Lowboy Part 5

"No," he said, pus.h.i.+ng her hand away. "Don't touch it."

"All right," she murmured, bringing her legs together. "All right." She looked down at herself for a moment. "Pa.s.s me my effects."

"Your what?"

"My effects effects, boy. My clothes." She reached past him and picked up her jeans and worked her legs back into them. He was curious to see the expression on her face but he couldn't bring himself to look at her. If their eyes met it was possible that he'd vanish in a puff of yellow smoke. Yellow for cowardice, Lowboy thought, staring down into his lap. Yellow for disease.

"What they got you on?" Heather Covington said after a time.

He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. His arms felt like pieces of dough. "Zyprexa, Depakote-"

She puckered her lips. "Zyprexa!" she said. "I remember that one. Zyprexa make me twitch."

"Zyprexa wouldn't do that." His voice was barely loud enough to hear. "Zyprexa's a second-generation antipsychotic. Those don't give you the shakes."

She leered at him. "Listen to the little boss. Rex f.u.c.king Morgan, MD."

Lowboy said nothing.

"They had me on Prolixin," she said after a while. "Maybe it was that."

"Prolixin would do it."

She slid closer. "What about Zyprexa? You say Zyprexa take away your juices?"

"Depakote does," he said, running his hand over the quilt. "It makes you not want to do it. That's why I stopped." He hated the way his voice sounded, explaining about meds like a middle-aged RN. He cleared his throat. "Depakote's fat-based. They all are. To get past the blood-brain barrier." He looked at her now. "The blood-brain barrier is made out of fat, actually."

"The blood-brain barrier," she said politely. "Good enough."

"Your brain's floating in jelly, Miss Covington. Fatty jelly." He smiled at her. "Sort of like a French pate."

"That would explain it," she said, b.u.t.toning up her s.h.i.+rt.

"But the rest of your body has a hard time with fat. So it stays in your blood-"

"Where you sc.r.a.pe this s.h.i.+t up at, little boss?" She leaned over and poked him in the ribs. "I bet the skullf.u.c.kers told you."

"n.o.body told me." He pa.s.sed a hand over his face. "They had a book about it at the library."

She whistled through her teeth. "No kind of library where I I got sent." got sent."

He lay back on the quilt. The light was paler now, less cutting, and he could stare at it for a long time without having to blink. "The library was two blocks from my house, on the corner of Seventh and Greenwich. I went there when they told me I was sick."

She cleared her throat and spat onto the floor. "And you believed them, hey? You believed the skullf.u.c.kers?"

He focused on the clouds above the grates. He waited for them to move but they kept still. "I'm sick, Miss Covington. You know I am."

"I'll tell you what I know." She shook her head. "I know I'm down here and they're not. I know I got no kind of meds in me. I know-" She hesitated. "I know that I've got ideas ideas."

"I have them too," he said. "I wish I didn't."

"You don't have my ideas, you little cracker. n.o.body got my ideas but me." She stared at him fiercely, working her jaws in a slow circle, as though she were sharpening her teeth.

"I don't want them."

He expected her to hit him but she didn't. She sat up very straight, heaved an unamused sigh, then pulled his jeans back up and zipped them closed. She did it roughly, matter-of-factly, the way that Violet would have done it. It was enough to make him wonder.

"Do you have kids, Miss Covington?"

For the s.p.a.ce of a breath she stared wide-eyed at him, sucking in her cheeks. Then her face went slack. "If you so sick, Rex Morgan, what you messing with me for? Why not go home and get your diapers on?"

"I told you why." He took a breath. "The air is getting-"

"Hotter," she said flatly. "I remember." She brought a wrist to her nose and sniffed at it thoughtfully, like someone standing at a perfume counter. "I tell you what. If I was a skullf.u.c.ker, I might say that all this foolishness about the air-"

"Thank you, Miss Covington," Lowboy said, getting to his feet. "Thank you very much. That's all for now."

She laughed and hooked a finger through his belt. "Where you running off to, little boss? Hang around a little. I'll be good."

He was full in the light now, squinting down into the corner, and the hand she held him with looked disembodied. People were walking across the grates in twos and threes, innocent and self-a.s.sured as children. Watching them he began to feel the cold.

"You'll shut up?" he said, s.h.i.+fting from one foot to the other. "You'll mind your own business? You'll put a sock in it? You'll say it with flowers?"

She said nothing to that, only pulled him back down, and he shook his head but let himself be pulled. It was warmer beside her. Their feet were in the sunlight but their bodies were sequestered and secure. He looked down at his dirty Velcro sneakers. They looked ridiculous in the brightness, oversized and crude, surplus footwear from a failed moon landing. He yawned and laid his head back on the quilt.

"I want to stay here forever," he said. "I don't ever want to go back up."

"You and everybody else," Heather Covington said. "Everybody want to be the Dutchman."

"The who?"

"Dutchman," she sighed. "Like the opera. Like the play. Dutchman been riding the 6 train for seventeen years. He ain't crossed a turnstile since 2002."

"How does he stay alive?" Lowboy said. He propped himself up on his elbows. "What does he find to eat?"

"Don't know as he eats anything," she said indifferently. She pulled her suitcase toward her and began to rummage through it. Something inside made a clinical sound, brittle and sharp, like beakers in a high school science kit. "Maybe he eats candybars from the kiosks. Maybe he fries chickens on the rail." She winked at him. "Maybe he eats h.o.r.n.y little boys."

The sunlight lost its color suddenly. Lowboy hummed to himself and laid his head down again and waited for her to keep talking. He wanted to believe her very much. What mattered most about the Dutchman was that the Dutchman was impossible. If the Dutchman existed then other impossible things could exist, like the Loch Ness monster or Ouroboros or the devil. The thought of it made Lowboy's teeth start to chatter and the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. If the Dutchman existed you couldn't be sure about anything. Half the books in the library would have to be rewritten. People would start walking backward down the street. He almost laughed out loud at that. If the Dutchman existed the world might not actually end.

He rocked himself gently and watched Heather Covington fussing. She was mumbling to herself now, hunched over the suitcase like a jeweler, putting some small thing together slowly. She seemed to have forgotten that he was waiting. He hummed to himself and tapped his feet against the channeled concrete floor. The idea of the Dutchman got bigger as he waited and began to throw off white and green and coppercolored sparks. Something was going to happen. The kingdom of the impossible stood glittering over his left shoulder, waiting quietly to admit him. All he had to do was turn his head.

"How old is the Dutchman?" he said. His voice sounded clumsy. "What does he look like?"

"White," said Heather Covington. "He don't smell right. Most times he's got a whole car to himself."

The way she said it told him not to press her. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed his face into the quilt, breathing the sourness in, trying to keep his excitement to himself. The Dutchman is real, he thought. He's an actual living person and she knows him. Maybe she's even brought him to this room.

"Why only the 6 train?" he said. "Why just that line?"

"Hhff," said Heather Covington. Something was in her mouth now: something brittle. Her left arm jerked upward and he heard a sucking. The air smelled like butane for a moment, then like roasted almonds, then like sweat.

"Miss Covington?" he said.

"Shut your mouth," she whispered, lowering her head until it vanished. With her head gone she looked like a monster on some ancient map of the world. She made a sucking sound through her teeth and kept her body absolutely still. "Little baby," she said, bracing her left hand against the floor. She coughed without covering her mouth. "Little baby," she said. "Little dollar bill."

The air was full of smoke now and the smell slid down his windpipe like an eel. He put a hand over his mouth, then over his eyes, then over the whole of his face. When he took it away Heather Covington was lying splayed out with her arms bent behind her, breathing in a soft contented stutter. Her right eye was open but her left eye was closed. A thimblesized gla.s.s bowl lay sideways in the hollow of her chest, rolling like a buoy with each breath. The smoke led up toward the city like a ladder.

"I'll tell you something," she said. "I never expected you to get on me."

He bit down on his lip and looked at her. "How come?"

"I'm ugly as a b.i.t.c.h."

He kept his eyes on the bowl, thinking of a way to answer her. Finally he propped himself up and looked at her closely and saw she was right. Her face was as flat and lifeless as a skillet.

She coughed. "I wasn't always ugly, though. I use to be a little blue-eyed girl."

"I know that," Lowboy said. "I saw your pa.s.sport."

"Ever heard of Dr. Z?" She sighed and began rolling up her sleeves. "Zizmor, I mean. Jonathan Zizmor, MD. That Jew skin doctor on Third Avenue."

"I've seen his ads," said Lowboy. He grinned at her. "I like the one that says BLEMISHES?-BLOTCHES?-b.u.mPS? BLEMISHES?-BLOTCHES?-b.u.mPS? in purple letters." in purple letters."

"That's him," she said. "That's the one." She held a gray forearm toward him, running two fingers along its skin, then brought both hands up gravely to her face. There was no light in her black eyes any longer. They looked like two holes punched into a piece of paper.

"Jonathan Zizmor did this to me," she said.

Just then a noise fell down on them like a hammer against a nail and the darkness folded over into nothing. A man in a uniform was squatting above them, unhooking something heavy from his belt. "That you, Rafa?" the man said, s.h.i.+ning a light down into the smoke. His voice sounded agreeable and mild.

"Heather Covington, Officer Martinez." She was wide awake again and her body was as solid as an arch. She put her right hand on the back of Lowboy's neck and leaned forward to keep him out of sight. He couldn't see the policeman but he could hear him drop to his knees against the grate. Heather Covington's head was trembling slightly, like an old woman's or an alcoholic's, but her eyes were hard and clear and full of hate. Lowboy braced his back against the wall.

"Smells like good times down there, Rafa," the officer said. "Smells like you've been doing yourself some cooking."

"Smoking crack, Officer Martinez," Heather Covington said brightly. "Trying to make the time go by."

The policeman heaved a sigh. "Thank you, Rafa. Thanks for including me in your life." The stillness between his breaths was absolute. "What are you doing over there in the corner? Why not turn around and talk to me?"

Heather Covington shut her eyes and took the tip of her tongue between her teeth. "Can't," she said finally. "Can't do it, Officer. I'm not presentable presentable."

For a moment the officer made no sound at all. When he spoke again his voice was free of all emotion, even and smooth, the voice of a surgeon asking for a sterile cloth. "Who's that with you, Rafa?"

As she turned her head to answer Lowboy kicked against the wall and slid out between her spread legs like a baby. The roar of the street shook the room like a matchbox and the officer was banging with his flashlight against the grate but by then he was already back inside the tunnel. He'd have run straight out onto the tracks but the sound of the water saved him and he caught himself on the crimped edge of the seam. He teetered and bobbed like a drunk at the end of a pier. He waited there as long as he could stand it. n.o.body followed him.

Maybe he arrested her, Lowboy thought. Maybe he shot her. Maybe they're smoking crack together. He opened his eyes wide, then shut them, then opened them again, straining to make out a difference in the blackness. Twice he heard the sound of rustling leaves. He counted from one to one hundred, took a few deep breaths, then counted from one hundred down to one. When he was done he went to the next station.

A breeze was building in the tunnel as he started walking. Uptown train coming, he said to himself, and it helped to take his mind off what had happened. Express, he decided, feeling the air against his open fingers. The through train to the Bronx. The uptown D. He quickened his steps as the sound overtook him. He felt clearheaded and relieved to be alone. He was hidden again, as safe as he'd ever be, down in the lightless, airless bowels of the world. The hum all around was a sweet thing to hear, gathering as the wind gathered, and it seemed as though it had something to tell him. He laid his head against the tunnel wall and listened.

Years later, in the rarefied seclusion that most of his life had been a dress rehearsal for, Lateef would claim that he'd recognized Violet h.e.l.ler's significance right away. If he hadn't, he'd have sent her home at once: she wasn't telling him enough to indulge her. "I had a feeling about Violet, right from the beginning," he'd say quietly, then withdraw behind his famous blank-eyed smile.

The truth was that he kept her in his office because she looked like a portrait by Brueghel, awkward and immaculate at once, and because there was nothing to do for the moment but wait. She was eccentric, of course, and stubborn-it was impossible, thank G.o.d, to imagine her in hysterics-but unlike most of the mothers who put themselves in the way of his paycheck, she refused to be parted from her self-control. She doesn't want to give me that satisfaction, Lateef thought, and the idea held his interest. But never for a moment did he suspect that she had any real part to play, either within the Special Category Missing or outside of it. Not until the call came in.

Her reaction to her son's case report had been predictable enough: she'd gone absolutely still, as though he'd propositioned her, and had stared at him in a way that he'd been acquainted with since his first day on the job. If she'd kept quiet it was only because her mouth had gone too dry with rage to speak. He'd returned her look calmly, even encouragingly: his misgivings had subsided as he watched her. Her own att.i.tude, after all, had forced his hand.

"Obstruction of justice seems to come naturally to you, Miss h.e.l.ler." He let the file fall theatrically closed. "I'd almost think you had a history yourself."

"You're a born policeman, Detective," she said, looking past him out the window. "Every little old lady is a mafioso."

"Listen to me, please. Everything I've learned about your son leads me to believe that time is very tight. His medication is at a negligible level, he's in a hazardous environment, and his psychoses tend to be violent." He sat back a moment and let that register. "In my opinion, there's a good chance that a crime will be committed: a serious crime, Miss h.e.l.ler. A felony. It could very well be happening as we speak."

"Then why aren't you out looking for him, Detective?" she said, rising mechanically to her feet. "Why are you sitting here doing absolutely f.u.c.king nothing, shuffling cards like we have all the tea in China?"

She was standing an arm's length from him now, legs set hard against the desk, opening and closing her fists like someone at the onset of a seizure. If I laugh now, he thought, I'll have lost her completely. She looks as though she might actually take a swing.

"All the time in the world, I think you mean."

Her palms came down on his desk with such force that a drawer clattered open. "Answer me, Detective! What the h.e.l.l are we still doing here?" me, Detective! What the h.e.l.l are we still doing here?"

Her accent's stronger now, Lateef thought, composing himself before he gave his answer. She sounds like a Hollywood n.a.z.i. "We're waiting for the phone to ring, Miss h.e.l.ler. That's all we can can do, I'm sorry to say. Unless you have some ideas about your son that you'd be willing to share with this department." do, I'm sorry to say. Unless you have some ideas about your son that you'd be willing to share with this department."

"I do have some ideas, in fact." She sucked in a breath. "I wonder why you didn't ask before."

He permitted himself a smile. "You don't seem very shy with your opinions."

"You're manipulating me now, Detective." She turned away from him tiredly. "If I thought you were acting out of a genuine desire-"

The buzzing of his deskline interrupted her. She stopped herself at once, her mouth hanging open like a sleeper's, and stared at the receiver with a look of simple dread. He paused a moment before answering, watching the fact of the call sink into her. There was no trace of relief in her expression.

"Excuse me just a minute, Miss h.e.l.ler."

She gave no sign of having understood him.

The conversation was brief-a minute at the most-and for his part Lateef said almost nothing. When he set down the receiver Violet slumped slightly forward, making a small defeated sound, as though her worst fears had already been confirmed. Any doubt he might have had that she believed her son was violent vanished in that instant. She'll work with me now, he thought. No more putting on airs. She knows there's no more sense in wasting time.

"A traffic cop working the intersection of Eighty-fourth and Columbus spotted your son through a grate. This was about twenty minutes ago, at ten forty-five. According to the officer, he appeared unharmed."

"Through a grate?" she murmured. "Under the sidewalk?"

He nodded. "He's still in the MTA network."

She was already standing. "I told you he'd stay underground. In the last note he sent-"

"Slow down just a little, Miss h.e.l.ler. I wouldn't mind keeping you company."