Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

Pender broke off the connection. Linda opened her desk drawer and took out the box of flag pins, then scooted her chair all the way over to the left of the big map behind her desk. But when she tried to insert a red one into the dot marking Concord with her left hand, it slipped from her fingers, the tips of which seemed to have fallen asleep.

Must have been leaning on it funny, she told herself, bending to pick it up. Next thing she knew she was on the floor-the flexion of her neck had sent a bone-jarring jolt of electricity shooting down her spine and fanning out across her entire neural network.

It was like being hit by a bolt of lightning, was how Linda described it to the nurse over the telephone, when she was able to use the telephone.

“Give me your number,” said the nurse. “I’ll have the doctor call you back.”

At five o’clock? thought Linda. And do you have a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell me? “You promise?”

“I promise. Just stay where you are.”

“No problem,” said Linda wryly.

For Cappy Kaplan, the key to enjoying a successful date with Rosie Delamour-and make no mistake, at seventy-four, Cappy’s idea of a successful date was about the same as any male over the age of thirteen and under the age of dead-was to time your move to her consumption.

To begin with, you had to pick her up early-if left to her own devices, by the time the sun was under the yardarm, so, generally, was Rosie. But with dinner, he’d buy a bottle of wine, which Cappy could afford only because the early start enabled him to take advantage of the discounted senior menus offered at the eating establishments frequented by the social security set in Atlantic City. After dinner, back at her place, was where it got tricky. Once Rosie started knocking back the store-brand vodka she favored, there was a very small window of opportunity between hotto and blotto, as they said in Cappy’s day.

Like most Navy men, the retired chief petty officer (Cappy was his nickname, not his rank) was prompt. He pulled up in front of Rosie’s apartment building in his ’68 Harley Electra Glide with the fishtail mufflers and the studded cowboy saddle (he could still ride the Hog, he just couldn’t lift it if it spilled), walked it into the vestibule (the bike wasn’t entirely secure even there, and sometimes it leaked a little oil, but he’d be damned if he was going to leave it out on the street in this neighborhood), and rang the buzzer to apartment 5-B at precisely five-fifteen. When Rosie failed to buzz him in, his first thought was that she had fallen asleep on the couch watching her soaps. His second thought was that his hopes for a successful date were probably as doomed as his first ship, the escort carrier Ommaney Bay, which went down off Luzon in January of ’45.

But it never occurred to Cappy to just turn around and go home. Rosie might need him-she might have passed out, fallen, struck her head on something. You could bleed to death from a scalp laceration-that’s how Bill Holden kicked it. Like they say, it ain’t the fall that kills you, it’s what you hit on the way down.

So he mashed all fifteen buttons on the wall with the flat of his big hand, waited by the door, and sure enough, somebody buzzed him through. Intercom must still be fubared, he decided, on his way up the stairs. Somebody oughtta call the super.

A little winded, he stopped to catch his breath at Rosie’s door, then rang the bell. No answer, but he could hear it ringing. He knocked anyway. “Rosie, you okay in there?”

The peephole darkened. “Go away.” Man’s voice.

Cappy knew he wasn’t Rosie’s only fella. Hell, she wasn’t his only gal-or hadn’t been, until Helen Breen, Tommy Breen’s widow, finally passed. But Wednesday night was their night, Cappy and Rosie’s, and had been for years. Something wasn’t copacetic around here. “Where’s Rosie?”

“You Cappy?”

“Yeah.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I’d like her to tell me that.”

“She told me to tell you.”

Cappy drew himself to his full height-once, six-two, still close to six-one-and crossed his arms over his chest. “Either I see Rosie or I call the cops.”

The door opened. Cappy found himself face-to-face with one of the creepiest guys he’d ever seen. And balder than Cappy on his worst day, bald right down to his eyeballs. “C’mon in.”

Cappy brushed by him-he’d dealt with more desperate characters than this in his thirty years in the Navy; hell, he’d been commanded by more desperate characters than this. Rosie was lying on the Murphy bed, a cold compress over her forehead. She sat up.

“Cappy, this is my son, Simon,” she said, weakly, but with an undertone of pride in her voice. “Simon, this is my friend Cappy I told you about.”

Simon stuck his right hand out, reached behind him with his left to close the door. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Didn’t sound that way a minute ago.” But Cappy shook the man’s hand. He knew how big a deal this was for Rosie-she’d often mentioned the children she’d been forced to abandon as infants. “Rosie baby, why don’t we take a rain check on dinner? You probably want to have a little time alone with your boy here.”

“Yes, that might be-”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” said Simon quickly. The old guy seemed to be pretty clueless as to Simon’s recent notoriety, but you never knew, he could leave here, turn on a radio, pick up a paper, watch the news, make the connection. “I’m the one who came busting in without calling first. Why don’t we have dinner together-we’ll send for takeout. My treat.”

“Very kind of you,” said Cappy, trying to work his way around Simon, who was standing with his back almost to the door. “But I couldn’t possibly…”

“Oh, yes, you could,” said Simon, reaching behind his back and drawing the Colt from his waistband. “You really, really, could.”

Cappy backed away from the door. Rosie saw the gun for the first time. “Simon, what are you-”

“I’m in a little trouble. Mom.” The word sounded strange to Simon, coming out of his own mouth-he hadn’t used it as a form of address since he was three. “I can’t take a chance on Cappy here dropping the dime on me.” He turned back to Cappy. “Why don’t you join your girlfriend on the bed-I’m sure you’ve been there before.”

To Linda’s surprise, the doctor, with whom she’d had only one appointment shortly after her transfer to Washington, returned her call within a few minutes; to her relief, he didn’t sound particularly alarmed.

“It’s called Lhermitte’s sign,” he told her. “If you hadn’t already been diagnosed with MS, it would be a red flag-as things stand, it just tells us what we already know. The numbness and tingling in your fingers concerns me more. That’s a new symptom, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we have you on a course of Betaseron every other day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Side effects?”

“Just the red blotches at the injection site-and those flu symptoms I told you about.”

“Let’s stay with it, then, and if necessary we’ll think about stepping it up a notch after your next evaluation. When are you scheduled to come in?”

“First of the month-I guess that’s Monday.”

“I’ll see you on Monday, then. And until then, I want you to take it easy. Avoid stress, no strenuous physical activity. And by all means try to avoid any sudden bending or twisting of your neck.”

“Yes, sir,” said Linda promptly. As far as she was concerned, one Lhermitte’s sign per lifetime was plenty.

Linda hung around the office long enough to see the updated BOLO and arrange for its high-priority national distribution to law enforcement only, then left for home. Although the information about the vehicle Childs might be driving was the closest thing to a break in the manhunt thus far, it wasn’t the sort of break you’d expect to bring about immediate results.