Chapter 50 The Goliath
The Goliath
Their position was open to attack. And Anca was worse than defenseless in this state, a full operational liability. Evan leaned over her, tilting her chin back, keeping the airway open.
Her head snapped to the side but he got his palm between her temple and the passenger window to muffle the impact.
Her lower throat was visible, her blouse pulled sideways, one button popped.
She was utterly, utterly vulnerable and he thought about her on the subway, drag-carried through the streets of Harlem, flopped onto that bed in the walk-down apartment.
He expected rage, but all that came was a hollowed-out ache of disbelief that in encountering her like this, a pack of men had seen opportunity.
Despite an imagination unbounded by convention, despite experience that had acquainted him with the abhorrent, he was core-struck by the unthinkability of taking advantage of her in this state.
His stomach roiled from the notion, the maybe threat lurking at his back in the reeds, the fetid air creeping through the vents.
At last she stilled.
Her blinks, long and languid.
He’d grown used to it a bit, the process of her emergence.
Her voice, hoarse: “There was a girl in fifth grade…”
Twisting awkwardly, he looked behind him. Rain pounded his window. The reeds thrashed tropically. But no one flew out from cover.
Back to her. “What?”
“A mixer. But I couldn’t dance.” The words, slurred but discernible.
“I sat alone by … refreshments table. And she was good at it. Dancing. She wore … kelly-green sweater, had her hair pinned up in a butterfly clasp. I was … so envious. When she came to get water, I told her she looked fat and clumsy. I remember … I remember how her face just … broke.”
Anca’s seat was still lowered. Her light blue eyes gazed up, the pupils dilated, open to everything. He was leaning over the console, over her, looking down at her. In another context, it would have been romantic, but it was not, not at all.
“I made fun of her for being good at something I was too cowardly to do,” she said, her words coming in a bit stronger. “And I had too much pride to apologize.”
Evan said, “We need to get moving.”
“I just lived it. I lived it again just now as if I was there. It’s a part of me, do you see? And a part of her. Right now. Still.”
“Yes.”
“All our damage. Our sin, our virtue. It’s not the past. It’s the present. Everything is present … all the time.”
Somehow the sky had cleared up. Patches of winter blue spread among the clouds and the sun had broken through, causing the endless skein of broken glass to glitter on the beach.
The reeds behind Evan, now unshaken by rain, stood stiff and distinct, offering transparency through the interstitial gaps.
As they waved, they cast saintly fingers of light across the car.
For an instant Evan was transported to stained-glass windows and resonant voices, but he forced himself back to gaze alertly through the reed bed.
No glinting eyes, no muzzle flash, just nature taking hold even here, rising from putrescence as she did.
Even the stench had receded, or he’d acclimated to it.
Reaching past Anca, he brought her seat up, her face rising close to his.
She looked into him. “Everything matters.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I am ready now. I am ready to talk to your friend. For myself.”
Settling back into his seat, Evan tapped the gas. The tires spun for a moment and then caught, lurching them forward out of the muddy ruts.
In the rearview, he watched the swamp tree recede.
He said, “Good.”
In a word, Naomi Templeton was cool. She was cool like black-and-white photographs, like Ray-Bans, a ’59 Cadillac, leather-jacket cool, nails-tough cool, tomboy-cool.
As Evan and Anca pulled up, Templeton was waiting alone on the porch, leaning against the decommissioned building with her arms crossed and one tactical boot set with its sole flat against the white clapboard panel behind her.
She had a strong, stubborn Irish jaw, her hair cut however, no makeup ever.
Her hips were not va-va-voom wide like Candy’s but sturdy, athletic.
She was on the job. Always.
Like her, the building was from another era. A Second World War wood-frame structure with a gable roof and narrow windows.
It was set apart from the training grounds and the hangars to the north, nestled cozily into a stand of black cherry trees stripped naked by winter. Branches clawed skeletally outward, red-tinged black, bark scaly and unforgiving.
Evan parked, got out, walked around, and opened the door for Anca. She emerged, the wet breeze lifting her hair. Templeton waited on the porch, unmoving.
As they approached, Evan braced himself for a thunder of Black Hawks, a storm of Counter-Assault Team members swathed in black BDUs, an incoming volley of less-lethal projectiles. But the world did not crash in on him. There was just Naomi Templeton on the porch, keeping her word.
Once they’d mounted the steps, Templeton peeled herself off the wall and offered her hand to Anca. “Ms. Dumitrescu, I’m Naomi. Thank you for meeting us here.”
Evan appreciated Templeton introducing herself by first name.
“It takes courage and grit and you have the respect of all of us here,” she said. “We have some folks ready to talk with you. The federal prosecutor, Gretchen Barton, is a longtime friend. You’ll have support in there, too, an interviewer specializing in trauma, a victim advocate—”
“I am not a victim,” Anca said. “I was victimized.”
Naomi took a moment to reset, admiration clear on her face. “I understand,” she said. And then, again: “I understand.”
“Thank you, Naomi. I am ready.”
Anca walked past her through the doorway, paused in the front room with its cozy assemblage of armchairs. Her head oriented toward the neighboring room, and then she strode in.
Evan entered in time to catch a glimpse of a conference room and several folks rising to greet Anca as the door swung shut behind her. He stood looking at the closed door.
Naomi’s footsteps creaked up behind him. “It’s a great team. She’ll be okay.”
Evan stared at the raised square panels of the door. “If she gets stuck or scared, they need to ask her to describe what happened in the third person.”
“We got it.”
“She has seizures, too. Can’t control them—”
“You said.”
“If it happens when she’s in there, someone let me know.”
“X.”
She touched his arm, barely. He turned around.
“It’s okay. We got it. We can wait right here.”
Two armchairs by a fireplace, a small table between them.
Evan sat. Naomi sat.
They studied each other.
“So this is what you look like when you’re not in restraints,” she said.
“Easier to see without a spit hood over my head.”
“Oh, come on, princess. I took the spit hood off.”
The fire leapt behind a wrought-iron screen. It smelled good, birchwood exhaling wintergreen and a trace of mint.
“She’s a tough broad,” Naomi said.
“You have no idea.”
He’d clasped his hands on his knees, worrying one thumb with the other. He stilled. He hated giving up nonverbal tells. He did not like Anca in the other room behind a closed door. He did not want to look at Naomi. He felt wildly out of control.
He wondered why.
Naomi stayed in her armchair, legs arranged in an ankle-on-thigh position, hands motionless on the armrest. Patient.
He appreciated that.
He cleared his throat. Started to speak. Stopped.
Finally he said, “She asked for help. She was in public. On a subway full of people. And no one cared. Not one person.”
Naomi said, “I know.”
“She had a fucking sign around her neck asking for help.”
Naomi said, “I know.”
“They dragged her through city streets past hundreds of people.”
Naomi said, “I know.”
He was flicking at his thumbnail with the middle finger of the same hand. He stopped.
“They shot her with fentanyl to keep her down longer.”
“I know.”
“After, she walked from Harlem to the Bronx.”
“I know.”
“That’s over four miles.”
“I know.”
“They took her wallet. No subway card. She didn’t have money for a cab. So she walked. Four miles. Know what she told me?” Beside them the fire popped pleasingly. At last, he lifted his gaze to meet Naomi’s. “‘No one would help.’”
Naomi leaned forward. Set a hand on his knee.
She said, “I know.”
“What does that say about them? Us. What does that say about us?”
Templeton rolled her pale lips, contemplated. “That we have a lot of work to do. But look at us here, making it right. Look at us. Here.”
They sat in silence, their thoughts punctuated by the crackle of logs.
Naomi walked them back out to the Mercedes, thanked Anca, and closed the door behind her. Then she came around to face Evan by the hood.
“She did great,” Naomi said. “We’ll track them down.”
“I’ll get there first,” Evan said.
Naomi studied him. “And you’ll leave them for us?”
“Yes.”
“Not dead?”
“Yes.”
“Unharmed?”
Evan kicked the hard earth. “Looks like rain.”
Templeton tightened her face against the cold, looked up at the dreary sky. Sighed. “Want me to open your door, too?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Oh, before I forget.” She dug in her pocket, tugged out a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. “To reciprocate. Y’know. Our ongoing courtship.”
She flipped him the pack.
He caught it against his chest. Looked down at the bright orange packaging. “Hey. One of these has been eaten.”
She shrugged. “Got hungry.”
“You suck at this, Templeton.”
She smiled, tucked a hank of bluntly cut hair behind an ear. “So they tell me.”
Evan retraced the off-road route, a long slow loop along the muddy path cut through the marshland to the south.
It was hurricane weather, the air balky and constipated, a wet wind buffeting the luxury car, rocking it on its chassis.
He’d rolled back the shade to the moon roof, keeping an eye on the sky in case Templeton’s superiors decided to reverse course and send a fleet of assault helicopters after him.