Ricky had threatened to harm her mother. A sick, elderly lady. Her bargaining power was that she still had in her possession the riches Ricky desperately wanted. She needed to keep reminding herself that she held all the nuts.
Ricky could bluster all he wanted.
Except…
She sank her face into her hands. She wasn’t dealing with someone normal. Ricky was more like a machine.
The voice almost made her jump out of her skin.
‘Are you OK? Can I help you, madam?’
A young assistant in a suit and tie, with a lapel badge giving his name as Jason, was standing at the entrance to the shower. She looked up at him.
‘I – I…’
He had a kind face and suddenly she felt close to tears. Thinking rapidly, a half-formed plan vaguely taking shape, sounding as weak as she could, she said, ‘I don’t feel very well. Is it possible someone could call me a taxi?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ He looked at her in concern. ‘Would you rather an ambulance?’
She shook her head. ‘No, a taxi, thanks. I’ll be fine when I get home. I just need to lie down.’
‘We have a staff rest area,’ he said in a sympathetic voice. ‘Would you like to go there and wait?’
‘Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.’
Glancing around warily for any sight of Ricky, she followed him through a side door and into a tiny canteen, where there was a row of chairs against the wall with a low table in front of them, some tea- and coffee-making equipment, a small fridge and a biscuit tin.
‘Would you like anything?’ he asked. ‘Some water?’
‘Water,’ she said, nodding her head.
‘I’ll phone a taxi, then I’ll get you some water.’
‘Do you have a side entrance it could come to? I – I’m not sure I could make it all the way back through the store.’
He pointed at a door she hadn’t noticed, which had an illuminated RE EXIT sign above it.
‘Staff entrance,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell it to come there.’
‘You’re very kind.’
Ten minutes later, Jason came to tell her the taxi was outside. She drained the last of her water, then, acting the part of the sick lady, walked slowly out through the door and climbed into the rear of a turquoise and white Streamline taxi, thanking the young assistant again for his kindness.
The driver, an elderly man with a shock of white hair, closed the door for her.
She gave him the address of her mother’s flat in Eastbourne before sinking down low in her seat, so she could just see out but hopefully not be seen, and pulling her jacket up over her head.
‘Like me to put the heating up higher?’ the driver asked.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she replied.
She looked hard for Ricky or the rental Ford as they drove out through the car park. No sign of him. Then, at the top of the incline, as they reached the junction with the main road, she saw the car. The driver’s door was open and Ricky was standing beside it looking around. His face, beneath his baseball cap, was a mask of fury.
She shrank down, below the level of the window, and covered her head completely with her jacket. Then she waited until she felt the taxi pulling away, making a right turn up the hill, before sitting far enough up to be able to see out of the rear window. Ricky was looking away from her, scanning the car park.
‘Please go as quickly as you can,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a good tip.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ the driver said.
She heard classical music playing on the radio. Something she recognized: Verdi’s ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’. Ironically, this was one of her mother’s favourite pieces. A curious coincidence. Or was it a sign?
She believed in omens, always had. She had never bought into her parents’ religious convictions, but she had always been superstitious. How strange it was that this was playing, right at this moment.
‘Nice music,’ she said.
‘I can turn it down.’
‘No, please, turn it up.’
The driver obliged.
She dialled her mother’s number again. As it started ringing, she heard the insistent beep of an incoming call. Which could only be one of two people. The wording
She hesitated. Tried to think clearly. Could it be her mother? Unlikely, but…
But…
She continued hesitating. Then she accepted the call.
‘OK, bitch, very funny! Where are you?’
She hung up. Shaking. The sick feeling back in the pit of her stomach.
The phone rang again. Same Private number. She killed it.
And again.
Then she realized she could play this a lot more cleverly and waited for it to ring again.
But it remained silent.
71
Nothing in his life prepared Ronnie for the devastation that lay ahead of him as he made his way from the subway station towards the vicinity of the World Trade Center. He’d thought he had some idea of what it might be like from all he had seen on Tuesday with his own eyes, and on television subsequently, but experiencing it now was shaking him to the core.
It was just past noon. His hangover from his drinking binge with Boris yesterday wasn’t helping and the smell of the dusty air was making him very queasy. It was the same rank stench that he’d woken up to in Brooklyn these past two days, but far stronger here. A slow line of emergency and military vehicles moved down the street. A siren wailed in the distance and there was a constant cacophony of roaring and clattering from helicopters hovering what seemed like just feet above the tops of the skyscrapers on either side of him.
At least the time he had invested in his new best friend had not been in vain. Indeed, he was beginning to look upon him as his local Mr Fixit. The forger Boris had recommended lived just a ten- minute walk from his new lodgings. Ronnie had been expecting to enter dingy, back-street premises and find a wizened old man with an eye-piece and inky fingers. Instead, in a smart, bland office in a modernized walk-up, he had met a good-looking, expensively suited and very pleasant Russian man of no more than thirty, who could have passed for a banker or a lawyer.
For five thousand dollars, fifty per cent in advance, which Ronnie had handed over, he was going to provide Ronnie with the passport and the visa he wanted. Which left Ronnie with about three thousand dollars net. Enough to tide him over for a while, if he was careful. Hopefully the stamp market might recover soon, although the world stock markets were still in freefall today, according to the morning news.
But all this was small beer compared to the riches that awaited him if his plan succeeded.
A short distance ahead there was a barrier across the road, with the bar raised for the convoy of vehicles to pass through. Two young soldiers manned it, facing his way. They wore dusty combat fatigues and GI helmets, and were holding machine guns in an aggressive stance, as if they were intending to find something to shoot at soon in the new War on Terrorism.
A crowd of what looked like tourists, among them a group of young Japanese teenagers, stood staring, taking photographs of just about everything – the dust-coated store fronts, the sheets of paper and flakes of ash that lay ankle deep in places on the street. There seemed to be even more grey dust than on Tuesday, but the ghosts were less grey. They looked more like people today. People in shock.
A woman in her late thirties with matted brown hair, wearing a smock and flip-flops, with tears streaming down her cheeks, was weaving in and out of the crowd, holding up a photograph of a tall, good-looking man in a shirt and tie, saying nothing, just looking at each person in turn, silently imploring one of them to give a sudden nod of recognition. Yeah, I remember that guy, I saw him, he was fine, he was heading…
Just before he reached the soldiers, he saw on his left a hoarding with dozens of photographs taped to it. Most were close-ups of faces, a few of them mounted on Stars and Stripes backgrounds. They had clear cellophane wrapped round to rainproof them and all bore a name and handwritten messages, the most common of which was: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?
‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t go past here.’ The voice was polite but firm.
‘I’ve come down to work on the pile,’ Ronnie said, putting on a phoney American accent. ‘I heard they’re needing volunteers.’ He looked at the soldiers quizzically, glancing warily at their guns. Then, in a choked voice, he said, ‘I got family – in the South Tower on Tuesday.’
‘You and most of New York, buddy,’ said the older of the soldiers. He gave Ronnie a smile, a kind of helpless, we’re-all-in-this-shit-together smile.
A backhoe excavator, followed by a bulldozer, rumbled through the barrier.
The other soldier pointed a finger down the street. ‘Make a left, first left, you’ll see a bunch of tents. They’ll kit you out, tell you what to do. Be lucky.’
‘Yeah,’ Ronnie said. ‘You too.’
He ducked under the barrier and, after only a few more strides, the whole vista of the devastated area started opening up before him. It reminded him of pictures he had once seen of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.
He turned left, unsure of his bearings, and followed the street for a short distance. Then, ahead of him, the Hudson suddenly appeared, and right by the river he saw a whole makeshift encampment of stalls and tents at the edge of a massive area of rubble.
