Here we go, darlin’, Andrew said. The baby in Andrew’s widespread hands, coming up off the jungle mat, the birds going suddenly still as—
Michael did not want to know what was behind this closed door.
Behind this door was something unspeakably horrible, something that went beyond fright to reach into the darkest corners of the unconscious, the baby going off in a hundred flying fragments, her arms and legs spinning away on the air, eyeballs bursting, bone fragments, tissue, blood spattering onto Andrew as the bomb exploded. A moment too late, Long Foot yelled, “She’s wired!” and a surprised look crossed Andrew’s face as the metal shards ripped through his body and blood spurted out of his chest. A piece of the dead baby was still in Andrew’s hands. The hands holding what had been the baby’s rib cage. But the hands were no longer attached to Andrew’s arms. The hands were on the trail some twelve feet away from him. And the stumps where his wrists ended were spurting blood. And a hundred smoking wounds in his jacket were spurting blood.
“Oh, dear God,” Michael said, and dropped to his knees beside Andrew, and the RTO said,
“Barnes, they’re …” and the jungle erupted with noise and confusion. They were flanked by Charlie left and right. Charlie had wired the baby, had stolen a baby from the village and wired it, and left it just off the trail for the dumb Americans to find, Come on, darlin’, here we go, and the baby exploding was the signal to spring the trap, Andrew hoisting her off the jungle mat and tripping the wire.
And in that instant, the true horror of the war struck home. The true senseless horror of it, they had wired a baby. And recognizing the horror, they had wired a baby, Michael was suddenly terrified. Running through the jungle with Andrew in his arms, and the Cong assuring him in their sing-song pidgin English that they did not want to hurt him, and the baby’s gristle and blood on Andrew’s face, and Andrew’s own blood bubbling up onto his lips, oh dear God his hands were gone, they had wired a baby, Michael knew only blind panic. Suddenly there was no logic and no sense there was only a wired baby exploding between the hands of a good dear friend and the friend was dying the friend’s blood was pumping out of his body in weaker spurts the friend was oh God dear God dear Andrew please, and he began crying. In terror and in sorrow. A sorrow he had never before known. A sorrow for Andrew and himself and for every American here in this place where he did not wish to be or choose to be and a sorrow, too, for a people that would use a baby that way because no cause on earth was worth doing something as terrible as that but behind him Charlie kept saying it was okay Yank no need to worry Yank nobody’s gonna hurt you Yank.
Andrew was already dead for half an hour when Michael found the medical chopper.
He would not let them take the body out of his arms.
He kept holding the handless body close, rocking it.
“Come on, man,” the black medic said.
“Get a grip.”
Michael turned to him and snarled at him.
Like a dog.
Lips skinned back over his teeth.
Growling deep in his throat.
The medic backed off.
A colonel came over to him later.
“Let’s go, soldier,” he said, “we’ve got work to do.”
“Fuck you, sir,” Michael said.
And growled at him, too.
Click.
A sound to his right. He whirled, terrified. The door to apartment 2B was opening. A girl the color of cinnamon toast was standing in the doorway. She was wearing only a half-slip. Nothing else. Naked from the waist up. She stared blankly into the hall.
“You lookin’ for Mama?” she asked.
“Yes,” Connie said.
“Try the club,” the girl said.
Michael felt a tremendous rush of relief.
Mama was at the club.
She was not behind this closed door. She would not have to be faced just yet.
He put the pistol back into his pocket.
“What club?” he asked.
He did not want to know.
He hoped the girl would not tell him.
Stoned out of her mind, she would not be able to remember the name of the club. No older than sixteen, stoned beyond remembrance. He had seen that same glazed look in Vietnam.
Young Americans going into battle stoned. To face the faceless enemy and the nameless horror in the jungle. For Michael, here and now, inexplicably here in this hallway in downtown Manhattan, the horror was an unseen, unknown woman named Mama, and he did not wish to face that horror again. Because this time it would destroy him. This time, the horror would explode in his hands, and he would run weeping all the way to Boston, his stumps spurting blood, only to learn that his Mama had given away even his best blue jacket. No cause, he thought. No cause on earth.
“Oz,” the girl said.
“All the way downtown,” Connie said. “Over near the river.”
No cause, Michael kept thinking.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m fine.”
16
Oz was a disco on a peninsula that hugged the exit to the Battery Tunnel. Located on Greenwich Street, as opposed to Greenwich Avenue farther uptown, it seemed undecided as to whether it wished to be closer to Edgar or to Morris, which were streets and not people. In any event, the club was so far downtown that in the blink of an eye the West Side could suddenly and surprisingly become the East Side. Or rather, and more accurately, the West Side could become the South Side, for it was here at the lowest tip of the island that West Street looped around Battery Park to become South Street.
“It’s all very confusing,” Connie explained, “but not as confusing as the borough of Brooklyn.”
They had parked the open convertible in an all-night garage on Broadway, and had walked two blocks south and one block west to the disco, passing several young girls shivering in the cold in short fake-fur jackets, high-heeled shoes, and lacy lingerie. Michael wondered if any of these girls had earlier been at the Christmas party where he’d met Frankie Zeppelin. He did not think he recognized Detective O’Brien among them.
At three o’clock in the morning on Boxing Day, there were at least a hundred people standing on the yellow brick sidewalk outside Oz. Not a single one of them appeared to be over the age of twenty, and most of them were dressed like characters from The Wizard of Oz. Standing on line in the shivering cold were a dozen or more Tin Men, half again that number of Scarecrows, six Cowardly Lions, eight Wicked Witches of the East, a handful of Glindas, three or four Wizards, a great many people wearing monkey masks on their faces and wings on their backs, some shorter folk chattering in high voices and pretending to be Munchkins, and a multitude of Dorothys wearing short skirts, red shoes, and braids.
Michael felt a bit out of place in his jeans and bomber jacket.
The sidewalk outside the disco was not merely painted a yellow brick, it actually was yellow brick. The building itself had once been a parking garage, shaped like a flatiron to conform to the peninsula-like dimensions of the plot. Its old brick facade was now covered with thick plastic panels cut and fitted and lighted from within to resemble the many facets of a sparkling green emerald rising from the sidewalk. The name of the club was spelled out in brighter green neon wrapped around the front and sides of the building, just below the roof. There were no visible entrance doors. There was only the yellow brick leading to this huge green, multifaceted crystal growing out of the sidewalk.