Unleashed (24 page)

"Wouldn't you agree? Don't you think this is the greatest city in the world?"

"Yes. That's why I live here."

"Were you born here?"

"I moved here five years ago," I said without turning around. There was something discolored on the baseboard to the right of the bookcases. It looked like a shoe scuff, but I wasn't sure. I bent over to look at it more closely.

"That's one of the things I love about New York—everyone is from somewhere else. Even me," he chuckled. "My parents brought me here from Germany when I was only six months old." The scuff was indeed a scuff. "Where are you from?"

"Beacon."

"That's on the Hudson, right?"

"Yes, about an hour north of the city."

"Are your parents still there?"

"No." I took a couple of steps back, trying to figure out what to look at next. The two bookcases and the two wall sconces were the only things on the wall. Paintings hung on all the other walls, but this one had large empty spaces on either side of the lamps.

"So where are—"

"Why are there no paintings on the walls?" I asked, interrupting him. 

"There are lots of paintings on the walls." I turned to look at him. He was smiling at me as if I were a small and amusing child who had just mispronounced a word.

"There aren't any paintings on that wall." I pointed at the empty wall.

"I don't know. I don't do my own decorating." He shrugged his large shoulders and looked around the room as if he'd never been in it before. I looked at the other paintings of Revolutionary War ships blowing the shit out of each other.

"You picked the paintings, didn't you?"

"No. I have a decorator."

"Did she put in the bookcases?"

"No. He didn't."

"Anything else that came with the room?"

"Those lights," he pointed at the lights I had been toying with, "and let's see. Oh, this." He walked over to a bust of George Washington that sat on a pillar next to an overstuffed armchair. I walked over to it and pushed on Washington's forehead. His head flipped back and the bookcases slid apart to reveal the stainless steel doors of the elevator. The doors opened, and the small cubed space of the mysterious elevator was exposed.

###

"O
h, my God." The mayor was staring at the elevator, his mouth agape. I watched his face. Was this really the first time he'd seen the elevator? He took a step toward it, then stopped and looked some more.

"Would you like to go for a ride?" I asked.

"Yes. Yes, I would," he answered. We stepped inside. He looked around us as the doors closed. "Where are the buttons?" he asked.

"There aren't any." The elevator started down.

"How deep does it go?"

"Not that deep." The elevator stopped and the doors opened. The long, dim hall stretched before us. I wanted to keep him in front of me, just in case.

"After you." The mayor stepped into the hall, and I followed. "This leads to a small and rather claustrophobic room up ahead. And then we catch a couch up one flight." The mayor turned around, he looked confused. "You'll see," I assured him. We walked down the hall in silence. The wall was still open and we stepped into the anteroom. The exit began to close behind us. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that there was a way out.

"What's going on?" the mayor asked with panic in his voice.

"It's OK. This happened to me before." The door thunked into place.

"I don't like this." The mayor looked around the stuffy space, his eyes open wide.

"There's got to be some way of calling the couch down. See, this is the pole it will come down on. It's a whole section of the floor, really." Just then the couch began to descend. "Or maybe it's automatic," I said. He nodded but didn't speak as the couch clunked into place. "Have a seat." I motioned to the dusty paisley couch and the mayor looked at me. "It's all right," I told him.

"I'm sorry. This is just a lot for me to take in all at once." He sat down. A dust cloud poofed up around him. "How long have you known about this?" he asked. I sat down on the couch next to him.

"I found it like an hour ago. I wonder who built it," I said. He nodded but didn't answer me. The couch began to rise. "I can think of a million reasons a person might want to get into Gracie Mansion, but who could build this kind of thing without it being noticed?" I asked.

Jessup looked up as we approached the room above. I tried to spy a glint of recognition in his eye but there was nothing. It seemed this was all new to him. The floor locked back into place, and we were in the room of abandoned furniture.

"This is a serious matter of security," the mayor said. "You haven't told anyone about this, have you?" he asked, looking at me as if I were a security risk.

"No. I'd just arrived into your office when you walked in."

"This is very serious." He stood up and walked around the room.

"I know."

"You can't tell anyone about this." He was pacing, head down, lips pursed.

"Do you want to see the path up to the street?" I asked.

"Definitely. Lead the way." He motioned toward the door. I stood up and headed for the exit. The mayor followed. I heard him stop, and then I heard a scrape on the floor. As I turned back, a sign telling me that all visitors had to be announced connected with the side of my head. I flew into a high-backed chair. There was blood in my left eye. I tried to scramble up but couldn't control my legs. I looked down at my feet and didn't understand.

The mayor strode over to me in two swift, determined steps and picked me up by my throat. I clawed at his hands, digging my nails in deep, but his grip tightened. I choked for breath. His blue eyes glittered two inches from my face. I kicked at his knees and his shins. He stood his ground, a slow smile changing the shape of his face. I kicked harder, and his hands tightened. I felt my windpipe close. I struggled, but I just couldn't breathe.

It was as if I were in a horrible dream, one of the ones where you can't muster the strength to hit hard enough or scream loud enough, where you are paralyzed and there is nothing you can do. I let my hands fall from his. I could feel myself giving up, hoping to wake up. I closed my eyes and listened to his labored breathing as he struggled to hold me and squeeze me enough to kill me. That's what he was doing—he was murdering me right here with all this paisley. Kurt Jessup, the mayor of New York, was trying to end me. In that moment, something clicked. My body, drained of energy and oxygen, made one last attempt to keep breathing, keep going, not die. I brought my knee up into his balls.

He cried out the way men will when you knee them in the balls. I pulled away from him. He dropped me, and I hit the ground gasping. Backing away from him on my hands and knees, my brain moving more slowly than my body, I grabbed at my bag. He recovered quickly and came at me again.

His fist connected with my cheek, sending me reeling with spots of light in my eyes, but it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. I found the Taser in my bag and turned back on him as he grabbed my arm and began to haul me up. I fixed the device on his stomach and pressed the button. He went rigid. His eyes bulged from his tan face. I pulled the Taser back and stuck it to where I thought his heart would be and pressed the button again. I felt his shaking. He fell onto his face on the floor. I put the prongs to the back of his neck and zapped him one more time.

P
anting hard, I opened the door. The hallway was empty, and I ran. My throat felt bruised and tight, which was making it hard to breathe. Blood was on my hands and leaking into my eye. I wiped it away with my shirt as I looked for my blue mark. I felt the world spinning, and it was getting hard to concentrate. All the doors looked the same, the hallways never-ending. My shoes squeaked on the floor. I stumbled from door to door, leaving a trail of blood, until there it was—my door.

It wouldn't open. Groaning, I pulled on the knob harder. Tears stung a cut on my cheek. "Come on," I wheezed. But the door didn't care that I was bruised and bleeding. I hit the door and collapsed onto the ground. The Taser was still in my hand, and I held it tight to my breast. This wasn't over. I had to get out.

I reached up and turned the knob. It opened easily. Right, turning the knob, should have tried that first. Gathering my strength, I hauled myself up and through the door. I stumbled through the room, into the closet, and through the passage out. The lights came on, and I hurried down the passageway. I just had to get to the surface, to the park, and everything would be fine. I climbed toward the drainage hatch on all fours.

Several steps before I reached it, the door opened, and the sunlight hit my face. I pulled myself up into the bushes. I fell over the iron fence and onto the paving stones. I rolled onto my back and let the sun beat down on me. Hearing footsteps, I turned my head. A woman walking her Pomeranian stopped when she saw me. Her mouth formed into a little O. "Snowball? I whispered. The woman turned and hurried back the way she came. I closed my eyes.

"Joy. Jesus Christ. Joy?" I opened my eyes. Mulberry stood above me, silhouetted against the setting sun. "What happened to you? My God. Are you OK?" I smiled with parched lips.

"I'm alive. And I found the killer." I closed my eyes again, enjoying the orange-tinted darkness.

"You need a doctor. Jesus, who did this to you?" He reached down and took my arm. I opened my eyes and looked at him. His face was very close, an expression of concern tinged with fear on it. Mulberry smelled like clean laundry and greasy food. He helped me up. "I'm going to take you to the hospital."

"I think that's a bad idea." My head was beginning to clear. "I can't explain what happened to me."

"You don't know?"

"Oh. I know." I swallowed, trying to dull the pain in my throat but only made it worse. "But I can't tell anyone."

"Even me?"

"I mean doctors. I'll tell you when we get back to your place."

"I really think you need to go to the hospital. You may need stitches."

"I'll be all right," I told him as we left the park. "Let's just go to your place. It's close, right?"

Mulberry lived in a converted tenement. It had an antique elevator with big push buttons and a gate you had to pull closed yourself. His apartment was warm, small, and cozy. Mulberry cleaned my wounds. I tried to push him away, but he hushed me and continued to wipe the dried blood off my face. When he was done, he put an ice pack on my swollen cheek. I slept between clean sheets with a fan cooling the air around me. I slept all night until the sun peeked over the horizon and turned the sky outside a dusty blue.

My throat was swollen and painful. The left side of my face shot a pain through my head and down my neck when I touched it. I got out of bed and found a bathroom. My reflection was shocking.

The entire left side of my face was deep purple. An angry scab sliced across my cheekbone. A smaller abrasion sat just above my eyebrow. On my neck, in dark blue, with green edges, was the imprint of the hands that had tried to choke the life out me. When I climbed into the shower, I found a bruise the size of my fist on my hip and a welt on my elbow.

I let the hot water pound the back of my neck and rush over my chest and down my legs. I breathed the steam and tried not to think about anything except the rushing sound of the water. The room was filled with swirls of white, and the walls were coated in condensation when I got out. I found a towel hanging next to a silk robe. The robe was black with small white dots and smelled like a man. It felt good against my damaged body.

Mulberry was asleep on a tan, overstuffed leather love seat that faced a large television. He was snoring under a blanket, his mouth open, his eyes fluttering. The dawn light filled the room, filtered through sheer white blinds. His feet, bare and hairy, stuck out over the armrest. He was too big for the little couch.

I wandered into the kitchen and looked at the pictures on the fridge—one was of Charlene and Mulberry at Charlene's high school graduation. They smiled at the camera, their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. They looked young. Another picture showed Mulberry as a kid with his father, who wore a full-dress uniform. His father's hand rested on Mulberry's shoulder.

I found coffee in the freezer, and filters in with the mugs. Mulberry's machine was a classic drip. I made a big pot of thick and serious coffee, hoping it would help clear the fog from my mind. I found fresh milk in the fridge next to a nearly empty six-pack of Newcastle. My whole body hurt, but here I was doing what I did every morning... except today I had fresh milk.

As I poured myself a cup of coffee, Mulberry walked in, his eyes puffy and his hair sticking out in odd, though not unflattering, angles. He wore a white undershirt over a pair of Christmas boxers. Santa rode, in an overstuffed sleigh, across his thighs, over his crotch and around to his butt. "Mornin,'," he said in a scratchy voice.

"You want a cup?" I asked. He grunted. I filled a mug and passed it over to him. Mulberry leaned against the counter and sipped it with his eyes closed. The whole thing was surprisingly comfortable considering that we didn't really know each other at all. "How old are you?" I asked. Surprise showed through his puffed lids.

"I'll be 40 in a month," he answered.

"Congratulations."

"Thanks." He sipped his coffee loudly. "Nice robe, by the way."

"I like it."

"Me, too." He smiled. "Nice shiner." I reached my hand up to the bruises and stopped just short of touching them.

"Thanks."

"How does your throat feel?"

"Like someone tried to choke me to death."

"You want to talk about who that someone was?"

"I don't know." He raised his eyebrows. "It's gonna sound insane," I said. "I can't even really believe it." He waited. "All right. It was the mayor."

He smiled. "Come on, Joy. You can tell me. I'm on your side, remember?"

"I'm not kidding." I turned my back to him and refilled my coffee. "He tried to kill me after I found a secret passage that led directly into his office from the basement of Eighty-Eight East End. I know it sounds insane, but it's the truth." I turned back around and saw that Mulberry was starting to believe me.