Chapter15

 

 

Chaos!

Everyone screamed something at the same time so nobody could hear what was actually being said.

If anyone was in charge, nobody knew who it was.

Most of the chatter dealt with death and dying, as if the people who sat behind these consoles were the victims rather than the field agents sent to do the actual dirty work.

Somewhere in the mix some voice or another talked about the slaughter the agency had last suffered in Afghanistan, and this voice was answered by other voices saying somebody is going to pay dearly for this.

Still another voice called this the worst disaster for them ever.

Eventually, the voices drew dim and then silent. But this was a chilly silence, one filled with outrage that had taken a new turn.

When the orders finally came, they were crisp and targeted with several clear objectives: Find the target, find the information, find the person responsible for this slaughter, kill everybody.

And seated before his own computer, his stubby fingers poised on the keyboard, he was in tune with his companions, vowing not to cease until he achieved vengeance.

Down again went the drones to scour the landscape.

Then, someone monitoring police frequencies announced: “They’re on a bus.”

 

****************

 

The bus pulled into Pennsylvania Station in the midst of the morning rush hour hubbub. Unlike the station in Manhattan with the same name, commuters here flowed in and out like the tide, rushing in from the PATH train from other parts east or from the host of diesel trains that came to this part of the planet from more distant locations. Many came to occupy the numerous corporate offices that lined the central part of the city, but many came to attend the local colleges and universities, law schools, or on occasion, got off one train to make a connection to another, some from the PATH to trains taking them south or west. Buses like the one Ponci sat it, pulled up into slots inside, dumping their load of passengers into the mix, creating a kind of organized havoc that somehow managed to allow people to get where they were going, but only after a significant amount of jockeying.

Ponci leaded his head against the bus window as the bus came to a half, nodding for a moment before forcing his eyes open again, his eyes so blood shot he almost looked drunk.

He couldn’t remember the bus reaching Newark, only the endless weaving through odd streets and highways, and a long stretch that showed the dull brown water of a very narrow river along one side of the highway and the cluster of ancient manufacturing still being done in this part of the world when banished from more civilized places.

“How long have I been a sleep?” Ponci asked.

“You’ve been nodding off for most of the trip from Hackensack,” Sara said.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I didn’t see the point,” she said.

 “The point is that they’re out there,” Ponci said.

Twisted up in his seat, he struggled to unfold himself, vaguely remembering bits of the trip mingled with strange dreams.

These differed from the usual dreams. He did not hear the voices of the dead, but of people from the past, stirred out of childhood as if dust kicked up by the moving bus wheels along dusty roads.

He kept seeing New York City as it once was, and felt a strange longing to seek out what no longer existed.

Sweat dribbled down into his eyes, stinging them.

“I didn’t see anyone behind us,” Sara said.

“I don’t need to see them to know they are there,” Ponci said.”

“You’re saying they followed us from the motel?”

“Maybe. Or picked up on a police report. Or by some other means.”

“Police Report?”

“Maybe you didn’t notice, but I saw the cops staring after us at the bus station. Frankly, I’m shocked we got this far.

“So what do we do?”

“We get off the bus and try to lose ourselves in the crowd.”

“What about the police?”

“If we’re lucky, we can slip out of the station before they notice we were even there.”

“And then?”

“We do what we came here to do,” Ponci said, then tried to rise.

But the pain rushed through him, making him sway for a moment before he eased back into his seat.

“Are you all right?” Sara asked, moving around him so that she stood finally in the aisle. The other passengers dribbled out the front door.

“As all right as I can expect,” Ponci said, forcing himself up with a grunt. Then, he made his way into the aisle and followed behind Sara as she made her way to the front. He had to clutch the tops of the seats to either side to keep from falling, using them to balance, and then push off against, propelling him towards the front of the bus.

The driver, looking annoyed and anxious, watched Ponci struggle up the aisle, and then, as he made his way down the steps to the platform below.

“He’s going to remember me,” Ponci thought. “He’s going to tell someone later where we went.”

An urge to do what he might normally do came over Ponci, but he suppressed it, knowing that it would be impossible to shoot the driver and not create more problems than it solved.

Once clear, the door closed and the driver turned his attention to moving the bus further up along the curb to where a crowd of passengers waited to load for the return trip to Hackensack.

Sara touched Ponci’s arm. He winced.

“We’ll get you fixed up once we get to where we’re going,” she told him.

“No doctors,” Ponci said. “I can’t go to a doctor with a bullet wound.”

“Trust me, I know people,” Sara said, then clutched his arm and steered him along the platform towards the wide wooden doors that led to the terminal.

“Stay near the wall,” Ponci said. “Out of the vision of the cameras.”

He pointed up the cameras mounted at intervals along all of the walls, those nearest looking out at the crowd. The farthest, Ponci figured, would not be able to make them out clearly enough to identify them – if indeed those he thought were looking were looking.

She did what she was told, leading him the way she might have a blind man, each step careful as to not jolt him as they came out into a time warp.

Newark Penn Station was everything that the New York version had once been, a magnificent tribute to a time when railroads were king, and stations like this needed to serve as palaces with high ceilings decorated with mosaics as powerful as any the Old World had to offer.

This was testimony to Industrial America, and the wealth of the robber barons that had dominated the world after the Civil War’s conclusion, when Newark, not New York, had served as the center of creativity, a kind of Silicone Valley where geniuses like Thomas Edison came to unveil inventions that would change the world.

Unlike New York Penn Station, the Newark version had not yet succumbed to upscale travelers seeking to make their fortune in the big city, but remained more pedestrian, its vast chamber filled with a mingling of wealth and culture, as poor and rich made their way to and from jobs here and elsewhere, while travelers from the heartland stopped here to change from diesel trains to the electric cars that could carry them beneath the Hudson River into the heart of Manhattan.

Under the high arches and illuminated by the vast windows above, humanity in all its shapes surged in every direction, moving towards the PATH and other Manhattan-bound trains or away from them towards the center of the city, bound for jobs or college, or just to make a living servicing the offices and apartment buildings that had cropped up like mushrooms over the last decade or so.

This was familiar turf for Ponci as Sara led him passed the line of concession stands selling everything from newspapers to gyros.

“I can’t remember the last time I was here,” he mumbled.

“I’m surprised you came here at all,” Sara responded, maneuvering him through the crowd, but still following his dictate to remain as close to the wall as possible.

“This was a main thoroughfare for me,” he said. “I’m came through here a lot.”

“You mean on business?”

“Yes.”

“Killing people?”

“Hush,” Ponci hissed. “That’s not the kind of thing you talk about in public. But if you must know, I had other reasons to come here.”

He stumbled and grabbed at a large green trash can to keep from falling. The can fell instead, casting a swath of half empty soda bottles, stained hamburger wrappers and other items across the scuffed marble floor.

“We need to fix you up,” Sara said.

“We need to get the package first,” Ponci said, hisses the words out through his teeth. The pain drained him. He could barely breathe.

“The package won’t be here until later,” Sara said. “So we’ll have time to fix you up first – if that’s all right with you?”

“It’ll have to be,” he mumbled.

She led him on into a waiting room so massive it could have and in fact did contain a small city, filled with the hustle and bustle of people, hawkers selling a variety of goods, transportation employees selling tickets or giving direction, business people, homeless people, mothers with children, occupying rows of stiff-backed wooden benches near the center.

Above, sunlight streaked down through the tinted ceiling glass, giving this whole world a beige glow typical of over exposed old movie films, and shaping the population of this micro-city into a flash back to another time and place more familiar to Ponci. But this was no silent film. The din rose up and echoed off the vast space above, filling everything with a din so deafening Ponci struggled to keep his thoughts in order, people laughing, crying, shouting, overpowered only by the numerous and often repeated public address announcements notifying people of incoming or outgoing trains.

The rumble of rose up through the floor itself, needing no announcement, but to Ponci, seemed ghost-like, and as invasive as the voices of the dead he carried around in his head. In some way, this place was little more than a mausoleum, a burial place for the long gone or yet unaware dead era that would come to a crashing halt when the reality of upscale New York or the ever envious Jersey City finally flowed into this place and consumed it.

And yet, it was not yet a haunted house totally filled with ghosts and memories. Each element here had its function, serving – if not the original purpose – then some facsimile of it, from the grand green ticket counter with the multi-colored glass to the large destination display that flipped over numbers and letters to tell passengers when to expect a train. And below, the humbled masses waited, unaware that time beyond this building moved on, and that they were caught up in an illusion for the brief time they occupied this space.

People cluttered in the corners of the room with suitcases and brief cases, waiting for the announcement that would send them on their way. Still others with apparently longer waits sat on the wooden benches, some with newspapers, some with handheld devices, others simply staring into space, old men, old women, some not so old, nodding off, struggling to keep off sleep, many here just to keep warm against the chill of the day outside.

He and Sara moved slowly, but oddly, didn’t look out of place. She might have been a nurse’s aide, helping one of her aged clients to or from a train. For some reason, the cameras posted on the walls on either side bothered Ponci, as if he was sure they were on the look out for them. Each time, Sara moved out of the prescribed path near the wall, he urged her back. Eventually, however, they came to the green arched doors that led to the street beyond which the parade of yellow cabs waited interspersed with local buses.

Here there was no way to avoid being exposed, and so he urged her to move as quickly as possible, even though each step brought him excruciating pain.

“Grab a cab,” Ponci told Sara when she tried to steer him towards one of the buses. “We need to get out of sight quick.”

Sara yanked open the back door and pushed Ponci inside, letting him get settled before she moved around the cab to the other side and got in, too.

“Where to?” the Latino driver asked, a small man with a tiny old fashion Irish-style hat typical of the waterfront of the 1950s.

“Orange Avenue,” Sara said, then gave him a number.

 

*********************

 

A grim air gripped the whole room as men and women sat before their terminals, searching desperately for clues on the screens.

“Satellite,” the supervisor yelled. “Why am I not getting satellite images?”

Someone mumbled something about heavy clouds and an impending snow storm, someone else mistakenly mumbled something else about a White Christmas, and got a scornful look from the gray-haired supervisor.

The man had abandoned his usual post somewhere in the depths of the building to prowl among the monitors as if too anxious to wait for some verbal report, insisting on being at ground zero to learn the truth at the moment everyone else learned it.

Someone called him “Mr. Berkner,” but nobody knew for certain if that was his real name since so many people in upper management went by names other than their own.

“I don’t care about clouds,” he shouted. “Give me data. The satellites can penetrate clouds.”

“Only to some degree, sir,” a strained and squeaky voice of a nervous technician said.

“Then give me images closer to earth, where are the feeds from the train station?”

“We have them, sir,” another voice said. “But we hadn’t caught any sight of our suspects yet – wait a minute, something is coming up now.”

“What is it?”

“Images from near the west door,” the tech man said. “Yes, it’s him and the woman, leaving.”

“Going out?”

“Yes, we have them on one of the outside cameras. They appear to be getting into a cab.”

“Get a team down there, now, and I want the information on the cab – where it’s taking them, and then I want another team to go there.”

“We might have to wait for the cab to drop them off,” the tech said. “We talk to the cab while they’re in it might alert them.”

“Fine,” the exasperated Berkner mumbled. “Just get a team to the site before they have a chance to disappear again.”

“On it, chief.”

 

****************

 

The cab steered through the glass canyons near the train station – overcast smearing the surface of each new building as if to paint them gray. These buildings ended and the older, more weary-looking building of a more familiar Newark appeared, landmarks that surrounded Military Park and its icons, things as familiar to Ponci as his own home was, grander buildings, the kind that barely clung on in Manhattan, but had put down roots here that would take a nuclear explosion to wedge loose. No Disney had come here yet to reinvent this city as had happened in Times Square.

In fact, this part of Newark looked a lot like old Times Square, absent perhaps the parade of peep shows and line of theater marques. Old stores still operated here, selling cheap clothing and shoddy electronics. Like old Manhattan, stairs to subway platforms decorated some of the street corners. Many of the brick sides of taller buildings bore faded painted signs for long extinct businesses, giving a ghostly presence to the more modern city, and a sense that the city of its forefathers hovered in the background, a spirit world into which a man could enter if he had a strong enough imagination.

Then, this too faded and the cab plunged into the wasteland of vacant lots, scars to a time other places celebrated as “The Summer of Love,” but here was remembered for the riots, leaving a landscape of rubble behind, and justification for some of the wealthier residents to flee the city in one of its last great migrations.

It was up one of these streets that the cab steered, the wasteland evident on both sides until finally, buildings rose again, but an odd assortment – old tenements on one side, a wealthy gated community called “Society Hill” on the other, as if to make very clear how wide the disparity was between rich and poor here.

The cab pulled to a stop a few blocks up where both sides were impoverished, and the sidewalk and gutters were littered with trash, empty bottles, and a sense of despair.

“You have money?” Sara asked Ponci when the cab finally stopped.

Ponci fumbled in his pocket for a wallet, then drew out a few bills with his bloodied fingers, handing these to Sara, who in turn, handed them to the driver.

She got out of the cab first, making her way around the back of the cab so she could open the door for him.

She halted as a tall, thin black man stepped out of the shadows.

“Hey sister Sara, what do you got there?” he asked.

“Someone I need,” she said, and opened the door which Ponci leaned against. He nearly fell out. But she caught him. “Come help me, Len. I got to get him inside.”
Len, in two tall strides, reached the cab in time to grab Ponci’s other arm, and between the two of them, they managed to get Ponci away from the cab and onto the sidewalk.

Sara closed the cab door, and the cab hurried away.

“What’s wrong with him?” Len asked, lifting his 1950s style beatnik glasses to study Ponci more closely.

“He’s been shot.”

“By who?”

“My brother, I think.”

“Your brother? How is Old Square Dave?”

“David is dead.”

“Dead?” Len said, nearly dropping Ponci. “How did that happen?”

“This man killed him,” Sara said. “Now will you stop asking questions and help get him inside. The last thing we need is for the police to see us.”

“All right, all right,” Len said, giving Ponci one more dark look before lowering his sun glasses again, and tightening his grip on Ponci’s arm for the haul from the curb to one of the dark doorways leading into the first floor of the tenement.

Sara fumbled to find the key and then, after opening the outer door, struggled even with Len’s help to get Ponci into the small vestibule just inside.

Len shut the door to the street. Sara leaned Ponci against the wall. The coolness of the tiles seeped through Ponci’s jacket. It distracted him from the pain.

“What the hell did you bring this mother fucker here for, if he’s the guy who killed Dave?” Len asked, vertical lines showing just above the bridge of his nose, his voice loud and filled with rage.

“Because he knows something I need to know,” Sara said.

“Like what?”

“Like the people who hired him to do the killing,” Sara said.

“Luis ain’t going to like you bringing him here,” Len said.

“Fuck Luis,” Sara said. “I nee this guy alive. So you and Luis better go find someone who can fix him up.”

Len nodded, and then moved through another door into the hallway beyond, a dim light hung from the ceiling showing a staircase going up along the left wall, and a string of doors along the right wall marked with numbers.

Ponci could barely see anything, not merely because of the dark, but also because of a haze that had come over him.

Out of one of the apartment doors, another face appeared, an old black woman with a face so wrinkled it looked like well polished wood. She had bright curious eyes that seemed to smile as they looked at the others, and then grew concerned when they looked down at him.

“Abraham! William!” she called out in a thin, but clear voice. “You come out here now.”

Two very large black men came out the apartment door behind her. They were nearly as tall as Len, yet much heftier, and seemed to Ponci, as powerful as defensive line backers. The one called Abraham had an afro hair style. The one called William had shaved his head.

“You want something, momma?” Abraham asked.

“I want you to take this man to the spare room, and be careful with him,” the old woman said.

Then she leaned close to Ponci.

“We’re gonna take care of you, don’t you worry,” she whispered.

“W-Why?” Ponci managed to mutter, his eyes filled with confusion.

“Because we need to and ought to,” the old woman said.

“But I’ve done…”

She laid her hand on his arm.

“We’ve all done thing we think is wrong,” she said. “But you’re hurt, and we’re going to heal you.”

Then, she stepped back and the two large men took up Ponci, holing him between them as they guided him through one door, then another, then up a set of stairs to a long hall, and down that hall passed more numbered doors until they pushed one open, and here, they eased Ponci down onto a bed.
Several women appeared along with Sara and the old woman, chasing the men out. They slowly undressed Ponci. When Sara tried to take his pistol, he grabbed her hand.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Let it go, Harold,” Sara whispered. “You’re too weak to use it anyway.”

Slowly, his fingers loosened his grip. She took the weapon, crossed the room and placed it in the top drawer of a dresser, his stare following every move she made.

The other women worked at removing his blood soaked garment, with him cringing in pain when they came to remove the shirt. This was pasted to his skin with dried blood.

the old woman shooed them away, too, putting both of her hands onto Ponci’s wounded side, her wrinkled fingers splayed across the wide wound area as she squinted down at it.

“This is going to hurt a little,” she said. “But we have to get the shirt off.”

He gave a brief jerk of his head.

But she was gentle, and even though he felt agony at her slowly removing of the fabric, she soothed him the whole time.

The cleared wound began to ooze fresh blood.

Other hands bearing a bowl and rags came, moistening the wound, slowly and carefully, washing away the dried blood.

A door opened beyond the women, and men’s voices sounded. A middle aged black man appeared, gray hair near his ears, and a slight bulge at his middle. He wore a suit with vest and tie a half century of date and carried a black bag that was also a generation or more out of date, symbol of a medical man that has ceased to exist in modern America, but still somehow clung to portions of the world where poor people needed his kind.

He laid the bag on the foot of the bed, and frowned at Ponci through thick round bifocals.

“Let’s see what we got here,” he said, and squinted at Ponci’s wound. He muttered “No good. This man needs a hospital. This wound is infected.”

“We can’t take him to a hospital,” Sara said. “They will be watching the hospitals.”

“They?” the doctor said, glancing up and across the bed to where Sara stood. “You mean the police?”

“And others.”

“I don’t know what mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Sister Sara. But I can tell you it won’t lead to any good.”

“What it leads to, I hope, are the men who ordered this man to kill my brother – so I need him alive so he can lead me to them.”

“What makes you think he will?”

“They owe him money, and we have something they want.”

“It sounds like a good way to get yourself killed,” the doctor said. “I’ll do what I can for him. But I can’t guarantee much. If he stays put for a few days, he might heal. But if he goes off and does what I think you two need to do, then he’ll get worse, not better, and might die on you before you get what you want.”

“He’s my only hope,” Sara said.

Again, the doctor nodded, opened his bag and fished out a box with a syringe in it, and then drew a bottle out of the bag as well. He poked the needle into the top of the bottle and drew clear liquid into the syringes. He injected this into Ponci’s arm. Then, he repeated the act with another bottle, injecting this into a number of places around the wound.

From the bag, he drew out a tube of ointment and spread this over the wound as well.

“I’ll give him some stitches,” the doctor said. “But they won’t hold long if he starts walking around. If he’s here for a day or two, I want you to wash the wound three or four times a day. I’ll give you a prescription you can get filled for him that will help reduce the infection.”

Finally, with the wound covered with gauze and tape, the doctor straightened, repacked his bag, and said, “That’s all I can do for him.”

Then, he looked at Sara again.

“If you go on with this, I don’t expect to see either one of you again,” he said.

“Then you won’t see me,” Sara said.