Don't Say a Word

  D’Annunzio unlocked the driver’s door first. He squeezed his huge body in behind the wheel. He put the key in the ignition and switched on the engine. Only then did he lean over—grunting loudly as he did—to unlock the passenger side.

  Aggie Conrad got into the car beside him. She unlocked the rear door. Elizabeth Burrows got in back. D’Annunzio, meanwhile, was turning up the volume on the police radio under the Pontiac’s dash.

  He heard Aggie Conrad’s door thunk closed.

  “All right,” he said.

  He wrestled the wheel to the right. He heard the back door thud shut also. He hit the gas.

  The Pontiac’s tires screeched as the big boat screwed out of its parking space. Already, ahead of him, a blue-and-white cruiser was pulling out into the swift Thirty-sixth Street traffic. Its siren whooped, its beacons spun. An official black car—Calvin’s—pulled out after it, a red beacon spinning on its dash. Its siren joined the call. D’Annunzio reached under the seat and brought up his own beacon. He stuck it to the dash, hit his siren toggle.

  The swiftly moving cabs on the street slowed and pulled to the side. The blue-and-white shot past them, Calvin’s black car followed, D’Annunzio’s came next. They raced past the Morgan Library, its marble stately against the dark, its spotlights swallowing the red light of the beacons. Then, with a wicked shriek, the Pontiac cornered onto Park. It shot downtown, cutting neatly through the traffic ahead.

  D’Annunzio stole a sidelong glance at Aggie Conrad on the seat beside him. She had one arm around herself, the other propped on it, her hand covering her mouth, rubbing her mouth. She stared out through the windshield.

  “There should be downtown units almost there,” he told her.

  She nodded, but she didn’t turn. She kept rubbing her mouth.

  There was a burst of static from the radio. The fragments of a report.

  “Central … we don’t find any hostage situation in progress at this location, over.”

  D’Annunzio glanced at Mrs. Conrad. She had turned to stare at the radio now.

  Another burst of static. “ … confirmation …”

  “Affirmative, Central … . Second floor two twenty-two Houston is Ho Sung’s Chow Mein Palace. Excellent hotand-sour soup, Central, but definitely no hostages, over.”

  With a guttural curse, D’Annunzio reached down and grabbed the microphone. He held it to his mouth, pressed the button, shouted into it.

  “Central, you dip, this is D’Annunzio, advise all idiot units that hostage situation is at two twenty-two Houses Street. That is negative Houston. Two twenty-two Houses Street.”

  There was a short lull. D’Annunzio glared out through the windshield. The Pontiac was now approaching a red light. The civilian cars ahead were not pulling over. A couple of them were trying to use the police sirens as an excuse to sneak through the intersection. Horns were sounding on the cross street. Brakes were squealing. D’Annunzio maneuvered the wheel with one hand, followed Calvin’s black Chevy through a crevice in the bottled traffic. The Pontiac snaked through, sped on.

  There was a burst of static from the radio.

  “All units be advised of wrong address …”

  A burst of static. “Uh … shit, Central.”

  “We copy, Central …”

  A burst of static. “Where the hell is Houses Street?”

  “Houses Street?”

  D’Annunzio replaced the microphone on its hook. He glanced over at Aggie Conrad again.

  The woman looked up at him, her lips parted.

  “Don’t worry … ma’am,” he said.

  Aggie Conrad laughed dismally. She hugged herself even tighter. She shuddered.

  Death

  Conrad saw nothing, knew nothing. He floated on his back in that black sea. He bobbed and drifted.

  It was a place without change, without horizons. There was only the element itself, the plash of the element rising and falling under him, rising and falling within him.

  “Mom-my. Mom-my. Mom-my.”

  The sound of it swelled and fell away and swelled again. It seemed to him almost a part of himself. He was an element in which he floated, the element of a cry:

  “Mom-my.”

  Two heaving syllables, sobbed out of his daughter’s chest:

  “Mom-my. Mom-my. Mom-my. Mom-my.”

  … baby …

  Conrad could feel the thoughtless terror in that shriek. Feel it rising and falling within him in that cry.

  “Mom-my …”

  He could feel the confusion in it, the last, the only confusion. He could feel her wondering wildly what was happening to her. Why? Why wasn’t she with her mother, pressed against her mother?

  “Maaaamaaaaaa …”

  … baby … , Conrad thought.

  And he got up.

  He was not sure at first that that was what he was hearing. He felt himself shift somehow in the blackness. He intolerable weight of pain, he felt as if he were trying lift this intolerable weight of pain with arms made paper, with legs made out of sand.

  … baby … baby … my …

  Jessica’s wail became a long shriek of terror. “Nooooo …”

  And the shabby room was spinning around Conrad. He was on his feet. Tumbling forward on his feet. The room was stretching in and out of focus. And there was Maxwell, growing tall as a building, shrinking to a point of darkness.

  “Nooooooooo … Mommeeee …”

  There was Maxwell, down on his hands and knees, crawling toward his daughter … And Jessica was cowering against the wall and Maxwell was moving across the mattress toward her …

  Conrad staggered forward. The room pitched and dipped. Bent over, his arms swinging, Conrad stumbled the last few steps across the room. He dropped on top of Maxwell. He threw his arms around Maxwell’s neck.

  “Fuck!” Maxwell said.

  He rose to his feet. Conrad clung to him, his arms thrown weakly around his neck. He rode up into the air on Maxwell’s back. The great, roaring creature grabbed at him, swatted at him. Conrad clung to him as he floated above the floor, as the room tilted and spun.

  “Fucker! Fucker!” Maxwell screamed.

  He reached around and got a purchase on Conrad’s neck. He grabbed hold of one of his arms, his left arm. That was all he needed. With a wordless shout, he wrenched the little man off him. He hurled him down to the floor.

  Even under the child’s wail, even under his own animal snarl, Maxwell heard Conrad’s arm snap. Conrad let out a single high-pitched shriek. His body stiffened, then went limp.

  Maxwell stood over him. He roared curses down into his face. Flecks of foam flew from his mouth. He tore at his own hair.

  “How do you like that? How do you like that, you fuck, you fucker! Now you’re dead, now you’ll be dead. Huh? Huh?”

  His eyes rolled so wildly that for a moment only the whites gleamed under that heavy brow.

  And then Maxwell reached down and grabbed Conrad by the throat and squeezed. He grabbed him by the belt buckle and lifted him into the air. Conrad went up like a doll, his arms dancing in air, his broken arm jouncing in unnatural directions. Maxwell lifted him higher, up to his shoulder. Blood belched from Conrad’s mouth in a great gout.

  “Now you’re dead!” Maxwell roared. And he flung the doctor’s small body across the room.

  Conrad went through the air like a rag doll. His daughter watched it in wild, stupid fright. She was screaming and screaming. Her father hit the far corner of the wall and dropped to the floor face first. The blood fanned out quickly around his head in a scarlet pool. He lay with his legs bent under him, his left arm splayed at a strange angle.

  He did not move again. He saw nothing. He heard nothing. He did not hear his daughter screaming and screaming. He did not hear Maxwell laugh or see him turn away. He did not lift his head as the giant started moving, more calmly now, to the little mattress, to the little girl.

  Maxwell knelt down beside her. He grabbed her by her ankle as she screamed an
d screamed for her mother. He laughed again, breathing hard, as he circled her throat with his one hand. He began to squeeze her. Slowly. Almost tenderly.

  Jessica cried out one last time.

  A Bum in a Doorway

  A bum in a doorway out on Houses Street heard her. That last ragged shriek: “Mom-my, mom-my. Mommy!” It got under his skin like wriggly worms. It made him stir in the doorway where he was sleeping.

  He lifted his head, looked around him. He shivered and grumbled, “Eh, shit. Wha’ wazzat?”

  The bum was a long, thin white man, about forty. He was wearing a filthy overcoat over filthy rags. He was lying in the doorway across the street from 222. He had his back propped against one side of it, his feet against the other. He had been sleeping soundly until the shriek woke him. He had, in fact, been sleeping off a snootful of very bad bourbon.

  He had worked long and hard for that bourbon. Well, not long, but hard enough, he felt. He had spent the better part of the lunchtime hours panhandling over on Broadway, in front of Broadway Audio. He had a theory that people felt guilty whenever they thought about making big luxury purchases. He believed it made them more charitable.

  Today, the strategy had paid off. Between twelve-thirty and two o’clock, he had made twenty-five bucks in quarters and singles. He closed shop for the day and rewarded himself for his labors with a full quart of Kentucky Best whiskey. By rush hour, he was sitting with some friends on a comfortable bench in the Spring Street subway station arguing over the lyrics to “What Kind of Fool Am I.” Shortly after nightfall, he was lying alone at the edge of the platform, puking over the side.

  It was late—after ten—before he made his way to this doorway and went to sleep. He had plans to sleep here the rest of the night. He surely did not want to be bothered now.

  But Jessica’s last scream had awakened him for sure. He sat up. He listened. Had he dreamed it? Of course he had but …

  But the ugly chill of that sound stayed with him. Under his skin, wriggling, crawling. He cocked his ear again to the city silence: the hiss of traffic, the thrum of underground pipes and wires …

  And then, from far away at first, there was another scream. Closer, louder. Another scream rising over the steady city throb, taking up where the last one had left off. Closer. Louder until he could hear: it was not a scream …

  Sirens, he thought. Cops. Shit.

  He grabbed hold of the side of the doorway. Grunting and spitting, he pulled himself to his feet.

  Cops. Fucking cops.

  The first red-and-white beacons came flaring around the corner. The sirens grew louder, bearing down on him. More cars appeared, more beacons, an entire army of whirling lights.

  “Ach,” the bum said.

  He started moving away, hobbling toward the river as fast as he could, his back bent, his legs bowed. He waved his hand at the onrushing cruisers behind him.

  “Ach,” he muttered again, disgusted. “Whadda fuck izzit to me? Whadda fuck? Whadda fuck izzit?”

  Maxwell Again

  D’Annunzio’s car took the last corner fast. It plunged into a night blown black and scarlet by flashing beacons.

  Aggie sat rigid with a premonition of despair. For a moment, she closed her eyes, held her breath. The flashers pulsed behind her eyelids like red clouds. She felt the sirens throbbing in her temples like the heavy pulse that clogged her throat.

  The Pontiac screeched to a stop. Aggie opened her eyes. There were police cars scattered over the small street. Cruisers and unmarked sedans with beacons in their windshields. Men were pouring out of them: men in uniform, men in suits and ties. All of them were crouching down. All of them were gripping pistols. All of them had their eyes turned upward toward a single building.

  Aggie looked up too. The building stood dark in the marble glow of a police spotlight. It was a brownstone, standing alone beside a vacant lot. Crooked and crumbling, its black windows stared stupidly. Its chipped and rotten stone, its scarred door, its sagging stoop—its aura of decay—gave it the idiot malevolence of a human skull.

  Aggie’s breath came shuddering out of her.

  “Wait here,” said D’Annunzio.

  He threw open his door. He grunted as he wrestled his way outside.

  But Aggie waited only a moment. She waited to check the backseat over her shoulder. Elizabeth sat there, dazed, it seemed, and baffled. She was watching the flashing red lights, gazing at them dreamily. When Aggie turned around, Elizabeth blinked and faced her. She smiled—sweetly, distantly.

  Aggie tried to smile back. Then she pushed open her own door. She stepped out into the whirling night.

  She was shaking. Her legs were weak. She wanted this not to be happening. She wanted that so much. To be home with her family, to be home with her husband and child and this would not be happening … To have it be yesterday, just yesterday … She kept one hand braced against D’Annunzio’s car as she looked over the scene.

  The other cars, she saw, were spread irregularly on the pavement before her. A new cruiser had just moved into the crush, and for a moment, the red flash of its spinning beacon blinded her. She raised her hand to her eyes. Under her hand, she saw the shadows of men. They were everywhere, running forward, crouching behind their cars, looking up over their guns.

  Aggie did not crouch. She stood by D’Annunzio’s car. She looked up from the men to that dead brownstone.

  Oh, she thought. Oh, Jessie …

  D’Annunzio’s great bulk passed in front of her. He was crouching like the others, as best he could. He moved to the window of the cruiser right in front of her.

  “This is it?” he said.

  Aggie saw McIlvaine’s face come to the cruiser’s window. She saw him looking up fearfully at D’Annunzio. He was nodding.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “But he’s crazy, man, I’m telling you. He might’ve done her, he might’ve, no one could’ve stopped him, I’m telling you.”

  Now Aggie saw Special Agent Calvin run up beside D’Annunzio. He had a bullhorn in his hand.

  “We’re gonna call to him,” he said sharply. But it was a question really.

  D’Annunzio turned to him and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Try calling to him.” He glanced back at McIlvaine. “What’s his name?”

  “Maxwell. Max Duvall,” McIlvaine said.

  D’Annunzio glanced at Calvin and nodded: Go ahead.

  Calvin nodded nervously. He looked over the cars, over the flashers, up at the brownstone. He raised the bullhorn to his lips.

  But before he could speak, the brownstone’s door began to open.

  No one moved. The cops stood frozen at their positions, their guns raised. Their eyes were bright and unblinking in the flasher light. Their eyes and guns were trained on the brownstone’s door. The brownstone’s door opened wider.

  Aggie stood rigid, staring at the door. Her lips moved silently. Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary … The world seemed strangely clear beyond the deafening hammer of her heartbeat, the foggy nausea of her fear.

  The heavy wooden door swung open. And through it, as Aggie watched, a monster stepped into the glare of the spotlight.

  He was massive. Blinking and stupid and huge. His arms hung heavily down at his sides as he shuffled forward on columnlike legs. His shoulders seemed to brush the doorway on either side as he moved out onto the stoop.

  The door swung shut behind him. He stood where he was. He peered down at them, at all of them. His small, blocky face contracted as if he could not quite imagine who they all were, or why they had come. He stood and stared from small, hard eyes set deep in a protruding brow. And then he started forward again.

  “Freeze!” someone shouted.

  And there was another shout: “Freeze!”

  “Hold it!”

  The men were standing up behind the cars, bracing their guns on car rooftops, coming out from behind the cars and kneeling with their guns held steady on the approach
ing man.

  “Just stay right there!”

  “Put your hands over your head!”

  “Put your hands up now!”

  McIlvaine’s voice rose babbling out of the car in front of Aggie.

  “See, he did it! I couldn’t stop him. No one could stop him! It’s him, he’s crazy, I swear, I didn’t …”

  Aggie stared up at the man on the stoop. Until this moment, she had hardly known that she’d had any hope left—until this moment, that is, when it all collapsed inside her and she was hopeless. Standing behind the phalanx of men and guns, staring over the car roofs up at the stoop, up at that creature, she felt as if her body were about to tear open with a cry, as if from now on there would be nothing to her but a long unthinking cry of black grief.

  She made no sound. Her hand moved to her stomach. She pressed it there gently. She stared up at the man on the stoop.

  The man on the stoop looked down at the lights, down at the policemen and the guns pointed up at him. He smiled dreamily at them. He nodded and laughed a little and smiled.

  And then he swayed where he stood. And then, without taking another step, he pitched forward like a felled tree—dropped headlong onto the stone steps beneath him—and lay there dead.

  And still, for long seconds, no one moved. For long seconds, they did not understand what they were seeing. Aggie did not understand. She kept staring at the stoop. She kept shaking her head and staring.

  A moment ago, the man was there—a massive, powerful thing standing there, seeming almost defiant against all those lights and men and weapons. And now a moment later, he was splayed on the steps, his head pointing down toward the sidewalk, his arms limp, still at his sides—and back of his shirt, exposed in the spotlight, soaked through everywhere with rich, black blood.