Killer Year

by Lee Child

  And then he can’t.

  To her credit, she spends a long minute trying anyway.

  When she looks up, he realizes he’s not the only one crying. There’s a terrible moment when they stare at each other, and then she covers her mouth with her hand, jerks to her feet, and rushes for the door.

  The camera pulls out slow on the man alone in his chair.

  The bloodred in the sunset had given way to the pastel colors of those candy hearts you see around Valentine’s Day.

  “You said that if we were married, it was all or nothing.” I took a deep breath. Afraid of what was coming. “That you didn’t want to go the same way your parents had.”

  She nodded, still not looking at me. With a flick of her forefinger she sent the cigarette spinning bright into the shadows below.

  The muscles of my chest tightened. All I’d wanted, and I’d had it for so short a time. “Has that changed?” I bit my lip, took a breath thick with fecund river smells. “Do you want a … a …” I couldn’t say it. That word, it’s like a home invader, a ski-masked freak in your living room. Once the possibility has been acknowledged, it never goes away. It becomes part of your reality, and you wake up sweating at night sounds forever.

  She spun. Her eyes flashed, and I could see beads of sweat on her upper lip. “No. I don’t want a divorce. You know better than that.”

  I let myself breathe. Our relationship had been forged of desire, a fantasy kingdom of want. But since the accident, we’d lived in a world of one-sided need. Selfish or not, there it was. “Look. This place … it hits a little too close to home.”

  She shook her head as if to clear it, and moved behind me to take the handles of the chair. “Maybe it’d be better if I did want a divorce. Easier on both of us. But I’m”—her voice caught—“I’m just not wired that way.”

  “Me either.” Was I telling the truth? Would I stick with her if our roles were reversed? I really don’t know. I just know I was relieved.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Of course.” I struggled to turn around and touch her hands. The easiest way to see someone pushing your wheelchair is to tilt your head backward, but there’s no dignity in it. You’re always staring up their nostrils. “Of course I do.”

  “I love you too, baby.” Pamela smiled at me, that secret laced with darkness, the secret she never shared. Then she took a deep breath and shoved the chair toward the edge of the bridge.

  On our wedding night, the bed rocked and shuddered halfway across the room.

  When we were done, Pamela flopped on top of me, her dark hair draping my chest. I lay motionless, still inside her, feeling her every breath like it was me drawing air. Our skin pressed tight, our sweat ran together, our bodies connected, and I literally couldn’t tell where I ended and she began.

  Gravel popped as my chair lurched forward. “Stop!”

  The front edges of the wheels hung in open air. Vertigo squeezed my stomach. Thirty feet below, the concrete base of the bridge struts loomed. Even if I missed them, the water was deep. I couldn’t keep myself afloat, not with half my body waterlogged and useless.

  Behind me, I heard her sob as she bent forward, braced herself, and pushed.

  The chair jumped four inches before my flailing hands found the tires. Hardened rubber burned my palms. Gravel slid over the side, hung in silence, and then clattered against the concrete below.

  “Stop!” My fingers locked like steel clamps. “Jesus!” The breeze seemed to tug at my dangling feet. My arms were strong from months of maneuvering the chair, and I forced the wheels to reverse, but they skidded ineffectually in the loose ballast.

  Fuck dignity. I looked backward, staring at her upside down, trying to understand what was happening, hoping for some answer in her eyes, some hint that this was ajoke.

  People talk about love at first sight, but what they really mean is recognition. You look in someone’s eyes, could be anyone, a childhood friend or a stranger waiting for the bus, and in an instant, things are different. Like they’ve pulled aside a curtain and let you look deeper than flesh.

  What you see depends on who—and where—you are.

  When I saw what was in her eyes, I let go of the wheels.

  In the sudden absence of resistance, we leapt forward, the chair cresting over the rim of the bridge and starting to fall, the river rushing upward. Just as it went over, I thought, Forgive me, baby, and then I twisted my torso as hard as I could and flopped sideways out of the wheelchair, my body slapping against the bridge edge like meat.

  Pamela’s momentum propelled her. She let out a startled cry and, still clutching the handles of the wheelchair, hurtled off the bridge.

  I scrabbled and fell, clawing at gravel that tore up in handfuls. My dead legs swung free. As my body slipped over the side, I made a desperate grab and caught the corrugated edge with both hands. The metal bit cruelly, and my heart slammed against my ribs. I clenched my teeth and heaved, wriggling forward, rocks jamming into my ribs. When I finally felt the tug of gravity ease, I gasped for breath, muscles on fire, as I spun and wormed back to look over the edge.

  She lay splayed on the concrete. Apart from the disconcerting angle of her pelvis, she looked almost relaxed, as if she were lounging in the shallows to battle the heat. Her left foot and arm bobbed with the current. Something sparkled just below the waterline. Her ring. Sometimes irony is so neat you just want to shoot yourself.

  Pamela’s eyes were open, and locked on mine. An eternal moment passed. Then she coughed, and said, “I think I need you.”

  And through the blood, I finally shared the secret behind her smile.

  It’s a funny thing, needing someone. If it goes one way, it’s a burden. If it goes both ways, it’s a bond.

  Our breakfast table is higher now, and there are rails fastened beside the bed. Maybe we don’t laugh as much as we used to, and everything comes a little harder. After all, not all secrets are pretty. But Saturdays are still our favorite. And though there are now two wheelchairs parked beside our bed, the man and woman in it are committed—all or nothing.

  Death Runs Faster

  by Duane Swierczynski.

  You wouldn’t have worn your best T-shirt if you knew you were going to die today.

  But you put it on first thing this morning, not really thinking, other than it was Friday, and you’ve been saving it all week.

  This T-shirt fits best under your uniform. Doesn’t bunch up at the top, or sag down near the top button.

  You hate your uniform. You hate it almost as much as your job. So you take the small pleasures where you can get them.

  Getting to work is a fifty-five-minute hassle, each way, because home is a dark one-bedroom apartment in the shadow of I-95, way too close to the river. This means a cold lonely walk, then a SEPTA bus ride, then a twenty-five-minute trek on the Frankford El to 13th Street, which, if you can hop on the very first car, spits you out near the end of the station, the closest to City Hall.

  Which is where you work. City Hall.

  You guard it.

  You get nine bucks an hour to guard the City of Philadelphia’s $24 million (circa 1901) showpiece, originally meant to be the world’s tallest building, but now has to settle for the dubious title of “world’s tallest masonry building.” All granite and brick holding it up; no steel. Of course, it dawns on you that maybe you’re not actually guarding the building itself but the people inside of it. Which would really depress you, because most of them are assholes.

  But yeah, you. City Hall. You answered an ad one morning, came downtown to the building across the street, filled out some paperwork, watched a forty-five-minute video, and boom, you were qualified to guard the world’s tallest masonry building.

  What a country.

  You’re cynical, but you’re thankful for the job. You hate your job, but you like having a job. At least it’s a job. There were eight months there when you didn’t have a job, and that was miserable.

  The worst part is
right now. End of the day on payday. Because you’ve got to take the Frankford El back across town to 2nd Street and wait for your paycheck.

  This wastes another bus token. Because you then have to hop back on the El, burn another token, plus sixty cents for the transfer. Two tokens cost $2.60 right from the machine. Machine busted? That’s four bucks. Plus the sixty cents.

  When you make $9.01 an hour, that’s like a half an hour’s pay burned on just getting paid and getting home. No wonder it pisses you off.

  But that’s the deal, because the outfit that got the contract with City Hall—it’s called Sherlock Holmes Security—has some extremely fucked-up ideas about employee relations.

  Get this: There are only two ways you can get your paycheck. You can go to 27th and Allegheny to Sherlock Holmes Security headquarters and ask Shenice at the front desk. Or you can go to 2nd and Market to Ritz Checks and Money Orders. Direct deposit?

  Your ass, direct deposit.

  Two choices: burn a token and a transfer taking the subway and bus to the middle of the North Philly badlands, or burn only a token going across town to Old City.

  You weren’t born brain dead. You ain’t going to the Badlands for a paycheck. Even if Shenice were hot. And she’s not.

  Of course, Ritz Checks takes 4 percent of your check before you see a single buck.

  “Financial services,” indeed.

  The line usually snakes out the front door.

  On a good day.

  Sometimes, though, like now, like today, fucking Christmas Eve, there’s an absurdly long wait for the checks. Because this afternoon Sherlock Holmes Security had a holiday party for upper management, and Shenice—whose job it is to drive the checks down to 3rd and Market, because nobody ever fucking goes up to 27th and Allegheny for their fucking checks—is a little drunk, and a little late. She can’t drive, so some accountant guy offers to take her down. You don’t know it, but Shenice decides to spread a little holiday cheer in the parking lot first. She blows the accountant, who can’t come, because he’s had too many pills and too much to drink, too. Since he can’t come, he asks Shenice about other options. She suggests letting her finger his asshole, which promptly grosses him out, and doesn’t help the problem one bit. The accountant asks about fucking her pussy, but Shenice demurs. She’s got a boyfriend, and that wouldn’t be cool. Not on Christmas Eve. They are at an impasse. The accountant says, “Fuck it, drive yourself.” Shenice says, “What about the checks?” The accountant is already up the stairs, back to the party. So Shenice goes back upstairs, asking around, and finally Mr. Applegate agrees to take her down, thinking he’ll be able to get into her pussy afterward. Boy is he mistaken about that.

  By the time Shenice arrives with the checks, the sun has long set, and it’s well past five, and you told Petty you’d meet him in Fishtown by six.

  There’s a long line ahead of you.

  All so you can get your biweekly check for $547. Wait. Minus the 4 percent. Which is more like $525.12.

  It’s Christmas Eve.

  Good thing you wore your best T-shirt today.

  Your buddy Petty thinks he’s a gangster.

  Maybe he is.

  He’s probably full of shit, but maybe he isn’t.

  Anyway, he promised you something tonight. A job. An easy job. Easiest job you’d ever heard of.

  Usually Petty is full of shit, but it’s Christmas Eve, and you want to believe him, because you need the money, and if you can’t believe on Christmas Eve, when can you believe?

  “You’re a security guard, right? I got a guard job for you. Hour of your time. Five hundred bucks.”

  Petty thinks he’s a gangster because he has a friend who says he has an in with the Polish mob.

  The Polish mob?

  “Don’t laugh. They’re serious as fucking shit. They’re worse than the Russians.”

  The Polish mob.

  “Hey. Seriously now. They’ve been making inroads in this town for years, and nobody knows about them except the people who need to know about them. It’s a war waiting to happen.”

  Who’s this friend?

  “Ernie Cifelli.”

  Sounds Italian.

  “He is.”

  With the Polish mob?

  It all sounds loopy, but Petty swore to you it was the truth, and it sounded good over Yuenglings at the Longshot Lounge, so what the hell. Petty finished college. Even a little bit of law school. Your Christmas Eve plans were kind of fluid anyway.

  It’s tomorrow, Christmas, you’ve gotta sweat.

  And that five hundred dollars would come in handy.

  You don’t know this, but Petty is telling the truth. There is a Polish mob, and it’s growing stronger by the day in Philadelphia.

  They’re like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and Satan: they’re incredibly powerful because nobody believes they exist.

  Except the Russians, of course.

  Even the Russians are scared of them.

  You don’t know any of this, and you don’t care right now, because you’re standing in line at the Ritz Checks place. You’re almost in the door, but not quite there. The rest of the guys are all bunched up, trying to keep warm. You’re too far away from the TV to see it, but they’ve got Action News on, and the temperature is in the lower right-hand corner. It’s got to be close to thirty. Maybe even upper twenties. A cold Christmas is in store for the Delaware Valley. It’s colder since the sun set.

  It’s past 5:30 P.M. now.

  Where the fuck is Shenice?

  You’re not wearing the right boots for this weather. Sherlock Holmes requires black lace-ups, doesn’t matter which kind. You found these at Payless, but the outer shell is too thin for the cold arctic air Philly gets this time of year. Bad enough standing in City Hall, feeling the freeze creep up through the soles of your boots. Out here on the sidewalk it’s worse. The cold is like a battering ram against your feet.

  If only you could be inside and wait. Even if the heat’s not on, it’s got to be better than outside.

  People with much better jobs pass you by on the sidewalk. You can tell they have better jobs because they’re not wearing fucking guard uniforms. The people making the most money wear jeans. The new-style jeans where you can see the threads. You want to save up to buy a few pair yourself. You never can seem to save up.

  “Smoke?”

  The guy behind you.

  You shake your head.

  “No, man.”

  You turn around.

  “Smoke?”

  He’s not asking to burn one. He’s holding.

  The check-cashing line is a smart place to deal. You know you’ve got money coming. You’ve probably got a long nothing night waiting for you. A little weed could even things out. Let you think again.

  You don’t have money for weed, though.

  You need it all for Christmas, and where the fuck is fucking Shenice?

  There’s Shenice.

  Climbing out of the back of a Lexus.

  She’s got the checks.

  Suddenly you’re not thinking about the checks. You’re thinking about the Lexus.

  You need to buy a Lexus by 9:00 A.M. tomorrow morning.

  Your kid has always been into cars. You bought him his first Matchboxes when you and Lora were still together, even though Lora was worried he’d bite off a rearview mirror or something and swallow it. They were only ninety-seven cents at Target. Sometimes you could get a ten-pack for five bucks. They made him happy, so what was the five bucks?

  But you and Lora had no idea you had an auto savant on your hands.

  He’s only five, yet can name any car down to the make, model, year—on sight. He’ll still shock the living shit out of you, walking down the street, headed to your apartment for a Saturday-night sleepover, naming cars as he goes.

  Chevy HHR.

  Subaru Forester.

  Pontiac Solstice.

  Chevy Cavalier.

  And he’s never wrong.

  One da
y you got tickets to the Philly Auto Show. You ran to the nearest phone, pumped in a quarter, and ended up gushing to Lora’s answering machine. By this time you were split up, so she wasn’t exactly rushing to return your calls. The show started the very next day. A Sunday. Family Day. She didn’t call you back until the middle of the week. You’d tacked the tickets to the corkboard above the wall phone. She said Friday might be good, but Friday you had work. She knew that. She offered to let you have him Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but seemed unable to understand that you couldn’t get off work on Friday.

  You hung up on her.

  A month later, you saw the tickets, and ripped them from the board and threw them in the trash.

  A week later, you realized that you could have gone to the show after work on Friday, maybe taken the boy for an hour or so. Not wasted the tickets. At the very least, grabbed an armful of the slick brochures for all of the new cars.

  You hate how fucking stubborn you can be.

  Now this Christmas the boy wants a model of a new Lexus. The kind that parks itself. He told you on the phone last week:

  “Daddy, it parks itself.”

  How does it do that?

  “It goes up, and the wheel turns, and the computer inside tells it to go back, and it goes back, and it parks all by itself.”

  Wow. I had no idea cars could do that.

  “It’s an amazing Lexus, Daddy.”

  You did a little research.

  It was the LS 460 L.

  A hundred grand.

  The toy version was $79.95.

  It didn’t park itself, but the six-year-old operator could pretend.

  You told Lora:

  I’m getting that for him for Christmas.

  Shenice handed over the checks but now they’ve got to sort them, and it’s ten minutes until six, which means there’s no way you’re going to meet Petty on time. Which means you’ve got a choice to make.