by Regina Doman
III
In the crisscrossing madness of Grand Central, Bear almost lost the man, but he caught a glimpse of him strolling down the ramps to the Metro North trains. On this lazy Saturday afternoon, the commuter rails were nearly deserted, so Bear had to be more careful. He slowed his steps and paused by a bank of ticket machines, keeping his eyes on the man. His target meandered up and down several terminals before choosing the Harlem line.
Bear slipped down to the platform when the man’s back was turned, and waited behind a pillar, wondering if he should just go up and speak to the man in this public place. But before he could act, a train pulled up, and the man got in the first car, which was empty. A crowd of day-camp kids surged down to the platforms, their counselors shouting, “Hurry! Everyone stay together!” Bear joined their melee as they piled into the second car of the train. No one else got on.
The camp kids shouted and ran around the car as the counselors tried to get them to sit down. Making his way through them, Bear walked to the front of the car and squinted through the Plexiglas windows of the barrel doors at the front of the car. He couldn’t see much, but he could see the broad-shouldered shape of the man. It looked like he was sitting down, reading a paper.
A conductor walked through the car and Bear bought a ticket for White Plains. As the train started with a burst of air that sounded like a dragon gasping, Bear sat down, giving one last look at the man’s black cloth-covered shoulders. Only New Yorkers would wear black in this heat.
Emerging into the artificial daylight of the Harlem station, the train deposited the day camp kids. The big man didn’t move. Neither did Bear. Now the train was empty, except for himself and the man. Bear wondered if the man knew he was being followed.
Through the darkness of the underground the train surged, and Bear looked out the window next to him. His eyes focused on his own reflection upon black. No other reality was present, just the man in black and himself on a train speeding out of the underbelly of the City. The phantom of Blanche, the white and black girl he was seeking, hovered in his thoughts. Maybe they were both seeking her.
The cell phone rang, and he answered it automatically. “Fish?”
“Where are you? Where is my phone? I’m still at the banquet hall, reduced to asking to use their phone. Rita said you left.”
“I’m following the man on a train heading North to Hartsdale.”
His brother groaned. “I knew something like this would happen if we split up. Okay, what’s your position?”
“Uh, we’re getting towards Melrose, I think,” Bear said, glancing at a train map he had picked up.
“All right. I’ll get Rose off to her house, and then I’ll drive up that way as soon as I can.”
“Right.” Bear hung up, and focused again on his quarry as the train emerged from the tunnel into daylight. A sun boiled somewhere in the haze in the vaguely western end of the City. They were coming to a station.
The big shoulders stood up and started to move. Like the shadow that he was, Bear watched him go, and then followed.
The man hurried down the steps of the train platform to the parking lot, his paper rolled in his hand like a truncheon. But as Bear walked down the steps, he saw the man pounding up the staircase that led to the other side of the platform as a southbound train pulled into the station. The big man was doubling back on his trail.
Slowly Bear crossed to the staircase as the man vanished over the top. Tense, he waited at the base of the steps, listening as the train screeched to a stop. Then he slowly climbed up the steps until he could look over the edge of the platform. There he got a glimpse of the man getting onto the train. The third car.
Bear took a deep breath and waited. The conductor made his last call for passengers, signaled the engineer, and the four-car train started to leave. Bear hurried up the steps as the train began to pull away, and sprinting, grabbed the door handle and leapt onto the last car just as it cleared the platform.
“You shouldn’t do that!” the conductor reprimanded him. “Very dangerous!”
“Sorry,” Bear said, pulling out his wallet and buying another ticket.
He knew he had better call Fish again and tell him he was now heading in the opposite direction, but first he wanted to locate his quarry. Moving through the empty car in the same direction as the train, Bear opened the barrel door in the front of the train and stepped onto the small platform between the cars. A rubber diaphragm kept him from falling between the cars to the tracks, which clattered beneath his feet. The yellowed plastic of the next car’s window was too opaque to see through, so Bear cracked the door. The car was empty, except for his prey.
Then the train roared into the tunnel again and all was black.
He cracked the door again as they rushed deeper into the tunnel. The man was moving. He was walking forward to the front of the car and yanking something red. For a moment, Bear wondered what he was doing, but then there was a long wheeze of compressed air and the cars clanked together harshly beneath Bear’s feet. Grabbing the safety handles on the back of the car, he realized the train was coming quickly to a halt. The emergency break had been pulled and the train was stopping...
The train was several hundred yards into the twilight of the tunnel entrance. Bear could make out arches beside the track, running by swiftly but more and more slowly as the train ground to a halt. He looked back at the man, and saw he was pulling the door handle to open the door. Then he was gone.
Bear immediately guessed what had happened. The man knew he was still being tailed, and was trying to lose his pursuer in a most unconventional manner.
And most people, Bear thought, would give up the chase at this point. He didn’t like the look of the tunnel himself. But there was Blanche—
With a bare pause, he crashed through the barrel door into the car, yanked open the back door and jumped out into the hot roar of the dragon’s cave.
The noise outside the train was horrendous, and Bear got away from it as fast as he could. He went with his instincts: that the man was switching directions again and running towards the tunnel entrance.
Black on black is nearly impossible to see, but Bear tried to orient himself. He made out the third rail, a metal cable to his left running parallel to the tracks, with the words DANGER 700 VOLTS spray painted on it at regular intervals. He could make out the light from the north end of the tunnel, a barely-seen glow, and started towards it, giving the cable a wide berth. The row of archways was to his right, and beyond them were two other train tracks with more pillars and arches in between. The tunnel must be some kind of merge point for several rail lines.
He caught sight of a figure against the light running down the tracks, and started after him, ducking from pillar to pillar so that he couldn’t be seen, if the man turned around. The ground was made up of fist-sized rocks, which made it difficult to keep his footing.
Eventually the train they had left behind started again and was gone in a streak of rattling thunder.
Now Bear paused behind a pillar, listening in the sudden vacuum of deafness, which turned into the silence of an echo. The man had vanished. But after a moment Bear had regained his hearing enough to hear rapid, jumping footsteps to his right. He had crossed over to another set of tracks. Reeling himself in towards the sound, Bear dodged around the pillars, zigzagging back and forth towards his prey.
The next time he paused, he realized he had lost it. He froze and edged behind a pillar of concrete, feeling around the edges in the dark and peering towards the late afternoon light at the end of the tunnel, about two hundred yards ahead. The rest of the tunnel was thick with shadows, but nothing moved.
He waited. Waited. Waited for the man to make the first move.
Then he heard the footsteps again, from a dark area to his left. He shot a brief glance around the pillar but saw nothing and retreated. The man was making his way from pillar to pillar just as Bear had done. And the steps were growing closer.
I can wait, he thought t
o himself. I can wait.
He heard breathing. The man must be very close now, and Bear was aware, now that he was close to him, of just how big the man actually was. He swallowed silently.
Just at that moment a high ringing noise started in his jacket pocket. The cell phone. Bear reached to silence it, and was grabbed by the shoulders. He was pulled around the side of the pillar and pinned against it by his neck.
Recovering with a curse at the timing of the phone, Bear swung back at his assailant’s face with his right fist, but the man easily blocked it with an elbow. Ludicrously, the phone continued to ring.
Bear then yanked his left hand from his pocket and rammed it into his assailant’s gut. The man tried to knee Bear in the stomach, but Bear blocked him and, crossing his wrists, broke the man’s hold on his neck. The man stumbled backwards, and Bear, freed, charged him, throwing his weight against the man’s waist and shoving him to the right to avoid the third line. If either of them hit that, they would both be dead.
But the man wasn’t thrown. Instead, both of his fists came down hard on Bear’s back. Gasping, off-balance, Bear let go of him, rolled over, barely avoiding the live line, and scrambled to his feet, breathing hard.
This guy knows something about street fighting, Bear thought. He shifted to the side of the tracks furthest from the cable but kept his eyes on the man, waiting for the telltale motion that meant the man was reaching for a concealed weapon. If that happened, Bear only had an instant to rush the man before the scales tipped decidedly in the assailant’s favor.
The man leapt forward with a jab, and Bear batted it and lunged with his right. The man dodged, but Bear nicked him on the right side of the face, and heard the man curse. The man punched Bear in the ribs, and Bear rammed his elbows down onto the man’s back.
The man slid behind him, tripped up Bear’s legs, and drove his elbow into Bear’s face. Feeling himself falling, Bear grabbed the man’s sleeve under his arm and yanked him over as he fell. He landed on his back in the gravel, and heard the man land next to him. Instinctively they both rolled away from the third line.
No time to lose. Bear scrambled to his feet, slipping on the oily rocks, searching once again for his enemy. He saw the man make the signal motion inside his jacket—he did have a weapon—
No time. Bear lunged for the man’s right arm, yanking it downward hard. The man’s hand was empty—Bear had stopped him from grabbing his weapon—but the empty hand became a fist that rammed hard against Bear’s stomach, shoving him against a pillar. Caught off guard by the force of the man’s drive, Bear’s lungs froze inside him. He felt a sharp blow to his face, and his head flew back to smash against the concrete behind him.
Stunned, Bear felt his body crumpling to the ground. He fought off unconsciousness, but the fight itself turned into a paralysis. He felt himself being frisked. Then the man stooped over him, yanked his hands backwards, and handcuffed him. The touch of the cold metal made Bear stiffen, and he fought back, even though his head still swirled in the blackness.
The man grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved his head to the ground on the train tracks. His ear pressed to the cement of the railroad tie, Bear could see the live cable a few inches away from him.
The man’s voice was deep. “Listen, punk, you better explain yourself quick before the next train gets here and interrupts you.”
Chapter Seventeen
The girl stared at the pills, and the whole purpose that the bag lady had served suddenly came into focus. I thought I’d eluded her, she thought. But actually she was just biding her time…
* * *
It was a wild party, and the energy crept beyond the guests in their black-and-white costumes and spread to the servers. Rita snapped her fingers as she leaned against the wall, waiting for people to come by her table for more desserts, and even the staff in the heat of the kitchen seemed a bit more animated by the music.
The girl felt she was the only one who was a stranger here. She didn’t care for the atmosphere or the music, which was a wild, tumultuous jazz without boundaries that was echoed in the almost spastic movements of the people who danced on the floor and chattered at the tables. Strobe lights flickered on and off against the gothic ceiling of the hall, turning the floor below into a world flashing alternately from black to white. The girl, the only one in a colored outfit, felt more out of place in this world, although her dress was now effectively white.
At last it occurred to her that, as all the guests had arrived and the tickets had been tallied, she could probably leave her place at the door. After all, the dinner was over and there was only dancing on the schedule. She had noticed other receptionists usually left after the last guests arrived, but it had been her practice to remain loyally at her post in case she was needed before the event ended. But tonight, she decided she was going to leave.
Edging along the wall between the tables and assorted guests, she tried to make her way to the door that led back to the workroom, where the servers could rest between shifts. It was not a place she enjoyed staying, but right now it seemed like a sanctuary.
Just then a hand grabbed hers. “Hey, wanna dance?” a male voice said, and she found herself looking into the face of a toucan. Actually, a man dressed in a tuxedo with an oversized toucan’s mask.
She didn’t want to dance, but any protest she could have made was deafened in that crowd. The man flung her forward into a reeling juggling match that was one part dance and three parts craziness. At first she tried to keep up with him, to be polite, wondering if she would get in more trouble for dancing or for stopping. But when he started trying to pull her closer, she seized a chance and dove beneath the arms of two swinging salt-and-pepper shakers and away from him.
By now she was in the middle of the sea of dancers, and she tried to fight her way out as quickly as she could. Then she saw him.
The big man, still wearing his black hood, was leaning against the wall. When her eyes fixed on him, he seemed to look straight at her. He leaned forward and started walking in her direction.
Numbly, feeling the fear, she turned and ran through the dancers. Why am I running? she thought to herself. But having walked the fine line of sanity and fear for days, she wasn’t going to stop because of an unanswered question. Suddenly she reached the edge of the head table, and without thinking, ducked underneath the floor-length tablecloth.
In the darkness beneath the table, she tried to recollect herself. He’s coming for me. It was running through her mind. He’s coming for me.
I have to get out of here now.
Crouching on her hands and knees, she scuttled down the long length of table, avoiding the occasional leg, heading towards the narrow door in the back wall that led to the prep rooms. She reached the door, looked in both directions, and still ducking down, slipped through it.
Once the door was closed behind her, muffling the deafening beat, she got to her feet, taking a deep breath, and tried to brush back the strands of hair that had escaped from her long braid. Now even I am starting to act strange, not just think strange…
“Blanche!” Assunta, one of the servers, called her name and she pivoted around, startled.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen the cash bag? The one with the donations?”
The girl shook her head. “Not since I handed it off to Mr. Scarlotti a half hour ago.”
“So you don’t know where it is?”
“Ask Mr. Scarlotti. He took it from me,” she said helplessly. Her head was throbbing. “I’ve got a headache. I’m going home.”
“Okay. See you later.” The server disappeared into the kitchen corridor.
Rubbing her temples, the girl made her way towards the workroom, hoping it was still open and that she could just slip out and go home.
When she opened the door, she was surprised to find someone in the room. Mr. Fairston’s wife, head of the Mirror Corporation. Standing near the corner where the girl’s purse and backpack were.
; “Is something wrong?” the girl asked tentatively.
The blond woman was dressed in a black dress with white diamonds on it, and wore long white gloves. Earlier in the evening, the girl remembered that she had been wearing a tall white crown. Now, her golden hair falling in tendrils around her neck, she turned towards the girl, a set look on her face. “Yes. There is.”
She walked over and sat on the edge of the table, surrounded by scraps of black and white ribbon. “I want to talk to you.”
“All right,” the girl said, and waited.
But the woman said nothing. Instead, she picked up a tumbler of dark soda that had been sitting near her, put something in her mouth in a quick dabbing motion, and downed it with the drink. She licked her lips, staring at the wall.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked.
“I have a headache,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said. So do I, she almost added, but remained quiet.
There was a long silence, while the woman drank the rest of the soda and stared at the wall.
“I want to talk to you about Jack,” the wife said at last.
The girl waited.
“He wants to die, you know.” She wiped her mouth and licked her lips again. “He doesn’t want to wait until he’s feeble and incapacitated. We planned it together. Our last night together. Then he’s going to go. We had it all planned out. It’s in his will.”
“You mean, he’s going to commit suicide?”
The woman nodded. “It was his idea. It took me a while to get used to it, but that’s what he wants. The problem is,” she looked at the girl sideways. “Now he’s afraid to do it, because he thinks you won’t approve.”
“Approve? Of course I don’t approve,” the girl said, her mind racing. “Are you saying he’s changed his mind?”
“He’s confused,” the woman said flatly. “He’s upset. It’s disorienting him.” She turned around. Her eyes bored into the girl’s. “I need you to support his decision to end his life.”
The girl took a deep breath. “I can’t. I don’t believe it’s right.”