Jason Pinter - The Mark

“You don’t understand,” I said. “Sometimes you only get one chance, one moment to make a difference. If I don’t take this…I don’t know if it will ever happen again.

“Don’t you see?” I pleaded. “Don’t you see what this could mean for my life? I have nothing right now. I have no name, no hope, and my future is fucked. This could bring it all back. I can expose the truth and make up for everything that’s happened.”

“And then what?” Amanda said, her back ramrod straight, her eyes slicing through me. “You make your name. Congratulations, Henry Parker. Then what happens to the millions of people who lose faith because you want to make your name? The thousands of cops who have to answer for the few who went bad? You’re thinking how it will affect you, and that’s selfish. You want to be a great reporter? You need to remember that the story isn’t about you.”

“Please. This is everything I’ve ever dreamed of. To make a difference. To change lives.” I thumped my hand on the binder, felt the shockwave rattle through my body. “This book could do that.”

“Whose life will it change besides yours?” Amanda yelled. “Whose? These cops? It’ll ruin them. The people? Do you really think losing faith in their protectors-most of it completely unwarranted-will make their lives better?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But I can’t just pass this up.”

“Yes, you can,” she said. “Why did you want to become a reporter in the first place? Really, why?”

“To help people,” I said. “To tell the truth about what needed to be told. To give people what they deserve to know.”

Amanda’s voice grew soft as a tear landed softly on the table. Surprisingly, it had come from me.

“You can help people,” she said. “You can help them by making things right. Not just for yourself. That door opens for everyone, Henry, but this isn’t your time. I know you’re innocent. I know you have a good heart. So use it. Make things right for these people. Help them. Then help yourself.”

Her eyes found mine. I cursed the cold book beneath my hand, cursed that my life had been altered. That this small folder had the power to change-and end-many other lives as well. And now I was questioning something I never thought I would. Every moment I hesitated, that door would be closing. All I had to do was prop it open. But I couldn’t.

“You’re right,” I said. “There has to be another way.” I slid the album back into the envelope and sealed it. “But right now we need to leave.”

She threw her arms around me. I had no energy to hug her back. “Now the front door, I’ll happily walk through.”

I gathered up the package. But as we left the apartment, a deep male voice called out from the stairwell. We froze.

“Hello?”

Amanda grabbed my arm, whispered, “Henry?”

Again, “Hello?”

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Neither of us reacted. We couldn’t let anyone see us. We had to hide. Putting my finger to my lips, I ushered Amanda back inside Gustofson’s apartment. I went to push the front door closed, but something stopped it. A hand. Someone was standing right outside the door.

“I heard a noise, is something broken?” The man pushed harder. There was nothing I could do. The door swung open. A Hispanic man wearing paint-splattered overalls stood in the doorway. One word flashed through my head.

Superintendent.

He glanced down at the floor, covered in dark brown pools. He saw my hands, the residue of blood from when I’d fallen. He looked up at me, his mouth agape, horror in his eyes. He backed away, arms outstretched, pleading.

“It’s not what you think,” I said, realizing every criminal in history probably said that. Suddenly the man turned and bolted down the stairs.

“Help! Policia! Somebody’s been killed!”

“Oh, fuck.” I turned to Amanda. “Come on, there must be a fire escape.”

We sprinted through the apartment, time again being sliced maliciously thin. There was no fire escape in the living room, and no windows in the bathroom. We hurried into Gustofson’s bedroom, where we found a metal stairwell outside the window, a mesh screen covering it.

I braced my leg against the wall, pain shooting through it, and yanked open the screen. We clambered onto the fire escape, towering forty or fifty feet above the alley below us. Carefully we wound our way down, gripping the rusty metal guardrails for dear life.

Down a flight of stairs, across the metal floor, repeat. A siren wailed in the distance. Within minutes I’d have another murder pinned to my chest. The scarlet M. My hole was growing deeper, the dirt walls caving in.

We scrambled to the bottom platform where a ladder dangled like a piece of spaghetti. There was a pile of black garbage bags below us. And beneath that, cement. Even the bottom of the ladder was a good fifteen feet from the ground.

“You go first,” Amanda said. I smiled back at her.

“And who said chivalry was dead?”

I handed her the album and wiped my sweaty hands on my shirt. Gripping the metal tight, I made my way down the ladder. Hand over hand, keeping my feet even and balanced. When I reached the bottom rung, I stopped. I didn’t want to land amidst the garbage bags, which were covered with broken bottles.

I leaned to my right, then exploded off with my left foot, jumping at an angle and landing just beyond the bags. My knees buckled as I hit the ground, my palm scraping the cement, tearing the skin from it.

Wincing, I gave Amanda a thumbs-up. I grabbed several garbage bags and tossed them off the pile, clearing a small landing area. She gently tossed the album to me. I set the book aside and positioned myself directly under the ladder. I cupped my arms.

“Your turn,” I shouted.

Hesitant, a twinge of fear in her eyes, Amanda climbed to the bottom of the ladder.

“You sure you can catch me?” she said.

“As long as you don’t weigh more than eighty pounds, no problem.”

“I’ll shove an eighty-pound foot up your ass if one toe touches the ground.”

“Fair enough.”

Amanda closed her eyes and let go. She tumbled through the air, a shrill scream escaping her lips. Then she was in my arms, her hands locked around my neck. I lowered her down and she slowly opened her eyes.

“You weigh a bit more than eighty pounds,” I said.

She jabbed me in the ribs, then gave me a gentle squeeze and said, “Thanks.”

I nodded, stared into her eyes. Then the sirens broke through our embrace, shattering the moment of peace.

We jogged toward the end of the alley, then headed east on Amsterdam. We hopped on the 81st Street crosstown bus, used the transfer still good from the subway, and shielded our faces behind a discarded copy of The Onion.

Headline: Journalist Changes Name To Hieroglyphic Symbol.

From the corner of my eye I saw a police car speed down the block and make a sharp right into the alley we’d just come from. I exhaled and pointed it out to Amanda. She took my hand, squeezed my fingers until they hurt.

We got off at the last stop, 80th Street and East End Avenue. The steel blanket of night had descended. The East River was dark, the moon glimmering off the water like silver beads. A warm breeze blew through my hair as I breathed it all in. On any other night, the city’s beauty would have been a moment to savor. But tonight it felt like a tomb.

This neighborhood was unfamiliar. Rows of expensive Upper East Side apartments ran down one side of the block. Trees with knee-high guardrails and doormen with constable caps opened the door for fashionably dressed tenants and their fashionably dressed dogs.

On the other side of the street, as though exported from another, less affluent universe, sat a squat tenement that looked completely abandoned. Windows were boarded up, bricks covered in graffiti and slime. Old, wheelless bicycles were chained to a fence. A gate opened up to a small path leading up to the building’s entrance.