'Yeah.' He nodded. 'I dig it.'
'Good.' She believed him, and she put the gun away but she left the bag open. 'Now we can be friends again, right?'
'Yeah.' Said with a measure of new respect and maybe fear, too.
'I'll follow you. I'm in the van over there.' She motioned to it. Edward started to walk to his red Toyota nearby, but Mary caught his arm. She felt a warm glow of nostalgia rise within her, and it helped to soothe the hurt that Jack wasn't here. 'I love you, brother,' she said, and she kissed his smooth-shaven cheek.
Edward Fordyce looked at her, puzzled and still angry about the frisk. She was off her rocker, that much was clear. Taking the baby had been insane, and put him in as much danger as she was in. He had a pang of wishing he'd never decided to write the message. But Mary was his sister in arms, they had lived and fought and bled together, and she was a link to a younger, more robust life. He said, 'I love you, sister,' and he returned the kiss. He smelled her body odor, she needed a bath.
He got into his Toyota, started the engine, and waited for her to get into the van with the baby. Drummer, she called him. Edward knew the kid's real name: David Clayborne. He'd followed the whole story in the news, but since that plane explosion over Japan the news hadn't given much coverage to Mary and the baby. He pulled out of the parking lot, glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure Mary – big old crazy Mary – was following. He hadn't expected to see Mary Terror step off that boat. Placing the message had been a shot in the dark, but he realized he'd hit a target far greater than he'd ever have hoped.
'Twelve thousand dollars?' he said as he merged into traffic heading for the Williamsburg Bridge. He glanced back; she was still with him, following closely. 'Babycakes,' he said, 'you're going to make me a millionaire.' He grinned, showing capped front teeth.
The Toyota and the van crossed the bridge, along with the flow of other cars, as small flakes of snow began to spin from the clouds.
Part V – The Killer Awoke
1: Damaged Goods
'I think we were followed,' Mary said for the third time as she stood at the window of Edward Fordyce's one-bedroom apartment and looked down on Cooper Avenue. Snow flurries rushed past, shoved by the wind. A pile of trash bags on the street had burst open, and garbage and old papers fluttered along the sidewalk. Mary was feeding Drummer from a bottle of formula, the baby staring up at her with his blue eyes as he suckled on the nipple. She looked left and right along the dismal avenue. 'It was a brown compact car. A Ford, I think.'
'Your imagination,' Edward answered from the kitchen, where he was fixing them canned chili. The building's radiators moaned and knocked. 'Lots of cars in this city, so don't get paranoid.'
'The driver had a chance to pass us a few times. He slowed down.' The nipple popped out of Drummer's mouth, and Mary guided it back in. 'I don't like it,' she said, mostly to herself.
'Forget about it.' Edward came into the front room, leaving the chili to bubble on the stove. He had taken off his overcoat and the jacket of his suit. He was wearing red suspenders – 'braces,' as he called them. 'You want a drink? I've got Miller Lite and some wine.'
'Wine,' she said, still watching out the window for a brown compact Ford. She hadn't been able to get a good look at the driver. She remembered the Knicks fan: he'd come across on the boat with them, and so had the blond-haired girl in the leather jacket. A lot of people had come across too: a dozen Japanese tourists, an elderly couple, and about twenty others as well. Had one or more of them been a pig on her trail? There was another possibility: that someone had been following not her, but Edward. It wouldn't be the first time, would it?
He brought her a glass of red wine and set it on a table while she finished feeding Drummer. 'So,' Edward said, 'you want to tell me why you took the baby?'
'No.'
'Our conversation isn't going to get very far if you don't want to talk.'
'I want to listen,' she said. 'I want you to tell me why you put the message in the papers.'
Edward walked to another window and peered out. No brown compact Ford in sight, but Mary's insistence that they had been followed gave him the creeps. 'I don't know. I guess I was curious.'
'About what?'
'Oh… just to see if anybody would show up. Kind of like a class reunion, maybe.' He turned away from the window and looked at her in the dank winter light. 'It seems like a hundred years ago we went through all that.'
'No, it was only yesterday,' she said. Drummer had finished the formula, and she rested him against her shoulder and burped him, as her mother had demonstrated. Mary had already taken stock of Edward's apartment; he had some nice pieces of furniture that didn't go with the place, and he was dressed better than he lived. Her impression was that he'd had a lot of money at one time, but his money had run out. His Toyota puffed blue smoke from its tailpipe and it had a bashed left rear fender. His shined shoes, though, said he had once walked on expensive floors. 'You're an accountant?' she asked. 'How long?'
'Going on three years. It's an okay job. I can do it with my eyes closed.' He shrugged, almost apologetically. 'I got a business degree from NYU after I went underground.'
'A business degree,' she repeated. A faint smile stole across her face. 'I knew it when I saw you. The Mindfuckers got you, didn't they?'
That familiar scowl creased his face again. 'We were kids then. Naive and dumb in a lot of ways. We weren't living in reality.'
'And now you are?'
'The reality,' Edward said, 'is that everybody has to work to live. There are no free tickets in this world. Don't you know that yet?'
'Has my brother turned into Big Brother?'
'No!' he answered, too loudly. 'Hell, no! I'm just saying we thought everything was black and white back then! We thought we were right and everybody else was wrong. Well, we were fucked up. We didn't see the gray in the world.' He grunted. 'We didn't think we'd ever have to grow up. But you can't fight time, Mary. That's the one thing you can't put a bullet into or blow apart with a bomb. Things change, and you have to change with them. If you don't… well, look what happened to Abbie Hoffman.'
'Abbie Hoffman was always true to a cause,' Mary said. 'He just got tired, that's all.'
'Hoffman got busted selling cocaine!' he reminded her. 'He went from being a revolutionary to being a drug salesman! What cause was he true to? Jesus, nobody cares who Abbie Hoffman was! You know what the true power of this world is? Money. Cash. If you've got it, you're somebody, and if you don't, you get swept away with the garbage!'
'I don't want to talk about this anymore,' Mary said, rocking Drummer in her arms. 'Sweet baby, such a sweet sweet baby.'
'I need a beer.' Edward went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Mary kissed Drummer's forehead. He had an air about him; his diaper needed changing. She took him into the bedroom, laid him down on the bed next to her shoulder bag, and began the task. There was only one more diaper. She was going to have to go out and buy another box of Pampers. As she changed Drummer, she noticed a typewriter on a little desk in the room. The wastebasket had crumpled-up paper in it, squeezed like white fists. She took a wad of paper out and opened it. There were three lines on the paper; My name is Edward Fordyce, and I am a killer. My killing was done in the name of freedom, a long time ago. I was a member of the Storm Front, and on the night of July first, 1972, I was reborn.
Drummer began to cry, uncomfortable and sleepy.
Behind Mary, Edward said, 'The publisher tells me I need a snappy opening paragraph. Something to hook a reader with real quick.'
She looked up at him from the wrinkled paper. Drummer kept crying, the sound hurting her head.
Edward sipped his beer. His eyes seemed darker, his face tight with pressure. 'They say they want a lot of blood in it. A lot of action. They say it could be a best seller.'
Mary crumpled the paper again, into a hard little ball. Her fist clenched around it as Drummer cried on.
