Just at that moment, though, the girl started screaming. It was an unbelievably loud and piercing sound which Danny had only heard before in horror movies and from his little sister. At the first sustained note, both attackers froze in their positions as if caught in a game of Red Light/Green Light. The next thing Danny knew, they were rocketing at top speed into the darkness and the far trees.
A breath flooded out of him and relief flooded through him. In his fantasies, the damsel in distress usually didn’t do much, just waited around for him to rescue her. The bad guys usually ended up sprawled on the earth unconscious or bound hand and foot. But Danny was no idiot: Reality’s reality. He knew a lucky outcome when he saw one. He grabbed the girl by the arm, drew her to her feet, and hustled her out of the park as fast as he could in case the attackers should decide to come back and slaughter them both.
Her name was Mary. She was a pretty tough kid. She had scratches on her face and neck and chest. The buttons had been ripped off her overcoat. Her top was torn, half of her bra was exposed. She was trembling, all right — hell, so was he — but she wasn’t hysterical or anything. She was barely crying.
When they were back on the avenue, under a streetlight, she took stock of herself. She turned away from Danny to readjust her pantyhose discreetly. Belted the overcoat shut to cover the rest of the damage. Then she faced him again. She took a few angry swipes at her swimming eyes, smearing mascara around her cheeks and temples.
“Bastards,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “You were really brave. Thank you.”
“I guess we oughta call the cops,” said Danny.
“Nah. Just help me get home, okay? I’m a little shaky.”
They rode across town in a cab. Mary stared out the window. She made angry sniffling noises, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. She didn’t seem to want to talk.
So Danny sat silently. He went over what had happened in his mind, composing the story he would tell his friends, smoothing the rough edges. As his excitement subsided, he began to feel the effects of the business. His knuckles burned and his throat was hoarse from screaming and a sort of retrospective terror had come over him. All in all, though, he felt pretty good — even the pain felt satisfying. He had lived up to his imagination. He was a hero.
“Here it is,” Mary said.
Danny looked out the window. His lips parted in silent surprise.
They were in one of the best sections of town, right next to the museum. They had stopped in front of an elegant stone townhouse.
Mary turned to him and flashed a weepy smile. “Would you mind coming in with me? My folks are gonna be crazed. They won’t believe what happened. It would really help if you were there to back me up.”
When they came through the door, Danny gaped at what he saw. The front hall was vast. A massive chandelier hung high, high above a marble floor. A fantastically wide staircase swept up to the second story with archaic grace. He could hardly believe the size of it all, the opulence. City real estate being what it was, it must’ve cost millions.
Almost at once, a man and woman in their fifties came hurrying down the stairs toward them: Mary’s parents. They were both wearing bathrobes, hers a floral silk, his cotton, plaid. Danny realized they had seen him and Mary via the security camera above the front door and they were already upset. As she reached the marble floor, the woman opened her arms. Mary rushed into them.
“Oh, Mama!” she said. She started sobbing into her mother’s shoulder.
Mary’s father paused. He seemed to study the two women a moment. Then he glanced over at Danny. He was short — a head shorter than Danny was — but thickly, solidly built. He had silver hair; a rough, stony face. His eyes were black and hard. They glinted in the light.
“Was this you did this?” he asked quietly.
In all his young life, Danny had never felt anything like what he felt then. A watery weakness through his whole body, the taste of copper on his tongue, a spasm of pain in his back, a wild, childlike anxiety that he was about to lose control of his bladder: fear — he had never felt that kind of fear. He couldn’t really tell why he felt it now. Something in the older man’s posture, relaxed, unbristled, calm. Something in the thin line of his mouth, in his flinty eyes.
But Mary, still clinging to her mother’s robe with one hand, swung her tear-stained face around to them. “No, Daddy, no! He fought them. There were two of them. They were gonna rape me. One had a knife. Danny was just passing by. He was so brave.”
Her father continued to stare at Danny another second. Then he nodded, satisfied. A smile twitched at his lips. He gave Danny an approving slap on the shoulder.
Danny sagged. He breathed as if he hadn’t breathed for long minutes. Maybe he hadn’t.
“What was it — n—s?” said the older man.
The hateful word came out that casually, as if he used it all the time. Taken off-guard, Danny hesitated. Once, only last year, he’d told a cabdriver to shut the hell up when he started talking racist garbage like that. But he wasn’t going to tell Mary’s father to shut the hell up. He wasn’t going to protest at all. On top of which, he couldn’t exactly lie about the race of the attackers.
“Well… they were black guys, yeah,” he said finally. Instantly, he felt his evening of courage stained, diminished. He’d been a hero before, but he felt like a coward now. He wished the night had faded away at its high point like a movie scene. Why couldn’t it be like that? Why the hell couldn’t life ever play out like daydreams?
Mary’s father nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Danny, huh? You did a good thing, Danny. I’m grateful. Tunny’ll drive you home.”
Danny’s gaze followed the older man’s gesture. He saw the shadow of another man in a corner of the foyer. The man must’ve come out of the door under the stairs. He was very large: tall, broad shoulders. Standing with his hands folded in front of him — just standing there, waiting. Tunny. What the hell kind of a name was Tunny?
Danny didn’t want to get in a car with the guy. He didn’t want Mary’s father to know where he lived. He didn’t want to be with these people at all anymore. He just wanted to get out of here.
He licked his lips. “Great,” he said. “Great. Thanks.”
Tunny met him in front of the townhouse, driving a black monster of a Lexus, the same kind of luxury sedan his boss at the agency drove. Danny moved to get in the front seat, but only the door to the back was open. Tunny sat behind the wheel, waiting, until Danny got in the back.
All through the silent drive downtown, Danny’s mind was working, his imagination working. He hadn’t had a good look at Tunny’s face yet. He tried to catch glimpses of it in the rearview, but he couldn’t see much in the dark of the car. He had a sense of the man’s features as thick, brutal, and sardonic, but he might have been making that up. He was making up all kinds of things, all kinds of scenarios. Maybe Mary’s father was a mob boss or an international criminal or something. Maybe he didn’t want anyone alive to know his daughter had been “dishonored” in the park. Maybe Tunny was driving him out to some swamp across the state line where he’d make him kneel in the mud and put a bullet in the back of his head. Danny resolved he wouldn’t kneel, but he remembered that watery feeling in his muscles when Mary’s father had simply looked at him and, for the first time, he began to understand that you might not always have a choice about such things.