American Subversive (39 page)

“Among the Fishers Island outlaws? Aidan, you talk about this guy like he's some
foquismo
revolutionary. Don't fall in love with the
accent. Exiled aristocrats are the same the world over: always with the people until they climb back into power.”

“Just trust me.”

“I have. I am.” She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and with some effort pulled out a phone card. “Here, use this to call Cressida. And your friend Julian, too. I got it up north so it's clean. Find a pay phone a few blocks away. Don't stay on long, but don't sound rushed either. And no messages. Sorry, I don't mean to baby you.”

“It's fine,” I said. And it was. It was nice.

I left my cell phone, took the room key, and kept my head down until I was outside. Only then did I realize how close I was to Cressida's loft on Gansevoort Street. She'd be at work on a Tuesday morning, but still, there were roommates. There was anyone, really. The city felt shrunken and overly familiar. I started up Tenth Avenue into Chelsea and had walked several blocks before I finally spotted a bank of phones. I huddled in against the middle one like a bum sleeping on his feet. So Cressida first. I punched in all the digits and it started ringing. I imagined her in the newsroom, whipping her phone out, checking the number, and, not recognizing it, impatiently answering anyway. Reporters always answered. Except she didn't. I hung up when it went to voice mail. Should I call her office line? Call the
New York Times
? No, that wasn't a good idea. There was no way Cressida could have put any of this together, but still . . . I moved on to Touché. As it happened, his was the only other number I knew by heart. Again it rang. Again no answer. This time I waited for the beep: “Hey, it's Aidan. I just got back from Litchfield, which was a delight, as always, and have a favor to ask. Call me, or I'll try you again later. It's important. Okay, talk soon.”

I placed the receiver in its cradle and immediately realized my mistake.
No messages
. Paige had drilled that into my head not fifteen minutes before! But this was Touché, and if anyone was discreet it was . . . oh, she wouldn't accept that excuse. What was I doing? I wasn't cut out for this. I can still write the post, I kept telling myself, and everything would sort itself out from there—Keith and Lindsay, the N3 plan. I could single-handedly stop the bombing, then go back to how things were, and Paige, well—

I don't know what tripped me up: the thought of returning to my life or the thought of Paige leaving it.

When I got back to the room, she was watching N3's coverage of the bombing arrests in Queens. The hapless Muslims had been dubbed the Flushing Four, and their mug-shot expressions, at once confused and defiant, could have come from terrorist central casting. I told her what had happened: that Cressida, for the first time in her life, hadn't answered her phone; and neither had Touché, though that wasn't such a surprise.

“I left him a message,” I said, and watched her shoulders sink.
But you don't understand, he's on our side,
I wanted to tell her.
It is possible to have friends, allies, still, after everything
. But I held my tongue.

“Aidan, we need to get out of here. We're too exposed.”

“You mean leave the city?”

“No, not yet. Because Keith is here, or will be. I'm sure of it. All this nonsense”—she pointed at the TV, at the talking heads screaming bloody murder—“this will only encourage him, spur him on. Most people would see it as a chance to get out, their crime being pinned on others. But it'll only make Keith more determined. I mean, look at those poor people.”

“I still can't believe they're totally innocent,” I said, as they were perp-walked across the screen.

“Crazy, isn't it, the things your precious country is capable of?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Paige was in the chair so I sat on the bed and slipped my shoes off.

“You should take a nap,” she said.

“I'm fine.”

“Well, you look tired. And we're not going anywhere until it's dark.”

“You have a plan?”

“Maybe.”

She didn't elaborate. So I didn't push her. Anyway, she was right. I was exhausted. I'd barely slept for a day and a half, and who knew when I'd get my next chance. Now there's a thought, I thought, as Paige started flipping through news channels. I turned my cell phone on and placed it next to me on the nightstand. Then I propped myself up on some pillows and stretched out across the bed. The TV droned on like city traffic. At some point Paige stood up and turned off the overhead
light. I started to tell her she didn't have to, but was asleep before the words came out.

Either Paige said my name or I dreamed it. Anyway, I opened my eyes. Wolf Blitzer was talking. The room was still dark. And Paige was still in the chair. I couldn't have slept more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Except . . . the sun was low over Jersey City.

“Paige, did you . . .”

“You're alive,” she said, without turning around.

“I think so. How long—”

“Coming up on four hours.”

“Jesus.” I sat up. “Did Julian call?”

“I don't think so.” I checked my phone; he hadn't. Neither, for that matter, had Cressida, or Derrick, or anyone else. It was like I'd dropped out of time. I sat up, still getting my bearings.

“We need to leave soon,” Paige said.

“Do I have time to take a shower?”

“Yes, but keep it short.”

Paige turned off the TV and began cleaning the room. I walked past her into the bathroom and shut the door.

I stripped down and stood under the falling water. Why hadn't Touché called back? He felt like my last tether to the known world, and I suddenly craved his soothing, big-picture perspective. Anyone's perspective. Where were we going? Had Paige figured something out, or were we just trying to stay ahead of whoever might be after us? But no one was after us. Still, the thought was sobering. I'll give this one more day, I decided. At the most.

Stepping out of the shower, I realized I'd left my backpack with my clean clothes out on the bureau. Could I walk out there in my towel? How bizarre this forced intimacy was, the two of us like characters in some short-story assignment, strangers feeling their way through a crisis. And let's throw in some action words—
passion,
perhaps, and
potential; risk
and
peril
. And
impossible
. Because that's what this was. That's what
we
were. Oh, hell. I wrapped the small towel around my waist, opened the door, and walked across the room. She was sitting on the bed. I don't think she even looked up. Another bridge crossed. To nowhere.

When I came out the second time, I was mostly dressed. Paige had changed, too—into a blousy, long-sleeved top.

“I went shopping while you were lounging around your father's country club,” she said, slipping on her high-tops. She ripped a Club Monaco price tag off her sleeve, then took it into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.

“What's wrong with the garbage? The maid won't care where you shopped.”

“Come on, think it through. Say we're traced back to here, and the cops show up before housecleaning does. They find the price tag in the trash and fan out to every Club Monaco in Manhattan, including the one on Prince Street where I bought this. They watch the security tapes, and, hey, there I am—new haircut, new glasses, new clothes. An hour later I'm on the news and we're in deep trouble. Not that we aren't already.”

“I see.”

“I hope so. Because that's how you need to start thinking.”

We left after Paige wiped down the room. After she donned a knit hat and scarf. After my phone still hadn't rung. She walked downstairs, and I followed her five minutes later, stopping at the front desk to pay for the room in cash. The clerk didn't ask why we weren't spending the night. He didn't ask anything at all.

We reconvened at the corner of Fourteenth and Washington, in a sliver of darkness amid the glowing high-end boutiques. She nodded at a pay phone I'd passed up earlier, and I slipped over and tried Touché one last time. It rang through to voice mail.

“Okay, then, let's go,” Paige said. She started walking toward Ninth Avenue.

“Hey, wait. We can't walk. I know too many people around here.”

“But there are cameras in the subway stations and most of the cabs.”

“Where are we going?”

“The other side of town.”

“How about the bus?”

“Cameras there, too.”

Across the cobblestone street a string of taxis and limos were dropping people off at some bottle-service lounge. “A town car, then,” I said, and before Paige could answer, I was dodging through traffic with my
hand raised. Illegal liveries were everywhere in Manhattan, stealing market share from their yellow-cab cousins. The ride was superior but it came at a steeper price. I knocked on the first tinted window I saw.

“How much to the East Side?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Come on, I live here.”

“Twenty.”

“Fine.” I hopped in the back, pointed at the tall, bespectacled girl across the street, and a moment later Paige was sliding in next to me.

“Chatham Square,” she told the driver. “And could you turn on the radio?” The man glanced into the mirror as he tuned in a techno station, but Paige had sunk into her seat and he couldn't see her face.

“Chatham Square?” I asked, once the music was loud enough. “At the bottom of the Bowery? What's down there?”

“Shhh.”

We turned right onto Hudson, merged onto Bleecker, and began a descent into the depths of the island. Soon we were in Chinatown, somewhere near the original Five Points. I spotted Winnie's, a late-night karaoke dive that had always seemed like the outermost edge of civilization. But it wasn't; the city pushed on, to the south and east, and so did we, across Bayard and down Mott. Where were we?

“This is good right here,” Paige said. She opened the door and stepped out onto Worth Street while I paid the driver. I tipped him well and he drove away having never fully seen us. I turned to find Paige, but my eyes landed on the terrifying skyline behind her. For there, in the ominous gloaming, stood the hulking facades of the criminal justice system—Police Headquarters, a series of courthouses, and then the dreaded Tombs. How convenient, I thought: every stage of the process, from arrest to incarceration. East was the only way to go. East into the immigrant netherworld between bridges. We skirted chaotic Chatham Square, Paige wrapped up like a fashionable mummy in her hat and scarf, and started down the hill toward the water. It felt like another country, or several, for the grim faces that shuffled past us hailed from every broken part of the planet. We made a left onto Henry Street, the tenements trading lots with city housing—poor and poorer—and stopped at the corner of Market. Before us stood the massive Manhattan Bridge overpass, a structure that should have
symbolized escape, but seemed instead a barrier, a wall, the farthest thing from a way out.

“Over there,” Paige said, motioning toward a grimy, graffiti-covered apartment building across the street. “The fourth-floor window by the fire escape. The one with the blinds down. Keith uses it as a staging area before the Actions.”

“And you think he and Lindsay might be here?”

“No, not yet. The blinds would be open. That's Keith's signal to the handlers that we're there. But I think he'll show up at some point. And I can get us inside.”

“You said you have no idea who these handlers are?”

“No. In theory, the less we know about who's involved the better.”

“So what if Keith shows up while we're in there?”

“That's the point. We're trying to
stop
him, remember? Which involves
finding
him first. And this place is our only shot. If he doesn't show up, then Roorback it is.”

“I hope so,” I said, and left it at that. But I was worried. I'd posted nothing on Roorback for more than twenty-four hours now, and Derrick was surely seething. If he finally followed through on his threats to fire me, he might change the site log-in to freeze me out. But wouldn't he call me first? Maybe he'd been trying; I had no way to tell. In the car, Paige had ordered me to turn my phone off and keep it off. Apparently, they could track cell signals without any calls being made at all. But enough. When I finally posted Paige's story, all would be forgiven in the eyes of the law.

“Come on,” Paige said. “We can't stand on the corner all night like crossing guards.”

More like dealers, I thought, peering around at our shadowy environs. It felt as if a thousand eyes were on us, yet I saw none of them. We walked to the end of the block, turned left, and then left again, onto Mechanics Alley, a rugged little lane running between the rear of the building and the giant bridge support behind it. A body moved in the darkness up ahead. Someone holding something. I stopped. Paige took my arm.