Atmosphere (18 page)

The groan rose further, riddled with choking, the effort of the gags sounding pained and anguished. Curious, but tentative, she took a gentle step forward, craning her neck in attempt to peer around the edges of the movie poster. She could barely make out what appeared to be the back of someone's head leaning against the Plexiglas wall. She thought she heard the tinny cadence of music radiating from headphones.

The person wailed again, louder, longer. Then, a series of sobs. She saw the person's head bob slightly.

She took another step. The small waiting area still shadowed the identity of the individual. Maybe it was a homeless person, hurt, sick, in need of care? Again she heard her father say:
stay away, worry only about yourself and not those around you.

Good advice, but she could not take heed at this moment. Someone could be hurt.

She stepped forward. "Hello?"

Another cough answered her, labored, strained.

The train began to pull into the station.

Feeling safe now that she would soon be on her way back into the city, she took a deep breath and walked around to the other side of the waiting port to investigate.

Jaimie's breath escaped her as the stark, horrifying image she beheld nightmared its way into her vision, into her mind. Nothing could convince her at that moment that a God existed, given the atrocious sight, and she subconsciously pinched herself over and over in the same mental spot, wishing it away. But the psychological pain she felt was real. And so was the horror before her.

It had taken her a few long burdensome seconds to feel the warmth of the blood seeping through her shoes, a river of it, pooling out into a semi-circle five or six feet wide, dripping out onto the tracks. She tried to move, but remained frozen in fear staring at this...this
man
(that's what it appeared to be, or had been), his gut disemboweled into a great crater that ran from sternum to thighs, as if a cannonball had been shot through him. His head gyrated wildly on his neck, the throat contracting with each revolution, sourcing the pained moans.

Yet, with the pain, with the torturous ungodly affliction set upon this soul, the escaping life inside somehow managed to leave a smile on his face, the teeth clenched, the lips curled upwards, pain and pleasure and death all combined to form the ultimate image of doom.

Again Jaimie tried to pull herself away, and finally succeeded, her sneakers suctioning away from the gummy blood. The train pulled in, its braking steel wheels burning the blood spilled over the tracks.

The stench of heat and copper rose up as the train stopped and its doors rang open.

Jaimie lunged forward, tripping over something in her path, something black, oddly shaped, something hard that hurt her toe and tumbled over the edge of the track to the street thirty feet below.

She fell into the car, tracking blood inside.

The doors shut behind her.

Breathing heavily, she looked up.

About twenty people were turned, staring at her.

H
arold had banged himself up pretty badly, and Frank figured the bald man had finally come to his senses and decided to surrender. It really seemed his only true option at the moment. He lay kissing the ground, crying like a baby, wrists cuffed, face and hands showing some pretty nasty lacerations from the shattered glass. Above all, he had two guns poised six inches away from his brain. The once mysterious and formidable man now looked powerless, tears racing down his bloodied face in a snot-laden drivel.

Ernie continued pressing his knee into Harold's back while Hector busily removed a plastic tie from his belt in quick preparation to fetter the man's ankles. Frank held on to him too, contemplating the absurdity of the entire scene. Blood and glass everywhere, on Harold's face, his clothes, and on the tiled floor. It looked as if someone had dropped a huge glass pitcher of tomato juice.

A hot coppery odor filled the hall. A bulge of sickness formed in Frank's throat, and he had to choke back the urge to throw up.
Why had Harold done this to himself?
What evils motivated the man to perform such a mass of intentional damage to his body? Was this sickening method of attempted suicide his only alternative given the immediate situation?

As Frank pondered these and many other seemingly unanswerable questions, he noticed Harold's blood-spotted dome turning a juicy shade of red right before his eyes, like a ripening tomato caught by stop-action photography. He leaned forward to see whether he was witnessing a chameleon-like transition, or if it had simply been a trick of the light reflecting from the blood.
   

The very moment he realized that it was indeed his skin flushing, Harold's red-soaked face twisted toward Frank and stared up at him, eyes wild and white and alive beneath his sleek mask of blood. His sudden and alarming stare contorted into a defiant scowl, a terribly angry look, and before Frank could warn his counterparts, or back off himself, Harold bounded up with newfound stamina, quickly inflicting a swift and unanticipated Wrestlemania-like flip on Ernie that sent him sprawling like a rag doll across the fragments of glass on the floor.

Frank and Hector staggered back, guns pointed, yelling
freeze
again—to no avail. Harold vaulted up and once again started smashing his face into the bars. Sputters of gibberish—and fragments of teeth—dropped from his bloodied mouth. He struck himself again and again, this desperate attempt to launch himself through the bars in the window almost as puzzling as the whole mystery itself. The trio stood at bay on Hector's word—it became evident that Harold posed no threat to anyone other than himself—watching with dismay as Harold committed himself to this face-first attempt at escape (he
was
still cuffed), accomplishing no more than a loose jarring of one or two of the bars from its cement foundation, and gaining a face of shattered bones.

Harold's leaps had quickly turned to weak, instinctually driven body-lobs, and the three cops tackled him once again to the jagged-edged floor.

He was no more than a lump of deadweight now, which made it much easier to immobilize him. Hector pressed his knees into Harold's calves, and fettered his ankles with the adjustable plastic restraint tie. Ernie reassumed his position, repeatedly digging his night-stick into the small of his back. Frank lodged his knee into Harold's neck, the barrel of his pistol buried into Harold's bloody broken nose.

At this moment of high stress and confusion, Frank's personalities started doing battle over the options at his disposal. The irrational man inside tried to coerce him to blow the bastard away, end this thing once and for all so he could go home and salvage the rest of the weekend. All he would have to do is pull the trigger and plant a hard one in his brain, although he doubted very much, outside of kill him, if a bullet would do much more damage to his face than Harold himself had already accomplished.

He felt his best alternative would be to listen to his sensible-detective personality and allow himself no freedom to shoot, as shooting him would be—as sick as it seemed—giving in to the maniac's wishes, granting him the pain and agony and death that he apparently so dearly desires. And giving Harold what he wanted was something that Frank Ballaro the Detective didn't want to do, under any circumstances.

Frank gazed into Harold's tensed up face, the horrible visage—eyes rolling, teeth clenched—sending shudders through his body. God, it really looked as if he had broken every bone in his face, the veneer of blood veiling the soupy, amorphous look it had acquired—as if his shattered bones were gently shifting under the skin.

From an outsider's point of view, the entire scene must've been quite a sight. A bloodied man, fettered at the wrists and ankles. Three grown men sitting on top of him, holding him down while he still squirmed unremittingly beneath their clenches.

Frank would've bet a week's pay that given the chance, Harold would chew right through his own limbs in an effort to escape.

Frank dug the gun hard into his face. Harold grimaced. The pain must've been excruciating. "Why're you so desperate to get away, Gross, huh?"

"Need to die," he sputtered, a sick bloodied eyeball twisted up at Frank.

He then stuck his tongue out and bit it off.

Frank grimaced and pulled his gun away as more of Harold's blood sprayed out on the floor. Harold buckled wildly, nearly lifting the three men off the ground, grunting and squealing like a pig snared in mid-slaughter. Hector and Ernie both yelled out, and Ernie slammed his club a half-dozen more times into Harold's lower back.

Finally, like a fish long out of water, Harold made an odd wheezing noise, and stopped moving.

The sounds of their breaths echoed eerily in the hallway. "Don't let up," Hector yelled, heaving laboriously. "He might be playing dead."

"Jesus, how's he enduring all that pain?" Ernie was nearly in tears himself.

Frank, thinking the same thing, saw that an audience had gathered. A dozen or more of the floor's inhabitants were crowded near the elevators, peeking over one another to get a good glimpse of the action. Some laughed, others whispered. But all stayed back and kept to themselves.

The elevators suddenly opened. For a fleeting moment Frank thought the residents from other floors were coming to investigate the fracas, but the onlookers— who were inching closer by the second—cowered back at the demands of the police rushing out onto the landing, at least a half-dozen uniforms and a few plain-clothes officers spilling out like gumballs from a vending machine. A few more had entered from the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall and started clearing the crowd.

Frank, Hector, and Ernie immediately surrendered their prisoner to four officers from the Bronx's 56th Precinct. Frank felt a wave of dizziness and he had to promptly stand against the wall a few feet away. He heard one cop calling for paramedics, another yelling at the looming onlookers to return to their apartments. The four cops crouching over Harold were shouting amongst themselves. Suddenly the hallway was very alive with activity.

A few long minutes passed. Frank watched tiredly as a group of EMT paramedics rushed in to work on Harold; it appeared that Harold had indeed finally fallen out of consciousness. Frank turned away from the grisly sight and walked a few feet further down the hall, a hand on the wall for support.

"You okay?" Hector held a towel and was cleaning the blood from his hands. He offered it to Frank, who accepted.

"A little winded. Been quite a day, huh?"

"We'll have a good deal of questions to answer."

"Last thing on my mind right now, Hect."

"I know. By the looks of it, you could probably use some sleep."

Frank smiled weakly, tossed the towel to the ground. "You said that about eighteen hours ago."

Hector peered around, observing the throng of activity. "We need to get ourselves out of here," he said, pressing. A few cops glanced at them curiously.

"What time is it?"

"About nine-thirty."

Frank looked around for Ernie, didn't see him. "How's Barba?"

"A little shook up, but he'll be fine. He's getting bandaged.

A man in his forties approached Frank and Hector. He wore grey cotton pants and a black sportcoat. A gun bulged beneath his left jacket pocket. "Gentlemen, good evening. Sergeant Sid Clemens, fifty-sixth precinct." He smiled thinly, as if making an effort of it. He did not offer a handshake; Frank and Hector still had some blood on their hands.

"I'm Captain Hector Rodriguez, from the thirteenth, and this is—"

"Detective Ballaro," Frank interrupted.

"Yes, Frank Ballaro, from the Lindsay case. What're you doing out in the field so soon? Especially with the kid making bail."

Frank smiled. He didn't need the attention right now. He ignored the question. "Pleased to meet you."

"Not under these circumstances, I'm sure." He faced Hector. "I trust you'll be able to fill me in."

Hector stepped forward, stuck his chest out. Although in his late-fifties, he still had an imposing air about him when it came down to doing business, and he didn't appear too anxious to let anyone else get involved in this mystery right now, especially after all he'd been through over the last eighteen hours.
  

In a forceful yet professional manner, he pleaded his case to Clemens and requested that he to take a step back and allow him to go about his business without any interference. "Sergeant Clemens, I've placed this man under arrest. The details of the investigation we are working on in which this man is a primary suspect cannot be discussed at this time. Please, I need to ask for your cooperation. After all on site medical treatments, I'd like him placed in the Strong Medical Center under clinical supervision. A Doctor Samuel Richards will be notified of his admission, and directions will be furnished to him as to how to proceed with the patient. It is crucial to the investigation that these instructions be carried out. Am I clear with this, Sergeant?"

Clemens pinched his brow. He seemed a bit perturbed. "Captain Rodriguez, with all due respect, why wasn't a notification put in regarding my district's potential involvement in this?" Clemens pointed to Harold, who was being lifted onto a stretcher. "Whatever
this
might be?"