CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Samantha struggled to help Hayes walk. He had been doing well for a bit, but now his head and nose were both bleeding freely. he had to keep his sleeve pressed to his scalp as if he were frozen in the middle of some bizarre salute. They went down empty streets at random and whenever they saw another pedestrian they shied away toward doorways and more empty alleys. Finally Hayes coughed and came to life a little more and began mumbling directions.

He directed her to the Wering Canal. They went down a stone stairway and began walking along the canal apartments. A smoky waterfall laved the stone walls at the far end. Next to it was an apartment with a small green door. Hayes leaned against it and told her to reach into his pocket and find the key with the little pearl. She did so and used it to open the door. Inside it was like a low musty attic with a tattered cot in the corner. Hayes staggered over and collapsed on it, the springs screaming beneath him. He lay there and forced breath into his lungs until it became calm.

“Whose place is this?” she asked.

“Mine,” he said.

“How many places like this do you have?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Several.”

Samantha tended to Hayes’s wounds for the next two hours. He had a mild concussion and one finger was broken. He said nothing as she moved his limbs around. She suspected he could not feel them at all. When she was done she went and sat by the door, head leaned back.

“What will happen to him?” she asked finally.

Hayes licked his lips. “I’m not sure. But it’s likely he’ll be suspended.”

“Suspended?”

“Yes. It’s procedure. He’ll be suspended while they consider how to go. There’s a board. I don’t know who’s on it or how big it is or how it works. But they have the choice to prosecute or fire him or do whatever.”

“Lord.”

Hayes nodded. Then his head tilted back and he fell asleep. Samantha slipped out the door and wandered up to the street and found a paperboy on the corner. It was so early he had not even cut open his stack yet. He watched her like she was some ghost, a ragged, filthy woman rising up out of the mist. She bought a paper from him and he handed it to her, eyes wide, and she read it as she walked back to the canal apartment. Hayes woke when she shut the door.

She said, “Be still. It’s nothing. I got a paper, that’s all.”

“You got a paper? Where?”

“From outside. On the street.”

“Were you followed?” he asked quickly.

“Who would follow me?”

“Anyone. Everyone, now. Were you followed?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

Hayes sighed and rolled his head away.

“He’s been arrested, like you said,” she told him. “It says so here.”

“Which paper?”

“The Freedom.”

“Ignore most of what they say. They’re saying he should be hanged, aren’t they?”

She was silent.

“Yeah,” said Hayes. “Yes. I know.”

“They won’t hang him, will they?”

“I doubt it. The Freedom’s written by fucking loons. It’s no good that everyone’s gotten ahold of it so fast, though. That means the reaction will be quicker, and stupider.”

“I know,” said Samantha. “I… I wonder where he’s being kept.”

“Probably at the Central’s cells. I bet he’s still being held for questioning, and they’re not dumb enough to put a police in a real prison. They’d kill him overnight.”

Samantha’s hand went to her mouth. She stumbled out the door and gripped the walkway railing, then stared into the waterfall and took some huge, deep breaths. Then when she had calmed herself she returned.

“I’m sorry,” Hayes said, blinking through his matted hair. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I don’t care. I just let my emotions get the better of me.”

Hayes did not answer at first. Then he said, “It’s all right. I understand.”

“Understand what?”

He looked at her as though he was not sure what to say. “About you,” he said finally. “You and Garvey.”

“You don’t have to understand anything,” she said harshly.

“I know. I just thought I’d let you know.”

“It’s none of your business. It never is.” Samantha shut her eyes and ground the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. She quivered, suppressing a scream, and said, “He hasn’t said anything about us.”

“What?”

“In the paper. He hasn’t said anything about us. It makes it sound like he was just wandering through the neighborhood alone, saw someone acting suspicious, and then there was a brief struggle and he shot him. Him, all filthy and crazy-looking. With no witnesses at all. That’s what he’s telling them, it says here.”

“Oh, Christ. They’ll kill him with that story.”

“They say the man he killed was Barney Patrick. That he was a longtime administrative aid in the Dock Assembly. But he wasn’t. You said so. The man said he’d never worked in a factory.”

“Yes.”

“So they’re lying.”

“Oh, yes. A police shoots a union man all by himself in an alley, with no witnesses? If this was any other city he’d probably be dismissed, maybe even jailed. In this city, at this time, with a fucking unioner, it’s going to be madness. It’s his word against what every bastard in the city wants.”

She sat very still, looking at the paper. She reached out and touched the words as though she could rearrange them into something better.

Hayes opened his eyes as though he had heard something. He sat up and looked at her, mouth slightly agape. Then he said, “Don’t do it.”

Samantha turned to him. “Don’t do what?” she asked.

“Don’t go to the police.”

“They’ll kill him with this story. You said so yourself.”

“They’ll kill you, too, if you give yourself to them. You’ll link the company to the police even more.”

“Then the hell with the company!” she spat. “They’re going to throw him in prison, Hayes! That or ruin him!”

“You don’t know that. But he’s going to be the sacrificial lamb either way. You’ll just bring yourself down with him.”

“I don’t care! They need to know the truth! Someone does, just one person!”

“They won’t care. They can’t afford to care.”

“Shut up! Just shut up for once in your damn life!” She stood and went to the wall and leaned her head against it. “I won’t let them do this to him. It isn’t right.”

Hayes did not answer.

“Why couldn’t he have left?” she asked quietly. “Why couldn’t he have just left that man there and come with us?”

“Because Garvey was made for lost causes,” said Hayes. “That’s why he’s stayed in his hometown, after all.”

“He believes he can help,” said Samantha.

“I never doubted that he believes it. He believes it with all his heart. It’s whether he should believe it at all that I wonder about.”

She sat down again on the floor and crossed her arms and pulled her legs up close to her chest.

“Samantha…” Hayes said. “I know what you’re about to do. If you do it, it’ll bring hell down. Hell on everyone.”

“Will it help Donald?” she asked, lifting her face.

“Probably. It very well could. But—”

“Then I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Just be quiet.”

Hayes looked at her a moment longer, then lay back and slept again. She waited, thinking, and then left.

Samantha did not go to her apartment. She knew that would be watched. Instead she walked into the nearest post office, her skirt mud-stained and her face still smudged. The clerk stared at her as she calmly asked for a box of envelopes, some nice paper, a pen, and several bottles of ink. “Doing some letter-writing, ma’am?” he asked nervously.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

When she had gotten her supplies she went to a phone station and called information. A bleary-voiced woman answered the phone. Samantha asked her for the address of a major newspaper.

“Which newspaper?”

“All of them, I should think,” Samantha said.

She wrote them down. Then she went to a nearby shop and purchased some new clothes and cleaned herself up until she looked decent. She found a quiet restaurant and she sat in the back and began to write, first one letter, then two, then three, all the way up to ten, one after the other. Once she was done she walked to the mailbox tubes and slipped the letters in, the pneumatic lines greedily sucking each letter out of her hands.

She sat on a bench then, not certain what to do, vaguely aware that she was putting things in motion that were far beyond her control. She suddenly felt that she had tipped something very large and very heavy over, and it had just passed its equilibrium and now there was no going back. She felt strangely detached. She had never really done a stupid thing in her life, and she’d always been careful about each decision she’d ever made. Normally she wouldn’t even conceive of doing something like this. But whenever she thought of Garvey lying in some cell she knew that it was not a choice at all.

She sat for a moment longer, then stood and began walking toward Evesden Central Police Department.

She wanted to wait for him on the front steps, but they told her they were going to be letting him out on the side. When she asked why, the duty officer gestured out toward the street in front of Central, and she looked and saw several men loitering, watching the building front with hooded eyes. She turned away and went down to the side of the station.

She stood in the small loading dock with the municipal workers for more than an hour before Garvey came shambling out. He wore ill-fitting clothes that were certainly not his own. His hair was uncombed and his cheeks bore days of stubble. He blinked up at the sunlight. When he saw Samantha his shoulders drooped as though he was stunned and deeply disappointed, all at once.

“Sam,” he said softly. “Sam, what are you doing here?”

She did not answer. She simply walked to him and held his face to make sure he was all right. Then she kissed him. He withdrew in surprise, then gently returned it.

“Samantha,” he said. “Jesus, Samantha, what the hell?”

“They were going to prosecute you,” she said softly.

“We need to get out of here. Is there a car nearby?”

“There’s a cab waiting at the end of the lane.”

He grabbed her and looked back at the front of the building, where a crowd was forming, presumably waiting for him. Someone’s amplified voice shouted at them, telling them to keep their distance.

“They were going to prosecute you,” she said. “I couldn’t let you do that to yourself. I couldn’t. So I went to them and asked to speak to your lieutenant.”

“Jesus.”

“And I told him what had happened, what had really happened. And then he got his major. And I told him and he went and got the commissioner. And I told him and they all seemed to think for a bit.”

Garvey shook his head and kept hustling her down the lane.

“And then once I had them all in a room together I told them I had written ten letters, each to one of the major newspaper publishers telling them what had actually happened, about the… the assault and everything, and they’d be getting them by the end of the day. So either they could go public with the story or they would wind up fighting the papers.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“And I suppose they decided to let you go.”

“God, Sam. That may make it worse,” he said. “That may make it worse for everyone.”

“I don’t care. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right what they were doing to you.”

They climbed into the cab. “Where’d Hayes stash you?” Garvey asked. “No. Wait. Don’t tell me. Just get us close and we’ll let you out.”

Samantha gave the driver an address only a few blocks away. Garvey nodded, his face drawn and thin and white as a sheet.

“They’ll fire you for this, you know,” he said. “This’ll be the end of it. Of your career. Jesus, Samantha, they’ll crucify you for this. Unioners may be after you.”

“I know. I don’t care anymore. Will the Department ever take you back?”

“Not after this, I don’t think. They said they were going to committee over it soon but they were hinting real hard that I should maybe resign. Maybe I should. Seems like the alternative would be a hearing.” He bowed his head and sighed. “You can love your job, but that doesn’t mean it loves you. You can love your city and you can love your country and your people, but they don’t love you back. They’re just things. Things that get too big and one day they just scrape you off their back. They don’t need you.”

“I do,” she said. “I need you. I do.”

He looked at her. His brow and cheeks lined and loose. Dark eyes soft and haggard. Then he leaned his head against hers and shut his eyes.

“I know you do,” he said softly.

“I’ll be there,” she said. “Wherever. When you’re ready.”

They came to the safe house canal. He opened the door for her but did not get out.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I think we’re being watched. I think we have to assume that.”

“By who?”

“By the union. By McNaughton. Hell, by the police. So just for now, stay low. Stay clear. And I don’t think we should be seen together, Sam.”

“Why? What more could they do to us?”

“I don’t want to know the answer to that question. Just keep your distance. From me. From Hayes.” He reached out and took her hand. Then he pulled her close and kissed her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Then she stepped back and he shut the door and the cab pulled away. Garvey did not look back.

She walked back to the dusty little apartment. Hayes was not there. She waited for an hour and then she went and got the paper.

The Department had acted on it just fast enough to look semi-responsible. She was not named, only listed as a “high-level McNaughton Securities employee.” Hayes was not mentioned, as she had kept him out of it. It seemed like just another lie in a heap of them. But that was the end of it, she knew. She no longer belonged to herself.