Afterburn (64 page)

Since then, the fall had turned colder and rainy, as it always did, and sometimes she thought of the prison. Of Mazy and the others. I don't want to go back, Christina told herself. Could the police connect her with Charlie's death? It didn't seem so. She'd left the hotel with him, but that was many hours before he'd been killed and weeks before the body had been found. He'd been alive and on the phone to his banker after that, too. The tabloids had covered the story extensively, especially one of the columnists, who'd filled his space with the shameless speculation that Charlie had angered the family of some Hong Kong billionaire who had died of a heart attack. The police had tracked the letter of credit from the bank to the spot-buyer. But no one at the bank had seen her, and she'd been in the spot-buyer's office only a minute, anyway. No name, no fingerprints. Of course, she'd also been videotaped walking out of the Pierre in the morning with Charlie. But no one at the hotel knew her name. And who knew that Charlie had been at the hotel? Only his secretary was aware that he'd met someone there named Melissa Williams, and she might have decided to keep that a secret, out of deference to Charlie's widow. The police could check Charlie's credit card records, but the charges for the room that last night were set up through his company, she remembered. What else? she asked herself. What else am I missing? Charlie had confessed that he'd had someone track down information about Melissa Williams, but that would lead only to the real Melissa Williams, not Christina. Mrs. Sanders, the landlady, would be able to identify Christina's picture, perhaps, but who would show it to her? Nobody who knew Christina's name knew that she'd lived there for a few weeks.

The stories in the
Post
and
Daily News
about Charlie mentioned the container load of cameras, but the transferred bill of lading had apparently been wiped clean of fingerprints. The container itself had been picked up in Port Newark the next day by a day-trucker who knew no one. Or said he knew no one. Probably someone Tony hired. He'd taken the trailer to a truck stop as directed, left the keys in the ignition as he went into the diner, and not been surprised when the truck was gone when he came out.

There remained the phone call from the hotel room made by Charlie to Christina's mother. But that went back to the secretary; if she didn't mention the liaison, then the police would not trace the call. But what if they did? She'd say that she and Charlie had spent the night together and she'd called her mother. Not a big deal. From the papers, it seemed that Charlie's death hadn't been linked to any of the other deaths. Someone smart, someone like Tony Verducci, had made sure of that. The one detective who knew her face was Peck, and he'd disappeared, never been found. Neither had Morris or Paul Bocca. Gone forever. Now, ironically, Tony was
protecting
her. What else am I missing? Christina thought. She'd used Rahul the Freak's phone that last day, then thrown it away. But the police didn't know who he was, and it seemed probable that he wasn't going to step forward and complain about some phone charges made by a woman whom he'd tried to molest in his house.

She shuffled along the sidewalk feeling tired, arguing to herself that she'd committed no actual crime. What was to be gained by presenting herself to the police? With her record, they would be all over her, asking about Tony Verducci as well. She had no money for a lawyer—back to Bedford Hills she'd go, maybe as an accomplice to murder. If she fingered Tony, they could get her mother. She found herself feeling ill thinking about it. But she felt ill a lot of the time now, especially when she woke up or, as now, when she smelled food.

She entered a Korean deli and inspected the green apples, again aware of the odd tenderness in her breasts. Maybe her mother would be excited for her. I never expected this, she thought. She dropped a few apples into her basket. Next, she needed a box of crackers. Some milk. She'd stopped smoking, forced herself, and was taking the vitamins. After food and rent, she had a few dollars left over each week. Somehow I'll manage, she decided. Maybe he or she will have blue eyes.

She finished picking out her bag of groceries, paid for them, then headed home. She wasn't making enough money to get her own phone, so she slipped a quarter into a pay phone on the street, called collect. If Tony was smart, which he was, he'd long since lost interest in her mother's phone line.

"Christina?" came her mother's voice after she accepted the charges.

"It's me," she replied, setting the groceries at her feet, "in all my glory."

"How are you?"

"Actually I'm—" She stopped. She watched a businesswoman march past. "I'm fine, I guess."

"I was
hoping
you'd call," her mother began. "I've been busy. The weather's been
perfect
. I've been—Let me just light this . . . So, oh, I said I was busy, yes. I'll be taking a little trip next week, and I've been trying to sort out all the stuff in the house before I go. Just try to make
progress
."

"Yes," Christina said, feeling discouraged and chewing her hair a bit.

"All those boxes from the garage that I put in storage last year have to be gone through, and the basement—"

She frowned. "What boxes?"

"I put everything I could find in one of those little rooms, those storage spaces you pay for, when the storm came last year." Her mother drew wheezily on her cigarette. "The garage is just about—Well, you'll see it, it's falling
down
, sweetie. Like the rest of this place," she sighed.

"What's in the boxes?" Christina asked.

"I have no idea. Your father's stuff."

She said nothing as her mother babbled on, though for a moment she braced herself against the phone booth, feeling a wave of nausea go through her, nausea or dizziness, but also fear and guilt. I never expected this, she told herself again, but then most of what had happened recently she hadn't expected, and she did not resist the knowledge of what was inside of her, for unexpected arrivals sometimes were for the good, even—yes—a matter of startled joy.

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Acknowledgments

SO MANY PEOPLE HELPED
, in one way or another, and I owe each a great nod of gratitude: Joe Connelly; Mark Costello; my agent, Kris Dahl; Laura Doggett; Ted Fishman; Stewart Freeman; Donovan Hohn; my uncle, Bart Harrison; Dan Healy in the Manhattan D.A.'s Office; Colman Tso; William Holstein, former president of the Overseas Press Club and my first guide to Hong Kong and Shanghai; Barbara Jones; Lewis Lapham; Nina Laven; my wife, Kathryn, who made possible the effort of writing; Rick MacArthur; James Alan McPherson; Scott Raab; Mary Reichers of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility; Lewis Robinson; Bob Shacochis; Roger Shahnazarian; Earl Shorris; Don Snyder; Lieutenant Colonel Bob Stein, retired; Jane Ross; Jeca Taudte; Lieutenant Colonel Porter Thompson, retired; Sarah Vos.

For the prologue, I consulted a number of works, notably
Aces and Aerial Victories: The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia 1965-73
(Office of Air Force History, 1976);
Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia, 1961-1975
by Earl H. Tilford, Jr. (Office of Air Force History, 1980);
The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973
, Carl Berger, editor (Office of Air Force History, 1977);
P.O.W.: A Definitive History of the American Prisoner-of-War Experience in Vietnam, 1964-1973
by John G. Hubbell (Reader's Digest Press, 1976); and
Thud Ridge
by Jack Broughton (Lippincott, 1969). I am particularly indebted to John Trotti's memoir,
Phantom over Vietnam: Fighter Pilot, USMC
(Presidio Press, 1984), for descriptions of the pilot's preparation and takeoff. The quotation and translation from the American warfare pamphlet appears in
War of Ideas: The U.S. Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam
by Robert W. Chandler (Westview Press, 1981). The quotation by Jean-Paul Sartre in the epigraph appears in
Torture and Truth
by Page DuBois (Routledge, 1991) and is taken from Jean-Paul Sartre's preface to
The Question
by Henri Alleg, translated by John Calder (London, 1958).

My editor, John Glusman, queried the text with uncanny brilliance. My debt to him is immense.

Much of this book began as an unsightly sprawl of papers on a back table in the Noho Star restaurant in downtown Manhattan. The staff and management there were unusually sympathetic.

Table of Contents

• Prologue: Takhli Air Force Base, Thailand
  
• China Club, Hong Kong
  
• Women's Correctional Facility, Bedford Hills, New York
  
• Orient Point, Long Island, New York
  
• 817 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
  
• 215 East Fourth Street, Manhattan
  
• 604 Carroll Street, Brooklyn
  
• Park Avenue Partners Fertility Clinic
  
• Staten Island Ferry, New York Harbor
  
• Jim-Jack Bar & Restaurant
  
• Snyder, Wainwright, Lovell & Passaro
  
• Bar, Pierre Hotel,
  
• Near Thirteenth Street and Tenth Avenue, Manhattan
  
• Room 527, Pierre Hotel,
  
• Emergency Room, Bellevue Hospital,
  
• Peace Hotel, Shanghai, China
  
• Pioneer Hotel, 341 Broome Street, Chinatown, Manhattan
  
• Vista del Mar Retirement Village, Princeton, New Jersey
  
• Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Brooklyn
  
• M&R Bar-Dining Room, 264 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan
  
• Near Thirteenth Street and Tenth Avenue, Manhattan
  
• Edwards Air Force Base, California
  
• 106th Street and Columbus Avenue,Manhattan