I bobbed my head and said, “I remember those days pretty well.”
“Bettie was on a team of computer operators who investigated those events.”
“This place had a team?”
Burnwald shook his head. “Not this place. Bettie was the only such expert here. The rest of the ‘team’ was scattered across the face of the United States. They were all in instant contact and had access to government processors that would give them any information they wanted.”
Bettie had never mentioned any of this to me. I thought for a moment, then finally said, “Could that group break into government secrets?”
“I’m sure the federal people have their programs well-protected. But it wouldn’t have been impossible for an expert like Bettie. Still...” He paused, put his folded hands under his chin and asked, “You’re not accusing her of what they used to call... un-American activities.”
I shook my head and let him see me smile gently. “I knew her pretty well, Mr. Burnwald. We were going to get married.”
“Yes,” he answered gravely, “and now she’s dead.”
I didn’t bother to correct him.
“Is there anything specific you’d like, Mr. Stang?”
“A detailed rundown of her activities while she was here. Is that possible?”
“No trouble at all. I’ll put one of our operators on it and she can retrieve it all within an hour. Can have it delivered to you this evening. Will that do?”
“You know,” I told him, “guys like you could put cops out of work, couldn’t you?”
“Certainly,” he agreed.
“Only... who will shoot the bad guys then?”
“I’ll check with our mainframe computer on that,” he answered deadpan.
When I put my card in his hand, he studied it carefully before he remarked, “Ah, yes, now I remember you... Captain Stang. Or rather, your exploits. They called you the Shooter, didn’t they, the media? ‘A frightening figure to the mob,’ or words to that effect?”
I shrugged and said, “That was a long time ago.”
After a few seconds of silence during which Burnwald studied my face carefully, he said, “That time’s back again, isn’t it?”
My teeth were showing through the grin I gave him. I didn’t have to give him an answer.
He knew what it was.
I didn’t look for a cab this time. The sidewalks were great for thinking, like being in a lecture hall of a fine university. Knowledge and experience were all around you; there was traction and skidding, good and evil. All of it. In bunches. It was a great classroom of power waiting to be used.
Or misused.
I kept stepping off curbs and up onto curbs. Without realizing it again, I was walking a tortuous route to a place I knew well, letting my feet find it without giving them any conscious direction.
Finally, there it was, a street about to die. A pair of big demolition units were parked fifty feet from the corner and four men in business suits, all carrying clipboards, were pointing out various areas and noting things down on their pads.
Outside Charlie Wing’s building a small van was being loaded with his few possessions.
I stopped and said, “How’s it going, pal?”
“Ah, Captain Jack,” he smiled. His face was old and wrinkled, but he had the youngest smile you ever saw. “All goes good. Soon will be in China, Captain Jack. You ever be in China?”
I shook my head. “My war didn’t take me any farther than Vietnam.”
“You think things change for the better in China?”
“Ho ho ho,” I said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Keep your money in an American bank and your hands in your pockets.”
He saw what I meant and nodded vigorously. “You smart man, Captain. I’ll write you from China. You read Chinese?”
“I’ll have it translated,” I told him. “You be careful and stay out of trouble.”
“Sure, Captain. Too damn old to get into trouble.”
“Yeah?” We shook hands like the friends we were, then I let out a little chuckle and told Charlie Wing, “The heck you are.”
“Heck you are, too, Captain Jack.”
When the truck pulled away, I looked up and saw old Bessie O’Brian leaning forlornly on her window pillow waving at her departing neighbor, and when the truck turned at the corner and was out of sight, she wiped the tears from her eyes, then saw me and put her sentry face back on again.
“When are you going, Bessie?” I called out.
“I’m ordering my coffin today,” she snapped.
“Come on, Bessie.”
She let her eyes roam the street, then said, “My youngest daughter is coming to get me.”
“From where?”
“Elizabeth, New Jersey. It’s across the river in the country.” She paused for a couple of seconds and added, “I hate the country. Damn, I don’t even like Central Park.”
“Why not?”
“There’s animals there.”
“Nah.”
“The hell there ain’t. People feed ’em peanuts and stuff like that there.”
“Those are just squirrels, Bessie.”
“I don’t care what they are.”
“Elizabeth is a pretty big city now. You’ll enjoy it. Besides, you’ll only be an hour away from New York. You can see all the big buildings with no trouble.”
Her face drooped a little and she asked me, “Why do we all have to move, Captain Jack?”
“The street is dying, Bessie. We don’t move out, we die with it.”
“Be all right with me.” She gave me a wry expression, said, “Watch out who you shoot, Jack. For a dyin’ street, it’s getting tougher around here all the time.”
I nodded, blew her a kiss and walked toward the corner.
Bessie was wrong. There was no more toughness on the street now. The tough stuff had gone someplace when the street got sick. It left completely when the street threatened to heave a post-mortem sigh.
At the incoming of the one-way street they had already put up a NO THOROUGHFARE barricade. The other end was open. You could go out but you couldn’t come in. Somebody had issued a quick exit move for the old station house troops and two city trucks were loaded with antique desks, swivel chairs, straight backs and coat racks. Another had nothing but file cabinets stacked from the cab to the tailgate of a rack-sided tractor-trailer.
The police personnel were all on duty, so they were holding down the telephones inside and collecting their personal items until they went off to other assignments. Bessie O’Brian would probably wave all of them off before they came and got her. Then the street would be dead.
But not yet.
I had to be the last to leave and that wasn’t yet. The street would be dead, but somebody would have to bury it, and that was me.
Then the street would really be dead.
In my pocket the cell phone gave off a buzz and I switched it to TALK. Thomas Brice said hello and told me he’d pick me up in one hour for a trip to Staten Island. It was a trip I dreaded in one way, but had to make. I had to have every detail of that whole situation resolved in my head so there would be no errors. Twenty years of lost time could make for strange changes and I wanted nothing to hit me unexpectedly.
And Thomas Brice was right on time. We drove over the bridge and when I looked down I almost felt the sensation of falling that wild distance to the murky waters of the Hudson River. Traffic was thin at that hour and before long we were in that other, strange part of New York City that was like a different state to most Manhattanites.