Wednesday, August 22
0400 hours
The South Bronx
“Pike … Pike …” The voice was soft as rain.
“Pike …”
Pike was in a dream. At the bottom of his bed a square of bright light floated in the air, a field of restless and ceaseless movement, sparks of color and explosions of darkness playing across a luminous blue-green surface, and in his ear a surge of noise in which he could almost hear voices whispering, hushed conversations, muted muffled cries that sounded like warnings or lamentations, a breaking wave of sound that rose and fell in a slow syncopation.
“Pike …”
In the dream the light from the square felt like a river on his forehead and his cheeks, cooling and soft, and under the surge of sound he could hear the working of his own heart, a steady bass beat, and under that a demiquaver of loss, a half-tone of sadness.
“Pike … wake up, man. We have to talk.”
Pike heard the voice but he didn’t want to surface. The dream was safe; being in it was like lying at the bottom of a pool and watching a kind of moonlight glittering on the surface of the water.
“Pike … goddammit.”
Pike lay on his back at the bottom of the pool and watched the light playing on the surface. In the light he could see shapes and images and transitory flashes of shimmering motion, and the voices became the voices of boys in the distance, and the radio noises like static from distant planets, gunfire, shattering glass in slow motion, rainbow pinwheelings, tiny ruby-red pinpoints of light and the boys going down, and around him in the darkness men working their weapons.… Pike … one voice now, rising out of the tidal welling of noise … Pike … A sliver of blue-green light cut his eyes and the pain brought him up.…
“Pike. Art … come on, talk to me.…”
Pike came up slowly, coming up toward the glittering light above him, coming up to the sound of a voice he knew.…
“What is it? They have you sedated?”
A dark room. Where? The hospital … Now it came in on him: the gun shop and the snipers, and the funeral on the TV news, and Keogh talking to him with a Browning shoved into his throat.
“What … who’s that?”
“Art. It’s me.”
A dim shape in the darkness, standing at the foot of the bed, behind the square of bright light. The television. Slick Ryan? Frank? Pulaski? It looked like it could be Pulaski. But wrong. Somebody …
Pike felt the earphone in his right ear and heard the sizzle of static. The stations had stopped transmitting and now there was nothing on but snow and static.
“Jesus …” Pike’s mouth felt as if someone had filled it with earth. “What … time is it?”
The voice came out of the darkness from somewhere behind the television.
“Hour of the wolf, Art. Sometime after four in the morning.”
Pike tried to lift his head off the pillow. His arms and legs felt like helium, but his head was a stone.
Pike relaxed into the pillow and pulled in a long ragged breath. The room smelled of Lysol and … earth? Cut turves of new earth. Something sharp and earthy.
“I thought you guys had all gone home.”
“We’re back. We’re here.”
“So … what happens now?”
There was a pause, as if his visitor was trying to figure out how to answer the question. Pike took it for sympathy.
“Look,” said Pike, “don’t patty-cake me. I could give a fuck for the Department.”
“You feel resentful, I can see that. It’s natural.”
Pike felt the water coming up around him again. He used the voice as a way to stay above it.
“Well … one way or the other, I’m out. Pickett’ll see to that … and … you guys. The club.”
“We had nothing particular against you, Pike. You really left us with no choice.”
Pike tried to speak. His voice was a dry rustle.
“You could use something. Here …”
He moved forward out of the dark. Blue-green light played along the side of his face and on his outstretched left arm. There was a white cup in it. Pike felt a strong hand on the back of his neck. He came up to the cup and drank. It burned down, a slithering ribbon of chilled flame he could feel all the way down into his belly. There was a pattern of some sort on the side of the Styrofoam cup. Flowers? Leaves? Purple against the shell-gray of the cup.
The cut-earth smell was very strong now. The man stepped back into the darkness. The television screen flared and flickered, green fire and black snow.
“Thanks … Jesus—scotch?”
“Glenfiddich. Just the best for you. For auld lang syne.”
“Yeah. Absent friends. You hear that?”
“What?”
“I don’t know … water. Something’s dripping somewhere. Get the light, will you? Maybe I got a tube pulled out or something. I can smell, like medicine or something. Smells like Listerine or something.”
Silence from the dark.
“Hey, can you? The lights?”
“No, Art. No lights.”
Pike felt a weak pulse of anger. It tired him. He felt the water rising around him.
“What’re you, Con Ed? Gimme a light.”
“No, Pike. Best not. We have things to do.”
The voice was soft as rainfall on a garden. Pike couldn’t get the smell of earth out of his nostrils. He ran his tongue over his lip and now he could taste it. His heart began to flutter like a fish.
“Things to do? Listen, why don’t you just go home. We all had a bad night. You don’t sound so good yourself.” Pike moved his right hand, looking for the call button. They usually pinned it to a patient’s pillow or the top of his sheet. He couldn’t find it anywhere.
“Look,” he said, feeling afraid and not knowing why, “I don’t hold this against you. You were just doing what you get paid to do. Man, I never meant what I said. I don’t take it personally. It’s just The Job.”
“My … a speech. I hear you saying this, Art. I hear you telling me. This is good stuff. It’s a breakthrough. Are you looking for something?”
Pike stopped moving. The button was not there. Someone had moved it. His heart rate went up a notch.
“Could use a nurse, man. You see the buzzer anywhere?”
“You need a nurse? There’s a nurse right here. Can’t you see her? Your own private nurse, Art.”
The television on the articulated arm began to move. Pike had to work to get his head to move, to follow the fan of blue-green light as it traveled across the floor and up the side of the other bed in his room. Halfway up the side of the bed, the sheets were covered with a pattern of … purple flowers? Leaves. Ribbons of purple and pools of … a blue-white hand, an arm. The light rose up across the terrain of the hospital bed like a full moon rising over a snowfield. In the middle of the bed a woman lay on her back, one knee up, her head turned toward Pike’s bed. On her belly a glistening mound of purple and pink bubbled out of her. The smell of cut earth was everywhere.
Pike went down like a sounding whale to reach his voice but there were strong hands on him and the smell of cut earth and the hands pulled him up and out of the bed toward the square of blue-green light and he died a while later with his eyes full of dazzling lights and in his ears the hissing surge of static and whispers, and in his mouth the taste of cut earth.