The Salinger Contract (17 page)

C
onner stood on the sidewalk, midway between Dex's Crown Vic and the front door of the bank. He looked at the car. Pavel was standing by the curb, leaning against the car, watching. Inside the bank, Conner could see Lyle Evans at the video monitors. Evans was beginning to stand up and walk to the front door. The security guard was holding a gun in one hand; in the other, he held a bound manuscript.

Conner looked to the bank, then to the car, then to the bank again. He looked up and down the snowy sidewalks and streets. He weighed his options. He weighed the gun. His aim would have to be dead-on—first Dex, then Pavel, and all that before Evans got to the door. That was the choice a Conner Joyce character would have made, not the one he wanted to make, but the choice destiny had forced upon him. He cocked the weapon, took a breath, and aimed. But
fuck
, no, he couldn't. He threw the gun to the ground and ran up Courtland Street. He heard tires spinning in the snow, the screech of a car lurching forward, heard the door to the bank open, heard a gunshot crack through the air. He kept running.

The one advantage of having done so much research about East Stroudsburg while writing
Leap of Fate
was that Conner now truly knew these streets—he knew the alcoves and doorways in the alley behind the Pocono Cinema; he knew each storefront insurance company and travel agency. He knew the curves and drops of Route 209, knew the crisscrossed pathways that led to the quad on the campus of East Stroudsburg University. He knew which classroom buildings were open after dark. The one disadvantage of having written all these details was that now Dex and Pavel knew them too. He may have been the cartographer, but Dex and Pavel had the map. Wherever Conner ran, he saw the approaching headlights of that black Crown Victoria; whenever he stopped to crouch in an alley or behind a Dumpster, he heard two sets of footsteps coming toward him. Moments after he had run inside the Foreign Languages Building of ESU, he heard the front door creaking open. And so he ran again.

He ran over slick white sidewalks and streets, around the gravestones in the Stroud Cemetery. And yet as he ran, questions remained—where could he go; what could he do? His plan was shot. Dex and Pavel were after him, and he didn't know which was more frightening—what would happen if he got away or what would happen if he didn't. He should have fired that gun when he had the chance. He would have done it if he had been a different sort of person; he would have done it if he had been a character he was writing in a novel, where he could eliminate all the anxious adjectives and adverbs he felt—“Cole Padgett fired the weapon. Two bodies were lying on the sidewalk. Dead. But that was OK, because Cole Padgett had no other choice. And now it was time for Cole Padgett to move on.”

In the shadows of a stone mausoleum, Conner crouched down and pulled out his phone to call Angie. He felt thankful to hear her voice mail. He told her everything that happened, told her every detail he could remember as if this might be the last chance for her to hear the story, every detail he had left out when he had tried to tell her the story before. He called back every time he had used up his allotted minutes. When he was done, Angie's voice mailbox was full and he was running again, along streets he had crossed before, over sidewalks where he saw familiar shoe prints. He ran over tire tracks that Dex's car had made. He didn't want to go home—he wouldn't be safe there—but he couldn't think of anywhere else to go. He'd get Angie's motorcycle, ride it into the city, turn himself in. “I'm the guy people're looking for, and here's the flash drive to prove it.” He wished he could be Cole Padgett, a man who rarely feared taking a chance. He wished he could be Steve McQueen—McQueen on a Suzuki with Devil Shotgun exhaust pipes could outrace any geezer in a Crown Vic. But sadly, he wasn't fictional and he had never been as good on that bike as Angie was.

On the way to Route 611, he stopped to catch his breath at a bus shelter. Taped to the glass was a faded and crinkled flyer advertising Trailways service to Port Authority in New York City. He took note of the bus station address, then started running again.

The Delaware Water Gap station was all but empty and the heat didn't seem to be working. Conner could see his wispy breaths materializing then dissipating before him. The ticket kiosks and snack counter were shuttered. The last bus of the night had already left and there wasn't another scheduled to depart until 4:15 in the morning; but there was a guard on duty, sitting at his security station—a wooden stand that looked like a dais. The guard was wearing a heavy black parka, hood up, and a green New York Jets knit hat. Conner asked him if it would be all right if he waited there until the bus came.

“It's all right with me if it's all right with you,” the guard said.

Conner wished he could sleep. Instead, he remained in the pew nearest the security station. He kept focused on the front door, waiting to see if Dex and Pavel were coming. He didn't know what he would do if he saw them—run like hell or instruct the security guard to draw his gun. But after he caught sight of the Crown Vic, which slowed as it came into his view, Pavel and Dex did not emerge from the vehicle; they just drove off. When the Trailways bus pulled up at the station and Conner walked outside to board it, he didn't see any sign of Dex's car.

T
he sun had not yet risen when the Trailways bus merged onto the interstate. Conner had feared Pavel would already be on board, or that he or Dex would get on the bus at the Panther Valley stop, but no one got on there. And though highway traffic got a bit heavier as the bus exited onto I-95 and approached the Lincoln Tunnel, Conner didn't notice any cars that looked familiar.

Conner hadn't packed for this trip. Somewhere in the Poconos was a house full of his belongings. Somewhere in the city he was approaching, he had a wife and son, assuming they were still OK. In libraries across America and in the few bookstores that remained in the country, there were copies of books he had written, stories of imaginary lives he had led. In a private library in Chicago, there was the only copy of a book called
The Embargoed Manuscript
. And in a black Crown Victoria, or in the hands of a bank security guard in the Poconos, was a manuscript called
Leap of Fate
. But as he rode on that Trailways bus, all he had were the clothes he was wearing, a wallet with credit cards, fifty bucks and some spare change, and a flash drive that hadn't been his in the first place. And on West 100th Street at the Twenty-Fourth Precinct, where he went to turn himself in, that was all he had to deliver to Desk Sergeant Mitch Gales, an amiable, potbellied man who looked as if he were approaching retirement age and seemed as if he would have preferred if Conner hadn't shown up at all. The man was watching
SportsCenter
and eating chili out of a Styrofoam bowl. Conner remembered Gales from when Angie had worked there, but Gales gave no indication of remembering him.

“Help ya, buddy?” Gales asked.

“I've got something people are looking for,” Conner said, and handed him the flash drive.

The Twenty-Fourth Precinct didn't have much of a lockup, just a bench and a toilet in a room with white-tiled walls and a cracked cement floor lit by fluorescents, whose glare was reflected by the white walls. Conner was the only person in the cell, so there was little to distract him from his doubts and fears, both of which kept growing with every passing moment. He hadn't been in church since his son's baptism, but he prayed hard in that cell, promised to dedicate his life to performing good acts if only Angie and Atticus could stay safe. He offered to give up the hope of seeing them again, if that's what it would take to protect them.

Time passed—who could tell how much. Conner paced his cell. He lost any concept of how many hours were going by—whenever he called out to ask what time it was and Gales told him, the answer surprised him. He had to ask whether it was morning or night, and on two occasions, he guessed wrong. Once he fell asleep and when he awoke, he figured he had been asleep for a whole day, but only a few minutes had passed. He wondered who would come to see him first—the NYPD? The FBI? Shascha herself? He was still pondering these questions when Sergeant Gales unlocked his cell.

“You must be a pretty important guy, Mr. Joyce; you must sell a lotta books.” Gales was holding a Ziploc bag with everything Conner had left at the front desk—wallet, phone, and the flash drive, too.

“Yeah, right,” Conner said.

“I'm not joking, Mr. Joyce. You're free to go.”

What did he mean, Conner asked. Hadn't he called downtown? Hadn't he called the FBI? Hadn't he researched the case?

“Yeah, we looked into all that, everything you told me,” Gales said, but he added that he had just gotten a call instructing him to release Conner and to return all his belongings.

“Who called you?” Conner asked.

Gales opened the cell door. “Your friend's here to pick you up,” he said.

“Friend?” Conner felt color return to his face, felt all the weariness of the past hours dissipate, replaced by an exhilaration he could compare only to the first rush of love. Angie must have gotten his messages, must have heard all the details he had told her, must have pulled some strings to get him released. He thanked Gales, shook the man's hand twice, then walked out of the cell, sprinting into the lobby where he imagined Angie waiting.

But Angie wasn't there.

Y
ou are disappointed to see me. I understand. I am sorry for
thees
,” said Pavel Bilski. He was now wearing a long, lined khaki trench coat that fit tightly over his blazer. But for all Conner felt, the man might just as well have been wearing an executioner's robe. Every drop of energy and excitement Conner had felt moments before had now bled out of him as suddenly as if his throat had been slit. He made no effort to argue with Sergeant Gales; he knew his cause was futile. Someone had paid Gales off, or had paid somebody else off, probably Dex had done it; it didn't matter. Wherever Pavel was headed, Conner could run or he could follow; either way, he would wind up in the same place. I had once told Conner about a quote from one of my mother's favorite films, and that quote returned to him now as he considered his predicament—
“Oui, je peux perdre, mais je gagne toujours”—Yes, I can lose, but I always win
.

Conner followed Pavel out of the precinct headquarters and onto 100th Street, expecting to be blasted with daylight. But it was night. He expected to see Dex outside, waiting in a car. But no one was out front. He remembered how full these streets had seemed whenever he had walked along them with Angie; it seemed significant to him that they were empty now. Empty apartments, empty squad cars, an empty library, an empty church, empty storefronts with For Rent signs in them, buses and taxis without any passengers.

“Where's Dex?” Conner asked Pavel.

“He has flown back.”

“Chicago?”

Pavel nodded. He made a gesture, indicating that Conner should walk with him, then started to head west. Conner thought of asking where they were going, but didn't see what difference the answer would have made.

“I assume you're carrying,” he said to Pavel, miming a gun.

“
Thees ees
true, yes,” said Pavel.

As he walked alongside Pavel, Conner took out his phone to call Angie. The voice mailbox was still full.

“My wife,” Conner said. “She's still not answering.”

Pavel raised his eyebrows.

“Is she all right?” Conner asked.

“As far as I know,” said Pavel.

“Have you seen her?”

“I have not.”

“Has Dex?”

“Neither has he,” said Pavel, then added philosophically, “as far as I know.”

The farther west Conner walked, the darker the streets seemed to become. Past Broadway, every building appeared to be cast in shadows.

“Are we going to someone's apartment?” Conner asked.

“No,” said Pavel.

“Are we looking for your car?”

“No, Conner, we are not.”

“Are we going someplace to talk?”

“No,” said Pavel. “I do not expect there will be much talking after it is done.”

Riverside Park was never particularly crowded this far north, especially not at night. Every so often, someone would turn up dead here—a drug deal gone wrong, a homeless person who got killed for someone else's kicks. The park was a good place for a killing; the Hudson was a good place to dump a body. Conner thought back to the time he spent in the Navy, all the things he thought he would have been willing to die for. Now he couldn't imagine dying for his country—his family, though, that was different. Whatever Pavel and Dex had in mind, he would go along with it; he wouldn't fight, as long as Atticus and Angela would be safe.

“Did Dex plot all this out?” Conner asked Pavel.

“Most, yes,” said Pavel.

“This walk? Did he plot this walk?”

“He did.”

“And did he plot what would happen at the end of it?”

“Yes,” said Pavel. “He had a plan for this, too.”

“I assume the gun is loaded?”

“Always.”

“And that you plan to use it.”

“This is the plan.”

“I could run,” said Conner.

“I would not advise that,” said Pavel.

“I could. But I won't. I won't resist if you promise me something.”

Pavel stopped walking near a set of stairs that led down to the park's lower level, barely visible at all in the blackness. The river lay just beyond, hard to make out from this vantage point and yet Conner could hear the flow of the water.

“Promise me,” Conner repeated, “nothing will happen to my family. Once I'm gone, that's the end of the story. I don't want them to owe Dex anything. I don't want him to take any revenge out on them for something they had nothing to do with.”

“I am sorry, Conner, but I am afraid that is not exactly what I have in mind.” Pavel drew the gun.