Now, operating on a few hours’ sleep and at least four cups of coffee, Vic sits in a folding chair across from Nora. Beside him is Detective Al Lozen from the NYPD.
When they were introduced this morning, Vic asked Lozen if he knows Rocky.
“Name sounds familiar,” Lozen said. “Is he . . . okay?”
That was a loaded question. Ever since Vic arrived in New York yesterday, he’s heard people asking it of each other. Is he okay? Are they okay? Is everyone okay?
Translation: Did you lose someone on Tuesday?
“He’s okay,” Vic told Lozen. “How about you? Everyone okay?”
Lozen shook his head grimly, and Vic regretted asking.
The guy’s NYPD, lives in Brooklyn. Every New Yorker, especially every cop, knows someone who died on Tuesday. Everyone’s lost someone—for most, it was more than one. Some people have lost not just family members and friends, but dozens of colleagues and acquaintances.
Besides O’Neill, Vic’s own list includes a couple of childhood pals from the old block back in the Bronx, and several men and women with whom he’s crossed paths over the course of his career.
“You know, I have two daughters,” Lozen is telling Nora, “and they share a bedroom and bathroom, and you should hear how they fight. I can’t imagine how all of you girls don’t go crazy and kill each other.”
“We’re never all here at the same time,” Nora assures him, “so it works out. A lot of flight attendants live this way. It doesn’t make sense to have your own place when you’re hardly ever home, right?”
Lozen agrees, and Vic glances at his notes. Time to get down to business.
At the moment, Nora has the apartment entirely to herself. Her roommates have been stranded since Tuesday at airports all over the world. None, thank God, were aboard American Flights 11 or 77 but Nora knew several of the flight attendants and both pilots who were killed when they crashed.
“I would have been flying myself on Tuesday.” She plays with the hem of her sweatshirt, which is a couple of sizes too big. “Not on the planes that went down—I always fly out of JFK—but still . . .”
“Why weren’t you flying that day?” Vic asks.
“I ate at this new Thai place and got food poisoning on Monday night. I should have known not to eat there, because that place was such a hole in the wall, you know? It was so bad . . . I mean, it seems crazy to even worry about something like that now. After everything that’s happened to all these people . . . people I know . . . like, nothing else even seems to matter, you know?”
“It’s okay,” Lozen tells her. “So you were sick . . .”
“Yes, and I couldn’t fly. So I was here, and I’ve been watching TV, and when they started saying that the planes were hijacked by Middle Eastern men—I totally remembered that guy from last month. And I thought I should call.”
Vic nods. “Tell me exactly what happened on August twenty-fourth.”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay. I was working a flight from Miami to JFK, first flight of the morning. I noticed a passenger acting suspicious. He was sitting the bulkhead, you know . . . at the front of coach, and just sort of . . . paying really close attention to what we were doing as we boarded the passengers and got ready to take off. Then I saw that he was talking into a little tape recorder. He was speaking in a foreign language. But he spoke English, too, you know—pretty well.”
She went on to describe how she’d reported his actions to the lead flight attendant, who told her to go into the cockpit and bring it to the captain’s attention. She did, and was told to keep a close eye on the passenger.
“I tried,” she tells Vic, “but, I mean, I was busy, especially after we took off, and . . . to be honest, he wasn’t really doing anything. He was just watching. And recording himself. At the time, it bothered me, but I had no idea . . . I mean, if I had known what could happen . . .”
“You did the right thing, reporting him. Tell me about the rest of the flight.”
She does. It was uneventful, the passenger disembarked, and she never saw him again.
“Would you recognize him if you did?” Vic asks as his personal cell phone vibrates in his suit coat pocket.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Excuse me for a minute, please.” Vic steps into the hall and pulls out the phone. “Vic Shattuck.”
“Vic. Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Rocky. Yours, too.”
“Yeah? Even though I’m talking with my mouth full? I thought you said that was a bad habit.”
A faint smile crosses Vic’s face. Amazing what connecting with an old friend can do for a person, even in the midst of a crisis. “We were five when I said it,” he points out, “and it is a bad habit.”
“Yeah, well, there are worse,” he says, chewing. “Ange made me a frittata and I don’t want it to get cold.”
Vic imagines Rocky sitting at the worn oval table in the kitchen of his duplex in the Bronx, a stone’s throw from the block where they grew up—and really, just ten miles or so from here.
If only Vic could drop everything and go up to the Bronx and eat some of Ange’s home cooking and shoot the shit with Rocky, and make the world go away.
Too bad it doesn’t work like that. Not today, and not for him. Never.
“Listen,” he says hurriedly, “I’ve got to call you back, Rock. Sorry. I’m in the middle of something.”
“Aren’t we all. Call me when you can.”
“I will.” Vic quickly hangs up and for a few seconds, stands there imagining what his life would be like if he hadn’t followed this path. If he were, say, a psychiatrist, the way he’d intended to be when he’d first gone to college.
For one thing, he’d be better rested, and closer to home . . . and there sure as hell wouldn’t be a gun in his pocket.
But this is the life he chose for himself; he’s doing what he always wanted to do.
No—what he always had to do.
Jaw set, Vic returns to the living room and hands Nora Fellows a sheet of head shots. “Do you recognize any of these men, Nora?”
Nora looks it over, then gasps and points. “That’s him. That’s the guy on my flight.”
Vic nods with grim satisfaction, his momentary desire to flee all but forgotten.
One step closer.
Something pokes at Mack’s cheek, startling him awake.
He opens his eyes to see a child standing over him. What the . . . ?
He blinks and she’s still there and he has no idea who she is, or where he is and his head is pounding so badly it’s no wonder he can’t think straight.
The child opens her mouth and, without turning her head or moving her gaze away from Mack, shrieks, “DADDY, HE WOKE UP!”
The shrill blast splinters Mack’s skull like a sledgehammer.
He closes his eyes and swallows back a tide of nausea. When he opens them again, the little girl has been replaced with Ben. He’s holding a steaming mug in one hand, a green plastic soda bottle in the other.
“Black coffee?” he asks. “Or ginger ale?”
Mack swallows hard. “Neither.”
“If you puke on that carpet, my friend, Randi will kill me. And then I’ll kill you. So— bathroom’s that way.” Ben points over his shoulder.
“I don’t need—” Mack gulps, sits up, and finds that he’s entangled in a puffy purple quilt. He manages to extract himself, runs past Ben, and makes it to the bathroom just in time.
As he kneels miserably on the tile in front of the toilet, he tries to piece together how he wound up here, at Ben’s apartment.
He remembers calling Ben from home and asking if they could get together for a little while. The last thing he remembers, he’d found his way to the midtown pub where Ben had promised to meet him for a beer. Or was it a drink?
Judging by how wretched he feels, it was both, and many of each. He smells strongly of stale cigarette smoke, too, and he recalls buying a pack somewhere along the way to the pub.
He rinses his mouth with water and spots a tube of toothpaste that has a picture of Barbie on it. He squeezes some of the sparkly pink goo onto his finger and rubs it over his teeth. He hasn’t finger-brushed since his sleeping-around days, before he met Carrie.
Carrie.
He spits out the disgusting toothpaste, which tastes of fruit and flowers, and it’s all he can do not to throw up in the sink. After splashing cold water over his stubbly face, he dries off with a towel.
Today’s newspaper is sitting on top of a closed wicker hamper, the sections in disarray, as if someone had been reading it and put it aside hastily. Mack finds the front page, scans the headlines, then leafs through the section, skimming the news.
Five minutes later, he folds the paper open to a page, tucks it under his arm, and makes his way back to the living room.
Ben is there, waiting. Wordlessly, he holds out the mug and the bottle.
Mack takes the bottle, but he’s not convinced he can stomach even ginger ale right now.
“Drink,” Ben tells him.
Mack opens it and takes a cautious sip. It goes down, stays down.
“Sit.” Ben gestures at the couch. The purple quilt is now neatly folded at one end, a pillow on top of it.
“Ben, I’m sorry . . .”
“Sit,” Ben says again, taking his arm and steering him over to the couch. “It’s okay.”
“Thank you.” Mack sinks onto the couch, the newspaper on his lap, and sips some more ginger ale. It’s not helping, but it’s not hurting, either.
Ben is in a chair opposite the couch, watching him warily.
Is he worried I’m going to throw up on the rug? Or worse?
What the hell happened last night?
What did I do?
Why am I here?
Mack vaguely remembers that he called Ben because he needed a shoulder and an ear.
What did I say?
“Feeling better?” Ben asks. He’s wearing a suit, Mack notices.
“A little better. Are you . . . are we . . . is the office open today?”
“It is, but no one expects you to be there. I’m just going for a little while, to get a few things squared away. You can stay here if you don’t want to go home. Randi and Lexi will be around.”
Mack’s eyes widen—ow, that hurts, everything hurts—and he tells Ben, “Lexi—that was Lexi just now, waking me up.”
Ben’s daughter. He hasn’t seen her in months. Maybe a year. Years? And yet she drew a picture of him and Carrie holding hands on a sunny day.
“Yup—that was Lexi. Only I told her not to wake you up, just see if you were awake. I know you have a hard time falling asleep, and staying asleep—although I guess if last night didn’t knock you out, nothing could.”
Last night . . .
Mack hasn’t a clue. Even this morning, right here and now, is hazy.
“I was so out of it, I didn’t even realize that was Lexi,” he tells Ben. “She used to be . . .”
“A baby?” Ben smiles faintly. “Yeah. I guess they grow up.”
Inevitably, Mack’s thoughts shift to Carrie, and the baby they were trying to conceive.
That’s never going to happen now.
Oh, hell, that was never going to happen anyway. Tuesday morning . . .
“Listen, Mack?”
He looks up to find Ben watching him, still looking worried, as if he knows . . . something.
But how much?
Ben clears his throat. “I’m glad you told me about Carrie, and if you don’t mind—I want to tell Randi about it.”
“Wh-why?”
“You know—she’s always felt kind of bad about things. That we never saw much of you anymore once you got married, or . . . I mean, we both thought it was us, that we rubbed her the wrong way or something.”
“No. It wasn’t you. It was Carrie. She just had a hard time with . . .”
“People,” Ben supplies, as Mack simultaneously concludes his sentence with “Everyone.”
Ben nods. “Well, now that I know the truth—it changes the way I see her. I wish I could go back, knowing what I know now. Maybe it’s too late to change things, with everything that’s going on—but it helps that I know.”
“How?”
“I don’t know . . . it just does. That’s why I want to tell Randi. She’ll feel better about it, too.”
“What . . . what are you going to tell her, exactly?” Mack’s heart is racing.
“You know—what you told me. About her past. It explains why she was the way she was. I mean why she is the way she is,” he amends hastily.
“You don’t have to do that,” Mack tells him.
“Do what? Tell Randi?”
“No—talk about Carrie like she’s still alive.”
“She could be.”
Mack shakes his head. No more lies. “She isn’t, Ben. She’s never coming home.”
“You don’t know that.”
Wordlessly, Mack hands over the newspaper, folded open to the article about Cantor Fitzgerald. He watches Ben read about how yesterday afternoon, at the Pierre Hotel, the chairman informed the families that not a single Cantor employee out of the thousand or so who had been at work on Tuesday morning had made it out alive. Not one.
When Ben finishes reading the article, he puts the paper aside and looks at Mack.
He knew, Mack realizes. He already knew.
“I’m sorry, Mack.”
He nods.
“What are you going to do?” Ben asks after a few moments of somber silence.
“Go on,” Mack says simply. “What else is there to do?”
Stepping from the bright morning sunshine into her office building, Allison is greeted with a prompt “Good morning, mon!”
As her eyes adjust to the dim lighting in the lobby, she spots the dreadlocked security guard back at his post. “Henry! It’s so good to see you.”
Ah, there it is again—that inexplicable urge to make physical contact with someone she really doesn’t know all that well; someone who—like Mack—she has seen in passing as she goes about her daily business and never really thought much about until now.
It’s all she can do not to race over and throw her arms around Henry, but she merely smiles.
“Good to see you too, mon. Everything is okay?” he asks in his lilting Jamaican inflection.
How to answer that?
With a simple nod and another question is probably the easiest way. “How about with you?”
Henry shakes his head. “I knew a few people.”
The words are spoken so softly she can barely hear them, but the sorrow in his big black eyes speaks volumes.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, mon. Me too.”
For a moment, they’re both silent.
Then Henry slides a clipboard across the counter to her. “Here . . . I need you to sign in.”
“Sign in?”
“New world—new security procedure. I need to check your bag, too . . . sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She opens her shoulder bag and he pokes around inside quickly.
“I never saw you wear shoes like this.” The twinkle returns to Henry’s eyes as he gestures at the sneakers tucked into her bag. She wore them to walk up to Union Square, then put on her heels before taking the subway to midtown.
“Shh—don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t want you to get fired, would I?”
It feels good to share a little laugh with Henry, after all the grim faces on the streets and in the subway, dozens of black SUVs with government plates parked all ov
er midtown . . . and now this: new security measures at the office.
Allison can’t help but think that it’s going to take a lot more than having visitors sign in and checking their bags to make this building secure. For one thing, Henry is often zoned out in a ganja-induced haze. For another, there’s a basement entrance that opens out to an alleyway where the smokers hang out. They keep the door propped open all day so they can come and go freely.
I guess that’s going to have to change now, Allison thinks as she waits for the elevator. A lot of things in this city are going to have to change if anyone is ever going to feel safe again.
She takes the elevator alone up to the tenth floor—unusual at this time of morning—and finds that all is dark behind the glass doors that lead to the 7th Avenue offices.
As she pushes through the doors, she realizes how useless they are. They aren’t even locked. Anyone could walk right through them.
Allison looks around for a light switch. Not finding one, she shrugs and makes her way down the darkened corridors to her own office.
She turns on the desk lamp, sits at her desk, and wonders if anyone else is going to show up. Everything is so still without the hum of office machines, voices, ringing telephones. It’s unsettling.
Maybe she should just go home.
To what, though?
More emptiness?
Even Mack appears to have abandoned the apartment building now. He didn’t answer her knock earlier, or the phone call she placed when she got back to her apartment. She left him a message, telling him she was going to be at work today, then dumped the coffee she’d poured for him down the sink.
Maybe he just didn’t want to see or talk to her. Or anyone.
Maybe Carrie turned up—or her remains were found, and he went off to make funeral arrangements.
Maybe something happened to him, just like something happened to Kristina.
Maybe he was arrested for what happened to Kristina.
Allison doesn’t want to consider either of the last two possibilities, but they’re perhaps just as likely as the others.
She thrums her fingernails on the desk and looks at the phone.
Should she call a locksmith first, or try calling Mack again?
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