Unfortunately, he didn’t perfect his act quickly enough. Clad only in the stained blanket he had stolen from a sleeping form in a doorway, he was picked up by two city policemen at nine a.m. on Tuesday, the 19th of October, 2009.
He could have killed the officers without effort, but he knew that would attract more attention than was wise. He was familiar with these types of village officials, reeves or wardmen or whatever they were called here, and cooperation with them was easiest at this point. The language spoken here was strange, loud and simple. He knew he could master it quickly.
They bound his wrists with chained bracelets and took him into one of the large boxes that moved mysteriously, without the aid of beast or slaves. He soon learned a few new words: “loitering” and “Riker’s Island”.
He declined to speak for a long time, even as he was shuffled before petty officials. A woman asked him questions, but she grew fearful and left. Within a few hours they took him across a bridge to a place where he felt more comfortable, a drear and decaying keep made of red bricks. He guessed the sign above the gate read RIKER’S ISLAND. Inside was a warren of rusty steel bars and metal doors. They freed his wrists and led him into a larger room filled with a score of men. Later, they showed him a cot for sleeping.
After the guards left, one large and tattooed man scowled and offered a particularly and universally expressive pleasantry. Barren intuitively understood. Amused, he approached the man. In a few moments, no one in the room would speak to or come near Barren. The larger man crawled on his belly on the floor like a cur put to the whip.
Barren spent time observing what he learned was called “TV.” It was a portal through which images of small people and things and events could be observed. He watched and studied without sleep: movies, news, reality shows.
By the morning of the third day he had learned much. He conversed with some of the men in the room, who quailed at first but eventually cooperated. One showed him his collection of little illuminated manuscripts. “Comics” the man called them as he began to show them to Barren.
Barren now absorbed this world with voracious appetite. That evening he was approached by a guard. He was handcuffed. He was taken to a small room. A man came in — tall, lean of frame, cropped blond hair, and dressed in fine cloth with a colorful bit of fabric at his neck. He was not a guard. The man began to talk, most of which Barren could understand.
“My name is Bossier Thornton,” he paused. “Detective, Criminal Investigations. You have the right to remain silent.”
No reply.
“Can you speak?”
Silence.
“What is your name?”
More silence.
“Do you know where you are?”
Barren studied the fool in front of him. He could read him as plainly as auroch tracks. The man was stupidly ambitious, and therefore worthy of contempt. Barren decided to play with him.
“I’m in … Riker’s Island?”
“Good. Now do you know where that is?”
“It’s either in New York City or a place in a … Mar-vel co-mic.”
The detective leaned back.
“How do you know which?”
“I’m learning to read. Co-mics. I’m here. The guys have them in there. I read that Riker’s Island is a place that holds bad guys and … super villains.
Bossier was an ardent fisherman of the shoals and bays of the criminal sea. He sometimes took the Riker’s duty out of curiosity, just to see what sorts of people were getting caught in the net. This was an odd fish.
He flipped through the thin processing file for this detainee. “Where are you from?”
“The Source.”
Bossier looked up, prepared to give this guy the don’t-be-a-wise-ass speech. He stopped. With the certainty of a mug shot or a positive DNA and prints match, or a rap sheet of prior convictions — none of which existed anywhere for this man— Bossier knew that here was a killer. He knew it from the man’s eyes. They were steel marbles, glistening ball bearings, that saw everything as prey.
“What do you do?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Like?”
“A … dame.”
The sneery way he said it was so stupid it was funny, like a bad amateur Bogey-impressionist.
The man was creepy, but there was no basis to hold him. His processing form made that clear. This one would have to be thrown back in to the sea.
“You want to get out of here?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Looks like you’ll be out tomorrow afternoon.”
Bossier got up and left.
A guard returned Barren to the group lockup. Once there, Barren persuaded one burly inmate to retrieve some scissors stashed in a wall crevice. The man, a hardened felon who specialized in brutalizing his victims, cut and snipped Barren’s hair with the careful detail and pandering chit-chat of a docile barber. He fashioned it as Barren indicated, pointing to a cluster of detainees with Mohawks. He then used soap and a little blue scraper to meticulously shave Barren’s beard.
Thus transformed, Barren sat on the edge of his cot, feeling the strange tingle of newly exposed skin and the anticipation of a stalk. A hunt that would result in his prize.
At ten the next evening, after four days at Riker’s Island, Barren was released back into the city. He was now equipped with an educational jumpstart, second hand clothes, and twenty dollars in his pocket. Ready for primetime. He was even starting to think in modern vernacular.
Chapter 11
OCTOBER 20
Just as Barren emerged from Riker’s Island, the train carrying Cadence plunged into its last night run before arriving in the city. She fidgeted and worried. She was happy to be getting there and anxious about the strangeness that seemed to stalk her.
She looked at the black glass and cut her eyes away. Don’t stare out that window. Not after last night. She put her head on the Amtrak pillow, relaxed into the gentle rocking movement, and sought the refuge of sleep.
She awoke at five in the morning, stirred by something vague, perhaps only the train jostling, and obscured by an urgent need to pee. She leaned up from her reclined seat and looked both ways down the aisle. The overhead lights were dim and the absence of reading lights meant the few passengers were all asleep. 9-11 Man was a snoring shadow sprawled across his seats. She eased up and looked at her own nest. She shrugged and got up and then stopped. The valise was in plain sight. She leaned over and pulled it up and moved it down two rows and shoved it beneath an empty seat. She pulled a blanket from the overhead and disguised the valise as a dark pile. Now she really did have to go, and she headed for the women’s bathroom in the next car.
As she slid the lavatory door shut, the light flicked on and the mirror over the sink caught her movement. She looked at it. It was blighted from the inside with some amoebic gray sprawl that ate the upper left corner. She sat and her face moved down and stared back from the mirror bottom. It seemed to loom up from the sink, obscenely decapitated and somehow balanced. Just to be sure, she made full eye contact. A woman knows her face, and the one looking back at her was ever so slightly off. She thought about talking to this image but hesitated. Who knows what truths might spill out in such an encounter?
She stared for a long time, then changed her mind. She inquired out loud, “Why are you doing this?”
Her voice answered, “Because if I don’t, I’ll stay like I am now … empty. When you are an orphan, when that full truth dawns on you, all the other truths you don’t know and can never ask about get really big. If Jess is alive, he’s the only shot I’ve got. He’s someone real to ask the hows and whys. Maybe he’s even someone to blame.” She thought for a second and came to her bottom line. “If I don’t do this now, I never will.”