Enough. It’s all gone now.
He crosses Third Avenue, walking quickly. Part of his past is under his feet and the future is right in front of him. He moves into the Lipstick Building, taking his press card from his jacket pocket. Thinking: Now Cynthia is part of the past too.
8:20 a.m. Josh Thompson. The High Line, Manhattan.
He is in the street but he can’t see the sky. There is a man standing off to the side, with a wild gray beard, a heavy plaid shirt.
— Mornin’, soldier, he says.
— Morning, Josh Thompson says, his throat cloggy with phlegm. He grips the MAC-10 under the blanket and poncho.
— Go ahead and hawk up the lunger, soldier.
Josh calls up a wad from his throat, makes a pulpy ball on his tongue, spits it three feet to the side.
— Where is this? he asks, looking around him.
— The High Line. Used to be a railroad spur. Then it was dead for fifty years. Now they planted it with stuff and made a park out of it. Right up above your head.
— A park?
— Yeah, a park in the sky. The High Line, they call it. There’s an elevator down there, you wanna see it. Hey, you must need to piss.
— Yeah.
— Let the brake out and I’ll walk you.
He rolls Josh into a shadowed area, filled with packing crates.
From the darkness, he wonders where the Aladdin is from here. As he does every time he has to piss, he thinks of payback.
— You need a paper to read, soldier?
— Sure.
He takes the newspaper. Two women on the front page. One blonde. One black. The headline says:
THE LAST DINNER PARTY
Who are these people? Josh thinks. Why isn’t Iraq on the front page? Or Afghanistan? They just don’t give a rat’s ass, do they?
The bearded guy leaves him alone. Josh starts unzipping his jeans, unfastening his diaper.
8:35 a.m. Sandra Gordon. Lobby of Lipstick Building.
She walks across the crowded plaza, following others through the revolving doors. She is wearing high boots, a heavy coat, a warm wool hat. The New York Times is under her left arm, home-delivered but unread, and she grips a Mark Cross briefcase. She will open the paper when she reaches her desk. Not an electronic reader for the Times. The Times itself. To see if there is news about Myles Compton. And his co-conspirators. She wonders if Myles made his plane, if that’s what he was taking to wherever he will hide for the rest of his miserable life. The poor son of a bitch.
Then she glances at the newsstand, the newspapers blocked by two men buying nuts or gum or even newspapers. One of the men moves and heads to the elevator banks. Sandra’s eyes fall to the low shelf of newspapers.
She makes a sharp sound of pain, and falls to the polished stone floor.
8:40 a.m. Ali Watson. Office of Joint Terrorism Task Force, Manhattan.
He is still filled with the night, lying on a cot in the small dark back office. Nobody has tried to rouse him with knocks on the door. He knows they are out there in the office, absorbing information, thinking about chatter from many places. For now, they will get along without him. He’s better off here than alone at home. They will let him grieve.
His mind is jagged, alive with crude scribbles he saw from his Mazda, which Malachy parked in front of his house. His brain jangles with the graffiti on the wet walls of empty Brooklyn streets, marks without verbs, just names, the narcissism of vandals. I am, they snarl. I exist, they brag. All the names invented, pseudonyms without warnings or declarations of love. When Ali was young, and he saw the words “Bird Lives” on a subway wall, he knew the message was about Charlie Parker, and the words were saying that his music would live forever. And so it has. This is not like Bird. I want to buy a spray can and write Mary Lou Lives on all the unwashed walls of the city. State it. Shout it. Make the verb clear. Make it about her, not me. Refuse to join the legions of I. All those young fools declaring that they exist. Shouting: I am alone, as lonesome as God, and here is my mark. I exist, and fuck you.
Mary Lou lives, you assholes.
He sits up on the edge of the narrow bed, and remembers the drive at dawn to the mosque, where he spoke to the imam. He woke the man up, and was allowed inside. He said to the imam that if he heard from Malik, please tell him that his mother was dead. That he should call his father. The imam was gentle, trying to console Ali, but shrugged and said he had not seen Malik in a long time. Maybe years now. Ali said: What about Jamal? Yes, sometimes he comes, the imam said. Jamal is still a Muslim. He even made the haj. He has nothing to do now with jihad. Ali knew that, knew Jamal’s address too. He said nothing more to the imam about Malik, but did give him a card.
— Call me, if you hear from my son.
— Yes, sir.
— I’m sorry for waking you up.
— I wasn’t sleeping, the imam says. I was praying.
— Pray for me.
— I will.
— And above all, for my wife.
Ali walks blindly now to the wall of the tiny room in the JTTF, feels for the light switch. Flicks it on. He blinks in the hard blue light of the fluorescent ceiling bulbs. The pale green walls are blank. Then he steps to the sink, turns on the tap. Thinking: This is like a cell in a very good prison. I am sentenced to solitary.
Never thought I’d survive Mary Lou. Not because I’m older, because of this job. You race to a domestic dispute and a man and a woman stop beating the shit out of each other and turn on you. Both of them. A knife or a gun, that’s part of the deal. Or there’s a robbery of a jewelry store in Chinatown, and you see the guy running through the screaming crowd, and a truck blocks his way, and he turns and fires. Over and over again. Day by day, year by year. Life in this job is a goddamned lottery, with odds against. Ali Watson always thought she would bury him. Why you, Mary Lou? Why not me?
He dries his face, runs a comb through thinning hair. He sees that his eyes are rimmed with red. And turns away from the mirror. Now I have to do the clerical stuff. There’s nobody else. Just me. Arrange a funeral. In Brooklyn. Pick the cemetery too. Dodge the press. Plead national security or some goddamned thing. Ask Ray Kelly to help. Call the lawyer about insurance.
First I gotta find someone else.
8:50 a.m. Sam Briscoe. Publisher’s office, Lipstick Building, Manhattan.
He is sitting on a leather couch in the reception area, casually scanning the New York Times. His hat and coat are in the closet. He is warm in his suit jacket. Behind him on the wall are raised letters in Caslon bold, spelling out the name chosen long ago by Elizabeth Elwood: “World Enterprises, Inc.” Simple and modest. There is a large portrait of her by Everett Raymond Kinstler on the right side of the lettering, placed there after her death. The portrait perfectly captures her intelligent, sympathetic eyes. It was commissioned by her husband long ago, and hung over the fireplace in the living room on Sutton Place until he died. Then she moved it into the library. Her son Richard moved it here, after the apartment was sold. He donated most of her books to the public library, but Briscoe is certain that he chose none of them for himself.