Liberty Falling Page 31

  It was bizarre that it was in his office. The man lived alone. He could keep porn in his home without fear of discovery. That he had it in his place of business could mean a number of things. Maybe fear of discovery heightened the excitement. Discovery of the porn itself or of him doing what men traditionally do when viewing pornography? His chair was feeling less than pure all of a sudden. Keeping the porn at the office might also mean he’d developed enough of a craving for the stuff that he couldn’t get through the day without it.

  Or it could mean nothing. Curiosity. Porn site ad pops up on e-mail, gets opened, filed, never thought of again.

  But Persian Kittens was on his “favorite places” menu. Frederick’s snake alarm rattled in Anna’s head. She jiggled the deep file drawer, the one where David Madison had surreptitiously deposited the folder. It was locked. Fingers quick from the practice of searching and frisking felt out the standard places keys were hidden. David’s key, unimaginatively enough, was tucked under the blotter. In a second the drawer was open. The contents had nothing to do with Molly’s treatment, the New York City morgue or the identity of Agnes Abigail Tucker. Printouts of nude women urinating, lactating, pregnant women. Magazines with such enticing titles as Big Boob Orgy and Butt Rangers were stacked a foot deep. A gym sock was near the bottom. Inside was evidence the doctor’s hobby extended to amateur photography. What looked to be nearly a hundred snapshots of women were stuffed inside. A plain-faced woman on elbows and knees, her bare bottom in the air, her neck craned as she leered over her shoulder at the camera as if concerned any of her dubious charms would go unrecorded. Anna flipped over the snap. On the back was written: “Jewelly, Virgin Islands.” A woman fifty-five or sixty, suffering from obesity, fat thighs spread, wearing nothing but what looked to be Mardi Gras beads: “Andrea, Louisiana.” “Helen, Alabama.” “Suzi, Little Rock.” “Patty, MS.” “The Blackstock sisters.” “Anne, artist?” Anna had seen enough. She tucked the sock back between two videos, Incest and the promising title of Horny Haitian Midgets.

  Settling the collection back roughly the way she’d found it, Anna noticed a sheet of paper with a list of names. Each was numbered. Jewelly was there and Andrea. She skimmed down. Number 44 was Sonya. The name rang a bell. For a moment Anna racked her brain; then it came to her. The silver-haired nurse who had met them on the elevator that first day Dr. Madison walked her out. “Forty-five?” she’d said. Anna looked back at the list of names. Number 45 was Anna P., followed by a question mark.

  Nauseated, she slipped the list back in the drawer, locked it and replaced the key under the blotter. So much for the date. It was five of three. She took up her pack and left, taking the stairs so she wouldn’t run into the doctor. Later she would thank Frederick and tell Molly. At present she felt too much of a fool, ashamed, as if the slime of Madison’s secret life had rubbed off on her. She wanted to hide and lick her wounds. At the hospital’s entrance, she hailed a cab. Cabbies no longer struck her as the lowest life-form in New York.

  Secure in Molly’s apartment, she turned up the air-conditioning, captured Rani for fur therapy, then called Delta Airlines. Not a single seat was available on the sixth of July. On the seventh there were openings, but since she was booking so late, the one-way would cost $1,287.34. Anna grabbed it. Cheap at twice the price. Escape hatch open, she felt better. Molly would understand. Frederick would be glad to have her out from underfoot and Hills Dutton, her District Ranger at Mesa Verde, would be thrilled to have her back writing parking tickets and rescuing poodles from parked and locked cars. Summer, July, was Mesa Verde’s peak season.

  Clasping a compliant kitten to her chest, Anna lay carefully back on Molly’s sofa. The cushions were soft but firm. Good for her back. She pulled the dead child’s cap off and scratched her scalp where hair had sweated into a mat. Rani, a ball of fur with silver paws, batted at the hat. “You are a true Persian kitten,” Anna told her. “Why would anybody want to look at ladies with no panties on when they could look at you?” Not yet interested in male sexuality, Rani jumped off Anna’s chest and ran down the hall as if all the hounds of hell pursued her.

  Anna turned the spud cap around and studied the logo. “Idaho potato,” Madison had said. The words percolated in her brain, “Spud” and “Call Caroline” were two of the items on Hatch’s laundry list. One of the Carolines worked at Craters of the Moon in Idaho. Was that the connection? Had Hatch guessed the cap, and therefore the kid, were from Idaho, and called the only law enforcement officer he knew there to follow up on the hunch? Or had he just thought to call an old friend to see what had happened with her poachers, Dick Head and Thomas Jefferson. No, Anna corrected herself. Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson Thomas.

  Put the pieces in a bottle, shake ’em up and see if they fit. Idaho. Agnes Abigail Tucker. Idaho. Caroline. Idaho. Dick Head. Idaho. Andrew Jackson Thomas. There’d been one other mention of Idaho that she wasn’t including, but she couldn’t remember what or where so she let it go. Shake the pieces. Andrew Jackson Thomas. What had Agnes’s mom called the girl’s father, the father she was sure had abducted her child? A.J., that was it. A.J. Tucker. A.J. Tucker/Andrew Jackson Thomas.

  Anna sat up so quickly her back went into spasm and she had to swear for a minute till it passed.

  A.J., Andrew Jackson, had taken Agnes and finally ended up in Idaho with the kid, and both had been living under the pseudonym Thomas. How or why Agnes had come to New York, Anna couldn’t figure, but it was satisfying to put one and one together if not two and two. She stuffed the cap in her pack. Tonight she’d return it to Jim. It had produced the one clue it had. Not much use now except for tracking down Tucker/Thomas to notify him his daughter was dead.

  “Not my job,” Anna said.

  Having turned off the ringer on the phone, she showered and lay down on Molly’s bed. It was after five when she awoke. Her mouth tasted foul and her hair had dried standing on end, but she felt much improved. Two messages had been left on Molly’s machine, both from Dr. Madison, wondering where she was and what had become of their date. Should he grow too lonely, Anna thought, the doctor could undoubtedly be counted on to take things in hand. What was it the doctor at the morgue had called Madison? “A great backdoor man.” At the time, Anna had thought it was some kind of proctology joke. The pathologist had a southern accent. In Louisiana a backdoor man was a lover. A married woman let him in the back door when her husband went out the front. No wonder the staff at the morgue had been so obliging. Anna punched rewind.

  Because of Jim’s infirmity, she was to take the subway to Brooklyn and the two of them would catch a cab back to MIO to get the staff boat to Liberty. Anna planned to leave around six. That would put them on the island after seven-thirty, when the festivities were in full swing. Patsy had said the official tour of the statue for the four hundred or so bigwigs was scheduled from seven to nine. After that everyone would assemble on the mall to park their plush posteriors on the Ralph Lauren cushions and watch the fireworks. That left Anna just under an hour to eat and shower again. Not for cleanliness’ sake, but to tame her wild hair.

  Hot water was a balm to her bruised back and face. Blunt trauma had its own healing schedule. Unfortunately, she was dead center of the next-day pain cycle. What had hurt the previous night and been stiff and sore in the morning had solidified into a bone-deep ache that ran from the top of her head to her right buttock.

  Refrigerator and cabinets were devoid of anything appetizing. Frederick tended to eat the same way Anna did: not much, not regularly and mostly “found” foods. Another reason he and she were a bad match. Given time, they’d starve each other to death.

  New York neighborhoods were grand places to forage for food. Anna would grab something, then go fetch Hatch’s father. On her way out she took Molly’s cell phone from the table in the entryway and stuffed it in her pack. Why she took it—even if she could make the wretched thing work—she wasn’t sure. In the wilds of Texas, the backcountry of Colorado, the swamps of Michigan, she
’d never felt as isolated as she did in this mecca of phones, faxes and bike messengers.

  As it turned out, Molly’s neck of the urban woods was rich in florists’ shops and poor in fast food. On Broadway, Anna would have better luck. A clot of unpleasant-looking young men had coagulated on the sidewalk between Molly’s apartment house and the corner. Though temperatures were in the high eighties, they dressed in trousers, heavy shoes and long-sleeved shirts in uniformly dark colors. One squatted on the pavement, one leaned against the building, the others loitered in orbit. Everybody smoked. The leaner had an additional cigarette tucked behind his ear for emergencies.

  Daylight, not a bad part of town, cars and other pedestrians about—even with her diminished physical capacity, Anna wasn’t concerned for her safety, but uncomfortable memories from adolescence welled up. Seldom could a girl pass a gang of boys without suffering crude remarks. Sticks and stones, she reminded herself. She also reminded herself she was no longer a girl. Construction workers were no respecters of age when it came to unseemly shouts, but teenage boys usually couldn’t be bothered. One of the perks of being middle-aged.

  Her guess was right. They took no notice of her whatsoever. They wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been sixteen and naked. A heated discussion was in progress. “Bitch niggers” and “Fucking slopes” and a handful of racial slurs that were new to Anna but sounded aimed at Middle Easterners were batted through the air. Cowards whipping up their courage with words. Courage to do what? If it had to happen, Anna hoped it would be limited to property damage.

  As she was passing gratefully out of earshot a final phrase spat into the street reached her: “Motherfucking mud people.”

  Anna stopped so abruptly a woman behind her bumped her, sending a spasm of pain into shoulder and butt. “Watch where you’re going,” the woman said distractedly.

  “Sorry.” Mud people. She’d heard that before, though not often. People who were not “white,” not “pure,” not “Aryan”; people the color of mud, with muddied ancestry, from the mud. It was the most all-inclusive racism there was. Us and Them. Us was white. Us was whoever we said Us was. Them was dirt.

  “Oh shit,” she whispered. “Oh shit,” and “Taxi!” In true New Yorker fashion she ran to the edge of the traffic flow, waved her arm, then sprinted to steal a cab stopping for a businessman, wearing a suit, briefcase in hand.

  “Hey,” he screamed as she jerked open the car door. “That’s my cab. My client—”

  “Shouldn’t be working on a holiday,” Anna shouted. She slammed the door and told the cabbie: “Battery Park.” After looking in every mirror twice, he pulled carefully into the lane of traffic.

  “I’m in a hurry,” Anna said, because she had to, not because she thought it would do any good.

  “Everybody’s in a hurry, lady.”

  “This is life and death.”

  “It’s always life and death.”

  The subway would have been faster but she was committed. Pawing through her daypack, she retrieved Molly’s cellular phone. Mud people. STOPMUDP4J. “Stop Mud People 4 July.” That’s what Corinne had tried to tell them. Her only means of communication was to scratch the warning in her own flesh. She hadn’t been naming her attacker. She’d lain there, her brain broken, and, with the safety pin for a baby’s diaper, tried to save others. Because the brave little goose was an actress and, as Zach would have said, therefore affected, she’d put the 4 before the J in the English tradition. The futile act of heroism stung Anna’s eyes.

  Not futile. Not yet.

  She began punching numbers from her address book into the cellular. For once she was sorry she was not from here. She didn’t have the Superintendent’s home number or the Chief Ranger’s or the Park Police’s.

  Patsy didn’t answer. Of course; she and four or five hundred others were pouring into the statue. The cab sped up. “Hallelujah,” Anna said. The cab slowed down. She punched 911 and send. A recording put her on hold. The cab stopped at a red light. No time; the sensation was back in force. Anna felt as if her skin were coming off. The light turned green. Still on hold. Fourth of July, there were probably emergencies all over the city: kids blowing their fingers off with illegal firecrackers, drunks punching one another, smashing up cars. “New Jersey!” Anna said.

  “Now you wanna go to Jersey?”

  “No. Never mind.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The monument now belonged to New Jersey. Or partially to New Jersey. That might have screwed up jurisdictions. “What’s nine-one-one in New Jersey?” she demanded.

  “Same as in New York, lady: nine-one-one. ABC isAB C over there too—or so I hear.”

  Anna put the phone back to her ear. The wax shavings, the elephant tracks in the garden, the bruises above Hatch’s kidneys, the cache under the stairs that was there, then not there, the stink in the ward, the carabiner, Charlie being tossed a can too heavy for a small man, the deaths of Agnes and Hatch, the midnight boater, the attempts on Anna—everything fell in place, painting a picture so clear Helen Keller would have seen it days ago.

  Still on hold. She stabbed End and called Molly’s hospital room. She got an operator. Anna had forgotten Molly was still back in ICU. No phones in ICU. She asked if Frederick Stanton could be paged. “It’s an emergency,” she said. The Columbia-Presbyterian operator was well versed in the handling of emergencies. Frederick was paged. No response. Supper hour. He’d picked a hell of a time to abandon the hospital cafeteria for the better fare outside. Her next choice was Dr. Madison, extracurricular activities notwithstanding, but she knew he had the afternoon off. She asked for his home number. No emergency in the world was going to pry that out of the operator. She offered to take Anna’s number and have Dr. Madison return the call. Anna had no idea what the number to Molly’s cellular was. It wasn’t written anywhere on the flippy little phone. “Never mind,” she said, for the second time in so many minutes.

  “Damn, damn, damn, damn.”

  “Keep your pants on. It can’t be that bad,” was the advice from behind the wheel.

  Yes it can. “Just drive.”

  Cursing eyes grown too old to read fine print, Anna squinted at the tiny numbers in her tiny address book and pushed the corresponding tiny numbers on Molly’s tiny cell phone. James Hatchett, Sr., answered promptly. “Jim,” Anna said, no time for hello. “I think I know who killed Hatch and why. I won’t be coming to get you. There’s something going down at the statue.” Going down. Under stress she reverted to cliché. “I need you to dial nine-one-one for me.” As the cab crept through Hell’s Kitchen, Anna told Jim what she’d pieced together. From the terse grunts and a final “I’ll get on it. You watch yourself,” she knew she could count on him. Jim Hatchett wasn’t a man easily flustered.

  One more call and she would be out of ideas. The Ellis Island number was answered by a recording that droned tediously through too many options. Finally she’d poked enough buttons and was put through to the law enforcement office. Another machine fielded her call. Joshua was out—making his rounds or just killing time till the fireworks started. Even without fireworks, the boats on the harbor were a good-enough show to keep him occupied most of the night. Anna left a detailed message.

  “Battery Park,” the cabbie announced. “See, you worried for nothing. It’s still here.”

  “A little farther,” Anna instructed. “Drop me at the Marine Inspection pier across from the station where the four and five lines run.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  The only bill Anna had was a twenty. She didn’t wait for change. Taxi fares being what they were, there wasn’t that much anyway. Eyes on the pier, she ran. Brakes squealed and a man screamed what she guessed was the equivalent of “Fucking idiot” in the language of men who wear turbans.

  Anna forced herself to slow down mentally if not physically. Fear bred tunnel vision. Dead or crippled, she’d be no good to anybody. A security guard she’d only seen once or twice manned the kiosk at t
he gate to the MIO dock. A nice-enough kid who passed the time by reading paperback thrillers with bloodstained covers. Anna flashed her visitor’s pass and told him to keep trying to get hold of the statue. “Tell them to get dogs in,” she finished, then remembered the elephant prints, the wax, and knew dogs wouldn’t do any good.

  He was not pleased to participate in an adventure not contained between the covers of a book. “That’s quite a story,” he said, and Anna could see him choosing not to believe her. For an instant she wished she looked like Max Brand or Travis McGee. Reaching through the open window, she gently laid her hand on his shoulder. “You do exactly as you’re told,” she said kindly. He’d do it. Whether he believed her or not, he’d do it. Maybe she couldn’t emulate Brand or McGee, but she was a master at doing the dark side of mothers. Far more frightening to boys of any age than mere muscle.

  “Staff boat’s long gone,” the kid volunteered. “Dwight’ll be almost to Liberty by now. But there’s an interpreter and her dad going over.” He pointed down the dock. A red head and a bearded face were just visible above the planks. The remainder of the two was presumably standing in a boat. Mandy and her Castro-clone cohort; the bearded man who dressed like an action figure from a guts-and-glory mercenary magazine, right down to the scarred and worn army boots. The boots she’d seen at Agnes’s death and the subway, and one of which had the imprint of its sole emblazoned on her back.

  “Tucker!” she yelled. “Andrew Jackson Tucker!” The beard turned toward her and she walked at an even pace over the boards. Running would spook him. Once he got on open water, she had no way to catch him. As far as she knew, no one on Liberty knew he was coming—knew he even existed.

  “It’s over,” she said reasonably, and turned her hands palm up in the universal gesture showing one was unarmed. “Liberty’s crawling with feds. The game’s lost. Mandy, you might want to step away from this guy. I don’t know what line he’s been feeding you, but it’s not true. His name is Tucker, he’s a member of a militia group from Idaho. He’s the father of the girl who died at the statue.” Anna had been fairly sure what she was saying was the truth. When she saw the startled irritation on the man’s face, she knew it was.