Firebreak

2

Pam Saugherty carried the ice cream and the milk in a plastic bag. D'Agostino's would deliver the rest of the groceries in half an hour or so. She crossed Abingdon Square, turned right onto Bleecker Street, and did one of those sidewalk dances with a man coming the other way, both of them moving to her left, then both reversing, then he stopping dead so she could choose for herself how to go around him.

"Excuse me," she murmured, with an embarrassed smile, knowing it was her fault. He nodded, not quite looking at her, and walked on.

She'd gone another five or six steps when his face became familiar. She'd seen that face before, bony, large, the eyes cold and uninterested, the jawline like a rock. She looked back and he was crossing the street at a diagonal, tall, big-boned, dressed in black, moving with a determined stride that made her surprised now he hadn't merely walked on over her when she'd gotten in his way. He strode around the corner into Bank Street, and out of sight, and Pam turned back toward home, frowning, weighed down much more by the elusive memory than by the plastic sack.

She knew that face. Reaching 414, she unlocked the street door, then paused to look back, across the street, at that corner of Bank Street. Something menacing in the memory, something frightening.

The mail had been delivered while she was out, pushed through the slot in the outer door onto the floor inside. Letting the door snick shut, she stooped to pick up the mail, mostly bills and catalogues, then unlocked the inner door.

It was the sight of the wheelchair that brought him back. The wheelchair to the left of the staircase that Matt so seldom used these days, the track for the riding chair built into the right side of the stairs for those rare trips Matt did take to the outside world. Seeing them both reminded her at last of the man, and the only time she'd ever seen him before, a time she usually managed not to think about at all.

Years ago, a hundred years it seemed, in another life, another world. The kids had still just been kids then, Bob, the oldest, only ten. She'd been married to Ed Saugherty, who had a good white-collar job with a computer company in Philadelphia, and they'd lived in a good brick house in a green suburb west of the city.

But Ed had a wild friend from his high school days, a man named George Uhl, who had brought trouble into the house, in himself and in a suitcase that had to have had something valuable in it, though nobody would ever find it now. Because Uhl was dead, and these other two, Paul Brock and Matt Rosenstein, had invaded the house, looking for the suitcase.

Matt intended to rape her, soon after they broke in, and when Ed tried to stop him Matt turned on him, beating him with a cold violence that was terrifying. The other one, Paul Brock, had tried to stop Matt, but he couldn't be stopped, until poor Ed was beaten into a dead thing on the floor. Then Matt had done what he wanted with Pam, and kept her and the children tied and gagged in their bedrooms while they waited for Uhl or the suitcase or whatever it was they wanted.

That part had seemed to go on forever, and only ended when another man broke in, even faster and harder than Matt. He'd shot both Matt and Paul, knocking Paul down the basement stairs. Then he had come in to where Pam was imprisoned, and untied her, without softness or sympathy, just methodical, uncaring, and saying only the one thing to her, once her hands and mouth were free: "You know what to do." Then he was gone.

She knew what he'd expected her to do, and what at first she'd expected of herself as well. Revenge herself on Matt Rosenstein to begin with, somehow, some painful way. Then call the police to come take this filth out of here, out of her house, so she could get back to the person she'd been before they'd invaded her world.

But there was no getting back. Ed was dead, and nothing would change that. She had seen evil, and been subjected to its whims, and nothing would ever let her forget that.

When, wearing nothing but the robe she'd just pulled on after the man had freed her, Pam had moved through this alien war zone that had once been her house, the first thing she'd found was Matt unconscious on the living room floor, near the kitchen doorway, a bloody gash on his forehead. And next was Paul, conscious but hurt, on his back on the basement floor, at the foot of the stairs.

She'd gone down those stairs, and Paul had called, his voice as faint as though it were coming from deep in a tunnel, "Help me!"

^"Help you!" Rage caught at her and she loomed over him, ready to kill, ready to maim, wanting revenge on these terrible people.

But he stared up at her, meeting her eye, gasping, "I tried to stop him! You know I did, I tried to stop him, but I never could! Is he ... alive?"

"I don't know," she said, reluctant, but having to answer, drawn by the intensity of his stare.

"Parker said his back was broken. Is he in pain?"

"He isn't conscious. He has a cut on his head."

"Oh, don't let him die!" Brock pleaded, and started to cry. "I know we don't deserve it, I know it's terrible, it's all gone so wrong, but please don't let him die!"

Baffled, caught by him despite herself, she'd said, "But... you're hurt, too. What about you?"

"I love him!"

She'd recoiled from that wail, and she recoiled now in memory, then started up the stairs, carrying the mail and the grocery bag, remembering that strange conversation in the basement of the house outside Philadelphia.

All Brock had cared about was his love for Matt Rosenstein. The intensity of it, the nakedness of it, even the selflessness of it, had cut through her anger, her need for revenge, her natural revulsion at the kind of love Brock was revealing to her.

But what to do? What could be done?

"I'll pay," Brock promised. "Keep Matt alive, I swear to you, I'll pay you whatever you need, I'll pay for your children, I'll pay for everything, only keep Matt alive!"

Her husband was dead. There was almost no insurance, she was a housewife with three children and no work history, no marketable skills. Rosenstein had been horrible, brutal beyond belief, but Brock had never been cruel, had tried to stop Rosenstein, had shown her decency in the middle of the horror. Now the reality of her situation pressed in on her while she listened to him, but what could she do? Rosenstein was unconscious up there, maybe dead already.

"There's a doctor I know," Brock told her. "Get me a phone, I'll call him, he'll take care of things."

The pity she felt was as much for herself as for him. Unwillingly, she said, "I could call an ambulance."

"No! That means police, jail, I'll never see Matt again in my life! This doctor, he'll help."

At the head of the stairs, she turned into the dining room, dropped the mail on the table there, turned toward the kitchen at the front of the house. From the bedroom at the back she could hear the television, Matt watching his soap operas. After she put the ice cream and milk away, she went back there, pushed open the door, saw Matt asleep in his wheelchair in front of the set.

Matt slept a lot these days, increasingly so over the years, never adapting himself to the reality of his paralysis, never trying to fight back, to become somebody new. Now he was a poor bloated creature, like something deep in a cave, so bitter and so sorry for himself there was no room for anyone else to feel sorry for him.

Pam's hatred for Matt, her desire for revenge, had faded a long time ago, but she would never be able to feel anything but repugnance for him as he was now. She knew that only the paralysis kept him from being the same cruel arrogant bastard he'd been years ago, when he'd first broken into her house. The only good thing about Matt Rosenstein, now or in the past or ever, was Paul Brock, and they all knew it.

She left Matt there asleep in front of his soap opera, and went on upstairs. The top floor was Paul's, his living room and bedroom and workshop, but the floor between was hers. Since the kids had gone off to college, one of their former bedrooms had become a sitting room for her, with her own TV, which she rarely watched. She listened to music there now, and read an English novel, and waited for dinnertime.

The man's name was Parker.

Dinner was usually the only part of the day when all three were together. Pam cooked and Paul came home from his shop to wheel Matt out to his place at the table. Matt could move his arms, though nothing below them, so he could feed himself. Usually he glowered at his plate and ate sloppily and had little to say, while Paul and Pam kept up the conversation. Paul was a slight man, under medium height, very thin, with a kind of friendly Ichabod Crane face. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look huge.

Tonight, Pam had to tell them both about that strange meeting on the street. Once all three were at the table, she said, not looking at either of them in particular, 'The man who came into my house that time, the man who shot you, I saw him today."

That drew an astounded silence. Paul stared at her, and even Matt roused himself to blink in her direction. And finally, Paul said, "You saw him? Where?"

"Out front. He was walking up the street, he turned onto Bank."

Paul took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The hand holding the glasses shook. "He's here," he said. "He found us."

"This is you, goddamit," Matt told him. His voice rumbled now, and wheezed, from all the extra weight. Glaring at Paul, he said, "You fucked it up again, god-damit!"

"Charov was supposed to—"

"Charov!" Matt pounded his wheelchair arm. "Fucking Russian wasn't as good as he thought he was! None of you fucking people— If /could do something!"

"I have to call them," Paul said, and jumped up, and ran upstairs to make the call where Pam wouldn't hear it-

There were always things Paul had to keep from her, both in how he made his money and how he spent his evenings when he dressed up and went out smelling of cologne, and she was happy to be kept in the dark. She didn't want to know. His electronics shop on Fourteenth Street made a profit, but she knew that wasn't his real income, that wouldn't pay for this house or all the money he'd spent on her and her family over the years.

Matt turned his heavy glower in her direction, while she listened to the murmur of Paul on the phone upstairs. "A fat lot of help you'll be, he grumbled.

"I've been of help in the past," she told him. "I've been of help to you" She didn't have to put up with his bad temper.

Matt had nothing more to say, and neither did she. Picking up her fork, she tried to eat, listening to the sounds of Paul from upstairs, then his footsteps hurrying back down.

He was white when he came into the room. He didn't sit at his place at the table, but just stood there, barely beyond the doorway^ staring with a horrified expression at Matt. "They cut us off."

Matt lifted his head. "What? They can't do that!"

'They did it." Paul seemed distracted, despairing, bewildered. "He went to them, he did something, I don't know what. They won't help any more. They told Parker they were out of it!"

"Told him!" Matt pounded the wheelchair arm. "Get me a gun! This time it's my turn, goddamit! Get me a gun!"

"Matt—"

Pam said, quietly, "Paul. If you give Matt a gun, I'm leaving."

"Goddam bitch!"

'That's all right, Matt," Paul said, and started to pat his shoulder, then realized this wasn't the time to get within arm's reach. Standing just far enough away, he said, "You don't need a gun, Matt. We'll figure this out. Don't worry, baby, he won't get in here. We'll figure it out."