the city. There were other parts of the city, five of them, called boroughs. One of these boroughs was the island he had heard of since he was a boy, the island where his son worked, Manhattan. It was all very confusing to an outsider, Waclaw thought.
Waclaw had an international driver's license. His task had been simple: he would drive the five blocks to the train station, park in the lot and wait for his son to come home from work. Then his son would drive them to the hospital.
Waclaw had not made it to the parking lot.
The rain had made driving so treacherous that Waclaw had driven off the road. He saw a brown patch of mud and water in front of him, lost control of the car and drove into what looked like a river or a lake. The engine stopped. The lights went out. The car surrendered to the rain, began drifting out into the river.
Then Waclaw could feel the car sliding slowly down farther into the water.
He tried to get out. The pressure of the water and the angle at which he sat made it impossible to open the door. His panic increased. But then the car had stopped moving, with the water level at the bottom of the window.
And so there he had sat for four hours, according to his waterproof watch, while the rain pounded on the roof of the car and he fruitlessly scanned the shore for possible signs of help.
Waclaw was hungry. He was tired. He needed a shave. He probably needed a new liver.
The rain continued to fall.
Then he had an idea. He slowly opened the window. Water and rain blew in. Waclaw, who was lean and taut, eased his way through the window and took off his shoes, which would weigh him down. He looked toward the shore. He didn't think he could swim that far- he could barely swim at all- but he could float on his back. So that was what he did. Better that than sitting around and waiting for help that might never come. He eased into the rushing river, floating into darkness and a rain that tried to pelt him under.
Arthur Alexson was hunched over, head into the wind and rain. He had cut a hole in a large piece of clear plastic he had found in an empty furniture box. It made a fine poncho, though it whipped around hard and with a snap when the wind caught it. He had tied a length of frayed cord around the makeshift poncho the way he had seen Sylvester Stallone do it in the first Rambo movie.
Arthur Alexson had a home, at least for now. The house he lived in was for sale. The people who owned it had moved somewhere. It was a nice house on a nice street with a basement window that didn't lock and which he entered after dark. He kept the finished basement clean and never went upstairs.
Arthur Alexson had left the house that morning, head and body bent over into the wind and rain in search of food. He had money, forty dollars, hard earned, asking for handouts right in front of the Fulton Street and Hoyt- Schermerhorn Street subway station entrances. It took him fifteen days to accumulate that much money, but what else did he have to do? He had spent five of his forty dollars for the goods he now hugged under the makeshift plastic poncho.
As he walked carefully along the muddy bank of the creek, Arthur noticed a spot of white drifting past him, heading for the East River. Arthur stopped. No doubt. It was a man, and the son-of-a-bitch was alive.
'I'll get you,' called Arthur, as the pale man floating on his back flowed closer.
The man called back something in Chinese or Russian or some such shit.
Arthur ran ahead of the man, heading in the direction in which the man was floating. Slipping in the muddy embankment, almost sliding into the water, worrying about snakes, which he hated, Arthur searched until he found a broken tree branch. It wasn't much and it wasn't all that long, but it was that or watch that poor bastard float away.
Arthur very reluctantly put his plastic bag of food down after quickly tying the top. Then he held out the branch and shouted into the rain, 'Over here. Here. Here.'
Waclaw heard the voice and began to paddle awkwardly toward it even though he didn't understand the words. The waterway had narrowed, and Waclaw thought that even with his poor swimming skills he might be able to make it to the source of the voice.
'Come on. Come on. You can do it,' called Arthur.
Waclaw neared the shore and felt something against his chest. It scratched and cut. He grabbed it and Arthur Alexson pulled him in and then grabbed his outstretched arms to drag Waclaw onto the embankment.
When he was sure the man was safe and wouldn't slip back in, Arthur sat and panted. He looked over his shoulder. His bag of groceries was still there.
'That was close,' he said.
Waclaw, too exhausted to move, thanked him in Polish.
'You're welcome,' said Arthur, shaking his head and taking off his poncho. He covered the man with it and said, 'What's your name?'
Waclaw took his wallet out of his pants, reached into it and pulled out a card. Arthur looked at it.
'This is my father. His name is Waclaw and he does not speak English. My cell phone number is 1-888-000- CHEM.'
The name printed at the bottom was Alvin Havel.
Mac pressed the top of the mouse and the screen of James Feldt's laptop appeared with a musical hum. The computer sat on Mac's desk next to a cup of hot herbal tea.
The tickle in his throat had become a discernible soreness. He didn't have to use a thermometer, but he knew that he had a temperature.
He knew that cold and flu viruses came from human-to-human transmission and were not caused by cold or damp weather. Mac had also concluded, with reservations, that cold and wet weather might well create conditions under which the cold virus was more easily transmitted.
In any case, Mac Taylor had a sore throat and a cold and maybe some kind of flu. He drank some of the lukewarm tea and examined the computer screen.
Columns of numbers faced him each with an identification attached: 'Woodrow Shelton, June Billing, $14,234; Monica Kobilski, June Billing, $18,333.'
What interested Mac was the last entry on the page. It was a note that read:
*Primary associate billing and carryover billing adjusted is %12.23 higher than adam
Adam. Lowercase. No period. Mac could imagine a number of ways to end the sentence including something like 'higher than adam predicted.' But this was the last thing Feldt had written. 'adam.' No time for capitalization?
The tea soothed for a few seconds. Mac took a bottle of aspirin from his desk, removed three tablets and downed them with the help of the tea. Then he popped a lemon lozenge into his mouth.
Mac pressed more keys and pulled up the photos of the two mutilation victims. He scanned the photos and found the ones that showed the letters
Time of death. Of course. If it hadn't been for the semi-fog of the flu, he would have seen it earlier. The body of Patricia Mycrant had been found first, a
Were there going to be four victims? Another
