Afterburn (63 page)

"Yes."

A man in a green baseball jacket stood next to Tony. Something was laid out on a table in front of them. "We have your rich boyfriend here," the man called.

She stopped. "Where?"

Peck pushed her forward across the wooden floor.

"Right here. Tough old guy, too." He switched on a bright work light. "Want to see?"

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Near Thirteenth Street and Tenth Avenue, Manhattan
September 28, 1999

THEY PARKED PAUL'S CAR
a few blocks away, broken windows and all, and went up to the door, past a cabdriver who had his taxi jacked up and the wheel off. "It's me," Paul said into his phone. "I'll wait for you to open it." Rick stood on the hinged side of the door. They could hear someone coming down the steps inside.

"Just let me talk the situation through," Paul warned.

"Fine." He'd let Paul believe whatever he wanted. His shotgun was reloaded now, the Ruger pistol in his right hand.

"You alone?" came a voice behind the door.

Rick touched Paul's back with the gun. "Yeah," Paul answered, looking at his good shoes on the pavement.

The door opened.

Paul stepped inside. "Hey."

"We've got her upstairs—" a voice began.

Rick yanked the door open, then set his finger against the pistol's trigger. The detective, Peck, frowned at him in surprise. Rick fired. The noise was enormous in the dark stairwell. Peck fell backward, his stomach bursting blood. He rolled onto his front and kicked his feet at the stairs, trying to stand. Rick fired into Peck's back. The blood soaked through his clothes, wetting the steps.

"Oh shit," Paul said.

Rick glanced out the door. The cabbie was wheeling his spare from the trunk. Otherwise the street was empty. No one had noticed the gunshots. He pulled the door shut. Peck moaned and tried to get up.

"Let's go," said Rick. He dropped the pistol into his coat pocket.

Peck lurched onto his side, looking up the stairs.

"We can't just leave him," Paul protested.

"Why not?" He pushed Paul up the stairs toward the floor of the large, gloomy factory room. "This is where they cut off my fucking arm, Paul."

Across the darkness he could see Morris, Tony, and somebody on the same table he'd been on—an older man, shirt off, face down, arm cuffed. He had a couple of hemostats pinching the bloody mess of his lower back. Bloody gauze packs littered the floor. One foot was clearly cut off, the wound clamped with a hemostat. Tony sat in a chair examining a piece of paper with reading glasses on, as if perusing the day's mail. Rick swung the shotgun at the room, keeping a step behind Paul's shoulder. Morris stood with a pistol extended at Rick.

"Peck!" called Tony. "Peck?"

"Where is she?" Rick shouted feverishly.

"Hey, hey, Rick!" said Tony. "She's here. With her boyfriend."

Morris followed Rick with his gun. "Just tell me and that will be it," he said to Tony.

Rick saw Christina bound in tape and hunched on the floor, not moving. "Is she alive?" he yelled in terror. The room seemed to tilt.

"We didn't touch her." Morris switched off the work light, then switched it on again.

"Christina?" he called, bothered by the changing light.

She didn't move or respond.

"Stop fucking with the light!" cried Rick. "What did you do?"

"We didn't do anything," said Morris. "We taped her up."

Rick pushed Paul forward and glanced at the man on the table. One hand was twitching, and a long incision ran up the base of his spine. "Who's he?"

"That's her boyfriend." Tony, fat inside a loose shirt, worked the overbite of his lower jaw. His smile appeared to measure the sum of the world's illusions. "Rick, you can't just walk in and walk out of this."

"Let her go," Rick ordered Tony.

"Let her go yourself." Morris flicked the light on, off.

I want to kill him, thought Rick, I want to do that more than anything ever.

"Tony," Paul began, trying to mediate between madmen. "Let her go. You have the money, the piece of paper, right? Let them all go. Come on. I've got guys who can clean this up. We can have the problem gone in three hours. Couple of suitcases, whatever." He paused. "You and me go way back, Tony. And we still got a lot of money to make."

"Who walks with this?" Tony asked, standing now and folding the paper into his shirt pocket.

"We do," answered Paul.

"Who? Him?" Tony pointed at Rick.

"Where are Jones and Tommy?" asked Paul. "You said—"

"They're still driving around looking for her." Tony considered the cell phone in his hand. "This thing went dead."

Morris waved his gun. "I don't like this situation."

Paul pointed at Morris. "Call him off, Tony, he's a hothead."

Morris kept the gun pointed at Rick, smiled.

"Christina?" Rick yelled, feeling sick, blinking too much.

No answer.

"I'm going to shoot this guy, Tony!" Morris widened his stance and put a second hand on the gun.

"Call him off!" Paul cried. The room echoed.

"Why can't I hear her?" asked Rick.

"Because we got her taped
up
, you fuck."

"Tony!" cried Paul, in a crouch. "Tell your guy here to just slow down, right? There's a way out of this, there's—"

Morris fired.

Paul staggered. The shot had caught the top of his head. Blood fountained two feet upward out of his skull, then he dropped to the wooden floor, legs quivering. Rick stepped forward, screaming, and shot at Morris awkwardly. Morris grabbed his thigh. I can't shoot this thing, Rick thought, but he hobbled forward and emptied his second barrel. He was off again. Morris grabbed his face and fell to one knee, moaning into his hands, blood dripping down his green baseball jacket. He stood over Morris. Now I kill you, Rick breathed, mouth full of spit. You killed Paulie.

"My eyes," cried Morris. "My eyes!" Rick clubbed him in the head with his shotgun, once, the same one-armed movement as jamming a shovel into hard earth. Morris fell over, sucking breath. Rick waited. Morris moved. He hit him again, savagely, using his knees, then a third time. Then he waited. A lot of blood from the mouth and ears. Then he hit him three more times, to be sure.

Rick looked up, chest heaving, his work done. Tony was scurrying into the darkness toward the doorway, moving quickly for an old man. Rick lifted the shotgun, then remembered both barrels were empty. The pistol was deep in his coat pocket. Tony disappeared, a door banged. I can't catch him, he thought, not on this foot.

Rick walked over to Christina. She was taped heavily.

"It's me," he said softly. "It's Rick." He was going to have trouble getting the tape off with just one hand. "Wait a minute."

He trudged over to one of Morris's toolboxes and found a pair of scissors. He returned to her and laid his one hand on her head. "It's fine. Don't worry." He cut the tape carefully so that first she could breathe and then she could see.

"He's still alive! He's still alive!" she cried. "Oh God, Charlie!"

"He's your friend?" Rick followed her, kicking at a loose screw on the floor.

She stood over the man. It looked as if pieces of his backbone had been cut out. Christina put one finger on the man's face, stroking his cheek.

"My brother's dead," Rick said, voice numb. "They killed him."

"Tony got the money, the piece of paper?" she asked.

He looked at her. "Paulie's
dead
." He was hard and full of hate for everything and everybody, even her. "I missed you so much," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

She touched the old man one more time. "Is he still alive? He's still . . . warm."

"Not really. Not with all that blood gone."

"He's dying because of
me
."

"Everybody here did." He walked over to his brother. When he looked up, he saw Christina in the half-light of the doorway across the dark room, watching him. She turned to go, saying nothing, leaving Rick by himself.

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Edwards Air Force Base, California
Spring 1966

HE
WOULD
SURVIVE,
oh fucking yes! Just hold. Hold!
Hold!
Squeeze your legs, Charlie-boy, get the blood back up, you weakling, it's just the G-forces . . . He heard the gurgling rattle of his own breath . . . the men yelling, then gunshots . . . I'm still . . . eyes shut, just tired. The G's on his back were . . . he could take them. I'm still, I am, I'm breathing, I'm
here
. He tried lifting his head, but the pain jolted through him. Were his eyes open? No, they weren't. Dark inside the visor. Heart felt slow. Did he tell . . . he didn't—no, Ellie, I . . . wanted me to explain, but I didn't, they wanted . . . not about Ben or Julia, either. He lifted his head, fell back as he went into a fifteen-degree roll, the nose of the F-4 scratched rough by a million clouds. I'll go three-sixty, the horizon line rotating clockwise, air-show stuff. Plenty of fuel. No ordnance, just two lieutenant colonels down on the desert looking up with binoculars. Watching you to be sure you checked out. Couple of stiff-assed instructors. He'd be stationed in Wiesbaden, West Germany, in a week, President Johnson getting pissed at Uncle Ho. Stand on your tail, kick the throttle to the afterburner stop, and accelerate
vertically
, baby, climb at Mach 1.6 for three thousand feet, eyeballs egg-shaped from the G's, then pull back the throttle and slow, slow,
slow
until . . . until you just hang in space, free, as free as anyone who ever lived, then drop a flap and let the plane fall over in the air and tumble until you reverse the verticality, nose down, no spin, no shimmy, throttling up again, this time toward the earth, death-diving, bright knife falling from heaven, the earth your sky, head pounding badly, need oxygen, he'd adjust his mask, but he could see the boy . . . running across a field . . . Charlie, come back here this—skinny legs, knees pumping . . . seeing it, seeing his children running in a field, the children running in the rice paddies beneath him, the fire from his nose cannon cutting a water buffalo in half, the children sinking into their deaths, but that was later and I was never . . . the number was two hundred and seventy-nine, as he'd figured it, a river ferry one of those times, and a bus, never told the number, Ellie, never told anyone, but I promise I . . . he loved children, he
did
, he loved when Ben and Julia climbed in bed those mornings, breath full of milk and cereal, play with us, Daddy,
play
with us . . . I will, I will, I am, I am still conscious, eyes closed,
don't
tell them, won't let you play the last game of the season if his mother at the kitchen sink, turning, accidentally saw him naked when he was fourteen stopped looking at him, Charlie, please call your father to dinner, Dad, I got into the Air Force one and
too much
, Manila Telecom sneaking back, jinking and stunting, tearing at him, pulling bloody rags out of his lungs, stock price dropping
cold
! I want to take a warm bath, Ellie, I'm cold, Charlie, I'm sorry, there's no—but I'm cold, Ellie, I'm very please call the guys downstairs slow heart said they can't fix it, there's no warm I'm cold here Ellie I'm fucking cold we pay eight million from a dead man's and there's no—
that
, that scared me, Ellie, can't feel my did you tell Ben and Julia? Even Ben? But what will you do Manila Telecom is coming I need to fax the statement to the board of directors, because I can't quite—
squeezing
, Ellie! standing on my heart! everything cold I'd cash out Teknetrix now before . . . Tower, tower, in a spin you told Ben and Julia you told them spinning dark thirsty because I can't hold it much Ellie I'm thirsty and cold, this girl they tried who is she I don't know
yes
, please, I am, I
am
, sweetie, I have my finger in the ring now, ready to
pull
I will, I am to avoid blackoutspin blood hurricaning in his head one and two pullring duck before ejection—

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106th Street and Columbus Avenue,Manhattan
November 2, 1999

HEAVY AS A LOAD OF BRICKS,
she thought as she trudged along Columbus Avenue, that's how I feel. But she'd finally decided to tell her mother. Why not? She had to tell
someone
. She'd been living as Bettina Bedford for more than a month now, working a few shifts as a waitress, laying low, living in her little shit room on 106th Street. Mostly she walked, staying hunched inside her secondhand coat against the fall wind, no makeup, not meeting anyone's eyes. Right now she wanted only to buy a few groceries and get back to her room. Maybe sweep a bit to calm herself.

Charlie's body had been discovered a week earlier by a fourteen-year-old boy illegally duck hunting in a cornfield three hundred miles north of the city. A naked body in the earth, as if he'd fallen from the sky. Christina wondered about his wife, his widow. I don't know anything about her at all, she thought, but the woman must have had something special for Charlie to have been with her all those years. The
Times
had also mentioned a daughter. Not the son, though.

She did not like to think of that, and she did not like to think of what had happened to Rick, either. He'd been found, back in the first week of October, near his rented cottage in Orient Point, Long Island. A fisherman noticed early one morning that an old yellow truck was resting upside down in six feet of water, having been driven off the sea cliff at a high speed. Rick's body was in the cab, along with an empty rum bottle. His death was ruled an accident, according to the brief account that had been scissored from a local Long Island weekly newspaper and sent, quite anonymously, to her mother. Which she had then forwarded to Christina. On the reverse side was an advertisement for children's pajamas.