The girl makes a hard swallow, stuffs a pocket with something unrecognizable. Then she climbs back to the ground, stunningly agile, and makes a beeline for the interior of Gompers. She enters through a low window hole that’s been halfheartedly boarded over. Jakob gives her a few seconds’ head start, then follows.
But he finds he can’t fit through the gaps in the plywood, so he circles around the side of the station and finds a hole that’s been smashed through the marble wall. He gets down on his knees, blankets the camera inside his jacket, and climbs through.
Jakob enters the main chamber of the station and stops, stays motionless and tries to get a fix on where the girl has gone. He smells smoke, hears the sound of running feet from above. He sees the remains of a huge support column to his right and crawls toward it on all fours, then eases himself into sitting and withdraws the Seitz from the fold of his coat. He brings the camera to his eye and pulls back to a medium shot, then begins to scan the balconies that rim the main chamber.
At the far end of the hall, he fixes on a small bonfire. He pulls in slightly, finds faces illuminated in the glow of the fire’s light. They’re all children, both girls and boys. In the center of the group is his star, the engine of his movie, the face that will only appear in reproduction, a still, fixed image. But, Jakob knows, even in this ridiculous dimness, that the power of this child’s face will certainly outshine every scenery-chewer slated to walk across the screen.
The little girl is handing out to her compatriots whatever she scavenged from the Dumpster outside. She works deliberately, with a seriousness of purpose far beyond what her age should allow. Every now and then, she stops to rub her eyes or bring the back of her hand across her nose.
This lighting isn’t going to work, Jakob thinks. And the distance is too great.
He’s going to need to shoot her during the day somehow. And to do that, sooner or later, he’s going to have to approach her. He comes back up onto his knees and starts to move for a closer column, but his hand hits something cold and metal and sends the object rolling down a slope of broken concrete. The noise echoes through the chamber and the children up in the balcony immediately scatter, one of them dousing the fire with tossed liquid.
Jakob cringes and curses himself. He stands up, shoulders the Seitz, looks through the lens and sweeps across the balconies. And he’s shocked to find himself staring up at a young boy, barely a teen. But as Jakob starts to sharpen his focus, the kid pitches a rock. The stone impacts at Jakob’s feet, but it’s just the initial assault in what suddenly becomes a barrage. From every angle above, rocks and bottles and lengths of pipe come hurling through the air down around Jakob. An old boot catches him across the forehead and he falls intentionally to the ground and starts to crawl for shelter.
But there’s no safe place to run. The children are fanned out and seem to have the whole of the main hall covered from every direction. They make no noise beyond the striking of their missiles. They appear to have an endless supply of rubble to use as ammunition.
Jakob tries a crawling run from column to column. Scrap metal and stones and rail spikes and small shafts of wood rain down around him. He flinches, takes a hard blow to the shoulder and sees he’s been hit by an unopened soup can. He rolls to the side, still trying to shield the Seitz, and a chuck of marble falls inches from his head.
“Please,” he tries to yell. “I’ll leave you alone.”
There’s a moment of amnesty and he takes it, climbs to his feet and starts to run for the hole he used to enter the station. As he approaches his exit, the attack begins again and as he squeezes through to the yard outside, he takes several blows to his back and head.
He falls outside bleeding, but he thinks the Seitz is unharmed. He gets up, starts to run toward Ivano Ave. He makes it a block, to the intersection of Polito, then lets himself slump against a street lamp and catch his breath.
Across the block, a crowd of hookers loitering in front of the Occidental Lounge seem to turn their collective attention his way. He tries to think of the fastest way back to the St. Vitus. Then he hears the screaming from behind.
Kidnapper. Murderer. Child Killer.
He turns back to Gompers Station, sees a small figure at the edge of the station’s roof. It’s pointing down in his direction, the voice so much larger than the stature should indicate. It’s the little girl from the Dumpster.
It’s him. He took Jenny Ellis. He killed Jenny Ellis.
A crowd starts to empty into the street from the Bangkok clubs and alleyways. And Jakob realizes what is about to happen.
He killed her. He killed the little girl.
He straightens up, hears voices being raised. One of the hookers starts pointing across the intersection toward him, yelling, “That’s him. That’s the son of a bitch who grabbed that little girl.”
He doesn’t wait for another word. He turns and bolts back down Ivano and knows the crowd is going to follow.
And they do. This drug-steamed parish of the night instantly transforms itself into the classic angry village and begins its pursuit. Jakob knows he could run faster if he dropped the Seitz, but that just isn’t a possibility. From the sky behind him, from the rooftop of Gompers Station, a child’s voice of unthinkable power explodes, an alarm bell ringing into consciousness an instantaneous mob mentality. And this mob is comprised of the citizens of the meanest tenderloin imaginable.
The babykiller. The babykiller is here.
Jakob runs across Haller Road, hangs a left onto Mac-Donald. The noise behind him is increasing and drawing nearer. There’s an awful taunting quality to it. He can’t make out any words, only a threatening babble. The sound track to a brutal demise born of blood-lust and a chronic, indiscriminate rage. He throws himself through a series of interconnecting alleyways and comes out on Polito. He’s run a full circle. Across the street is the opposite border of Gompers Station.
He starts to hesitate, but the sound of barking dogs drives him across the road and through a gap torn into some rusted cyclone fencing. He picks the first open boxcar he sees and climbs inside it. And only then does he realize how badly his head is pounding. His lungs begin to seize up on him and he claws at his pockets for his medication, but comes up empty.
He rolls onto his stomach, lets his head rest against the floor of the boxcar, thinks he might be able to pass out. He can no longer tell if the noise of the mob is growing fainter or drawing nearer. He touches the Seitz, strokes it, keeps his hand on the grip.
Some time passes. A series of minutes filled only with the sound of his decayed lung expanding and contracting like a sputtering motor consuming its last drops of fuel.
And suddenly Jakob realizes that he’s lying on a blanket of white paper. The entire floor of the train car, every inch, is carpeted with “Missing” flyers.
He rises up on his elbows, lifts his head, blinks to clear his vision. He looks down to the floor of the train car and reads
Have You Seen This Child?
He stares at the words as if they might mutate into a parade of insects and march off the page. He stares until the words lose their meaning.
And only then does he let himself look at the photo beneath the words. The picture of Jenny Ellis. The picture of the little girl from the Dumpster.
You escaped, he thinks, shocked at his envy as much as his discovery. You escaped as I wish to escape.
He gets up on his knees, picks up one of the flyers, runs a hand over the photocopied visage.