Two Graves

2

… ONCE AGAIN, THE MISTS CLEAR, AND THE MAN SMILES. He thumbs the safety off his handgun and takes aim.

“Auf Wiedersehen,” he says. His crooked smile widens as he savors the moment.

The young woman, her hand still in her bag, finds what she needs, grasps it. “Wait. The… the papers. I have them.”

A hesitation.

“The papers from… from Laufer.” She recalls a name she glimpsed on one of the papers, plucked out of her memory at random.

“Impossible! Laufer’s dead.” The man, the Nazi, appears taken aback, the cruel confidence on his face changing into alarm, uncertainty.

Her fingers close around some of the papers, curling them up and partially crushing them, and she lifts them from her handbag, just enough to show the black swastika on the letterhead.

Taking an impatient step forward, the man reaches out to snatch them. But hidden in their wrinkled folds, curled around it, lies her can of Mace, which she scooped up as she gathered the papers together. As he glances down, reaching for the bundle, she lets fly with a blast directly into his face.

The man topples backward with an inarticulate cry, the pistol dropping to the floor as his hands fly to his face, the papers scattering. Snatching them back up, she kicks the gun aside and sprints for the door, running through the altar-like room beyond to the staircase and hurtling down to the second floor, taking the steps three at a time, the heavy knapsack like a millstone around her shoulders. This is where it starts to happen: the feeling of drifting, of heaviness in her legs, of semi-paralysis. From upstairs she hears harsh words, German, guttural, the tread of heavy feet.

She runs past the counterfeiting room, past the bedrooms, hearing always behind her the sound of the man’s pounding feet. She races down to the first floor, gasping from exertion, still strangely slowed as if by molasses and fear, but manages to reach the front door, grasps the handle.

Locked. And all the first-floor windows are barred.

As she turns back, a gun goes off behind her, the round taking a hunk out of the door frame. She flings herself into the sitting room, slipping behind a large display case that stands away from the wall of the room as if in preparation for being removed. Pressing her back against the wall for support, gripping the wainscot rail, she raises her feet and cocks her legs; a second later the man enters and she kicks forward with both legs, heaving the case down onto the man. He leaps to one side as crockery, pewter, books, and glass come crashing, again in slow motion; the man only partially escapes being crushed, the top edge of the falling case catching his knee, knocking him to the floor with a howl of fury.

Leaping over the case, she runs from the dining room. Another shot rings out and she suddenly feels the tug in her side, with a flowering of heat so scorching that the pain of it almost brings her to her knees.

She half runs, half falls down the narrow staircase to the basement, tears past the heap of books, leaps onto the chair she had placed earlier, wriggles out the opening in the window. She hears the thud of footsteps overhead: the man is on the move again, but the tread slower, heavier, favoring one leg.

She thrashes through the ailanthus trees to the rickety table pushed up against the eight-foot brick wall, scales it, kicks it away as she leaps over, landing in her friend Maggie’s backyard.

Here she pauses. All is quiet. Still, she must keep moving. She enters the back patio and then Maggie’s kitchen, closing the door softly behind her and leaving the lights off.

One AM: Maggie wouldn’t be back from work yet. She examines her side, bleeding profusely, and is relieved to find the round only grazed her skin.

Quickly she moves through the dark, silent apartment to the front door. Then—carefully, very carefully—she cracks it and peers out. East End Avenue is quiet, a few cars passing by beneath the soft streetlights. She darts out, closes the door behind her, and scurries northward, scanning the avenue for taxis, her side hurting, shoulder aching under the weight of the knapsack. Not a cab in sight.

And then it happens. Just like all the times before: the screeching of brakes, the slam of a door, the clatter of running feet.

“Halt!” comes the harsh cry. “Hände hoch!”

Another man is running toward her, gun in hand.

With a muffled cry of frustration and despair, she ducks into the closest open doorway: an all-night delicatessen. Even at this late hour it’s full of people, standing at the order counter and helping themselves to the self-serve salad bar. She flies through, knocking down stacks of canned goods, overturning the salad bar and flinging the slippery contents to the ground—anything to slow the man’s advance. The deli erupts in cries of protest. She runs into the back kitchen, charges through an open doorway in the right wall, tears down a short corridor, and bursts into another kitchen, larger and dark: apparently, this second, adjoining building houses a more formal restaurant. She darts into the silent restaurant—past the tables set with white tablecloths, ready for the next day’s diners—unlocks the front door, and finds herself back on East End Avenue, fifty feet from where she started.

She looks around wildly. Still no cabs. It will be only a matter of minutes, maybe seconds, until the Nazi reemerges. Sweeping the scene, her eye catches something in the greenery of Carl Schurz Park on the far side of the avenue: a brick wall, with a closed gate beside it, and—beyond—the yellow bulk of a large, Federal-style building.

Gracie Mansion.

Sprinting across the avenue, she clambers up the crosspieces of the gate and reaches the top of the brick wall. She knows the current mayor doesn’t live here, disdaining the mansion for his own ultra-luxurious apartment—but it will still be well guarded.

Glancing over her shoulder, she sees the second Nazi emerge from the delicatessen. He catches sight of her, breaks into a run.

Cursing her slowness, she slides down the far side of the wall and makes for the mansion. It is dark inside, with floodlights bathing the exterior. She runs toward a uniformed cop standing at one corner of the building.

“Hey, Officer,” she says, trying to control her breathing, shifting her backpack to cover the bloody patch under her arm, “Can you tell me how to get to Times Square?”

The cop stares at her like she’s a madwoman.

She positions herself between the mansion and the policeman. “I got lost and I’m trying to find my way back to my hotel. Can you help me?”

Behind the cop, she sees the second Nazi, peering over the brick wall, staring at them.

The officer frowns at her. “Miss, do you have any idea where you are?”

“Umm… Central Park?”

The officer now looks convinced she’s high on drugs. “This is a restricted area. And you’re trespassing. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”

“Okay, Officer.”

She walks alongside the cop as he leads the way toward the front of the house. Glancing back, she sees that the Nazi has disappeared. Still, she now has to get away from the cop—she can’t risk having her name entered into the official record. She waits until they are near the mansion’s east front. The cop opens the gate with his key, escorting her toward his squad car. She drifts back, lagging. And then, abruptly, she breaks for the line of trees standing along the edge of the park.

“Hey!” the cop shouts. “Come back here!”

But she doesn’t come back. She runs, and runs, through the trees, the deserted streets, the dark avenues, runs until she thinks her heart will explode…

Corrie awoke with a muffled cry. For a moment she was confused, disoriented, with no recollection of where she was. Then she saw the scuffed walls around her, saw the closed door directly in front of her, smelled the odor of old shit, and her memory came flooding back. She had fallen asleep in a stall in the ladies’ room of Penn Station. She had been dreaming again… that same hideous, awful, extended dream, the dream that was not a dream—because it had happened, exactly that way, two weeks earlier.

She shook her head, trying to dispel the fog of fear. Two weeks had gone by. Nothing had happened. Surely she was safe.

She stood up. Her knees protested the movement. Her butt was asleep from sitting on a toilet seat for six hours. At least the bullet graze had healed and her side was no longer sore. Exiting the stall, she washed her face and hands, brushed her teeth and combed her hair with the toiletries she’d purchased in a Duane Reade. She examined herself in the mirror. Two weeks on the street, and a bit of art, had turned her into a filthy, homeless drug addict, for sure.

It was six PM, and Penn Station was bustling—exactly as she’d hoped. For the last two weeks, she had never moved except as part of a crowd. Her eyes roved everywhere, checking for anyone who might be shadowing her, on the alert in particular for that cruel face with the smoked glasses. She had become a street person, hiding in subway stations and churches, sleeping on park benches and highway underpasses, eating Big Macs retrieved from the Dumpster behind McDonald’s after closing time. It was clear enough that she had stumbled across some kind of powerful, organized Nazi group or conspiracy. That was the only explanation for the safe house, for all the apparatus and paperwork—and for the dogged determination with which the men had chased her. They knew she had stolen papers.

Maybe she was overly paranoid, but it seemed likely they would go to any lengths to find and kill her.

She could have gone to the police. But that would have required an explanation of her B&E: a felony that would have ended her career in law enforcement before it even began. And they might not believe her, or the Nazis might have split. Who would believe that Nazis were operating out of a house in twenty-first-century Manhattan?

She had tried to reach Pendergast several times, with no luck. The mansion on Riverside was shut up tight. As she readjusted the now-familiar weight of the knapsack on her shoulder, she reminded herself how important it was to get in touch with him. The papers were important, she felt sure, although having no German of her own she could not be certain.

She’d kept discreet watch on her own apartment building several times and seen no signs of suspicious activity. She was confident they hadn’t found out who she was.

But it wasn’t over. One way or another, she had to get these papers into Pendergast’s hands, tell him about the house. The Dakota apartment would be her next stop.

She made her way down to the Eighth Avenue subway. The station was packed, and a train was just arriving. She hung back, at the far end of the platform, waiting for the train to disgorge its passengers and take on the hordes. She waited longer still, until the train had left the station and the exiting riders had departed, for the surface or for the commuter trains to Long Island and New Jersey. For a few moments, the station was empty. Glancing around one final time, she sat down on the edge of the platform, lowered herself carefully onto the track bed, and then—walking in the path of the quickly dwindling train—vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.