Icarus w-2

  Icarus

  ( Westwood - 2 )

  Russell Andrews

  Russell Andrews

  Icarus

  BOOK ONE

  THE FIRST FALL

  1969

  ONE

  The day started out beautifully for ten-year-old Jack Keller. First, Miss Roebuck, his fifth-grade teacher, was out sick, which meant he had a substitute teacher, which meant he didn't really have to do much work, which meant he could do some serious daydreaming about the Knicks, particularly Willis Reed, whom he pretty much worshiped. Second: Dom was taking him to a game that night, just the two of them, and there was nothing he liked more than going to a Knicks game with Dom. Ever since he'd been four years old, which was when they first met, man and boy had connected. There was just something about the crusty old man – he kept telling Jack he was only forty-four but Jack insisted on calling him "old man" – that made Jack feel safe and protected. He was never afraid of Dom's temper, which could be terrible, or put off by his curmudgeonly nature, which could drive almost everyone else crazy. People seemed to shrink back from Dom as if they were frightened of him, but Jack never understood what it was that frightened them. Dom was thin and wiry and he used to be a boxer, so he looked tough, but a lot of guys looked tough without scaring people. They couldn't possibly know about Dom. Not the thing that Jack knew, anyway. That was a secret. A big secret. If they knew, Jack thought, they'd really be frightened. But sometimes, especially when they were together in public, he thought that maybe Dom's secret was the kind of thing you didn't really have to know. Maybe it was the kind of thing you could understand simply by looking.

  Then again, it could have been the old man's arm that made everyone uneasy; people never knew how to deal with stuff like that. Jack had never thought there was anything much to deal with. Dom was just Dom, arm and all, and when they were at the Garden, he would let Jack eat as many hot dogs as he wanted – his record was four – and drink Coke, which his mom hardly ever let him do.

  Third: As if all that wasn't enough, the Celtics were in town that night, so he'd actually get to see, in person, the despised John Havlicek and Bill Russell, whom Jack knew he was supposed to hate, being a Knicks fanatic and all, but whom he had to admit, although never out loud, he really kind of liked.

  When he got home from school, his day stayed just about perfect, too. Billy Kruse's mom walked him home, with Billy, because they lived a couple of buildings away. Jack's mom wasn't home from work yet, which was fine with Jack because he liked being alone. He could do his homework and sneak in some TV and daydream some more. Sometimes he daydreamed about his father, whom he hardly remembered. His mom had told him that his dad was dead, that he'd died when Jack was just a baby, but lately he'd begun to suspect otherwise. He wasn't exactly sure why he didn't believe her, except it just didn't ring true. He'd heard about men who'd deserted their families or who'd gone to prison – that wasn't so uncommon in Hell's Kitchen; Billy Kruse's dad was in for three years for armed robbery – and something about the way his mom told her story made him think his dad hadn't really died, that he'd just run away. Or been taken away. Jack asked Dom about it once because Dom had known Jack's dad, had been his friend – Bill Keller had worked at Dom's meatpacking plant – and Dom said, "He's gone, Jackie. That's all that matters." When Jack had said, "Yeah, but is he dead?" all Dom said back was "Gone is gone."

  At about five o'clock, his mom called and said Dom was going to pick him up in about half an hour. "Isn't it kind of early?" he asked, and she said, "He's bringing you up here to my office before the game. I want to talk to you."

  "Did I do somethin' wrong?" Jack asked and his mother laughed. "No, sweetie," she told him. "I just want to see you. I have something to tell you. Something good."

  "Cool," he said, and he meant it because he liked his mom, even more than he liked Willis Reed, and he liked going to her office. She was a paralegal at a law firm. The office was in a midtown skyscraper, on the seventeenth floor, and it had a great view of the East River and Queens through its oversized windows. Jack liked to go right up to the window and put his nose flat up against the glass. He'd stretch his arms out, as high as he could get them, spread his legs just as wide, pressing as hard as he could against the pane, and pretend that he was flying. Earlier that year, Miss Roebuck had taught the class about Greek mythology. Jack's favorite story was the one about Daedalus and Icarus. He even went to the library and checked out several books, reading everything he could about the boy who dared to fly too close to the sun. Jack loved the idea of making wings, then soaring higher and higher up toward the heavens. He thought about it almost every day, imagining that he was Icarus, leaving the earth behind, going higher than anyone had ever gone. Mostly he thought only of the glory, and he could see himself so clearly that it became real to him. He could feel the air rushing over his body; he could immerse himself in the silence of flight and thrill in the extraordinary freedom. But sometimes he dared to think about the fall. Like Icarus, he, too, would climb too high and his wings would melt, and then Jack could feel, in the pit of his stomach, the sensation of plummeting, of falling straight down, and the fear that overcame him would jar him out of his fantasy and he'd find himself in his room or in class, his hands shaking, his mouth dry, and his fingers clenched tightly around whatever he could grasp as if that thing were a lifeline safely tethering him to the ground.

  But up in his mother's office, arms raised, there was never any fear. Just outstretched arms and cool window glass against his body. And he could be the triumphant Icarus, flying out over the river, above the whole city. Looking down at the world, climbing toward the sun…

  Jack quickly finished up his homework, nothing too hard, mostly math, and changed into a pair of jeans, sneakers, his gray Knicks T-shirt, and his blue and orange Knicks jacket. Then he went outside on the stoop to wait for Dom to pick him up. Sitting there on the rough cement, he wondered what his mom was going to tell him and if the Knicks would win that night. He wondered a little bit more about his dad, too. But mostly he wondered how many hot dogs he was going to be able to eat. He decided that tonight he was going to go for a new record.

  – "-"-"JOANIE KELLER WAS nervous.

  She didn't understand it exactly. She knew what she was nervous about but she didn't really know why.

  Possibly it was because, more than anything else in her life, Joan Keller wanted her son to be happy and she didn't know if what she was going to tell him would make him happy. If it didn't, she wasn't quite sure what she would do. Go ahead with the plans anyway? She didn't know if she could do that. Don't go ahead with the plans? She didn't know if she could do that either. Oh, God. When she thought about it like that, she guessed she did know why she was nervous.

  She didn't want to think about it right now, she'd thought about nothing else for days, so she decided she'd keep herself busy and get some tiresome filing out of the way. But it didn't take her long before her brow was furrowed and her lips were moving and she was practicing exactly what she was going to say. This is nuts, she realized. He's ten years old and he's a great kid, so why wouldn't he be happy with the news? There was no reason that she could think of. No reason at all. So just tell him and hug him and kiss him and hope that he hugged and kissed her back. And, of course, he would. That's exactly what he'd do. So why be nervous? Pretty soon they'd be hugging and kissing and laughing all over the place.

  She checked her watch. It was five-fourteen. Any second now Gerald Aarons, one of her three bosses – the most important of the three, he really ran the place – would come out of his office, glance at her, mumble something nearly incoherent, and head toward the elevator. He did it every day, unless he had an important meeting, leaving right at a quarter after five so he could make the five
forty-five train to Westport. The minute hand on Joanie's watch moved and… Yup. Right on time. Gerald's door was opening, he was stepping into the outer office, and there it was – the glance, something that sounded vaguely like "gnightseeya," and then he was down the hall and gone. It didn't take long for the rest of the office doors to open and shut. Soon the hallway was filled with three-piece suits rushing by. Most of the lawyers were gone by five-thirty since almost all of them had commutes and families waiting for them, too. The ones who didn't left just as early. They had martinis or stewardesses or poker games waiting for them.

  Okay, enough worrying about Jack, Joanie thought. It was ridiculous. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. He'd come, she'd tell him, he'd be thrilled. No problem. So just get back to work, she told herself. How often does this happen? You've got half an hour, free and clear, to really clean up your desk. No one's going to bother you now. There's no one left to bother you.

  With a little shake of her head, Joanie realized it paid to be a lawyer instead of a paralegal. It was five thirty-one and the place was already deserted.

  Unbelievable, she thought. One minute after quitting time.

  Empty.

  Just one meager minute and she was all alone in the office.

  – "-"-"REGGIE IVERS WAS certain that people were staring at him and he hated that. Really hated that. It made him crazy.

  Walking quickly down Forty-second Street – no one was walking as fast as he was, he was passing them by like they weren't even moving – Reggie giggled. So what if they were looking? It couldn't really make him crazy. He wasn't crazy. That's what the doctors had told him. Maybe he'd been crazy. But not anymore.

  He'd never felt crazy, Reggie thought. But he must have been. At least, if he'd really done what everyone said he'd done. You'd have to be crazy to do that. To go up to a complete stranger on the street and hurt her like that. When he heard the details, he actually got sick. Look, he said to the lawyers, I couldn't have done it. It made me sick to my stomach just hearing about it. But the lawyers insisted he did do it and everyone else seemed to agree.

  Christ.

  He could never have done such a thing. Pick up an empty beer bottle on the street? That alone, with all the germs, was disgusting enough. Really. He would never do that, much less the other stuff. Much less hold the bottle in his hand and break it, smash it so it was all jagged and sharp and deadly. And then go up to a stranger in the street, a total stranger, and… and…

  He couldn't even think about it. It was too awful. Too sick.

  Too crazy.

  She needed three hundred stitches, they said in court. And she lost an eye.

  How could he have done such a thing?

  He couldn't, that's how.

  It was all the lawyers' fault. They made everyone believe he was guilty. No, not that, worse than guilty. Crazy. His own lawyer! Telling the whole world he was as cuckoo as a loon! And then smiling afterward, telling him how happy he should be because they weren't putting him in prison, they were putting him in a place for loons. A special hospital for nut jobs.

  God, he hated fucking lawyers. Hated them the whole time he was in the loony bin. Seven years of hate. And getting out hadn't changed anything. It had been thirty days since they told him he wasn't crazy anymore. Thirty days since he'd been back on the streets. He'd hated them every one of those days, too. Every single minute of every single day for thirty days…

  Reggie Ivers realized he'd stopped walking.

  He must have walked really fast because it was pretty chilly and even though he wasn't wearing a jacket he was sweating. But why did he stop? Where was he?

  Reggie looked up at the numbers over the front of the tall building on the corner: 527 East Forty-second Street. Why did that sound familiar? Why did he know that address?

  He heard the sound of paper rustling and he looked down, realized there was paper in his hand. Yellow paper. He smoothed it out, saw it was from a phone book. Oh, yeah. He'd been looking in a phone book, he remembered that now. But why? What was he looking for?

  Now he remembered that, too.

  He was looking for lawyers. Lying, cheating, cocksucking lawyers.

  Reggie stared at the ripped-out yellow page, saw that he'd circled the name of a. lawyer at the top of the page. The first lawyer in the phone book. It was the name of a firm.

  Aarons, Reuss and Seaver.

  And look at this. Look at their address: 527 East Forty-second Street. Right where he was.

  Son of a bitch, Reggie Ivers thought. What a coincidence.

  And you'd have to be crazy not to believe in coincidences.

  – "-"-"DOM BERTONLINI WALKED with Jack into the lobby of the building on First Avenue and Forty-second Street.

  "You know what floor she's on, right?"

  "Seventeen. Aren't you comin' up?"

  "No," Dom said. As usual, he spoke in a raspy growl and he knew it sounded harsher than he wanted it to. "I think she wants to talk to you herself. I'll be up in a little while."

  "What's goin' on?" Jack asked. "What's the big secret?"

  "You'll just have to ask her," Dom said. And then, with his good hand, he brushed Jack's hair back off his forehead. "We can talk about it at the game, Jackie, just you and me. But now I'm gonna take a little stroll around the block. And then I'll come up and see how you guys are doin'."

  "Do you have to call me Jackie?"

  Dom nodded. "It's what I've always called you."

  "Grown-ups are weird," Jack said.

  "You have no idea," Dom told him. "I'll see ya on seventeen."

  He waited as Jack went up to the security guard, signed himself in, then stepped into the elevator. Dom watched the elevator door close before releasing the breath he'd been holding inside. Then he went back to the revolving door, pushed and stepped through, back to the sidewalk. He noticed the tall, skinny guy in the T-shirt coming across the street, heading right toward him, but he didn't really pay attention. He watched the guy go through the revolving door and into the building but all Dom thought was "Geez, he's walkin' fast." Then he shrugged and went for his stroll around the block.

  – "-"-"REGGIE WISHED HE wasn't sweating so much when he went up to the guard at the front desk.

  "What floor are the lawyers on?" he asked.

  The guard smiled at him, not a friendly smile, more like you're-a-dumbshit smile, and said, "We got a lot of lawyers in this building. Which ones you want?"

  Reggie held the yellow paper up so the guard could see it.

  "Aarons, huh?" the guard said. "They're on seventeen but I think everyone's pretty much gone. You got a name? I can call up and see if he's still there."

  When Reggie didn't answer, the guard repeated, "You got a name, pal? Or are you just droppin' somethin' off?"

  "Droppin' off," Reggie said. "Droppin' somethin' off."

  "Why don't you just leave it with me?" the guard told him. "I'll give it to 'em in the morning."

  "Okay," Reggie said.

  The guard waited but Reggie didn't move. "I don't see no package," he said. "You got somethin' or don't you?"

  "I got somethin'," Reggie told him.

  "Well, where is it?"

  "Right here," Reggie said. And he pulled out the knife he'd been carrying in his back pocket, the one that folded, that he'd bought on the street a few days ago, and without another word he stabbed the guard in the heart, three, four, five, six, seven times, until he stopped moaning or moving or breathing. Reggie dragged the guard's body behind the lobby desk so no one would see it. Then he went to the elevator and pressed the up button.

  It took him a second to remember what the guard had said, where he was going. Then he remembered.

  He stepped into the elevator and headed up to the seventeenth floor.

  – "-"-"JACK SAW HIS mom across the room, her back to him, busy filing. She didn't hear the elevator so she didn't know he was there. Half the lights were off and it looked like hardly anyone else was around. It was a li
ttle after six and the whole floor was in shadows; it was pretty spooky, and Jack knew he shouldn't do it, but he couldn't resist. He crept up until he was right behind her, she never heard a thing, and then he grabbed her around the waist and went "Boo!"

  His mom jumped about three feet in the air and spun around. But when she landed she wasn't angry. She said, "Oh, my God, you scared me to death!" Then she hugged him, held him tight, and kissed him. She didn't usually hug him for so long, so when she let him go he ran across the room, right for one of the big windows. He pressed himself spread-eagle against the glass. Peering out over the city, he said, "Look, I'm flying, Mom, I'm flying!"

  She was smiling at him, but he thought she looked a little… what was the word she liked to use sometimes?… edgy. Kind of like she had something to do and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. She looked like he imagined he looked in the doctor's office right before he had to get a shot. Like something not so great was coming but then afterward you know you'll feel better.

  "What is it, Mom?" he asked. He put his arms down and slid his feet together and took one step away from the window toward her. "Whatever it is…"

  What he was going to say was "…it'll be all right," but he didn't get to finish the sentence because she wasn't watching him now, she was frowning and looking to her left, toward the elevators. Some guy had just stepped out and was walking up to her. He looked kind of weird, Jack thought, and he smelled bad. The man was sopping wet, too, almost like he'd been swimming, but he couldn't have been, so it had to be sweat. Jack had never seen anybody sweat so much. And the guy's clothes were filthy. He'd spilled something all over himself. On his shirt and arms, all over his neck, too. A Coke, maybe. No, maybe not. It wasn't quite the color of Coke.

  The man got closer, was just a few feet away from his mother now. Jack saw that whatever the sticky-looking stuff was that he'd spilled, it was definitely not the color of Coke. But it was all over the guy. Even on his face and on his shoes.