A Bridge of Years (40 page)

The
cardiovascular machine faltered as her blood volume dropped. Billy
turned off the machine before he left.

He
remembered that bleak room, sitting in this one with Lawrence
Millstein.

Billy
had remembered a lot recently. Sometimes the memories came
flooding out of him, a river mysterious in its source. Maybe he was
getting old. Maybe some flaw in the armor (or in himself) allowed
these freshets of remembrance. He had never been a particularly good
soldier; he was what the infantry doctors had called an "anomalous
subject," prone to unpredictable chemistries and odd neural
interactions. Most soldiers loved their armor, and so did Billy,
but he loved it the way an addict loves his addiction: profoundly,
bitterly.

He
extracted from Lawrence Millstein the address of the apartment where
his prey—Tom Winter—lived.

He
considered going there directly, but the sun had come up now and the
morning streets were fiercely bright. He looked through Lawrence
Millstein's back window over a landscape of iron fire escapes, across
the enclosed courtyard where a gutted TV set glittered like a bottle
washed up from the sea. Billy was fully armored now and it would be
hard to move in daylight without drawing attention.

But
he was comfortable here ...
at
least for a while.

Lawrence
Millstein had wrapped a wad of toilet paper around the stump of his
finger. He sat in a chair staring at Billy. He had not stopped
staring at Billy since the moment Billy switched on the bedroom
light. "It's going to be a hot day," Billy said, watching
Millstein flinch at the sound of his voice. "A scorcher."

Millstein
didn't venture a response.

"It
gets hot where I come from," Billy said. "We had summers
that made this look like Christmas. Not so humid, though."

In
a voice that sounded uncomfortably like Ann Heath's voice, Lawrence
Millstein said, "Where do you come from?" "Ohio,"
Billy said.

"There's
nothing like you in Ohio," Millstein said.

"You're
right." Billy smiled. "I live in the wind. I'm not even
born yet."

Lawrence
Millstein, who was a poet, seemed to accept this.

An
hour passed while Billy contemplated his options. Finally he said,
"Do you know his number?"

Millstein
was weary and not paying attention. "What?"

"His
telephone number. Tom Winter."

Millstein
hesitated.

"Don't
lie to me again," Billy cautioned. "Yes. I can call him."
"Then do that," Billy said. Millstein repeated, "What?"

"Call
him. Tell him to come over. He's been here before. Tell him you need
to talk to him."

"Why?"

"So
I can kill him," Billy said irritably.

"You
evil son of a bitch," Millstein said. "I can't invite him
to his death."

"Consider
the alternative," Billy suggested.

Millstein
did so, and seemed to wither before Billy's eyes. He cradled his
wounded hand against his chest and rocked back and forth, back and
forth.

"Pick
up the phone," Billy said.

Millstein
picked up the receiver and braced it against his shoulder while he
dialed the number. Billy calculated the number and memorized it,
listening to the clatter of the dial each time it spun home. He was a
little surprised Millstein was actually doing this; he'd guessed the
odds were fifty-fifty that Millstein would refuse and Billy would
have to kill him. Millstein held the receiver to his ear, breathing
in little sobs, eyes half shut, then hung up the phone with a
triumphant slam. "Nobody's home!"

"That's
all right," Billy said. "We'll try again later."

Billy's
prediction was correct: the day was long and hot.

He
opened the tiny window but the trickle of air it admitted was
syrupy and stank of gasoline. Billy's armor kept him cool, but
Lawrence Millstein turned pale and began to sweat. The sweat ran down
his face in glossy rivulets and Billy told him to drink some water
before he fainted.

Sunset
came late and Billy began to grow impatient. He felt the pressure of
the armor; if he didn't take some action soon he would have to power
down. When he was up too long he grew edgy, nervous, a little
unstable. He looked at Lawrence Millstein and frowned.

Millstein
hadn't moved from his chair all day. He sat upright by the
phone, and every time he called Tom Winter's apartment Billy pictured
Millstein as Ann Heath, the wedge of glass driven in a little deeper
with every number he dialed. Millstein was pretty much a wreck.

Billy
thought about this.

He
said, "Does Tom Winter live alone?"

Millstein
regarded him with a dread so familiar it had become tiresome.

"No,"
Millstein said faintly.

"Lives
with a woman?"

"Yes."

"Do
you know where
she
might
be?" The silence now was protracted.

"You
could call her and just leave a message," Billy suggested.
"It wouldn't be hard."

"She
might come here with him," Millstein said, and Billy recognized
this as a prelude to capitulation. Not that there was any question of
it, really.

"I
don't care about her," Billy said.

Millstein
trembled as he picked up the phone.

It
should have gone easily after that and Billy wasn't sure why it
didn't: some flicker of his attention, maybe, or of the armor's.

He
waited with Lawrence Millstein through the long evening after
sunset, while the air through the window turned cooler and the
apartment tilled with shadows. He listened to the sound of voices
from the courtyard. Not far away, a man was shouting in Spanish. A
baby was crying. A phonograph played
La
Traviata.

Billy
was distracted a moment by the lonesome sound of the music and by the
stirring of the burlap curtains in the breeze. This was a kind of
paradise, he thought, this old building where people lived without
fighting over rice and corn, where nobody came and took children away
and put them in golden armor. He wondered if Lawrence Millstein knew
about living in paradise.

Then
there was a knock at the door.

Billy
turned, but Lawrence Millstein was already standing up, shouting.

He
shouted,
"No!
Oh, fuck, Joyce, go away!"

Then
Billy killed him. The door opened and a woman stood outlined in the
light from the hallway, a huge brown-complexioned woman in a
flower-print dress; she peered into the dark apartment through thick
lenses. "Lawrence?" she said. "It's Nettie—from next
door!"

Billy
killed Nettie with his wrist beam, but his hand shook and the beam
cut not neatly but like a ragged knife, so that the blood went
everywhere, and Nettie made a noise that sounded like "Woof!"
and fell back against the faded wallpaper.

Then
the hallway was full of voices and distress and although Billy
had soothed his armor with these killings he knew his real business
would have to wait.

A
woman in the crowd tugged Joyce away from the doorway, away from the
bodies. Tom understood by the look on her face that Lawrence was
inside and that Lawrence was dead.

His
first impulse was to comfort her. But the crush of tenants held him
back, and the sirens were closer now . . . He edged down the
stairwell and out to the sidewalk. He couldn't allow himself to be
questioned even casually, with a wallet full of ID from the future
and no one to vouch for him but Joyce.

A
crowd formed around him as the police cruisers pulled up. Tom stood
discreetly back among them. He watched the cops erect a barricade; he
watched two medics hustle from an ambulance into the building, then
stroll out moments later to stand under a streetlight, smoking and
laughing. The red rotary lights on the police cars made the street
ominous and bleak. Tom stood a long time even after the crowd began
to thin, waiting.

There
was a hush when the bodies came out: two amorphous shapes under
blankets.

Joyce
emerged a little after that, a fat man in a brown suit escorting her
toward an unmarked car. The fat man, Tom guessed, was a police
detective. He must have asked her whether she knew either of the
victims;
yes,
she
would have said,
that
one . . .
She
would cooperate because she'd want to help find the killer.

But
Tom knew by the way she looked at him, and then away, that she was
confused about his role in all this.

A
confusion he shared. Not that he might have committed the crime but
that Millstein's death might be connected somehow with his
time-traveling. Too many possibilities, Tom thought. A world that
contained doorways between decades might contain almost anything
else . . . Any kind of evil monster might have tracked him to
Millstein's apartment.

The
police cruisers began to pull away from the curb; the crowd
dispersed. A raft of cloud had moved across the sky from the
northwest and the night was suddenly cooler. A wind whipped around
the corner from Avenue B.

Rain
before morning, Tom thought.

He
thought about the walk back to the apartment, dangerous in these
night streets.

He
felt a hand on his shoulder . . . and spun around, startled,
expecting a cop or something worse, and was shocked again:

"Hey,
Tom," Doug Archer said. "We have to get out of here."

Tom
took a step back and drew a deep breath. Yes, anything was possible.
Yes, this was Doug Archer, from Belltower in the state of Washington
at the end of the 1980s, as incongruous in this dirty street as
a Greek amphora or an Egyptian urn.

Doug
Archer, who seemed to have some idea what was going on. Now
there's
a
neat trick, Tom thought.

He
managed, "How did you find me?"

"Long
story." Archer tilted his head as if he were listening to
something. "Tom, we have to leave
now.
We
can talk in the car. Please?"

Tom
took a last look at the building where Lawrence Millstein had
died. An ambulance pulled away from the curb, headed uptown. Joyce
was gone.

He
nodded.

Archer
drew an oversize Avis keytag out of his pocket.

Tom
felt but didn't understand the urgency as Archer hustled him
into a boxy rental Ford and pulled away from the curb. The heat had
broken and the rain came down in a sudden, gusty wash. Dawn was still
hours away.

They
drove to an all-night deli in the Village and ducked inside.

"A
man was killed," Tom said. He was still trying to grasp the fact
of Millstein's death. "Somebody I knew. Somebody I got drunk
with."

"Could
have been you," Archer said. "You're lucky it wasn't."
He added, "That's why we have to go home."

Tom
shook his head. He felt too weary to frame a reasonable
response. He looked at Archer across the table: Doug Archer in a
crewcut and a starched shirt and black leather shoes, his sneakers
presumably abandoned in 1989. "How do you know all this?"
Millstein dead and Doug Archer in the street outside: not a
coincidence. "I mean, what are you
doing
here?"

"I
owe you an explanation," Archer said. "I sure as hell hope
we have time for it."

An
hour ticked by on the wall clock while Archer told him about Ben
Collier, the time-traveling custodian.