41
McKenna had stopped staying at SROs when he got spooked. Someone had discovered that Selena Haley’s computer had been hacked the day that she had been murdered. They traced it back to McKenna’s laptop. He was pretty sure it wasn’t the police or the FBI, because they don’t normally leave death threats. He ditched the computer and dropped through the cracks. I knew where not to look for him. He would avoid the city homeless shelters—they were run like prisons and could be just as dangerous. The soup kitchens, rehab centers, and methadone clinics all had their regular communities where a new guy on the street would stand out all too easily. McKenna would want total anonymity. And so did I.
The city had closed—consolidated—many of its libraries, but I still had plenty of stops to make. I checked every public library on the west side of Manhattan, walking from Bryant Park to 179th Street. I walked because I didn’t want to show up on any of the surveillance cameras in the subway, and because waiting for a bus would have slowed me down.
Somewhere, McKenna was holing up, but he had to have Internet access. The carrels in the public libraries were as close to anonymous as one could get—and they had wireless Internet connections. Homeless people rarely get rousted from a library unless they create a nuisance, like letting loose with a schizophrenic rant, or sleeping on the tables, or urinating in their clothes. It’s warm, there are newspapers to read, and the water fountains usually work and produce a quality product. But unless you are actually taking a book out, no one questions you or your right to be there. It was a long shot, but an educated one. If I didn’t find him on the West Side, I’d do the East Side the next day.
I felt the man’s eyes on me before I saw him. I walked in front of the reference librarian’s desk, heading for the bank of carrels in the back, when I sensed a startled intense gaze. I was careful not to respond. I continued on my way, took a chair, and settled into the space, plugging in my laptop and signing in. Then I took a moment to gaze around the room, lazily, as though bored and waiting for my system to boot up.
He was a tall black man, mid- to late twenties, lanky but not thin—his height made him look thinner than he was—wearing army surplus khaki and boots, and a desert camo jacket. His eyes flicked away when I looked in his direction.
I wanted to bolt. I thought I was absurd. Paranoid. Resorting to racial profiling. Did I really think that my ghostly pursuers had found me in an uptown library? That they’d been waiting for me there? Or that this man, who had done the unthinkable and looked at me, was somehow a threat? I was breaking up, deep into the DMZ of paranoia. Drifting. I needed to take control, no matter what it cost me. The sane strategy would be to act the part of a lunatic—confront my fears and the man. I stared at him, glaring.
He hid behind a magazine. Rolling Stone. I kept glaring. He looked around the room, overacting his nonchalance, until our eyes met. I refused to blink. He stood up, dropped the magazine on the table, and walked out. Through the racks of new arrivals, I could see him pass the front desk and exit. He was gone.
I stayed for an hour, fueling my laptop, resting my feet, and attempting to reassure myself that what I was going through was nothing more than an episode. With a return to my life, these constant fears would dissipate, and I would be whole again. It was getting late.
The sun was dropping toward New Jersey as I headed up Saint Nicholas Avenue. I would have to start thinking of a place to spend the night very soon. There were parks up on the north end of Manhattan. It was going to be a cold night, but I had the long johns and the thermal socks—I was dressed for it and, in addition to my laptop and shoes, I had the sleeping bag tied to my backpack.
My street senses were all askew. I looked like someone that I would normally avoid. It kept me from looking too closely at the people I passed on the street. Another of McKenna’s rules. Avoid eye contact. I kept my head down, the ball cap pulled low, and the sunglasses in place. What energy I could spare for observation was focused on keeping an eye out for a tall black man in desert camo. That’s why I didn’t see them until they were right on top of me.
Neither man was much over five foot four, but they were both broad-chested and powerful-looking. The first bumped me as I passed an alley between a Dominican chicken joint and an auto parts store. I stumbled slightly and the second one pushed hard from behind. I took three staggering steps into the alley, with both of them alternating jabs and shoves to keep me off-balance. I pulled away, broke clear, and put my back against a wall.
The two had me cornered. Both were wearing cheap sneakers, jeans, dark hoodie sweatshirts, and quilted polyester vests. One had a long, sharpened screwdriver with which he made jabbing motions in my direction, though he stayed back out of reach. The other had a knife, a heavy-bladed tool that would have been useful for chopping down small trees—or people. He advanced.
He said something in Spanish and pointed. My execrable foreign language skills were of no help, but I didn’t really need them. He wanted my backpack. I almost laughed. These were not the men who had chased me and tried to trap me all across the country. These were not the hit men from a Central American drug cartel, there to take revenge. These were two pitiful muggers, no farther up or down the food chain than I was at that moment.
Then it hit me. In a single day on the street, my priorities had changed. The day before, I would have handed over the backpack and wished them well. A laptop, some warm clothes, a sleeping bag? Even the cash? These weren’t things worth fighting or dying for. But it was a different day. I was terrified. My ability to survive without those clothes would be in jeopardy. My identity, what remained of it, as Jason Stafford was on those computer files. The path to reclaiming my life was there.
The cash. The cash was expendable. It was replaceable—somehow. It meant little to me, and might turn their weapons aside.
“Uno momento,” I yelled, holding up a single hand in surrender, reaching into the bag with the other. It must have looked like a threatening move because the one with the knife took two quick steps closer and slashed the air in front of my face.
“No! No!” I screamed, unconcerned with letting my terror show. “Dinero. Much dinero. For you. Here. Here.” I had stashed the money in various pockets in the backpack and my clothes. I found four fifties and threw them on the ground between us.
The guy with the screwdriver bent over and swept the ground. The fifties disappeared. I sensed a shift in hostilities. They were getting what they wanted without committing murder. There was a chance we would all be able to walk away from this. I found two more fifties and threw them to the ground. Wrong move. I had overplayed my hand. The knife-wielder, and the obvious brains of the team, saw the possibility of an even greater payoff. Just how many fifties were there in the bag?
He came forward and slashed at my face again. I leaned backward away from the knife and tripped over a black plastic bag of garbage. I fell.
“Take the goddamn bag,” I yelled, trying to extricate myself from the garbage and the backpack straps. What a ridiculous cosmic joke, I thought, to outwit hit men and hackers, and to die in a garbage-strewn alley, done in by two muggers. I kicked ineffectually at the advancing man, his knife swinging in ever-narrowing arcs. I was mesmerized, like a mouse waiting for the snake to strike.
The little man was suddenly lifted into the air by someone from behind and tossed face-first into the wall.
“Hey! Retaco! Basta ya!” a deep voice ordered. The black man from the library grabbed the Latino’s knife arm as he came off the wall. With one fluid motion, he pulled him forward and twisted the arm around and down. The mugger squawked like a throttled chicken and dropped the knife. His buddy ran. But not far. The black man kicked him in the leg as he passed and he dropped as though shot. With the first mugger dragging along, held by the overextended arm, the stranger walked over to the downed second man and kicked him again. This time in the ribs.
“Get that money out of your pocke
t,” he said. “I want to see it. All of it, conejo.” He let the man get up as far as his hands and knees and drew his leg back for another kick.
“No. No,” the man cried, tossing the fifties back on the ground.
“Very good. Now get the fuck out of here. The both of yous.” He swung the first man by the injured arm and let him fly back out onto the street. Both of them ran. Neither looked back.
I got up from the garbage and brushed myself off.
“Thank you. The money is yours. A reward.”
He looked at me scornfully. “You’re Jason Stafford.”
I felt a major twinge of fear. “Who wants to know?”
“I heard you were smart. I don’t think so. Pick up your things and let’s go. I got someone wants to talk to you.”
I didn’t want to die in that alley, and from what I had just seen, this guy would have no problem making that happen. Nonetheless, I felt that some resistance was required.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. You’ve been following me. I saw you.”
“I wasn’t following you, numbnuts, I was waiting for you. My man said you’d be along and I could just wait you out. And there you were. And about time, too. Come on, it’ll be dark soon and we got some walking to do.”
I reviewed my chances of getting away. Slim and none. I picked up the bills and stuffed them back into my bag. “Ready,” I said.
42
Halfway across the George Washington Bridge, the sun slid down behind the Palisades and the temperature, already cold, began to plummet.
“Come on, keep up,” he called back. I was a good ten paces behind him, but there was no danger of my turning and running off. Where was I going to go? “I am freezing my ass off, and not liking it one bit.”
I walked faster. It kept me warm. There hadn’t been even a breeze walking through the city, but up on the south side of the bridge the unprotected walkway was open to a cold damp wind coming up the Hudson.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked again.
He didn’t answer. He had not answered any of the other times I had asked.
“Move along, my man,” he said. “And keep your head down. There’s another camera coming up right along here.”
I put my head down. “Can I take the damn glasses off?” The sunglasses were as good as a blindfold—I could barely see one step ahead of me.
“Soon.” He led me to the end of the bridge and up the sidewalk toward Fort Lee. “This way.” We jumped the chain-link fence, he was a lot more graceful than I, and took the next street along the top of the cliff. We kept walking. A neighborhood of shops and two-story homes gave way to a steeper section of the cliff. Luxury high-rises soared up above us, while down the cliff there were multilevel parking garages to service them. Below that there was nothing but rocks and trees and scrub brush cascading down toward the river.
“Keep smiling,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
I tried to keep up, but my legs were starting to fail me. I’d covered too many miles on aching feet already that day. I was about to protest and plead for a break, when my guide—or captor, I still wasn’t sure which—crossed the road and walked down the ramp into the darkness of one of the concrete garages.
The apartment building soared up an uncountable number of stories. Far above I could make out terraced balconies and floor-to-ceiling windows. The views from there of the Hudson and Manhattan must have been breathtaking. There was a curved driveway leading to a polished brass-and-glass entryway where two doormen stood guard. They were contentedly ignoring me, but I was sure that if I took more than a few steps toward the entrance, they would be all over me.
“You coming?” The man had returned to the bottom of the ramp and stood glaring at me. It wasn’t really a question.
“I’m coming,” I said, and crossed the street.
He led me to the far side of the lot and down two flights of stairs, our footsteps echoing coldly in the narrow stairwell. The only light came from a dim yellow bulb all the way at the top, yet I was still unprepared for the inky blackness of the lowest level of the garage when we arrived at the bottom.
“They got motion sensors that turn the lights on when you come down the ramp or use the elevator, but the stairs are on a different circuit. We don’t like to advertise our comings and goings. This way.”
Around the end of the last row of cars, there was a cutaway in the wall and we made a turn. The garage was open, with a chest-high concrete retaining wall running the length of the cutaway. Above the wall was a space six feet tall and thirty feet wide.
“How you holding up?” He sounded clinical, not concerned. He simply wanted information.
“My feet are killing me, and I could use a break. But if we’re close, push on.”
“We’re here,” he said, stopping at the half wall. “But this bit gets tricky. If you feel shaky, speak up.”
Beyond the wall stretched treetops, partially screening the river and the city. Manhattan stretched out for ten miles downriver. Now lit from within, the buildings along the Hudson looked like glowing jewel cases. At that distance, the city was clean, and beautiful, and alluring. A place of incredible magic.
“Nice view, huh? The folks across the street have to pay big bucks for that view.” He laughed, hitched his butt up onto the top of the wall, and swung around facing the city. “Last little bit. Come on.”
I had decided that the murky, and all-powerful, forces that seemed to be able to track my every move across the country were not going to go through such an exercise to gull me into meeting them in the woods below Englewood, New Jersey. Though I wasn’t sure what to expect, I had left all resistance behind.
On the far side of the concrete wall, someone had set up a long extension ladder that led down to darkness.
“I’ll go first in case you need me to guide your feet. Just keep moving and don’t look down,” he said.
“What’s to see? It’s pitch-black down there.”
“Let’s go.” There was nothing to do but follow.
I edged over the wall and started down the ladder. It creaked and groaned with our combined weight, but it held steady against the wall. Once down into the darkness under the garage, I realized that it was not quite so pitch-black. I could see the ground fifteen feet below. The ladder bowed a bit as I reached the halfway point but rebounded as I made my way down the last few steps.
“Welcome, Jason,” a familiar voice said. “You’re just in time for dinner.”
43
Other than a swipe of black soot across his forehead, Dr. McKenna looked like life on the run agreed with him. He had shaved the beard and cut his hair, leaving a single conservative part. He was wearing a heavy winter-season blue suit, and a full-length apron over it proclaiming STUART SAYS, ‘LICK MY RIBS,’ CAN DO Q, CLARKSDALE, MISS, with a cartoon drawing of a smiling, round-faced man wearing a pig snout.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, indicating the three canvas folding chairs near the mouth of the man-made cave. A single mammoth round concrete pillar supported the floor of the garage a good six feet over our heads. We were directly under the three-story structure. On both sides the rock curved upward, meeting the concrete and sealing off the area into a single high-ceilinged vault. A thin layer of soil on the floor softened the rough, jutting surface. McKenna, or his friend, had set up two small dome tents, a camp table, a kerosene heater, a small gas grill, and even shaded overhead lights. A heavy-duty orange extension cord ran up the side of the pillar to the garage. “Cozy, isn’t it? Abraham has been living here since last spring, and when I heard about it, I thought it would be just perfect for my needs. We came to an agreement quite quickly. I provide the cash to maintain our lifestyle, and pay him to act as my assistant. We’ve spruced the place up quite a bit in the last few days. How do you like your steak?”
“Medium rare?” I looked around aga
in. “Are you planning on spending the winter down here?”
“Well, for my part, I certainly hope not. I have a family I’d like to see again. But Abraham suffers from PTSD after two tours in ‘Insanistan,’ as he calls it. He doesn’t do well inside four walls.” McKenna gestured out at the woods in front of us. “This place is perfect for him.”
“Nobody bothers you? No cops, or kids, or dogs, or . . .”
“Just the raccoons, so far. We have to keep both food and garbage under lock and key.”
He opened the grill, flipped the steaks and sliced zucchini, and closed it again. “Another few minutes. Coffee or water? There’s nothing stronger, I’m afraid. Abraham no longer touches alcohol—it interferes with his treatment—and I respect his quest.”
Hot coffee sounded good. “I’ll take a cup.”
“Milk and sugar are in the big blue cooler.”
Abraham, who seemed much less imposing once I knew that he had a name, had taken one of the chairs and was reading underneath a clip-on light attached to a broom handle stuck in the dirt. His feet were warming by the space heater.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“A novel.”
My reading list had shrunk to books about cars, which I read to the Kid, or books about kids with autism.
“Which one?”
He looked up. “Why do you care?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just making conversation.”
“Not necessary.” He went back to the book.
The three of us ate around the camp table, Abraham continuing to read while McKenna and I spoke, only responding with a quick look when one or the other of us mentioned him. I caught sight of the book cover. Tom Young’s The Warriors. The cover showed an armed soldier in silhouette against a blood-red background. A strange choice for a man with PTSD, but then again, maybe not.
Long Way Down Page 24
