At that moment, almost as though his appearance had been triggered by my thinking of him, I spotted Dave at the far end of
the car. The shock made me gasp loudly. If anyone had noticed, which was unlikely, he would probably have surmised that the
fat man in front of me had stepped on my foot. But all thoughts of personal discomfort were forgotten as I gazed at the mundane
but unlikely figure down the car. Like me he was standing, pinned by people on all sides. He hadn’t seen me, or if he had
he was being careful to conceal the fact. Each time the train and its sardinelike cargo lurched briefly to the right or left
I lost sight of him, but each time he came back into view he was still staring vacantly at some tall black man’s leather-jacketed
back about an inch from his nose.
Every imaginable way of attracting his attention ran through my head, and just as swiftly I discarded them. The prospect of
fighting my way down the car to where he stood was frankly a physical impossibility. And even if I shouted his name I probably
wouldn’t be heard over the noise of the train; I would simply become, to the people around me, one of those New York embarrassments
that you pretend you haven’t noticed and try to avoid making eye contact with.
Then, as the train slowed, I saw him begin edging his way toward the doors. He was obviously getting out at the next station,
and I prepared to do likewise.
The crowd on the platform was even worse than in the train. I lost sight of Dave almost at once and could only struggle inch
by inch in the general direction I’d last seen him headed. Eventually things thinned out a little, and when I reached the
foot of an escalator I briefly glimpsed him stepping off the top. By the time I got there he had disappeared. There were three
tunnels I had a choice of going down; most people were heading for the one to the left, so I took a chance and went that way.
Sure enough, pushing through the exit gate up ahead I saw the familiar white T-shirt and long greasy hair. I put on a sprint
that should have had me catch up with him before he hit the street.
But when I reached the open air there was no sign of him. I looked desperately around in all directions, then took a chance
and headed for a nearby intersection. My instincts had carried me in the right direction, because I glimpsed him on the far
side, diagonally across from me and walking away. Defying the traffic and a good deal of angry honking and hollering, I made
it across and managed to keep him in my sights. I caught up with him at the next corner. He spun around in obvious alarm when
my hand descended on his shoulder—as well he might, because he was a total stranger.
“Hey, what the fuck is this? What do you want?” He squirmed out of my grasp as though I was about to sexually assault him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “my mistake. Did you just come out of the subway?”
“What the fuck is that to you? Get away from me, I don’t know you!”
He scurried away, glancing nervously over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t following him. I stood there,
cursing silently. Could I really have been that mistaken in the subway car? It was possible. I’d only had a brief glimpse
of the man I’d thought was Dave. More precisely several brief glimpses, my view of him constantly obscured by the swaying
bodies between us.
Or could it really have been Dave down there, but I’d lost him somewhere in the labyrinth of stairs and tunnels, then picked
up on this total stranger who coincidentally bore some resemblance to him?
I walked on despondently for a few blocks, then remembered Lou and glanced at my watch. The traffic was still solid, so I
looked around for the nearest subway entrance. And as I did so I forgot all about Lou.
Because there, directly opposite me across the street, painted in small but distinct white characters, was the number 444.
D
espite an impulse to plunge into the traffic that rumbled past only inches from where I stood, I remained rooted to the sidewalk,
staring as though afraid that if I blinked or looked away even for a second, then what I had seen might vanish. Subliminally
I registered that the lights had changed and the “Walk” sign was green. I crossed with the crowd who’d been waiting, keeping
my gaze fixed on that clear white “444.”
I could see there was some sort of engraved plaque of polished brass on the wall. As I drew closer I was able to make out
the words “Beacon Trust.”
My hand slid almost of its own accord into the pocket of my coat where it closed around the card that I had put there as I
left the apartment. Had I known that I would need it? Was something taking its course regardless of anything I did or thought
or wanted?
The door to “Beacon Trust” consisted of two vertical capsules made of thick unbreakable glass. One was for entering, the other
for leaving. Only one person at a time could do either. I watched as a man inserted a card like my own into the slot provided.
The capsule swiveled open and he stepped in, paused a moment as it shut, then the other half opened and he entered the building.
I stepped up to the door and inserted my card as he had, praying that I wasn’t going to find that the codes had changed and
the card I had was out of date. It worked. The capsule slid smoothly open, I stepped in, waited, then stepped through into
a polished marble lobby.
A couple of armed guards were on duty but paying no particular attention either to me or any of the trickle of individuals
who came and went in various directions. I looked around, getting my bearings. A rather grand staircase wound up from one
end of the lobby to a higher floor where, I suspected, I would find offices—which were not what I was looking for. Nearby
was a bank of elevators, and next to that a recessed area from which several corridors ran off. It looked to me as if these
led only to more offices. More promising were a set of wide steps, half a dozen at most, which led to a kind of lower ground
floor of which I could see little from where I was. Not wanting to stand around uncertainly, thereby attracting the attention
of the guards, I went decisively down these steps, and found myself facing a blank wood-paneled wall with a single door in
the center. Once again there was a slot in which a card could be inserted. Crossing my fingers that the same card would suffice,
I slid it in. Sure enough there was a soft click and the door swung back on automatic hinges.
I stepped through into a large windowless area in which there was no sound except the constant hum of air-conditioning and
an occasional footstep on the polished marble floor. Various rooms opened up ahead of me and to each side. All contained nothing
but floor-to-ceiling steel doors, each one obviously a private safe and bearing its own number. Those closest were only about
the size of drawers, the farthest away looked large enough to take a pretty big suitcase.
There were, so far as I could see, no guards down there and no visible security cameras. I imagined that, on the whole, the
kind of people who might want to avail themselves of such a facility would prefer not to be photographed doing so.
“Can I help you, sir?”
I jumped at the voice at my elbow and turned to see an attractive young woman in a dark suit and white blouse looking up at
me with a pleasant smile.
“If you’d like to tell me your number,” she said, “I’ll be glad to show you where it is.”
My number. A feeling of panic swept over me. I had no number. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Any moment now I was
going to be exposed as having entered under false pretenses, and who knew what the consequences of that might be? I started
to mumble something about having forgotten, but then I realized I hadn’t forgotten at all. I’d been given the number, surely,
in my dream.
“Nine-one-one,” I said impulsively, and with a conviction that I frankly didn’t feel.
“That will be over here,” she said without a blink of hesitation. “If you’ll step this way, sir.”
I followed her to my left, through an opening the size of a door but with no door in it. She gestured to the wall in front
of me, about halfway up. There, sure enough, I saw a drawer-sized steel door marked “911.”
“If you require privacy to deal with any business you may have, remember we have individual cubicles for that purpose.” She
indicated four more doors, one in each corner of the room. “If you need any further assistance, just call me, or press the
buzzer on the wall.”
“Thank you,” I said, “you’ve been very helpful. Thank you very much.”
I waited till she had gone before trying my card in the door marked “911.” I didn’t want to discover at this final hurdle,
and under her inscrutable gaze, that my dream had been inaccurate or incomplete. As I slipped my card into the slot provided,
there was an immediate soft click. I breathed a sigh of relief mixed with apprehension as the small door sprang open, revealing
a flat steel box with a handle attached. I pulled it out. The top was hinged, but I didn’t open it right away. I headed for
the privacy of one of the corner cubicles, knowing with a sickening and terrible certainty what I was going to find.
The only thing in the box was a clean white envelope, not even sealed. It contained a clear plastic bag in which were the
remains of a pair of pantyhose. I could see a couple of dark stains that I took to be blood, and they were shredded where
Larry had hooked them on Steve’s fender to leave the traces that had sealed his guilt.
Instinctively I reached out to check the lock on the door of the little boxlike cubicle in which I sat. I knew I’d locked
it when I entered, so the action was merely a response to the wave of panic that surged over me. For a moment I wondered if
I would ever be able to leave that tiny cell-like place. Maybe I would stay there till they broke the door down and found
my putrefying corpse. The impact of my discovery had been worse than I had imagined even in my darkest moments. I didn’t know
how to go out and face the world again. I think I had a kind of brief nervous breakdown sitting there on that plain bench
before an equally plain table, hypnotized by that open box and its dreadful contents.
I tried to look at things logically. Had the chain of events that had brought me to this point been truly synchronicitous
or in any other way out of the ordinary? Was I the victim of a fate over which I had no control, or the perpetrator of crimes
that my unconscious was finally forcing me to face up to? Surely—Occam’s razor again—I had to choose the latter as the most
likely explanation. Being haunted in my dreams by what I’d done made a lot more sense than the idea that the whole universe
was merely the plaything of Dave and his computer.
But how about that strange business of waking up three times at exactly 4:44
A.M
.? What explanation was there for that? Well, I told myself, it’s a known fact that some people can set themselves to wake
up like an alarm clock, right on the dot. Maybe it’s a faculty we all possess but just don’t normally use. Furthermore, who’s
to say I hadn’t been lying there with my eyes open waiting for 4:44 to come up, and only consciously registering the clock
face when it did? Nobody could say that wasn’t how it happened, including me.
Same thing with the pantyhose commercial on TV. I’d fallen asleep but unconsciously registered it, maybe just the sound track,
when it came up. I’d seen it before, so it had already connected—unconsciously—with the terrible secret that I was keeping
hidden from myself.
I was beginning to sound in my head like a phone-in shrink, but that wasn’t going to get me off the hook. Nothing was. Everything
pointed to my guilt.
Except the possibility that Dave was real and had told me the truth.
So who had hidden that damning piece of shredded, bloodstained, DNA-rich nylon in this place? George Daly calling himself
Larry Hart? Or Larry Hart calling himself George Daly? In either case the motive was the same—to keep the evidence safe until
it had to be planted on Steve. And if that did not become necessary, the next logical step was to destroy it—wasn’t it?
I wondered if that was why I was there. To destroy the evidence. Was that what I wanted?
My mobile rang with a startling loudness in that tiny space. I plucked it from my inside pocket and answered. It was Lou,
waiting for me in the restaurant and wondering where the hell I was. I said I would be there in fifteen minutes and hung up.
I remained motionless a few seconds more. I had responded to his question with total spontaneity; now I had to reflect whether
I intended to do what I had said I would. I decided I did.
All I had to make up my mind about now was what I was going to do with that white envelope and its contents. Should I lock
them up again? Or take them with me and decide what to do with them later?
Another moment’s hesitation. Then I stuffed the envelope into my jacket, unlocked the door, and left.
T
here’s a story scientists like to tell,” I said to Lou over my risotto al mare, “about some great luminary, an Einstein or
a Bertrand Russell, someone like that, who’s giving a public lecture on astronomy. He explains how the earth orbits around
the sun and how the sun orbits around a vast collection of stars in the galaxy, and so on and so forth. At the end of the
lecture a little old lady gets up at the back of the room and says, ‘Everything you’ve told us is rubbish. It’s perfectly
obvious that the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle.’
“So the great scientist gives a condescending smile and says, ‘Then perhaps you can tell us, madam, by what is the turtle
supported?’
“’You’re very clever, young man,’ says the little old lady, ‘but you don’t fool me. It’s turtles all the way down.’”
Lou chuckled merrily.
“Scientists tell that story,” I said, “not because it’s a putdown of little old ladies and stupid superstitions, but because
it expresses their own worst fears.”
A bushy eyebrow lifted in mild surprise. “How come?”