The Intruder (18 page)

The train horn sounds again, getting closer. The Albany-to-Washington. The red lights in Ronnie’s sneakers blink.

“I just want you to leave my family alone,” Jake tells John G.,
trying to wrap things up so they can all go home. “We don’t want any more problems with you.”

“Yo, you’re the one with the problem,” Abraham interrupts. “Get the fuck outta my tunnel.”

Ronnie hits the rail two more times with his bat, as if he’s starting to tap out a warning signal. The lights in his sneakers go on and off a little faster.

“Just stay away from my family,” Jake tells John G.

“Yo, this is my family down here.” Abraham breaks in again. “You stay away!”

The five of them are converging on the tracks, with the third rail somewhere in between. Ronnie keeps hitting the steel with his baseball bat. Gates seems to be shrinking before Jake’s flashlight beam. The one-armed man is pulling away with his shopping cart, as if he senses something bad is about to happen.

Philip keeps a steady beam shining in Abraham’s face. Now that Jake knows he’s been drinking, the scotch stench is overwhelming.

“All right, guys, let’s get outta here.” Jake shines his light toward the south end of the tunnel, showing the way out. “I think we’ve made our point.”

The southbound train is almost visible. A hard tiny circle of light appears at the north end of the tunnel coming toward them.

But Philip and Abraham have moved closer and are now face-to-face in the middle of the tracks, with Philip blinking the flashlight on and off in the taller man’s eyes. They’re like a couple of ferocious Dobermans refusing to back away from each other on the street.

“Take that fuckin’ flashlight outta my face before I shove it up your ass,” Abraham says in a measured voice.

“Try it.” Philip flashes the light three more times and tightens the grip on the bat in his right hand.

“Philip, gimme that.” Jake steps between them and tries to grab the bat from him.

But Philip looks right through him and holds the bat aloft. “Get outta my way, Jake.”

A cloud of belched-up alcohol passes between them and Jake
suddenly realizes what a terrible mistake he’s made in trusting this man. He can hear the train’s wheels chugging down the tracks.

“Come on, Philip, give it up.”

He starts to reach for the bat again, but before he can get it, Ronnie blindsides him like a nose tackle. Jake stumbles forward and falls to one knee between two slats in the tracks. A bell rings in his head and a light flashes behind him. He turns and sees the Albany train bearing down on him less than a hundred yards away. Its light replaces the flashlight Philip has dropped.

Jake looks over to his left just in time to see Philip swinging the bat at Abraham’s head. Both hands on the grip. The air slithers and sighs. Metal hits bone. There’s a hollow sickening pop and then Jake feels a light splatter of blood on his right cheek.

For a moment, no one moves. The train light fills the tunnel and the sound of the wheels is almost deafening. Then Philip steps off the tracks. Abraham starts to crumble, grasping for air with his hands as if he’s falling off the side of a building.

He lands on one of the rails and then rolls away as a tiny spark goes off.

Jake struggles to his feet and jumps off to the left of the tracks just as the train goes by.

In the flickering light from the passenger cars, he sees John G., also on this side, backing away and waving his arms in panic. Philip and Ronnie are after him like herky-jerky figures in an old nickelodeon movie with frames missing. Philip cracks Gates across the left temple with his bat and Ronnie catches him clean in the midsection with a level swing. John G. doubles up and Jake comes stumbling over, trying to break it up.

But before he can get there, a sharp blow to the back of his head reduces everything to black again.

When Jake comes to, Philip and Ronnie each have him by an arm and they’re dragging him down the track, back toward the open south end of the tunnel.

“Yo, you see that shit?” says Ronnie.

“What?” asks Philip.

“The spark. You know. The spark from the track just before the train came. You fried that nigger.”

“I didn’t see any spark.”

“You must’ve dropped him on the third rail, cuz.”

“Ah, that’s terrible,” says Philip. “They’re supposed to have those things covered. Somebody could get hurt down here.”

They both start laughing.

“What did you do?” says Jake, only now realizing Philip hit him from behind.

“Ha?” says Philip, sounding irritated.

“What the fuck did you do? You fucking killed a man. You may have killed two men. Are you fucking crazy?”

“Jake, it hadda be,” says Philip.

“But we can’t just leave the scene of a crime.” Jake drags his heels, trying to force them to stop and turn back.

“Look, I’m not gonna stand here and argue with you.” Philip almost jerks Jake’s right arm out of its socket. “What’s done is done.”

Again, Jake is aware that dozens of eyes are watching them from the tunnel’s dark corners and recesses.

“We should call the police,” he says.

“You do and you’ll go to jail with us. You know what the law is, Counselor. You’re an accessory to murder.”

Jake’s stomach feels like a bloody abattoir. “But I didn’t know things were going to turn out this way.”

“Like hell, you didn’t. You wanted to get rid of him. This is what it takes.”

This is what it takes.
Philip touches Jake on the arm with the baseball bat. “Look, this is gonna have to be our secret,” he says, hurrying Jake along. “We can’t tell anybody what happened here tonight.”

“We’re gonna have to stick together,” says Ronnie, pulling hard on Jake’s left arm.

“Yeah, like family,” says Philip.

It’s another couple of minutes before they reach the ledge and climb back through the opening in the fence. The park is deserted. Dozens of pigeons sit on top of the batting cage. Across
the river, the lights of New Jersey glitter like a thousand accusing eyes.

Jake finally tears himself out of Philip’s grip and goes to stand at the edge of the outfield, trying to catch his breath. The whole time he was underground, he’d been praying for the moment when he could surface again and rejoin the world of the living. But now that he’s back, he feels as if he doesn’t quite belong here anymore. Even the cool September air feels wrong in his lungs.

His life has just been divided into two halves: everything that happened before tonight and everything that will happen afterward.

25

John G.
’s ribs feel broken. His face is sticky with blood and his legs are weak. His head is a bell full of pain. He keeps waiting to go into shock, so that he won’t be able to feel anything. He wants to be numb. But numbness doesn’t come. He still feels too much.

Keep moving. Keep moving. The men with the bats could be along any minute to finish him off. It’s not just the Haldol that’s been kicking in again lately. Fear has shot a hot wire into his brain and brought him to rapt attention. Every detail of what’s just happened is now tattooed on his memory: the flashlights, the train approaching, the baseball bats, Mr. Schiff’s voice calling out, telling them to stop.

He keeps limping along the tracks, dragging himself from the scene. He’s too scared to go back and see about Abraham. All he’s about at the moment is hurting and moving. Through the dark, past the grate by the boat basin garage, around the bend at Seventy-ninth Street, beyond the yellowing burlap tent with the light flickering inside.

For a brief second, he’s back in Father Tortora Park in Patchogue. Playing cowboys and Indians. I’m a good guy. I’m a bad guy. Come get me. Bang, bang. Ka-chow. Hide behind the rock. You’re dead. No, I’m not. You just think I’m dead. Come get me, sucker.

But then he remembers that Abraham is dead. It’s no game.
That burly light-haired guy with Mr. Schiff beat his brains in with a baseball bat. Slaughtered him like an animal. He keeps seeing the spark off the third rail where he fell.

There’s no time for mourning, though. The men with the bats could be along any second.

He goes staggering on, the pain in his head spreading down his spine and curling up through his stomach. With each step, he gives a little involuntary yelp. I’m a good guy. I’m a bad guy. He hears something scurrying along behind him and realizes it’s just more rats. Gotta keep moving. An old Doors song is playing on a distant radio. “I tell you this, no eternal reward will forgive us now . . .”

What’s the point? Why not give up? Why not stop and wait for them to catch up and finish him off? What’s there left to live for? Back in Patchogue, he’d be standing up from behind the rock, throwing his hands in the air, shouting, I quit, I’m going home, I’m taking my guns and my hat with me. Expecting to find his mother with a drink by the stove as he walks in, seeing him and singing, “He’s a root-tootin’, high-falutin’ Cowboy Joe.”

But here in the tunnel, a slant of light beckons from a grating at Eighty-sixth Street. Though it’s only street light, his shoulders hunch forward and his knees refuse to buckle.

It’s as if his body still has the will to live, even after his mind has surrendered. Damn it. Against his heart’s desire to lie down and die, he keeps moving toward the light. Left foot, right foot. I’m a good guy. I’m a bad guy.

26

Tired, sullen, bruised, and confused, Jake makes his way back to the comfort of his marriage bed. The steam from a hot shower is still rising from his body and his pores feel open but somehow not clean.

It’s too late to call another lawyer about what’s just happened. He’s not even sure he should make a statement to the DA at this point.

He turns to spoon Dana from behind, wanting to feel nothing more than the assurance of her body heat and the rhythm of her breathing. Instead, she squirms away from him, as if even in slumber she senses something’s wrong.

“Where were you?” she asks, still three-quarters asleep.

“Just doing some work.”

She rolls onto her side, making little smacking noises with her mouth. “Todd Bracken called for you.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. Ten-thirty.”

He freezes for a moment, caught in the lie. Was Todd calling from the office? Does she know Jake wasn’t there?

“I was out meeting a client,” he says.

She’s already on her stomach and asleep.

He lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling, wondering how he could’ve broken their bond of trust so easily. It’s not that he’s
never lied to her before. It’s just that he’s never lied about anything that truly mattered. There’ve been no affairs, no hidden bank accounts, no deep family secrets. He’s always told her about every case he’s had, even when she wasn’t particularly interested. The witnesses, the depositions, the judges, the motions. The only thing he’s ever held back from her, he realizes, is the murder in his own heart.

Weird-shaped shadows stretch across the ceiling. Car windows, elongated tree branches, telephone wires. The street is absolutely silent, though. John G. is gone. Instead, there is dripping. Hardly discernible at first. But a steady tap-tap-tap over Jake’s head.

From living in an apartment most of his life, he’s grown used to sounds from other people’s homes—babies crying, couples arguing, glasses breaking, water rushing. He remembers standing outside his own parents’ bedroom and hearing the violence in his father’s voice threatening to bring the walls down.

His father was the angriest man he’d ever known. Other immigrants found success and opportunity in the New World; Gregor Schafransky found only justification for his precious outrage. The rest of the family came over from Poland just before the war and flourished in the plumbing supply business. For a while, they tried to support Gregor by giving him a job as a salesman, but he had neither the aptitude nor the temperament. He retreated into drink and blamed everyone else for his problems. He clashed with the relatives repeatedly and wound up working behind the counter of a deli on Stillwell Avenue. His only true accomplishments were the beatings he doled out to his wife and his resented son.

He was the Joe DiMaggio of wife beaters, the Muhammad Ali of domestic abuse. He beat them with righteous fury and with blind drunken abandon. For insanely specific reasons and for general discontent. It wasn’t that he was violent all the time; that would’ve been more manageable. There was no telling what would set him off. Too many bottles of ketchup in the cupboard, not enough beer in the refrigerator, newspapers on the bathroom floor, a pair of glasses lost. Once he brought home lamb chops
from the deli and when Jake couldn’t finish eating them, his father beat him until he vomited. Then he demanded the boy eat what was left on his plate.

But his masterpiece, the crowning achievement of his sacred inviolate outrage, was his wife’s face. Her flesh was the clay he pounded with his fists. What he left was a sculpture of collapsed cheekbones, black eyes, and splintered teeth. A grim Russian girl, she’d been raised to believe a man would always take care of her. Sometimes she’d run into Jake’s room and try to hide in his bed. But her husband would always come and drag her out, leaving Jake shivering like a coward under the covers, filled with shame for not being able to protect her.

One Friday morning the old man backhanded her across the kitchen for burning his eggs and she crashed into the stove, breaking her left wrist.

Instead of hiding in his room again, Jake, who was all of fifteen, stormed out of the house. He took the B train all the way into Manhattan and wound up wandering aimlessly through the Central Park Zoo. He found himself in front of the lion’s cage, trying to summon up the courage to go home.

The lion was magnificent up on its perch. All coiled strength and dark glimmering eyes. Watching her, Jake felt the animal was trying to tell him something about how to survive in this life.

He took the train home just before nine and fished a broken bottle of Piel’s Real Draft out of the garbage can on the corner. With a head that felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, he climbed the six floors to their apartment. His father was asleep on the couch, snoring with his mouth open and a Clark Gable submarine movie on the TV. Jake touched the soft spot at the base of his father’s throat with the jagged glass and waited for the old man to open his eyes.