Mercy Street(66)

Then, at sixty seconds, the earth shifted. He heard the quaver in her voice. There was no question in his mind that tears were coming. There was no question in his groin.

The snowflakes flashed and flickered. He wished that he could zoom in closer. He wished that Anthony would stop breathing.

At sixty-two seconds her eyes began to fill.

Victor paused the video to study her face.

Columbia.

He had a thing about women crying. A woman crying cracked him open with love.

The video ended abruptly. Heavy footsteps, a male voice somewhere off camera. Sir, please step out of the way.

Victor watched the video at half speed, at double speed. He watched it again and again.

HE HAD SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Who was she, and how had she gotten herself into this situation? Was she a prostitute? Why did she hate children? Or was it men she hated, the man she’d been fucking? Most importantly: Who was that man?

Watching, he memorized every detail. A car alarm shrieking, traffic noise, a bicycle whizzing past. In the middle distance, just above her left shoulder, a street sign was visible. MERCY.

Columbia, he thought. It wasn’t really her name—Victor knew this—but he needed something to call her. She cried efficiently, with heroic force. At fifty-nine seconds her face was impassive, still as granite. At sixty-one seconds, her eyes closed briefly.

At sixty-three seconds she cried two tears exactly. A single fat tear shot down each cheek.

Every small, blessed detail. Her earlobes were pierced with tiny silver hoops. Victor imagined her getting dressed that morning, choosing the outfit she’d wear for her abortion. That she had worn jewelry bothered him deeply. It seemed inhuman. This was more or less what he’d expect from a woman about to kill her baby, except that Columbia was not inhuman. Her distress was palpable. It couldn’t have been clearer to Victor: she didn’t want to do this. She seemed ready to collapse from grief.

MERCY. The name seemed significant.

Every detail seemed like a gift.

The deep male voice at the end of the recording. Sir, please step out of the way. Was it his imagination, or did the guy have an accent? Was this the man Columbia had been fucking, whose baby she was about to kill?

When he thought of it that way, he almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost, but not quite.

He watched the video again. He was starting to hate the protestor a little. It was more than sign envy: the guy, whoever he was, was standing too close to her. It was a pet peeve of Victor’s, an uncontrollable impulse. He had a similar reaction while watching porn. A solitary female, that was his preference: a beautiful female undressing, preparing herself for him. Seeing another man touch her ruined his pleasure. It distracted him from the business at hand.

If another man touched her, Victor lost all interest in fucking. He wanted to beat the crap out of the guy and keep the female for himself.

At sixty seconds he hit pause. He studied her frozen face, the frowning dark eyebrows, and suddenly it hit him.

He had seen her before.





16


Anthony stood at the curb waving. From a distance he might have been a father putting his child on the school bus, except that the bus was an airport shuttle and the person waving back was sixty or seventy years old. His mother looked ready for battle, her hair helmet freshly lacquered, frozen in place. Beneath her gray wool coat, she wore a new pink tracksuit, suitable for walking the beaches of Jupiter, Florida, with his aunt Doris.

He watched the bus disappear down the street. Then he went back inside the house, where clocks were ticking. This was not a new situation. It had been true his entire life, but he had only just noticed.

Tick, tick.

The kitchen clock had a jerky second hand, like an old man with a tremor. The digital display on the microwave oven had been flashing 12:00 for twenty years. In the living room was a grandfather clock that had belonged to Grandma Blanchard. Every half hour it bonged long and low like a foghorn. If Anthony stood sideways in front of it with both arms outstretched, his other hand would be touching an anniversary clock, which chimed on the quarter hour but ran two minutes fast.

Why did his mother, or any human being, need so many freaking clocks?

From somewhere in the house his phone rang.

He scrambled downstairs to his headquarters and found it on the desk, ringing and vibrating, jumping like a cricket. Its excitement was understandable. The phone was not accustomed to ringing.

“Who is she?” a male voice barked.

“Who is who?”

“Who do you think? The girl in the video.”

The grandfather clock bonged portentously.

“How should I know?” said Anthony. “I never saw her before in my life.”

“I beg to differ.” Excelsior seemed out of breath. “You seen her a bunch of times. She was in that first batch of photos you sent me, way back in October. And again in November. And again on January fifth.”

This was news to Anthony.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Hell yes, I’m sure.”

“Hang on, let me look.” Anthony sat at the computer and located the folder for October, the first set of photos he’d taken last fall.

“Okay, I have October open. What number?”

“Zero one one,” Excelsior said.

Upstairs the cuckoo clock started up, a half second behind the grandfather clock. BONG cheep cheep. BONG cheep cheep.