“This will take some doing.”
Eph said, “We need this now. Right now.”
“Ephraim, what you have presented me with here is bizarre and unsettling, but it is apparently isolated. I know you are concerned for the health of a colleague, but securing a federal order of quarantine means that I have to request and receive an executive order from the president, and I don’t carry those around in my wallet. I don’t see any indication of a potential pandemic just yet, and so I must go through normal channels. Until that time, I do not want you harassing these other survivors.”
“Harassing?” said Eph.
“There will be enough panic without our overstepping our obligations. I might point out to you, if the other survivors have indeed become ill, why haven’t we heard from them by now?”
Eph had no answer.
“I will be in touch.”
Barnes went off to make his calls.
Nora looked at Eph. She said, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” She could see right through him.
“Don’t go looking up the other survivors. Don’t screw up our chance of saving Jim by pissing off this lawyer woman or scaring off the others.”
Eph was stewing when the outside doors opened. Two EMTs wheeled in an ambulance gurney with a body bag set on top, met by two morgue attendants. The dead wouldn’t wait for this mystery to play itself out. They would just keep coming. Eph foresaw what would happen to New York City in the grip of a true plague. Once the municipal resources were overwhelmed — police, fire, sanitation, morticians — the entire island, within weeks, would degenerate into a stinking pile of compost.
A morgue attendant unzipped the bag halfway — and then emitted an uncharacteristic gasp. He backed away from the table with his gloved hands dripping white, the opalescent fluid oozing from the black rubber bag, down the side of the stretcher, onto the floor.
“What the hell is this?” the attendant asked the EMTs, who stood by the doorway looking particularly disgusted.
“Traffic fatality,” said one, “following a fight. I don’t know…must have been a milk truck or something.”
Eph pulled gloves from the box on the counter and approached the bag, peering inside. “Where’s the head?”
“In there,” said the other EMT. “Somewhere.”
Eph saw that the corpse had been decapitated at the shoulders, the remaining mass of its neck splattered with gobs of white.
Eph drew the zipper all the way down to the bottom seam. The headless corpse was overweight, male, roughly fifty. Then Eph noticed its feet.
He saw a wire wound around the bare big toe. As though there had been a casualty tag attached.
Nora saw the toe wire also, and blanched.
“A fight, you say?” said Eph.
“That’s what they told us,” said the EMT, opening the door to the outside. “Good day to you, and good luck.”
Eph zipped up the bag. He didn’t want anyone else seeing the tag wire. He didn’t want anyone asking him questions he couldn’t answer.
He turned to Nora. “The old man.”
Nora nodded. “He wanted us to destroy the corpses,” she remembered.
“He knew about the UV light.” Eph stripped off his latex gloves, thinking again of Jim, lying alone in isolation — with who could say what growing inside him. “We have to find out what else he knows.”
Setrakian counted thirteen other men inside the room-size cage with him, including one troubled soul with fresh scratches on his neck, squatting in the corner and rubbing spit vigorously into his hands.
Setrakian had seen worse than this, of course — much worse. On another continent, in another century, he had been imprisoned as a Romanian Jew in World War II, in the extermination camp known as Treblinka. He was nineteen when the camp was brought down in 1943, still a boy. Had he entered the camp at the age he was now, he would not have lasted a few days — perhaps not even the train ride there.
Setrakian looked at the Mexican youth on the bench next to him, the one he had first seen in booking, who was now roughly the same age Setrakian had been when the war ended. His cheek was an angry blue and dried black blood clogged the slice beneath his eye. But he appeared to be uninfected.
Setrakian was more concerned about the youth’s friend, lying on the bench next to him, curled up on his side, not moving.
For his part, Gus, feeling angry and sore, and jittery now that his adrenaline was gone, grew wary of the old man looking over at him. “Got a problem?”
Others in the tank perked up, drawn by the prospect of a fight between a Mexican gangbanger and an aged Jew.
Setrakian said to him, “I have a very great problem indeed.”
Gus looked at him darkly. “Don’t we all, then.”
Setrakian felt the others turning away, now that there would be no sport to interrupt their tedium. Setrakian took a closer look at the Mexican’s curled-up friend. His arm lay over his face and neck, his knees were pulled up tight, almost into a fetal position.
Gus was looking over at Setrakian, recognizing him now. “I know you.”
Setrakian nodded, used to this, saying, “118th Street.”
“Knickerbocker Loan. Yeah — shit. You beat my brother’s ass one time.”
“He stole?”
“Tried to. A gold chain. He’s a druggie shitbag now, nothing but a ghost. But back then, he was tough. Few years older than me.”
“He should have known better.”
“He
Setrakian said, “The first week I took over the shop, someone broke my front window. I replaced it — and then I watch, and I wait. Caught the next bunch who came to break it. I gave them something to think about, and something to tell their friends. That was more than thirty years ago. I haven’t had a problem with my glass since.”
Gus looked at the old man’s crumpled fingers, outlined by wool gloves. “Your hands,” he said. “What happened, you get caught stealing once?”
“Not stealing, no,” said the old man, rubbing his hands through the wool. “An old injury. One I did not receive medical attention for until much too late.”
Gus showed him the tattoo on his hand, making a fist so that the webbing between his thumb and forefinger swelled up. It showed three black circles. “Like the design on your shop sign.”
“Three balls is an ancient symbol for a pawnbroker. But yours has a different meaning.”
“Gang sign,” said Gus, sitting back. “Means thief.”
“But you never stole from me.”
“Not that you knew, anyway,” said Gus, smiling.
Setrakian looked at Gus’s pants, the holes burned into the black fabric. “I hear you killed a man.”
Gus’s smile went away.
“You were not wounded? The cut on your face, you received from the police?”
Gus stared at him now, like the old man might be some kind of jailhouse informer. “What’s it to you?”
Setrakian said, “Did you get a look inside his mouth?”
Gus turned to him. The old man was leaning forward, almost in prayer. Gus said, “What do you know about
