by Thomas Laird
The phone rang. It was Gary Schneider.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“What’d you say?” Marty asked.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Schneider said at full volume.
“I’m not deaf, Gary.”
“Marty…”
“What?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not that sick. I’ll—“
“Marty? Have you been asleep all day?”
“As a matter of fact…”
“My God…I’m so sorry. You don’t know? You haven’t watched TV?”
Marty Van Dyke panicked when he remembered Cathy wasn’t home. It was after six, and she was always home at 5:30 PM, with him, when they returned from the station at the Anderson Building.
Before Marty could ask the unthinkable, Gary Schneider told him.
Schneider had gone out for doughnuts for the crew and for Cathy. He missed the blast by eighteen minutes. He felt the shock wave and he heard the roar, one mile from the Anderson Building at the closest Dunkin Doughnuts. The cops wouldn’t let him get near ground zero, but word was released about the names of the dead three hours later on the local news, and the entire crew and Cathy Van Dyke were among them.
*
Marty sat in the bathroom on the toilet. His ears finally popped and his hearing was nearly back to normal. He hadn’t cried yet and he wondered what was holding things up inside himself. The phone call came from the police at midnight. They’d recovered her body from the wreckage of the Anderson Building, and they needed an ID.
Marty rushed to dress and leave, and he was downtown in forty minutes.
The morgue at St. Mary’s was one of a number of hospital morgues that was overloaded with the victims of the Chicago bombing. All the hospitals in the area volunteered their services for the dead. The city morgue could not have handled the hundreds who died in the blast.
A Lieutenant Jimmy Parisi and a Detective Tommy Spencer were waiting for him at St. Mary’s. They identified themselves and quickly lead him to the viewing room in the hospital’s morgue.
Parisi unzipped the body bag. Marty gasped. Cathy was intact—at least her upper body was—but she looked like a waxed impression of herself.
“She was crushed by the avalanche of concrete and steel that fell on them from above,” Parisi explained. “There were massive injuries on the chest and lower extremities, Mr. Van Dyke…I’m so very very sorry.”
Parisi was not a big man. He was perhaps five nine, and maybe about 180 pounds. He was solid-looking, with Italian features. The dark brown, almost black hair. He might have passed for a slightly more world-weary Al Pacino, Marty thought. Spencer had fairly long blond hair, especially for a cop and especially for a guy in his fifties—all of which was guesswork for Van Dyke. Spencer didn’t say anything. Parisi did all the talking.
“I’m also very sorry for your loss,” Detective Spencer said.
“It doesn’t look like Cathy. Not the living Cathy, I mean. It looks like some wax figure of her.”
“That’s what bodies look like, in my experience,” Parisi told him.
“You’ve seen a lot of them,” Marty murmured.
“Yes. In this job. In the war.”
“Vietnam?” Van Dyke asked.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t go. I was 4-F. For blood pressure.”
“I’m glad you missed it,” Parisi said. “I wish we all could have missed it.”
Spencer nodded, with a slight grin.
“What now?” Marty asked.
“She’ll be released fairly soon. Then you can make the arrangements,” Parisi explained.
It was then that Marty Van Dyke began to weep. Parisi took him out of the viewing room, but Spencer remained behind.
The cop bought him a cup of coffee in the cafeteria at St. Mary’s. Parisi drank a Diet Coke. Marty never touched the cup of coffee.
But he had stopped weeping as soon as they sat in the booth in the cafeteria.
“Was it the same people who did all that in New York yesterday?”
“We don’t know yet. I’m probably not the guy to ask anyway. The Federal Police are all over this. National Security, you know. We’re sort of super cargo at the moment. It’s their dance.”
“But what do you think?” Marty went on.
“If I were putting odds on it in Vegas I suppose I’d go with Bin Laden’s people. Probably because that’s the popular assumption, right now. If you’re Arabic or even from the Middle East, it’s a good time to keep a low profile in this city, Mr. Van Dyke. We’ve had numerous reports of street violence. And the night is still young.”
“The Arabs around here—“
“Are under attack. They’ve already tried and condemned them. No judge, no trial, no jury. It’s like The Oxbow Incident in this city, Mr. Van Dyke…You’re the movie critic on Channel Two, no? You and…Cathy and Marty, now I remember seeing you two on Saturday nights. You used to fight all the time. You never agreed. It was very entertaining.”
“Yes…We never had a fight at home in four years. Only place we ever disagreed was on the air. You believe that, Lieutenant?”
“My wife is a Homicide Detective. We usually have our spats at work in a professional way. At home…At home we’re too busy acting like we’ve only been married a week, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes. I know. That was the way it was for us. We never spent much time apart. Work. At home. We never wanted it to be any other…”
Parisi touched his arms until the shuddering stopped.
“I’ve met you before,” Marty said.
“Where was that?”
“I was a crime reporter a long time ago. At the Herald.”
“Yeah. I think I remember you now. I was a Sergeant, then.”
“I think I talked to you once or twice,” Marty said.
“Yeah, I remember you…That red hair. Like fiery red. And the freckles too.”
Spencer showed up, then.
“We’ve got some more people for ID’s, Jimmy.”
“It’ll be a very long night here,” Parisi explained. “Go home, Marty. As soon as I hear anything, anything at all, I’ll call you myself.”
“I’d appreciate it, Jimmy.”
Parisi shook hands with him, Spencer nodded, and the two cops walked off. Marty sat with his lukewarm coffee in its Styrofoam cup. The cafeteria was empty at one in the morning. It was 9/13, he realized. He’d slept through half of that day of horror while Cathy had been crushed by the Anderson Building. He’d been snoring through the day with a dose of Benadryl and a head full of sinus pus. But his head was clearing now, and the weeping had come to an end. Marty’s background in crime reporting had given him a hard edge, an edge which Cathy had not always appreciated in their four year marriage. She had softened that indifference, Marty was certain, but she had never cancelled it outright. It was a carry-over from his days in the morgue, down at police headquarters and in various hospital morgues. He was used to be around the dead from those days on the crime beat, and now that hardness was coming back to him.
Nine-twelve cancelled Van Dyke and Van Dyke, but it was reincarnating the old Martin Van Dyke of the Chicago Herald. It didn’t matter if it were Bin Laden or anyone else, Marty was going to find out who his wife’s murderer or murderers were. He knew how to dig. He knew how to ask questions. He knew how to search out and find the likely suspects. He’d done it for a living before.
Marty recalled the pictures of Bin Laden. A six foot six Saudi. Certainly they’d locate such a man quickly, if he were behind the New York disaster. And if he were the perpetrator in Chicago, he’d take credit for all these deaths as well. It was in his nature to be boastful. It was jihad, after all, a holy war. All Americans were infidels—even Cathy.
Cathy. His blonde, five foot four inch wonder. The only crime she’d ever committed was falling in love with a redhead named Marty Van Dyke. Ace newspaperman turned movie critic. The
show was her idea, two years after Marty and she had made their names in the movie critic circles. They’d been married just two years when she suggested they approach Channel Two about a TV show that would make their disagreements about the flicks a TV series. The powers at Channel Two liked what they saw in the pilot, and the show took off even though it was on Saturday nights, Death Valley for TV shows. The public watched the husband and wife go at it at 6:30, and then they went out on the town. The ratings reflected a big share for their time slot.
She was not confrontational at home. She could not get enough of him and it was the same for Marty. Frequently they were almost caught in compromising positions at the station, before and after filming of the shows. They embarrassed the stagehands continually with their antics. They received condoms for a prank gift after their first season anniversary.
Cathy wanted a baby. Marty just wanted Cathy. But he couldn’t say no to her desire for a child because he couldn’t say no to Cathy, bottom line. She didn’t conceive, and Van Dyke wondered if he were shooting blanks, if he were sterile. He had an appointment with a doctor next Tuesday—but now that could be cancelled.
Someone murdered his wife, and nine hundred or so other people. It might have been the same people who raped the Tower in New York. Marty didn’t believe in coincidence, so it seemed likely that it was an act of terrorism.
When he got home from the hospital, he turned on the TV and saw the violence that was erupting in the streets of his city, Chicago. Marty was a native of Chicago. Home grown, graduated from Lane Tech on the northside, and then of Northwestern University, courtesy of a very rich scholarship he’d won as a result of writing for his high school newspaper and then showing financial need. He was the child of a single parent, his mother Evelyn. Evelyn was widowed when Marty turned eight. She had her husband’s pension. Jack Van Dyke had been a fireman before he fell through a burning roof and was killed on the job out on the southwest side. So young Martin earned a full four-year scholarship in journalism at Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois, and he took full advantage of his good luck. He landed a job at the Chicago American right out of college, and he earned his master’s in Evanston via another scholarship based on his perfect four point GPA at the university just north of the city. He moved to the Herald and began his career as a crime reporter.
Then he met Cathy, who wrote a women’s column at the Sun Times. It was love at first sight for both of them, and they were married six months after they met.
They loved the movies. Their favorite was Casablanca. They both shed real tears when Humphrey Bogart insisted that Ingrid Bergman get on that plane to Lisbon at the end. Cathy thought it was very funny that a seeming tough guy like Marty Van Dyke would cry at the end of any movie. But it endeared him to her more deeply than she could explain. He had a soft spot, beneath that tough-guy reporter exterior. He was soft at the core. It was difficult to reach Marty’s center very often, and that was what kept her love alive for him. She could reach him. No one else could. He’d told her that himself, and it was their secret. It was the source of all that heat they’d felt for each other.
Cathy was a miracle, the only miracle that had ever happened in his life. Now there were no more acts of God. There was nothing to believe in. Not God, not his own country, not humanity. Nothing. The Anderson Building explosion had ruined him. It had crushed all his human parts, he thought. Now there was nothing left to do but get even. Somehow he had to make the person or persons responsible pay. Pay with their lives. They’d stolen Marty Van Dyke’s life. His life was Cathy, just Cathy, only Cathy. Now there was nothing left to do but get them, make them forfeit their lives for what they’d stolen from him. It was as if no one else died in the Anderson Building explosion. Only one life had been crushed by the rubble.
Marty Van Dyke got down on his living room floor. He pulled his knees close to his stomach. His body was as taut as coiled steel. He wanted to weep again, but the tears would not come. So he stayed on the floor, clenched, as if he were waiting for the next bombing, the next explosion, to break the horrible silence that surrounded him.
CHAPTER THREE
I took my forty-eight hours and got reacquainted with my redheaded wife Natalie. And I got reacquainted with her newest birth control device, the diaphragm. The gynaecologist told her they worked fine, but I had my doubts. My first wife used the diaphragm too, but we had a couple close calls with it. Seems that if you just nudge it while you’re making love…There are enough little Parisis in the world. Let’s leave it at that.
Natalie is much younger than I am. More than a couple decades. I’m pushing sixty, and she’s still in her thirties. The age thing has never become a big deal as of yet, but I keep looking at this youthful redhead who lies in my bed night after night, and I’m wondering how she can stand to see the royal port ageing next to her in our queen sized bed.
“Stop it,” she says, when I bring up the issue of our age disparity.
“You could be chasing the light magical with some young stud who could actually keep up with you.”
“You’ve kept up. In fact you tire me out, from time to time, especially when you start moaning about your geezerhood, Jimmy.”
My first wife and Natalie are the only women I can remember who made me laugh. I found myself becoming very serious with every other female I have encountered throughout my life—encountered in a romantic way, I mean.
“Is it very bad on the street, Jimmy?”
“Yes. It’s very bad. It’s…evil.”
“That bad?”
“I was never as scared in the street as I was on those two days, Red. The eleventh and the twelfth of September. I’ll never be as frightened again, I don’t think, either. In the War, we were halfway around the world. At least nothing bad could happen here, I thought, back then. There was always a safe place, you know? But when they hit the Tower, there was nothing safe left in this country, and then the next day they stuck the knife next to my heart, right here, in this city. There’s no safe place, Red. No place to come to. What they used to call the citadel, in a castle. The strong place that couldn’t be taken. Now we’re all vulnerable. There’s no place to retreat to anymore. We’re out in the open, naked, uncovered… I’m convinced that newborns scream not because the doc slaps them on the ass, but because they know they can’t hide deep inside momma anymore. There’s no haven, no retreat, no hiding place anymore.”
“Now you’re scaring me, Jimmy.”
I grabbed hold of my naked wife and I pulled her close.
“I’m your safe place. What scares me most is I won’t always be there for you and the kids, all of our kids.”
“You’ll be here. I won’t let you go.”
She kissed me the way she always kissed me, full mouthed and warm with just a hint of a tongue tip searching me out. I didn’t ask her if she had the diaphragm in. I was too impetuous to wait and find out, and she never asked me to hold off while she put the damn thing where it went.
I felt Natalie tighten inside when she finished. She was warm, almost hot, and her increased heat aroused me even more so that I just kept on going, and then her eyes went wide about the time mine did and we came at each other furiously, and I collapsed atop her like someone had shot me at point blank range.
“Jimmy!”
“I’m okay,” I gasped.
Then I managed to roll to her side.
“You didn’t let me put my little thing inside.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“We might have been taking a chance, you know.”
“I know. I heard the gynee when she explained it all.”
“What if I get pregnant?”
“You won’t, Red. My warriors are too tired to hit the beach anymore.”
“You could have fooled me, Jimmy.”
I smiled. What else could I do?
“You’d be devastated if I got you knocked up again?”
“No. I always wanted a son with you.”
“Hey? Is this a
setup, Redhead?”
“No, my love. I don’t do ambushes.”
“Well I’m glad to hear it.”
“We don’t want to populate this world any further anyway, do we?”
“If it’s with your kids…I’d have to think it over.”
She kissed me and probed again with her tongue.
“I don’t like it with that damn thing inside you.”
“There’s always condoms.”
“I’d rather fuck the bathtub drain, Natalie.”
“That’s very crude of you.”
“I like it natural. I liked the pills.”
“We didn’t like the side effects, remember?”
I nodded my head grudgingly. Natalie broke out with sores in her mouth. They were so painful she couldn’t even kiss me without hurting, so we canned the pills.
“We could have one more baby, and then I could have the tubes tied. I’m getting old enough now.”
“You’re just a kid, Christ.”
“I’m thirty—“
“Never mind.”
“We could have one more. I’m young enough, and you’d—“
“I’d be eighty when the kid was in college.”
“So?”
I have one son, Mike. He’s in college now. The big girl from my first marriage was married and a med school student.
“You really want another kid now? With the world he’d be thrown into?”
“We were thrown into this mess, just like everyone else was tossed into it.”
I could see it was no use. She’d changed gears on me. She wanted another baby and she’d made up her mind. That was why she didn’t stop and insert the little demon diaphragm.
“This was a fix. Right?”
“You like making me pregnant. Confess.”
I was about to argue with her, but it was a no-win scenario.
“Natalie, I really am getting too goddam old for this shit.”
“Once more with feeling, then.”
She had me so aroused that a nineteen year old would’ve been proud of the production that was going on below my waist.
