”Umm?”
“Are the Dickersons real? I mean, have they always been the Dickersons?”
“They're real.” Hershey grinned. “Sonnenberg says only a vengeful God could make an Allison Dickerson. The house comes in handy, though. Doc went in to set up an intercom security system for them, and their kitchen ended up looking like Mission Control.”
“It's good to see you smile, Roger.”
“Yeah.” The smile faded.
“Nuts! I made you self-conscious, didn't I?”
Hershey touched her hand reassuringly, but for several minutes he didn't speak. Then, “Melanie?”
“Yes, Roger?”
“Do you ever think you're crazy?”
“No.” She turned to look into his face. “I'm not crazy, Roger. Neither are you.”
“You never feel as if you're not real? Like you asked about the Dickersons?”
“Oh, Roger.” Melanie slipped an arm around his shoulder. “All that happened is we took different names and changed a few habits. And we learned to use our minds a little differently than those people.” She gestured toward the men and women who stood watching the fire's progress. “Look at them, Roger. What do you see?”
“Just people.”
“Ordinary people, Roger. Bored people. Quiet desperation people. Most of them are miserable and half of them would leap at a chance to be like us. To be almost anything they would want to be. To start whole new lives without ever looking back.”
“Melanie?” Roger Hershey gave her a squeeze.
“Yes?”
“You know that's a bunch of bullshit, don't you?”
“Yes.”
17
It was almost five. Manhattan's homebound traffic crawled northward in fits and starts while the southbound lanes were nearly empty. Connor Harrigan drove slowly nonetheless, unwilling to risk being stopped for a speeding violation in a car lately stolen from the parking lot of the Westchester Country Club. Two hot-wired ignition cables swung freely below the dashboard. He eased the accelerator further at the warning sign for the Ninety-sixth Street exit and allowed the car to drift into the right lane of the FDR Drive. Baker, peering forward from the passenger seat, had pointed in that direction.
“You got any particular destination in mind?” Harrigan asked.
“Just the park.” Baker answered with a squint of annoyance, as if his concentration had been interrupted. “Go down York Avenue and then cut crosstown to the Seventy-second Street entrance.”
“While you're talking to your pals, ask them whether Peck got his ass blown off in that fire back there.”
Baker shrugged, indicating that he didn't know and they wouldn't either. Nor did he much care. He had Tina on his mind. Tina and Tanner Burke.
“What about the message Peck got that made Sonnenberg decide playtime was over?”
“Ben Coffey?” The sadness of that news had barely struck him in the rush to escape the smoke and the guns. It was hard to imagine that Howard—Ben—was dead. So much talent. So much torment. So much waste. So little in common between them and yet so much. He was the first, perhaps the only one until Tanner, to whom Baker could talk. The only one who understood the loneliness that came with the talent. The sense of being apart.
“No,” Harrigan answered, ”I mean the second part. Peck read that and acted like he had something big going for him.”
“What about it, Charley?”
”i don't know.”
”I.. . Charley doesn't know,” he told Harrigan. “All that means is that it wasn't about me or Sonnenberg. Charley would have heard.”
“You're sure?” Harrigan raised an eyebrow. “How could it not be about Sonnenberg?”
Baker shrugged again and returned his concentration to Tina. They were on York Avenue headed south but barely moving. A sewer maintenance crew at Ninetieth Street caused a bottleneck that brought traffic almost to a halt.
“Baker, stop with the shrugs,” Harrigan snapped. “I'm trying to anticipate the guy if he's still on his feet.”
”I don't know, Harrigan,” Baker answered patiently.
“Then help me figure, for Christ's sake. What did you do, give up thinking when you got Charley and the beastie?”
”I happen to have something more important on my mind, Harrigan.”
Connor Harrigan ignored the answer. “It's not you, it's not Sonnenberg, and it's not Coffey because they covered him in part one. Could Peck's people have nailed whoever helped you down at the Plaza?”
“No.” That was Roger and Melanie. Baker wasn't sure whether Harrigan knew their current names or what good the knowledge might do him. But there seemed no point in volunteering it. “It's the same two who were covering us on the golf course. They're probably safe. They won't go back to the lives they had before.”
“Okay, scratch five. Who does that leave?” The car moved forward into the intersection. A line of buses blocked most of the next street.
“Isn't there a faster way to get to the park? Turn right here, Harrigan. Try Second Avenue.”
“Where in the park, by the way?”
“Sonnenberg only said the park.”
Harrigan heaved a sigh and swung onto Ninetieth Street, headed west. “That park is five miles long, Baker, and maybe two miles across. What do you say we get a little more specific.”
”I told you. Seventy-second Street.” Baker said this as if he had a reason. There was none. Only that the Seventy-second Street entrance had led him once before to Tanner Burke.
“tanner burke”
“What about Tanner, Charley?”
“go slow, baker”
“Charley says slow down.” Baker tapped Harrigan's arm.
“What for? The wimp sniffs out radar too?”
“He's not a wimp, Harrigan. He's my friend. Slow down. I think he hears something.”
Harrigan rolled his eyes but slowed the car to a jogger's pace.
“Charley, is it Tanner?”
”i think so. keep thinking tanner, baker, i think she hears when you think tanner.”
“What about Tina?” Baker's fingers dug into the padded dashboard.
”i don't know, there, baker, i heard tanner, she's calling you, baker.” Harrigan turned left onto Second Avenue. He watched Baker, fascinated. Baker's eyes were open but they seemed sightless. The car reached Eighty-sixth Street.
“no, baker, she's behind us now. she was on that street with trees.”
“Harrigan.” Baker blinked. “Take your next right and go back. Tanner's here someplace.”
“You're shitting me.”
“Just go right.”
Harrigan signaled onto Eighty-third Street toward Third Avenue. His eyes closed, Baker directed two more right turns and then, with a waving motion of his hand, told Harrigan to slow and then stop. He opened his eyes to see a red brownstone with a closed antique shop on the first floor. Baker's face brightened. “She's here,” he said, reaching for the door latch. Harrigan grabbed his shoulder.
“Wait a second.” Harrigan's face was disbelieving. “You mean she's here? Right here in this red dump?”
Baker nodded and shook off his hand. “Let's go,” he said.
“Hold it,” Harrigan insisted. ”I don't want to sound negative or anything, but don't you think this is a little bit incredible? I mean, we drive into a city this size looking for a dame we're not even sure is here and we go almost straight to her address?”
”What about that, Charley?”
“you mean what i think?”
“Please, Charley”
”i think sonnenberg knows where she is. sonnenberg knows we can hear if we get close enough, sonnenberg knows when he says go to the park there's only this way”
“Thank you, Charley.” Baker understood.
“thank you, baker, it was nice what you said about how i'm your friend.”
“You're welcome, Charley.” Baker turned to Harrigan. “It's not so incredible. I'll explain later. Charley, is she alon
e?”
“she doesn't know, she thinks so. there's a thing on her eyes so she can't see, but she knows you're here, she's yelling 'jared' but not out loud in case someone's there.”
“Let's go.” Baker stepped to the street.
Harrigan, his gun drawn, followed Baker up the narrow stairs leading to the only apartment on the second floor. “Shit!” he muttered, noting the heavy metal-clad door with three different locks cut into it. “Half this goddamned town is like a fort these days. That bottom lock is for a cane bolt on the other side. Your friend Charley got us this far, see if he can dig up a set of keys.”
“Abel?”
”i can open it, baker.”
“If there's no one inside to hurt us, Abel. I want you back before Tanner sees you.”
“she saw charley. now you like charley.”
“It's not the same, Abel. Just open the door. No more.”
Baker looked at Harrigan and then at his revolver. “Don't get nervous with that ,” he told him. “Abel's going to let us in.” Harrigan's lips parted and he shook his head. He understood Baker's words, but their meaning was slower to penetrate.
“Abel. Come out, Abel.”
Harrigan fought his impulse to move out of Abel's reach. At last he was seeing it. All of it. And still his mind could not believe it. He watched as a man he's come to know, even like, was changing before his eyes into something else in steps that were impossible to describe because they were so very small. Nothing changed, yet everything changed. The effect was staggering. Now there was a different man, a man Harrigan neither knew nor liked, a man who made Connor Harrigan wish he could turn and run. The man smiled at him and nodded once. A greeting. Harrigan shivered.
Abel turned from Harrigan and placed both hands over the tarnished doorknob. He lifted slowly. Harrigan heard a grinding sound above the door and looked up. The lintel was buckling. Splintering. Thick chips of layered paint came away and fell over Abel's shoulders. A growing strip of light appeared at the base of the heavy door. Abel released the knob, now half-crushed and bent on its spindle toward the ceiling. Stepping away, he smiled again at Harrigan, then raised one foot and smashed it against the door. It reeled inward under the blow, tearing loose from its hinges.
Abel bowed toward Harrigan, still smiling terribly, and with a sweep of his arm invited Harrigan to enter. Harrigan returned a show of teeth and stepped past him. As he looked away, he felt a small sting on the fingers of his right hand. Harrigan glanced down. The fingers of his gun hand met. The hand was empty. Harrigan crouched and spun, his arms raised in a defense he knew was futile against the hands that had snatched away his weapon so quickly that he'd sensed no motion. But there was no attack. There was only Abel smiling at him, the revolver held out on the flat palm of one hand. Harrigan swallowed and took back the weapon Abel offered, then stepped through the door, struggling to ignore the chill on the back of his neck.
A room on the left, the kitchen, was empty. A short hallway, dark with faded beige paint, led to an even darker living room and a series of doors at the other end. The first one Harrigan reached was a walk-in closet. Harrigan noted a curious mixture of clothing inside but turned away. The second door was a bathroom. The light from a small opaque window showed fixtures stained by years of dripping faucets and pink tiles cracked by the building's settling. He found Tanner Burke behind the middle door.
She was taped to a chair. More packing tape, with a folded washcloth underneath, covered her eyes. Another strip covered her mouth. She cocked her head fearfully at the squeak of the floorboards under Harrigan.
“It's Connor, miss. I'm with Jared.” He reached first for the blindfold.
“get back, abel. quickly”
“Mmmph!” Tanner's head bobbed up and down. Her chest heaved in relief. Harrigan pried loose a corner of the blindfold, enough to grip. 'This'll sting, lass. Hold on.”
“abel!”
Harrigan tore at the tape. Tanner's eyes winced at the pain and the light but flashed gratefully at Harrigan. Now they found Jared Baker and struggled to focus on his face.
Abel moved forward. With one hand he reached for the remaining tape that gagged her and stripped it brutally from her mouth. He grinned at her. He grinned until Baker was far enough back to cover his face with his hands.
Tina Baker wondered dimly where they'd taken her this time. She knew she should be concerned, and that Tanner... Liz ... got all upset when she was being carried out, but it was just too hard to keep her mind on anything. It was fairly far, across a bridge and back partly toward Connecticut. Westchester someplace. A big stone house at the end of a long driveway. A big couch in a room that was too cold and too dark. Stanley knew she was cold. He'd put his jacket over her, and now he was trying to start a fire in one of those big carved fireplaces like they had in castles.
He wasn't good at it. He just used logs and a lot of newspaper, but the fire was catching anyway. Its light flickered upon the shape of another man who stood in a doorway, watching her. He was dressed all in black. The man wore one of those old-fashioned Hombergs low on his forehead and a black coat with a big collar turned up around his cheeks. She couldn't see much of his face. Only that he was staring at her in a way that began to make her afraid. Like that judge. The one in the hospital who stood staring at her and wanted to know why his son screamed and she did not. It wasn't him. She knew that the judge was dead. It was just that this man reminded her of him and that there was something familiar about him. She didn't know what. After that last needle it was hard to think about anything for very long.
“Stanley,” the man said. He spoke, she thought, like something was wrong with his throat.
“Yes, Mr. Tortora.”
“Is everything attended to, Stanley?”
“The kid's ready.” Stanley pointed. “She ain't under too deep. Two of Dr. Sonnenberg's associates are bringing his boat down to the Seventy-second Street Basin, then they're gonna meet us. If the alarm systems are off, we're all set.”
“That has been attended to, Stanley. And the five guards and their dogs have been relieved.”
“Mr. Tortora.” Stanley looked into his eyes. “You're sure you want to go through with this?”
“It's quite necessary, Stanley.”
“How about Sonnenberg? I mean, with him being upset about his guy Coffey, maybe he should get more rest first.”
“He's resting now, Stanley. He is gratified by your concern. Does the child know where we're going?”
Stanley shrugged. ”I ain't told her.”
“Then we'll observe her powers of deduction as well. Come, Stanley. It is time to go to the park.”
It was less than an hour since the sun had set, yet the night seemed deeper where they were. Baker chose the place where they would wait and listen. It was along the low path that led to the zoo, not far from where he'd first heard Tanner's scream. He heard many sounds and voices now. Too many. Like an untuned radio, they crossed and fought each other. There were the zoo sounds. The grunts of nocturnal hunters frustrated by the bars of their cages. Smaller animals, their natural prey, bleated alarms as if doubting the security of their own enclosures. From the roadway overhead he heard the occasional hum of homebound cars. From Tanner, who shivered on a rock nearby with Connor Harrigan, he heard thoughts of Tina, a gun, something about a gun, and of Abel. It was the thoughts of Abel that made her cold. Harrigan too had thoughts of Abel but mostly about a man called Stanley. Satisfied thoughts. Thoughts of a man who'd solved a puzzle. Baker could not follow exactly. It was about Stanley Levy, and Tortora, and Sonnenberg, and the woman Tanner told him about who looked like Stanley. The pieces were there, but they would not come together in Baker's mind the way they seemed to be assembling in Harrigan's. Something blocked them. Nonsense nursery rhymes all garbled up and walls of brick. It was even more confused when Charley listened. Baker stopped trying. He tried to push his thoughts of Tanner and Harrigan aside like so many cobwebs in the dark and focus instead on Tina.
> Tina. He could see her in his mind, but he knew that what he saw could not be happening. Tina was drifting through time. Through history. He saw her first in the land of the Egyptian kings, floating over flat deserts lit by stars, past ancient tombs and limestone carvings. Now she floated forward in time, vaulting over centuries. It was the age of Ivanhoe. There were jousting knights with lances thrust forward. Weapons that cut and flailed. Foot soldiers in visored helmets standing stiffly at attention when she passed.
He was hearing Tina, he was sure, but he was hearing her in a dream she must be having. She was asleep. Still drugged, more likely. And dreaming about places she had read about but never seen. She did not seem troubled. She was smiling. There was a new place now. A place that was real. They'd been there once together. Where? Charley? Do you know where that is?
“Jared.” Tanner touched his shoulder. Then her arms hugged each other against a chill that was not in the air.
‘Take my jacket,” he said. Baker slipped off the suede coat that had covered her a night earlier and put it over her. She placed an arm around his waist before he could step away and steered him back toward Connor Harrigan.
“We'll find her,” she whispered, leaning into his chest. “I'm so sorry, Jared.”
“Sorry?” He looked down at her. “What could you have to be sorry about?”
”A lot, I guess,” she said softly, not caring that Harrigan could hear. “For not being able to look at you on the way over here. For not having met some other way. Especially for not taking care of Tina.”
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