Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II

by Ben H. Winters

  Now all that’s left is the million-dollar question. Because even if I do track him down—which I almost certainly will not be able to do—it remains the case that abandoning one’s spouse is not illegal and never has been, and of course I have no power at this point to compel anyone to do anything. I’m unsure exactly how to explain any of this to Martha Milano, and I suspect she knows it anyway, so I just go ahead and say it:

  “What do you want me to do if I find him?”

  She doesn’t answer at first, but leans across the sofa and stares deeply, almost romantically, into my eyes. “Tell him he has to come home. Tell him his salvation depends on it.”

  “His … salvation?”

  “Will you tell him that, Henry? His salvation.”

  I murmur something, I don’t know what, and look down at my notebook, vaguely embarrassed. The faith and fervency are new; they weren’t an aspect of Martha Milano when we were young. It’s not just that she loves this man and misses him; she believes that he has sinned by abandoning her and will suffer for it in the world to come. Which is coming, of course, a lot sooner than it used to be.

  I tell Martha I’ll be back soon if I have any news and where she can find me, in the meantime, if she needs to.

  As we stand up, her expression changes.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry, I’m such a—I’m sorry. Henry, how’s your sister doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  I’m already at the door, I’m working my way through the series of dead bolts and chains.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ll be in touch, Martha. I’ll let you know what I can find.”

  * * *

  The current environment. That’s what I said to Martha: A missing-person investigation is especially challenging in the current environment. I sigh, now, at the pale inadequacy of the euphemism. Even now, fourteen months since the first scattered disbelieving sightings, seven months after the odds of impact rose to one hundred percent, nobody knows what to call it. “The situation,” some people say, or “what’s going on.” “This craziness.” On October third, seventy-seven days from today, the asteroid 2011GV1, 6.5 kilometers in diameter, will plow into planet Earth and destroy us all. The current environment.

  I trot briskly down the stairs of the Cavatones’ porch in the sunlight and unchain my bike from their charming cement birdbath. Their lawn is the only one mowed on the street. It’s a beautiful day today, hot but not too hot, clear blue sky, drifting white clouds. Pure uncomplicated summertime. On the street there are no cars, no sound of cars.

  I snap on my helmet and take my bike slowly down the street, right on Bradley, east toward Loudon Bridge, heading in the direction of Steeplegate Mall. A police car is parked at the end of Church with an officer in the driver’s seat, a young man sitting upright in black wraparound shades. I nod hello and he nods back, slow, impassive. There’s a second cop car at Main and Pearl, this one with a driver I slightly recognize, although his wave in return to mine is cursory at best, quick and unsmiling. He’s one of the legions of inexperienced young patrol officers who swelled the ranks of the CPD in the weeks before its abrupt reorganization under the federal Department of Justice—the same reorganization that dissolved the Adult Crimes Unit and the rest of the detective divisions. I don’t get the memos anymore, of course, but the current operating strategy appears to be one of overwhelming presence: no investigations, no neighborhood policing, just a cop on every corner, rapid response to any whiff of public disturbance, as with the recent events on Independence Day.

  If I were still on the force, it would be General Order 44-2 that would be relevant to Martha’s case. I can call up the form in my mind, practically see it: Part I, procedures; Part VI, Unusual Circumstances. Additional investigative steps.

  There’s a guy at Main and Court, dirty beard and no shirt, whirling in circles and punching the air, earbuds in place, though I’d be willing to bet there’s no music coming out of them. I raise my hand from my handlebars and the bearded man waves back then pauses, looks down, adjusting the nonexistent volume. Once I’m over the bridge I make a small detour, weave over to Quincy Street and the elementary school. I chain my bike to the fence surrounding the playing field, take off my helmet and scan the recess yard. It’s the height of summer but there’s a small army of kids hanging out here, as there has been all day, every day, playing four-square and hopscotch, chasing one another across the weeds of the soccer field, urinating against the wall of the deserted brick schoolhouse. Many spend the night here too, camping out on their beach towels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars bed sheets.

  Micah Rose is sitting on a bench on the outskirts of the playground, his legs drawn up and hugged to his chest. He’s eight. His sister Alyssa is six, and she’s pacing back and forth in front of him. I take the pair of eyeglasses I’ve been carrying in my coat pocket and hand them to Alyssa, who claps her hands delightedly.

  “You fixed them.”

  “Not me personally,” I say, eyeing Micah, who is looking stonily at the ground. “I know a guy.” I tilt my head toward the bench. “What’s wrong with my man?”

  Micah looks up and scowls warningly at his sister. Alyssa looks away. She’s wearing a sleeveless jean jacket I gave her a couple weeks ago, two sizes too big, with a Social Distortion patch sewn on the back. It belonged to Nico, my own sister, many years ago.

  “Come on, guys,” I say, and Alyssa glances one last time at Micah and launches in: “Some big kids from St. Alban’s were here and they were being all crazy and pushing and stuff, and they took things.”

  “Shut up,” says Micah. Alyssa looks back and forth from him to me and almost cries, but then keeps it together. “They took Micah’s sword.”

  “Sword?” I say. “Huh.”

  Their father is a feckless character named Johnson Rose, whom I went to high school with, and who I happen to know went Bucket List very early on. The mother, unless I got the story wrong, subsequently overdosed on vodka and pain pills. A lot of the kids spending their days out here have similar stories. There’s one, Andy Blackstone—I see him right now, bouncing a big rubber medicine ball against the school—who was being raised, for one reason or another, by an uncle. When the odds rose to a hundred percent, the uncle apparently just told him to get the fuck out.

  A little more gentle prodding of Alyssa and Micah, and it emerges, to my relief, that what has been lost is a toy—a plastic samurai sword that once upon a time came with a ninja costume, but which Micah had been wearing at his belt for some weeks.

  “Okay,” I say, squeezing Alyssa’s shoulder and turning to look at Micah in the eye. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It just sucks,” says Micah emphatically. “It sucks.”

  “I know that.”

  I flip past the details on Brett Cavatone to the back of my notebook, where I’ve got certain small tasks laid out for myself. I cross out A’s glasses and pencil in samurai sword with a couple of question marks beside it. As I straighten awkwardly out of my squat, Andy Blackstone bounces the medicine ball my way, and I turn just in time for it to sproing up off the pavement and hit my outstretched palms with a satisfying, stinging whap.

  “Hey, Palace,” hollers Blackstone. “Play some kickball?”

  “Rain check,” I say, winking at Alyssa and clipping my helmet back on. “I’ve got a case I’m working on.”

  2.

  Rocky’s Rock ’n’ Bowl turns out to be a great big brick building with black-glass windows and a hokey sign above the door—musical notes and a smiling cartoon family munching on pizza. Rocky’s sits just past the abandoned husk of Steeplegate Mall, and to get there you’ve got to go through the vast mall parking lot, through a small obstacle course of garbage cans, overturned and spilling out, and abandoned vehicles, their hoods popped by thieves to dig out the engines. In front of the doors of the restaurant, sitting atop an empty newspaper box like statuary, is a young guy, twenty maybe, twenty-one, a stubbly uneven teenager’s beard and
a short ponytail, who calls out “how you doin’?” as I approach.

  “Just fine,” I say, mopping my sweaty brow with a handkerchief. The kid hops down from the newspaper box and sidles up to meet me, nice and easy, his hands jammed in the pockets of his light jacket. A criminal’s trick—you don’t know if he’s got a gun or not.

  “Nice suit, man,” he says. “Help you find something?”

  “I’m looking for the pizza place,” I say, pointing behind him.

  “Sure. Sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Henry,” I say. “Palace.”

  “How’d you hear about us?”

  Lots of questions, rat-a-tat, not to get the answers but to get a read: How nervous is this guy? What does he want? But he’s nervous himself, eyes slipping warily side to side, and I talk slow and calm, keep my hands where he can see them.

  “I know the owner’s daughter.”

  “Oh, no kidding?” he says. “And what’s her name again?”

  “Martha.”

  “Martha,” he says, like he’d forgotten it and needed reminding. “Totally.”

  Satisfied, the kid takes an exaggerated step backward to push open the door. “Heya, Rocky,” he calls. A blast of music and warm smells from the darkness within. “A friend of Martha’s.” And then, to me, as I walk past, “Sorry about the hassle. Can’t be too cautious these days, know what I’m saying?”

  I nod politely, wondering what he’s got hidden up in the jacket, what means are tucked away to welcome a visitor without the right answers: a switchblade, a crowbar, a snub-nose pistol. Can’t be too cautious these days.

  The music playing inside is early rock and roll, tinny but loud; there must be a battery-operated boom box tucked away somewhere, turned up to ten. Rocky’s is just one big room, wide as an airplane hangar, high ceilinged and noisy and echoey. At one end is an open kitchen with a massive wood-burning pizza oven, a couple of cooks back there with rolled-up sleeves and aprons, drinking beers, bustling around, laughing. The dining area has the classic cheap red-and-white checked tablecloths, fat little barrels of red pepper flakes, vinyl records and cardboard cutout guitars displayed along the upper moldings. There’s a sign shaped like a Wurlitzer jukebox advertising specials, all named after girls from classic-rock songs: the Layla, the Hazel, the Sally Simpson, the Julia.

  A big man in a stained white apron shambles over from the kitchen, raising a bear paw of a hand in friendly greeting.

  “How you doin’?” he says, just like the kid outside, same practiced geniality. Old Saint Nick belly, fading anchor tattoos on his forearms, sauce stains down his front like cartoon blood. “You wanna shoot, or you wanna eat?”

  “Shoot?”

  He points. Behind me are six bowling alleys that have been repurposed as firing ranges, with rifle stands at one end and paper human targets at the other. As I watch, a young woman in noise-canceling headphones narrows her eyes and squeezes off a round from a paintball gun, blasting a yellow splotch onto the upper arm of the target. She shouts happily and her husband, boyfriend maybe, claps and says “nice.” At the next alley over, a hunched and white-haired man, one of a cluster of seniors, is hobbling slowly up to the rifle stand to take his turn.

  I turn back to the big man. “You’re Mr. Milano?”

  “Rocky,” he says, the easy relaxed smile freezing and hardening. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I hope so.”

  He crosses his thick arms, narrows his eyes, and waits. It’s “Ooby Dooby”—the song playing from the boom box—vintage Roy Orbison. Love this song.

  “My name is Henry Palace,” I say. “We’ve met, actually.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He smiles, pleasant but disinterested: a restaurateur, a man who meets a lot of people.

  “I was a kid. I’ve had a growth spurt.”

  “Oh, okay.” He looks me up and down. “Looks like you’ve had a couple of those.”

  I smile. “Martha has asked me to try and locate your son-in-law.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” says Rocky, eyes suddenly sharpening, taking me in more carefully. “What, you’re a cop? She called the cops?”

  “No, sir,” I say. “I’m not a policeman. I used to be. Not anymore.”

  “Well, whatever you are, let me save you some time,” he says. “That asshole said he’d be with my daughter till boomsday, and then he changed his mind and made a run for it.” He grunts, refolds his arms across his chest. “Any questions?”

  “A couple,” I say. Behind us the dull dead thud of the paintball rounds smashing into their targets. This sort of thing is going on all over the city, to varying degrees, people getting “aftermath ready” in various ways. Learning to shoot, learning karate, building water-conservation devices. Last month there was a free class at the public library called “Eat Less and Live.”

  Rocky Milano leads me through the restaurant to a small cluttered alcove off the kitchen. There were always rumors about Martha’s dad, silly little-kid rumors, discussed in confidential tones by those of us she babysat for: he was “connected,” he had “done time,” he had a rap sheet a mile long. Once I think I asked my mother, who worked at the police station, if she could run his file for me, a request she treated as dismissively as is appropriate for any such request coming from a ten-year-old.

  Now here’s Rocky, apologizing with a good-natured grin as he pushes a pile of paper plates off a chair for me, settling himself behind a battered metal desk. He essentially confirms everything that Martha said. Brett Cavatone married his daughter about six years ago, when still an active-duty state trooper. They didn’t have a ton in common, Brett and Rocky, but they got along just fine. The older man respected his new son-in-law and liked the way he treated his daughter: “Like a princess—like an absolute princess.” When Rocky decided to open this place, Brett left the force to work for him, to be the right-hand man.

  “Okay,” I say, nodding, writing it all down. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why come work here?”

  “Oh, what? You wouldn’t want to come work for me?”

  I look up sharply but Rocky’s easy smile is still in place. “I meant, why would he leave the force?”

  “Yeah, I know what you meant,” he says, and now the smile widens—broadens, more like, taking up more real estate on his round face. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  He’s joking, of course, goofing on me, but I don’t mind. The truth is I’m enjoying the company of Martha’s father. I’m impressed by his ramshackle restaurant and his defiant insistence on keeping it open, providing some measure of normalcy and comfort until “boomsday.”

  “Thing about Brett,” says Rocky, comfortable now, leaning back with his hands laced behind his head, “is that the guy was terrific. Hardworking. An ox. He was here more than I was. He built the chair you’re sitting on. He named the house specials, for Pete’s sake.” Rocky chuckles, points absently out at the dining room, where the husband and wife from the target range sit at one of the tables now, sharing a pizza. “That’s a plain they’re enjoying, by the way. This week’s special is called Good Luck Finding Any Fucking Meat.”

  He chortles, coughs.

  “Anyway, the plan was, we’d get the place going together, then when I died or went soft in the head, he’d take over. Obviously that isn’t happening, thank you very much Mr. Goddamn Asteroid, but when I said I’m staying open till October, Brett said ‘sure thing.’ No sweat. He’s in.”

  I nod, okay, I’m writing all of this down: hardworking—built the chairs—open till October. Filling a fresh page of the blue book.

  “He promised,” Milano says acidly. “But the kid made a lot of promises. As you’ve heard.”

  I lower my pencil, unsure what to ask next, abruptly seized by the absurdity of my mission. As if any amount of information will prepare me to go out in the vast chaotic wilderness that the world has become and bring Martha Milano’s husband back to his promises. In the kitchen, the small cluster of cooks crac
k up riotously about something and slap each other five. Taped up behind Rocky in the cluttered office is one of the target forms from the bowling alleys, a silhouetted human figure, blue paint splattered all over the face: bull’s-eye.

  “What about friends? Did Brett have a lot of friends?”

  “Ah, not really,” says Milano. He sniffs, scratches his cheek. “Not that I know of.”

  “Hobbies?”

  He shrugs. I’m grasping at straws. The real question is not whether he had hobbies but vices, or maybe a new vice he wanted to take for a test drive, now that the world has slipped into countdown mode. A girlfriend, maybe? But these are not the sorts of things a father-in-law is likely to know. The boom box is playing Buddy Holly, “A Man with a Woman on His Mind.” Another great one. I’m not listening to enough music these days—no car radio, no iPod, no stereo. At home I listen to ham radio on a police scanner, jockeying between the federal emergency band and an energetic rumormonger who calls himself Dan Dan the Radio Man.

  “Can you give me an idea, sir, of where your son-in-law was supposed to be going when he left here yesterday morning?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Just running errands. Milk, cheese, flour. Toilet paper. Canned tomatoes if anybody has ’em. Most days, he’d come in and open up with me, then go out first thing on the ten-speed, find what he could find, come back for lunch.”

  “And where would he have gone to find those things?”

  Rocky laughs. “Next question.”

  “Right,” I say. “Sure.”

  I turn the page of my notebook. It was worth a shot. Wherever Brett was headed yesterday morning to shop, it probably wasn’t an establishment operating within the rigorous strictures on food markets as spelled out in IPSS-3, the revised titles of the impact-preparation law governing resource allocation: rationing, barter limits, water-usage restrictions. Rocky Milano isn’t about to tell all the details to an inquisitive visitor, particularly one with ties to the police force. I wonder in passing how Brett Cavatone felt about these small negotiations of current law: a former policeman, a man with a painting of Jesus on the wall above his bed.