He raised his eyes toward Merlin. “It’s possible,” he whispered.
“It is important that you understand anything is possible, Ricky. An auto accident can be faked. A sexual harassment complaint sent to your psychoanalytic governing body. Your bank accounts can be trashed and eviscerated. Your relatives or your friends or even just your acquaintances can be murdered. You need to act, Ricky. Act!”
There was a quaver in Ricky’s next question. “Don’t you have any limits?”
Merlin shook his head. “None whatsoever. That’s what makes all this so intriguing for us participants. The system of the game established by my employer is one where anything can be a part of the activity. The same is true for your profession, I daresay, Doctor Starks, is it not?”
Ricky shifted in his seat. “Suppose,” he said softly, hoarsely, “I were to walk away right now. Leave you sitting with whatever is in that bag…”
Again Merlin smiled. He reached down and just turned the top of the bag slightly, revealing the letters f.a.s. embossed on the top. Ricky stared at his initials. “Don’t you think that there’s something in that bag alongside the head that links you to it, Ricky? Don’t you think that the bag was purchased with one of your credit cards, before they were canceled. And don’t you think that the cabdriver who picked you up this morning and took you to the station will remember that the only thing you carried was a medium-sized blue gym bag? And that he will tell this to whatever homicide detective bothers to ask him?”
Ricky tried to lick his lips, find some moisture in his world.
“Of course,” Merlin continued, “I can always take the bag with me. And you can behave as if you’ve never seen it before.”
“How-”
“Ask your second question, Ricky. Call the
Times
right now.”
“I don’t know that I…”
“Now, Ricky. We’re approaching Penn Station and when we head underground the phone won’t work and this conversation will end. Make a choice, now!” To underscore his words, Merlin started to dial a number on the cell phone. “There,” he said, with brisk efficiency. “I’ve dialed the
Times
classified for you. Ask the question, Ricky!”
Ricky took the phone and pressed the
send
button. In a moment he was connected to the same woman who’d taken his call the prior week.
“This is Doctor Starks,” he said slowly, “I’d like to place another front-page classified ad.” As he spoke, his mind churned swiftly, trying to formulate words.
“Of course, doctor. How’s the scavenger hunt game going?” the woman asked.
“I’m losing,” Ricky replied. Then he said, “This is what I want the ad to say…”
He paused, took as deep a breath as he could muster, and said:
Twenty years, it was no joke,
At a hospital I treated poor folk.
For a better job, some people I left.
Is that why you are bereft?
Because I went to treat some other,
did that cause the death of your mother?
The ad lady repeated the words to Ricky, and said, “That seems like a pretty unusual clue for a scavenger hunt.”
Ricky answered, “It’s an unusual game.” Then he gave her his billing address again, and disconnected the line.
Merlin was nodding his head. “Very good, very good,” he said. “Most clever, considering the stress you’re under. You can be a very cool character, Doctor Starks. Probably much more so than you even realize.”
“Why don’t you simply call your employer and fill him in…,” Ricky started. But Merlin was shaking his head.
“Do you not think that we are as insulated from him as you? Do you think a man with his capabilities hasn’t built layers and walls between himself and the people who carry out his bidding?”
Ricky figured this was probably true.
The train was slowing, and abruptly descended beneath the surface of the earth, leaving sunlight and midday behind, lurching toward the station. The lights in the train car glowed, giving everything and everyone a pale, yellowish pall. Outside the window, dark shapes of tracks, trains, and concrete pillars slipped past. Ricky thought the sensation was similar to being buried.
Merlin rose, as the train pulled to a stop.
“Do you ever read the
New York Daily News
, Ricky? No, I suspect you’re not the type for a tabloid. The nice refined upper-class crusty world of the
Times
for you. My own origins are much humbler. I like the
Post
and the
Daily News
. Sometimes they emphasize stories that the
Times
is far less interested in. You know, the
Times
covers something in Kurdistan, the
News
and the
Post
, something in the Bronx. But today, I think, your world would be well served by reading those papers, and not the
Times
. Do I make myself absolutely clear, Ricky? Read the
Post
and the
News
today, because there is a story there that you will find most intriguing. I would suggest absolutely essential.”
Merlin gave a little wave of the hand. “This has been the most interesting ride, don’t you think, doctor? The miles have simply flown past.” He pointed at the duffel bag.
“That’s for you, doctor. A present. Encouragement, as I said.”
Then Merlin turned, leaving Ricky alone in the train car.
“Wait!” Ricky yelled. “Stop!”
Merlin kept walking. A few other heads turned toward him. Another shout was halfway out of Ricky’s mouth, but he stifled it. He did not want anyone to focus on him. He didn’t want to gain anyone’s attention. He wanted to sink back into the station’s darkness and become one entity with the shadows. The duffel bag with his initials blocked his exit, like a sudden massive iceberg in his path.
He could no more leave the bag than he could take it.
Ricky’s heart and hands seemed to quiver. He bent over and lifted the bag from the floor. Something within shifted position, and Ricky felt dizzy. For an instant he raised his eyes, trying to find something in the world that he could seize hold of, something normal, routine, ordinary, that would remind him and anchor him to some sort of reality.
He could see none.
Instead, he seized the long zipper on the top of the bag, hesitated, taking a deep breath and opened it slowly. He pulled back the opening and stared inside.
In the center of the bag there was a large cantaloupe. Head-sized and round.
Ricky burst into laughter. Relief filled him, unchecked, bursting out in guffaws and giggles. Sweat and nervousness dissipated. The world around him that had been spinning out of control stopped, and seemed to return to focus.
He zipped the bag back up and rose. The train was empty, as was the platform outside, except for a couple of porters and a pair of blue-jacketed conductors.
Throwing the bag over his shoulder, Ricky proceeded down the platform. He started to think about his next move. He was sure that Rumplestiltskin would confirm the location and the situation where his mother had been in treatment with Ricky. He allowed himself the fervent hope that the clinic might actually have kept records of patients dating back two decades. The name that had proven so elusive for his memory might be on a list up at the hospital.
Ricky marched forward, his shoes clicking on the platform, echoing in the darkness around him. The core of Pennsylvania Station was ahead, and he moved steadily and swiftly toward the glow of the station lights. As he marched with military determination toward the brightly lit crowds of people, his eye picked out one of the redcaps, sitting on a hand truck, engrossed in the
Daily News
while he waited for the next train’s arrival. In that single second, the man opened the paper so that Ricky could see the screaming headline on the front page, written in the unmistakable block letters that seemed to cry for attention. He read: transit cop in hit-run coma.
And below that, the subhead: seek missing hubby in marital mayhem.
Chapter Seventeen
Ricky sat on a hard wooden bench in the middle of Pennsylvania Station with copies of both the
News
and the
Post
on his lap, oblivious to the flow of people surrounding him, hunched over like a single tree in a field bending to the force of a strong wind. Every word he read seemed to accelerate, slipping and skidding across his imagination like a car out of control, wheels locked and screeching impotently, unable to halt the careening, heading inevitably toward a crash.
Both stories had fundamentally the same details: Joanne Riggins, a thirty-four-year-old detective with the New York Transit Authority Police, had been the victim of a hit-and-run driver the night before, struck less than a half block from her home as she crossed the street. The detective remained on life support systems in a coma at Brooklyn Medical Center after emergency surgery. Prognosis questionable. Witnesses told both papers that a fire-engine red Pontiac Firebird had been seen fleeing the site of the accident. This was a vehicle similar to one owned by the detective’s estranged husband. Although the vehicle was still missing, the ex-husband was being questioned by police. The
Post
reported that he was claiming his highly distinctive car had been stolen the night before the hit-and-run accident. The
News
uncovered that the man had had a restraining order taken out against him by Detective Riggins during the divorce proceedings, a second restraining order taken out by another, unnamed female police officer, who was said to have rushed to Detective Riggins’s side in the seconds after the young woman was crushed by the speeding car. The paper also reported that the ex-husband had publicly threatened his wife during the final year of their marriage.
It was a tabloid dream story, filled with tawdry intimations of an unusual sexual triangle, a stormy infidelity, and out-of-control passions that eventually resulted in violence.
Ricky also knew that it was fundamentally untrue.
Not, of course, the majority of the story; only one small aspect: The driver of the car wasn’t the man the police were interviewing, although he was a wondrously obvious and convenient suspect. Ricky knew that it would take them a significant amount of time to come to believe the ex-husband’s protests of innocence and even longer to examine whatever alibi he claimed to have. Ricky thought the man was probably guilty of every thought and desire leading up to the act itself, and he guessed that the man who’d arranged this particular accident knew that, as well.
Ricky crushed and crumpled the
News
in anger, twisting the pages and then tossing them aside, scattering the sheets on the wooden bench, almost as if he’d wrung the neck of a small animal. He considered telephoning the detectives working the case. He considered calling Riggins’s boss at the Transit Police. He tried to imagine one of Riggins’s coworkers listening to his tale. He shook his head in growing despair. There was absolutely no chance whatsoever, he thought, that anyone would hear what he had to say. Not one word.
He lifted his head slowly, once again nearly overcome with the sense that he was being watched. Inspected. That his responses were being measured like the subject of some bizarre clinical study. The sensation made his skin grow cold and clammy. Goose bumps formed on his arms. He looked around the huge, cavernous station. In the course of a few seconds, dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people swept past him. But Ricky felt utterly alone.
He rose and, like a wounded man, started to make his way out of the station, heading toward the cabstand. There was a homeless man by the station entrance begging for loose change, which surprised Ricky; most of the disadvantaged were shooed away from prominent locations by the police. He stopped and dropped whatever loose change he had in the man’s empty Styrofoam coffee cup.
“Here,” Ricky said. “I don’t need it.”
“Thank you, sir, thank you,” the man said. “Bless you.”
Ricky stared at the man for a moment, taking note of the sores on his hands, the lesions, partially hidden by a scraggly beard, that marked his face. Dirt, grime, and tatters. Ravaged by the streets and mental illness. The man could have been anywhere between forty and sixty years old.
“Are you okay?” Ricky asked.
“Yes, sir, yes, sir. Thank you. God bless you, generous sir. God bless you. Spare change?” The homeless man’s head pivoted toward another person exiting the station. “Any spare change?” He kept up the refrain, almost singsong with his voice, now ignoring Ricky, who continued to stand in front of him.
“Where are you from?” Ricky suddenly asked.
The homeless man stared at him, filled with a sudden distrust.
“Here,” he said carefully, indicating his spot on the sidewalk. “There,” he continued, gesturing toward the street. “Everywhere.” He concluded by sweeping his arms in a circle around his head.
“Where’s home?” Ricky asked.
The man pointed at his forehead. This made sense to Ricky.
“Well, then,” Ricky said, “have a nice day.”
“Yes sir, yes sir, God bless you, sir,” the man continued melodically. “Spare change?”
Ricky stepped away, abruptly trying to decide whether he had cost the homeless man his life, merely by speaking with him. He walked toward the taxi stand, wondering if every person that he came in contact with would be targeted like the detective had, like Dr. Lewis might have been. Like Zimmerman. One injured, one missing, one dead. He realized: If I had a friend, I couldn’t call him. If I had a lover, I couldn’t go to her. If I had a lawyer, I couldn’t make an appointment. If I had a toothache, I couldn’t even go and get my cavity filled without putting the dentist in jeopardy. Whoever I touch is vulnerable.
Ricky stopped on the sidewalk and stared at his hands. Poison, he thought.
I’ve become poison.
Shaken by the thought, Ricky walked past the row of waiting cabs. He continued across town, heading up Park Avenue, the noises and flow of the city, incessant movement and sound, dropping away from him, so that he marched in what seemed to him to be complete silence, oblivious to the world around him, his own world narrowing, it seemed, with every stride he took. It was nearly sixty blocks to his apartment, and he walked them all, barely aware that he even took a breath of air on the trip.