She picked up. This is Cat Martin.
Hello?
Adolescent white boy. Her synapses snapped.
Hello. What can I do for you?
Did you talk to my brother?
Cat pushed the green button. The readout was a 212 area code.
Whos your brother?
He told me he called you.
No, not adolescent. This kid sounded young, nine or ten. His voice was serene, even a bit aphasic. Drugs, probably. A few of his mothers OxyContins.
Whats your name?
Did you talk to him? Im sorry, but I need to know.
When would he have called?
Last week. Tuesday.
Shit. This was something.
Id have to check the records. Can you tell me his name?
Were in the family. We dont have names.
Keep him talking. Give the guys as much time as you can.
What family are you in? she said.
He told me he talked to you. I just want to make sure.
Are you in trouble? Can you let me help you?
I was wondering. Can you tell me what he told you?
If somebodys hurting you, I can make them stop.
No, no statements. Phrase everything as a question. Keep him answering.
I didnt know.
What didnt you know?
I thought he was just going to put the bomb somewhere and run.
Can you tell me about the bomb?
Did you tell him not to do it?
Whos your brother? What do you think he did?
I shouldnt have called. Im just scared. Sorry.
Wont you tell me what youre afraid of? Wont you let me help you?
Thats nice of you. But you cant.
Yes. I can.
Are you happy?
What the fuck? No one had ever asked her that particular question.
Cat said, I think youre un happy. Is somebody making you do something you dont want to do?
Youd do the same thing. Wouldnt you?
What is it you think you and I would do?
Were all the same person. We all want the same things.
Can you let me come meet you? Dont you think we should talk in person?
Nobody really dies. We go on in the grass. We go on in the trees.
He was spinning out. Cat kept her voice calm.
Why do you think that?
Every atom of mine belongs to you, too.
Click.
She paused a moment, to be absolutely sure he was gone. By the time shed risen from her chair, Pete was in her cubicle.
He was spinning out. Cat kept her voice calm.
Why do you think that?
Every atom of mine belongs to you, too.
Click.
She paused a moment, to be absolutely sure he was gone. By the time shed risen from her chair, Pete was in her cubicle.
Fucking A, he said. What the hell? Brothers?"
He was on a pay phone. Way the hell up in Washington Heights.
Are they there yet?
On their way.
Mm.
Theres that line again. Were in the family.
Is it from some rock band?
Not that we can find. Were still on it.
Theyre checking movies, TV shows?
They are, Cat. Theyre good at this.
Right.
What was that he said at the end?
Im not quite sure. I think it was from Whitman.
Say what?
I think it was a line from Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass."
Poetry?
That would be poetry, yes.
Fuck me. Ill check in with you later, he said. Right.
Pete barreled off. Cat had to stay put in case of a callback. No other calls for her unless she was specifically asked for.
Thirty minutes passed. This was part of what she hadnt expected the downtime, the hanging around. When she went into police work shed seen herself careening around in unmarked cars or touching down in helicopters. She hadnt anticipated so much waiting by the phone. She hadnt pictured a life that would so closely resemble working for a corporation, dutifully performing her little piece of it all.
Every atom of mine belongs to you, too. That wasnt quite right, but it was close enough. A kid who quoted Whitman? Cat was probably the only department member whod recognize it; she was without question the only one on the premises whod read Winnicott and Klein, Whitman and Dostoyevsky. For all the difference it made.
Did you talk to my brother? Jesus fucking Christ. One kid self-detonates and his little brother calls to check up on him. A picture was emerging there was that, at least. A missing kid with a younger brother-assuming it was true, and who knew? would be much easier to track down. Were they the sons of cultists? That was more of a rural thing, messianics who raised children deep in the woods, taught them to hate the sinful world, and congratulated themselves for doing Gods work. It was more Idaho or Montana, these righteously murderous families whod gone off the grid. But the five boroughs had their share, too. Hadnt they just arrested a guy whod been keeping an adult tiger and a full-grown alligator in his one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn? They were everywhere.
She could have kissed Pete when he finally returned. Whats up? she said.
Phones on the corner of St. Nicholas and 176th. Out of the way. No kid on the scene, no witnesses yet.
Shit.
Youre okay?
Yeah.
Ill check back again soon.
Thanks.
She was sequestered now. She was bound to her cubicle, on the off chance of a callback. Momma is waiting. Call her. Shell never leave you alone.
The morning passed. Cat did some filing, caught up on her e-mails. She had one caller, at eleven forty-five, asking for Cat Martin, and her short hairs stood up, but it was just Greta, her only female regular, calling to tell her that the explosion had been caused by the unquiet spirit of a slave girl whod been murdered on the site in 1803 and that the only way to appease her was to go there immediately and perform the rite of extreme unction. Greta lived on Orchard Street, had been a seamstress for more than fifty years, had eight grandchildren, was probably a nice person.
We all want the same things. She kept hearing the kids high-pitched, tentative voice, his strange courtliness. There was how to put it an innocence about him. Subject matter aside, he had sounded for all the world like a decent, ordinary kid. That was probably drugs, though. Or dissociation.
Pete stopped by periodically, bless him, to tell her they hadnt found anything, and at twelve-thirty to bring her a pizza from Two Boots.
Seems like a good day to say screw the diet, he said.
Pepperoni and mushrooms. He knew what she liked. She offered him a slice, which he accepted.
How serious you think this is? he said. Not sure. Whats your gut telling you?
That its small but looks big.
Cat folded the tip of her pizza slice, took a big voluptuous bite. Was there anything, really, as delicious, as entirely satisfying, as a slice of pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza?
She said, You think its only these two kids.
Yeah. Think Menendez brothers.
A truly whacked-out fourteen-year-old, no longer with us, and his impressionable younger brother.
Our first copycat.
She nodded. Since 9/11, theyd all been puzzling over the dearth of follow-ups. Not Al Qaeda that was the concern of other departments. Cat and Pete and the rest of deterrence had been wondering why more ordinary American citizens hadnt used it as inspiration. It had been the terrorists gift to the violently deranged. You could blow up a garbage can now you could yell Fire! in a goddamned theater and cost the city of New York another billion or so in lost tourist revenue.
She said, Receiving their instructions from?
A higher power. You know.
She knew. Nine times out of ten, the ones who followed through were obeying someone or something. They were servants to a cause.
First one said people have got to be stopped, she said.
My guess? Dick Harte was having sex with both of them.
There are no reports of missing kids from anywhere near Great Neck.
Hes got wheels. There are kids everywhere.
Cat said, I dont quite figure Dick Harte as somebody who drives around looking for little boys to have sex with.
Happens all the time.
I know. Im talking about a feeling, thats all.
Okay, Pete said. Dick Harte is a God-fearing family man whos never touched anybody but his two wives. Why does the kid pick him?
Im just throwing this out. I predict that sooner or later well track a missing and find a father whos been torturing his boys all their lives. Older one gets to an age and decides its got to stop, somebodys got to pay. But he cant bring himself to kill his father. He picks some guy who looks like his father. Same age and weight.
Possible.
If the kids werent local, if they werent the sons of people the Hartes knew, it suggests they were the kind of boys who could be picked up by a stranger in a car.
Which happens all the time, Pete said.
Absolutely. But something in these kids voices, especially the second one I dont picture them hanging around a park, waiting for some guy to pull up in an expensive car and suck their dicks for ten dollars. It doesnt click for me.
Hey, youre the one with the pee-aitch-dee.
For all the good its done me.
So you think the guy they really want to kill is their father.
Dont hold me to it.
Wouldnt think of it.
Dont hold me to it.
Wouldnt think of it.
I predict well find a citizen whos so stressed about his oldest boy running away hes been torturing the younger one double. The kidll turn out to have been privy to the plan, hell be taken from his fucked-up home to a differently fucked-up home, where hell live and get treatment until hes old enough to go out and get a job and have a family and start torturing his own sons.
You take a dim view, he said.
And you dont?
Why would a kid like that quote poetry?
Good question. Are they checking Whitman for that in the family shit?
All done. Its not from Whitman.
Too bad.
Yeah.
She spent the day waiting for a call that never came. It was funny she usually felt grotesquely popular here on the job. She was sought-after. Today she just sat by the phone, begging it to ring, like a high school girl in love.
She tracked down a Whitman scholar at NYU, one Rita Dunn, and made an appointment for tomorrow morning. Otherwise, she killed time. Filed a few more things. Got to some old reports that had been languishing in a bottom drawer.
She stayed an extra hour, then packed it in. She had her cell, of course if the kid called back, they could patch him straight through to her wherever she was. She walked home through the dusk of another perfect June day among citizens who refused to shed their habits of looking suspicious to her. The guy nervously unloading boxes from a bakery truck, the jogger in Princeton sweats, even the blind man tapping along with his cane they all seemed like potentials. They were, in fact, all potentials. Everyone was. The trick was to keep living with the conviction that almost everyone was actually harmless. It was the jobs central irony. If you werent careful, you could get as paranoid as the people you dealt with.
Were all the same person. We all want the same things.