Restoration (46 page)

  "How can Ashe know though?" Penelope asked. "You're putting a hell of a lot of trust in him." Then she realised what she was saying. "Of course you are…"

  "This way we survive," Alan said, "maybe not well but alive and sometimes I guess that's all you can really hope for."

 

 

It's difficult to shock New York. If it were a person it would likely punch you in the face before you even had time to describe it for metaphorical effect. While you were recovering on the floor it would pat you on the back, apologise, ask if you wanted it to call somebody but make it clear that you look at it that way again and it will put a freakin' cap in your ass. Strangely, you will love it for acting this way.

  Simply: New York has seen some serious shit in its time. And laughed at it.

  Nonetheless when a streamlined A4 Pacific steam locomotive tore its way through East Tremont there were those that considered it remarkable enough to stop what they were doing, stare, and maybe even offer up a pithy prayer or curse.

  The chaos of a steam locomotive hitting the morning traffic was such that nobody spared Ashe so much as a glance as he jumped off and ran up the street.

  "Subtle," he said, skirting around the gouged up asphalt and turned over cars.

  "You can't mend a timeline without breaking some streets," said a voice to his left. Looking up he saw a particularly mangy pigeon fluttering through the clouds of dust the train had kicked up.

  "Blending in with your surroundings?" asked Ashe.

  The pigeon gave an unhealthy squawk. "People 'round here see a fat seagull they're going to shoot and eat it."

  "Snob."

  "I'm taking no risks."

  They hurried up the street, darting past the increasing number of spectators emerging from the brownstones around them.

  "This way," the pigeon said, crossing the street and fluttering towards a nearby building.

  Ashe followed, clambering over the gouged furrow of asphalt and through a shallow stream caused by a fire hydrant the train had uncapped on its arrival.

  Ashe and the pigeon entered the building, the bird perching on the banister railing of the fourth floor while Ashe made his way up the stairs.

  "Come on!" it shouted. "Can't you climb any faster?"

  "You'll go some way to find a man of my age that could climb this far at all, damn it." Ashe dragged himself onto the fourth floor landing. "Which room?"

  "405."

  Ashe raised his hand to open the door and then hesitated, pulling his gun from his coat. He opened the door.

  It was silent inside and he tensed as the squeak of the door hinges worked its way along the entrance hall like a warning.

  "Quickly!" the bird shouted, flying over his head and into the apartment.

  Ashe pushed the door closed and walked into the main room, stepping awkwardly around piles of takeout packaging and empty bottles.

  "Hey," said a voice from behind him.

  He turned to see Tom stood in the doorway of what must have been the bedroom. He was pointing a snubnosed revolver at him.

  "I was going to shoot myself," said Tom. "I mean, no great loss, huh? And that way Elise would stay safe. But then I heard you arrive," he tapped his head towards the dirty window that looked out on the body of Ashe's train, "and I figured I didn't have to shoot me, I just had to shoot you."

  "Just kill him," the pigeon said to Ashe, circling the light fitting in the centre of the room.

  "A talking bird?" said Tom. "I've seen some shit in my time, I mean, drink as much as I did and you have interesting times, but this is new."

  They stared at each other for a moment and then Ashe lowered his gun.

  "No more," he said, "this is not who I am."

  "You can't argue with genetics!" the pigeon replied. "Now shoot the drunk, we don't have time for this."

  Tom scratched at his mop of hair, his gun still pointing at Ashe. "I just don't know," he said, "I mean… this ain't exactly my style either but…"

  "You love her," said Ashe.

  "Yeah," Tom replied.

  "I get that, she's your perfect ideal, the person that makes you a better guy just by being with you."

  "That's it."

  "Same with me and Sophie. Some people just bring the best out of a man don't they? Make you into someone you didn't know you had the balls to be."

  "Yeah."

  "Do what you've got to do," said Ashe. "Your choice."

  Tom shuffled his feet. Christ he could do with a drink. A drink always did sharpen his ability to make decisions. Or rob him of the need to.

  "I just don't want her to die," he said, "she deserves better. But…"

  The door to the apartment banged open and a man ran in firing a revolver. A couple of the bullets lodged themselves in the walls of Tom's apartment, a third in his forehead.

  Ashe raised his gun and fired without even thinking, shooting the man twice in the chest and sending him crashing against the far wall.

 

 

Miles and Carruthers pushed their way past the ever-increasing crowd of cameramen and coiffured anchor-persons, trying to see what was going on beyond the police tape.

  "Jesus," said a guy to Carruthers left, "did someone send out invitations?"

  "I don't think we have to worry about anyone wondering who we are," Carruthers said to Miles.

  The police had erected a stretch of tarpaulin to block the view of their excavation. Nobody needed to see their loved ones pulled out of the dirt on the news. Lieutenant Dutch Wallace was pacing up and down, clearly uncomfortable at working to a crowd. He knew he'd have to speak to them and was pissed off about it. Dutch's indigestion was moving into overdrive. What the hell was going on out here today?

  When he heard the sound of car horns and a motor tear past the entrance to the site he actually turned away. No more, he thought, this man is at his limit…

  The car wasn't ignored by everyone. Joey Spencer, a cameraman from the Orlando affiliate of CBS, was resting his shoulder and sneaking a joint in the cab of his van when the Oldsmobile sped by. It had been clear to him that shooting footage of twitchy cops and tarpaulin wasn't going to win him any awards and he had been quick to tire of it, whatever that shrewish bitch, Tyler Mercer had to say. Mercer fancied herself a rising star in the world of broadcast news. Joey thought she'd be gone by the fall. She could barely string a sentence together and if tits were all it took then he'd seen – and cupped – better. When he saw the speeding Oldsmobile in his rearview mirror he jumped out of the van and ran to the roadside with his camera. Why he couldn't say. A speeding car was hardly award material either after all. There had just been something in his guts that told him the story had switched sides on them.

  He got to the roadside, camera rolling, just in time to catch that tank of a car hit the concrete overpass and explode. The footage was shaky – Joey couldn't help but flinch when the car impacted – but it captured it in some detail. The networks would have no doubt showed it slowed right down – if, that is, they had been able to show it. Their audiences would have cooed at the screen as the front of the car immediately concertinaed on impact. The rear bumper flipped up as if the General Motor company had taken to installing hinges mid-chassis. The car turned from a big, sprawling, beast to a ball of metal and glass. The fuel line ignited, immersing the whole in a surge of flame that lit with the sound of someone being struck in the stomach by a baseball bat. The other cars on the road, already cautious of the speeding lunatic that had been the unfortunate Hughie Bones, were able to avoid further damage. If it had been busier then there would have been a pileup for sure but traffic was light and those cars that had been behind the Olds pulled safely to the side of the road. The passengers climbed out and ogled the scene before them, half in horror, half in delight, after all, it's not every day you get to see something right out of a Hollywood action movie.

  Hughie Bones got more attention from his fellow man right then than he had achieved at any other point in his life. Shame he had to die to do it.

  Joey Spencer kept his camera trained on the accident for some time. There seemed no rush to check the wreck for survivors, naturally there couldn't be any.

  Lieutenant Dutch Wallace would have agreed with the cameraman's assumption but he wore a badge that insisted he get involved nonetheless.

  "Jesus wept," he said, "this day is just fucked."

  A blackened and weeping body pulled itself out of what was left of the rear passenger window and fell to the asphalt with a wet hiss, just to prove the Lieutenant right.

 

 

"You're going to need this."

  Mario tried to hide the gun in his jacket but it was too big for any of the pockets. If he tucked it into the waistband of his jeans he thought he'd likely shoot his dick off. Finally, irritated by the sort of impracticalities he had never concerned himself with in his movies, he cradled it inside his coat like something he was trying to protect from the rain. He needn't worry, he supposed, the passengers on the train were no different to the people walking the platforms. They were insubstantial and he was clearly beneath their attention. There was only one person that could probably see him and he was several carriages in front.

  Not that he was any more real than the rest, Mario thought, couldn't be… he was probably lying face down in a Turin gutter right now, drink and the ghosts of Sixties' drugs making him dream this madness while he slept.

  Fine by him, maybe he could get a new movie out of it, a time travelling assassin, something a bit different from his usual stuff.

  The darkness beyond the train windows was replaced by a run-down looking street as the train came crashing to earth. Mario tumbled from his seat, dropping the gun onto the floor. God damn it, he thought, the heroes in his movies never behaved like this. He grabbed the gun and reached for the door.

  Just as he was turning the handle he saw the old man pass by. He waited a second, not wanting to bump into him. Peering through the dirty glass of the window, he watched the man for a few seconds then, satisfied he wouldn't be noticed, opened the door and jumped out.

  "You can't park that here," said a voice behind him as he stepped down onto the broken road. He turned to see an old black man who appeared to be wearing an entire wardrobe's worth of clothes. A wave of whisky and tobacco hit Mario as the man coughed. "You gots some kind of permit or something?"

  Mario smiled and held up his gun. "This is my permit old man," he said in a passable American accent, "want to see it in action?"

  The old man backed away in a panic, tripping over his own feet and tumbling into the rubble.

  That was better, Mario thought, much more like the movies.

  The old man was out of sight now and he had to run to catch up. Just as he cleared the rear of the train he saw him enter a brownstone across the street.

  Inside he could hear the man's footsteps going up the stairwell, heard him talking to somebody. He's as mad as me, he thought, chuckling as he jogged up the stairs after him.

  The old guy stopped on the fourth floor. Mario peered between the banister railings and watched. There was a pigeon fluttering around the man's head as he opened one of the doors and stepped inside. Which was ridiculous, but no more so than anything else Mario decided, trotting up the last few stairs and moving along the hallway towards the door of 405.

  OK, Mario thought, if I'm going to do this I'm going to be Pacino about it. He waited for a few moments, took a deep breath and, in his best Scarface frame of mind, shoved the door to the apartment open and went in shooting.

  
Every day above ground is a good day
, he thought and smiled as he pulled the trigger of the gun over and over. Two shots went wide but the third bagged his target. OK he thought, time to wake up now…

  Which is when Ashe shot him.

 

 

"What the hell?" asked Lieutenant Dutch Wallace of nobody in particular, before running into the road to assist what he could only assume was the hardiest road crash victim he had ever had the misfortune of encountering. "It's okay buddy," he said before realising that he had no idea what gender this thing even was. It was a mess of charred flesh and jutting bone, and it occurred to Dutch that the kindest thing to do was to shoot the poor bastard, who would want to live like this? Dutch gave a yelp of panic as the thing grabbed his ankle.

  "Hey," the creature said, "don't suppose you'd give a man a hand would you? I could die of boredom trying to crawl over there at this rate."

  "It's him," said Carruthers, "the prisoner."

  Miles hadn't doubted it. He had recognised the car well enough from the last time they had seen it, pulling out of this very same entrance leaving a trail of choking innocents behind it.

  "Yeah," he said, "hard to kill isn't he?"

  The crowd of reporters had, despite their natural inclination to flock towards bad news, fallen back. The sight of this thing, smoke rising off it as it continued to crawl towards them, was not something they thought they would be reporting for their newspapers or interviewing for cable broadcast. This was too grotesque even for them. If only it would have the decency to lie down dead – surely it would do so any moment?
Surely?
– then they would happily point their cameras at it and write elegant and emotional words about the victim's passing. But while it still breathed, lungs inflating and deflating with the noise of a crumpled plastic bag, there was nothing that could bring them closer to it.