Vigil (24 page)

The others said it too. Bill’s mom let out a muffled wail and her husband gathered her against him. Someone gave the signal and the casket began to gradually descend into the earth. Carter, despite himself, was reminded of the dig in Sicily—the Well of the Bones. The earth there had looked a lot like this, the color of wet coffee grounds, and at the bottom, again like this, there were only bones.

A minute or two later, it was over. The mourners said their farewells to each other and dispersed to their cars. Suzanne came over to Carter and said, “We can have the limo take you back to the city, but first we have to go to Bill’s parents’ house to drop them off.”

It had never occurred to Carter that everyone wouldn’t be going straight back to Manhattan, and his first thought now was
Where can I get a cab?
Inside the cemetery it would of course be impossible, and outside its gates he had no idea where he’d be.

“Oh, sure,” he mumbled, still wondering what other recourse he might have. “But I really don’t want to intrude on the family’s time alone,” he said. Already his eyes were scanning the remaining cars, to see if any of them might be able to give him a lift back to town. A gray Toyota was just pulling away, and about the only car left was the black Lincoln. A young man was standing beside it now—the guy from the funeral parlor, the one who looked like a professional mourner—and he was even looking in Carter’s direction.

“Excuse me, will you?” he said to Suzanne, thinking this might be his last chance. “I’ll be right back.”

As Carter walked over toward the Lincoln, the mourner’s eyes grew wide. Maybe the mortuary had sent him as a kind of supervisor, Carter thought, just in case anything went awry at the service.

“Are you with O’Banion Brothers, by any chance?” Carter said.

The guy looked quite flustered. “No. I’m not.”

“Oh, because I needed a ride back into Manhattan, and I wondered if you were going that way.”

The guy’s eyes lit up, as if he’d just been presented with a totally unexpected gift. “Yes! Absolutely. I can drop you off wherever you like.”

“Thanks.” It was more than Carter had hoped for. “Let me just tell Bill’s family I’ve got a ride.”

Carter went back, much relieved, and told Suzanne, who looked a little relieved herself. Maybe the family would have been on the hook for the cost of the extra limo ride.

Returning to the Lincoln, he noticed two laborers with shovels hovering a discreet distance away. The gravediggers, here to finish the job.

“I’m Carter Cox,” he said, extending his hand to the guy giving him the ride.

“Ezra Metzger,” the man replied. He waved toward the car. “Please.”

Carter got in on one side, and Ezra went around to the other, all but rubbing his hands together with glee. Maybe, Ezra thought, his luck was changing after all. Only the day before, he’d been bailed out of jail for the fracas in the UN park and released on Sam and Kimberly’s recognizance. And today he was getting an exclusive audience with the one man in New York he was most interested in talking to.

“This is my Uncle Maury,” Ezra said, as the driver turned around in the front seat.

“Pleased to meet you,” Maury said. “So where are we headed?”

“Anywhere in Manhattan would be fine,” Carter replied. “But the closer to St. Vincent’s Hospital, the better.” He hadn’t checked up on Joe yet that day.

“St. Vincent’s it is,” Maury said. “I’m gonna just listen to the game, if you two don’t mind,” he added, turning the radio up. Was this their method for affording privacy to the occupants of the backseat, Carter wondered? Not that he thought they’d be needing it for any reason.

As the car wound its way around the cemetery drive, Carter asked Ezra how he knew Bill Mitchell.

“I don’t, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. So you’re a friend of his family?”

“No, not that either. I read about the funeral services in the paper. My real interest, I’ll confess, was in meeting you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because I’d read about the accident in your lab, and I was very curious about what exactly had happened. You, I thought, must know better than anyone.”

“Are you a fire investigator?” Carter asked, though the plush town car certainly indicated otherwise.

“No.”

“A reporter?”

“Oh, no. I’ve worked in many labs myself, most recently in the Middle East, and I’m always curious when there is a mishap as dire as yours.” No use, right now, in going into his real reasons. “Would you mind my asking, what kind of work were you doing in your lab when the fire broke out?”

Who was this guy, Carter wondered. And should he answer that question? The car pulled out of the cemetery gates, and after mulling it over for a few more seconds, he couldn’t see what further damage could be done if he did answer. All the damage imaginable had already
been
done. “Professor Russo and I are both paleontologists, and we had been working on a fossil.”

“With the deceased Mr. Mitchell?”

Carter hesitated, then said, “Bill wasn’t really authorized to be there.”

Ezra appeared to take his meaning, and said, “Yes, I see. Experiments can easily go wrong, can’t they, in the wrong hands?”

To Carter, it sounded as if he was speaking from experience.

“But can I ask you then,” Ezra said, proceeding as cautiously and politely as he could, “what is this fossil you and Professor Russo had been working on?”

Carter looked out the window at the other cars now whizzing past. “Was. What
was
this fossil we were working on. It was completely destroyed in the explosion and the fire. And now we’ll never know what it was.”

“What did it look like?”

That was a good question, and despite himself, Carter found himself re-engaged in the subject. It was the bitter-sweet feeling you got from talking about an old flame. “Most of it was pretty well entombed in a block of stone, but from what we could see, it might have been a member of the raptor family.”

“That would be a dinosaur?”

So now he knew the guy wasn’t a rival paleontologist. “Probably. All we had seen of it so far was its hand, or I should say claw, and part of one limb.”

Ezra seemed fascinated by this information. “That’s funny,” he said.

“What is?”

“You said hand at first. As if it had struck you as human.”

Carter couldn’t argue with that; the fossil had always stirred curious thoughts in him. Not to mention the bizarre sensation he’d had the day he’d taken the sample of the extended talon—the fossil had seemed somehow warmer than the surrounding stone. “Is that why you’re interested?” Carter asked, taking one more stab. “Are you an anthropologist?”

“In the broader sense of that word—the study of mankind—yes, I guess you could say I am.” To Ezra, this seemed like a fair compromise, and an effortless way to assuage Carter’s curiosity. “I’m very interested in how we got here, and why.”

“Sounds like you take a fairly cosmic approach,” Carter said. Was this guy actually a little . . . off? Carter began to wonder if he was about to start hearing about alien explorers who taught us the secrets of pyramid building.

“I’d accept that—I do take the
cosmic
approach,” Ezra said, “even though I know you’re using the term in a derisory way.”

Jeez—had Carter’s tone of voice betrayed him that badly, or was this guy supersensitive? Carter had to remind himself that even if he did think Ezra was strange, he wasn’t stupid. In fact, his features had a sharp and brilliant cast to them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any offense.”

“None taken,” Ezra replied, though it was clear that he was annoyed. He turned his face away—in profile, he reminded Carter of a desert hawk, gaunt, spare, and hungry—and studied the tollbooth inspector who was even now giving the driver in the front seat his change.

They drove through the tunnel in silence, Carter feeling bad that he’d insulted the guy who was giving him his ride. When they emerged, Carter took a shot at improving the climate in the car by asking Ezra where he lived.

“East Side,” was all Ezra said.

“Alone?”

“No.” If there was one good thing, in Ezra’s view, that had come out of the UN imbroglio, it was that the court had mandated he remain at his present address under close supervision. Kimberly had been livid—one of the few things in a long time that had given Ezra genuine joy.

But what he couldn’t afford to do right now, Ezra realized, was remain offended, or in any way alienate this Carter guy—at least not until he had extracted enough information to resolve any doubts or questions he might still have. Was there some connection between what was going on in the lab that night—a lab where a curious fossil was under close scrutiny—and the pealing bells that had gone off in every church in town?

“I’ll have to circle the block,” Maury interjected, “to get into the hospital driveway,” but Carter, anxious to get out of the car, said, “No problem, you can just drop me off across the street.”

Maury shrugged and pulled the car over to the curb in front of an abandoned building that faced the main entrance to the hospital.

“Thanks for the ride,” Carter said to Ezra, who finally turned back to him and asked, “Is Mr. Russo being treated there?”

“Yes.” That was an easy one. “I’m going to go up to the ICU and see how he’s doing.”

Carter turned the handle on the door and got out. But before he could walk away, Ezra had slid across the backseat and lowered the back window.

“One more thing,” Ezra said.

“Sure.” Now that he was out of the car, Carter felt like he was in the clear.

“Did your colleague tell you anything, no matter how odd, about what happened in the lab that night? About the explosion? The fire? The fossil?”

“Not much,” Carter said. “You’ve got to understand, he’s still in very bad shape. I know that they were using a laser, and the beam hit a pocket of gas that was trapped in the stone. That’s what caused the accident.”

“You’re sure that’s all?” Ezra asked. “There wasn’t anything more?”

Carter debated going into it; all he wanted to do was get away, but at the same time there was something in Ezra’s query—in the imploring look in his eyes—that made him pause.

And Ezra saw it. “What? Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Okay, he did say one thing that might interest you,” Carter said, as Ezra waited by the rolled-down window. “Now, you’ve got to remember that he was delirious and doped up to his eyeballs when he said it—”

“Tell me.”

“He said the fossil had come to life.”

Ezra remained expressionless for a moment, then his cheeks flushed and he banged on the inside of the car door with his clenched fist. “I knew it!”

Now it was Carter’s turn to be surprised. “You knew that?”

Ezra scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it out the window to Carter. “That’s my number, but I never pick up. Call it, and leave your number with the housekeeper.”

“We need to talk,” Ezra said, “much more.” He sat back on the seat, his eyes straight ahead. There was a momentary break in the traffic, and the car pulled away.

As Carter waited for the WALK signal, watching the Lincoln’s taillights disappear, he happened to glance at the huge sign on the derelict site behind him. COMING SOON, it said, in big letters, THE VILLAGER, A 26-STORY LUXURY CO-OP. And under that, in equally big letters, A PROJECT OF THE METZGER COMPANY, INC. Why did that ring a bell all of a sudden? It took him a second to put it together, but hadn’t that Ezra guy said his last name was Metzger? Could it be . . . ?

The WALK light flashed and Carter crossed the street, wondering exactly who it was that he’d just been talking to. And more important, how in the world could Ezra Metzger—yes, he was certain that was the name—how could he have anticipated, as he claimed, Russo’s ravings about a fossil coming to life?

Night was becoming his friend. It was so much simpler
to move through the streets at night, under the glow of the lamps that made everyone and everything look slightly unreal. He was able to move like a mist among the people, to absorb unnoticed their thousand scents and voices and shapes. He could inhale their perfumes, look into their eyes, even brush against their bodies, feeling the texture of their clothes, their skin. He went where the streets were full, to inhale the air they’d breathed, to listen to them talk—
a hundred different tongues, all seemingly spoken together
—and to learn the secrets of their hearts and their souls.

In that, he felt, there was little surprise. And some comfort. He had not been wrong
then,
so long ago . . . and he was not wrong
now
.

But in everything else, so much was changed.

Already he had learned the name of the place he now inhabited, and he had learned, too, its position in the present world. Could a place for his return have been more wisely chosen? Was there anywhere on earth he could so readily begin again? It was not divine providence—
oh no,
surely not that
—but it was something closely akin to it, something that had been set in motion. A plan that even he, in all his wisdom and all his knowing, had not yet fully compassed.

Still, he had come to know certain streets, certain corners, better than others, and he often found himself returning to these, like a wolf might follow the trails he had successfully hunted on before. When he emerged from the darkness of his lair—a place of splintered wood and crumbling brick, where he could hear the faint echoes of infirmity and disease—he often walked these familiar paths. Here, for instance, was the place the burned man had been taken . . . here was the place where he had watched from the shadows as the fire blazed . . . and here was the place, now blackened and abandoned, from which he had been returned to the world. There were answers here—oh yes, that much he knew—but he did not yet know in whose breast these answers were held.