And then we heard it, and later we learned it was a second plane. This one hit the south tower, on the side facing south. We couldn’t have seen it from Carmine. Maybe I would’ve seen it from West, gliding beautifully, horribly, toward the tower, toward the parents in the tower, the people.
“We can’t go home,” Bella said. She’d started to cry. (No brave face this time. No attempt to hold it back.) She was clicking the top of her pen, repeatedly, without rhythm.
By then we were in a hotel, sitting crosslegged on a king-sized bed, staring at CNN, at BBC, watching on TV what was happening less than two miles from where we sat. Bella punched numbers on the phone on the nightstand. She couldn’t reach her friends, all of whom had been in school with her. Except one.
Diddio.
But I knew he was safe, I knew. He would’ve stumbled into bed only a few hours earlier, after dragging himself home from a late show at a club, a long hangout bullshit session backstage or out by the band’s bus, then would’ve stopped at the Delphi or another greasy spoon for a meal.
Maybe he would’ve gone up to the roof of his building to watch it after the first attack.
“Oh, man,” he’d moan sadly, as the shock started to settle in. “Oh, man.”
I knew what he’d do.
No, I didn’t.
He threw back on the clothes he’d worn the night before and he ran over to Harrison to save me, to help me find Bella.
And when the north tower collapsed he was at my back door, trying to warn me. He figured I was in my office, deep in my haze, searching online for Weisz, for knowledge that would help me locate the Madman, something.
Then he came around on Harrison, passing my front door, and he was on Greenwich when the cloud of debris and smoke and ash came and he fell back as frantic people scrambled to avoid the terrible gray wave, to find safety, and someone fell over him, and then someone else. Finally, he crawled to the side of my home and rolled up in a ball, where he stayed, he told us, until he no longer saw, no longer heard, the pounding, scraping shoes of desperate people trying to outrace wreckage, trying to escape. Until he no longer heard the shouting, the screams, cries.
Covered in white ash, his eyes stinging, his throat raw, he stumbled to my front steps.
Which is where he was sitting, sobbing, when Luther Addison arrived.
Addison came to find Bella and me, just as our closest friend had done.
After determining that we weren’t home, he drove Diddio to St. Vincent’s.
Diddio was fine, the doctors told him. Sprained wrist.
Around 4 P.M., still in my running outfit, I walked over to Midtown North. They called up and Luther came down the stairs and he threw his arms around me. When he stepped back, he said, “Nobody could find you.”
“We’re all right,” I told him. “I got Bella and kept going.”
He insisted we come to his place. Giselle, he said, would set us up: dinner, a place to sleep. Clothes for Bella.
I pulled my ATM card from my pocket. I took it with me when I set out to run. On the way to the hotel, as empty-eyed people marched silently toward ferries to New Jersey, trains to Westchester, the 7 line to Queens, I found what might have been the last working ATM in the city.
“We’re going to ride this out,” I told him. “But thanks anyway.”
“Man,” Diddio said later, “that guy came for you, T.”
“Lucky he did,” I told him as I patted his knee, the black denim of his jeans. Early October and we were on Greenwich, leaning against a police van, watching a yellow crane do its business, looking up at something that was no longer there, listening to the sad neighborhood, the sounds of shock, grief, loss, an uncertain future.
“All the world is falling apart and he came for you,” Diddio repeated. “You live to be eight hundred and you can’t doubt him.”
“No, you’re right, D.”
“Ain’t that a man,” Diddio added, shaking his head as he adjusted the bandage on his wrist.
I found him on Madison at 58th, at the ass-end of FAO Schwarz, a world away from downtown and its plight, its uncertainty.
A pair of blue-and-whites were cutting off traffic on the west side of the avenue, and cars, taxis and buses were jockeying for room over in the right lane. A lunchtime crowd of business suits had gathered in the pale light on the east side, white paper bags filled with sandwiches and Snapple at their sides. It seemed the action behind the yellow tape had been going on for a while: Some of the suits were easing away, shuffling back to the brick buildings off the avenue.
As I crossed 58th, I saw that Addison’s men were focusing on a tin trash can near the corner. The dented can, with a black plastic sack tucked inside, had been removed from its red-and-white station and, from where I stood, it seemed empty. But apparently it wasn’t, since two cops, badges clipped to their baggy nylon jackets, were staring at it, and in it, with dark looks, firm, furrowed brows.
In a corner, with bright, whimsical posters from the toy store surrounding him, a scruffy homeless man sat on the damp concrete near a shopping cart and a clear industrial-sized trash bag filled with empty soda cans and bottles. A battered American flag was taped to the front of the cart. The old man had his head in his hands and he was muttering to himself, loud enough for me to catch the sound but not the words.
When I found Addison, he was already looking at me, and while he didn’t smile, he seemed glad to see me, if only to get away from what was going on behind him.
Up the block, toward Fifth, the cops were intent on keeping tourists and their kids away from the crime scene.
I stayed on the citizen’s side of the yellow barrier.
Addison came toward me, unmistakable confidence in his large, powerful frame. He wore his perpetual uni: black suit, white shirt, black tie with a diamond pattern woven into the fabric. As he drew closer, I saw in his pale-green eyes that he didn’t know why I’d had him paged, and that perhaps he thought we were just going to go have lunch and everything was going to be all right, like he was going to invite me over for his annual Kwanzaa celebration again and this time I’d say yes.
“Good to see you, Terry,” he said as we shook hands over the tape.
“Been a while.”
He bent down, slid under the tape and came to my side. “How’s Gabriella?”
“Great. Yours?”
“Everyone is fine,” he said.
“What’s this?” I asked, gesturing toward the trash can, the homeless man and his stash.
“He was working, gathering empties,” Addison said. “He digs in and comes up with a hand full of red.”
“Cut himself?”
“Not unless he’s overflowing with the stuff. There’s about ten gallons of blood at the bottom of the can.”
There was a blood center up on 67th, off Third. But Addison knew that. There wasn’t much I knew that he didn’t.
“Man keeps saying a name,” Addison said, nodding over his shoulder. “Audia. Audia.” He shrugged.
“Anything else in that can?” I asked.
“We’ll soon find out.”
I gestured with my head, asking Addison to follow me back across 58th, to the shadows on the south side of the street. To my left, a block away, was the Plaza, the Pulitzer Fountain, Sherman in gold.
“Luther, why didn’t you tell me they found Weisz in Indianapolis?”
It took a second to sink in, then it did and I watched as the goodwill drained from his face.
“That’s what this is about?” he asked. “Couldn’t be just catching up.”
“We’re not going to do much catching up until Weisz is in a cage.”
“I have told—”
I cut him off. “It’s not what you told me. It’s what you haven’t.”
“You want to hear from me every time I get a call about Weisz.”
“Damned right I do,” I replied.
“All right,” he said, as he edged away from the curb, “I heard from Los Angeles. A security guard
at the Hollywood Bowl hears piano playing at three o’clock in the morning, looks down on the stage and there’s a naked man sitting there. Guy’s got his head shaved, arms, legs, everything. The old guard calls his buddies in the LAPD. When they arrive, the naked man is playing Prokofiev, one of the cops says. As they come toward the stage, he runs off and they can’t keep up with him and they can’t track him down. He’s quick, they say, like an animal.”
“Weisz,” I told him. It’s all there: The Russians, his forte, the core of his repertoire. And the escape: quick like an animal.
Wait. Weisz earned a silver medal at the Van Cliburn competition by performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Opus 23 and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Opus 18. But Prokofiev? Yes, of course. The—
“It’s our man?” Addison asked, his eyes fixed on mine.
I nodded.
“That was one day before he applied for the job at Eli Lilly,” he told me. “The same day, in fact. It was about six o’clock in the morning in Indianapolis when he took off toward Cahuenga.”
“So he was in L.A. or Indianapolis,” I said as he ran his hand along his thin tie. “Either.”
“Maybe, but I’ve also been told he’s been in Grand Forks, North Dakota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Peoria, Illinois; Orlando, Florida—that’s a big one, Orlando. He’s been seen there a few times. Las Vegas, that’s another big one. Did you know he applied for a job at the Venetian? Yes, he did. Used the name Scarlatti. That guy, a redhead, by the way, had all kinds of fake ID. Turns out three years ago he was a she.”
“The one in Indianapolis, Luther, wasn’t a guy who had a sex-change operation,” I said, as I shifted in the seat. “He was taking antipsychotic medication, wanted to work with animals. He was transcribing the Goldberg Variations on scraps of pap—”
Now Addison cut me off. “Who told you this?”
“Tommy Mangionella.”
Addison smiled wryly and, as he looked away toward the east side, scratched the top of his head amid his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. “Tommy Mangionella,” he chuckled. “Tommy Mango.”
I tried to recall whether Addison had ever told me how he felt about Mango. Even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have to ask. Son of a sanitation worker, a John Jay graduate who worked his way up after starting on foot north of 125th when Malcolm X Boulevard was still known as Lenox Avenue, Luther Addison wouldn’t go for an angles guy like Tommy Mango.
“Is it true?”
As if exasperated, the lieutenant let out a long breath. “All right,” he began, “the guy seemed to like animals. Bach? More like doodling. Nothing about antipsychosis medication. Indiana state police think he was a plant from PETA or one of those animal-rights groups.” He leaned forward. “By the way, I thought you said Weisz preferred the Russians, not the German, Johann Sebastian.”
“Russians,” I repeated meekly. The Pulitzer Memorial is known as the “Fountain of Abundance.”
“Mango’s mistaken,” Addison said. “And so are you if you think I’m in the business of keeping you in the dark.”
“Well, like you said, it’s been a while.”
He pointed to the center of his chest, to his heart. “The case is open.”
“And Weisz—”
“Weisz is a suspect. For you, he’s guilty. Period,” he said. “For me, I need to talk to him and it’s going to be a good, long, productive conversation.”
“If we find him,” I added.
“‘We,’” he said, without rancor. “We’re back to that.”
I started to reply, but he held up his hand.
“Never mind,” he said. “I know your ways.” He added, “And, yeah, nice eye. I don’t suppose that’s from an elbow under the boards.”
He turned and started back to the yellow tape. One of his guys in nylon was trying in vain to talk to the homeless man, who had pulled his ratty coat over his head.
Addison asked, “Just what are you doing with Mango?”
I filled him in, telling him about Dorotea and Sonia Salgado before moving on to the conversation Tommy the Cop and I had had less than an hour earlier.
“So he’s trying to buy you off,” Addison said.
“I wouldn’t—Yeah, sure. That’s him, yes.”
“Pretty low price for a man’s integrity,” he said softly.
“A man’s integrity might be worth knowing how to find who killed his wife and son,” I told him.
“There’s a right way to do this,” Addison continued. “Getting in bed with Mango isn’t it. Not by a long shot. This guy is bad. He was bad in the cradle.”
A willful man, Addison was coming at me with force, and his patient whisper had more power than Mango’s threats. He knew I’d listen, though I’d rejected his counsel, crossed him—putting him in a hard place with Sharon for a while—and challenged his passion for his work. Sharon and I agreed: Here was an honorable man.
“You started out with an obsession,” he said, “and you turned it into something good, something fine—”
“There’s a ‘but’ coming. …”
He waved a finger at me. “Now you want to help this woman who lost her daughter—for the second time. Fine.”
“Good,” I said. “We don’t disagree.”
“I told you a while ago, Terry, if you do this, always do it for the right reason.”
“All right, Luther,” I said. “I’ve got you.”
“Let me finish.”
“No need.”
“You help the mother, it’s a good thing,” he said, as he lifted the yellow tape, straining it. “You go off trying to solve a thirty-year-old murder case, you’re drifting.”
Two young women in neat business suits, short skirts under efficient tops, crossed between us. Each carried a thin cell phone and a Palm Pilot bearing the stylized logo of a company I’d never heard of.
“But I’ve got to ask—even if I’m only talking to myself, Luther—why is Tommy Mango interested in a simple B-and-E that’s outside his jurisdiction?”
He slid under the tape. When he stood tall, he said, “You have never taken advice, Terry. You won’t start now.”
“That never stopped you from giving it, Luther. You might as well go on.”
“I will,” he laughed. “You know I will.”
I nodded. We let it get lighter. But I could tell he had something he wanted to say. Probably something about my stubbornness, my recklessness, though I was neither stubborn nor reckless. Resolute, maybe. Determined. And inexperienced, still; too inexperienced to take down the Madman who—
“Terry,” he began, as he leaned closer to me, “that question about Mango, it’s a good one. And there’s a question of whether you’ll deliberately sit on something just to get next to him. Whether you’ll compromise who you are for what Mango says he can deliver.”
“I hear you,” I said.
“We’re not much but what we stand for.”
“Luther …”
“What we’ve got doesn’t say who we are,” he went on.
“Luther.”
“What am I saying?” he asked.
“You’re saying you’ll tell me every time you get anything on Weisz.”
He understood. “No matter how ridiculous.”
“Right,” I affirmed.
Then he said, “Who’s watching your back on this one?”
I pointed to the scab near my right eye. “No one.”
“You want me to call somebody downtown?”
“No,” I said. “Everything’s coming at me straight on now.”
He let out a low chuckle.
“What?”
As he shook his head, he murmured, “‘The Goldberg Variations.’ Jesus.”
EIGHT
Hogan Place was about three miles from midtown. It seemed about the right distance to go to burn off a couple of lectures from a pair of cops who worked opposite ends of the same alley. I brought a gyro-and-rice plate I picked up from a cart on 44th into Bryant Park and ate
quickly, surrounded by the late-lunch crowd gathered on white pebbles, on the dull-green lawn, craning their pale faces toward the April sun in hope of a glowing tan. After dropping the Styrofoam container into the trash and leaving the park, I tossed around thoughts of how to define pragmatism, and I considered how two men about the same age and drawn to the same profession, two lifelong New Yorkers, men who understood conflict and the nature of life beyond civility and reason, could each conclude that theirs was the best way to play it. Addison, head of the Black Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. Tommy Mango, the Pope of TriBeCa. Luther Addison, who followed the book so closely he may have been a contributor. Mango, who made it up, then changed it when he needed to. Addison, who, with sobriety, with genuine gravitas, says, “We’re not much but what we stand for.” Mango, who smirks and says, “That’s how it works, kid. You stick your neck out, you get cancer.”
As I reached the dependable swirl and rush on the west side of Fifth, as I fell in and quickened my pace to head south, I found myself wondering how Addison could believe idealism had any place in this world. This world of blood, collapsing steel and stone, of greed and justification, zealots attack the innocent, where the young die before they’ve had a chance to live, where mothers scream in horror as they see their babies … Where a self-satisfied father, lost in his own ignorance, knows nothing of what is about to happen, nothing. Where a father cannot help before the threat is enacted and life is no more. Where a father has to hold his young daughter as she sobs uncontrollably, longing for her mother’s embrace, for a father who did what he was supposed to do.
Tommy, no idealist, might’ve had Weisz by now. In pieces, maybe, or beaten down to paste. Or in cuffs. And Tommy ushers me into the cage and he leaves to get coffee, a notepad, a stenographer …
I’d like to think I’d get him to remove the cuffs before he goes.
There are times when all I want is to look into Weisz’s eyes and watch the light go out, to see in them the fear that was in Marina’s eyes when she saw Davy in the rat piss and sludge between the tracks, and the train was roaring toward the station and I was not there.
Christ.
Look at me: I’m doing it again. I’m stoking my anger, the perpetual fire. For my own gratification. For my own gratification, I’m doing it again, walking along Fifth Avenue, engulfed by purposeful strangers, patriotic tourists, office workers, beggars, pitchmen, women and men of means. On a sunny day, four years later. Because a red-haired man applied for a job in Indianapolis, because a naked man played Prokofiev at 4 A.M. in the Hollywood Bowl.
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