Glenn Cooper: Book of Souls

“I’m going for a run,” Will announced through a scowl.

“Go for a long one, Mister Will,” Moonflower advised.

A daily run had become part of Will’s postretirement routine, a component of his new-man ethos. He was leaner and stronger than he had been in years, only ten pounds heavier than his football-playing weight at Harvard. He was on the brink of fifty, but he was looking younger thanks to his no-scotch diet. He was big and athletic, with a strong jaw, boyishly thick tawny hair, and crazy blue eyes, and clad in nylon jogging shorts, he turned women’s heads, even young ones’. Nancy still wasn’t used to that.

On the sidewalk, he realized the Indian summer was over, and it was going to be uncomfortably chilly. While he stretched his calves and Achilles tendons against a signpost, he thought about shooting back upstairs for a warm-up suit.

Then he saw the bus on the other side of East 23 ^rd Street. It started up and belched some diesel exhaust.

Will had spent the better part of twenty years following and observing. He knew how to make himself inconspicuous. The guy in the bus didn’t, or didn’t care. He had noticed the rig the previous evening, driving slowly past his building at maybe five miles per hour, jamming traffic, provoking a chorus of honks. It was hard to miss, a top-of-the-line Beaver, a big royal blue forty-three-footer with slides, splashed out in gray and crimson swooshes. He had thought to himself, who the hell takes a half-a-million-dollar motor home into lower Manhattan and drives around slow, looking for an address? If he found it, where was he going to park the thing? But it was the license plate that rang bells.

Nevada. Nevada!

Now it looked like the guy had indeed found adequate parking the night before, across the street just to the east of Will’s building, an impressive feat, to be sure. Will’s heart started to beat at jogging speed even though he was still stationary. He had stopped looking over his shoulder months ago.

Apparently, that was a mistake. Gimme a break, he thought. Nevada plates.

Still, this didn’t have their signature. The watchers weren’t going to come at him in a half-baked-Winnebago battle-wagon. If they ever decided to pluck him off the streets, he’d never see it coming. They were pros, for Christ’s sake.

It was a two-way street, and the bus was pointed west. All Will had to do was run east toward the river, make a few quick turns, and the bus would never catch up. But then he wouldn’t know if he was the object of somebody’s exercise, and he didn’t like not knowing. So he ran west. Slowly. Making it easy for the guy.

The bus slid out of its space and followed along. Will picked up the pace, partly to see how the bus responded, partly to get warm. He got to the intersection of 3 ^rd Avenue and jogged in place, waiting for the light. The bus was a hundred feet behind, stacked up by a line of taxis. He shielded his eyes from the sun. Through the windshield he made out at least two men. The driver had a beard.

On the go again, he ran through the intersection and weaved through the sparse pedestrian sidewalk traffic. Over his shoulder, he saw the bus was still following west along 23 ^rd, but that wasn’t much of a test. That came at Lexington, where he took a left and ran south. Sure enough, the bus turned too.

Getting warmer, Will thought, getting warmer.

His destination was Gramercy Park, a leafy rectangular enclave a few blocks downtown. Its perimeter streets were all one-ways. If he was still being tailed, he’d have a bit of fun.

Lexington dead-ended at 21 ^st Street at the park, where 21 ^st ran one way west. Will ran east, along the outside of the park fence. The bus had to follow the traffic pattern in the opposite direction.

Will started doing clockwise laps around the park’s perimeter, each lap taking only a couple of minutes. Will could see that the bus driver was struggling with the tight left turns, nearly clipping parked cars at the corners.

There wasn’t anything remotely funny about being followed, but Will couldn’t help being amused every time the giant motor home passed him on its counterclockwise circuit. With each encounter, he got a better look at his pursuers. They failed to strike fear in his heart, but you never knew. These clowns definitely weren’t watchers. But there were other sorts of problem children out there. He’d put a lot of killers in jail. Killers had families. Vengeance was a family affair.

The driver was an older fellow, with longish hair and a full beard the color of fireplace ash. His fleshy face and ballooned-out shoulders suggested a heavy man. The man in the shotgun seat was tall and thin, also on the senior side, with wide-open eyes that furtively engaged Will sidelong. The driver stiffly refused to make eye contact altogether, as if he actually believed they hadn’t been made.

On his third circuit, Will spotted two NYPD cops on walking patrol on 20 ^th Street. Gramercy Park was an exclusive neighborhood; it was the only private park in Manhattan. The residents of the surrounding buildings had their own keys to the wrought-iron gates, and the police were visible around there, prowling for muggers and creeps. Will pulled up, breathing heavily. “Officers. That bus over there. I saw it stop. The driver was hassling a little girl. I think he was trying to get her inside.”

The cops listened, deadpan. His flat Southern drawl played havoc with his credibility. He got a lot of those out-of-town looks in New York. “You sure about that?”

“I’m ex-FBI.”

Will watched for a short while only. The cops stood smack in the middle of the street and halted the bus with hand waving. Will didn’t stick around. He was curious, sure, but he wanted to get over to the river for his usual circuit. Besides, he had a feeling he’d see these geezers again.

To be on the safe side, when he got back home, he’d take his gun out of the dresser and oil it up.

Will was grateful he had chores and obligations to occupy himself. In the early afternoon, he made the rounds to the grocer, the butcher, and the wine merchant without a single sighting of the big blue bus. He slowly and methodically chopped the vegetables, ground the spices, and browned the meat, filling the postage-stamp kitchenette and the whole apartment with Piper’s trademark chili smoke. It was the only dish that was foolproof in his hands, dinner-party safe.

Phillip was napping when Nancy came home. Will shushed her then gave her a first-year-of-marriage hug, the kind where the hands wander.

“When did Moonflower leave?”

“An hour ago. He’s been asleep.”

“I missed him so much.” She tried to pull away. “I want to see him!”

“What about me?”

“He’s numero uno. You’re numero dos.”

He followed her into the bedroom and watched as she bent over the crib and kicked off her shoes. He’d noticed this before, but it really struck him at that moment: she had developed a serenity, a mature womanly beauty that, frankly, had snuck up on him. He impishly reminded her regularly that when they were first thrown together on the Doomsday case, she hadn’t exactly make him woozy with desire. She was on the plump side at the time, in the throes of freshman syndrome-new job, high stress, bad habits, and the like. Candidly, Will was always more of a lingerie-model sort of a guy. As an adolescent high-school football star, he had been imprinted with the body image of cheerleaders the way a duckling is imprinted by a mother duck. All his life, he saw a great body, he tried to follow it.

Truth be told, he never thought about Nancy in a romantic way until a crash diet turned her into more of an hourglass. So I’m shallow, he would have admitted if anyone called him on it. But early on, looks weren’t the only impediment to romance. He also had to introduce her to cynicism. At first, her fresh-out-of-the-academy gung ho, eager-to-please personality sickened him, like a stomach virus. But he was a good and patient teacher, and under his tutelage she learned to question authority, play loose with the bureaucracy, and generally sail close to the rocks.