Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II

by Ben H. Winters

  We’re in this tableau, the four of us, as the doors of the elevator creak closed and we start down again, listening to the rusted clang of the chains.

  “It takes about thirty-five seconds for the elevator to get down to the ground floor,” says the man on top of me, leaning his body forward to flatten me further. “The way we do it is, it touches down, the doors open, we roll out the bodies and hit the Up button.”

  Martha screams and thrashes in the grip of the tall woman. I breathe through my nose, deep breaths.

  “I don’t know what happens to the bodies. It seems too early for cannibalism, but who knows? They keep disappearing is all I know.”

  The man’s chin is square and jutting. His hand is rough and it smells like Ivory soap. I started counting seconds as soon as he started talking; there are twenty seconds left.

  “What I did was, I rigged the staple gun to the motor of a hedge trimmer, so it can really do some business. I got guns, but I’m saving up my bullets. You know how it is.”

  The man grins, shining white teeth, a gap between the two in front. The elevator descends, the chains rattling deafeningly like exploding ordnance. T-minus ten seconds—T-minus nine—who’s counting?

  “My friend Ellen, she just uses a butcher’s knife. No imagination, you know?”

  “Fuck you, you dick,” says the woman holding on to Martha, glaring at the man. He puffs out his cheeks, looks at me like can you believe this one? T-minus two. One. The elevator touches down with a thud. My bones rattle. I brace myself.

  “Who are you?” says the man, and takes his hand off my mouth, and I say, “My name is Henry Pal—” and he fires the staple gun with a whir and a click and my brain explodes. I scream, and there’s another scream, in the corner, it’s the woman, Ellen. I crane my neck and try to see through the pain-sparked flickers, red and gold stars flaring across my field of vision. Martha is biting the woman’s arm, kicking free.

  “Fuck!” screams Ellen, raises her knife like a butcher, and Martha screams, “Phillips! Mr. Phillips!”

  “Oh,” says the man, and eases off. “Well, shit.”

  Ellen lowers the knife, breathes heavily, and Martha sinks down against the back wall of the elevator car, her face in her hands, sobbing.

  A password. Of course. Mr. Phillips. Palace, you idiot.

  Blood is rushing from the side of my head, down my forehead and into my eyes. I raise one finger and touch the wound, a hole the size of a dime, the small sharp object of the staple buried in the thin flesh of my temple.

  My assailant tosses his weapon on the floor of the elevator. “Ellen, hit the Up button, will you, honey?”

  * * *

  There are more goods than I saw in that first glimpse, many more: a room full of boxes, each box overflowing with things—useful things. Batteries, light bulbs, portable fans, humidifiers, snack foods, plastic utensils, first aid supplies, pens and pencils and big pads of paper. The man, the one who just shot me in the head with his staple gun, he pats me on the back and grins wolfishly, opens his arms and does a proud half-turn around the room.

  “Pretty nice, right?” he says, and then answers his own question, settling back in a swiveling chair. “It’s very nice. I obtained an Office Depot.”

  He pilots himself across the room on the wobbly wheels of the chair and docks behind a wide L-shaped glass-topped desk, where he puts up his feet and unscrews the lid of a plastic jug of pretzels. I’m holding my palm up to the side of my head, blood flowing freely down my wrist, pooling inside my shirt sleeves. Martha is holding herself, trembling, looking fearfully at the woman with the butcher knife. A couple years ago, at this time, Martha Cavatone would have been at Market Basket, picking up something for dinner, or maybe at the bank, the dry cleaners. A year from now, who knows?

  “See, I had a friend,” says our host from behind his glass-top desk. “An acquaintance, really, who owed me just a disgusting amount of money. This was last December. And you know, I had a feeling how this was going, this business with the asteroid. It was in the darkness still, hidden by the moon.”

  When he mentions the asteroid, he gets a sort of wistful contented glimmer in his eye, like it’s the best thing that ever happened to him. Conjunction, is what he means. In December 2011GV1 was still in conjunction, aligned with the sun and impossible to observe. It was not “hidden by the moon.” My eyes have landed on the water—boxes of jugs, ten jugs to the box, two stacks of ten boxes, side by side. Twelve jugs of water per box times ten times two.

  “And this cat, this poor fellow, I went to him and said, look, forget the money. Because this guy, when he wasn’t making bad bets on sports, he was the manager of the Office Depot in Pittsfield. And the thing about Office Depot is that they don’t have just office things. They have a really extraordinary variety of merchandise.”

  He sounds like a commercial for Office Depot, and he knows he does. He laughs, tosses his shoulder-length hair.

  “Anyway, so the shit goes down, they say the world’s gonna end, and I’m in a position, you know? I had a copy of this guy’s keys, I had some friends lined up, I had a truck set aside, I had some gasoline.” He winks again. He shrugs. “So I obtained an Office Depot.”

  “We did, Cortez,” says Ellen, curtly. “We obtained it.” She’s at the door of the empty stairwell, still holding her butcher knife.

  Cortez grins at me, rolls his eyes slightly, like we’re in cahoots, he and I, boys versus girls. I study him, long black hair, bulging forehead, jutting jaw—he reminds me of a houseguest we had once when I was a child, a noted poet my father invited to give a lecture at St. Anselm’s. My mother said he was “ugly, in that handsome sort of way.”

  I take another look at Martha, make sure she’s okay. She’s sitting down at a desk; the room is full of desks, glass-topped desks, hutch desks, imposing oak-top desks; many of them with locked drawers. A room full of stashes, hidden places, things squirreled away.

  “Do you know this man?” I say, bringing the photograph of Brett out of my pocket.

  Cortez gasps theatrically, puts his hands in the air. “Oh my God, you’re a fucking policeman.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do it again,” he says, grinning. “With the picture. Ask me again.”

  I place the photograph down in front of him. “Do you know this man?”

  He slaps his desk, delighted. “A real-life policeman. It’s like an acid flashback.”

  “Yes,” says Ellen quietly, from her side of the room, still holding the butcher’s knife. “We know him. He was here yesterday. You’re his wife?”

  Cortez gives Ellen an irritated look while Martha nods, her eyes filling with refreshed hope as she looks around the room. She’s thinking, here—in this room. She’s reveling in the fact of his proximity, in space if not in time: He was here.

  “Yes. He was here.” Cortez is looking me over, up and down, marveling still at the real-live policeman. “And he said that the woman would be coming alone, which is why I shot you with my staple gun.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “I did not apologize.”

  “Can I just …” Martha swallows. Her hands are trembling. She looks from Ellen to Cortez and then back to Ellen. “What did he want?”

  “Stuff,” said Cortez simply.

  “What?” says Martha.

  I’m looking around again: the desks, the filing cabinets, the boxes of impulse-purchase nonfoods, fruit snacks and goldfish crackers and granola bars.

  “What do you mean, what?” says Cortez, grinning. “That’s what he wanted. Stuff! Stuff for you, sweetheart.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Martha. “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, honey,” says Ellen, glaring at Cortez, laying her hatchet down at last and putting an arm around Martha. “He paid us to take care of you. Until afterward.”

  “Take care of?” says Martha, eyes wide. “What does that mean?”

  “It means, give a bunch of fucking shit to.” Cortez sidles ove
r to their side of the room and scoops up the big knife. “It means, not let to become dead.”

  “Shut up, Cortez,” says Ellen. “It means he paid up front for us to provide enough stuff for you to make it till the end. Food, water, batteries, flashlights, clothes, tampons. Whatever.”

  “And if you’re afraid of things going bump in the night, we do protection.” Cortez walks back to his desk, slides Ellen’s butcher knife into a drawer. “Right up until the end.”

  “But not afterward?” I ask.

  “Afterward?” Cortez cackles, kicks his legs up on the desk like a corporate raider. “Anyone making promises for afterward is a liar and a thief.”

  I’m holding my bloody forehead, thinking this through, realizing along with Martha exactly what it means. Brett wanted her to be taken care of, which is a nice thing, except it means he knew that he was leaving. There is no longer any question of accident or foul play. Brett Cavatone left his wife with foresight, efficiency, and decisiveness. Martha is staring straight ahead, lost behind the large desk like a schoolchild in her daddy’s office.

  “Excuse me,” she says, suddenly sitting up straight, her voice carefully controlled. “Do you have any cigarettes?”

  “Yes, honey,” says Ellen, unlatching a trunk the size of a small bathtub. “Thousands of them.”

  The pain from my new injury has reignited an old one, like a pinball bouncing against a bumper and lighting it up: a raw spot where I was once stabbed, just below my left eye. It was the drug dealer who stabbed me, the one whose dog is at my house right now, waiting to be fed.

  “This protection. This is a service you offer?” I ask Cortez. “Have been offering?”

  “It is.” He grins. “You interested?”

  “No, thank you. How do people pay you for this service?”

  “Stuff,” he says, the strong chin, the lopsided grin. “More stuff. Things I can turn around and offer to other folks. Items I can hang on to for a rainy day. For the big rainy day.”

  “How did he pay you?” I say, holding up the photograph again.

  “Ah!” Cortez rubs his hands together, eyes gleaming like coins. “You want to see?”

  * * *

  Pieces of metal, hunks of metal, scraps and stacks of it. Gleaming silver, contoured black plastic, glass and dials. I look at the pile, look at Cortez.

  “It’s a vehicle.”

  Cortez waggles his eyebrows mysteriously, having fun. We took the elevator down together in silence and then had to go outside, around the back, and down a rickety flight of basement stairs accessible now only by a sidewalk trapdoor. The basement of 17 Garvins Falls has a concrete floor, dim overhead bulbs hooked up to a noisy and foul-smelling biofuel generator. I lift one long flat plane of reinforced iron and find words painted on the other side in a childlike comic-book font: CALIFORNIA: GOLD RUSH COUNTRY!

  “A U-Haul,” I say, and Cortez’s jagged grin widens. “Can you believe it?”

  I can. I do. Rocky Milano was lying: he didn’t have his beloved son-in-law and right-hand man hauling furniture around the county on a ten-speed bicycle. That’s how a restaurant stays open: get ahold of a working vehicle, scam or barter for a supply of gas or some bootleg biofuel, make a reliable map of DOJ checkpoints to be avoided. No wonder Rocky is so aggrieved. He didn’t just lose a son-in-law and a top employee; he lost his most valuable capital asset. I wish I could go back to that room and ask him again, press him on all the half-truths and evasions. I’m not a cop, I’d say. I’m just a guy trying to help your daughter.

  “What I told him is, if you’re gonna leave this, you gotta take it apart,” says Cortez. “I’ll get more on it, piece by piece, don’t you think?”

  I don’t hazard a guess. I lift a gritty metal pole the length of my arm.

  “Steering column.” Cortez titters, angles out his chin.

  I wander among the pieces of the van, identifying the pedals, the seat belt straps, the slanting beveled iron of the loading ramp. The fractured shapes of something as ordinary as a U-Haul truck, it’s like a vision from distant memory, like I’m inspecting the butchered carcass of a mastodon. The two tire rims are stacked, one atop the other, the fat black rubber wheels beside them.

  I straighten up and I look at Cortez, the Jesus-style hair, the mischievous smile. “Why would he trust you?” I ask. “To honor a bargain?”

  He splays a hand across his breastbone, offended. I wait. “We’ve known each other, going back, that cop and I. He knows what I am.” He smiles like a magical cat. “I’m a thief, but I’m an honorable thief. He’s seen me get arrested, seen me get out and build right back. Because I’m dependable. A man of business has to be relied upon, that’s all.”

  I pull the wad of gauze away from the side of my head—it’s soaked in blood—I put it back in place. Rocky Milano has not closed his restaurant, even though we’re in countdown land: he’s doubled down, intensified his commitment to his operation and his self-identity. So, too, with Cortez the thief.

  “Plus, he said that if I went back on him, if I let anything befall his wife, he’d come back and murder me,” adds Cortez, almost offhandedly. “I’ve known people who say that and don’t mean it. It was my strong impression that this was a man who meant it.”

  “And he gave you no indication of where he was going?’

  “Nope.” Cortez pauses, smirks. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. Wherever he was going, he was in a goddamn hurry to get there. I teased the man about it. I said, for someone who is here to cut up a working vehicle and leave it behind, you sure want to get going. He didn’t laugh, though. Not one little bit.”

  No, I think. I bet he didn’t. If Brett was as much of a straight shooter as I am sensing he was, if he was the decent and honorable character that emerges from everybody’s recollections, then he hated coming here. I can picture him, on the way to Garvins Falls Road, in this stolen van—tasting the bitterness of the measure he was taking, of putting his trust in this weaselly and self-regarding man. Brett Cavatone disassembling a U-Haul van, working swiftly under Cortez’s glittering gaze, not looking at his watch, just doing the job carefully and well until it was done.

  My missing person was a man dying to leave, in a fever to leave, but who knew that leaving was wrong. He made a compromise with himself, struck a moral balance, did what he had to, to make arrangements for the woman he’d be leaving behind.

  I say “thank you” to Cortez. He says “you’re very welcome” and bows. I go up to collect Martha.

  * * *

  On Garvins Falls Road, outside, the late-day sunlight a perfect golden gleam along the rutted sidewalks, I look back up at the building and Martha looks down at the street. It’s hotter than yesterday but still not uncomfortable. There’s a pair of perfect clouds teasing each other across the bright blue sky. Martha seems calm and composed, surprisingly so, considering what she has learned.

  “I told you,” she says, very softly, and I say, “Excuse me?”

  “I told you, he’s like a rock, that man. That’s how he is. He thinks of things. He’s so thoughtful. Even—” She smiles, turns her face up to the sun. “Even leaving me, he was considerate about it.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Sure.”

  In the distance, all the way back in downtown Concord, the deafening holler of the tornado siren. I can picture the truck rumbling into its dock, McConnell and the rest of the cops hurrying into place, forming their perimeter, preparing to unload.

  “So, just to be absolutely clear, Martha,” I say, as gently as I can. “You no longer want me to find your husband?”

  “Oh, no,” she says, startled. “Now I want you to find him more than ever.”

  4.

  People talk about the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, like it just happened one day. All the dinosaurs were hanging out, all together in an open field, and the asteroid slammed down and destroyed them, killed them all and all at once.

  Not so, of course. Some died on the day, no doubt about it, and probab
ly a lot—but the whole business took years. Generations, maybe. They can’t say for sure. They know that a ten-kilometer asteroid exploded into the crust of the earth in the Yucatan Peninsula 65.6 million years ago, tearing a great gash from the planet and darkening the sky, and some of the dinosaurs drowned and some burned and some starved when the plants stopped growing, and some stumbled on through the new cold world. They ate what they could find and fought for scraps and forgot there had been an asteroid. Brains like walnuts, creatures of need, they knew only their hunger. A lot of species died. A lot of species didn’t.

  This time, too, it’ll go both ways: Most people will die in October and in the brutal cataclysms that follow, and then many more will die later. The sudden death versus the lingering; the instant and certain versus the drawn-out and unpredictable. My parents both died suddenly, a finger-snap, a crack in time: One day my mother was here, and then she was buried, and then soon after that my father, bang, gone. With Grandfather, it was the long way: diagnosis, treatment, remission, relapse, new diagnosis, the wayward course of illness. There was one afternoon when we huddled at his bedside, Nico and I and a handful of his friends, said our goodbyes, and then he got better and lived for another six months, pale and thin and irritable.

  Naomi Eddes, the woman I loved, she went the other way, the first way: bang and gone.

  The best available scientific evidence suggests that on the day itself, the earth’s atmosphere will be riven by flame, as if by a prodigious nuclear detonation: over most of the planet, a broiling heat, the sky on fire. Tsunamis as tall as skyscrapers slam into coasts and drown everyone within hundreds of miles from impact, while around the globe volcanic eruptions and earthquakes convulse the landscape, splintering the crust of the world at all its hidden junctions. And then photosynthesis, the magic trick undergirding the entire food chain, is snuffed out by a blanket of darkness drawn down across the sun.