The truth of the matter

PART I
CHAPTER ONE

Waterman

The revolving door went around and suddenly there he was: Waterman. The one man who might know the answers; the one man who might clear my name. He stepped out of the black office tower. He stood for a moment in the gray light of the late autumn afternoon, buttoning his overcoat and eyeing the flurries of snow falling from the slate-colored sky. Then he moved off along the sidewalk, joining the crowds of city commuters and Christmas shoppers.

I followed him.

I had been sitting at the window counter in the Starbucks across the street. Nursing a strawberry-banana smoothie, watching Waterman’s building, waiting. Now, I drained my cup with a rattling pull at the straw and stood up. Quickly, I zipped up my black fleece against the cold and hurried outside. As Waterman moved away, I crossed the street and joined the crowd moving along behind him.

For the first time since this nightmare began, I felt a small, dizzying thrill of hope, real hope that I might find my life again, find my way home again. Waterman was the only person I knew of who might be able to explain how a year of that life had vanished from my memory, how I’d gone to sleep one night in my own bed and woken up entangled with the terrorist Homelanders and wanted by the police for the murder of my best friend.

I shouldered my way through the dense crowds, hanging back about half a block behind my man. Waterman was a tall guy, bald except for a fringe of silver hair. His bare head rose above the other people on the sidewalk. It was easy to keep him in sight as he hurried along.

But even as my heart lifted in hope, it was racing in fear.

New York City was like some kind of paranoid nightmare. Okay, probably not for everyone-but definitely for me. The skyscrapers and office buildings rocketing up out of the ground hemmed me in on all sides. They seemed to blot out the sky, leaving only a small strip of iron gray visible between the building tops above. Below, the avenue ran under the rising walls like a narrow canyon between towers of colorless stone. The people and cars pushing through that canyon were crushed together shoulder to shoulder, fender to fender, as if they were in some kind of steel-and-glass stampede. Horns were honking constantly. Sirens sounded every few minutes. Jackhammers stuttered loudly where workmen dug holes in the pavement. The noise was overwhelming.

And everywhere-everywhere-there were faces and eyes. The faces and eyes of ordinary citizens on their way home from work or shopping. The faces and eyes of slinking, sullen, suspicious men who might be my enemies or just city thugs. The faces and eyes of policemen-policemen and more policemen-so many-standing on every corner, sitting in patrol cars parked at the curb, studying the crowds, watchful, alert.

To someone else, maybe to anyone else, it might have all seemed exciting and dazzling and full of energy. But I knew that at any moment, any one of these thousand faces, any pair of those eyes, might turn toward me, might recognize me. At any moment, someone could point a finger and shout, “Look! That’s Charlie West! Get him!”

Up ahead, Waterman turned the corner and vanished from my sight. Afraid of losing him, I pushed through the people around me more quickly, slipping between bodies padded with heavy overcoats and down jackets, brushing by briefcases and purses and shopping bags filled with wrapped boxes. I got to the corner and scanned the scene. There were fewer people on the side street and it was easy to spot Waterman as he hurried along.

I hurried along behind him. One block, then another. As we moved farther and farther from the center of town, the crowds and traffic thinned. There were fewer and fewer people on the street, fewer cars. It became harder- then just about impossible-to hide myself in the crowd. I could only hope that Waterman wouldn’t turn around and see me. Even though I thought he held the secret to my missing year, I didn’t know if he was a friend or an enemy. I was afraid if I confronted him on the street, he would run away-or attack me or turn me in. I just didn’t know. I wanted to follow him for a while and see if I could find out more about him before I approached. I wanted to choose the time and place we met.

It was late November, almost Thanksgiving. The stores were decked with Christmas decorations. There were elaborate displays in some of the windows. I hurried past a Victorian scene with miniature electronic skaters moving over a frozen lake, past a depiction of “The Night Before Christmas” with Santa’s sleigh landing on a rooftop. My eyes strayed over the animated figurines. For the first time, I dared to think that maybe I could be home for the holidays, back with my mother and father, back with my girlfriend Beth for our first Christmas together… or anyway, the first Christmas together that I could actually remember.

I guess my mind sort of drifted as I was thinking about that, daydreaming about it. Because all at once, I came back to the present, I looked ahead of me-and Waterman was gone.

I stopped dead. Desperately, I looked left and right. I was on a street of brownstones, quaint four-story apartment buildings pressed together in a long row, each with a stone stairway leading up to the front door. I scanned the stairways to see if Waterman was going up one of them. I scanned the doors to see if Waterman was going inside. He was nowhere.

I started walking again, started walking faster, nearly running-rushing to get to the last place I’d seen him. I reached the spot on the sidewalk where he’d vanished.

That’s when I saw the alley.

It was a passage of concrete between two brick walls. It ended in a windowless wall of stone. The passage was too narrow for a car. There was nothing in it but a pair of trash cans.

And Waterman. He was there too.

He was standing very still near the alley’s end, his hands in his overcoat pocket. He was waiting there.

He was waiting for me.

I stared at him. I swallowed hard. I guess he’d known I was behind him all along. I guess he was the one who had chosen the place for us to meet.

Well, there was nothing much I could do about it now. I could either speak to him or walk away. And after all this time searching for him, there was no chance I was going to walk away.

My pulse pounding in my head, I started slowly down the alley. I went about halfway and stopped. I stood shivering, my breath frosting in front of me as it hit the cold air.

“Hello, Charlie,” Waterman said. He had a soft southern twang to his voice.

I had to swallow again before I could answer him. “You’re Mr. Waterman.”

“That’s right.”

“And you know me. You know who I am.”

He gave a brief, tight smile. “I know you, Charlie. I know who you are. And I know what’s happened to you. I can explain everything.”

It would be impossible to describe what I felt then. A soaring sense of relief and hope. It was like a gigantic bird of some kind taking flight inside me. Was there really a chance I might be able to stop running, to stop being alone, to stop being afraid? Was there really a chance I could find my life again?

“Tell me,” I said. My voice was hoarse. I could barely get the words out. “Tell me everything.”

With another slight smile, Waterman shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not that easy.” He shifted his gaze, looking past me, looking behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder to see what he was looking at. Another man had entered the alley. He was a heavyset man with broad shoulders and a belly that pressed against the front of his gray overcoat. He had an LA Dodgers baseball cap pulled down low over slickly handsome features: thick lips, a Roman nose, sunken eyes.

Confused, I looked back at Waterman, but Waterman went on looking at the man in the Dodgers cap.

Then Waterman said: “Shoot him.”

I spun around in time to see the man in the Dodgers cap lift a gun and point it at my chest. In the narrow alley there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The man pulled the trigger. I heard the gun whisper, saw the smoke, felt the impact in the center of my chest.

And then I was falling and falling into utter blackness.