Gone Tomorrow

They had cell phones in their pockets. I took both of them. Both had my picture. Both call registers were blank. There was nothing else. No money. No keys. No material evidence. No clue as to where they had come from. No likelihood that they would be in a position to tell me anytime soon, either. I had hit them too hard. They were out for the count. And even when they woke up there was no guarantee they would remember anything anyway. Maybe not even their names. Concussion has unpredictable effects. Paramedics aren’t kidding around when they ask concussion victims what day it is and who the President is.

No regrets on my part. Better to err on the side of safety. Guys in fights who think ahead to the aftermath usually don’t get that far. They become the aftermath. So no regrets. But no net gain, either. Which was frustrating. Not even the brass knuckles fit my hand. I tried both sets on, and they were way too small. I dropped them down a storm drain twenty feet away.

Their car was still idling on the kerb. It had New York plates. No navigation system. Therefore no digital memory with a base location. I found a rental agreement in the door pocket made to a name I had never heard and a London address that I assumed was fake. In the glove box I found instruction manuals for the car and a small spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen. The notebook had nothing written in it. I took the pen and walked back to the two guys and held Leonid’s head steady with my left palm clamped down hard. Then I wrote on his forehead with the ballpoint, digging deep in his skin and tracing big letters over and over again for clarity.

I wrote: Lila, call me.

Then I stole their car and drove away.

FIFTY-FOUR

IDROVE SOUTH ON SECOND AVENUE AND TOOK 50TH Street all the way east to the end and dumped the car on a hydrant half a block from the FDR Drive. I hoped the guys from the 17th Precinct would find it and get suspicious and run some tests. Clothes are disposable. Cars, not so much. If Lila’s people had used that Impala to drive away from the hammer attack, then there would be some trace evidence inside. I couldn’t see any with the naked eye, but CSI units don’t rely on human vision alone.

I wiped the wheel and the shifter and the door handles with the tail of my shirt. Then I dropped the keys down a grate and walked back to Second and stood in a shadow and looked for a cab. There was a decent river of traffic flowing downtown and each car was lit up by the headlights behind it. I could see how many people were inside each vehicle. I was mindful of Theresa Lee’s information: fake taxis, circling uptown on Tenth, downtown on Second, one guy in the front, two in the back. I waited for a cab that was definitively empty apart from its driver and I stepped out and flagged it down. The driver was a Sikh from India with a turban and a full beard and very little English. Not a cop. He took me south to Union Square. I got out there and sat on a bench in the dark and watched the rats. Union Square is the best place in the city to see them. By day the Parks Department dumps blood-and-bone fertilizer on the flower beds. By night the rats come out and feast on it.

At four o’clock I fell asleep.

At five o’clock one of the captured phones vibrated in my pocket.

I woke up and spent a second checking left and right and behind, then I fumbled the phone out of my pants. It wasn’t ringing, just buzzing away to itself. Silent mode. The small monochrome window on the front said: Restricted Call. I opened it up and the

colour screen on the inside said the same thing. I put the phone to my ear and said, ‘Hello.’ A new word, recently invented.

Lila Hoth answered me. Her voice, her accent, her diction. She said, ‘So, you decided to declare war. Clearly there are no rules of engagement for you.’

I said, ‘Who are you exactly?’

‘You’ll find out.’

‘I need to know now.’

‘I’m your worst nightmare. As of about two hours ago. And you still have something that belongs to me.’

‘So come and get it. Better still, send some more of your guys. Give me some more light exercise.’

‘You got lucky tonight, that’s all.’

I said, ‘I’m always lucky.’

She asked, ‘Where are you?’

‘Right outside your house.’

I here was a pause. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘Correct,’ I said. ‘But you just confirmed that you’re living in a house. And that right now you’re at a window. Thank you for that information.’

‘Where are you really?’

‘Federal Plaza,’ I said. ‘With the FBI.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Your call.’

‘Tell me where you are.’

‘Close to you,’ I said. ‘Third Avenue and 56th Street.’ She started to reply, and then she stopped herself immediately. She got no further than an inchoate little th sound. A voiced dental fricative. The start of a sentence that was going to be impatient and querulous and a little smug. Like, That’s not close to me.

She wasn’t anywhere near Third and 56th.

‘Last chance,’ she said. ‘I want my property.’ Her voice softened. ‘We can make arrangements, if you like. Just leave it somewhere safe, and tell me where. I’ll have it picked up. We don’t need to meet. You could even get paid.’

‘I’m not looking for work.’

‘Are you looking to stay alive?’

‘I’m not afraid of you, Lila.’

‘That’s what Peter Molina said.’

‘Where is he?”Right here with us.’

‘Alive?’

‘Come over and find out.’

‘He left a message with his coach.’

‘Or maybe I played a tape he made before he died. Maybe he told me his coach never answers the phone at dinner tine. Maybe he told me a lot of things. Maybe I forced him to.’

I asked, ‘Where are you, Lila?’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said. ‘But I could have you picked up.’

A hundred feet away I saw a police car cruising 14th Street. Moving slow. Pink flashes at the window as the driver moved his head right and left.

I asked, ‘How long have you known Peter Molina?’

‘Since I picked him up in the bar.’

‘Is he still alive?’

‘Come over and find out.’

I said, ‘You’re on borrowed time, Lila. You killed some Americans in New York. No one is going to ignore that.’

‘I killed nobody.’

‘Your people did.’

‘People that have already left the country. We’re fireproof.’

‘We?’

‘You ask too many questions.’

‘If your people acted on your orders, then you’re not fireproof. That’s a conspiracy.’

‘This is a nation of laws and trials. There’s no evidence.’

‘Car?’

‘No longer exists.’

‘You’ll never be fireproof from me. I’ll find you.’

‘I hope you do.’

A hundred feet away the police car slowed to a crawl.

I said, ‘Come out and meet with me, Lila. Or go home. One or the other. But either way you’re beaten here.’

She said, ‘We’re never beaten.’

‘Who is we?’

But there was no answer. The phone went dead. Nothing there, except the dumb silence of an empty line.

A hundred feet away the police car stopped.

I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket.

Two cops climbed out of the car and headed into the square.

I stayed where I was. Too suspicious to get up and run. Better to sit tight. I wasn’t alone in the park. There were maybe forty people in there with me. Some of them seemed to be a permanent population. Others were temporary strays. New York is a big city. Five boroughs. Journeys home are long. Often easier to rest along the way.

The cops shone a flashlight beam in a sleeping guy’s face.

They moved on. Lit up the next guy.

And the next.

Not good.

Not good at all.

But I was not the only person to reach that conclusion. Here and there around the square I saw shapes rising up from benches and shuffling away in different directions. Maybe people with it outstanding warrants, dealers with stuff in their backpacks, surly loners who didn’t want contact, helpless paranoids wary the system.