t want that to happen again. So I didn’t call you because—”
Krull’s eyes went soft. “I’m not bad luck.”
“I know that. I do . . .”
“I believe everything you’ve said. I want to protect you, which is something I happen to be good at. And I have a gun. Put it all together, I’m the best damn rabbit’s foot you’re ever going to get.”
I smiled.
“I want you to think of me that way. As your good luck charm. I want you to tell me everything that scares you, okay?”
I didn’t say anything, but I did reach into my bag and take out the e-mail I’d received at the Space. “Maybe you could track down the return address?”
Krull looked at it. “Maybe I could.”
Krull’s apartment was in Stuyvesant Town, a large, East Side complex where I’d heard lots of cops lived. I’d never been there before, but Yale had, about four years earlier. With a cop, in fact. Yale had been so drunk he could barely see straight, and when he entered the cop’s apartment, he’d been amazed. Hard-cover, vintage books lined all four of the living room walls, from floor to ceiling. A literary cop, Yale had thought, falling head over heels in lust—until he realized that none of the books bore legible titles. When he reached out to touch the spine of one of them, he learned the sad truth: bookshelf wallpaper.
I told Krull that story as we careered toward his Stuyvesant Town apartment in the backseat of the police car with Red and Rosy Cheeks in the front. “I wonder if I’ve ever met that guy,” Krull said, laughing.
Rosy Cheeks said, “I don’t know any gay cops.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I’ve never had a cop hit on me. Gay guys always hit on me.”
Red, who was behind the wheel, turned and stared at him. “Why?”
“I dunno. They think I’m hot?”
She shrugged. “Maybe they think you’re gay.”
“No fucking way.”
“Most gay men aren’t interested in straight guys. They’ve got some kind of radar.”
“Shut up, Fiona.”
“I’m serious. My cousin told me that, and he’s gay, so he ought to know.”
“I said shut the hell up!”
Krull rolled his eyes. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would diffuse this idiotic argument, so I watched the kid stewing in the passenger seat, his ears turning purplish. I didn’t like the fact he had a gun on him. He seemed too emotional to be carrying something lethal. Besides, I’d had enough to do with guns this evening to last me a lifetime.
A lifetime. To me, the expression had always meant forever, and I supposed it still did. I supposed each person’s lifetime was her own, personal forever. But for Ariel, forever had lasted three years. When Yale was touching the cop’s wallpaper, she hadn’t even been born.
Mi hijo, mi hijo. Te amo. No llores.
“Have you guys found out her real name?” I said.
“Who?” asked Rosy Cheeks, his voice still tight from anger.
“Ariel . . . The girl in the ice chest.”
“Her name was Sarah,” Krull said. “Sarah Grace Flannigan. Her pare
nts reported her missing a week ago.”
Fiona said, “She was with her dad last, at that playground on Tenth and Hudson? She was on the swing set, and he turned his back on her for half a second to get his video camera out of the bag. Turned around with the camera on and got a shot of an empty swing. She’d disappeared into thin air, poor little girl.”
Not Ariel but Sarah. Sarah Grace, waving to her dad from a swing on a fenced-in city playground. Sarah Grace Flannigan in her purple jeans and her Disney T-shirt and probably a purple sweater and a purple coat. They’d taken the sweater and the coat before they squeezed her body into a shiny, pale blue picnic cooler. Because corpses don’t need to keep warm. “Do you mind if I crack the window back here?”
“Sure.” Fiona released the auto lock. “How were the parents, Detective?”
“Pretty devastated,” Krull said.
Mi hijo, mi hijo . . .
“Did they give you any leads?” asked Rosy Cheeks.
“Not really. The only unusual thing was that Sarah had found herself a new imaginary playmate in the past month or so. Which wasn’t even that unusual because the kid was an only child, with an active imagination. She had a new imaginary playmate every week.”
I think you’re turning into quite the young novelist, eh, Daniel?
I said, “Was the playmate a man with sunglasses?”
“Her playmate was Cinderella,” said Krull.
No one said anything else for the rest of the ride. I watched rows of low, darkened walk-ups flash by like dream fragments and breathed the cold air that streamed through the crack in the window, thinking about how sad it was to finally know Ariel’s real name.
12
You Shook Me All Night Long
Krull’s building occupied one of the nicer spots in the complex—across the street from the East River, with just one building to the left and nothing to the right but the tree-lined sidewalk. His apartment was on the twelfth floor, and the lobby was brightly lit and under-decorated with white linoleum floors, rows of shiny metal maiboxes and nothing else—not even a fake plant—to break the tidy monotony. As we entered the narrow, old-fashioned elevator, Krull muttered, “Jake’s going to be pissed off.”
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