The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein (27 page)

She stood up and came over to squeeze my hand. "He did do that. He doesn't want to hear it from me, but he rescued me from wallowing in my own self-pity. I can't tell you how much I love him."

Nina propped herself up on her elbows. "Dammit. We're just getting to the good part. You fading on us, Val?"

"Yes. All that country air and biking. And a bit too much vino. See you in the morning." Nina reached up to the glass-topped coffee table and emptied the wine bottle. "Sheesh. Just when I thought we'd be moving into the sex. Haven't you always been curious about that? I bet Mike Chapman is one hell of a good lover."

23

"Maybe you have been married too long." I pulled a throw over my legs and sipped more of the Sancerre, having opened another bottle. "You do that at work? Look at the partner in the next office and undress him when he's standing in front of you talking deals? I work with the man every day. I don't fantasize about wrapping my legs around him and--"

"Bullshit. Maybe you should. How about that first guy you worked for when you got to the DA's office? What did it take, about a minute for him to wriggle your pants off, for the simple price of an evening at Yankee Stadium, a ballpark hot dog, and a brew?" She was laughing as she tried to remember the story.

"Truce! I never did him. I just, well--"

"Fantasized all the time. See? I'm right."

I heard Val come out of the upstairs bath and close the door to her room.

Nina whispered to me, "You promised you'd tell me what happened last September when we had some time alone together. I didn't want to ask in front of Val."

I had avoided the subject every time Nina had tried to bring it up. It was impossible to have witnessed the events of the World Trade Center attack and describe it without reliving the pain of that morning. Nina and I had lost a mutual friend who had been on one of the planes that hit the towers, and in our grieving for Eloise I had sidestepped the memories that had haunted me from the first moment of the crash.

Like most weekdays, I had gone to the office before eight o'clock, enjoying that hour or more of work before the phones started ringing and the corridors filled with lawyers, cops, and crime victims. My desk on the eighth floor of the district attorney's office faced south, causing the room to flood with light from early morning on. The twin towers stood sentinel, just ten blocks farther south, visible beyond the gargoyles of our annex building's rooftop twenty feet away, every time I glanced out the window.

I was composing a memo on my computer when the first plane hit. It sounded like a massive explosion and the glass panes behind me rattled and shook. At the time, there was only one other person--Judy Onorato --on my hallway, the executive wing of the trial division. My window shades were drawn to keep the sun's glare off the screen of my monitor.

I stood up and raised the blinds, thinking that a car bomb had exploded and knowing that the courthouses --the one in which our offices were located, and the federal building across the street--had been targeted before. There from my desk I could see the gaping black hole near the top of the north tower, less than ten blocks southwest of me. It was framed against the most exquisitely clear blue sky I had ever seen.

Judy ran into my office moments later. She had turned on the conference room television after hearing the blast. "Did you see it? A plane flew into the World Trade Center."

We both figured it was an accident, a small aircraft that had veered off course and hit the tower. By the time the newscaster was confirming that in fact it had been a large jet, it was still impossible to believe. I couldn't fathom that an entire 767 had been swallowed into the core of the tall building.

Phones started ringing everywhere on the hallway. I went to the desk of McKinney's secretary--neither he nor she was in--since her console had all the executive extensions on it.

Lobby security was the first to call, telling me that they were locking the building and no one else would be allowed to enter. The Fifth Precinct, just east of the office, was ordering the evacuation of every office south of Canal Street.

Rose Malone was the next call. "Battaglia's here. He wants McKinney immediately."

McKinney was rarely in before ten on a good day, and it wasn't even nine yet. "He'll have to settle for me." My heart was racing. The news stations were already broadcasting that witnesses were describing the crash as deliberate. "Alex? Ignore the order to evacuate. How many people have you got over there?"

"Just two of us."

"We're law enforcement, not civilians. Whoever is here, stays here. Whatever the cops need, get it done."

I turned to look out the window at the towers. As I watched, a colossal explosion ripped through the south tower, blasting a fireball in my direction. I dropped back into the desk chair and buried my face in my hands. The radio on the desk reported what I had not seen coming: a second plane that soared in from the south to cause the eruption I had witnessed.

Now the only street noise was sirens, a shrieking cacophony blitzing the area from every direction. Directly below the window on Centre Street, the scene unfolded like a 1950s movie about nuclear warfare. Hordes of men and women, dressed in business clothes, carrying briefcases, began to head north, some walking, others beginning to trot.

The only people moving south were those in uniform. I knew that every fire truck in the city and beyond must have headed to the towers when the first plane hit. Now every one of the hundreds of police officers assigned to the DA's office for trial appearances or preparation, each of the thousands who had business at headquarters, and all of the uniformed court officers who supervised activity in our buildings, were running to the World Trade Center. At that point in time, I couldn't begin to imagine what they would encounter. I only knew that something inside these people's heads and hearts gave them the courage to go help when everyone out of uniform was moving in the opposite direction.

I picked up the phone and started to make calls. I found my parents first, and my brothers, assuring them that I was out of harm's way. By the time I reached Jake at the NBC studio in Washington, where he was assigned for the week, he was scrambling to put a crew together to go out to the Pentagon. Another plane had just hit. "It's Bin Laden again. They should have taken the bastard out after the ninety-three attack. How are you going to get out of there, Alex?"

"Don't worry. There's a group of us here," I lied. "Do what you've got to do and I'll find you later."

The phones didn't stop ringing. Parents and spouses of young lawyers were calling to see whether they had reached work, especially those whose subway routes took them through the World Trade Center hub. Assistant district attorneys who were stuck below- ground on trains or in cars that were stopped at bridges and tunnels called to offer help, not knowing when or how they would ever reach the office.

"Hey, Alex, it's Mercer. What the hell are you doing there?"

He had just been released from the hospital a week earlier, recovering from a bullet wound that had almost killed him. "There are no words to describe what's going on down here. Thank God you're grounded. Have you tried to find Mike?" Before he could answer me I heard a new wave of wails from the street below and looked out the window. "Oh my God! It's collapsing. Mercer, the south tower is going down!" The implosion seemed to be playing itself out in slow motion, and nausea gripped my stomach as I thought of the thousands of people being buried alive under tons of concrete and steel.

"Mike's way down there somewhere. He didn't get home until six this morning. His mother called to check on him when she heard the news about the first plane. He would have slept through the whole damn thing if she hadn't been worried. He wants you out,now. " Mercer raised his voice to bring home his point. "My orders are to hound you till you leave."

I closed my eyes and hoped against hope that Mike hadn't gotten there in time to be near the buildings when the second tower crumbled to the ground. Half the kids he had grown up with were cops or firemen, and he would follow them into the mouth of hell if he thought there was a single man he could save.

There was no need for me to argue with Mercer. The phone line went dead. I looked at the other desks and could tell by the unlighted consoles that all service had been cut off. Our provider's antennae must have been part of the communications center located on top of the World Trade Center complex.

Smoke began to drift down the corridor. The mild wind was blowing our way now, carrying with it an acrid odor and soot-filled debris. I went from office to office, shutting the windows, coughing as the downtown air spread its coating of pulverized concrete and burning jet fuel--a toxic mixture that stung my eyes and irritated the lining of my throat.

I walked to Battaglia's wing, crossing the main hallway, which was as deserted as a ghost town. Three of his executive assistants were in with him, while the other two had not been able to get near the office. They were making a triage plan for the rest of the week, already knowing that we would be at war, with no way to carry on the ordinary business of the criminal justice system. The four of us plotted with him for almost two hours, cut off from the city around us except for some of the cell phones, which worked some of the time.

When I got back to my wing, shortly before 1P.M., the streets below, which had been teeming with fleeing workers after the two towers had collapsed, were eerily still and empty. Coffee carts had been abandoned on every corner, and empty cars were lined up in the municipal lot, many of them belonging to the officers who had sped downtown on foot. Papers swirled everywhere in the breeze, and now ashes were settling on the sidewalks and roadways.

I looked out the window and cringed at the sight of the sky without its landmark towers. What was it that was said of people who had limbs amputated? That the missing arm or leg ached forever, in some kind of phantom phenomenon. We, too, would ache forever as we looked for those towers in the sky, thinking of the thousands who would never be seen again by loved ones, and never be found.

By four o'clock, Rose came around to tell me that Battaglia had gone to meet with the mayor and governor. The police commissioner's office had sent a cop over to see her, insisting that we close our doors and send everyone home. The air quality had become so bad that if we did not leave immediately, no one could guarantee that we'd be safely evacuated that evening.

I pulled a pair of old loafers out of the back of a filing cabinet, closed up the office, and took the elevator to the lobby. Four uniformed cops from the precinct were guarding the entrance, handing out face masks to each of us as we left the building. I spoke to one I recognized, who had arrested a man who had been doing stickups and rapes in Chinatown a month earlier. Now he was gray from head to toe, covered in residue and reeking from the stench of burned flesh.

"I need to get down near the towers. You got any patrol cars going over? There must be something I can do to be--"

"Forget it, Miss Cooper. Nobody's getting in but cops, firefighters, Emergency Services. No amateurs. It's a war zone." He thumbed his hand northward. "Be grateful you can't go, ma'am. You'd never sleep again."

I stood at the intersection of Centre Street and Hogan Place, adjusting the mask to ease my breathing. How many men and women did I know who at this very moment were risking their lives--or had already given them--to try to rescue people from this cataclysmic event?

Tears had formed, and I tried to convince myself they were caused by the debris in the air. I wanted to find Mike Chapman. I needed to know he was safe. I took my cell phone out to try to dial his number but got no signal. A cop with a bullhorn shouted at me and two other pedestrians on the nearly deserted street. "Move along, miss. D'you hear me? Move it north, guys. This is a frozen zone."

I headed uptown, past empty Chinese restaurants and across Canal Street. The trendy shops of SoHo were all closed and shuttered as I continued walking across Houston Street and up Fourth Avenue. The only vehicles moving south were emergency trucks, now bearing the gold lettering on their sides from counties in upstate New York, and neighboring areas like New Jersey and Connecticut.

Two hours had passed when I reached the approach to Grand Central Terminal. As with all the landmark buildings in the city--potential targets--the small amount of traffic that was moving on the streets was being diverted away from the station. I walked east, breathing better here but exhausted from the day's emotion. As I waited for the light on Forty-fourth Street, a cop called out to me from the driver's seat of his RMP--radio motor patrol car.

"Hey, Al. You comin' from downtown? We'll give you a lift the rest of the way."

Lester Gruby had been a detective in Special Victims years before. He'd been flopped back to uniform when he lost his gun in a drunken brawl outside a racetrack in Nassau County.

"Still on Seventieth Street?" I nodded and got in the back of the patrol car. "What do you hear?"

"Real bad. The numbers are staggering. Engine Forty, Amsterdam Avenue at Sixty-sixth Street? Twelve guys missing or dead. A whole company." His voice broke. "It's like that every time I check in with the desk."

"Maybe you could drop me at New York Hospital. At least I can give blood."

Gruby looked at me as though I were crazy. "Guess you haven't heard. They're turning people away from the blood banks. They're not gonna need much. People who escaped, most of them have minor injuries. Anybody in range of the buildings that collapsed, they're dead."

The police radio crackled the rest of the way to my building, with urgent calls about falling beams and hazardous shifts in the settling structures. It was after seven when I unlocked my door. There were eighteen messages on my machine, family and friends becoming more frantic as the day wore on. I returned the most urgent calls, then asked two friends to get in touch with a list of the others for me.

Jake had left two voice mails, telling me he was fine but that the airports were closed both in D.C. and New York. He had no idea when he'd be coming home.