by Robert Pobi
Everyone turned to Lucas, waiting for his magic powers to kick in. But there wasn’t much to think about in the way of positions—the shooter had to have been close to the northwest corner, at the leftmost edge of the massive heat pumps sending warm air down into the body of the building. A pair of tracks were carved into the thick carpet, but the wind had done its work; other than a rough gait measurement, they wouldn’t learn much from the trail.
The footsteps led to the corner by the HVAC units, straight to the skeleton of scaffolding bolted to the wall—no doubt installed for repairs before the deep freeze put everything on hold.
There weren’t a lot of ways up—the integrated ladders on the side were the only option: four levels to the ramparts. Whoever had used the scaffold wore gloves, so there was no worry about disturbing fingerprints or latent DNA, and whatever had been left behind in the way of trace evidence had been blasted past Hoboken by now. Lucas headed up the scaffold.
He had very little mobility in his prosthetic hand, and he had to hook his elbow over every second rung. His leg locked each time he pulled back his thigh, and this helped him Spider-Man up the frozen steel tubing, but it was a lot slower than someone with full biomechanics.
The wind had scoured the platform clean, and there were no immediate signs of a man’s passing. Lucas pivoted and rolled up onto the deck.
Out there, high above the city, the wind became something to be feared. Coming up here required more than just motivation and determination—you needed to enjoy punishment. There were a thousand other places along Park or Forty-second that would have served all the tactical considerations better than this place.
So why here?
Lucas moved to the brick wall that rose three feet, then rolled out for another eight in a ledge before dropping out into space. He rose slowly, keeping his center of gravity low—the psychological hurdle of being forty-one floors up added all kinds of white noise to an already unsettling exercise. He wasn’t afraid of heights, but you had to be a moron to not respect what gravity and pavement could do to a falling body.
Looking down Park to Forty-second was like staring down a long, narrow trench, which made the exercise seem easy. But when you took a figurative step back and examined the variables, this fucker had a lot of extra math involved: wind; shifting daylight; snow; reduced visibility; weapons adjustment (and possible failure); clothing choice; distance. And a narrow slice of time to line it all up. This wasn’t a shot just anyone who knew their way around a rifle could make.
Lucas pulled out his scope and sighted down Park. Grand Central Terminal filled the reticle, and the intersection was a cacophony of flashing lights and cop cars—all for a single bullet that everyone was trying to go back in time to stop.
Making that shot from here would be like trying to thread a needle while riding a mechanical bull set to Motörhead. It would take the first half of the intersection to simply acquire the target. Which gave a tiny window to focus, take a breath, calculate the lead, and squeeze the trigger.
Close to impossible.
Lucas could think of maybe three men off the top of his head who could make it happen, and even then the statistics were against them.
But for their guy, it had been doable. Difficult and unlikely—but doable. All you had to do was ask Doug Hartke.
The deck was scrubbed virtually clean by the wind. There were no scratches or pigeon shit or any other marks on the engineered stone, either atmospheric or man-made.
Lucas turned back to the roof, back to the storm coming down and the city beyond the haze. Then he looked down at the forensics guys who would be doing all the heavy lifting in cataloging the million and one pieces of crap up here, very little (if any) of which would be useful.
He now had a developing picture of the man they were looking for. A guy like this hadn’t been spawned in a vacuum; he had a life out there. He had done this before.
That was when Kehoe piped up above the wind. “Well, Page? What do you think?” he hollered from the rooftop below.
Lucas turned and examined him for a second; he had already given his opinion—he was only up here out of morbid curiosity.
“Bingo,” he said.
8
Lucas was tucked into the corner under the spider-works of sheathed ducting that fed into the dead end behind the main service elevator. The coffee that Whitaker kept bringing him was better than the stuff they used to hand out in the field; evidently, the Starbucksification of America had spread to the FBI. All his parts had thawed out, and his prosthetics were loosened up.
But Lucas wasn’t thinking about the coffee any more than he was worrying about the national debt; his mind was focused on what they weren’t telling him.
Kehoe was definitely keeping something back. Lucas had no idea what it was, other than it was there, in everything he said and, more important, in everything he didn’t. It was in the pauses and the little tick of time he used before answering questions. It was there when he looked Lucas square in the eye and in the way he watched him.
But the big tell was how everyone other than Whitaker was avoiding him. And it wasn’t from discomfort; he was used to making people uneasy, but that was in the world at large—he wouldn’t make a dent with these people. No, they were avoiding him because they had been told to.
Classic Kehoe.
He was on his third cup of coffee when Kehoe’s tailored silhouette came around the corner, Grover Graves in tow. Agent Whitaker shadowed them but stopped short, near the corner by the elevator. Lucas was starting to like her, and it wasn’t just because of her almost preternatural silence. He sensed that she was looking out for him, even though he was unable to articulate how. It had started back at the intersection of Park and Forty-second and had been amplified by the way she kept bringing him coffee.
Kehoe took off his gloves and blew into his fists. Even under the vent, Lucas could feel the cold wafting off him. Graves moved into the huddle, looking unhappy.
Kehoe filled a few seconds of airtime with a pause before saying, “You saved us a lot of time.”
“You would have figured it out—”
“Yes, we would have,” Graves interrupted, demonstrating that the old days weren’t far away in his mind.
Lucas gave him a soft smile and finished with, “In a week or two.”
Over at the elevator, Whitaker cracked a smile that she covered with a cough directed into her gloved fist.
Kehoe ignored the petty animosity but gave Graves a look that shut him down. Kehoe was one of those rare bureau people who was good at what he did because he was results oriented, not politically motivated. In an organization where ascension is as dearly coveted as results, divine protection would have been his had he stacked his boxed set with a pile of number-one hits. But his wake was littered with dogs—lost causes that no one else wanted. He was famous for it. And in the face of what appeared to be a direct desire to stay a field agent, he was nonetheless pushed up the law enforcement ladder by his superiors until now, almost three decades in, he was the acting senior agent for all of New York City. And one of the most respected in Manhattan’s history.
Kehoe continued, “I’d like you to stay on with this one. As a favor to me and as a favor to Hartke. He would have wanted you here.”
Lucas wondered if that had sounded as insincere to everyone else as it had to him. After mulling it over, he realized that these were no longer his people. And he would not let himself get manipulated. Besides, he had nothing left to give them. “No thanks,” he said, heading for the elevator.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. We’ve got a new little girl, and she’s not sleeping so well.” He nodded at Whitaker. “And she’s driving me.”
Kehoe started to protest, but Lucas was already gone.
As they stepped into the elevator, Whitaker said, “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”
Lucas reached out and hit the button with a green anodized knuckle. The doors slid closed, block
ing out Graves and Kehoe. “What are friends?” he asked.
9
When Lucas walked in the front door, Erin was in the study, on the sofa between the fireplace and the new Christmas tree devoid of ornaments. She was staring at the fire, zoning out with a glass of sauvignon blanc and that crappy music that she liked and he thought belonged in the elevator at Saks—it sounded like the Smiths tonight. She didn’t look up from the fire, and he hoped that she wasn’t angry. He could deal with disappointment, but when she got angry, communication got reduced to slammed doors and silence.
He hung his coat up on the deco hall tree by the stairs, kicked off his boots, and went over to the love seat. He dropped into the tufted leather, his prosthetic straight out in front of him. “Hey, baby.”
She didn’t speak for a few moments, and when she did, all that came out was, “Are you going back?”
Erin was fearless—always—and when something rattled her universe, she charged it head-on. Now, with her face only a few feet away, he could see the anger twanging the muscles below her skin.
Lucas reached out, taking her little face in his hand. She closed her eyes and dug her cheek into his palm, and she felt warm.
“You look”—all emotion, except for disappointment, dropped out of her voice—“different.”
He was going to ask her how, but he knew what she meant. He could also feel it.
Erin put her feet up on his lap, and he massaged the arch of her left with his good hand. She watched him for a few moments before saying, “You’re not thirty-five anymore.”
What she said had nothing to do with what she meant. Sure, the old him had both arms, both legs, and both eyes. But she was talking about herself and the kids.
“Just let me figure a few things out.”
At that, she pulled her feet off his lap and reached for the bottle on the coffee table. “There’s an us in this, you know.” Erin filled her glass and stood up. “I’m going to go upstairs; I have an early morning with the kids.”
He tried to kiss her good night, but she had already slipped away.
10
Lucas sat on the sofa for a while, cycling down the old machinery and nudging his OS toward hibernation. The adrenaline of being out there again slowly leached from his fibers, leaving guilt in its place. Erin was right—he’d have to be a complete and utter fool to forget what had happened the last time he had been out in the world with a badge clipped to his waist.
By the time the wheels in his head stopped spinning, the fire was reduced to a glowing mat of embers. The room was chilly, and his good leg was asleep. He gripped the armrest and pushed out of the sofa. The one positive thing he could say about his prosthetics (the arm and leg at least) was that they didn’t suffer from fatigue; they never cramped up, and they didn’t fall asleep. He stood there as the blood made its way into the lesser veins and capillaries of his good leg, and it felt like an army of ants were moving under his skin, chewing their way through muscles, tendons, and flesh.
He shifted his weight off the prosthetic as the imaginary neural insects finished off their feast. When they were gone, he headed down the hall to the kitchen and got himself a glass of milk from the fridge. He wondered how the kids were doing upstairs, what dreams were going through their little subconscious universes.
With Alisha added to the mix, there were now five children in the house, all kids whose biological parents had failed them and the system had given up on. Some had come from bad homes. Some had come from terrible homes. Some had come from no home. But somehow, magically, they had ended up here, with him and Erin. It didn’t take a degree in Freudian therapy to understand that both of them were trying to fix the broken parts of their own childhoods. But now with Alisha joining the Merry Pranksters, it looked like they had reached critical mass. They had no plans to expand the ranks any more. At least that’s what they had promised themselves.
Lucas counted the milk cartons in the fridge, making sure that there was enough for breakfast tomorrow; it was amazing how much milk kids could go through in a day. There were still six full half-gallon cartons, so he allowed himself another glass. Then he scavenged a piece of dry cheddar from the back of the meat drawer.
After he finished putting the dishes in the rack away, he grabbed an apple—there was always a big bowl of fruit on the island—and checked the back door. The lights were still on in Dingo’s apartment, and on any other winter night he might have gone over; Dingo could always be relied on for a beer and a little conversation when Lucas couldn’t sleep. But he needed to get to bed. After checking the lock for a second time, he headed down the hall.
The apple tasted like it had just come out of the fridge, and he stopped and adjusted the programmable thermostat. He inspected the front door and headed up the stairs in the dark.
He paused just past the pink elephant night-light on the landing. Laurie was camping out in Alisha’s room, zipped up in a sleeping bag on the floor. Alisha was in the bunk with the dog, and the room smelled like canine farts and baby shampoo, but she looked at peace. She had taken to Lemmy, and if there was one thing that Lucas knew, it was that nothing helped a kid like a big furry friend who liked to lick you on the face. And Lemmy, even though he looked like a brute (the result of his Great Dane and mastiff genes), loved kids. He tended to gravitate toward the children who needed the most support, and Lucas and Erin had learned to watch how Lemmy approached newcomers to help guide their own advances—the technique wasn’t gospel, but Lemmy demonstrated instincts that often bordered on mystical.
He then stopped across the landing, beside Maude’s bedroom. She slept with the door locked, and it was an indulgence they allowed her for now. (She had agreed to let Erin keep a key around her neck.) He could hear her breathing on the other side, a metronomic rasp that was somehow in time to the house. The girl, now thirteen and already a young woman, had spent seven long months in an upstate institution before coming here. Preceding that, her years had been marked off in a middle-class home over on Staten Island—a place she was doing her best to forget. She was still uncomfortable around men, and Lucas never spent time alone with her; he didn’t want her to feel even remotely uneasy, so he always waited for her to come to him. She had been with them for two years now, and he had worked hard to gain her confidence. And it was finally paying off. When they sat her down to ask if they could legally adopt her, she gave him a hug—a real hug—and nothing he could remember beat that feeling (not even that first big breath after he woke up in the hospital missing a few of his parts). It was one of the greatest accomplishments of his life.
He checked in on Damien and Hector, all tucked away and sleeping as if the world didn’t have men with rifles in it. Lucas made sure that they were covered and kissed them both on the foreheads. It wouldn’t be long before Damien became a surly teenager, and Lucas wanted to get all the kisses in before the deadline.
Back in their room, Erin was under the covers, and since Lucas had done a head count, he didn’t have to make sure they were alone. Sometimes one of the kids snuck in at night. It was usually when they had a bad dream or it was the night before a court date or a thunderstorm was hammering the city outside, but every now and then, he found Erin in bed with a little hummock of blanket that was doing its own breathing.
He closed the bedroom door softly and padded into the bathroom. He needed a shower, but he doubted he’d be able to wash the day off; Kehoe and his world wouldn’t be excised by something as simple as Irish Spring.
As he let the water heat up on its trip from the basement tank to the third floor, he stripped off the day’s clothes and dumped them in the hamper. Taking clothes off was a lot easier than getting them on, but it still took a few minutes of practiced contortions and, as usual, the jeans were the worst. He hoped that the next fashion revolution would turn its back on straight-legged denim and maybe go baggy, giving him a few years of reprieve. After all, joy was in the little things.
When he was finally nude, the bathroom was fille
d with a thick weather system of steam. He took off his arm; it was a much more complicated construction than his leg, and the humidity built up in the joints and could get funky. But unless he wanted the added possibility of a somersault through a plate glass shower stall, he needed the leg.
He stepped into the travertine booth, the walls adorned with enough knurled aluminum handles to satisfy a rock climbing school. Back in the beginning, they had been indispensable, but now, starting his second decade as the mechanical man, they were there because he didn’t feel like going through another bathroom renovation. Besides, as he got older, his shitty balance might make a comeback. And getting older looked like a real possibility these days.
The water was a shade below boiling, and he let it pelt his back. The scar tissue took a little longer to heat up than the rest of him, and as the warmth slowly spread through his system, he geared up for his end-of-the-day mental shutdown.
But this wasn’t an ordinary day. Not by any sort of metric. He couldn’t shake the image of Doug Hartke’s gray matter splattered all over the vinyl dashboard in frozen chunks.
Or Kehoe’s clumsy attempt at getting him back.
Lucas was no stranger to the machinations of the bureau, and he recognized a deeply flawed geometry in the way Kehoe had behaved. And if there was one thing he knew about Kehoe, it was that the man never did anything without a predetermined reason. There was always a plan.
What was going on?
And what wasn’t Kehoe telling him?
Fuck it, he thought. It’s over. You’re out.
As the hot water softened his muscles and the steam cleared out his lungs, the night’s storyboard faded, and once again he was just a university professor taking a shower.
He started to nod off under the steam, and he shut down the big jet and stood there, drip-drying his parts for a few seconds before stepping out of the tropical booth.
