Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

I remember looking at Ace hanging on the edge of the pool watching us go. I tried to remember his face. Had he been angry, sad, guilty? Had he been jealous? I couldn’t recall.

  “We never really talked about it,” I answered Jake. “But my father seemed to think so.” My head was starting to ache again.

  “How jealous do you think he is?” he asked.

  “Not jealous enough to do this, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said, pulling the article from my pocket, unfolding it and looking at the picture yet again. Ghosts of a woman and a little girl stared back at me.

  Jake didn’t answer me. He ambled toward the door. I sensed that he was uncomfortable in Max’s place, wanted to leave. I didn’t ask him why. I suppose the apartment was intimidating in its opulence. As an artist, Jake must have known that the Miró on one wall, the Dalí sketch on another, were original pieces. Zack had told me once that he felt like he was hanging out in a museum when we were at Max’s place, that a guard might come and ask him to take his feet off the couch.

  “But jealous enough maybe to fan the flame, to make you think there was more to this than there is?”

  I looked at him. Why did everyone always suspect the worst of Ace? Just because he had an addiction, that didn’t make him a psychopath and a liar. Did it? Jake lifted his hands, I guess reacting to whatever he saw on my face.

  “Just a question,” he said. And it was a valid question. If I weren’t so defensive about my brother, maybe from years of defending him to Zack, I would have seen that. But at that moment, it just made me feel like I wanted to distance myself from Jake a little bit. Nobody likes people who speak a truth you’re not prepared to examine.

  On the way out, I asked Dutch if my father had taken anything with him when he left, if Dutch had helped him out with any boxes. Dutch said no, that my father had just come for a while, then left with nothing.

  “Why? Something missing?” he asked with a frown.

  No, not really. Just a little girl named Jessie. I smiled and shook my head.

  I was quiet on the train and on the walk back to our building, and if Jake minded, he didn’t show it.

  I’d made a decision. I was being tossed around in this situation like a skiff in a hurricane and I was sick of it. All I had so far was the information other people had given me. The mysterious freak sending me mail, my parents, my brother, even Jake. Everyone was telling me his version of the truth, and all of it was different. The only way to make any sense of what was happening was to find out for myself what the truth was. So I decided that it was time to head up to the Bronx. I told Jake. He didn’t think it was a good idea and tried to be polite about it.

  “It was your idea,” I said as we stood at the door to his apartment.

  “Yes. It was my idea for me to go. Not you. Not we. Me.”

  “Why is this your problem?” I asked. “Why do you care about this?”

  He turned and looked at me, put his hands on my shoulders. I could have melted, really, beneath the intensity I saw on his face.

  “I don’t care about this. I care about you. A lot. More than I should this soon, I guess.” He paused here, sighed, and looked down at the floor. I saw the color come up in his cheeks. “But I can’t let you do something I think is dangerous without at least speaking my mind. For Christ’s sake, Ridley, someone’s watching you. Have you forgotten that? He’s been at the pizzeria, in the building.”

  “Right. So I’m not even safe here in my home. So what difference does it make if I go to the Bronx or not? You can come with me.”

  Does my logic sound a bit shaky? I guess it was. But I didn’t have a lot of experience with this sort of thing. I was just consumed all of a sudden with a desire to know what was happening to me, to find out for myself, not to be told or lied to or manipulated by people with an agenda that might or might not conflict with the truth. I told him this much.

  “Ridley, be reasonable.”

  This made me angry. I didn’t like being talked to like a kid. Be reasonable? Like just because I disagreed with him that made him reasonable and me unreasonable? How typical.

  “No, fuck you. Don’t patronize me,” I said. Temper, temper.

  He sighed. “Okay.”

  He walked into his apartment and I followed, closing the door behind me. He took off his leather jacket and flung it on the couch. I tried not to look at how the black shirt he wore clung to every ripped muscle on his chest. He sat down.

  “You’re on your own, then,” he said, and looked at me. “I go alone or I don’t go at all.”

  He was bluffing.

  “That’s it? What’s the point of that?”

  “I won’t willingly put you in a situation that I think might be dangerous for you. If you want to put yourself in harm’s way, fine. But I won’t be a part of it.”

  Isn’t it just like a man to pretend that trying to control you is the same as trying to protect you?

  His jaw tightened and I could see a muscle throbbing there. He was bluffing. I was sure of it. I didn’t really want to go it alone, by the way.

  “Great. Good. See you later.” I was definitely bluffing.

  But he didn’t move, just kept those eyes on me as if expecting me to come to my senses. So I left the apartment and slammed the door. All the way down the stairs I expected him to come after me but he didn’t. Then I was on the street again. I took a left onto Fourteenth Street and caught a bus to the West Side. I took the 1/9 to 242nd Street in the Bronx, out of sheer stubbornness. All the way up there, a long train ride, for nearly an hour I wondered what the hell I was going to do when I got there.

  The New York City subway system is pretty mythic, don’t you agree? Whether you’ve ridden it or not, you probably have a picture in your head of what it’s like. And it’s probably not a pretty picture. When you close your eyes, you probably see these old red cars that rattle and shake their way beneath the streets of Manhattan. In your mind’s eye, they’re covered with graffiti, lights flickering and going dark around corners. In your imagination, they are likely the habitat for every rapist, mugger, murderer, gang member, and serial killer in the five boroughs. Old New Yorkers, the people I know who grew up on these trains, have told me that once, in the not-too-distant past, that description wasn’t too far off. But in my New York, the subway is just another way to get around, probably the fastest way in most cases. The new cars are graffiti resistant and regularly maintained. The most offensive thing about them is the unfortunate beige-and-orange color scheme that seems to dominate. Between the homeless people, the rush-hour crushes, the odd, often inexplicable and interminable delays, and the fact that the stations themselves are not air-conditioned (making them feel like the first layer of hell in the summer), the subways are probably one of the most unpleasant places on the planet. But I’ve never felt unsafe on the trains.

  You can usually count on people all around you, no matter what time it is, but by the time the local 1/9 train passed Ninety-sixth Street and was crawling up to the Bronx, there were only a few people in my car. A young kid in a private-school uniform carrying a bulging backpack listened to a Walkman, rocking to a beat that I could just hear over the rumble of the train. An old woman in a navy wool coat and flowered skirt read a romance novel. A bald (as in shaved, not as in losing) guy in a leather jacket and faded jeans dozed, his head back, mouth agape. By 116th Street I was nodding a bit myself, not sleeping but slipping into a reverie, thoughts of my uncle Max circling my consciousness.

  For all his joviality, my uncle Max was a powerful man in New York City, but it wasn’t the kind of important that makes much of an impression on you as a kid. When you’re twelve it’s not a big deal that your uncle plays golf with senators and congressmen or that you see his picture in magazines like Forbes rubbing elbows with Donald Trump and Arthur Zeckendorf. Maybe if he’d been hanging out backstage with Bono or Simon LeBon, I might have paid more attention. But real-estate development isn’t exactly sexy, if you know what I mean.

  Late
r on, after my first foundation ball, I started to get the idea of the kind of influence my uncle had, the kind of people he knew. He was a major campaign contributor to people like Al D’Amato, George Pataki, and Rudolph Giuliani. The guy was connected in a serious way. He had to be in his business. You had to have a way to part the sea of red tape, a way to get around zoning laws—and if not, a way to see that those zoning laws get changed. There were whispers, too, of other, shadier connections. And if you think about it, as a real-estate developer on the East Coast, there was no way he could do business without associating with the people who controlled the construction industry. The fact that my uncle’s business interests sometimes coincided with the business interests of less-than-reputable characters had always stayed in the periphery of my mind. I mean, my uncle’s lawyer was Alexander Harriman, a lawyer known for his notorious client list. But I’d never devoted any serious thought to it. Until now.

  I always think of him just as my uncle Max, never as the man that he was separate from our family. A powerful businessman, rich, influential, lonely, and the only women around him seemed, I don’t know, transient, hollow in their affections, going through the motions. Were they call girls? I wondered now. Or were they just gold diggers, women who spent time with him for the gifts he could buy, the places he could take them, the other people he knew and had influence over? Uncle Max, I said in case he could hear me, I’m sorry, but maybe I never knew you. It’s funny how the titans in our lives, the people who have the most influence over our childhoods, over the people we become, never seem like people, flawed and separate from us. They’re like archetypes, The Mother, The Father, The Good Uncle, existing only as characters in the movie of our lives. When other facets of their personalities come clear and other elements of their lives uncovered, it’s shocking, as if they suddenly peeled their face off and revealed another. Does it seem like that to you? Well, maybe it’s just me.

  The train jerked and rocked and I opened my eyes to find that I was alone in the car with the sleeping man wearing a leather jacket and faded denims. Just one more stop, I knew, and the train would move from the underground tunnel to the elevated tracks. I closed my eyes again. Then I thought, Wasn’t that guy all the way on the other end of the car before? The thought made my belly hollow out and my throat go dry. I opened my eyes just a crack and saw that the man was now wide awake and staring at me with a strange half-smile. My breathing came deeper and I tried to keep my chest from heaving. I noticed a long case on the ground beneath his legs. It looked like it might hold some kind of instrument. I felt a little relieved at the sight of it. I’ve always had this theory that you have nothing to fear from people who have something to carry. The murderer, mugger, rapist, even your random serial killer would not carry anything on his nefarious errands. I mean, think about it, he needs both his hands free. Even a backpack would slow him down.

  But that feeling of relief passed as I noticed him inching closer to me. The train flooded suddenly with lamplight as we moved aboveground. I cleared my throat and sat up, opened my eyes. He immediately dropped his head to his shoulder and pretended to be sleeping again.

  I stared at him, not sure what to do. My legs felt as if they were filled with sand and my heart was doing step aerobics in my chest. But I forced myself to get up and walk to the front of the car, where I heaved the door open and moved between the cars to the next one. Then I turned around and through the windows looked back the way I’d come. The man sat there looking at me, with that same half-smile, but his eyes seemed dark with menace. I stood staring at him, convinced that as long as my eyes were open, he wouldn’t come any closer. I thought about Zelda, about what she had said—God, was it only yesterday?—about someone looking for me, someone who was no good. Was this the man she’d seen? Was he following me? I couldn’t be sure. After all, there’s no shortage of staring freaks and weirdos in this city.

  The train stopped at the next station and we were still in a staring contest. But when the doors opened, he got up suddenly, grabbed his case, and left the train. If he came into my car, I was ready to flee through the door to the platform, and move toward the front car, where I knew I would find the conductor. I stood for what seemed like an hour, waiting for him to come in after me. I was all alone, no one in any of the cars I could see from where I was standing and no one on the platform. But then the tone sounded and the conductor said over the intercom, “Stand clear the closing doors.” The doors closed. Then jerked open again.

  “Hands and bags away from the door,” the conductor said over the PA system, sounding annoyed.

  I moved to look out onto the platform, but I didn’t see the man standing there or walking away. I went back to the window and looked through the train into the other cars but didn’t see him there, either. Where is he? I wondered, thinking I should be able to see him on the platform if he’d exited. By now I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that my hands were shaking. Again the tone sounded and the doors closed, then pulled apart again at the last second. I started to move through the train toward the conductor’s car in the front. It was so quiet, I could hear only the sound of the heavy doors pushing open and then slamming hard behind me. I kept looking behind me, each time expecting to see the man in pursuit.

  “Stand clear the closing doors, asshole,” the conductor said loudly. I stopped and looked out the window of the car I was in. Then I saw him, standing on the platform as if he’d moved from behind one of the pillars. The doors finally closed and the train moved slowly away from the station. My body flooded with relief and I sank onto one of the benches, leaned my head back.

  “I’m getting paranoid,” I said aloud to no one.

  Then I opened my eyes to see that he stood staring at me as the train moved past him, one hand raised in farewell, that same smile plastered on his face. I didn’t wave back.

  I got off at the last stop, still a bit shaken, and walked out onto the landing. Though it was dark, I could see in the glow of the street lamps that Van Cortlandt Park was in high color, its acres of trees painted gold and orange, deep red against the still-green grass of the parade ground to my right. Some kids played handball in the courts next to the staircase as I made my descent to the sidewalk, and their cheers and cries lifted into the air. Riverdale is one of the last nice areas in the Bronx, and that evening it felt safe and idyllic.

  At the bottom of the stairs, a black ’69 Firebird idled in the street. The engine hummed and rumbled, communicating power like a dog baring its teeth. Jake sat at the wheel. I tried not to smile in relief, kept my eyes ahead and walked past him.

  “Hey,” he called as I passed by. “I thought you were bluffing.”

  He trailed me with his car, moving slowly up Broadway, causing the drivers behind him to lean on their horns before passing him by, hurling obscenities.

  “Come on, Ridley,” he said finally after a few blocks of this. “You win.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I got into the passenger side and he sped off. The car was cherry inside, leather polished and unblemished, smelling of Armor All. An Alpine compact disc changer was mounted beneath the dash; the knobs on the dash and the gearshift were all new, brushed chrome. It was exactly the kind of car I would have envisioned for him. It was tough, but there was something careful about it, too.

  I noticed that we passed the address he found for Amelia Mira by a block before he did a U-turn and got closer so that we could see the row house from the car. After pulling under the large, old branches of some trees beside the park, he handed me a worn blue baseball cap and some Oakley sunglasses, both too big for me, and made me put them on.

  “You don’t want anyone to recognize you,” he said. “That would sort of blow the whole point of our being up here.”

  I still hadn’t said anything and I could tell it was starting to get to him. We sat like that for a few minutes. Finally he said, “Christ. Are you always this stubborn?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “I really am.”

  I
looked at him then and smiled. He reached for my hand and I took it in mine.

  “Ridley, I really didn’t think you’d come up here by yourself. I never would have let you walk out if I had thought that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it because now that I was looking at him, I could see that I had scared him. The relief on his face was clear, and in his eyes I could read his concern. I felt bad for acting like a brat. Again.

  “You know what, Jake? I’m just feeling manipulated. Everyone’s got a different version of what’s going on and I don’t know what to believe. I can’t do this alone, but I need to see things for myself. Do you get that?”

  He nodded his understanding. “I get it.” I saw something pass across his face, but it was gone before I could put a name to it.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  “We sit and watch,” he said, looking at the scene around us. It was a cold but gorgeous autumn evening, kids still playing soccer in the park, people jogging, walking dogs. It seemed like a strange night for a stakeout, in the middle of all these people living their quiet, happy lives. It should have been raining, with an occasional rumble of thunder and flash of lightning. The park should have been full of thugs, gangs ready to rumble.

  “Watch for what?”

  “Hopefully,” he said with a shrug, “we’ll know it when we see it.”

  I thought about this and what it could mean—hours of just sitting in the car. Sometimes getting your own way is not as gratifying as it should be. He was smiling at me as if he could read my thoughts. My stomach growled and I had to pee.

  After making Jake take me to the Burger King we’d passed earlier so that I could get a Whopper and relieve my aching bladder, we parked across the street from 6061½ and watched as people came and went. Dark houses came to life, interior lights began to glow. Some of the houses went dark again as we waited. But 6061½ remained black and still among them.

  We didn’t talk much, but the silence between us was comfortable. Every half hour or so, Jake would turn on the car for a while to let the heat run and take some of the chill out of the air. I was a little scared and a little uncomfortable, not sure what we were looking for and not sure what we would do if and when we found it. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of complaining aloud. After a couple of hours, I climbed into the backseat and lay on my belly, peering out the side window, just for a change of position. I could just see the top of Jake’s head.