Don't Say a Word

  He halted, staring. Someone was there, coming. A doorman probably. A maintenance man. Not the police, not yet. But someone …

  The door cracked open. A shaft of light dropped into the hall before him.

  Conrad threw himself back, pinned himself back against the wall. The shaft of light got wider and wider. It spread like a yellow stain down the wall in front of him, down over the floor, out across the floor toward his feet.

  The door opened wider and Conrad saw the shadow of a man.

  He was a big man. Tall, square shouldered. A black man in a purple doorman’s uniform.

  Aching, bleeding, Conrad pressed tight to the wall as the doorman peered cautiously into the hall. The doorman pushed the door open a little farther. The stain of light spread toward Conrad’s feet, stopped an inch from the toes of his shoes. The alarm bell blasted the shadows. The doorman stepped into the hall.

  Conrad saw his dim silhouette as he slowly moved forward. He saw him running his hands along the opposite wall, looking for the light switch. Another step and the doorman loomed directly in front of him. If Conrad had breathed out, the doorman would’ve felt it on his cheek.

  Then the doorman took another step and went past him. Under the constant bell, Conrad heard him say, “Here it is.”

  Conrad bolted. He ran for the door. The doorman flicked the switch and the office lights went on. But by then, Conrad was out the door, rounding the corner, half running, half staggering down the outer hall. Behind him, the bell kept ringing and ringing. The doorman never even turned around. He never even saw him go.

  He was a wild figure; his hair wild, his eyes wild. His orange shirt was stained at the sleeves with blood. His hands were running with blood. Blood was dripping off the tips of his fingers. He came around the corner into the lobby at that hopping, staggered pace. It was a broad lobby. Mirrors on the walls. A chandelier hanging from a high ceiling. The front door, a revolving door, was to his left. He limped toward it.

  “Hey!”

  He looked around. On the wall far to his right were two elevators with golden doors. One of those doors had just slid back. A man had just burst from the car and was running toward him. He was a small, stocky Hispanic man in khaki, his round belly stretching his shirt buttons. The maintenance man.

  “Hey!” he said again, pointing at Conrad.

  Conrad stopped where he was. “Quick,” he said. He pointed back down the hall whence he’d come. “In the office right next to mine. Quick. Hurry. The doorman …”

  The man’s eyes narrowed with determination. He swerved in his course, raced bravely away from Conrad, down the hall.

  Conrad limped to the revolving door. Shouldered it around. Tumbled out onto the sidewalk and stood there unsteadily, dazed and blinking in the night mist.

  He was on Eighty-third Street. Central Park West was to his right. That was where they were, he thought. The kidnappers. They were watching the exit to his building around the corner. They would not be watching this street, this door. They would not, he told himself.

  He panted hard. Every breath made his abdomen sting. He put his hand to the bloody place. He groaned at the pain there, at the pain in his knee.

  Let them not be, he thought. Please. Please. Let them not be watching.

  He turned away, toward Columbus Avenue. He cried out once in pain as he began to run.

  In the Nursery

  By the time the police brought in their prisoner, Aggie and Elizabeth were in the nursery.

  “The stars,” Elizabeth was saying. “Did you paint the stars?”

  The two women were alone in Jessica’s room. The policemen were all in the living room outside. Elizabeth was gazing up at the ceiling, her lips parted.

  “Did you paint the stars?” she asked again.

  Aggie only nodded. She found it hard to talk about Jessie’s stars. “Yes,” she finally managed to say.

  “They’re so beautiful,” said Elizabeth.

  “Thank …” But Aggie couldn’t finish.

  Elizabeth lowered her eyes to the older woman. Hesitantly, she raised her hand, touched Aggie’s shoulder. Then, quickly, she dropped her hand to her side.

  “It will be all right,” she said, looking down. “She’ll come back. I know it.”

  Aggie nodded, tried to smile.

  Elizabeth turned away. With one slow sweeping look, she took in the whole room. The stars on the ceiling, the rainbow on the sky-blue wall, the crystal palace painted there among drifting clouds. “Really she will,” she added helpfully. “She has such a beautiful room.”

  Elizabeth was wearing one of Aggie’s old dresses now. The police technicians had taken her other one, the bloody one. They had taken it away in a plastic bag. They had also scraped flakes of blood off Elizabeth’s cheeks and dug under her fingernails for other samples. They had done this in the bedroom while D’Annunzio and Special Agent Calvin asked her questions.

  Aggie had been there too. Elizabeth had asked her to stay there with her. Aggie had sat on the bed next to Elizabeth and held her hand. She had listened to Elizabeth’s story about the man in the car with the knife. She had listened and she had thought: My God, she killed him. Is that what she’s saying? Yes, she killed him. With her hands …

  She had stopped patting the girl’s thin hand then. She had simply stared down at it. She had stared down at it and an image of her little girl’s face had risen before her: Jessie, with her small lips trembling, her blue eyes frightened and bewildered.

  Aggie had swallowed hard, fighting down the nausea, staring at Elizabeth’s hand.

  Aggie had made the policemen leave the room before Elizabeth took her dress off. Then she’d handed the dress to one of them through the door. She had picked an old dress out of her closet, a flower print on a cream background. Elizabeth had had to pull the belt tight, and the hem ended above her knees, but it fit well enough.

  Then Aggie had taken the girl into the bathroom. She sat her on the toilet and cleaned her face with a washcloth. She worked around the cheeks and eyes, stroked the blood away gently while Elizabeth gazed up at her. Aggie thought about washing Jessica’s face. Jessica would never stop talking and asking questions: “What am I doing today? Will Daddy be home before I go to bed? Can I watch TV after school?” Sometimes Aggie would lose her patience: “Jess-i-ca! How can I clean your face if you keep moving it around like that?” Jessica would giggle, which only made things worse.

  , But Elizabeth Burrows did not talk or move as Aggie cleaned her face. She sat very still, her back straight, her hands folded on her lap. And she gazed up at Aggie. She gazed up at her steadily with big green eyes and parted lips. Aggie wanted to say, “Stop that.” But she didn’t. And Elizabeth gazed and gazed.

  When Aggie was done, she put the washcloth in the sink. Elizabeth kept looking at her, her head tilted slightly to one side.

  Aggie could see now how beautiful she was. Like someone in a painting. Like Botticelli’s Venus. God, Aggie caught herself thinking, what she would have been if only … She stood at the sink and looked down at Elizabeth. Elizabeth, her head tilted, gazed up at her.

  She must have just torn that man apart with her bare hands, Aggie thought.

  “Let’s go back in the bedroom,” she said gently.

  “No …” Elizabeth blinked, as if Aggie’s voice had awakened her. “I mean … I mean … Could I see her room?”

  “Her …?”

  “Your daughter’s.”

  Now she stood next to Jessica’s loft bed, gazing with that same stupid wonder up at the painted stars, the crystal palace, the painted rainbow, and the clouds. She wandered dreamily away from Aggie. Over to Jessica’s toyshelf in the far corner. She touched a little music box there, a tiny carousel. She touched the horses on it, the cloth flags waving from their golden poles.

  Aggie watched her. She saw her smile down at the painted horses. Through the walls, she could hear the low murmur of the men talking.

  “I thought about this room,” Elizabeth
said suddenly. “Your daughter’s room. I wanted to come here.”

  “Did you?” said Aggie. She shivered a little. The thought of this woman, this madwoman, sitting in a madhouse, thinking of her daughter’s room …

  Jesus, Nathan! Do you just tell them all about us?

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “After the man … there was the man with the knife and then … then the policemen. They found me with him when he was … After he was dead, you know, because of the Secret Friend and … And the policemen put me in their car and I told them, I said, ‘You’ve got to help Dr. Conrad. You’ve got to help him.’ And I kept saying that, and they called in on their radio, and they said they would bring me here and I … I was afraid. I was afraid but I thought … I thought, ‘Now I’ll see her room.’ That’s what I told myself so I wouldn’t be afraid. ‘Now I’ll see what her room is like.’ I kept telling myself that.”

  Aggie offered her a kind smile as she fought down another shiver. “I understand,” she said.

  “And then I … ,” Elizabeth began. And then she stopped. “Oh,” she said, breathing it out on a long sigh. “Look.” Her eyes were bright now, her lips parted and turned up gently. She was looking into Jessica’s closet. “Look. She has so many … You know …” She moved her hands in front of her. “Animals. Toys and animals.”

  “She calls them her friends,” Aggie said. And her voice became hoarse again.

  “Friends,” Elizabeth repeated. “They’re so sweet.” She stepped into the closet.

  Aggie hesitated. She did not think she could go into the closet again. When she did step toward it, she felt leaden; in her throat, in her chest, in her stomach. Thick and heavy.

  She came to the closet door and looked in.

  Elizabeth was in there with the animals. She was on her knees and they surrounded her. The alligators and the martians; Goofy and Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.

  But of course, she was holding White Snow, the old teddy bear. Holding it against her breast, her arms wrapped around it.

  Christ, thought Aggie, blinking her tears back. She would pick him.

  Hugging the teddy bear, Elizabeth looked up at her. “I’m going to disappear,” she said softly. Her voice sounded oddly unclouded, oddly strong. “Did Dr. Conrad tell you that?”

  “No,” Aggie managed to say. “No. Of course not.”

  “Well, it’s true,” said Elizabeth sadly. “I know it is.” She rocked White Snow in her arms. “It’s like, I’ll be in here, stuck in here. With all these friends. And … the friends will be talking in here and I’ll … have to listen to them. I’ll have to listen to them and then slowly, slowly … I’ll just be gone.” She raised her eyes to Aggie. Aggie saw how deep they were, how clear. “I’ve seen them like that, you know. The ones who’ve disappeared. In the hospitals. They sit there. They stare into space. They stare at the wall.” She shuddered. “You can almost see, you can almost look into their eyes and see it. It’s like a funeral: the room inside is full of all the person’s friends, but the person himself isn’t there anymore. Only the friends are in there, talking and living inside. But the person is just … gone.” She smiled slightly, snuggling against the teddy bear. “It’s worse than a funeral,” she said. “I think it must be worse than dying.”

  “Don’t say that.” Aggie stepped toward her.

  Elizabeth clutched the bear tightly, rubbed her cheek against it. Her eyes swam and her lips grew thick and she blurted out, “This is such a nice room! I wish I had a room like this one!”

  “Oh, hell,” said Aggie. There were tears in her eyes too. She stepped forward, reaching down toward the girl, reaching down to touch her cheek.

  But that was when they brought in the prisoner.

  The two women could hear him the moment he came through the front door. He was screaming.

  “Fuck you people! Fuck you people! This is so fucking illegal. This is so fucking incredibly illegal. You assholes. You think this isn’t illegal? You think you can just get away with this? You guys are in for the big surprise-a-roo. Motherfuckers! Assholes! You didn’t read me my rights,” he sang out. “You guys are about to get your fat blue asses in a big sling. Hey. Hey! Get your fucking hands off me. Brutality! Fucking brutality. Get the fuck off me.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Aggie whispered.

  Then she was running out of the nursery. Around the corner of the hall. Into the living room. Into the crowd of men in ties and men in uniform. The men parted to form a corridor to the door. And Aggie looked down the corridor of men and saw the prisoner.

  It was the man who had pretended to be Detective D’Annunzio. He was pinned between two patrolmen. They were holding him by his elbows. His hands were secured—handcuffed, she saw as he twisted this way and that—behind his back. His brown hair flopped and tossed as he struggled in the patrolmen’s grip. His eyes were bright and he was smiling so that his white teeth flashed in the toplight. He laughed wildly. His voice cracked as he spoke.

  “You guys are soooo fucked. You are so fucked you don’t even begin to know the meaning of the word fucked. They are going to have your pictures next to fucked in the fucking dictionary, dickheads. Assholes. Nobody even read me my rights, nobody said a fucking thing to me, they just …”

  And then, before Aggie knew what was happening, she was on him. She was clutching at his jacket, pulling at it, clinging to his neck, his hair. The tears were pouring down her cheeks; they were hot, they were burning into her skin. Her voice was a hoarse wail. She hardly recognized it. She hardly realized she was screaming into the man’s startled face:

  “Where is she? Please, please, tell me where my baby is! Oh, please, Jesus, you’ve got to tell me where she is, please, please, I swear, I’ll do anything …”

  Vaguely, she felt the hands grabbing at her, prying at the arms she’d thrown around the prisoner’s neck. Vaguely she heard the deep voices shouting, “Mrs. Conrad!” And she felt their strength pulling at her shoulders, at her waist.

  But she held on to the prisoner. She held on and kept crying, screaming, “Please. Oh, please, in the name of God, in the name of Jesus, please tell me, tell me she’s alive, just tell me she’s alive …”

  And then they had her, the policemen had her, they were pulling her back, pulling her away from him, and he hadn’t told, he hadn’t told her. Agatha fought against the hands that held her, fought to get back to him.

  “Please,” she screamed, she wailed it. “Make him tell, oh, Jesus, please make him tell, make him tell me …”

  But now they were pulling the prisoner away. Someone was barking out, “Take him in the bedroom.” Aggie could hear her own hoarse sobs. They sounded faraway and terrible, as if they belonged to someone else. Held back by the powerful hands of the men, she looked up and saw the prisoner being pulled away toward the hall. He was laughing again, his hair falling into his eyes. He was looking back at her and laughing.

  “Hey, sorry, Tits,” he called to her. “So sorry, baby, your friends here fucked up. They got the wrong guy here. I don’t know nothin’ about stealin’ babies. All I want is my lawyer, you hear what I’m saying? Why don’t you tell your friends: Better get Mr. McIlvaine his lawyer, boys.’

  Aggie sagged limply in the men’s hands. “Please,” she said. She sobbed helplessly.

  As the man disappeared into the bedroom, she felt herself being released. The policemen lowered her slowly, gently to the floor. She went down on her knees, her head hanging, her hair hanging down around her face.

  “Please. Make him tell.” She heard herself crying. “Make him tell me where my baby is. Please.”

  Then, a moment later, she felt warm arms around her, holding her. She felt soft hands in her hair, stroking at her hair. She heard a soft, smoky murmur in her ear.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right, really. It’s going to be all right now.”

  Crying, Aggie rested her head against Elizabeth’s breast.

  “It’s going to be all right now,” Elizabeth said again. “Eve
ryone can see him now. Don’t you understand? They can all see him. Everything is going to be just fine.”

  222 Houses Street

  The subway car was brightly lit. It rattled loudly, rocking back and forth as it headed downtown. There were four people on it. There was a couple murmuring to each other in one front corner: a young black man in a leather jacket, a young white woman with bleached-blond hair. There was a Con Ed worker reading the News in a middle seat: a stocky black man in his work overalls, carrying his hard hat resting on his thigh.

  And lastly, there was a man huddled alone in a rear corner. His head hung forward. His large bald spot glistened in the fluorescent light. His arms were crossed on his lap, hands clutching forearms as if he were holding himself together. His shirt was torn and there were patches of blood on it. There were pats of blood that had dripped from him onto the linoleum between his feet.

  The subway slowed as it came into the Canal Street station. The Con Ed man folded his paper and stood. He carried his hard hat under his arm as he went to the rear door. Holding the metal pole with his free hand, he glanced down at the huddled, bleeding figure.

  “You need help there?” he said quietly.

  The bleeding man did not look up. He shook his head. The train’s dark windows became bright as the subway passed into the station. The yellowed tiles on the station wall went by in a blur, then focused as the train gradually came to a stop.

  “You oughta get yourself to a hospital,” murmured the Con Ed man.

  The man who was bleeding glanced up at him. “I’m all right,” he said.

  The Con Ed man shrugged and sighed. “Suit yourself.”

  The train’s doors slid open. The Con Ed man stepped out. The doors closed. The train moved forward again, rattling, rocking back and forth.

  Conrad raised his head then, looked out the window, trying to spot the Con Ed man. Had he walked on to the exit? Had he stopped at a telephone to call the other kidnappers? Conrad couldn’t find him.