— I wish I could write tonight, Helen Loomis says in a sad blurred voice.
— You will. In your memoirs.
She chuckles. Then from 15th Street, a car turns, and a uniformed cop wearing an orange vest uses his club to point it downtown. The car moves slowly past the Old Homestead, aimed at 14th Street and what becomes Hudson Street on the far side. Briscoe steps out of the park, Helen behind him. The car slows, then stops on the far curb, the engine still pumping exhaust fumes into the falling snow.
— Christ, Helen, I hope these aren’t folks from “Vics and Dicks.”
— My people.
A young woman steps out of the back door. There are other people in the car, which has snow gathered on its hood and roof.
— Helen! Hey, Helen, it’s me, Janice!
Helen squints hard, then relaxes.
— It’s the woman who loaned me the cell phone, she says.
The young woman shouts, Where you going?
— Second Avenue and Ninth Street, Briscoe shouts.
— Come on! Janice shouts. We have room for one more.
Janice waddles awkwardly across the snow in a lumpy way to Helen, takes her arm.
— Go, Briscoe says. I can walk to the subway.
— I can’t leave you here alone, Sam.
— I’ll be fine, Briscoe says. Go.
Helen allows herself to be pulled to the open door of the car, where he can see the heads and blurred faces of others, packed tightly. Helen is shoved in by Janice, who follows her, and slams the door.
— Go, Briscoe whispers.
He waits until the car pulls away, crossing 14th Street, moving into Hudson Street, becoming two more dirty red eyes in the snow. Briscoe stands there for a long moment.
9:10 p.m. Beverly Starr. Pastis restaurant, Meatpacking District, Manhattan.
She is at the bar in the crowded restaurant. Waiting for the guy from the car service. Some streets blocked. Sipping a tequila and tonic. Her heart still beating fast. Her right cheek is scraped, and she pats it with a cloth napkin soaked in peroxide that the maitre d’ brought her. Other refugees from the benefit are at various tables, faces somber with a kind of blankness. She thinks: Post-traumatic stress disorder? They are whispering. Holding hands. Waiting for something that is not food.
She stares at her drink, closes her eyes. Sees her own slide show. A woman’s snapped ankle flopping like a sock. A gaping older man who has lost his front teeth. A fat guy in an Ali Baba suit falling back under a high-heeled stampede. Opens her eyes. Snow still falling.
This is the kind of night when I need some guy to hold me. To whisper to me. To tell me that everything’s gonna be all right.
Then smiles, and wonders who won the auction.
9:11 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Fourteenth Street.
He crosses the wide street to the downtown side, and begins to walk east, toward Eighth Avenue, where he can find a subway. The A or the C. He looks up at the buildings. Lights are burning in about half of them, with the shades drawn. Others are shadeless, windows on the storm. He sees one woman alone, watching the street, not moving. In another, there is diffused light from a television set. On the street, a lone woman walks a small dog. He steps around a Mega Millions sign, with a printed image of a man peering from behind the day’s prize. His face is hidden, but his hairline recedes. Can it be Rudy Giuliani?
He slows now. His feet in their socks and boots are losing feeling. His gloved hands are numb. He imagines Helen Loomis in her apartment now. Or soon. Warming. Smoking a good-night cigarette. He wonders if her friend Federico the mambo dancer is across the street, moving to Tito Puente while the snow falls harder. He hopes so. He imagines Matt Logan, at home with his wife, wondering whether he can handle the brave new World of a website. Of course he can. News is news.
Maybe Fonseca will file for the site tomorrow. Maybe he can talk to Ali Watson before the snow stops falling. Or do a portrait of the guy he shot. Whoever the hell he was. The best story? It’s his nutjob son. And he can be traced to Patchin Place. But maybe they don’t connect. Maybe he’s just a pissed-off former employee. Some neighbor says the music was too loud? An architecture critic? Who the hell knows? Maybe Fonseca will discover the guy had a co-conspirator, a backup, the one who dropped that MAC-10. Or discover what was most likely: the guy was alone. The story now is that one night after his wife was murdered, Ali Watson killed a guy in the line of duty. Those are the known facts. So far. No theories, please.
The dead guy will soon be on a slab somewhere. Maybe even in the same freezing morgue as Mary Lou Watson. And Cynthia.
Cynthia.
I could not pray for her down at Patchin Place, Briscoe thinks. Backed up to the library fence twenty feet from Sandra Gordon, seeing the grief in Ali Watson’s eyes. And here I am in front of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. When Briscoe was young, it was called St. Bernard’s. The gate is open. He looks up the wet stone stairs at the red church doors. A light is burning above the arch. He starts up, then pauses. One door opens, and an older Mexican woman emerges, pulls her zipper to the top of her coat, buries her jaw in her scarf. He goes up a few more steps. She nods in a welcoming way. He goes to the top. He opens the red door and goes in.
9:15 p.m. Sandra Gordon. Her apartment.
The local news from New York 1 is on the set in her study. For possible news about Myles. The sound is off. She sits in an armchair, nibbling salted almonds, sipping a beer. Then she sees pictures of Aladdin’s Lamp, police cars, panicky crowds, a woman reporter with a microphone. She turns on the sound.
… possible terrorist attack. At least one alleged terrorist is dead. Scores were injured fleeing the scene, when the armed terrorist displayed a suicide vest in the crowded club. Police say…
That’s the place Janice wanted me to go to! Yes. Is she okay? Did she get hurt? Where the hell is she? A terrorist attack? On a disco? Makes no sense.
Then the anchorman is on. Making a clumsy segue. Meanwhile, the investigation of the murders in Greenwich Village of… She clicks off the sound and looks away, sips the beer, gets up, walks to a window to watch the driving snow. She counts to fifty and turns to the set. The anchorman again. Then a head shot of Myles! A kind of mug shot, without numbers underneath. Flicks on sound. Police in Putnam County believe they have found the body of a Wall Street man who failed to show up at a federal grand jury today. The man: Myles Compton. The body was found by two snowboarders. The man was shot twice in the head. Federal investigators had no comment but—
She turns off the set.
Sits there in silence.
Thinking: God, I’m too old for this.
Refusing to shed even one more tear.
9:16 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Our Lady of Guadalupe, 14th Street.
There is no Mass under way, but the lights are shining. He has slipped into a pew in the rear. The familiar image of the Lady of Guadalupe is high on the altar, her dark Indian skin a sign of triumphant consolation, with some kind of painted blue stream spreading beneath her. He has seen her in many places. In Mexico, above all. In the old Mexico City cathedral where pilgrims come each December to celebrate her goodness, hundreds doing the last few miles on their knees, to leave painted tin retablos asking for her intercession. The lights in this church do not burn now at full strength, except on the Virgin herself. Green-painted pillars rise to the high dark ceiling. But Briscoe can see people scattered through the pews. Everyone is alone. No couples. No mothers and children. Few men at all. Up near the front on the right, there’s someone in a wheelchair. Out in the aisle. To the right and left of the altar, candles burn in rows, and one older woman goes up and drops a coin in a slot and lights a fresh one.