Graveland: A Novel (22 page)

Through the kitchen door, over the next couple of hours, she could hear them whispering, conspiring, strategizing, or so she imagined. But there were also moments when the exchanges sounded harsh, as if Julian and Alex were bickering or snapping at each other. Occasionally, she could see shadows and some movement, but not a lot, and then for the longest time all she could make out was Julian’s boots, positioned horizontally—so she took it that he was sitting on the floor, too, legs outstretched, leaning against the section of wall next to the living room window.

No sign of Alex.

After that, time just passed. She considered crawling over to the door, or whispering something out, but the more the hours drifted by, the harder it became for her to imagine doing anything at all, even moving. It got dark as well, and no one turned on any lights, or tried to turn on the TV. Was this because the electricity supply into the apartment had been cut? Maybe. She didn’t know. Though if it
was
the case, it probably meant that cell phone and Internet connections had also been blocked.

Eventually, the drowsiness came, and Lizzie started letting her head slump.

Now she’s in a weird in-between state.

“Lizzie.”

She focuses. It’s Alex. He’s in front of her, crouched down, but with one hand holding on to the table, for balance. In the dim light, his face is only partially visible.

“Alex,”
she whispers, leaning forward suddenly, reaching a hand out to touch him, as though they haven’t seen each other for months.

“Listen,” he says, leaning sideways, avoiding her hand. “We need coffee, if we’re going to stay awake. So make some, will you? But keep as quiet as you can.”

Lizzie stares at him. “Alex, what’s happening?
Talk
to me.” Her eyes fill up with tears. “What are we going to
do
?”

She puts so much effort into saying this last word that it’s like a release. And now that she’s finally asked the question, she can’t help feeling that an answer—full, satisfactory, game-changing—will come spilling out of him. But all he says is “I don’t know. I don’t
know
.”

“You
must
know.”

“Look, this wasn’t part of the plan, okay?” He says the words slowly, his tone very deliberate. “Now. Will you please make the coffee.”

Lizzie feels sick all of a sudden. She doesn’t know what’s going on here. It seemed like they were almost in tune back there, before this started, in the other room, like they had a chance of connecting again—but only for all of, what was it, five or six seconds? And that was
it
? Now she’s supposed to just make coffee? In normal circumstances, Julian wouldn’t let her touch anything in his precious kitchen, now she’s the fucking
maid
?

Fully awake again, she starts thinking more clearly than she has done in a while.

“Okay,” she says, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, “it wasn’t part of the plan, but that was then, what’s the plan
now
?”

Alex sighs, shudders almost. “There isn’t one. I mean … Julian … he can’t take this, he’s falling apart in there. I don’t know what to do.” Now
his
eyes fill up. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this, in our family
shit
. I just … I wanted you around—”

“Oh, Alex,” she says, her heart swelling, “I love you.” She reaches out to touch his face again, and this time he lets her. After a moment, she whispers, “What did you tell them … when they called? What happened?”

He looks confused. “I … I don’t really remember. We just talked bullshit. Julian was incoherent. I told them to fuck off, and that if they didn’t, we’d … you know…” He stops, exhales, unable to finish putting the thought into words.

Lizzie uses her other sleeve to wipe his tears away.

“Listen to me,” she says, adrenaline starting to pump through her system now. “We really need to focus. This is not the time to be incoherent. You guys did what you did for a
reason,
okay? And you were very focused when you were doing it. So that’s what you’ve got to hold on to here. What
we’ve
got to hold on to. And when they call back, which they’re bound to do sooner or later, you articulate that reason, over and over, hammer it home, show them you’re not just a pair of crazy fucks, that there’s a way out, a route to the other side.” She pauses and swallows, unsure where any of this is coming from. “And then, when we get out of here,” she goes on, “that reason, that rationale, whatever it is, even if it’s fucked up or hopelessly deluded, it’ll be a platform, and a passport, to
some
kind of public sympathy. It won’t be much, but what else is there?”

Alex stares at her, then nods his head. “Yeah,” he says, in a loud whisper, “yeah, you’re right.”

“So go back in there. Talk to Julian. Work something out. The phone might ring in the next five minutes. It might not ring all night. But you have to be ready.”

She leans forward and kisses him on the forehead.

Moments later, he’s back in the other room, and she hears their voices again, Alex whispering to Julian, Julian whispering to Alex.

Then she looks up at the cupboard where the coffee is. She looks at the stovetop. It’s dark in here, but not completely. How hard can it be?

With her heart still racing, Lizzie breathes in, reaches for the edge of the table, and slowly pulls herself up.

*   *   *

It’s in a bar on Norfolk Street—at around 5
A.M
., while having a quick drink with Val Brady—that Ellen Dorsey decides she’s had enough of this whole story and should really go home. It’s been a long night of huddled conversations with other journalists, of rushed phone calls and live tweeting, of trying to make contact with Frank Bishop again but being blocked at every turn (she’d given him her number but somehow, stupidly, in the confusion, hadn’t taken his), and ultimately of realizing she’s lost all control of the story, that it’s moved ahead without her, that she works for an outlet where breaking news just doesn’t figure into the mission.

Not that she didn’t know this already, but she’d certainly been trying to ignore it in recent days.

She looks across at Val Brady now.

There’s an early edition of the
New York Times
spread out on the table in front of him. This is his first-ever page-one byline, and he can’t stop staring at it. He also hasn’t been able to stop thanking Ellen for texting him the previous afternoon and giving him the jump on everyone else.

She knew there was no point in trying to get anything up on the
Parallax
site, or even on her own page—because, to be honest, who would see it in time? This needed to be addressed head-on, and within minutes, literally. So while she might have been trapped in a car on I-87, texting Val meant that he could be the first one on the scene.

And she has to admit that he did a great job, because not only was he the first one to publicly name the Coady brothers, he also managed to dig up some pretty electrifying background material on their father.

At one point during the evening he offered to share his byline with her, but for various reasons, political, logistical, whatever, that was never going to happen. She didn’t mind, though.
He
got to break the story, and that’s how it goes.

But man, thinking about it now, at 5:00
A.M
. with a drink in her hand …

“So you don’t get to do this,” she says after a while, “but I think I’ll slink off to bed.”

“No fair.”

“Fuck you. Do your job. That means no sleep for the next twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six hours, whatever it takes.”

Val already looks shattered—bleary-eyed and coffee-jagged—but it’s what he signed up for.

“Come on,” he says, “why don’t you stick around?”

“Because I don’t have to, that’s why. I can read about it in the paper”—she flicks the
Times
with the back of her hand—“or online, or watch it on TV, with much better pictures and angles.” She picks up her drink, releasing a long sigh. “I’m done here. My last thread to this was the girlfriend’s old man, but they won’t let me near him, and besides, he’s probably signed a movie deal already.” She drains what’s in her glass. “Plus, there’s no point, I don’t work for a daily newspaper. What am I going to do? Fucking
live tweet
developments all day? I’m a journalist, not a civilian.”

“Right.”

“I just need to look for a new job, that’s all.” She puts her glass down. “But that’s not going to happen today. Plus,
plus,
I have this Ratt shit to deal with.”

Val laughs and is about to say something when his phone pings. He whips it up and reads the message, starting to slide out of his chair as he does so. “Er, I have to get back. There’s been a—”

Ellen holds up a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I’ll read about it. Just go.”

He hesitates, knows not to say thanks again, half-smiles, and leaves.

A few minutes later, she leaves herself, gets a cab on Delancey, and within half an hour is at home and in the shower.

She’s tired and tries to sleep, but isn’t able to. After a while she moves from the bed to the couch and considers turning on the TV. She decides not to and throws an eye instead over the Ratt Atkinson article with a view to arming herself for later. There won’t be as much interest in it as there was yesterday, but she likes to be prepared.

At what she considers a reasonable hour—reasonable, that is, for her sister, a mother with two school-age kids—Ellen calls Michelle and slips into their familiar routine … or at least tries to, because as it turns out all that Michelle wants to talk about is this horrible siege thing up in New York. When Ellen, with some reluctance, fills her in on a few of the background details, Michelle is transfixed. The point of the call, however, gets lost, and can’t be retrieved.

When she puts the phone down, Ellen is more tired than ever, but even less likely to be able to sleep. Stretched out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, she pictures that deserted block on Orchard Street, pictures a small second-floor apartment. It’s been nearly fourteen hours now. What the fuck is going on in there?

In some ways it’s a classic siege situation. They’ve been through the initial phase and are now in the more fluid negotiation, or standoff, phase. Conventional wisdom says that the longer a siege situation of this type goes on, the more likely it is to end peacefully, so the negotiators are probably dragging it out deliberately, employing various well-worn tactics. But it’s unclear so far what demands, if any, the Coadys are making. None of that information had trickled down from police sources to any of the reporters Ellen spoke to.

There was plenty of speculation, though, as more information became available about who they were, about the older brother’s previous activism, and about the circumstances surrounding their father’s death.

There was also plenty of speculation about the explosives—about whether or not they really had any, and about what kind these were most likely to be if they did.

Ellen figures that this is the key point on which the whole thing will turn.

She also figures there’ll have to be a development soon. It’s gone on long enough, and with Friday morning kicking into gear a four-block-radius shutdown of
any
part of the city is pretty much unsustainable.

She could turn on the TV for an update, but again, she decides not to.

Why?

Because on reflection she doesn’t really want to know. It’s not her story anymore.

If she turned on the TV now, it’d be as a civilian.

It’d be prurience.

So she keeps staring up at the ceiling, unable to stop running stuff through her mind, though.

It’s weird, the one person she feels particularly bad for is Frank Bishop. He was a nice guy, strangely guarded, or repressed or something, she doesn’t know, but what he must be going through at the moment is unimaginable.

Ellen eventually starts getting drowsy, and by a little after 9
A.M.
she has fallen asleep.

*   *   *

Thanks to an endless supply of bad coffee and high-grade adrenaline, Frank has managed to stay awake all night and well into the next morning.

There’s a strange feel to the new day. All the fire escapes and shop signs on Orchard are glistening and sun-dappled in the early light. But simultaneously, at street level, a deathly stillness radiates from the deserted, locked-up bodegas and nail salons, the leather goods stores and discount boutiques.

Frank finds it disturbing and weirdly calming at the same time.

But really, he’s been through so many phases of this thing already that it’s hard to tell, from one moment to the next, just
what
he’s feeling.

Once he got past his own initial phase late the previous evening—pure terror eventually yielding to a slightly less intense cocktail of anxiety and confusion—he found that talking to people, the police officers, the FBI guys, the negotiators, anyone who’d engage with him, was as good a way of steadying his nerves as any. And these people did allow a certain amount of information to filter out. Initial phone contact, for example, revealed an apparent degree of confusion on the part of the Coady brothers. Seasoned negotiators regarded this as a positive, because it indicated amateur status—it meant the brothers didn’t really know what they were doing and would therefore be easier to manipulate. A long—and no doubt calculated—stand-off phase ensued, and during this time detailed profiles of the Coadys were drawn up, not just by the various law enforcement agencies involved but also by the media, with the online edition of the
New York Times
first out of the gate. And by this stage, too, late into the night, Frank and Deb were both glued to their respective devices, monitoring news and Twitter feeds, text messages and e-mails.

As a result, it wasn’t long before there was something approaching full disclosure on Alex and Julian Coady. Frank found this extremely difficult, even humiliating—hearing in detail, along with everyone else, about a boyfriend of his daughter’s he hadn’t known existed until yesterday.