“No, it’s not like that. Really, it’s…it’s the opposite of that. I mean, when I saw that girl…it was a chance. A chance.” He repeated it firmly, as if understanding it himself for the first time.
“A chance for what?” she said softly.
“A chance to do something. Something that mattered, even if it was just for one person. Most people go through their whole lives…they never get a chance like that.”
“You think most people want a chance like that?”
“I don’t know what most people want. Hell, I don’t even know what I want.” He closed his eyes. The cat had made its way back onto his lap, nestled in determinedly, and, meeting no resistance, was generating a contented, tranquilizing purr. “Listen,” Jason mumbled, “I don’t mean to impose or anything, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to get off this couch anytime soon.”
26
Jason woke up early the next morning, more sore than hung over, and in better shape than he anticipated. Tiptoeing around Martha’s apartment, he cautiously peeked into her bedroom, half-guilty—who knew how she slept—but she was still wearing the sweats, probably because he was there. He didn’t want to wake her, at least not until he had some time to think. The cat was following him around from room to room, keeping an eye on him, or looking for attention, or both, and watched from just outside the bathroom as Jason tried to put himself back into some presentable form without making a mess of the place. It soon got impatient, and the meows grew alarmingly loud. Jason found some dry food in the kitchen and gave him some to quiet him down.
He found the phone and called Adam’s apartment. There was no answer, which he expected, but it couldn’t hurt to check. Adam always assumed that people were going to come after him, and he had escape routes and contingency plans, as he called them, for almost every possible scenario. Finally, his paranoia was paying off—no one had ever bothered to chase him before, not even a jealous husband.
Most of Adam’s safe houses involved old girlfriends, who were surprisingly tolerant of him. What was the name he had mouthed through the glass last night before the train pulled away? Monica. Now Jason remembered her name. Which one was she? He could probably find the number back at his apartment, but Adam’s paranoia had rubbed off on him, and he wasn’t ready to go home yet. It was probably safe; if they had been after him, they would have taken him out first, since he was closer—or at the very least they would have been paying enough attention to avoid letting him level one of them with a swinging barstool. Chances are they had no idea who he was, he told himself again. Still, he wasn’t quite ready to go home.
Jason decided to fix himself some coffee, and rummaging around he also found some Cap’n Crunch cereal. Good woman, that Martha. The kitchen was very well stocked; she must have cooked most of her own meals. He was settling in when there was a soft thud at the door, and he was filled with dread at the prospect that one of her friends from the party was stopping by. Sidling over to the peephole, the cat one step behind, he was able to make out the back of the paperboy, walking away—the Sunday Times had some good weight to it. After he was gone Jason quietly opened the door a bit, using one foot to block the cat if necessary, and pulled the paper into the apartment.
Returning to the kitchen table, by force of habit he rearranged the sections while scanning the headlines. Sunday, September 9. That meant something. Shit. The maintenance flight. He looked at his watch—if he left immediately, he’d only be a half-hour late. There was a pad by the phone, and he decided to leave Martha a note.
“Martha: thanks for everything, you really saved me. If you hadn’t been there, the Nixons would have gotten me for sure. I always knew you were too good for John.” He walked back to her bedroom and watched her again, even though he knew it was probably wrong to do it. But he was overwhelmed by the memory of the only time he ever toured as a musician, the summer in between college and law school. No matter how far you drove into the night, the next day you’d reach another city, with thousands of people living their lives. And then the next day you were gone, on to the next one. Here she was—only about a mile away from his apartment, actually—living her life, stuffed with its own hopes, dreams, disappointments, vet bills, and so on. It seemed pretty well put together. A nice woman who drifted by with a life preserver just when he needed one.
He left the note on the kitchen table. He didn’t sign it, but he added a PS: “You were probably right about my costume.” And then he was gone.
———
He made really good time into the City. It was a quiet Sunday but he got lucky with the trains, and he even had a little spring in his step when he got to the roof. It was a nice day to fly, and being up in the air would give him a chance to think.
Sammy was waiting. He rose from his chair with a serious look on his face, and Jason could tell he was going to give him the business for keeping him waiting. Maybe he’d cut him some slack when he got a look at his sorry state.
“Hey, man, sorry I’m late,” Jason said with a sheepish grin.
“No problem, Mr. Sims,” Sammy said stiffly.
“Hey, I’m not that late. Especially considering. You wouldn’t believe—”
“No problem at all, sir,” Sammy interrupted, which was noticeable, since he usually liked a little elbow room before he spoke.
“Hey, I’m going to need that—”
“Right this way!” Sammy interrupted again, and guided him toward the helicopter.
Jason followed him, confused. “Anything I need to know about?” he asked, offering Sammy an opening.
“Nothing more than usual,” Sammy almost mumbled, and continued to avoid any sort of eye contact.
Jason climbed into the helicopter and started the engine. As always, Sammy handed up the clipboard for him to sign out and gave him the maintenance log book as well. As the noise from the rotors got louder, Sammy leaned into the cockpit.
“Which route you gonna take?”
“You know I like to fly out to tar beach,” Jason said, referring to a neighborhood out in Brooklyn known for its rooftop sunbathers.
“Nice day like today, you’re better off heading to Staten Island.”
“No way—just a few weeks left of summer. Not going to see any women out by the Verrazano Bridge. Just Lady Liberty. And she’s old and wearing a robe.”
“Sounds like Robert Johnson talking, to me.”
“What’s that mean?” Jason said sharply.
Sammy stepped away and put his ear protectors on.
“Nothin’!” he shouted out. “Don’t mean nothin’!”
Sammy stepped farther back. Jason looked down at the console and started to pump his fist as he turned his head back. Sammy’s fist was raised but motionless, and he didn’t meet Jason’s gaze; he was staring down at the clipboard cradled in his arm. With the brim of his Mets cap turned up, he looked as much like the Statue of Liberty as a black man possibly could. Jason hesitated, waiting for him to look up, but he didn’t, so he pulled the helicopter into the air.
Jason headed out towards the East River, thinking about everything, wondering if Martha had woken up yet; where, and with whom, Adam was hiding out; and what, if anything, Alison was thinking at that moment. He should have asked Sammy about Alison. Sammy always had the right answer, even if he’d only tell it to you in the form of a long story.
He was already across the river when he circled around and headed toward the Statue of Liberty. Now that he thought about it, put a Mets cap over that spiked crown of hers and it would be she who looked like Sammy, not the other way around. Besides, it was safer to do these tests over water, anyway.
Halfway between Lady Liberty and the bridge he hovered, putting the copter through its paces. Staring at the panels, checking out the instruments; looking at his watch, seeing how long it took to descend 200 feet. He brought it down fast, trying to break an old personal record, which, of course, was not the point of the exercise, but it helped pass the time and keep things interesting. It
took a bit of effort to level off, and he must have come within a hundred feet of the water, a little close for comfort. Regaining control and then holding the copter steady, he leaned over to consult the maintenance log, but as he turned his head the oil pressure gauge caught his eye. Boy, that’s low, he thought, and before the thought had finished forming the red warning light went on.
He tried to pull up quickly but couldn’t. The copter started to shake, and the rotors above started to hum the mechanical equivalent of an irregular heartbeat. Four other warning lights erupted simultaneously, and if his life wasn’t in danger it would have been pretty funny, something out of a Woody Allen movie—Bananas or Sleeper, he’d have to decide later—but it was either the executive desk exerciser or the kitchen-of-the-future. In any event, right then he had to give all of his attention to holding the sputtering craft together for as long as possible. He figured that down was better than up, and the closer he got to Liberty Island, the more likely it was he’d be rescued by a Port Authority boat, assuming he survived the crash. Especially on a late summer Sunday, a busy tourist day would draw more cops.
Struggling to maintain control, he successfully pointed the copter in the direction he wanted to go, and also headed down, though there really wasn’t much choice about that part. The key question was whether he was flying or falling. The engine cut completely, answering that question definitively about halfway to the water. At that point there was nothing left to do but pray—there was a very real chance that this was the kind of crash one would not survive, and even those odds might have been shaded by wishful thinking. But after taking a nanosecond to weigh the pros and cons, he decided that wasn’t the last thing he wanted to do on this earth. Better to face this with a clear head, as the person he was. Looking down, he noticed that he’d never buckled in properly—attending to that seemed like a good use of the limited time remaining. That quickly turned out to be easier said than done, as the helicopter slipped into a dizzying spin, disrupting his coordination while enhancing the beat-the-clock quality to the belt-fastening enterprise. Finally he clasped it shut, and looking up, saw water in every direction. Grabbing the sides of his seat, he closed his eyes. Not a single scene from his life flashed before his eyes—he thought of nothing but the moment, concentrating in the darkness on the inevitability of what was coming next.
He hit the water, hard. Very hard—the impact exceeded even the dire expectations that he had steeled himself against. Still, the evidence suggested he had survived the initial impact, so that was something. Water rushed into the cockpit from all sides with disorienting force, and as Jason reached down to undo his belts he felt a searing pain in his chest that limited his breathing to quick little pants. The craft pitched backward, leaving him looking up at the bright blue sky, regretting that he couldn’t see the Statue of Liberty, which might have made for a fitting end. Still, despite the desperate little gasps and searing pain, it might not be the end—and either way, better to go down fighting. He calculated that the helicopter would probably float for a while, but if he was going to lose consciousness—a mortal danger that had to be accounted for—it was probably better to try to get out than to risk going down with it. As the helicopter continued to tip backwards on its tail, trying to kick out through the front seemed like the best hope. Jason looked through the windshield, strategizing about how this might be accomplished, and the last thing he remembered was seeing the rotor, bent over the front and rotating awkwardly.
27
Jason opened his eyes. The rotor was still spinning, and his chest still hurt. A momentary surge of panic accompanied the thought of getting out of the helicopter before it was too late, and he tried to push his arms out to the sides and behind to gauge the water level, but nothing met his hands. Something was limiting his reach, and his body mobilized a wave of adrenalin should emergency measures be necessary. Instead, Jason took a calm, shallow breath, felt around again, and, shifting his eyes from the spinning rotor, re-assessed his environment. Turned out he was in a hospital room, not the helicopter. A ceiling fan was spinning lazily overhead. It was a private room—not a half-vacant semi-private—with touches of wood and a general ambiance one step up from standard dreary-hospital pewter. He was on his back in a light blue hospital gown, left arm bandaged and left ankle aching, and it was hard to move. Sometimes it hurt to breathe, but he was reassured by the fact that he wasn’t attached to any machines, or even an IV.
Despite his limited mobility, a TV remote and a call button were within reach, and he chose the remote first, deciding to gather as much information as he could on his own. His watch was still working; it was almost seven, and Carol’s smiling face slowly emerged on Channel Six as the TV warmed up. That meant it was morning, probably Monday.
He watched Carol and Nate trade some happy talk and waited for the headlines at the top of the hour. He was able to confirm that it was Monday, but seven o’clock came and went with no mention of him or the helicopter—or traffic at all, for that matter. At 7:15, Carol announced, “And now here’s Dave Edwards with the traffic,” and a picture of Dave beside a map of the City came up on the screen. The voice of Dave described how bad the traffic was everywhere, and little red lights popped up on the map to illustrate which delays he was talking about. It occurred to Jason that there was no reason not to do it that way all the time.
Then it was back to Carol in the studio. Her familiar good looks were so reliable that Jason forgot for a moment that he had reclassified her as a force for evil. “Thanks, Dave,” she said with a winning smile. “For those of you just tuning in, we’ve been having some problems with our remote camera, but it should be up and running tomorrow.”
Jason turned off the TV and thought about ringing for the nurse, but he decided to rest for a few minutes. Morning light was creeping in through the windows. He would rest, and then think, and then plan.
These prospects were disrupted by a knock at the door, which Jason decided to ignore. After a second set of knocks, the door opened slowly.
“Jason? You awake, son?”
“Who’s there?” Jason asked. The voice was familiar.
“It’s me,” Mayor Cohen answered, stepping out of the shadows. “They told me you’d probably be able to talk.”
Jason’s heart sank, imagining the media hordes that followed the Mayor wherever he went, and which he was unable to fathom confronting at the moment. “I’m not ready to see—”
“It’s just me, son,” Cohen interrupted, in a quiet, level tone. “I’m alone. It’s just you and me. Nobody knows you’re here.” He dragged a chair toward the bed and sat down, as Jason replayed the Mayor’s words in his mind. The accent had been on the word nobody, which gave the sentence an ominous quality. “Nobody knows I’m here,” Cohen continued. “And they never will.” He retained the hushed tone to his voice, but in fact it wasn’t sinister—it was more like he was sharing a secret than keeping one.
“What do you want?”
Cohen gave a knowing look, and a weary smile. “Just want to talk a little. Some things we have to go over. You’re in a little over your head, and I’m here to help pull you out.”
“Then you know everything that’s been going on?”
“Nothing happens in this city I don’t know about,” Cohen said with a hint of pride, but mostly stating a fact. “We just need to get on the same page, get a few things squared away.”
Jason tried to sit up, but it was too much of an effort. “I don’t know what I can tell you. I know Morgan has been working against you, but I can’t see—”
“Jeb Morgan? Dear friend of mine. He financed my first campaign—right out of his pocket, never asked a question about a penny of it.”
Jason felt a knot tighten in the pit of his stomach, and had a quick flashback to the helicopter, spiraling out of control. He subtly clenched his fists under the sheets, and wiggled his toes. He could probably move if he had to. “I don’t understand. Didn’t you raise the licensing fees?”
�
�Sure did. And ol’ Jeb just got a special waiver from the FCC. We pushed it in Congress. Next time this year, he’s going to own three stations in this town. Law says you can only own one. But they decided, what with the fiscal crisis and all, that if he was willing to keep those stations running, probably better for the people than just having them shut down. Now I would imagine in a few years, those fees might slip back down a bit.”
“So…you’re in this together?” Jason asked, making an effort to minimize the astonishment in his voice. He still didn’t know for sure what exactly he meant by “this,” and he was trying to gauge, in the light of this new development, whether he was in immediate danger.
“In this together?” Cohen repeated, with more than a hint of mockery in his voice. “If you mean taking care of business—of course,” the Mayor said, as if he were stating the obvious. “Just how do you think this city is run?”
“I don’t know. I guess—”
“Don’t even try. This city can’t be governed, at least not by the book.” He got a stern look in his eyes. “You know what they call it? Us? ‘The Ungovernable City.’ Ungovernable. Everybody says it. Well, that’s an easy thing to say, but somebody’s still got to govern the damn thing! And right now that somebody is me.” Cohen got out of his chair, circled around, and gripped the back of it like it was a podium. He leaned forward to lecture at Jason. “Half the tax base—the people who make their fortunes in this town—they’ve slipped away. Outside the city limits.”
Cohen stood straight up, as if newly outraged by the very thought, and walked a few steps across the room towards the window. “Now that makes it very hard for me to do my job. And you know what my job is?”
“You mean that stuff about making life matter?”
Cohen spun around quickly for a man his age. “I’m not talking about that shit now. I’m talking about looking out for the people of the City of New York.” He pointed at Jason with his finger. “The working people. The people who walk the streets and ride the subway. One billion passengers rode those trains last year. One billion.” The light was glowing through the shuttered, translucent blinds behind him as he spoke, casting his face in darkness, and giving the impression that it wasn’t so much Cohen that was speaking, but the Mayor, and every mayor that had come before him.
Urban Flight Page 22