Ninth and Nowhere

I Seven A.M

Two of them were outside the apartment because there were always two of them outside.

Jamal Davis couldn’t remember their names. One skinny, one less skinny, but both mean-eyed, like they’d practiced it. He’d heard the skinny one’s dad’d been a famous OG, who’d made it to all of thirty-seven before he didn’t make it anymore.

The block was brownstones, fronted by fire escapes, all rusting except for 414 West. Fresh paint on ironwork, fresh paint on the door, fresh paint on the window frames. Garbage and recycling clean and lined up perfect. The crew’s apartment on the second floor was rent free because Lester told the landlord they’d watch out and make sure nothing happened to the building. But the funny thing was that, because the building was the crib of the DS-12s, nobody moved in to the other units. Lester took the rest of them over.

Jamal spotted Skinny and Less Skinny eyeing him from a distance. Nothing about him could give them much to worry about: a bulky olive-drab combat jacket that kept out most of the March chill. Jeans with cuffs, orange Reeboks — nice ones, more than he could afford. But sometimes you just had to. His hair was short and his body was round. Which he didn’t like, the round part. But his grandmother had always given him food and he kept eating food. When he was in high school, sometimes somebody made a comment. Jamal was only five seven, a regret, but God gave him muscle and after he broke a jaw or tore an ear or sent somebody on their fours, puking, the comments stopped.

To the two wall-leaning outside 414, round and waddling Jamal was just any other nineteen-year-old in the ’hood. He kept his hands outside his pockets, of course.

He joined them. “Yo.”

“You Jamal?”

He nodded and when he wasn’t looking around he looked at the two. Less Skinny didn’t seem quite right, talking to himself and playing with his joint in a twitchy way. Jamal didn’t want him to go off. Skinny was just smoking a cigarette. Calm.

“Let’s see some ID. Gotcha passport, right?”

Jamal blinked. Less Skinny giggled.

Skinny: “Fucking with you. Do Jesus.”

Jamal extended his arms, crucifixion like, and got frisked.

“Go on up. Second.”

As he stepped through the door he was jerked to a stop. Less Skinny had gripped his collar. He whispered, pot breath, “Careful, son. Don’t fuck up.”

Son? He was Jamal’s age.

The door to 2A was open. Jamal supposed if you had the whole apartment building to yourself, why bother to close it, let alone lock it?

Still, he knocked.

“Yeah?” a voice called.

“Jamal.” He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

He’d been in crew cribs before and this was like any of them. Table for cards and business and meals. Some matching chairs, some that didn’t match. A couch and two armchairs that looked years old, weird plaid, gray and tan, not even his grandmother would’ve liked it. A big-ass TV, of course. CNN was on, crisp and bright and muttering, the volume low.

One bedroom door was closed. Another was ajar and through that one he could see a man sleeping on his back, snoring. He wore cargo pants but no shirt. A house-arrest monitor was attached to his ankle.

Jamal looked around and didn’t see Lester anywhere. Then he heard the sound of pissing and noticed an open bathroom door, the shadow of somebody inside.

Should he sit or stand?

He stood.

A flush. The sound of water from a faucet.

Lester appeared in the doorway, drying his hands on a paper towel. Sleeveless white tee, cargos, Reeboks of his own, silver.

Lester was as skinny as Skinny downstairs. But shorter. And he was muscled, rippling muscles. Jamal heard that at an initiation beatdown, Lester had cracked a kid’s skull with one punch, not the concrete he fell on. But the knuckles. Maybe it was the gold rings too. Lester wore four of them, two on each hand. They had to weigh a quarter pound total.

“Appreciate this, you know, you getting up early for this,” Jamal said.

“Shit, dog. You think I get up for you? Ain’t been to bed. We in an hour ago. My girl, she in that room there, the door closed, so keep your voice down.”

“Sure, man. Yeah.”

Lester’s hair was cropped close and razor-cut along his forehead, then ninety degrees straight down to his temples. Like the barber’d used a ruler. On his chin was a long, stringy goatee.

“But I ain’t got leisure time here, you know what I’m saying? So let’s do this or not do this. My boys downstairs, they check you out, but I’ma ask you to strip.”

Jamal didn’t move.

“You mean—”

“Fuck, dog, strip mean strip. So...” He lifted his palms impatiently.

Jamal took a deep breath. He glanced at the closed door. Lester laughed. “She out for the count. And even she wakes up, you got nothing she ain’t seen before. Do it.”

Jamal did. And though Lester didn’t ask, he turned around because that’s what he’d seen people do in the movies to prove they weren’t wearing a wire.

Lester looked over the round body, saying nothing, not joking about the belly and thighs and man tits.

“’Kay.”

Jamal got dressed quickly. He was in fact terrified that Lester’s girlfriend would walk out of the bedroom and laugh.

“I’ma ask you, dog. What you want it for?”

“I just need it.”

Lester’s eyes went dramatically wide. “Well now, that don’t answer my question, you think?” He walked to the fridge and pulled a beer out, drank half of it. Didn’t offer anything to Jamal.

“All about the green. It’s a shit time for us. My grandmother, she got laid off. Doing cleaning now. She’s a smart lady but she’s sweeping and dusting like some Lat bitch snuck up here from Honduras. Fuck that. And I send MT what I can.”

Lester sat down, stretched out his legs. “Why you never jump in with us?”

Jamal kept standing. “Dunno. Guess ’cause I couldn’t risk getting fucked up. MT’s away for five more, even they give him the benefit of everything. And he’s got himself into trouble inside already. Hit a screw tried to feel him up.”

Lester winced. “Aw, man, let ’em feel. Don’t hit. Thought your brother knew the rules. Bought him another year?”

“Six months, one sol.”

“Fuck solitary.” Lester’s face screwed up tight. “But here you come, dog, asking what you asking, which’ll put your ass right into the system, too, if you fuck up. Then what’ll Granny do?”

Jamal’s voice nearly broke as he said, “I didn’t want it to go like this. I don’t have any fucking choice.”

Lester finished the beer and pulled a toothpick from his pocket. Not a wooden one. Plastic, white. Or maybe ivory.

“How much you got?”

“Three.”

Lester was frowning. “Three won’t get you shit.”

“It’s all I got. Maybe three twenty.” He was going to add, “If I didn’t want to eat today,” but Lester might say not eating today’d be a smart move. The weight and all.

Lester glanced at the TV–CNN, always busy. Rumor was he had a glass eye, or fake eye. Jamal didn’t know if they were made out of glass or what. He watched a minute of breaking news. A little boy had gotten lost in a construction site, a huge mall somewhere. Had he been kidnapped, fallen into a foundation? His name was Robert but the newscasters called him Bobby.

Lester walked into the kitchen and crouched below the sink. He emerged with a brown paper bag. He collected a roll of paper towels and spray bottle of Windex. He walked to the card table and set everything down. He opened the bag and spilled out a pistol and a dozen bullets. The gun’s wooden handle was nicked and the blue metal parts were worn and uneven.

“Three Cs ain’t buying you a Glock or anything fancy, dog. You didn’t think that, did you?”

“I didn’t know.” He reached for the small revolver.

Lester waved his hand abruptly and Jamal froze.

The gangbanger picked up the gun using a paper towel, sprayed it with the window cleaner and then wiped it down, his flesh never coming in contact with the weapon. He set it down and did the same with each bullet. Jamal’s eyes slid to the TV. Still the story about the missing kid.

Lester plopped down the last bullet. “’Kay, dog. The green?”

Jamal dug the money out of his pocket and damn if Lester didn’t pick up the money, too, with a paper towel and put the wad in his pocket. He didn’t count it but Jamal supposed nobody ever in the history of the universe had fucked over Lester.

“You mention my name and you’re gone and Grandma’s gone, too, you know what I’m saying?”

“Sure, Lester.” Jamal started to load the gun.

“Now get the fuck out.”

When he was at the door Lester said, “Dog?”

Jamal looked back.

“Don’t never do a bank or check-cashing shop. You jack a car, I know a place’ll pay good green. Only cost you ten points to me. You do a house and end up with merch, I’ll move it. Cost you fifteen points there — riskier’n shit from cars, you know what I’m saying?”

Jamal nodded, then swallowed.

“Phone-card stores’re good. And remember, convenience stores, lotta times, put up cameras, you know, security? But they fake, to save money. An’ one last thing.” A nod toward the pocket where the gun rested. “Don’t use it ’less you for sure got to. Bullets — they change everything. But if you do, it’s pop, pop.” Lester reached up and poked Jamal hard in the temple twice. “Two. The head. Don’t bother no place else. You good with that?”

“I can do it,” Jamal said.

Lester looked him over and laughed. “Damn, dog, I b’lieve you can. Now, get the fuck out.”

“He say where he going?”

“Nothing,” Sharpe told Lester Banks. “Punk ass looked me in the eye, like pushing me, you know.”

Lester figured that Jamal could take Sharpe, skinny as an old rooster, one on one. Beatdown. Except if it came to metal, Sharpe had his Glock and Jamal had the Shit and Wesson.

They were on the doorstep of 414 West, Lester and Sharpe. Doug, too, but he was hanging back. Lester scared him. Lester was watching Jamal’s receding form. Easy to spot. The orange shoes.

Lester said, “I got some intelligence is interesting.”

Sharpe asked what it was.

“His brother’s in medium sec at Burlington.”

“Yeah. MT, he solid.”

“Do I care?”

“Well, you—”

“You don’t gotta answer.” Lester was thinking. “You see his face?”

Sharpe was silent.

“That you can fucking answer.”

“Jamal, yeah. I seen his face.”

“He got something in mind. Something big going down. I think his brother tipped to something, heard something inside. Told the dog about it, and he comes here playing closemouthed. Boy don’t want to share. Only reason I gave him that piece, find out what he’s about.”

“I wondered why,” Sharpe replied. Then fell silent under Lester’s probing gaze.

Lester asked, “What’s on about town?”

“The Flatland?” Sharpe asked. “Only thing big I know about.”

Lester hadn’t thought about that. There’d been talk of a crew across town getting a load of fent and oxy, a big load, up from North Carolina. They were in the Flatland neighborhood, near the docks. Bad fuckers.

“Damn, punk takes the fent, tags the courier and anybody nearby. Worth, what? A couple hundred large.”

Sharpe said, “Man, we could move that shit fast. Market always want it. But might be something else.”

“Then I’ll cap his ass and take what he got. Get my Smittie back. Punk boy got no business playing with that. Something ’bout that dog I don’t like. Gimme yo Glock.”

Sharpe instantly handed over the pistol.

Lester checked the magazine and made sure a round was chambered. He looked up the street, where Jamal was turning the corner. He slipped the gun in his pocket.

“Later.”

The crack in the plaster ceiling was different things at different times.

It might be a map of an interstate, it might be a mountain range, it might be a woman’s voluptuous body.

This morning, as he lay in his sagging bed, what Adam Rangel saw was something he’d never characterized the crack as in his eight months of living here: a pirate ship.

Well, any old-time ship, he supposed, but for some reason Adam thought of it as a pirate ship. He remembered seeing that movie with Christie, Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe that was it. Maybe he’d had a dream about the date.

No, it wasn’t Christie.

He couldn’t recall. Somebody blond. Christie wasn’t blond.

Sometimes, lying in his rickety twin bed, looking up, Adam wondered if the crack was a risk. It looked pretty deep. Did it mean that the ceiling would come tumbling down on him? The building was ancient, built with plaster. Sheetrock didn’t fall. It rotted. And even if it did fall it wasn’t heavy. Plaster fell and it weighed a ton.

But was it worth calling the landlord?

Probably not a good idea. Adam hadn’t been so good about paying rent on time. The checks somehow never stretched the way they should. The fewer waves he made, the better. No lease here. He could be kicked out anytime. He knew he couldn’t find anything this cheap and he sure wasn’t going to pass a credit check for anything else. Just keep it down and keep it low.

Sometimes Adam Rangel walked a very fine line.

Besides, he’d never heard of anybody getting crushed to death by a plaster ceiling.

He rolled upright, planting his feet on the green linoleum floor. He massaged his calf. This was out of habit, not to temper the pain. The five-year-old wound didn’t ache at the moment. Hadn’t for a long time. But massage it he did.

Adam slept, as always, in boxers. And he glanced down now, over his forty-one-year-old body, which was in good shape. Unfair, considering he got very little exercise and his diet was a joke.

Last year, Priscilla — he was sure it was Priscilla — had a chance to see virtually every square inch of that body and she’d told him she thought he was in his twenties. Sometimes he missed her and wondered where she was now. She’d traced her finger over the tattoo on his neck, an arrowhead in which a skyward-pointing sword was crossed by three lightning bolts.

“Special Forces,” he had told her in answer to her question.

“Oh, is that where that thing came from?” She had massaged the bullet-hole scar too.

Thing.

“Did it hurt?”

“Did. Doesn’t now. Usually.”

“Was it the Taliban?”

“Friendly fire. Happens a lot. More than you’d think.”

He slipped his feet into loafers and walked into the bathroom to pee. Debated brushing his teeth and decided to. Today the effort wasn’t too much.

Pay attention to the little things, accomplish the little tasks. What doctor had told him that?

Adam could remember former girlfriends’ names better, if only slightly better, than doctors’.

He checked text messages. None.

This both depressed and relieved him. When he had to respond he sometimes got tense. He might get it wrong, people might ask him to explain what he meant, might ask him questions whose answers didn’t come easily to him.

He went online.

Several e-mails but they didn’t bother him. E-mails were in a demilitarized zone. Texts were immediate, high-pressure, front line. E-mails you could stack up and let sit. You answered them on your terms.

One was a response to an e-mail he’d sent to a big drug company that’d run an online ad looking for new hires. Adam had a BS degree, with some chemistry classes. For someone with his education, though, all they could offer was entry-level sales. And that meant desk, pushing paper and talking to people. Fuck.

Delete.

One was from his mother, no subject line.

Delete.

Another:

Adam was handy. When he was ten, he and his father had framed and drywalled a couple of rooms in their and his grandparents’ houses. He had a talent for it. After the service, he’d worked for a couple of contractors. But then he’d started not showing up. Fired. He’d gone to day labor, cash. That was better. For a while.

Delete.

He pulled on his gray slacks, a T-shirt and a plaid short-sleeved shirt, which he left untucked. As he dressed, he looked out the window. A typical March day, overcast and dim. He could feel the chill coming off the grimy glass. The weather cheered him. He hated the sun, hated heat.

For such obvious reasons that it pissed him off. That made him feel predictable, made him a slave to the past in all the worst, clichéd ways. Almost funny.

Then the wasp started. No, two of them.

Two wasps. Little fuckers.

Adam reached between the box springs and mattress and took out a Colt.45 semiautomatic pistol. It was an old military sidearm, though not the one he was issued in Afghanistan. The army made you give your weapons back. Anyway, he’d flown home commercial, so there was that. He’d bought this one on the street. For protection. And just in case.

He pulled the slide back to put a round in the chamber and put the muzzle in his mouth. He tasted metal and oil and smelled gunpowder from the last time he’d fired it, at a range, a year ago. He’d never bothered to clean it.

He turned slightly so that when the bullet exited the back of his skull, if it exited, it would slam into a thick, structural riser of the apartment and stop there, so no one else would be hit.

Five... four... three... two...

Then, aiming the weapon elsewhere, he looked at it, admiring the shape, the feel, the weight. He pushed a button to drop the magazine out the bottom of the grip and pulled the slide to send the bullet that was in the chamber cartwheeling to the bed. He picked the slug up, slipped it back into the mag and reloaded the Colt. Set it on the unsteady table.

Adam walked into the kitchen — that is, the five-by-ten-foot area divided from the rest of the single-room apartment by a half-high wall. He hadn’t changed the ceiling bulb, so he used a flashlight to see if the pizza from last night was untouched by anything with six legs. It was. He felt a thrill.

And to drink...

Oh, shit. Disaster.

When he’d gone to bed last night around eleven he’d left the bottle of cabernet on the counter. His second of the evening. He’d poured only one glass from it, he was proud to say, and he was looking forward to the rest to have with the pizza for breakfast. But Adam’s hearing had been damaged during the war and he must have bumped the bottle, not hearing it fall, as he staggered to bed. Almost all had spilled onto the floor; only a mouthful of the cheap, tangy red wine remained.

Fuck.

He lifted the bottle and with what was left took his morning meds. He was about to fling the bottle across the room but controlled himself. There’d been enough complaints.

Sitting on the bed, he massaged the scar on his calf again.

And, naturally, here it came... What replayed a couple of times a day in his thoughts: He’s hunkered by himself behind a low wall, rising sometimes to look for a target. Others in the platoon behind their walls, or flat on a crumbling driveway or in the sand.

Rising, squeezing off rounds, then low once more.

And when that happens, utter fucking hell. The incoming, thunk, snap, snap... the bullets everywhere. From thirty or forty guns. Hitting the front of the wall, skimming over it, slamming into the old building behind. Stone cascading, fragments zipping. So fast, so fast, snappy and stinging and loud.

They’re scattered throughout hills, the enemy. His platoon is in a vast open space, with only two goatherds’ shacks and three or four stone walls, a few feet high at the most, for cover.

Adam rises and fires some bursts.

“Where’s the fucking air?” somebody shouts.

“En route. Medevac too.”

One of the guys in the patrol’d been hit, bad. He rose at the wrong time. Face and shoulder.

Bad.

More bullets. They zip like steel wasps, they fall like red-hot fragments of meteorites.

Adam is thinking:

If it weren’t the fourth day of the relentless snap, snap, snap...

If he didn’t wake up every morning trying to keep a big breakfast down, just so everybody thinks he’s just one them...

If they could just take a few klicks of land in this god-awful outpost and hold it...

If he hadn’t signed up solely for the sake of his father...

If not for all those, then he might not do the unimaginable thing he’s about to do.

But he has arrived at the end of the line.

Adam has never been shot or hit by shrapnel moving fast enough to break the skin. But today he knows he’s going to be wounded. Because he’s going to do the wounding himself.

He’s not stupid about this. He knows he’ll be suspect because it will be a nonlethal puncture of his flesh exactly in the place where one wishing to shoot himself to escape duty would shoot himself. (The calf is number one.) This is one of the most serious offenses in the military. The crime is malingering, which sounds as tame as loitering but it’s not. If you self-inflict an injury in combat you’ll face ten years of military prison and a dishonorable discharge.

So Adam looks around to make sure no one can see him. His weapon has three modes: single semiautomatic, three-round bursts and fully auto. He clicks his rifle to single — one trigger pull, one bullet — because he doesn’t want his flesh turned to gravy. Adam pulls a large bandage from his MOLLE backpack; he presses this against his calf, so that if CID is in the mood to play forensics, they won’t find gunshot residue on his uniform or skin and will think the slug must’ve come from a distance. He’ll discard the bandage later.

With no further prep, he shoots himself in the leg. The rifle he’s been issued fires a small bullet, a little under a quarter of an inch in diameter. But it moves fast as the dickens, two thousand mph, far faster than the jets that are coming to pound the enemy and drive them, temporarily, to cover.

There’s a sting but no terrible rush of pain. The nerves are traumatized. Still he cries out, “I’m hit!” And he hides the bandage in a pocket.

“Ahhh, ahhhh...”

Adam freezes.

And looks behind him.

There was a gap in time from when he looked to see that he was alone and when he fired his weapon.

And in that briefest of moments, a fellow soldier crawled up behind him.

His best friend in the unit, Todd Wilshire. They joked, they played cards, they shared books and stories about women, snuck illegal hooch.

The bullet slowed somewhat as it passed through Adam’s leg. But it still traveled fast enough to zip into Todd’s throat and neck and tidily open a vein.

His eyes lock on Adam’s as he grips his neck, pointlessly, the red cascading, cascading.

“Ahhhh... Ah...”

For a moment, Adam debates. Todd saw, Todd would tell. But then: No, I can’t do it. He cries, “Medic! Medic.”

Soon a shuffle of feet and the young man, hunched over, rolls into the spot between Adam and Todd. He glances at the wound on Adam’s leg and assesses it minor and then turns to the hemorrhaging soldier.

Who can’t be saved.

As his shivering death approaches, Todd tries to say something to Adam.

The lips seem to form a P. But then he goes still.

Every day for the past five years, Adam Rangel thought of the incident, thought of his friend’s eyes, thought that if he’d called for the medic sooner, Todd would be alive. What was he going to say that started with a P?

He looked at the Colt sitting on the table.

Then: Fuck. Out of wine.

Most places that sold liquor weren’t open yet. He then remembered the Quik Mart on Ninth Street in the Nowhere District of town. He’d only been there once — it was a long hike — but he had a soft spot for the place, because the Indian clerk, Kari, the name badge said, used eighty cents of his own money when Adam couldn’t come up with the full amount for his bottle and the Hot Pocket. Kari was a huge fan of the Beatles.

Quik Mart it would be.

“I’m Patrol, yeah. Sure. But I haven’t been on patrol, lowercase p, in years.”

Fifty-nine-year-old Arthur Fromm was speaking to the watch commander of the 19th Precinct. A man who was twenty years Fromm’s junior. Short, intense, precise, as scrubbed as squash before going into the pot.

The commander was confused. “On patrol?” But only for a moment. “Patrol Division, uppercase. Being on patrol, lowercase.”

Fromm nodded his long head.

“That’s funny.” Though the watch commander wasn’t smiling.

Fromm was tall and because he never seemed able to gain weight he was as slim as the day he graduated from the academy, eons ago. A fact that irritated many a fellow officer. His uniform was perfectly pressed. He sent it out. For years, Martha had ironed and rolled off lint every morning. The last time she’d tried, the fire department got involved.

The two men were in the hallway of the precinct house. Both started when a blast of March wind rattled the windows behind them. The building was 117 years old.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t important, Arthur.”

“Yessir, I’m sure.”

The commander was a captain, and even though the man resembled an Eagle Scout, Patrolman Arthur Fromm was respectful of authority. Always.

Yessir...

“I’m down two people in Riverside. We have to have it covered. The POS-Seven.”

This was a requirement ginned up by some pencil pusher in headquarters, stating in clunky bureaucratic prose that every district in the city had to have a requisite number of “personnel on site,” the count varying depending on population, but never less than one.

In this day of internet-connected squad cars, the requirement seemed antiquated. But there it was.

“Only for today. Mahoney and Juarez’ll be back tomorrow.”

It would be a black mark against the commander to let a district go unpatrolled. There was a reason more and more police departments were being called public-safety offices. The job of protecting the public was one of the reasons Fromm had signed on.

“All right, sir. Yes.”

The commander thanked him, though it had been an order more than a request.

“Riverside,” Fromm said.

Also known as the Nowhere District. Gentrification had largely passed the grim, pungent neighborhood by.

“That’s right. Larkin from the bridge to the park and Ninth Street. There’ve been some car break-ins. Graffiti. Muggings. Drugs. Don’t worry. It’ll all come back to you, Arthur. Do the things you used to do. Talk to shopkeepers. Ask kids why they aren’t in school. Drugs? Don’t bother unless it’s packaged for sale. Or it’s fentanyl. You know how to run a test?”

“No. It wasn’t a big drug back then.”

“You suspect that’s what it is, call it in and somebody from Narcotics’ll get right over there with a kit.”

“Yessir.” What he knew about fentanyl he knew from Discovery Channel true-crime shows.

“You checked out on the new Motorolas?”

“How different are they from the old Motorolas?”

The commander thought for a moment. “Supply’ll let you know.”

“I’ll get my coat and weapon.”

Fromm walked to the large cubicle he shared with another officer, a squat, cheerful African American woman named Delores.

“What’d Butch want?”

The nickname for the watch commander, thanks to the buzz cut, which in Fromm’s opinion was a bad fashion choice.

“He’s sending me out.”

“For coffee?”

“Ha. On patrol.”

He opened the drawer and pulled his utility belt out. It held a Glock 9 mm pistol, a Taser, extra magazines for the gun, handcuffs and a flashlight. The flashlight worked fine. He’d get new batteries for the Taser. He put the belt on. The weight was both familiar and disturbingly alien.

He asked Delores, “What’s the story on body cams? I read a memo but I don’t remember.”

“Optional for now.”

Fromm decided to pass. There was enough to think about with the rest of the gear.

As he left, she called, “You be careful, Arthur.”

He grunted her way and smiled.

In supply he got the Motorola, which worked exactly like the older version, though the sound was better. He swapped out Taser batteries. Then put his coat on, heading for the precinct’s front door.

Walking away from the comfort of his desk, he thought: Damn, damn, damn. I do not want to do this.

In his career as a beat Patrol officer, Arthur Fromm had his share of run-ins with all sorts of perps. Druggies — they were called “cluck heads” back then — and muggers and bank robbers. None of the incidents troubled him more than one would normally be troubled talking a crazy-eyed perp into setting down the knife he was brandishing.

But then, four years ago, Martha had started failing.

Little things at first, just forgetfulness. Then worse and worse. Dangerous too. The burning-uniform incident. Boiling eggs without putting water in the pan. Cleaning the living room walls with gasoline.

Of course, it was a complicated disease, layered. And there were the moments of crystal clarity and — eerily — memories of their early days together in far more detail than he could ever summon.

But good symptoms or bad didn’t matter. She was his wife of thirty-six years and he was going to make sure that she was taken care of until the end.

And so he’d transferred to Administration, where the odds were virtually nil that he’d be shot by a mugger or a husband in a domestic or one of the gangbangers from the crews that were moving into the precinct in increasing numbers.

Fromm had one month and six days till retirement, with a nice pension. He’d be home all the time and could dispense with most of the expensive full-time day staff.

Not religious by any means, he nonetheless occasionally prayed and he did so now.

Please, let me get to the end of watch today alive and unwounded.

Please, let me do nothing that would get me fired or brought up for conduct.

Let me get home to my bride...

He stepped outside into the damp, cool air, reflecting that at least the watch commander didn’t exactly cut him a break. The man could have juggled personnel and stuck Fromm anywhere in the precinct. But he’d given him Riverside. Part of Fromm’s job in Administration involved compiling statistics, and he knew that the Nowhere District was one of the meanest in the precinct — in the whole city, in fact. There’d been a murder there just last week — one gangbanger had killed another right in front of a middle school.

He tried to think if a police officer had ever been shot in Nowhere.

Three years ago, Arthur believed. The cop had lived but he’d be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

He now headed for the Larkin Street Bridge.

He’d spend some time there.

And after that, Ninth Street, in the heart of Nowhere. Fromm recalled there used to be a great breakfast spot there, an old-fashioned diner. He hoped it was still there. That was one thing about walking a beat. You got to know the best places to eat.

She lay in bed, on her back, thinking of Michael.

Picturing him.

He was a handsome man — looking a bit like a younger version of the actor Harrison Ford, thick, dark hair, a solid face, broad shoulders. He was her age — midthirties — and in good shape; he, like she, enjoyed running and working out. He did some kind of martial arts but one of the unusual ones. Not karate or tae kwon do.

Michael wore stodgy suits and his shirts had too much starch in them. They were like the dry marker boards Lanie used when she was brainstorming with the copywriters at her ad agency. Brilliant white and almost shiny. She’d teased him about it.

Lanie Stone, though, didn’t always think this much about Michael’s appearance. She thought more about his kindness. His eyes, which radiated confidence and care. And his nature: calm.

Important, during this time in her life, which was very, very un-calm.

A snore from beside her. She eased away from the warm, heavy body of her husband. Henry had rolled onto his back during the night. Hence the guttural snort.

She climbed from bed and walked silently over the thick carpet, comforting under her bare feet. And white as... white as the shirts that Michael wore.

Stop that.

Lanie slipped into the bathroom and pulled off the T-shirt she slept in, the cotton panties. In the mirror, she performed a fast examination of her profile. A pinch of the belly. A half inch more than she would have liked. But she wasn’t too hard on herself, not at the moment. She indulged in a sweet now and then. Why shouldn’t she? This was, hands down, the hardest time of her life.

No. No tears.

She had someone to save her.

Michael would save her.

Into the shower, the hottest water she could stand. Then she toweled off, dressed in a robe and blow-dried her short hair. She’d cut it recently. Michael said she should, and she had. Henry had blinked when she’d returned from the salon. “Oh. Short.” She didn’t know whether he liked it or not. “Why’d you do that?”

She said only that she wanted a new look.

“Good. It’s nice.”

Which made Lanie feel particularly guilty. She almost told him about Michael right then and there. But no.

As she dressed in a blue silk blouse and a navy-blue skirt and jacket, she wondered what today would bring.

She’d told her secretary that she wouldn’t be in today, she had a doctor’s appointment — which was a good lie because you could always be a bit vague when it came to medicine, as if you didn’t want to go into personal details. Something private. Something down there.

As for Henry, she hadn’t told him she’d be away. But he never stopped into the agency and he rarely called during the day. He was a busy man himself, doing IT security, working long stretches to keep the computers of major corporations hack free. If he did happen to call and Rose told him she was at the doctor, he’d probably bluster that he’d forgotten, so as not to be embarrassed. And because his brilliant mind was always churning, he might very well believe that Lanie had told him.

A glance at her phone. Her stomach did a flip.

Which really said something else altogether. It was a message via code she and Michael had laughingly come up with. It meant they would meet at the Holiday Inn on Tenth Street at the designated time.

She texted back.

She did her makeup, just a bit of blush, pale-brown shadow, pink lipstick. A waft of perfume, not much today, never very much. She used the fragrance solely for herself; the perfume triggered memories of a time before all the un-calm.

She looked at herself in the mirror.

You’re really going through with this?

And nearly lost it. Tears started to well. Some sorrow, some guilt.

But mostly fear.

This was so fucking risky. She stood on the precipice of disaster, the very edge. The smallest of incidents could tip her over. A coincidence, being spotted in the street where she should not be. A roving reporter catching her on video in the background. Being hit by a car crossing the street. Police, phone calls, questions.

Disaster...

But, breathing deeply, she got herself under control.

She started out the bedroom door. She had to leave now. Her husband’s alarm was to buzz in three minutes.

Lanie looked at his sleeping form.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed. Then the cloud lifted.

She stepped to the front hall, pulled on her camel-colored wool overcoat. She locked the door behind her and hurried to the bus stop, looking forward to picking up a muffin and a latte.

But mostly looking forward to seeing Michael.

Carlos stood at his kitchen window, overlooking the pleasant side of Carlyle Street.

Over there, the houses were beautiful brownstones, built a hundred years ago when attention was paid to detail. The structure directly opposite him was crowned with a scrolly façade inlaid with a mosaic of a fox. People living in those apartments, the rich folk, had to look at the scuffed yellow siding and aluminum frame of Carlos’s building. Poor souls.

The five-foot-six Carlos Sanchez was wearing what he usually did: jeans and a shiny jacket in a sports team’s colors. This was his trademark look. Today it was the Chicago Bulls, red and black. This was his favorite jacket (the first pro game he’d ever seen was the Bulls).

His favorite and, he hoped, lucky jacket.

Lucky enough to keep him out of jail.

As he looked out the window into the somber, gritty morning, he was gripping his mobile, on which he’d dialed nine numbers. The phone waited patiently.

Finally, he tapped the tenth and final number, “4,” and then “Call.”

The man answered on the third ring. “Yes?”

Carlos identified himself. “So. Can we meet? You said we could meet?”

Silence.

Please.

“I’ve got a nine o’clock.”

A nine o’clock? Oh, appointment, he must’ve meant. This man ran in a whole different world than Carlos, who was a foreman at an industrial plant on the waterfront. But did that mean he wanted to meet, or he was backing out?

“Should I—?”

“Be at my place at eight thirty. After that, I’m gone.”

“That’ll work fine. I’m going to my daughter’s dance recital at school at—”

Click.

He turned from the window.

Carlos stared at the TV. The CNN story, he noted, was about a child, a boy of about five, who’d wandered away from an older brother on their way to school. The mother was working. The boy was lost in a jobsite where a mall was being constructed. They thought he might be trapped somewhere or had fallen into a foundation pit. Carlos shut the set off.

He thought, naturally, of Luna. Twelve. Presently on the bus to her middle school, nervous about her recital but excited too.

He walked into the bedroom and sat on the bed, staring at the brown paper bag. The sack was identical to the one Luna had taken from him and slipped in her backpack twenty minutes ago. Hers contained a turkey-and-cheddar sandwich, a baggie filled with tiny carrots and a Little Debbie coffee cake.

This bag contained something very different.

Am I really doing this?

Then on went the lucky jacket. He stuffed the bag into the pocket and stepped outside into the chill morning, the air fragrant with exhaust.

“It’ll be fine. Imagine it’s an audition for a part in a play.”

“Oh, that’s not making me feel any better,” Brett Abbott said.

“You acted in high school.”

“I hated it and I was terrible.”

“I’m sure you were great.” The petite blond kissed her husband hard.

“Ick,” said Joey, thirteen. Soon he’d be more interested in the ick, though Brett supposed when it came to your parents, there was a perpetual ick factor.

Bev gave the baby some more glop. Brett thought: Now that’s ick for you.

They were in the kitchen of the family’s split-level, in a subdivision just on the edge of town. Brett was polishing his shoes, which he did every morning before he left for work. He hadn’t done this for two months and four days. It felt good.

Bev said, “Mr. Weatherby seems nice.” The couple had met Brett’s new boss — potential new boss — several times, at a fund-raiser downtown, at the country club. And the charismatic man had taken Brett and Bev out to dinner once, as a sort of get-to-know-the-new-employee thing.

Potential new employee.

Bev said, “Maybe he can help us with a loan.”

Brett’s coffee paused on his way to his mouth.

“I’m joking, honey.”

Weatherby owned W&S Financial Services and made good change from loans. And Weatherby himself made good change from W&S. He and the wife had driven a new Tesla, the fancy one, to the steak house.

Brett shrugged. “Ah, he’d laugh if you told him something like that.”

Bev fiddled at the sink. “You’re looking nervous.”

“Really.” Brett Abbott, thirty-eight, generally didn’t give off nervous. He was six two, two-hundred-plus pounds, wide shoulders. He had a slow-moving way about him. He might look upset or angry and cagey at times but didn’t think he ever looked nervous.

“What’s Dad nervous about?” Joey asked.

Brett had learned that nothing gets past kids and when your wife phrases something so out there, well, of course he was going to ask.

“It’s like your first day of school. You’re never sure how it’s going to go. Your dad’s trying out for this job.”

Weatherby hadn’t gotten to be a multimillionaire by paying money to people who weren’t good at what they did. He offered Brett a probationary period. If he performed well, he could look forward to good pay.

Joey said, “Your last job, you took me on that sixteen-wheeler.”

“That was fun.”

“What’re you doing for this new job? Something neat?”

“Do you know what ‘vet’ means?”

“Yeah, where we take Babe and Coffee.” He nodded toward the two labs presently chowing down breakfast in the corner.

Bev and Brett laughed. He said, “That’s true. But it’s a verb too.”

“A word that means to do something,” the boy said.

“Good. Right. ‘Vet’ as a verb means to check people out and make sure they can pay back a loan before Mr. Weatherby’s company lends it to them. Have they paid money back in the past, how big are their assets...?”

This drew a snicker from the boy.

“Joey!” Bev said.

“Dad said it.” Then the boy was losing interest — financial services couldn’t compete with a big truck — and he returned to typing out texts.

You’re looking nervous...

Because he was.

Nervous as hell.

The family was in trouble. They’d foolishly listened to a small-time investment advisor, who’d managed to lose all their savings in two years. They’d run up massive debts. Brett had worked out agreements with banks and credit card companies to pay off the crushing sums that were owed. Bev was working, too, two jobs. But then recently — two months and four days ago — Carelli Transport went under. Brett had looked at bankruptcy but decided no. He would never do that.

He had to do something. There was no margin in their life; they’d just been making ends meet with what Carelli paid him — and even that meant eating lousy food, driving junkers and having no health insurance, neither he nor Bev.

The insurance was a big deal. Bev’s job involved a drive of two miles from home to the school where she worked. Brett’s took him all over the city, sometimes to dicey areas of town. If anything happened to him, an injury or accident, that could bankrupt the family. His brother had a minor heart problem. His two-day hospital stay had cost $65,000. Even now, the thought of that amount made Brett’s stomach twist.

But he was optimistic about today. He’d pulled in some favors from people he’d met through the transport company and got an entry to Ed Weatherby. They’d met and the couples had met and the matter-of-fact man had said he liked the cut of Brett’s jib (he’d had to look it up later). Weatherby would try him out. If it worked, he’d sign on full-time. One thing in his favor, Brett knew: he was very, very good at his job.

Brett looked at his watch, a big gold one that his father had given him for high school graduation. “Better go. Can’t be late for this.”

Bev followed Brett out of the kitchen. They stepped into the front hallway and Brett pulled on his navy-blue wool overcoat.

Coyly, Bev reached behind the other coats in the closet and handed him a shopping bag. It was heavy. “Got you a present.”

He pulled out an alligator-skin briefcase. Beautiful.

His first thought, he was ashamed to say, was how much had she spent. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I got it on eBay for seventy dollars. I held my breath for the last ten minutes of the auction.”

He kissed her hard. “Thanks, babe. Gotta go.” He looked her in the eyes. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to nail this thing.”

“I know you will. Wait, you didn’t have a bite to eat, only coffee.”

“There’s a place on the way that’s got breakfast sandwiches. I’ll pick one up there. How do I look?”

He turned up the collar of his coat, held the briefcase at his side and cocked his head.

“You can vet me any day,” she whispered.