Unknown Remains

by Peter Leonard

  Ruben said, “Where you hiding him?”

  “You want to see where Jack is? I’ll show you.”

  They followed her into the living room, the girl pointing at the TV showing a high angle looking down at the mountain of debris, what was left of the Trade Center.

  “You want Jack? He’s in there.”

  As soon as she said it, Cobb imagined people being blown up and body parts compressed in the rubble. “Gimme your cell phone.”

  She took the phone out of her pocket and handed it to him. Cobb checked the call log. There were seven numbers. He checked the deleted calls. Jack’s cell number didn’t appear in either place.

  “He would’ve called if he could,” the girl said. “I know that. And because he didn’t, I know what happened.” She turned and looked at the TV showing rescue workers circling the rubble, and Cobb left her there with Ruben, moving through the apartment, first going to the bedroom, looking under the bed, checking the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain open, and then checking the closet, looking behind all the clothes on hangers.

  The girl came in and said, “You really think he’s in here, are you kidding? Get out of here. Get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  Cobb wouldn’t have thought a girl this good-looking could get so mad, using language like that.

  He closed the apartment door and they started down the hall. “You believe the mouth on that one?”

  “Man, you don’t let a niña talk at you like that,” Ruben said. “Listen, they gotta show respect. You gotta demand it.”

  “She thinks her boyfriend’s dead; she’s blowing off a little steam. What do you care?”

  “You don’t teach them, they gonna give you trouble.”

  Cobb wasn’t listening; he was thinking about Jack McCann. He liked the situation: guy in trouble, walking away from his problems, Cobb trying to convince himself Jack was alive. It was way more interesting that way, but now they had to find him.

  TWO

  Cobb parked across the street from a clapboard colonial in a rural residential neighborhood. The house was nothing special but had to have cost a small fortune in this trendy town. People had been stopping by all afternoon. Ruben, quiet for the last thirty minutes, said, “Think he’s in there?”

  Cobb lowered the binoculars and glanced at him.

  “Anything’s possible. But let me ask you, if you were in Jack McCann’s shoes, would you go home?” He glanced at Ruben’s blank, beat-up face, gold studs looking out of place in his mangled lobes, the ex-fighter wearing a pink and white striped shirt and black blazer today, a gold bracelet on one wrist and two diamond rings, one on each of his gnarled, swollen hands. Take away the jewelry, Ruben dressed like he was going to pledge a fraternity.

  Reconsidering, Ruben said, “He make it out alive, man, all he does now is disappear. Start over. His woman collects the life insurance, she all set. Know what I mean?”

  “But we’ve got to make sure.” Cobb raised the binoculars and aimed them at the big windows in front, looking through the glass at people holding plates and cocktails, socializing in the crowded living room, late afternoon on September 16. Looked like a party but no one seemed like they were having fun.

  At six they drove into the town. Ruben wanted to go to Applebee’s. Cobb had never been to one, hated places like this, where eating was supposed to be fun, but he didn’t protest. It was happy hour, loud and crowded. They sat at a table in the bar and ordered drinks, Ruben looking at the menu, reading the words out loud: enchiladas with chicken, quesadillas with steak, fajitas with steak.

  “Need some help?”

  Ruben gave him a dirty look. The waitress brought their drinks, and they ordered food. Cobb studied the young girls and wished he was alone. He thought he could deal some of this young ass, but not with the over-the-hill ex-fighter next to him.

  Their meals came. Ruben had ordered the sizzling skillet fajitas. Cobb grinned. “Makes you think you’re back in the barrio, huh?”

  Ruben ignored him, getting right to it, shoveling sizzling meat and peppers into his mouth, eating like he was being timed.

  “Makes me think I’m in a second-rate restaurant.” Cobb had ordered Bourbon Street chicken and shrimp that had about as much to do with New Orleans as macaroni and cheese.

  They ate and drove back to the house. There were lights on, but the cars that had been lining both sides of the street were gone. “I’m gonna go, check it out,” Cobb said.

  “How long you gonna be?”

  “I don’t know. Why, you got something more important to do?”

  Ruben looked at him and said, “Already tired of sitting here.”

  Cobb got out of the car, crossed the street, and walked up the driveway along the side of the house, looking in windows, no one in any of the rooms.

  He stood next to the three-car detached garage. The rear of the house was all lit up. McCann’s wife, a nice-looking blonde, was standing at the kitchen sink, washing glasses, lining them on the sideboard to drain. She turned off the faucet and brought her hands to her face. She was crying, letting go. Cobb studied her for a while with detached indifference.

  Was it possible Jack McCann was alive and hiding in one of the dark upstairs bedrooms, and the crying wife and people coming by were all for show?

  That was just Duane’s amped-up imagination running free. He could hear a phone ringing in the house. The woman took her hands away from her face, turned her head and looked across the room. Cobb crossed the driveway and moved next to the house and saw the woman holding the phone up to her ear. He listened for a few minutes then walked down the driveway to the side door and turned the handle. It was unlocked. He opened it and went in. The woman was talking, crying, having an emotional conversation. Cobb moved along a hallway to the front of the house and went up the stairs. He stood on the landing, listening, didn’t hear anything. Were there kids up there asleep? He had no idea.

  The second floor was dark, the wood floor made noise, so he stopped and took off his shoes. He checked the three rooms. One looked like a guest bedroom; the second had a TV, a couch and chairs, and bookshelves full of books.

  Cobb was in the master bedroom when he heard her come up the stairs. He dropped to his knees on the far side of a king-size bed and then went to the floor as she came in the room and turned on a bedside lamp. Looking under the bed, he could see her shoes with short heels. She sat on the bed and took them off, got up, crossed the room, went into the walk-in closet and came out a couple minutes later in her underthings, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door. That she was good-looking with a great body made the situation more fun. Give it a little time, Cobb thought he might be able to take advantage of the grieving widow.

  He heard water running and the sound of an electric toothbrush. He walked out of the room and down the stairs, carrying his shoes. All the lights were off. He slipped out the side door, walked down the driveway, and crossed the street. Ruben was staring at him when he got in the car. “The fuck you been?”

  “Seeing if he was in the house.”

  “Was he?”

  “No.”

  “I could’ve told you that.”

  “An hour ago, you thought he was in there hiding. Now you say he isn’t. You’ve got all the answers, huh? Tell me where he’s at.”

  “Muerto. Difunto. In the rubble.”

  “Now you’re saying he went down with the buildings, is that right?”

  “I say, I think he went down. But I don’t know. Just like you don’t. That’s why we here, uh?”

  Cobb started the car, put it in gear, and pulled away. “I keep seeing him walking out of that cloud of dust lucky to be alive, and McCann saying to himself, ‘All I have to do is disappear and start my new life.’ How many get an opportunity like that?” He turned onto the highway in light traffic.

  Ruben said, “What about his woman?”

  “What about her?”

  “Maybe he loves her.”

  “If that’s true, why
’s he fooling around?”

  “Don’t mean he don’t love her.”

  “Let me tell you she’s a knockout, too,” Cobb said. “Better than the other one. But there are three billion women in the world. Subtract the ones are too young and too old, there still has to be a billion and a half.”

  “What you think is too young?”

  “Under eighteen. Where you come from, girls lose their virginity at what, eleven, twelve?”

  Ruben said, “A woman is a woman, uh?”

  “Try that here, they put you away.”

  “What’s too old?”

  “Over twenty-five,” Cobb said with a straight face and saw Ruben grin in the dim light.

  “Ever been married?”

  “I look crazy? It’s the ones tell you they don’t want a serious relationship you have to watch. They want a piece of your soul.”

  “They don’t want a piece; they want the whole thing.”

  Cobb said, “What about you?”

  “Two times. I don’t learn. First time, I was nineteen.”

  “Nineteen? Why would you do that?”

  “’Cause I wanted her more than anything. Carmen was something, had the best ass I ever seen.”

  “Were you fighting then?”

  “I was always fighting, since I was fourteen.”

  “What happened?”

  “Carmen’s perfect ass got big. Went from this to this.” He showed Cobb, moving his hands from ten inches apart to two feet, and showed the gold tooth.

  “Did you look at the mother?”

  Ruben frowned. “What’re you saying?”

  “You always look at the mother to see how the daughter is going to turn out. They don’t do that in Puerto Rico, huh?”

  “I think is done everywhere, but Carmen’s mother died before I see her.”

  Cobb saw the hotel in the distance and took the next exit.

  “Listen, every thirty seconds in America, some guy’s getting a divorce ’cause his wife got big as a cow. It’s a fucking epidemic.”

  Ruben shook his head. “Man, you like to talk.”

  Cobb turned into the hotel parking lot, pulled into a space, and glanced across the interior at Ruben. “You’re on tomorrow. Know what you’re gonna say?”

  Ruben nodded, opened the door, got out and leaned his head back in. “I know what I’m gonna say. Know what you gonna say?” Saying it mean, like Cobb had challenged him.

  “You don’t ever have to worry about Duane Cobb. I’m always in character.”

  Ruben closed the door and headed for the hotel entrance.

  THREE

  It had been six days, and the feeling of loss was like a weight she carried around. There’d been hope in the beginning; survivors were found alive under the rubble. One guy rode down in the collapsing building and lived. But hope that Jack was alive faded a little more with each passing day, and now it seemed impossible he had made it out.

  He’d called after the first plane had hit. He’d left a message, said it was bad, fire and smoke and bodies everywhere. Jack said he was going to take the stairs—it was the only possibility. She had tried to call him but never got through. Watching the news an hour later, Diane saw the north tower go down in twelve seconds and her heart sank. She listened to his message over and over. It ended with “I love you.” She’d tried calling him, and kept calling till her cell phone ran out of juice, recharged it and kept trying.

  Of the 258 people in Jack’s office, 243 were still missing and presumed dead. Diane had met with a group of Jack’s co-workers’ spouses in a banquet room at a local country club, the wives asking each other what they were going to do. How they were going to cope. How do you bury someone when there’s no body? What heals your heart?

  They cried and tried to cheer each other up, but for Diane the meeting was more depressing than helpful or therapeutic. She was overwhelmed and just tried to keep it together. She kept seeing the same images over and over. The gaping hole in the north tower. Plumes of black smoke. The jumpers. Burning paper raining down like confetti. The fire trucks and ambulances lined up. The noise. The feeling of panic and helplessness.

  At one point Diane had taken a train to Manhattan and a cab to the Trade Center area. She walked along the missing-persons wall, looking at flyers that had photographs of people who had disappeared that morning. The flyers had notes that were typeset or handwritten. This is my husband Paolo Minoli. If you see him, please call his wife, Inez: 646-480-6649.

  Diane found a space on the wall and took out the page she had designed on her computer. There was a photo of Jack smiling, and a headline that said This is Jack McCann, last seen on the 89th floor of Tower One. If you see him, call 203-555-0198. Tacking a flyer to the wall was probably crazy, but it was proactive; it was doing something other than waiting by the phone.

  Diane was on the phone with her mother when she saw a black sedan park on the street in front of the house. She watched a dark-haired guy get out and start up the walk to the front door. “Mother, I’ve got to go. Someone’s here.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.” She flicked off the cell phone and slid it into her front jean pocket, moved into the foyer, stopped and looked at her face in the mirror. Her eyes were red, and she had a streak of black on her cheek where the mascara had run. She wiped her face and dabbed her wet eyes with a Kleenex.

  The doorbell rang. She took a breath and opened the door, looking at a guy in his midthirties, about Jack’s height: six feet, but smaller through the chest and shoulders.

  “Mrs. McCann, I’m Duane Cobb from corporate. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  The name didn’t ring a bell, and he didn’t look at all familiar. She wondered if they’d met at the office Christmas party, scanning faces of Jack’s co-workers in her mind, but she didn’t see Duane Cobb.

  “I just want to talk,” he said, “if you have a few minutes.”

  The last thing Diane wanted to do was rehash what had happened. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “You, and how you’re doing.”

  “I don’t have much to say.” She opened the door all the way and he stepped into the foyer. She closed the door and led him into the kitchen, standing across the island counter from him, self-conscious being in the house alone with a stranger.

  “Would you like something, a cup of coffee?”

  “That’d be nice,” Cobb said.

  She took the pot out of the coffeemaker and poured him a cup. “How do you take it?”

  “Cream and sugar. I better do it, I’m kind a particular.”

  The sugar was on the counter. She opened the refrigerator, took out a pint of half-and-half, and handed it to him. She’d never seen a grown man put two spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee or use that much cream, turning it into a kiddie drink. Cobb saw her watching him, smiled, and said, “Keeps me sweet.”

  She was trying to place his accent. “Where are you from, Taylorville, Mattoon?”

  “No, Carbondale. How in the devil’d you know that?”

  “My cousin married a salesman from southern Illinois who sold combine harvesters, hay tedders, and haul-out transporters. Your accent’s like Bud’s.”

  “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t really.”

  She saw him staring at the platters of baked goods lining the counter. “Would you like something to eat, a cookie or a brownie?”

  “No, I’m all set.” He paused. “I didn’t know Jack, but I’ve heard what a wonderful person he was. How popular he was in the office. How much he helped young people breaking into the business.”

  Hearing that made her feel better, because she knew it was true. Jack had mentored a number of young brokers who’d made it, done well, and were anxious to tell Diane at company functions how Jack helped accelerate their careers, and how much everyone admired him.

  The TV on the counter was tuned to a news broadcast showing the planes striking the towers in slow
motion. She turned it off and fixed her attention on Cobb. “So you work in the San Francisco office?”

  “I’m not actually with Sterns and Morrison.”

  “Who’re you with?”

  “I’m a grief counselor hired by corporate.” He sipped his sweet coffee.

  “Why didn’t somebody call and ask if I wanted to talk to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t need a grief counselor.”

  “I can help you work through the emotional pain you’re experiencing.”

  “How do you know what I’m experiencing?”

  “I don’t really, but I can imagine. I’m trained. I went to school for this.” He paused. “Tell me, Mrs. McCann, what are you feeling? Are you in shock? Are you angry? Do you feel guilty Jack died and you survived?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Now I’m going to tell you something, and I just want you to listen.” Cobb paused for effect. “Grief is a normal and expected reaction to loss. It’s a process that can’t be rushed. There’s no quick fix. There’re no shortcuts here. There are seven steps you’ll go through before you’re whole again.”

  Diane was thinking step one was to get through it on her own, and bag the other six.

  “You can’t go back,” he said. “You can only go forward. My advice, talk to Jack, tell him what you’re thinking. He can hear you.”

  “Really? Where is he, up there in heaven?” Diane pointed at the ceiling. “Looking down at us?”

  Cobb ignored her sarcasm. “I’m sure Jack was a wonderful husband, and I can only imagine how much you miss him. He’s still with you but in a different way. I can help you cope with your feelings and regain your inner strength.”

  “Let me stop you right there. I’m not interested in talking to you or anyone else about this. I don’t want to be rude, but finish your coffee, and I’ll walk you out.”

  Cobb pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and tried to hand it to her. Diane wouldn’t take it. He left the card on the island countertop and walked out of the kitchen. She followed him to the front door. He turned and looked at her. “Mrs. McCann, I can help you if you’ll let me.”