The men rounded a corner and came out onto a wider artery, a cobbled road lined with train or trolley tracks, which led past rows of factory buildings. Everything was eerily still in the dawn light; the place was like some radioactive ghost town. Breathing harder now, they came around the edge of a warehouse and skirted an odd feature, like a great stone bathtub set below the ground. Jack recognized it from his childhood days in Red Hook: a graving dock. Its walls were tiered stone, and they stepped down to the long rectangular pool, which was frozen over. As they jogged along the edge, he noted immobile waterfalls cascading down the sides, bundled ropes of milky ice. A row of wooden stumps rose out of the center of the pool, where—when the water was drained out—ship hulls had once come to rest.
The little team veered left, away from the dock, into an alley between two warehouses. The security man held up a hand and they paused, panting. Jack’s T-shirt was damp with sweat beneath his winter layers and heavy Kevlar, but catching a cold was by far the least of his present worries.
“Okay,” the security man whispered. “It’s right around that corner.”
“Do you know what’s inside?”
The man shrugged. “It’s an old abandoned shed. There’s a bunch of heavy machinery in there, but I don’t know the layout. No reason to go in, you know?”
Jack considered the man. “Why don’t you stay here? You can keep an eye out in case he bolts, and radio for assistance if we need it.”
The security man nodded, embarrassed but clearly relieved.
Jack peered around the corner. He was hoping for a small contained space, but the “shed” was a football field long, sided with more of those checkerboard windows, so dirty that they offered no view inside, at least not at this distance. Hopefully, they didn’t offer much of a view out. It was hard to be sure in the thin dawn light, but it looked like there was some kind of loading dock about halfway down.
“What do you think?” Jack whispered to the S.W.A.T., who had more experience with this kind of sudden assault.
“I think Daskivitch should wait at this end. You and FBI there”—he nodded at Ray Hillhouse—“go see if there’s an entrance in the middle. I’ll hit the far end. When we’re in position, I’ll give you guys a high sign and we’ll all go in at once.”
Above the far end of the shed, a metal crane was already catching the first real rays of morning light. Jack pulled out his service revolver. “We better go in before it gets too bright out here. If we can, let’s take him alive—I wanna know who that kid was in the box.”
“Ready?” the S.W.A.T. said.
The others nodded, and then began to run.
CHAPTER forty-five
THE S.W.A.T. WENT FIRST, scuttling like a crab, below the banks of windows. Jack followed, trying to keep his head down, wincing at the thought of taking a bullet from his own captured gun. He glanced left as he ran, rewarded by an occasional glimpse through a missing pane: quick impressions of a huge open interior crowded with rusting machines. Ahead, he saw that the loading dock’s big sliding door was down, but a regular door beside it was slightly ajar. A rusty tin sign hung above it: SAFETY GLASSES MUST BE WORN.
He reached the loading dock and slumped down beneath the edge. He thanked his recent park jogging for preparing him for the sudden sprint; when Hillhouse, the heavier man, dove down beside him, the FBI agent held his stomach and gasped for air. Jack glanced back at Gary Daskivitch, crouched at the corner of the shed, as hard to hide as a grizzly bear. Down at the other end of the shed, the S.W.A.T. had taken up a position behind the base of the old crane.
Hillhouse was wheezing. “You okay?” Jack asked.
The FBI man nodded, and released the safety on his shotgun.
The team exchanged thumbs-ups.
Jack took a deep breath, darted up a little staircase at the edge of the loading dock, ran across it, and paused outside the smaller door. He listened carefully: silence. Maintaining a firm grip on his pistol, he reached out with his left hand and pushed very lightly on the door. Squeak. Jack gritted his teeth. He transferred the gun to his left hand, gripped the doorknob tightly, and lifted up on the frame, hoping the hinges would swing more freely. And they did, enough to admit him and his colleague without further complaint.
They found themselves in a narrow hallway. The air inside was musty, and probably ten degrees colder. From his glimpses in during his headlong rush outside, Jack had gathered the impression that the shed had one long open interior, but such was clearly not the case. The hallway was murky, but ten yards down light spilled in through open doorways on both sides. Just before they reached them, Ray Hillhouse tugged on Jack’s sleeve. He pointed to himself, then the right doorway, then to Jack and the left.
Jack nodded. Carefully, he peered around through his designated entrance. A relatively small room, softly illuminated by light coming through a dusty skylight. Old green metal lockers knocked over and scattered as if by a giant’s hand. A floor so deteriorated that scraps of linoleum were jumbled in piles that somehow made him think of raw tobacco.
Gingerly, he stepped out across the locker room floor and found another door, half open. He peered through, holding up his pistol. A big hollow skylit space, the machine floor. In one corner, a pile of red metal canisters (for acetylene torches?). In the center of the floor, a monumental piece of heavy machinery, its green paint peeling back to reveal a yellow undercoating, topped by a set of massive gears. (He had no idea what it might be for.) He heard a sudden fluttering. Startled, he pointed his gun up, only to discover a couple of disgruntled pigeons settling on a metal rafter.
Slowly, Jack stepped out across the gritty concrete, moving his gun from side to side. He peered around a pile of giant broken metal ducts. No one. He paused to wipe sweat off his forehead with the back of his nongun hand. He figured he must be halfway to Daskivitch now. On the right far side of the room, another open doorway…
Coming closer, he smelled smoke. And then he heard something, a low humming sound. Human.
Moving as quickly as he dared, he traversed the rest of the floor, feeling hugely vulnerable in the open space. He reached the side of the door frame and paused. The smell of smoke was stronger. He peered around. A big employee lunch room. Several long tables ran across the left side, and a bank of dusty checkerboard windows made up the right wall, brightening in the early sun. Several pigeons highstepped across the grimy green linoleum floor. One of them looked up and contemplated Jack, its little black watermelon pit eyes fixed on his face. He held his breath, praying that it wouldn’t provide a warning to the white-haired man who stood in a far corner, holding out a hand to a trash-can fire. The other arm was bound in a sling—evidently Jerome Konetz had gotten in a pretty good shot with his flashlight before he had passed out in that Atlantic Avenue basement. Maybe this was why Sperry hadn’t shown up at the reunion: Lifting a small craft into the water and navigating the channel’s swift currents would be hugely difficult with just one functioning arm.
Sperry seemed to be singing to himself. Slowly, Jack raised his gun. He was about to shout at the man to get down on the floor when another door at the back of the room swung open and all hell broke loose. Gary Daskivitch began to come through. The pigeons flapped up toward the ceiling’s water-stained acoustic tiles, squawking loudly, distracting the big detective. And Sperry didn’t waste a second in surprise. He charged toward the door and slammed into a big metal shelving unit next to it, which crashed down, pinning Daskivitch on the floor. Sperry picked himself up and reached for something on a side table. Something that looked very much like a Glock-19 service weapon.
Jack lunged forward. “Freeze, goddamnit! NYPD!”
Sperry whirled around, wide-eyed, but again he didn’t waste a second in acknowledgment. Abandoning the gun, he dodged around his flaming trash can and hurled himself against the bank of windows, which gave way with a crash. And then he was gone.
Cursing, Jack sprinted across the room. He paused to glance at his former partner, who lay
groaning on the floor, but Daskivitch waved him on. “Go! Get the bastard!”
Jack ran over to the windows. Shark fins of broken glass still clung to the edges of the hole Sperry had made. Jack tucked his gun in its holster, picked up a chair, and smashed the opening wider. He ducked through and then he was outside, squinting in the early sun. A parking area, weeds pushing up through the broken concrete. He looked left: nothing. He looked right and saw Sperry limping around the far edge of the shed, clutching his damaged arm. Jack sprinted after, shouting for Ray Hillhouse and the S.W.A.T.
He ran around the end of the shed, veered around an old gray Dumpster, and saw the basin to his left, sparkling now in the light. His footsteps slapped on the concrete and echoed against the wall of the shed. His breath sounded very loud in his own ears, and ragged. He turned right again, which brought him back to the graving dock. The scene was oddly beautiful, everything tinged with morning light, all orange and rose.
Sperry was staggering along the edge of the dock, the long way, grunting in pain. Jack followed. “Stop!” he called out, between gulps of air, but the man hobbled on.
A distant shout. Jack made out the figure of the S.W.A.T. at the far end of the dock. Raising his rifle.
“Don’t shoot!” Jack cried.
With his customary decisiveness, Sperry skidded to a halt and started to lower himself down the stone tiers at the side of the graving dock. By the time Jack reached the spot where he had clambered down, the man was already skidding out across the ice. The dock was perhaps two hundred feet wide. Cursing, Jack lowered himself down, tier by freezing tier. Down at the end of the dock, the S.W.A.T. was running around to the far side.
The ice was treacherous. Sperry slipped, fell on his side, and slid a few yards, but he picked himself up and scrambled on. Jack almost felt sorry for the man; he was unarmed, and injured, and nearly cornered. Then he thought of all the people Sperry had killed or wounded, and his sympathy dried up. He set out, almost skating across the ice.
“Sperry!” he called, but the fugitive ignored him. He tried another tack. “Bobby!”
This time, hearing his childhood nickname, the man paused in his flight and looked over his shoulder. And that was when the ice groaned. With a sharp, gunlike report, deep cracks appeared. Sperry looked down, finally overwhelmed by surprise and confusion, and then the broken ice dipped sideways beneath him and he dropped into the frigid water. And disappeared.
After a shockingly still moment, he bobbed back up, spluttering, arms flailing, until they found the edge of the hole.
“Hold on!” Jack shouted. He thought of something he had heard when he was a kid, about how you were supposed to lie down to spread out your weight across fragile ice, and that’s what he did. Unfortunately, he was at least ten yards away.
Sperry went under again. Then he bobbed back up, spit out a mouthful of water, and cried out like a panicked child.
Jack looked up across the ice: The S.W.A.T. was directly across from him now, and he had been joined by a couple of squad cars, lights flashing. “Don’t move,” the S.W.A.T. shouted. “Help is on the way.”
Jack wriggled out of his wool coat, held on to one arm, and tried to throw the garment out across the ice. Not even close.
Sperry’s grip on the ice weakened and he plunged out of sight again. Jack winced. When the man’s head popped up again, Jack called out to him.
“Bobby! Tell me: Who was the boy in the coffin? Please, Bobby, tell me…”
There was a terrible pleading in Sperry’s eyes. And then the ice cracked some more and he was gone.
CHAPTER forty-six
FOUR DAYS LATER, JACK finally discovered the identity of the floating boy.
It was no great feat of deductive reasoning, no brainstorm or exceptional piecing together of clues. It was just basic detective work, just slogging on and refusing to give up. It took many hours, but Jack had them. He didn’t have to be home now at any special time, and he took vacation days so he could work without a budget-conscious Sergeant Tanney telling him that the case was already finished. He did it with a computer, a fax machine, a phone, and a little luck.
In the late afternoon, he got a call from a doctor in Michigan, a response to a photo he had faxed out hundreds of times, to hospitals across the country. Young Steven Eastlund had not stayed around for treatment, but the doctor clearly remembered diagnosing the ten-year-old’s illness, and meeting his parents, and the white-haired, hawk-faced man they all called Grandpa.
After a little more legwork, Jack learned that the parents, residents of Mancellus, Michigan, had been killed soon thereafter, on September 3, 2001, by a drunk driver, on a county highway in broad daylight.
A week later, the towers came down. First the diagnosis of his grandchild’s illness, then the death of his daughter and son-in-law, then September 11. Who knew if the latter event had fully unhinged Robert Sperry? It certainly could not have helped.
THREE DAYS LATER, JACK and Gary Daskivitch and Linda Vargas and some other detectives from the task force and the Seventy-sixth precinct took a trip out to Long Island, where somebody had a cousin who worked for a cemetery, and they gave the boy a proper burial, with a modest little headstone that everybody had kicked in to buy.
Jack had ordered the inscription, highly unoriginal:
Rest in peace.
CHAPTER forty-seven
THE NEXT MORNING, JACK slept late. When he finally got out of bed, he discovered that he was out of coffee, so he threw on some clothes and walked down to the corner deli. When he got back, the answering machine in the front hall caught his eye. The red message light, blinking.
He ran a hand over his mouth. He wasn’t due in to work until four. He was sick of reporters and lawyers and Department brass. He just wanted to sit in his kitchen and drink his coffee, maybe go up and shoot the shit for a while with Mr. Gardner, but it was hard to ignore the machine. What if it was his son, with some emergency? Or some work thing that needed his immediate attention?
He tilted his head back, groaned, and pressed Play. And froze.
Michelle’s voice, tentative. “Jack? It’s me. I, uh…can you call me?” And then she hung up. He replayed the message immediately, then a third time, trying to tease out any hidden meanings. Did she sound sad, or upset? He thought so, but couldn’t be sure. He leaned against the wall and wrapped his arms around himself. What did she want? Was she having regrets? Did she want to come back? Or did she just want to find a safe time when she could come and take back her stuff?
He returned to his bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed for five minutes, thinking. Then he stood up. He didn’t reach for his cell phone. He went over to the bureau and dug into a drawer for his newest, thickest pair of athletic socks. He changed into his sweatpants, and pulled on his sneakers. Then he went out to the hall closet and pulled out his sweatshirt. He picked up his car keys, and his house keys, and he locked up, and went out and got into his car.
HE FOUND A LIGHT pole on the edge of the park and pushed against it with both hands while he stretched his Achilles tendons, and then he grabbed one foot at a time and stretched his hamstrings. Then he entered the park, got on the loop road, and started running. This was what he needed right now, this steady slapping of his feet on the asphalt, the sound of his breath huffing into the winter air.
It was a weekday, so the park was sparsely populated. He glanced over at the edge of the lake, where some fat geese were waddling along. He looked up into the trees sliding past overhead, into their bare, bristly branches. He passed a couple of heavyset women helping each other work off some extra weight, and then he was passed by a Park Slope dad pushing a toddler in an expensive jogging stroller. He thought of his son, Ben, and how that was what you did, really—you pushed your kid along in front of you, huffing and sweating, until he was able to run on his own, pick up speed, and leave you panting far behind.
He was breathing harder now, and his muscles were sore, but he pressed on. He replayed Michelle’s phone
message in his mind a few times, but it was opaque as ever, and he resolved not to think about it for the next three quarters of an hour.
After a while, he passed the turnoff for the Center Drive. He could see farther into the woods now, could see the outlines of the mulchy earth as it rose and fell. He was just a few hundred yards from where the dead doctor had lain, and Vargas’s Michelin Tire kid. He thought of the crumpled look on the doctor’s wife’s face, and the stricken look on the son-in-law of the Governors Island security guard. He thought of Tommy Balfa, falling to the deck of the boat, and he thought of the cocaine addict who had drowned her children, and he thought of the other dead, the hundreds of bodies he had seen pass before him in years and years on the job.
What had the little Buddhist nun called it? Impermanence. Everything changes. Everything that rises falls away.
One of his hamstrings was cramping a little. He thought of Robert Dietrich Sperry, disappearing beneath the ice. And he thought of Steven Eastlund’s memorial voyage from Governors Island to the shores of Red Hook. At least the kid wasn’t floating nameless anymore.
Three minutes later, he came to the Boathouse and the little lagoon where he had tried to propose to Michelle. He saw a Chinese bride sitting like an open white flower at the water’s edge, and then another one up on the little stone bridge, and a third one on the water’s far shore, and he had to smile, despite himself.
He jogged on, sweating even in the new year’s cold, and then he was pounding up a steep hill on the park’s northeast corner. He saw a few scraps of autumn leaves clinging to a bare winter tree, and he thought of something else the nun had said to him: that the trees didn’t try to hold on to the falling leaves, and the leaves didn’t hold on either; when their time came, they just fell.
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