City Dark(90)

“He may be in shock; it’s okay. Robbie?” Then, like he’d been hit with a bolt of electricity, Robbie came alive. He uncurled himself and screamed in Nate’s face.

“Why did you send me down here? WHY?!” The sound echoed up the stairs.

“Robbie, I’m so sorry,” Nate said. “Let’s get you out of here, okay? It’ll be all right.”

“It won’t be all right!” Robbie’s eyes were wide and tear filled. He scrambled up, then fell to his knees again and threw up. Vomit splattered on gravel and concrete. Joe cringed. It was the really good dinner from the little French restaurant. And some grape soda.

“I’m so sorry,” Nate said again. “Robbie, please believe me. I should never have asked you—” Before he could finish, Robbie sprang to his feet, pushed past Nate, and rushed through the door. He would not look at Joe but followed the flashlight beam to the ladder. Joe shined it after him, not knowing what else to do.

“Robbie, wait!” he called out. Robbie didn’t answer, just scrambled up the ladder and out onto Ninth Avenue.

Nate and Joe followed, Nate holding the shotgun in scraped and bleeding hands. On Ninth Avenue, he cleared the gun of its remaining cartridge and then found an old Asian couple sitting on a stoop and smoking. He offered them the gun. They smiled and took it—this from a Black man who looked like he had been in battle and an equally scuffed and scarred little white boy—without saying a single word.

Nate and Joe looked up and down the avenue and in both directions on Forty-Third Street. No sign of Robbie. Joe’s ears were still ringing, and there was that sharp burning smell he couldn’t get out of his nose. The new shorts fit fine, but they were really dirty after all the ruckus. Nate looked terrible, his shirt torn and covered with dust, the collar bloody. He crouched a little as he walked and rubbed his neck.

“I’m really sorry,” Joe said. “About everything.”

“None of it is your fault,” Nate said. “It’s okay, Joe. I’m just really worried about your brother.”

“What happened to him? Do you know?”

“I think the men who were down there attacked him,” Nate said. “Robbie is probably very traumatized by it, whatever they did. Do you understand? That’s why we have to find him.”

“Like, he’s scared and stuff? And freaked out?”

“Yes. Freaked out for sure. It’s not his fault, though. You know that, right? Whatever those people did to him, it wasn’t Robbie’s fault.”

“I know. I feel bad for him.”

“I do too, but . . . when we find him, we have to be really careful about how we talk to him. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“It might be very hard for him to think about, let alone talk about. So we’ll be really careful.” He paused. “And maybe it’s best if you don’t bring up what happened, even after Robbie seems okay. Does that make sense? Let him mention it, if he wants to, but it’s best not to bring it up. No teasing or anything. It’s too serious for that.”

“I understand.”

“Okay.” He patted Joe on the back, and they began walking up Forty-Third toward Ricky’s.

“Were you in a war?” Joe asked. He was thinking of how Nate had created obstacles behind them as they ran into the shadows.

“I was in the Vietnam War, yes.”

“Is that where you learned that stuff?”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah, like throwing things behind us to stop that guy from chasing us. And how you carried the gun and stuff.”

“Maybe. I don’t really know.” He sighed. “Let’s look around a little more. We still have the flashlight. We’ll walk by Ricky’s also. Hopefully, he went back there. If not, we’ll wait for him. We’ll be there until morning.”

Robbie didn’t come back, though, not the entire night long, even after Joe had fallen asleep in a booth at Ricky’s coffee shop. Nate stirred him as the first light was visible in the sky, and the two caught a city bus going downtown.

On the first ferry to Staten Island, as dawn painted the harbor a smoky rose color, Joe gazed back at the twin towers, looking chalky and stiff like chimneys. He wondered where Robbie was, and where his mother was. He would never see his mother alive again. He wouldn’t see Robbie until a day later. And although he followed Nate’s advice and never said anything to Robbie about what happened in the courtyard, it didn’t matter.

Robbie never, ever looked at him the same again.





CHAPTER 71


Midland Beach


Staten Island

7:15 a.m.

Robbie never learned Evan Bolds’s name. That hadn’t been given to him, so Robbie made up a name for him, Wally, because for whatever reason, Robbie felt it suited him. He had expected to hear from Wally by midnight. Maybe 1:00 a.m. It was now after seven, and Robbie had heard nothing. The blinds were drawn. His single-room apartment was dim. And the AC unit was droning its numbing wah-wah sound.

His palms were sweaty. A knob at the back of his neck ached from the tension through his shoulders. He was lying on his couch a few feet away from the computer desk, trying not to reach for the burner phone every few seconds. Wally had given him both that phone and the laptop with the creepy old-school messaging application. Just as Robbie only used the laptop to communicate with one person, he only used the cell phone to message Wally. No one else was ever involved with either device.