A World Without Secrets (2 page)

"Let me see what you got in the box."

The cop bent and rummaged quickly through the box before straightening up. "Okay, but don't let me catch you looting."

"Looting? Loot what? That building has been empty for two years. What kind of plane was it?"

"What plane?"

"The one that hit the building."

"Wasn't no plane, Mac. They're saying it musta been a gas leak or something."

I scowled and shook my head. "Okay for me to finish picking up my photocopies?"

"Yeah, go ahead," the cop said over his shoulder as he started to move towards other people looking through cars.

Despite the care I exercised in collecting the loose papers, it was obvious that many of the pages would be unusable. But by salvaging everything, I might be able to reassemble a couple of complete manuscripts.

Tired and disgusted, I carried the box upstairs and dropped it against the wall just inside my apartment's front door. I wished then that I'd brought it up when I'd arrived home, but who could have known that the building across the street would suddenly blow up in the middle of the night?

Rather than rejoining the gawking spectators, I began to clear the detritus from my bedroom. I couldn't find the pair of canvas and leather work gloves I'd bought several years ago, but I did come across an old pair of woolen winter mittens that I could use to protect my hands. After carefully picking up as much of the glass and wood pieces as I could and placing them into an empty box I'd retrieved from a closet, I used a vacuum cleaner to get the rest. Although it appeared like I'd gotten it all, I knew I'd be afraid to walk barefoot around my bedroom until the rug was thoroughly vacuumed several more times. If I'd had the money, I'd have called in a rug cleaning company.

Once I was able to move around the apartment without fear of slicing my feet to pieces, I turned my attention to the rest of the damage. Large shards of glass were embedded in the walls of the bedroom, some so deeply that they refused to budge until I used a pair of pliers on them. I was extra careful not to break them further and thus make them irretrievable without causing additional damage to the walls. I hadn't noticed earlier, but my bedspread was covered with tiny fragments of glass. When I'd flung back the covers, the fragments had been temporarily hidden from view.

It was amazing just how far chunks of glass had traveled. My third-floor flat was laid out like a railroad car. The bedroom was at the front of the building where two large windows looked out onto the street. Behind that was the living room with no windows. Then came a small hallway that ran alongside the bathroom. The bathroom was located on the outside wall of the house, but there was no window in there either. Lastly, there was the kitchen. The kitchen had one large window that looked out on the backyard, two stories down. After climbing the inside stairway to my apartment, the front door entered the hallway by the bathroom.

Several small pieces of glass had made it through the bedroom and living room, ending up in my kitchen. I knew I'd been lucky that none of the flying pieces had pierced my sleeping form.

The weather wasn't expected to turn really cold for the next few days, but rain was forecast for sometime during the afternoon, so I used large, semi-transparent garbage bags and duct tape to temporarily seal out the elements. I also set up my video camera to record the cleanup efforts across the street so I could study it later and possibly use some of what I observed when writing a story. After making a small hole where the lens could poke through the plastic, I ran the video output on the camera to an old desktop computer. The enormous hard drive was almost empty and it would keep recording everything for a week if I let it.

By the time I finished cleaning the mess in my apartment, the fire across the street was under control. The sun was peeking over the tops of tall buildings and the streets of the neighborhood were filling with the normal vehicular traffic of those people fortunate enough to have jobs. Now that the initial adrenaline rush from the incident was over, I was feeling tired. I was presently unable to count myself among the ranks of the employed, so I stripped off the covers because I feared they might contain tiny slivers of glass, then sheathed the bed with fresh linens and blankets. After I removed my outer clothes, I slipped back between the sheets to get a little more sleep. Money was getting low, and it appeared that extended unemployment benefits might be on the verge of ending. My bank account balance, not large to begin with when I was 'surplused' by an innovative technology company in Flushing, Queens, seemed in danger of disappearing altogether. I had definitely begun to rethink my career goals. But for now, getting some more sleep was uppermost in my mind.

Awakened again a little after ten a.m., this time by the sounds of heavy equipment, I wandered over to a window to see what was going on. The garbage bags I'd used to cover the opening allowed me to see out, although the thick plastic distorted the scene that greeted me.

Firefighters were still hosing down the building where plumes of smoke rose from smoldering piles of twisted metal and building materials. The equipment noise that had awakened me was emanating from tow trucks preparing wrecked cars for removal to a city lot. My own car was already gone, but I wasn't too concerned because my earlier quick inspection had shown it to be far beyond simple repair. Overwhelming evidence of a bent frame was obvious. Since it was a twenty-two-year-old clunker, there would be little point in repairing it. Like most city residents, I rarely left anything of value in the car— that is, until last night— but street punks normally had no interest in reams of used copy paper.

Turning away from the devastation, I padded to the kitchen for a quick breakfast of corn flakes in milk, then enjoyed several cups of coffee as I listened to the typical morning news babble on the radio. As I expected, the building explosion was the lead story, with the blast attributed to a probable gas leak despite numerous reports that the water, gas, and electricity had been turned off years ago. The company that owned the building denied any knowledge of what might have caused the explosion and claimed no one had even been inside during the months they had been waiting for zoning approvals on their proposed demolition and new construction.

While I wasn't so fastidious with other things in my life, dirty plates and counters invited cockroaches, the scourge of city living. As soon as I was through eating, I washed my breakfast dishes and put them in the rack to dry, then turned my attention to personal grooming.

I felt enormously better after a shave and a shower, so I dressed and left to pick up a morning newspaper. The owner of my building was on the first floor, supervising the efforts of two workers as they prepared to replace the broken doorframe. A small pile of new lumber sat stacked in the hallway and would help provide temporary protection for the building after the damaged pieces were removed. Without an exterior door we'd be extending an open invitation to rats and possibly unwelcome human visitors.

"Morning, Mr. Trent," I said casually.

"Good morning, Mr. James. Some mess, eh?"

"Yeah. I cleaned up the mess in my apartment right after the explosion. When do you think you'll get replacement windows installed?"

"As soon as possible, I promise. My first priority is to get the entranceway and window openings sealed so we don't have animals and vermin trying to enter. My carpenters will put plywood over your windows in the front until we can get proper replacements. The sizes in these old buildings are no longer standard, so they'll probably have to be specially manufactured. Will you be home this afternoon?"

"Yeah. I'm just going out for a paper and a walk around the blast site. I'll be back within an hour."

"I'll see you later then," he said to my back as I descended the cleared front steps.

Walking to the nearest newsstand/convenience store a block away, I picked up a copy of a local rag. The placement of the store and the metal, roll-down burglar protection gate had prevented damage there. Tucking the paper under my arm, I strolled around the block where the destroyed building had been. There were several places where I had to step into the street to get around fire trucks still working at the scene or news trucks covering the efforts. Something about the site was troubling me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

As I approached my building after my walk, a reporter and cameraman blocked my path.

"Excuse me, sir. Do you live on this block?" the female newsperson asked as she stuck a microphone in my face.

"Yes, I do. I live two buildings down."

"I'm Lena Williams from CINC Cable News. Were you at home when the explosion occurred?"

"Yes, but I was asleep," I said as I tried to sidle past the reporter.

"Was anyone injured in your apartment?" she asked as she again moved to block my escape.

"My bedroom faces the street and I was injured by a piece of glass. I live alone so no one else was hurt there. My car was on the street in front of the apartment building though. The force of the explosion bent it almost in half. The city has apparently hauled it away. May I get past you now?"

"Did you notice anything suspicious just before the explosion?" she asked with complete disregard for my patient request.

"No. As I just said, I was sleeping. The building has been closed and vacant for years."

"Thank you, Mister— ?"

"James. Colton James." I don't know why I gave her my name. I had no need to be any more civil than she was when she repeatedly blocked my path, but as an author trying to establish name recognition, I didn't figure it would hurt.

The newsperson finally stopped moving into my path to prevent my escape and hurried down the street with her cameraman in tow as she sought to annoy one of my neighbors who had just emerged from his residence.

At the top of the steps outside my building, I spun around to stare at the disaster site for a few minutes. I had suddenly realized what had been confusing me. There wasn't any building material rubble outside the perimeter walls of the wrecked structure. Images from war zones always show the collateral damage to surrounding buildings from debris that flies out for a block or more in every direction, but not a single brick had landed outside the walls of the original apartment building here. Logically, the fronts of buildings across from the apartment building should have been severely peppered by flying debris. But while the windows and doors in the neighborhood had been blown out by concussive force, the stone facades of the buildings seemed unmarred. Apparently, only dust, dirt, and very light objects such as paper had escaped from the apartment building site. So it hadn't been an explosion at all. It had been an implosion.

"That just doesn't make sense," I mumbled. "What could possibly have caused an implosion of an apartment building?" Lost in thought, I threaded my way past the busy carpenters and climbed the narrow interior stairs to my third-floor apartment.

News of the explosion continued as the lead story on all local news stations and repeated hourly on the cable news networks. As a result, I found myself spending the afternoon on the phone with friends who, upon hearing the address, became concerned for my safety. I received a number of offers for a place to stay until repairs to my apartment were completed, but I declined all while expressing my grateful appreciation for the offer and explaining that damage to my flat was limited to two broken windows.

During the afternoon, my landlord's carpenters came and covered each of the two window openings with plywood. I wouldn't let them leave, however, until they had cut a one-foot square opening in one, despite their vociferous protests. I said I would assume full responsibility for the opening. As soon as they had gone, I covered the opening with clear plastic and restarted the video camera. The opening afforded me at least a modicum of natural light in the room.

An insurance adjuster dropped by for a visit just after the workmen left. He claimed to be working for the company that carried the policy on the destroyed apartment building. He recorded the facts of the damage to my apartment, the injury to my foot, the damage to my car, and the lost photocopies. He promised he'd contact me again once the initial investigation was complete. I wondered if that would happen this year.

After washing and putting the dinner dishes away, I cleared the table and brought the box of photocopies to the kitchen so I could sort through the confusing mass. Intermingled with the valid photocopies I'd retrieved were a number of unrelated papers. Some appeared to be old rent receipts, probably from the building across the street, and some were just discarded papers like those likely to be found lying on any downtown city street. I made a separate pile for everything not related to my manuscript.

Hours later I had one complete, almost pristine manuscript and another that needed about fifty replacement pages before it could be submitted to a publisher. I also had one full copy that I would retain but which could never be sent out. Any editor receiving it would probably assume the writing was as poor as the appearance and reject it without even reading the first page. I remembered seeing an online comment made by a submissions editor who'd retired from a large publishing concern. While working, he'd said that if he found any typos or misspellings in the cover letter, he trashed the manuscript without even looking at the first page. I knew it was difficult enough convincing an editor or agent to glance at an unknown author's work without erecting obstacles in my own path.

I still had the original manuscript on my laptop computer and backup copies on USB flash drives, so I could always have more copies printed, but it would be a further drain on my precious funds.

During my years working in the computer industry, my job had grown steadily less fulfilling. When I found myself among the unemployed as the firm embarked on a massive layoff program, I was ready for a change. I'd known that chances for success as an author were incredibly slim. A famous writer had once compared it to winning the lottery and said that only one author in a hundred thousand ever made enough to write full-time.