Liberty Falling

by Nevada Barr

  Mandy made no move to leave the boat. Anna kept walking. Forty feet separated her from the boat. She needed to get to the end of the dock before Tucker started the engine. To keep him distracted she kept talking: “He murdered Hatch.”

  Mandy glared at Anna with such scorn it was a wonder her lip didn’t curl clear up to her nose. “You’re so fucking stupid,” Mandy yelled. “There’s no cops on Liberty. They don’t know shit.” She held up a radio. They’d been monitoring air traffic. “And A.J. didn’t kill Hatch.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Tucker growled. Mandy had used his name. Anna guessed it wasn’t the same as her hearing it from a known confederate. Tucker had spent some time in a court of law. He jerked the pull rope. The engine cranked but it didn’t start.

  He pulled again and Anna began to run. The fifty-yard dash, ten seconds in eighth grade. Forty feet, thirteen yards, how many seconds? Absurd arithmetic flickered through her mind. Tucker was too dangerous to fight with, but if she could get him out of the boat for even a few seconds, she could disable the engine by ripping off the spark plug wires and chucking them into the harbor.

  “I know he didn’t kill Hatch,” Mandy was yelling. Her rage, always under the surface, had been loosed; flecks of foam whitened the corners of her mouth, blood suffused the fat cheeks. Anna’s feet pounded the planking. Pain ricocheted up her spine. She pushed against it. The interpreter’s face grew redder and redder, a party balloon about to pop.

  “You know how I know, you stupid bitch?”

  A fist caught Mandy square on the mouth. Blood spurted where teeth had been. Snapped back, she fell overboard. “Radio!” A.J. barked. Then: “Fucking bitch.” Mandy had taken their radio with her. The engine sputtered and came to life.

  Anna and the runabout left the dock at the same moment, she in the air, it on the water. She did not want to catch Tucker. She’d already caught him once—or he’d caught her—and she’d come away the loser. In the instant her feet left the pier, she knew what she had to do. She had to land on, or catch hold of, the gunwale as she fell to the water. Capsize his boat, flood his engine. Then, if the gods were kind, get the hell away before he laid hands on her.

  Time proved Einstein right; it telescoped and elongated in the same space. As her feet left the dock a moccasin fell off. She was aware of the cooler air on her bare foot. She saw the shoe tumbling. Below, between the runabout and the thick pilings supporting the pier, she watched Mandy floating face-down. Red hair feathered around her head like an exotic sea urchin. Simultaneously all was a blur, passing so fast it was incomprehensible.

  Straightening her legs, Anna braced herself for the shock when she collided with the boat. In a whir of movements, A.J. bent, lifted an oar, swung it like a bat. Curling into a ball, arms around her knees, Anna tucked her head. The blow fell across her shoulders. Hampered by a moving boat, the oar landed without force. But Anna was in the water and Tucker was motoring away.

  “You okay? You okay?” she heard as she surfaced. July 4 and the harbor was as cold as if it remembered the melted snow of January.

  “Okay,” she sputtered. “Fish Mandy out.” Anna hoped he’d comply. She had no desire to waste time saving the life of such a major pain in the ass. “I need a boat,” she said as she floundered to a rickety wooden ladder at the pier’s end.

  “There’s just the one,” the guard called. “And you can’t take that. It belongs to the Assistant Superintendent.”

  “Thanks.” Dripping, Anna pulled herself onto the dock. A spasm was building in her lower back. Willing it away, she forced herself to her feet. The other moccasin was gone now. Belly-down on the planks, the guard was bent in two at the waist, trying to haul Mandy’s dead weight from the water by pulling on one freckled arm.

  “Give me a hand,” he said.

  Anna ignored him and ran down the pier to where Claypool’s runabout was moored. A sharp pull and the engine came to life. Claypool was a careful man, his equipment in good order. She commended him as she turned the stolen craft into open water. Drifting after her she could hear the guard’s yell: “Come back here. Help me. You can’t take that boat, it’s the Assistant Superintendent’s!”

  Quarter past seven. Mrs. Weinstein’s cross-cultural collection of important people would be riding elevators, climbing stairs, filling the crown. “Shit,” Anna whispered, better words deserting her.

  The harbor was alive with boats of every description. Brightly colored sails fluttered and dipped in an offshore breeze like the wings of butterflies. Stinkpots—the derogatory term sailors on Isle Royale used for motorboats—buzzed between the more graceful craft in an orgy of power. Yachts from up the Hudson, Long Island, Connecticut, the Carolinas, graciously allowed the lesser folk to scrabble about them. Thousands of people out to see the fireworks.

  They might get a better show than they’d bargained for.

  Ahead, bucking on water chopped by a dozen wakes, was Tucker. Anna had the faster boat and the distance was closing between them. His beard kept appearing on his shoulder as he looked back. Peripherally, she was aware that the holiday merrymakers were not pleased. Shouts were hurled like stones as her wake nearly capsized a canoe. A.J. sideswiped a cigarette boat with a five-thousand-dollar paint job and ruined a romantic water picnic when his wake rocked a dinghy, dumping the champagne bottle into the sea and toppling the glasses into the bean dip. Havoc was good. Somebody would call Harbor Patrol. Anna leaned forward as if this minute streamlining would increase her speed.

  A disorienting sense of the surreal surrounded them. As in a war zone, there were flashes of fire and the crack of guns, but the soldiers were laughing, dressed in shorts and flowered shirts. Flares were from Roman candles, the reports from firecrackers. Pounding chop hammered Anna’s back, starting muscle spasms that threatened to rip her hands from the tiller. Icy spray needled through hot air to sting her face and neck. Details were unnaturally clear. Names of the pleasure craft whirled by: Pig Pen, Daddy’s Girl, The Wife. Anna could see separate air bubbles in trailing fingers of foam, each rivet in the hull. The red of the gas can glowed. The black of a hooded sweatshirt crammed beneath the bench was a black hole in the keel. Black sweatshirt: that’s what Claypool had been wearing the night he abandoned her at MIO. The night Hatch was killed.

  Dwight had alibied Mandy, said she didn’t catch the staff boat that night but was marooned on Manhattan. But Patsy had said something. They were talking about vibes or karma and being able to feel it. Patsy said that the night Hatch died Mandy must have felt it too, because when she got up in the middle of the night Mandy had been awake and around. The import of that didn’t register at the time, but it proved Mandy was on Liberty when Hatch was pushed. Since she didn’t take the staff boat, she must have found another way. If Anna could “borrow” the Assistant Superintendent’s boat, so could Mandy. In the dark and the rain, wearing Claypool’s hooded sweatshirt, Anna had mistaken her for him. Mandy knew Tucker hadn’t killed Hatch because she had done it herself. “Damn,” Anna whispered, wishing she’d not bothered to have the security guard pull her out of the sea.

  Despite danger to civilians, she cranked the throttle to full open. The boat shuddered and lunged. Tucker was close: twenty yards, fifteen, ten. Like a dog chasing a car, Anna wondered what she’d do when she caught up. Killing him was out. Since she had no gun, no knife and little strength, she doubted she’d be much of a threat. Besides, they needed him, needed to know where the radio transmitter was and who was manning it.

  “Stop him!” she shouted. No one heard over the sound of the engine. Everybody thought it was a game. Anna tried to squeeze more power out of the Evinrude, but it was giving its all. The only workable plan was to ram him. With luck she’d disable the boat. She hoped a responsible party had already called Harbor Patrol and there would be heavily armed good guys to take over.

  An open expanse of water appeared. Tucker had maneuvered into the ferry lane. Seven yards. Five. The beard was on the shoulder. Then he was turning around, h
is camocovered knees knifing up, boots over the gunwale and back. Reversed, he straddled the tiller facing her. His boat slowed, traveling blind.

  He was giving up. Thankyoubabyjesus. Three yards. His hands went between his knees. Two yards. Anna cut power.

  The hands came back in sight. In his fists was a handgun, silver and huge. A .45 at close to point-blank range, with a barrel Anna could have driven a truck into. She opened the throttle wide, jammed the tiller hard to starboard, smashing into the side of his boat. He fired. The shot was wild. Cordite stung Anna’s nostrils as the impact of the collision threw her forward, both hands on the bottom of the boat. Tucker was driven back, boots in the air. She was the first to right herself. The Evinrude had died. She jerked the rope pull. It roared to life. Turning, she saw Tucker rise. He had not lost hold of the .45. Up it came, slow, deliberate, leveling at her head. Anna dove over the side and swam for the bottom. Thrumming reverberations chased her, the sound of bullets traveling through water. Cold seized her muscles. Salt water, murky with God knew what, closed pea soup veils around her. There’d been no time to breathe and her lungs expanded with need. Something cold brushed the back of her leg. Maybe the severed limb of a cadaver dumped with medical waste. Maybe her luck was improving and it was only a shark.

  Lungs gave out and she kicked for the surface. No hope of stealth. Survival forced her up gasping and choking. She drank in the humid summer air with a chaser of seawater. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge, Manhattan, Ellis: she oriented herself till she faced Liberty Island. Tucker was moving on, his wake already fading. She’d lost. “Help!” she screamed. “Somebody help!” Private boats flurried and partied a hundred yards to her left. To the right the behemoth canary-colored ferry from Staten Island had started its run. Her own boat was still running. With no dead-man switch to cut off the engine when the operator disappeared suddenly, it had started the inevitable circle of an unmanned boat. Canted to the left, the propeller plowed a rough arc, circling back toward her. Had she been 007 she would have waited, bulldogged the boat like a runaway steer and hauled herself aboard. But she’d seen the scars of a ranger at Apostle Islands who had been gored by his own propeller. She struck out for the nearest boat.

  Cold and trauma took their toll. With the first long reach of her arm her back went into full spasm, pulling her head back toward her heels. Anna cried out and was gagged by salt water. Coughing bound the muscles tighter. The backs of her thighs struck in sympathy. Panic was a red glare in her mind. She beat feebly at the water with impotent hands. They could not hold. Eyes open, watching the light recede, feeling the deepening cold swallow her feetfirst, she sank.

  Suffocation. Bubbles. Liquid murmuring. Cold. Molly on the respirator. Twelve in. Twelve out. Tubes trailing jellyfish tendrils. Molly fighting to open her eyes. Molly, tube in her throat, choking. Molly’s hand, a starfish of white. Molly.

  With the last echo of her will, Anna forced her arms up and back. Each move taking a quantity of thought, she interlaced her fingers around the back of her neck. Pulling hard, she began dragging her head down, curling her knees up toward her stomach, forcing the knots in her back to untie. It hurt so bad she screamed. Underwater the sound was faint, as if someone else, far away, was in terrible pain. Anna felt sorry for that person. Fleetingly, she wondered who it was.

  Muscles stretched, cracked—she could hear it through the bones of her spine. The cramp opened its iron fingers. Anna clawed her way toward light. Though it never seemed to grow any closer, she finally burst through the green membrane and sucked in the air.

  Mindlessly, the runabout was completing its prescribed circuit. Blades spinning at twelve hundred revolutions per minute cut through the water. Anna reached for an armful of water to drag herself from harm’s way. Another spasm. Drown or be sliced to ribbons, then drown. The choices were not appealing. Anna wished she believed in God so she could revile Him or make peace with Him. She managed an atheist’s prayer: God damn it, do something.

  The angry growl of a much bigger dog washed over the water. The staff boat on its trip from Liberty to Manhattan bore down the ferry lane. Through the window of the pilot’s cabin, she could see Dwight. His face was set, hard. He was going to run her down.

  She tried to scream but drank instead. She tried to dive but back and legs rebelled. Water heaved upward and took her, turned her over and over, crushed the air from her lungs and tangled her arms and legs. Darkness spread and Anna knew she was giving up, going down. It was an oddly peaceful, if unremittingly cold, sensation.

  25

  “NO YOU DON’T. Oh no you don’t.”

  Anna could hear. She tried to breathe, but a warm wet substance was clamped over her mouth. A blow struck between her breasts and she came up swinging. Her fist collided with slippery softness. A singularly noncelestial grunt followed and she opened her eyes. Curious faces ringed her. Dwight knelt over her, his earring stellar in the deep light of afternoon.

  “God damn it, you don’t give CPR to somebody that’s not dead, for Christ’s sake,” Anna snarled.

  “She’s found religion,” Dwight crowed. “That was a close one. What were you up to? Are you sober?”

  With the captain’s help, Anna sat up. “No jokes. Go to Liberty. Serious shit.” There wasn’t air enough to make sense, but Dwight heard the urgency behind the words and ran back to the bridge to take over from whomever he’d left minding the helm.

  The Liberty IV turned neatly, intersecting her own wake, and the sound of engines grew in pitch. “Dwight. Good man,” she whispered, then lost it in a fit of coughing that ended in vomit tasting of salt and acid.

  Cal, his arms ironwood and bone, held her gently. When the heaving stopped, Anna disentangled herself from him and sat up, her back against the bulkhead. Cal’s face was a foot from her own and for the first time Anna could see his age. He hid it in the black heart of warm, understanding eyes. Cal had seen too many things and had never lost heart. “Tried to run me over,” she said, making no sense even to herself. She ran out of steam.

  “Old Dwight wasn’t aimin’ at you. He was aimin’ at that little boat ’bout to dice you into sausage. Hit it too. Dead on. It’s kindling. Dwight saved your life and you cussed him and punched him.” No censure sharpened the deckhand’s words. He was just telling a story. One that, by the twitch of his lips, amused him greatly. “Dwight stopped and I drug you out.” Anna noted Cal was as wet as she.

  “Thanks,” was the best she could do.

  He nodded his acceptance and Anna knew she was safe for the moment. It was okay to close her eyes. No it wasn’t. They flew open, startling Cal. “Help me to the captain,” she croaked.

  Without argument, Cal lifted her. Her hundred and twenty pounds were nothing to him. After a few shambling steps she found her legs worked. Cal bore the brunt of her weight till they reached the short, steep stairs to the bridge.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, and Anna felt powerful hands on her rump as he boosted her up. Not sure she could stand unaided, she crawled a couple feet and braced her back against the starboard bulkhead. “Get on the radio,” she told Dwight. “The statue is full of explosives. Probably C-four. Idaho militia. Racists. Skinheads.” To her own ears she sounded insane, but Dwight didn’t question her. While he made radio calls, Cal came up to sit next to her. The deckhand was black, a mud person, a person to kill. Rage warmed Anna and her muscles grew stronger with the heat. “Skinheads,” she repeated, thinking out loud. The white boy with the shaved head, the janitor, the lunk who had a swastika tattooed on his neck, the idiot who had “accidentally” tossed a forty-pound can to Charlie, effectively ensuring he wouldn’t be climbing around the statue for a couple months. The others called this lump of humanity “Idaho.” That was the reference she couldn’t recall. He was the one who wanted to work S-6, Miss Liberty’s breasts. That’s where some of the charges would be.

  Tucker or Mandy would have smuggled the stuff over from the abandoned halls on Ellis where they prepared the charges, hollowi
ng out pillar candles and packing them with C-4, then resealing the openings with wax. Anna had found the wax shavings. Early on she’d gotten a whiff of the sweet-sour stink of the explosive. The candles, the wax, were to seal the C-4 so dogs couldn’t sniff it out. A long time ago, in another life, she and two other girls had brought marijuana over the border that way. The pillar candles had left the distinctive round “elephant prints” in the garden and in the dust underneath the stairs.

  On one of her nightly forays to torment Billy Bonham, it made sense Corinne might have stumbled across them in their preparations. They clubbed her down and threw her in the garden to die.

  The C-4 would have been taken to Liberty by boat. They probably docked on the natural jetty in the blind spot behind Claypool’s and passed the materials off to Idaho.

  His janitor cart would have been the perfect way to carry the explosives and the climbing gear he would need to place the charges. One night he must have dropped a carabiner. Hatch had found it, clipped it to his belt, probably never suspecting what it meant. Or dying because he did suspect.

  “The cavalry is on its way.” Dwight broke into her thoughts. “And I got hold of Andrew. He’s contacting Patsy, the Superintendent and anybody else he can get his hands on to start an orderly evacuation of the statue.”

  “Sorry I cussed you,” Anna said.

  “Enough said.”

  “Not a picnic,” Cal remarked.

  They knew what he meant. Stairs were narrow, elevators small; under the best of circumstances it would be thirty minutes or more before Mrs. Weinstein’s people were clear.

  “Call Andrew back,” Anna said, remembering. “Tell him look for a thick white man. Called Idaho. On cleaning crew. May know him. Arrest him.” Weariness was such that complete sentences were beyond her. In her mind’s eye she saw again the look on Tucker’s face when Mandy went over the side with the radio. Her guess was, Idaho was setting the charges. He would radio Tucker when he was clear and Tucker would flip the switch. Without the radio, there had to be a change in plans. Tucker now had to find Idaho, relay messages in person; then the both of them had to get clear and get back to where the transmitter was stashed so they could detonate the charges with a radio signal. “Tell Andrew to look for Castro clone,” Anna said as Dwight spoke into the mike. “Armed and dangerous. Call security at MIO. If he’s still got Mandy, arrest her. Police brutality requested.” Energy sapped, Anna concentrated on breathing.