Brood (22 page)

He is heading vaguely south, vaguely east.

He hears a man's voice, a thick voice, a heavy, bellyish bellow. “Tallyho!” The call goes up, and suddenly Central Park is horribly alive with lights—lights propped up on the roofs of squad cars, enormous klieg lights on tripods as if to illuminate a theater before a world premiere. The darkness of the park turns bright silver. The privacy of night is stripped away—it is like tearing the clothes off a helpless person.

Rodolfo runs. Cops on foot, cops in cars, cops on BMX bikes, and cops on horseback chase after him—all that is lacking is the bugler in a red cutaway coat and the hounds. Instead of crops, they carry clubs. He hears their engines. Hears the frantic clop of hooves. How many are there? He cannot say. But there must be at least twenty in the field, all in hot pursuit, plus a couple of hilltoppers watching from a distance, keeping track of the hunters and their quarry.

He keeps away from the ribbons of roadway, rendering the squad cars useless. He resists climbing any of the trees that go whizzing past him as he runs. In a tree, he will be trapped. In a tree, he will be killed.

The ground behind him shakes as the cops on horseback draw closer.

“Tallyho, tallyho!” an enormous cop on a very small bicycle shouts.

“Halt,” shouts another.

One particularly fit young officer is making the chase on foot. He runs with his arms at his side, and his hands, hanging limply, paddle back and forth. Has he learned something new about the physics of foot speed? He is coming at Rodolfo at a vertical. His path will intersect with Rodolfo's in ten more paces. Beyond that, the corridors of brightness created by the lights the police brought begin fading, dimming—if he can only get to the darkness, his chances of survival will increase.

“Don't shoot, don't shoot,” the speeding young officer says as he bears down on his quarry. His piston gait is tireless, robotic.

Rodolfo can feel the heat of the horses like sunlight on his back. It is difficult to put space between himself and his pursuers because he will not, must not, run in a straight line. He must weave, he must cut a path as unpredictable as possible. He does not fool himself into believing that the cops want to take him alive. He does not comfort himself with the sweet story that they would never snuff out the life of a minor.

Their own blood has been spilled. There is nothing they will not do.

Rodolfo is on the Great Lawn now. The ground is soft. It is far too open. He might as well be running on the moon.

He thinks about going on all fours, but there are two or three seconds in the transition from biped to quadra-, and right now he cannot afford them. He is running as fast as he has ever run, and now it is clear that he must run faster.

The young cop on foot makes his move, and Rodolfo powers himself forward toward the lawn's border.

“Aaaar,” the cop grunts as he prepares to tackle Rodolfo.

The tires of the squad cars behind him are digging up long black and green curls of lawn. The sirens let out little whoops—there is something strangled, almost involuntary in the sound, which makes it somehow all the more nerve-racking. Rodolfo leaps over the benches on the lawn's border, and the young cop slams into the wooden slats.

Rodolfo's leap has taken him six feet over the benches and when he lands, he staggers for a second, almost falls.

Now he has the moment and the momentum to go on all fours. The bag of Skittles he was carrying in his front pocket falls out; the hard little candies bounce and disappear.

Rodolfo tries not to think. Thinking is not what nature wants, not at a time like this. But he cannot stop himself. He wonders what they will do to him if they catch him. If he were a fox, the hounds in their frenzy might tear him to shreds, but here the hounds are the hunters. He knew this day would come. The man in the white truck is picking them off one by one. And now here come the cops—two of their own are gone and they want justice. No, they want revenge. Of this Rodolfo is certain: He will be beaten, he will be hurt, humiliated. His dread of capture and punishment is so acute, he can almost feel the blows raining down on him, smell the breath of the hunters, see their smiles of swinish satisfaction…

One of the squad cars drives right through the barricade of benches. Of the four mounted cops, two coax their horses to leap over the benches, and two pull their horses up short, causing them to rear up, paw at the air with their front hooves.

A shot is fired. Rodolfo holds his breath, waiting for the pain. But maybe it was just a warning shot. Whatever it was, it missed.

A dark geyser of dirt rises up where the bullet strikes the earth.

The park has always been a place of safety, his refuge, all of the wild children's. But now his only chance of remaining free, remaining
alive,
is to get out of there. He wills himself to go faster and faster. The ground moves beneath him as swift as water roaring out of a tap. He had no idea this kind of speed was in him. He runs left, and right, and left again. He does not dare look over his shoulder, but he can feel himself putting distance between them and him.

He has reached Eighty-Fifth Street. The Metropolitan Museum of Art floats into sight. It is massive, heavy, definitive, a stone-and-marble crypt for everything from prehistoric tools to recent masterpieces. The extension on its west flank, a pyramidal glass enclosure for its tons of Egyptian bounty, looks milky white. He doesn't know why (nor does he question it), but Rodolfo runs toward the glass pyramid, unsure what he will do once he reaches it. Sprinting, leaping, he makes it up the slope leading to the museum. By now, he has left most of his pursuers behind, but the two on horseback are still hunting him, still close.

He allows himself a brief glance back. The mounted police are twenty feet away, maybe closer. One of the cops has his club drawn. The other, a woman, her trousers clinging to her powerful thighs, her blond hair streaming from beneath her uniform's cap, has drawn her weapon. Both horses are winded. Their eyes are wild, showing a great deal of white. Their nostrils palpitate like beating black hearts.

Rodolfo's leaps become a kind of flying. In moments, he is at the base of the Egyptian wing. He looks up, surveys what he must do. Closer and closer the mounted police come. And…

He's up. He catches the lowest edge of the roof, lifts himself up easily, and scrambles across the steep glass slant to its apex.

“Halt! Halt!” the man on horseback hollers.

Yeah, me's doin' a lot of that,
thinks Rodolfo, his first actual thought since the chase began. He stands atop the Egyptian wing, looks down at the police and their horses. How little they look. The man is telling the woman to put her gun away.

Rodolfo raises his arms in triumph. He takes careful steps as he makes his way along the rooftop.

Some of the other hunters are catching up. A string of flashing blue and red lights is closing in.

Who knows what is on the other side of the museum? Fifth Avenue. More hunters?

He has one thing to say to them: “Mother. Fuckers.”

That said, he scrambles over the very top of the roof. He loses his footing for a moment and starts to slide down the roof's eastern slope. Waving his arms and vocalizing little grunts of fear and distress, he manages to turn his feet in a way that brakes him. He sits for a moment.

There is a breeze up here. But it feels warm, recycled, like breath.

Next he scrambles up the museum itself, higher and higher, until he has scaled the slate roof and looks down at the city. A couple of buses idle in front of the Met. From this height, they look no bigger than a vial of Zoom. Taxis, limos, and the occasional private car stream southward on Fifth as the traffic lights turn green.

There are no police, he sees, but moments later, eight squad cars arrive, their emergency lights dancing crazily around and around, their sirens silent.

Rodolfo squats and looks down, hoping not to be seen. He thought that by now they would have been discouraged, would have given up. But no, it seems clear they will hunt him and hunt him until they can kill him or take him away.

He hears something. A scuffling sound. He turns toward it—but too late. A hand clasps his ankle.

Terrified, he looks down and sees a pair of large eyes staring up at him. He tries to pull his leg away, but he is gripped too strongly. Trapped! He pulls again but it throws his balance off and he starts to tip.

“Whoa, Rodolfo, you's slippin',” a voice says.

Whoever has caught him by the ankle has a flashlight, a small one, three inches long, but with a powerful glow. He shines it in his own face.

“Globe!” Rodolfo cries, amazed and relieved.

Globe is one of the original wild children. He was on the scene when there were no more than ten of them eking out an existence in Central Park, skateboarding eighteen hours a day, chasing and eating squirrels, bathing in the reservoir. As the population of cast-off and runaway kids grew, relations between Rodolfo and Globe deteriorated. As Rodolfo took more control of the lives of the castoffs, Globe resented his growing power—though, in fact, he had no desire to be leader of the brood. What he wanted was to be left alone and to have no authority to answer to, especially when it came to his all-important, all-consuming sex life. He and Lily-Lou mated three years ago; their child was wingless, but strange in other ways. After that, he mated with Casino; their child
was
winged but died shortly after birth.

“Why you's up here?” Rodolfo asks.

“We's living high, my brother,” Globe says.

He sweeps the shining arc of his flashlight, illuminating his pack, nine in all, crouched prehistorically, with hungry, wild faces, unkempt, grinning. Two small children, naked, hover a couple of feet above the roof, their rapidly beating wings like the shuffle of cards.

Globe jabs his thumb down toward Fifth Avenue. More police have come. They are dragging sawhorses onto the street, detouring traffic east.

“Troubles?” he asks.

“Me's carrying a million woes,” answers Rodolfo.

One of Globe's crew, a girl with braids pinned to the top of her head, catches one of the hovering babies by the foot. She lifts her T-shirt and brings the child to her breast. The baby's wings continue to flap, but more slowly as he latches onto his mother.

“Ow!” she says. “Take it easy, Icona, you's got teeths.”

“Me's need to go,” Rodolfo says.

“You's welcome twenty-four-seven,” Globe says. He points his flashlight at the others, letting the light linger on a girl dressed in a white T-shirt and black shorts, with short blond hair, several tattoos on her face. She smiles at Rodolfo.

“How me's go?”

“No problemo, my brother. You's hundred percent?”

“Me's gotta go.”

“No problemo.”

“We's not say
problemo,
Globe. We's
say worries.
”

“Life goes different up high,” Globe says. He winks at Rodolfo. “Us's knowing all the things about this picture house no other bodies know. We's having you long gone in no time.”

“All right. Go now?”

“Sure. Where?”

“Me's got a visit,” Rodolfo says.

Globe grins a grin far too knowing for a boy his age—but there it is. “Sure now?” he says. “Soft company here.” He shines his light back toward the blond girl. She raises a hand to shield her eyes, but she does not stop smiling.

“Sure now,” Rodolfo says.

“Okay, then.” Globe claps Rodolfo on the shoulder. “We's here, you's gone. No problemo.”

No problemo
turns out to be a bit of an overstatement. There
are
problemos, and worries too. But in the broad stroke of the promise, Globe is as good as his word. Using rope ladders, treetops, ledges, and their own dexterity and guile, Globe and his trusted sidekick Stash have Rodolfo on the ground and on his way in about ten minutes. His final descent is at the south end of the Met's parking garage, and from there, unmolested, he makes his way south and east.

To Sixty-Ninth Street. Out of nowhere, a summer rain. The drunken roll of thunder. Couples running for cover. A homeless man rising groggily from his tormented sleep. Rodolfo walks with his head down. Hands in pockets. Looking at no one and hoping no one looks at him.

The rain awakens Alice in her bed. She has been sleeping with her window open and now she sits up, presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, shakes her head. Rain is blowing in and she gets out of bed to shut the window.

When she reaches the window, she sees a face. She lets out a yelp of shock and covers her mouth.

It's him.
Her pulse races. She can hardly breathe.

“Rodolfo!” she whispers.

He is standing on the fire escape. He doesn't wait to be asked in. He climbs through the window. He is drenched. His long hair is shiny and dark. His shirt is soaked, transparent. She forces herself not to look at his muscles, the dark scribble in the hollow of his chest. A zigzag of blood runs along the skin from his wrist to his elbow, but he seems unaware of it. He stands now in her girlish room, rain dripping off him, wetting the carpet as if he were a cloud.

“What happened?” She points to his arm.

He looks, noticing it for the first time. He makes certain it's nothing serious. He wipes the blood clean with his hand and then attempts to dry his hand against his jeans, but his jeans are soaked.

“Me's okay.”

“Look at you!”

“Look at
you,
” Rodolfo says, and the tone of it, and her perception of its meaning, silences Alice; the tone carves a trapdoor in the moment, and Alice falls through it as if through the opening in a hangman's scaffold.

But rather than being afraid, she chooses to be brave. She takes Rodolfo's hand and leads him into her bathroom. She runs the water until it's hot—it's a long journey from the water heater in the rat-infested cellar to her bathroom on the house's third floor—and soaks one of her fluffy taupe towels. Gently, she cleans the blood off his arm. Now she can see the extent of the gash.