I frowned. “A scar?”
“Wait. Does he have a scar? Lemme think. Hey, Ivan! You know that guy Tom next door? Does he have a scar on his face? Or was it the guy who used to run the place?”
Ivan didn’t remember any scar.
I thanked the manager of the sofa shop. I thanked the manager at Duane Reade. Eddie thanked the people at the diner. None had helped. Izabel was leaning against a parked station wagon when we got back to the art shop, shaking her head. No Tom. At 11:50 A.M., the shop remained closed.
“Let’s try the condo Aya told us about,” I said.
Detective Jamal reminded me that I was supposed to be at Cornell Medical Center giving another talk, in half an hour.
I sighed. “Cancel it.”
The building in front of which Tom Fargo’s car had been ticketed turned out to be a onetime pretzel factory converted to lofts. The brick had been sandblasted, a glass lobby added. The remodeling was stylish, and residents would have a great view of the Brooklyn Bridge. The co-op sat down a cobblestone street from one of New York’s premier restaurants, the River Café, on a barge, which offered a five-star view of the Manhattan skyline.
We had to wait a few moments in the lobby while the doorman chatted with a short, sweaty Hispanic woman who — from the talk — appeared to be a cleaning lady, and was complaining about broken air-conditioning on the A train. She was headed upstairs to “Mister Greg’s apartment.”
When the doorman turned his attention to us, his polite expression became more animated.
“I recognize you! My God! You were with the President on TV! I have a cousin who lives in Barrow, Alaska. He said you stopped an outbreak there two years ago!”
His name tag read MAURICIO. The lobby seemed quiet and had potted palms under an old blowup photo of Ebbets Field, onetime home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I’d noticed outside that signs posted on poles warned drivers that streets here were cleaned on Mondays and Wednesdays between 9 and 11 A.M. Move your car during those times.
“We’re trying to find an old friend of mine, a man named Tom Fargo,” I said.
Mauricio shook his head, disappointed that he could not help. “Sorry. There’s Tom Wilson in 4B, across from Greg’s. No Fargo.”
“Wilson, huh?”
“Nice man. He runs an art shop.”
“Do you mind looking at this photo? Recognize him?”
Mauricio’s open expression became worried, concerned, even before he glanced at the photo. “Does this have something to do with the malaria?”
“Not at all. It’s a personal visit.”
Mauricio looked at Eddie’s face, and at Izabel Santo. He had an intelligent face, but even someone with limited intelligence would have seen through my lie.
Mauricio studied the photo carefully, held it far from his face, pulled it close, frowned, looked sick.
“Why is he screaming?” he said.
“He lost a loved one.”
“He has a beard. And that hat is different. The only thing like Tom Wilson is the little space in the teeth. I can’t say if this is him.”
“Is Tom home now?”
“He’s not an old friend of yours, is he?”
Detective Jamal held up his shield. Mauricio said, at once, “I didn’t see him leave this morning, but I can call up to see.”
“How about if we just go knock?”
“I have to call first. Rules. Sorry.”
Jamal shook his head. “No, you don’t have to call up.”
We were moving across the lobby when the elevator door opened and the Hispanic woman — the cleaning lady — rushed out, screaming that there were two dead bodies in Señor Greg’s apartment. That Señor Greg and Rebeca were up there in a back bedroom, lying by a roaring air conditioner, their blood soaking carpets, their blood on floors and walls.
TWENTY-TWO
Every mile heading inland took Tom Fargo farther away from safety, a harbor where he could steal a boat, the border to cross into Canada. Pittsburgh — site of the next release — lay five hours west, he reckoned, as the Subaru cruised smoothly along Interstate 80, through Allegheny Mountain passes and the Delaware Water Gap.
Soft targets. Targets filled with people who are just as guilty as the politicians and generals.
The vectors slept in their travel cups, inside the doors. National forest rose on both sides of the highway. Tom felt as if his vehicle formed a protective capsule of inevitability around him. He was aware of other cars yet felt invisible to their occupants. These people had wound him down like a spring. They’d worked on him for years. His actions now were the natural consequence of their casual, endless brutality.
Emergencies are always like this. In one city, panic. In the next, a few miles away, people eat ice cream cones and laugh at comedy movies. Pittsburgh tonight, next stop tomorrow. I have enough supply for one last release after that. The best one.
He was in a clock running backward, having scouted the infection route months ago, zigzagging through America’s heartland, appraising parks, lakes, ponds. Here an Iowa state campground, where thousands of people gathered in summer, eating cotton candy or watching draft horse pulls, feeling safe. Here a quiet eddy beneath a Mississippi River bridge, by a beach where people lay in the sun. Hobart Haines had helped him pick the targets. Tom wanted these people to fear the very air they breathed. Hobart had said, Make them think that TODAY might be their last one. You’ll get people to do what you want.
But Tom’s confidence turned bitter as he recalled that for all his progress he was crippled in his mission. Back when he’d scouted the land, he’d assumed he’d have a regular supply of vectors. And that other attackers would be ranging through the South, hitting other targets.
Now there was just him and three thousand remaining insects BECAUSE OF JOE RUSH.
I can still make them think there are many attackers. Billions of mosquitoes live along the East Coast. The Americans will fear that my mosquitoes will breed with theirs. I will make them pay.
Pittsburgh, eighty miles.
The CD broadcast a sermon, recorded by another American he’d met overseas, a convert who had seen truth and gone over to the right side also. “Fight for the sake of God those who fight us, but do not attack them first.”
Tom said, out loud, “I did not attack first. They did.”
“God does not love the aggressors.”
“All I wanted was to be left alone.”
The GETOUT app had made New York departure easy, directing him from Brooklyn to Eastern Parkway and the Jackie Robinson, avoiding the silvery Whitestone Bridge. “Heavy NYPD action there,” the message warned. “Try the Throgs Neck Bridge instead.”
In America, nothing was coordinated anymore. Not politics. Not justice. Not friendship or even safety.
Route 80 grew more congested as he approached Pittsburgh. He’d dismantled his GPS to discourage electronic tracking, in case the federals figured out who he was. His hand-scrawled directions exited him onto two-lane Pennsylvania State Route 8N in Hampton Township, and then, as his heartbeat rose in anticipation, past fast-food restaurants and signs saying 2 FOR 1 BURGERS and new subdivisions with names like Indian Lakes and suburban Hardies Road. He entered a public parking area for North Park. On a pleasant summer dusk the seventy-five-acre lake shimmered. Canoes formed silhouettes against the sinking sun. Joggers enjoyed trails. Picnickers cheered a softball game. A poodle fetched a Frisbee, veering around riders on road bikes. No one challenged the lone man with a knapsack walking casually into the state forest, carrying a plastic container swarming with vectors.