"The zoo?"
"She said you'd take me to the zoo."
"That's what your mommy said?"
"Uh-huh. I want juice!"
"Did she say how long she'd be gone?"
Courtney frowned for a moment then extended her arms as wide as they'd go. She said, "Long, long time."
Rune picked up the stuffed rabbit. Oh, shit.
Courtney stuck her lower lip out threateningly and said, "Juice."
Sam Healy was in his late thirties, over six feet tall and lean. His thinning hair was combed straight back and his moustache drooped over the corners of his mouth. He resembled a cowboy, at least when he was wearing what he now wore – a plaid shirt, jeans and black boots. His profession: a detective with the NYPD Bomb Squad.
They sat in Rune's houseboat, where he spent an occasional night, and she leaned forward, listening to him as intensely as if he were telling a rookie how to dismantle a C-4 demolition charge. She asked, "How often should I feed her?"
Healy said, "You're too nervous about this, Rune. Three times a day'll work fine."
"How about medicine?" Rune's palms were glistening with sweat. "Should she be taking medicine?"
"Well, is she sick?"
"No."
"Then why would she need medicine?"
Rune said, "She's a baby. I thought you always gave medicine to babies."
"Not if she's not sick."
Rune gazed out over the river. "Oh, Sam, it was fun playing with her and reading to her, but this – this is, like, really, really serious."
"They're very resilient."
"Oh, God. What if she falls?" she asked, panicked.
Healy sighed. "Pick her up. Comfort her. Dust her off."
"I'm not ready for this, Sam. I can't be a mother. I'm trying to do my story. I'm… Oh, God, does she wear diapers?"
"Ask her."
"I can't ask her. I'd be embarrassed."
"She's, what? About three? She's probably toilet-trained. If not, you should start pretty soon."
"Me? No way. Forget about it."
"Rune, kids are wonderful. When you and Adam and I go out we have a great time."
"But he'syour son. That's different. I don't want one of my own. I'm too young to be a mother. My life is over with already."
"It's only temporary, isn't it?"
"That's the part I'm not too sure about." Rune looked toward Courtney's room. Her voice was panicky when she said, "You think she drinks too much juice?"
"Rune."
"She drinks a lot of juice."
"You should worry a lot less."
"Sam, I can't have a kid with me when I interview people. What am I-?"
"I'm going to give you the name of the day-care center Cheryl and I used to take Adam to. It's a good place. And some of the women there work nights as baby-sitters."
"Yeah?"
"Look at the bright side: You didn't have to go through labor."
Rune sat close to him and laid her head on his chest. "Why do I get myself into things like this?"
"She's a sweet little girl."
Rune put her arms around him. "They're all sweet when they're asleep. The thing is they wake up after a while."
He began rubbing her shoulders.
"That's nice."
"Yeah," he said, "it is."
He rubbed for five minutes, his strong fingers working down her spine. She moaned. Then he untucked her T-shirt and began working his way up, under the cloth.
"That's nicer," she said and rolled over on her back.
He kissed her forehead. She kissed his mouth, feeling the tickle of the moustache. It was a sensation she'd gotten used to, one she liked a lot.
Healy kissed her back. His hand, still inside her T-shirt, worked its way up. He disarmed bombs; he had a very smooth touch.
"Rune!" Courtney shouted in a shrill voice.
They both jumped.
"Read me a story, Rune!"
Her hands covered her face. "Jesus, Sam, what'm I going to do?"
9
The train up to Harrison, New York, left on time and sailed out of the tunnel under Park Avenue, rising up on the elevated tracks like an old airplane slowly gaining altitude. Rune's head swiveled as she watched the redbrick projects, clusters of young men on the street. No one wore colorful clothing; it was all gray and brown. A woman pushed a grocery cart filled with rags. Two men stood over the open hood of a beige sedan, hands on their wide hips, and seemed to be confirming a terminal diagnosis.
The train sped north through Harlem and the scenes flipped past more quickly. Rune, leaning forward, climbing onto her knees, felt the lurch as the wheels danced sideways like a bullfighter's hips and they crossed the Harlem River Bridge. She waved to passengers on a Dayliner tour boat as they looked up at the bridge. No one noticed her.
Then they were in the Bronx – passing plumbing supply houses and lumberyards and, in the distance, abandoned apartments and warehouses. Daylight showed through the upper-story windows.
You wake up in the morning and you think…
Rune tried to doze. But she kept seeing the tape of Bogg's face, broken into scan lines and each scan line a thousand pixels of red, blue and green dots.
… Hell, I'm still here.
The way their eyes looked at her was weird.
She'd figured the prisoners would lay lot of crap on her – catcalls, or whoops or "Yo, honey," or long slimy stares.
But nope. They looked at her the way assembly line workers would glance at a plant visitor, someone walking timidly between tall machines, careful not to get grease on her good shoes. They looked, they ignored, they went back to mopping floors or talking to buddies and visitors or not doing much of anything.
The warden's office had checked her press credentials and guards had searched her bag and the camera case. She was then escorted into the visitors' area by a tall guard – a handsome black man with a moustache that looked like it was drawn above his lip in mascara. Visitors and inmates at the state prison in Harrison were separated by thick glass partitions and talked to each other on old, heavy black telephones.
Rune stood for a moment, watching them all. Picturing what it would be like to visit a husband in prison. So sad! Only talking to him, holding the thick receiver, reaching out and touching the glass, never feeling the weight or warmth of his skin…
"In here, miss."
The guard led her into a small room. She guessed it was reserved for private meetings between lawyers and their prisoners. The guard disappeared. Rune sat at a gray table. She studied the battered bars on the window and decided that this particular metal seemed stronger than anything she'd ever seen.
She was looking out the greasy glass when Randy Boggs entered the room.
He was thinner than she'd expected. He looked best straight on; when he turned his head to glance at a guard his head became birdish – like a woodpecker's. His hair was longer than in the tape she'd studied and the Dairy Queen twist was gone. It still glistened from the oil or cream he used to keep it in place. His ears were long and narrow and he had tufts of blond, wiry hair growing out of them. She observed dark eyes, darkened by an overhang of bone, and thick eyebrows that reached toward each other. His skin wasn't good; in his face were patches of wrinkles like cities in satellite photos. But Rune thought it was a temporary unhealthiness – the kind that good food and sun and sleep can erase.
Boggs looked at the guard and said, "Could you leave us?"
The man answered, "No."
Rune said to the guard, "I don't mind."
"No."
"Sure," Boggs said, as cheerful as if he'd been picked for first baseman in a softball game. He sat down and said, "What for d'you want to see me, miss?"
As she told him about receiving his letter and about the story she grew agitated. It wasn't the surroundings; it was Boggs himself. The intensity of his calmness. Which didn't really make sense but she thought about it and decided that was what she sensed: He was so peaceful that she felt her own pulse rising, her breath coming quickly – as if her body were behaving this natural way because his couldn't.