Lowboy Part 20

She closed her eyes and sat up straight and nodded. A few hours earlier she'd have laughed at his manner but now she barely seemed to be listening.

"You won't need me for the rest of it, will you? You won't need me really."

He took her arm and gripped it. "What's the matter with you, Miss h.e.l.ler? How many of your pick-me-ups did you take?"

She smiled at him or at something just behind him. "I don't have any pick-me-ups, Detective."

"You listen now, Miss h.e.l.ler. Look at me. I don't pretend to know what's wrong with you and I don't want to know. But whatever it is, you'd better fix it fast. I have no intention of missing your son again-none whatsoever. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Detective. Yes, you do. I'm sorry." But the smile and the diffidence behind the smile were clearer to see than ever.

The train banked hard to the left and the local track met them, flickering behind a row of I beams like a dragon in a black-and-white cartoon. Lateef watched it in the feeble hope that it might calm him. He remembered what Violet had said about trains and he found himself studying the car and the pa.s.sengers, asking himself what it was about them that she hated. As he looked out the window he began to feel the tunnel's hold, its inescapable authority, the unconditional order it imposed. He wondered whether that might be the reason. We have no say, he thought. None whatsoever. We can't affect the speed or the direction or the order of the stations. The only choice is whether to get off. His thoughts embarra.s.sed him and he recognized their simplicity but he couldn't bring himself to part with them. They brought him nearer to her, possibly even nearer to the boy. They hid a promise of a kind in their simplicity.

"Ali," she said suddenly, putting her hand over his. Her eyes were clearer now than he had ever seen them. She was looking where Lateef had been looking before, through the line of I beams at the local track. They were pa.s.sing a 6 train, pa.s.sing it at the slowest possible crawl, their twinned lights coloring the air between the cars. The 6 looked full to overflowing. A delay uptown, Lateef thought, not quite sure what he was meant to be looking for. Then she took his hand in hers and it dawned on him that she'd called him by his first name and that she was touching him willingly for the first time since they'd been in her apartment.

"What is it, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

"Halfway down the car." Her hand gave a twitch. "Do you see him?"

"I'm not-hold on a minute-"

"Do you see the man in the fur hat?"

He shaded his eyes. "The Hasid?"

"Look past his left shoulder. Right now there's a woman in the way." She got to her feet and crossed the aisle as though the train were standing still. Lateef got up more cautiously and followed. He picked out the Hasid again and took stock of the woman beside him, a fortyish commuter in a nondescript brown coat. There was no one behind her. He wondered almost idly whether the woman was the Hasid's wife, whether she was wearing a wig like some Hasidim did, and why the car should be so crowded at that hour. He made an effort not to wonder about Violet. He'd just decided that the woman wasn't Hasidic at all when he saw the boy behind her clear as day.

"You see him now," said Violet. She said it kindly. "He'll turn this way soon. He always likes to look out on both sides."

A man in sungla.s.ses pushed past the Hasid, hiding the boy again. Lateef cursed him silently. "You're sure that's your son? Did you get a good look?"

He expected her to ignore him and she did. She rested her forehead against the scuffed gla.s.s and stared across the flickering divide. Her mouth hung slightly open. He put his hand on her shoulder and she gave a groan and slid out of his grasp.

"We should sit down, Miss h.e.l.ler. We don't want him to see us."

She turned away at once and clutched at the crosspole. I've frightened her, Lateef thought. Maybe that's for the best. He held his arm out and she took it gratefully.

"You could watch," she said. "He doesn't know you."

"You're forgetting I chased him through half the West Village." He smiled. "I wouldn't mind forgetting that myself."

"That's right," she said quickly. "You did that. I forgot."

"We can see him from here," Lateef said, helping her to sit. He kept an empty seat between them as before. Two girls in matching turquoise parkas gawked at her, not sure whether to laugh, but she looked past them as if they were made of wax. She hasn't even noticed them, he thought. She barely seems aware of where she is. The boy was still facing away from them, his head tipped to one side, swaying lightly with the canting of the train. Lateef appraised his features point by point. The flat blond hair, the boyish stoop, the shapeless thriftstore sweater. It had to be the same boy. He looks relaxed, Lateef thought. Thank the Lord for small mercies.

As he had that thought the local started braking. No sense keeping him in sight, Lateef said to himself. Let him go and get ready. Get off the train at Union Square and wait. The feeling of entrapment broke over him again and he felt his palms and underarms go damp. The local was falling back silently and smoothly and the boy was already drifting out of view. He waited for Violet to react but she did nothing. He kept his eyes on the 6 and when the boy was finally gone he willed himself to turn and look at her. He was sweating freely now. Her head was propped against the wall and her eyes were partly closed. She's sleeping, Lateef thought. How can she be sleeping. But she didn't look asleep so much as dead.

"Miss h.e.l.ler," he said. The name stuck in his throat.

"Yes?"

"Here's what's going to happen, Miss h.e.l.ler. We'll get off at the next stop and wait for the local. I'll put everyone up the line on track alert." When she said nothing to that he shook her shoulder gently. "Wake up, Miss h.e.l.ler. Stay with me now. If he doesn't get off the local, we'll have to get on it ourselves. Some men from my department should be at Union Square already. We'll leave them there in case we somehow miss him."

"All right, Ali," she said. There was an appeal behind her use of his name, a warning of some kind, but it thrilled him regardless. She let him carry her weight as if it were the most natural thing in the world. This will be over within the hour, he reminded himself. A few more hours at the most. He studied their conjoined reflection in the window, a middle-aged black man and a semiconscious foreigner, trying to picture what might happen then. He couldn't picture anything.

When they were almost at the station it occurred to him that his backup would be waiting on the platform and he shifted away from her and sat up straight. She slid farther down against him without opening her eyes. He stared at his reflection helplessly.

At last the station came. "Violet," he said, more sharply than he'd intended. She sat up grudgingly and fixed her hair. The girls in the parkas were giggling openly now. He got to his feet and reached behind him and guided her up.

"Is this it?" she said, pa.s.sing a hand over her face. The gesture was familiar to Lateef but for a time he couldn't place it. Finally he recognized it as his own.

"Is this it?" she repeated. She seemed not to expect an answer. What's wrong with me, he wondered. Why can't I picture either of us tomorrow. The train came to a stop and the doors slid smoothly open and he led her slowly to the nearest bench, making an effort to keep himself from trembling. I'm frightened of her, he said to himself. Frightened of her and for her. He felt no surprise at the thought.

Before they reached the bench her eyes had closed again. He stared at her the way the girls on the train had been staring and as he did so he remembered what had happened the last time she'd seen her son. Why didn't that put me on my guard, he thought. G.o.d knows that should have been enough. But of course he knew why. He sat down next to her and took her hand.

"Violet," he said. "Listen to me, Violet. I want you to open your eyes."

She opened them at once and looked toward him. Toward him but not at him. "Go on ahead," she said steadily. "This is just something that happens."

"There's nowhere to go, Violet. We have to wait here for the local."

She nodded. "When it comes, go ahead."

"He's supposed to get off here, remember? You have to be ready. You have to wake up."

"Where are the men you said would be here? The men from your department?"

"I don't know." He hadn't thought of them until that instant. "Most likely they're waiting for us upstairs."

She looked past him with what might have been concern. The local track was half a step behind her. A quivering started up along its rails.

"Here it comes," said Lateef.

She met his eyes now. "What do we do? Do we get up?"

"We stay right here until it comes to a full stop. We don't turn around. As soon as it's stopped we get up and we go."

She smoothed down the creases in her jeans and said nothing.

"If for any reason he doesn't get off, we get on. We wait until the doors start to close and then we move. Can you do that with me?"

She closed her eyes tightly, as though the question itself was too much for her, then opened them and took hold of his sleeve. The quivering turned to screeching as the local's airbrakes. .h.i.t. He watched the train arrive on other people's faces. A man in a transparent raincoat turned his head from left to right like a video camera, eyeb.a.l.l.s ticking back and forth grotesquely.

"Can we turn around yet?" Violet said through her teeth. "Should we be getting up?"

"Hold on," he told her. "A few seconds more."

He stood without turning and helped her get up and kept her close to him until the doors opened. She'll be all right, he told himself. Just keep her moving. He turned her around by the shoulders, perhaps a little roughly, then stepped forward to look up and down the platform. Its curve was in his favor and the whole train was in view. He counted under his breath from one to nine, ticking his head from side to side as the man in the raincoat had done. No one got off who looked anything like the boy.

"Not here," Violet said behind him. "Some other place." It sounded as though the words were meant for someone else.

"He's on this train," Lateef said under his breath. "You saw-" But the door-closing theme cut him off. a.s.suming that he's spotted us, he thought. If he's spotted us how much time do we have left. Maybe a minute. He kept the doors of the car from shutting with the heel of his right foot and reached for the standpole to keep from falling over. "Come on, Violet," he said. "Let's not give him the time to change his mind." But when he looked back at the platform she was gone.

Over the next three stations Lateef searched the train from back to front and checked the platform every time it stopped. The cars seemed more crowded than was usual for that hour of the morning but he'd long since lost all confidence in his judgment. At Grand Central he put in a call to Lieutenant Bjornstrand, then switched to the downtown express, still not thinking about Violet at all. The boy was distracting him nicely. He got off somewhere, Lateef said to himself. He must have. Bleecker Street or Astor Place. When the express started to move he sat down heavily on the bench and dug the knuckles of his thumbs into his temples. It hadn't occurred to him to question the other riders-there'd been no time to question them- but as soon as he'd left the local he'd regretted it. He still regretted it. The back of his head was throbbing where his skull had hit the asphalt and his heart was spasming sickly in his chest. He thought about Emily's deposition and her torn and filthy jacket and suddenly he was thinking about Violet. I'll have nothing to tell her, he thought. Not a trace of the boy. She'll think she was seeing things again. He brought his hands forward to cover his face and rolled them evenly from side to side. Maybe she is seeing things, he said to himself. Maybe both of us are. He tried to recollect what he'd seen with his own eyes but he seemed to have misplaced the memory. I saw what she told me, he thought, taking his hands from his face. I saw what she told me to see. The possibility occurred to him that he might have been tricked, deliberately misled, made use of in some way he couldn't name. But when he tried to guess at her reason for abandoning him his thoughts went dim or shut down altogether.

He got out at Union Square and went back to the bench and sat where she'd been sitting. The wood felt warm against his back, as if she'd only just left, but he didn't believe it. He sat there silently and stiffly. At one point he'd felt able: he remembered that much. He'd felt confident in his abilities, even proud. It might in fact have been that very day.

I remember now, he thought suddenly. I remember when the feeling left me. I was sitting at my desk looking at the boy's note, the one written in cipher, and I guessed that the keyword was "Violet" and it was. I decoded it and wrote it out in big block letters and appreciated it. Then I stood up and went to the door and saw her waiting for me in the hall.

Lateef sat for a time with his hands in his pockets, tapping his shoetips together, watching the trains come and go. They were nearly full now but the platform was empty and he couldn't understand why that should be. Pa.s.sengers got on and off but none of them seemed to linger. No one sat on the bench. After what might have been half an hour he got heavily to his feet and walked toward the stairs leading up to the exit and that was when he noticed Violet.

She stood bent to one side in the shadow of the stairs and seeing her there answered his last questions. Her face was tipped sideways and her pale mouth hung open and she moved her eyes as though a train were pa.s.sing. She flinched as he approached her and from that he judged that she could see him coming. Otherwise he might have thought that she'd gone blind.

"Miss h.e.l.ler," he said, holding his hand out as if to an infant. But in reality she was prematurely aged, aged almost past recognition. He'd meant to say "Violet" but the name no longer represented her. "Miss h.e.l.ler," he repeated. She gave no sign of hearing him. He opened his mouth a third time but he couldn't seem to make the slightest sound.

"It's gone bright," she said. "Please turn it off." Her mouth snapped shut after each word like the hinged jaw of a puppet.

"Don't worry, Miss h.e.l.ler." He took a step toward her. "It's Detective Lateef. It's Ali." He'd seen people in that state before or in something very like it and he knew there was no sense in moving quickly. The current running through her body was so enormous that she barely seemed to have the strength to breathe. He'd seen it times without number, in suicides and barricades and addicts of all kinds, but he had no way of knowing which she was. That wasn't true of course: he knew perfectly well. The fact of it hovered in the air between them, buzzing almost inaudibly, waiting to be given its due. It had been waiting since sometime that afternoon. Lateef looked at Violet and cleared his throat to hear the noise it made. He heard the noise clearly and he was grateful to hear it. He bent over to make himself seem smaller.

"What was in those pills, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

She ducked as though he'd thrown something at her. "A thing's going to happen," she said, running her tongue over her lips.

"Is that right?" he said. He took another step.

"Very soon. It's happening already."

"Can you hear me, Miss h.e.l.ler? Do you know who this is?"

He waited a long time for her to answer. When at last she closed her mouth and covered her face with her hands he allowed himself to look over his shoulder. A few steps behind him was a payphone with a yellow receiver. He backed toward it cautiously, forcing his eyes not to stray, and reached it without once losing sight of her. He thanked G.o.d that no one else was on the platform. When he put the receiver to his ear the dial tone came through dimly but clearly and he sucked in a breath and thanked G.o.d for that also. He dialed Lieutenant Bjornstrand's number and was told that his support was waiting for him up at Thirty-fourth Street. He asked for no explanation and none was offered. He set the receiver back in its cradle, closed his eyes for a moment, then called Ulysses S. Kopeck, MD. Even as he dialed he knew what Kopeck would tell him but he needed to hear the words spoken. He might not pick up the phone, Lateef thought. If he doesn't what then. But Kopeck answered on the second ring.

"Sorry to call you at this hour, Dr. Kopeck. This is Detective-"

"I recognize your voice, Ali. I've been wondering when you might call."

Lateef kept silent for a moment. "You knew what was wrong with her," he said. "You knew exactly what the problem was."

A pause for effect as in a theater. The pause before the punchline. "Of course I did, Detective. Didn't you?"

"Are you trying to tell me, Doctor-" He stopped to take another breath. "Do you mean to tell me that we talked for half an hour in your office, with her waiting right outside, and you never once saw fit to let me know?"

"I have a confidentiality agreement with my patients, Ali. I like to honor that agreement." Kopeck cleared his throat mildly. "In any event, I a.s.sumed that her condition was self-evident."

"Not to me it wasn't. Not to me."

"I'm surprised by that, Detective. I'd been told you dealt with cases of this nature regularly. After all, you've been with Miss h.e.l.ler for the better part of-"

"Just tell me what's wrong with her, you f.u.c.ker. Give me her diagnosis."

"Since you put it that way, Detective, Miss h.e.l.ler is a paranoid schizophrenic." He could hear Kopeck's lips smack together as each word was expelled. "Can I help you with anything further?"

The 4 came in behind him and a napkin pirouetted at his feet. He wasn't looking at Violet anymore. He wasn't looking at the train. "I've been with her since this morning, like you said. I've seen my share of schizophrenics. I never would have guessed-"

"Miss h.e.l.ler has what psychiatrists call a high degree of insight into her disorder, unlike her son. When I was seeing her, she took two hundred milligrams of Clozapine daily, in tablet form, and forty milligrams of Celexa."

"She never told me that. None of it. I asked her-"

"You asked her directly?"

Lateef didn't answer. The 4 had pulled up and its doors had opened. He studied the motionless car packed with commuters. They seemed to be under the impression that they were moving. None of them so much as glanced at Violet.

"She didn't want me to know," Lateef said. "She was right not to tell me. I'd never have taken her with me if I'd known."

"I'll have to take your word for that, Ali."

Lateef looked down at the receiver for a time, weighing it in his palm, then dropped it lightly back into its cradle. The 4 had rolled away without his noticing. He turned his head unwillingly toward the stairs, half expecting to find her gone, wishing to find her gone with all his might. She was in much the same position as before, perhaps drawn farther back into the dark, perhaps bent slightly nearer to the floor. Muttering and working her jaws as though she had something between her teeth. As he came forward he wondered whether she had been listening. No matter now. She was standing with her chin wedged against her left shoulder, cursing everything she saw, but she quieted when he said her name and drew her gently toward him.

At 116th Street the train came to a regretful stop and a man slipped sideways through the doors and sat down across from Lowboy. No one else was in sight. Thirty-seven seats to choose from not counting those reserved for cripples but the man sat down without a moment's doubt. A storklike man with crimped orange hair and the righteous eyes and bearing of a prophet. He stared up and down the aisle as though to quiet his many accusers and when he was finished he turned and smiled out of the side of his mouth at Lowboy. The waitingroom smile of an insurance claims adjuster or a dentist. Can a dentist be a prophet, Lowboy wondered. Can an insurance claims adjuster. He was about to ask when the man held up a finger.

"No laces," the man said, pointing at Lowboy's shoes.

Lowboy stuck out his feet. "Velcro," he said softly. That was the term. He waited for the man to go on talking.

In place of an answer the man raised his finger again. His Adam's apple quivered on his flushed and wattled neck. A moment later he lowered his finger like a dowser's wand until it was pointing down at his own shoes. They were wrapped in silver duct tape from the laces to the shins. The tape looked new and heavy and expensive. It made Lowboy suspicious.

"Where are your socks," Lowboy whispered.

"Where are yours," said the man.

Lowboy looked down and saw the man was right. Who could have taken them, he said to himself. Secretary most likely. That reminded him of something.

"I saved the world," he said.

The man shrugged his shoulders. They rode on in silence as the train made its rounds and the man sucked his teeth and repeated every one of Lowboy's movements. When he pitched the man pitched. When he jerked the man jerked. There was something behind it. At each stop he made a wish that someone else would get on but when the doors opened he always changed his mind. Ninetysixth Street now. Eighty-sixth Street presently. The man jerking left and right and mimicking him like a monkey at the zoo. Sucking on his teeth and bobbing his head and tapping his heels together to make music. A territorial display or could it be a courtship. The skin on Lowboy's face began to itch.

"What's under the duct tape," he said. "What's behind it."

The man grinned and snorted and got to his feet. "Nike cross trainers," he said. He reclined from the crosspole. "There's a Dumpster at the Foot Locker on Broadway and Eighteenth-"

"Get away from me," said Lowboy.

To his surprise the man sat down at once. "You're one of us," he said. "You're a colleague."

Lowboy looked past the man and said nothing.

The man stretched his legs out and arched both his feet like a dancer. "I take them off sometimes," he said. "On certain occasions. For example when I cross the Musaquontas."