City Dark(28)

For a few seconds he was sure that he was going to cry—just let his hands fall into his lap, let the tears fall between his tie and his shoes. Then the grip of fear snapped him out of it. His mother’s body had turned up on a beach near his home. There was sand in some shoes he had no memory of wearing on a night he had no memory of passing.

And now a simple case file had regurgitated a bittersweet piece of his childhood.

He dug back through the accordion file. That particular one was filled with older records on Evan Bolds, from his dismal performances in failing New York City schools in the ’70s to the bloody elevator case in 1983. There was nothing else of Joe’s in there, no other legal papers or personal stuff. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had dumped the contents onto the dining room table one night. It was a common habit when he was working from home: spreading out what he was focused on and pushing other things, like mail and canceled checks, aside. If that was the case, then maybe the baseball card had been swept back in? Okay, but that said nothing about how he had gotten it in the first place.

Did she give it to me somehow? Is that why I recognized her in the morgue? She approached me, maybe, when I was bombed out of my mind, and now I don’t—

“Or did I find it on her?” he asked out loud. His eyes shot over to the closed door of his office. It was late July—the place was mostly empty—but still his heart thundered in his ears. He swallowed hard.

No, no, no. I didn’t.

You can’t remember!

Memory was impossible if he truly had been blacked out during some encounter with Lois. The darker truth was that Joe didn’t understand what was happening to him at all.

Lois, he thought. His supple mind, having been on a quickening treadmill of tasks, subtasks, and ideas, now ground to a halt. You’re going to need to understand her—and what became of her.

He felt cruel for lacking the slightest interest in doing so before this miserable afternoon. He was an attorney, an ostensible seeker of the truth. As a prosecutor, he had access to all kinds of investigatory knowhow and resources. Why the hell wouldn’t he want to know what happened to his mother after forty years and such a dreadful end?

“Because she never tried to find out what happened to me,” he said, whispering this time. Now he did cry. Pressing a thumb and forefinger to his eyes, he heaved softly and wept for the first time in years. Eventually, his left hand found the knob to the lower desk drawer. There was a bottle in there, probably two. He wouldn’t drink all day in the office, but he needed to start. Now.





CHAPTER 25


Wednesday, July 13, 1977

West Seventy-Ninth Street and the Hudson River

Upper West Side, Manhattan

10:28 p.m.

A few cars moving from West Seventy-Ninth Street through the traffic circle provided a brief view of the path ahead, but it also shrank their pupils and dimmed their night vision. Then the traffic petered out and disappeared altogether. They were about to enter a short tunnel at the edge of the circle that went under the parkway and then east along Seventy-Ninth Street. In front of them was blackness; not even the other end was visible in the gloom.

Joe’s stomach felt fluttery. Before the move, their house was on a rundown street in Danbury, Connecticut. It was dark at night, but there were house lights on all the time and tall streetlamps every half block or so. Neither boy had done much camping, so a complete absence of light was scary to begin with. This was much more ominous, though. Grown-up places, Joe knew instinctively, places with lots of people and big cities especially, shouldn’t be so dark. Darkness like that wasn’t natural. It only hid bad things.

Robbie clicked the lighter on, and a warm cone of light leaped up the curved wall of the tunnel. Mostly it illuminated graffiti—dirty words and other letters that Joe couldn’t make out in a dozen spray-paint colors.

“Let’s walk in the street,” Robbie said, letting the lighter go dark. “I can click it on every few seconds, maybe.”

“I can’t see the other side,” Joe said, his voice rising with fright. “Even with the flame, I can’t see more than a little bit in front of us.”

“Those cars up there,” Robbie said, although the passing cars up the hill on Broadway weren’t visible from inside the tunnel, “that’s what we’re aiming for.”

“I can’t see them!”

“Ugh, it’s because there’s a hill that goes up. Just walk straight, okay? We’ll be out in like thirty seconds.” They began to move forward, Joe close behind his brother. The air was hot, still, and fetid. Inside the tunnel it smelled mostly like pee, but there was a dankness underneath, like wet earth. They heard the rumble of vehicles passing overhead every few seconds. Robbie clicked the lighter on, and more garish graffiti appeared along the scarred barrel of the tunnel. Then there was a sound, a moan or a grunt, followed by a cough. Robbie lifted the lighter higher, then squealed and it clicked off, leaving them in blackness.

“Ow, my thumb!” Robbie said. “I can’t keep it lit like that!”

“What’s going on?” Joe asked, his heart in his throat. “I heard something.”

Another few coughs echoed in the gloom.

“Hey! Who’s there?!”

The voice was gravelly and deep. Joe felt his penis shrivel. He grabbed Robbie by the arm, and they both stood still. Joe stared straight ahead at nothing, praying for the glow of headlights, but none came.