At Sullivan and Washington Square South, two uniformed cops watched them pass. Their radios crackled and one yelled, “You two, stop!”
They weren’t going at much more than a jog. Somehow, Samantha managed to pick up the pace as they ran toward Bleecker.
Taylor glanced over his shoulder. The two in blue were coming up fast. As he crossed West Third with Samantha next to him, three more men came flying around the corner from Thompson, one block east. Street clothes. Masks gone. Nightsticks gone. Guns out.
“Shit. We’ve got to get off the street.”
He reached his right hand for her left to encourage her. She squeezed it, cried out in pain or because of the effort or both and urged herself to go a little bit faster. Her breathing was ragged. At Bleecker, Taylor led them left so they were out of the line of sight. Line of fire, really.
“Is everyone in the Oh-Nine crooked?” He panted to catch his breath. The pain in his ribs was already back. Maybe none were broken, but he had to be pretty badly bruised.
“Doesn’t need to work that way. The guys in masks just had to call our descriptions in for something. The whole precinct could be after us.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Where to go? Think.
He scanned up and down the block, caught sight of a name on an awning. He tugged, and they ran down the street to the front door.
Samantha read the awning. “The Other End. Yeah, the end. That’s what’s coming.”
He pulled open the door, let her go in first, and turned to peer out as the door was inches from closing. The three in street clothes ran around the corner onto Bleecker as the door slipped shut.
Taylor led Samantha to a table in the back of the crowded rock-and-roll club. A six-piece band was in the middle of something that had as much jazz as thumping rock in it. They ordered drinks, both with an eye on the front door for anyone checking for them. Samantha deflated into the chair, and real fear registered on her face for the first time.
“It hurts so much.” She held her right arm tightly to her belly. “I’ve got to get away. I can’t do this.”
I’d probably be in tears after the crack she took.
After half a set, they squeezed back through the tables to the front door. The cover had been steep and the drinks expensive, but the outlay was worth it to lose their pursuers. Taylor held up his hand, checked the block in both directions, and went to the curb. A cab dropping off a couple likely headed for the second show at The Other End was exactly the thing he needed. He waved to Samantha in the doorway.
The cab took off with both of them slumped in the back.
“We’ll figure this out.”
“The next time they come, it won’t be a warning. Who can I trust? They’ll kill me. I can’t. I can’t.” She was almost whispering. “I’m sorry. I need to think. What to do. I’m taking the cab home. I need to get my arm checked. I want to be safe. I don’t know how that’s going to happen.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. No thanks. I just need to think.”
He honored her request, getting out at 14th Street. From a payphone he dictated the story on the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade to one of the assistant editors on the city desk.
The editor read it back to him. “Sounds like a fun night.”
“A real blast.”
His side sure hurt like hell. Didn’t matter. There wasn’t anything you could do for bruised ribs. The lobby of the 20th Precinct stunk of ammonia and puke. Taylor walked out with his father trailing behind him. The man refused to let Taylor help, so his father weaved a wide slalom to the front door. He was wearing beat-up blue pants and a gray T-shirt the cops had provided. Gray hair fell down into his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice. When they’d finally arrested Professor Taylor, he had been in the apartment hallway, hurling candy everywhere. The sergeant said he was yelling too, but wasn’t making any sense. Taylor knew why. Poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Christabel,” to be exact. The poem was his father’s favorite to recite when he was shit-faced. They’d let Taylor take him home because it was too busy a night for the patrolmen to bother with the paperwork.
Taylor led the way down Broadway to 78th Street, their walk narrated by the slurred invective his father hurled at Taylor’s back. In the apartment, the professor stumbled through the clutter of the living room to the bedroom. The springs squeaked as he collapsed onto the bed.
“Bring me a drink.” It was a command.
“You’ve had enough.”
“I’ve enough? The scribbler thinks I’ve enough.” The mattress squeaked again as he tried to get back up and louder when he fell back. “Always lecturing. What does the scribbler know? Do you ever read literature? Do you even read?”
Taylor pushed aside academic journals, magazines, and newspapers to clear a space on the couch. Student papers were scattered over the coffee table. Did they ever get graded? Returned? At one corner was an empty bottle of no-name vodka. Here was why Taylor’s second rule of drinking said no hard stuff. He’d broken that rule just last night with Samantha. But there was the interview to get.
Are those the kinds of excuses my father made to himself? Back when he needed excuses.
The room was hot and sticky from steam heat. The stink of old cigarette ash and rotting food hung in the air. He unwrapped a stick of Teaberry and chewed it.
“Get me a goddamn drink.”
“You’ve had more than enough.”
“Your brother would do it.”
“Right. Do you remember the last thing you said to Billy? ‘You’re a fascist fighting a fascist war.’ Then he was out the door. Gone. Gone forever.”
“Miserable little scribbler with your miserable little quotes. There’s no truth in that. There’s only truth in literature. ’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, and the owls have awakened the crowing cock.’ ” The first of the 671 lines of “Christabel.” No matter how much he drank, the professor’s diction somehow improved when he recited. “My son’s no cock. He’s a dick. Enough of the scribbler. On with literature. ‘Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! And hark, again! The crowing cock.’ ”
Taylor rose and approached the small kitchen, kicking another empty bottle as he went. The bottle stopped when it hit a brown grocery bag of garbage that hadn’t gotten farther than the living room. The rotting smell was worse in the kitchen. On the counter was a case of vodka delivered by the friendly corner liquor store. Five bottles were left. To the cadence of the lines, he poured each down the drain. He was absolutely certain his gesture would have no impact on his father’s drinking. It made the scribbler feel a little bit better just the same.
He pulled the front door shut with a click. His father was still saying the lines. He knew they were supposed to be beautiful. He hated each and every one.
As he entered the houseboat, Taylor was greeted by Mason as if he had returned from the wars, which he pretty much had. The tail wagged. The dog jumped up, and its front paws landed right where the nightstick had.
“Ouch, ouch. Okay, Mason. Down, down. I’ll take you out.”
Popeye’s note said, “Fed good, new water, walk at six bells.” Taylor wondered if six bells was six o’clock or some other time on the nautical clock.
He put the leash on and Mason led him down King Avenue to Fordham Street. The dog did his business quickly, but was so happy to be out and about, his tail swinging so fast it was almost a blur, that Taylor kept on going, tired, hurting, but allowing the air to clear his head. On the main avenue, he turned toward the end of the island. There was nothing like a look at the ocean, even the narrow end of the Long Island Sound, to lift the spirits at the end of a tough day.
He considered the story he was stumbling around the edges of, stumbling badly. The police might announce the discovery of the city bonds, and that would go off like a bomb in the media. He could have written a story about finding them—maybe even gotten himself arrested—but a hunch told him to wait, to let the police recover them and see what happened next. He sensed a much bigger story, and he hated grabbing a little headline only to bring in all the other papers. Wasn’t that going to happen anyway?
Samantha still hadn’t told him everything that was going on at the Ninth Precinct. Or all of what she knew about Dodd. He was sure of it.
She was a beautiful woman and tough at the same time. Nothing wrong with that. He liked the way she’d gone against the grain by deciding to be a cop, by not taking the shit that came her way, by fighting back. Now she sounded ready to give up. He wanted to help her. How could he do that and get the story? What if the facts went against her? Was he willing to make one person more important than the story?
The little waves of the sound quietly lapped the pilings and bulkheads. The oily chemical odor wasn’t as strong tonight, allowing the salt air to break through—the perfume that made being by the sea so nice.
Two things required more reporting. The radio call that had sent Samantha the wrong way. That, and of course, tonight’s attack by three men—they must be cops—who demanded she deny the story about the call and admit to abandoning Dodd. Someone wanted the shooting to go down the way it looked—Dodd killed by a mugger, who died in the exchange of fire.
So what had really happened?
He shook his head and scratched behind Mason’s ears. The story already had too many leads. Usually it was just the opposite.
He also had to talk to the families of the two dead men. Would Dodd’s widow know something about what was happening on the job? Maybe not, but it was still worth a shot. Johnny Mort had a family somewhere that he’d visited. Maybe they could explain the bonds. Maybe that was his allowance. Taylor chuckled to himself.
Mason looked up at him, and that reminded Taylor of one of the weirder facts in this story—the sign on Moon’s grave. Someone had killed the dog and that had forced Mort to “do worse to save the others.”
The “others,” he assumed, were the other dogs, including the one staring at him right now. The “worse,” well that might have been the mugging or the shooting. Or both. He needed to know for sure.
Taylor gave the leash a tug. Mason led the way back to the houseboat.
Popeye must walk him all over the place. He knows the island as well as I do.
The little refrigerator held seven ponies. After the visit to his father’s apartment, he considered not having one. Not for long. He took a bottle and opened it. He and his father were nothing alike.
In the cassette player of his all-in-one Emerson stereo was the new album by Bruce Springsteen. Born to Run. Springsteen wasn’t punk, but like punk his music did for Taylor what all the crap on the radio didn’t. Springsteen reminded him of the rock and roll that had gone away. The rough music of passion, hard luck, and blown dreams. But Springsteen’s music wasn’t old or in any way nostalgic. “Thunder Road” wasn’t a story for 1966; it was a story for now, for darker days.