The Last Six Million Seconds

“A backpacker they picked up in Thailand. Just some kid. They told her they were going to use her to smuggle heroin from Hong Kong to New York.”

“And now he knows for certain that his own men were shredded?”

“After today, when you found the real couriers? Of course he knows for certain. I phoned him and told him myself, gleefully. I couldn’t resist. I mean I really rubbed it in.”

“You know Xian?”

Lee shrugged. “We do a little business from time to time.” He spit on the floor. “So what? I do business with the 14K, but I still hate them.”

Chan buried his head in his hands.

53

Forty-nine was too old to feel girlish excitement at the bleep of a fax machine-unless you happened to be a child of the sixties. One advantage of belonging to the generation that never grew up is that you never grow up. Moira guessed the fax was from Charlie. For a start, he was the only person she knew on the other side of the world working at 2:00 A.M. New York time. Secondly, he was the only person who sent her faxes, junk mail excluded. There was no reason for him not to fax at this hour; the fax machine’s single ring would not have woken her. But she’d not gone to sleep. Maybe insomnia was contagious. Charlie never slept either. Maybe it was age. Just because you don’t grow up doesn’t mean you don’t grow old, unfortunately.

She stood by the machine which she’d installed in the tiny spare bedroom-Clare’s room-that she now called her office. With a sound between squeaking and rolling the thin, curly paper emerged into the tray. She started to read even before the guillotine chopped it. Surely there was more?

When the machine didn’t bleep again, she reread the stark, cruel message and trembled.

She went to the kitchen to find the bourbon, downed a glass in one swallow, poured another. So she was dead after all, and Charlie had turned cold. In a way Clare had died a long time ago, and there was only so much mourning you could do for a smack addict who wasn’t going to see forty. Even so, she could not stop the flashbacks. Clare had been such a cute kid, and so smart. In another city in another world she might have done something wonderful with her life. Moira went back to the living room, which was not much bigger than Charlie’s. She opened a window, looked down on the street. Jump or scream? She gave the world a lungful of abuse, closed the window, finished the glass of bourbon. There were choices, though, Clare. It wasn’t all the fault of the world. I begged you to quit, begged you.

Taking a fresh glass to Clare’s room, she yelled at the walls: I tried to save you. I gave you everything I had. Everything. I lied for you. I cheated for you. Why wasn’t that enough? Love is supposed to be enough, goddamn you. Whatever the circumstances, it was the smack that killed you. Did you have to be so fucking weak?

The glass was empty again. She returned to the kitchen, poured a fresh slug, collapsed into a chair. I did all I could to save her. In a way, losing Charlie was a crueler blow.

But Charlie was not cruel, merely very angry. How could she blame him? He’d caught her in another lie, a big one this time, those phony dental records they had persuaded her to take to Hong Kong. But it’s not the way you think, Charlie. I never joined the mob; I was only trying to save my baby.

Two more bourbons later she made a decision. She had told herself she wasn’t going to watch Mario die at Mount Sinai. He had had a whole life full of women who could do that for him. She didn’t need more grief because grief was what she’d had a whole life full of. But now she would. And before he died, he would talk because she needed him to help her save her last relationship. There wasn’t going to be anyone after Charlie. You knew things like that when you were pushing fifty.

Despite the hour, she telephoned the hospital. She used her old cop voice and her old cop manner to bully her way through to Mario, who wasn’t asleep anyway and was glad to hear from her. He appreciated the opportunity to say good-bye to the only real love of his life he said, that schmoozer.

It was after nine in the morning by the time she had woken from a drunken sleep, washed, taken a couple of Tylenol for the hangover, telephoned for a cab, walked the four flights down from her apartment and was waiting on the pavement. She saw them in her makeup mirror as she was checking her mascara, two black kids no more than thirteen or fourteen; not small, though. You had to know the streets to read them: a downward glance exchanged, a whisper, a nod toward her handbag. She waited until they were nearly upon her in a run, then turned, kneed one in the groin and with an open palm thrust straight fingers into the other’s windpipe. She had to step over them (one writhing, the other coughing, both amazed) to reach the cab that was drawing up to the curb. The driver barely stopped moving for her to get in, then accelerated away while she was still closing the door.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” The driver had a thick accent that Moira could not quite place. “I saw from across the street.”

She scowled. “Kids around here, you know-”

“I mean, they coulda had guns. Even if they didn’t have them, they could get them. Now they know where you live.”

Moira smiled. She never waited outside her own apartment house. The address she’d given to the taxi company was ten doors away. Streetcraft, you never really forgot it. She was pleased with herself. Love gave you the strength to fight back; experience gave you the technique. Come to think of it, forty-nine didn’t need to be such a bad age for a woman. I’ve found a man worth fighting for.

“What accent is that?” she asked the driver, to be polite.

“Georgian. Georgia, ex-USSR, not USA.”

Russian to her. When she was very young, the cabdrivers had sometimes been Russian, refugees from communism. Now they were Russians again, refugees from the new capitalism. It made you feel as if you’d lived through a condensed historical cycle in which everything had happened except civilization. She’d tell Charlie; he appreciated that kind of talk. They had a faxual relationship. She forgot which of them had thought up that bad joke. Love was weird. A daughter dead again, a hangover like a hatchet through the skull, about to visit a terminally ill ex-husband-and she felt terrific because she had a fight worth winning. Trust me, Charlie, I can explain. And don’t get killed, okay?

She talked to the driver about the Bronx-these days some of it was still like a circle of hell so famous they were selling tickets in purgatory-and looked out the window as they crossed the bridge into Manhattan. Traffic on the Harlem River crawled over slatecolored water shading up to light gray where the sun penetrated the clouds. Something about boats and rivers that didn’t change the way cars and roads did. She’d been proud of this city once, still was up to a point. There were angles and perspectives, traditions even, that were timeless and gave the illusion that you were part of something of permanent value. But the truth was, its soul was shriveling. It was dirty. She’d watched while bluntness gave way to rudeness gave way to hostility gave way to homicidal rage, all in about thirty years. When brutality became the only effective means of communication with your fellow citizen, it was time to get out. Hong Kong? You’d better do some explaining first, girl.

The daydream stopped with the cab at Mount Sinai. When she told them what room Mario was in, the reception became tangibly more polite. She stood in the elevator, fuming just a little with an old rage: Captain in the NYPD and he gets a five-thousand-dollar-a-night room in Mount Sinai to die in.

The anger faded, though, when she saw him. The dextrose IV drip that stood by the bed on a pole wasn’t hooked up to his body; the limpness of the plastic tube hanging down from it was a kind of analogue for the limpness of his two arms, which lay in parallel on the covers. She averted her eyes while she tried to catch up with the devastation that three short weeks had wrought on that fine body.

She bit her lip as she approached the bed. This was going to be more difficult than she’d expected. Damn it, women were different from men, no matter what they said. More than two decades before this womanizing crook had reached her, and she still didn’t know how to forget that; any man would have been able to kill that soft spot she felt opening somewhere in her guts, but she couldn’t. She sat down in one of the chairs by the bed. He’d lost a lot of his hair too.

“Thanks for coming.” The voice was thin and faint, the smile forced. She could see from his eyes, though, that his mind was still alert.