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Anton can’t escape the gossip. Everywhere he goes, he’s followed by news of the guy in the suit, everything from shooting up Su Chin’s to bringing a firefight into a homeless camp in some old warehouse.
The constant barrage has gotten so overwhelming that he’s been ranging farther from home, avoiding the local hangouts and spending his free time exploring parts of the city that he’d never thought to bother with. Not that it’s that big a deal: This bodega, for example, looks like every other bodega he’s ever shopped in.
That is, until he turns down an aisle and spots the man in the suit.
Not his own personal boogeyman, thankfully—it’s the guy with the limp, the guy who was there when the bomb went off.
The guy who definitely has too much bread to be shopping at a corner bodega.
It’s the one intriguing detail of his day, and so Anton forgets about trying to pick out snacks and quietly stalks the guy, trying to get a bead on what he could possibly need that would make a guy in a suit that nice show up at a high-priced convenience store in the middle of a neighborhood this sketchy. (And worrying, very slightly, about the possibility that the guy might get mugged.)
And then, just as the guy’s turning into a new aisle, another customer brushes by Anton and goes straight up to the guy, who greets her with a calm “Detective,” and starts right in on a conversation that has Anton rooted to the floor.
The guy knows Detective Carter.
His first thought—an informant?—sounds laughable just on the face of it: Informants aren’t rich enough for suits like that, and any informant worth his salt would know enough not to stand out by wearing a fancy suit to a bodega.
And what kind of informant runs toward a bomb? Don’t you need a sense of self-preservation for a job like that?
No, there’s something very odd about this guy, and Anton wishes he could catch more of the conversation. It started with something about lies, maybe, but Anton’s hard-pressed to pick up much else while staying carefully one aisle away and out of sight. He picks up on the tone, a bit: Carter’s conversation turns curious, at first, and then (after some slow reply that he can’t catch) scoffing, disbelieving—
“It was stolen,” she says, and then stops in the middle of a sentence.
The next thing that’s loud enough for him to make out is unmistakable, and yet impossible to grasp: Carter’s exasperated “So you kidnapped her?”
They’re turning the corner onto his aisle, and Anton’s too busy retreating to hear whatever came next. He gets on the aisle they were just on, just in time to hear Carter again, low: “I should arrest you.” But then her voice dips back to the conversational: “Where’s the baby anyway?”
Then it’s angry whispers, and “What do you want me to do?” (still angry), and then more conversation that he can’t make out.
He dares enough to sneak a peek while they’re checking out. The guy’s apparently buying… diapers and baby food? When the clerk congratulates the guy, he gets pretty flustered. And then he and Carter part ways without a goodbye—whatever’s between the two of them, it’s not friendship—and Anton’s left with a head full of speculation that dogs him long into the night.
It was stolen.
I should arrest you.
You kidnapped her?
So Carter’s investigating something about stolen goods, and… the guy with the limp has somehow kidnapped someone. Carter said that to his face, and yet… didn’t arrest him. And how could a guy with a limp that bad manage a kidnapping, anyway?
He’d start wondering about Carter getting involved in shady business, except that it’s Carter, the white knight of the eighth precinct. She’s been shifty lately, sure, but that’s part of some sting operation, right?
Is this part of the sting, as well?
What do you want me to do?
Maybe?
Wasn’t Fusco trailing the guy, some weeks ago? Taking pictures? Maybe the dark side of the police force has their eye on this guy. Fusco’s as dirty as Carter is clean, so if Carter’s helping this guy and Fusco’s spying on him, it’s not hard to figure out which side he’s on. Which meshes with the fact that he ran toward a bomb, trying to warn the victim before it went off.
The kidnapping thing doesn’t make much sense, but…
Hmm.
A cart full of diapers and baby food.
What’s a guy that old doing with a baby? Whose baby?
(Is he married? Did his wife send him in to get supplies? But his stunned reaction to the clerk’s question… nah, can’t be his own kid.)
How does a guy with that much money end up buying emergency supplies at a corner bodega instead of hiring a nanny or at least sending out a personal shopper?
Where is the baby, anyway? If he’s not married, who’s watching the baby?
(What do you want me to do? sounds, for a moment, like Carter offering to babysit, and Anton goes through a short bout of half-hysterical giggles, thankful there’s no one around to hear him.)
Man, he was almost starting to like the guy, the guy who shouted “I have to warn him!” and actually ran toward a bomb. Kinda badass for an old guy with a limp. But… the guy’s a kidnapper.
Maybe kidnapped a mom and her kid?
The images that flood his head are of his own mom, and of Corey… as a baby, in his mom’s arms, like in those photos that Seamus tossed the day Anton left his old home for good.
Maybe it’s not really a kidnapping. A custody dispute? Maybe the mom’s run off with her own kid, and this guy’s helping her, keeping her someplace safe.
So you kidnapped her? I should arrest you.
That doesn’t sound like the guy’s helping her.
Anton doesn’t want to think of some young mom getting kidnapped. But it’s hard to make anything else fit the details.
Only… why would that guy kidnap someone? Let alone someone with a baby?
And why didn’t Carter do anything about it?
The gang’s in the midst of trading rumors about the Dons when the conversation turns back to the guy in the suit… who’s been spotted wearing a baby carrier.
In the park. With Carter. And another guy in a suit, shorter, older, bit of a limp.
Somehow, it’s just a dull surprise, because the baby was enough of a hint for Anton’s brain to put the rest together. Because it could have been a coincidence, but the guy with the limp had a baby, one that Carter was interested in, and now the guy in the suit’s got a baby, all at the same time.
That’s no coincidence.
He still doesn’t know who the baby is or why those guys have one, but his friends chatter away and Anton just sits there, trying to connect a terrifying serial killer (who leaves a room full of witnesses alive) with an ageing kidnapper (who runs toward a bomb) with a white-knight detective (who knows about the killing and the kidnapping—I should arrest you—yet meets these guys in the park).
With a kidnap victim—you kidnapped her—who, in Anton’s head, looks just like his mom.
And a baby.
Conclusions elude him, but the possibilities sure give him a massive headache.
After spotting the guy in the suit in various bars across town, but never once seeing him eat or drink in public, the speculation turns to more fanciful thoughts: maybe he’s a robot, or an alien. Keith brings up the Punisher, and they start debating if the Punisher is more of a hero or more of a villain. Anton stays out of it.
Then someone mentions a bomb, and Anton’s attempt to ignore the conversation shatters. He sits there, frozen and barely breathing, as Troy relays the details (through three or four layers of friend-of-a-friend, but news travels fast these days).
It happened just this afternoon: Someone blew up a car, and that car contained one of the Dons… and right before he drove off to his doom, he was spotted talking with the guy in the suit.
Their theories—about why the guy in the suit blew up one of the Dons—get cut short when Troy’s phone trills.
And then they’re passing around a photo of Carter. Carter, in a cafe, right now, sitting across from two guys in suits.
Don’t think they’re CIA, Troy’s friend texts. Think it’s that badass killer dude?
See if he actually eats anything, Troy texts back.
Anton doesn't need any more confirmation that the three of them are involved in something together, the killer and the kidnapper and the cop. It sets his mind whirring again, makes his head pound, as his friends are trading crude remarks about just what those three might be up to in their spare time.
And then Troy’s showing around more photos, shoving them in Anton’s face. The guy in the suit handing over something big and heavy. Carter looking into it, eyes wide at the contents. Carrying it out the door.
Anton starts to shake before he even knows why.
Because that’s the bag.
That’s the bag that the guy walked off with, that first day. The day he shot up Seamus’s store, and left only Anton standing. That’s a bag full of guns and what else would they even be handing her and what the hell is Carter mixed up in and why does that very question make his stomach clench like he’s going to throw up?
When his friends get their fill of mocking him for his obvious fear, they head off, still laughing.
Leaving Anton sitting at the kitchen table with his head on his arms, struggling to keep the tears at bay, because he still needs to clean up after his friends and the last thing he needs is Seamus mocking him too.
When familiar heavy steps trudge up the stairs, Anton gives up on fighting off the tears, and bolts off to hide in his bedroom, hoping Seamus might be too busy (or drunk) to care about the state of the kitchen.
Even with the lights on and the door locked and the wedge shoved firmly under the door, his room is filled with terrors that have never fully gone away, not since that first nightmare.
The guy knows where he lives.
Might want more weapons now. Might come to their house again. Might—
The bottom of the closet makes for a very cramped bed, but he piles up a few blankets and pulls the dresser in front of it (as if that’d stop him) and then sits there, in the dark, breathing hard and shuddering at the memory of that hand squeezing his throat… those bloodshot eyes staring into his soul.
He dreams about explosions.
The guy in the suit blowing things up, with that weird smile on his face. Pulling the bombs out of that same old duffel bag, chucking them into the Double-D’s, and trying to hand Anton some grenades.
The guy with the limp grabbing his arm—c’mon, we have to warn him—and pulling him toward a car, ignoring his panicked protests, right before everything turns into flames.
When he wakes, finally, he lies there for a good long while, feeling drained. Blinks his eyes against the tears.
Tries again to piece together the jigsaw: a terrifying serial killer with a baby carrier, a limping rich guy who both runs toward a bomb and kidnaps a young mother. Or something. And both of them know Carter, and she chats with them in bodegas and in late-night diners and doesn’t even try to arrest them.
(The headache is getting to be a constant, these days.)
He’s heading for school, trance-like, when something in him bolts and he finds himself in some random alley. Not the first time he’s played hooky, but only recently has he been doing it on his own. Going home isn’t an option (for multiple reasons), so he ends up wandering around Brooklyn, occasionally dodging cops (on the off chance that they care about a truant teenager while there are cars exploding in the streets).
It’s not so much that he worries about the direct consequences; he’s been picked up a time or two, and Seamus barely cares, so it’s more of a bother than anything else. But he needs time to, to get away from everything, time to think… or maybe time to turn his brain off for a while. Home and school are the last places he wants to be right now.
Well… the last places if you don’t count the police station. Which he’s trying not to think about, because it’s all tangled up with the last time he was sitting there, with his friends, their first encounter with the guy in the suit, when he’d—when he’d strangled Anton and—and he hadn’t even had a suit, not then. The day before the guy tracked Anton down to his own home and shot all his friends and for some reason left him standing and walked out with a bag full of guns that he’s just given to Detective Carter—
Carter, the cop who’d dealt with them that day. And dealt with the guy they’d all thought was just a bum. And now she’s meeting with him in diners and he’s giving her bags of guns.
Anton’s headache gets worse, and he forces himself to stop thinking about the details. He’s just going to drive himself crazy because none of it makes any sense.
Early afternoon finds him at a diner, ravenous and a little shaky. He sinks down into a booth and orders a pizza burger.
A few minutes later, the waitress brings his food over, and he’s lifting his first curly fry when he raises his eyes to see a cop just sitting down at the very next booth.
Facing him.
Reading the menu, but. Facing him.
Act natural, he scolds himself, as he tries to choke down a few more fries, his hunger driven away by the churning of his stomach. Act natural, because you can get away with all sorts of things if you act like you’re supposed to be there, if you refuse to act guilty or weird or scared.
Trying to run would just make things worse.
And then, for the second time in as many days, he freezes
before knowing why.
It’s the sound of a limp, those distinctive uneven footfalls. And before he can convince himself that it’s surely someone else, the guy walks right past his table. Light brown suit. Something in his hands.
Stops at the next booth.
“Hello, Officer Simmons?”
Anton can’t breathe.
“Who the hell are you?”
The guy doesn’t answer right away. Anton keeps his head down, wanting to get out, to run, to be anywhere else. Can’t bring himself to move; can barely keep his breaths quiet, keep himself from whimpering.
Can’t help but imagine the other guy, the guy without a limp, the killer in a suit showing up right here, in broad daylight, with an odd smile: Hey, Anton. Good to see you again.
After a moment, the guy with the limp slides into the booth across from “Officer Simmons,” and then there’s silence, except for the beating of Anton’s heart and the rasp of his own breath in his ears.
The cop makes noises about arresting the guy, and Anton’s breath catches—but the guy with the limp takes it in stride. “I’d like to talk to you about your organization, the one commonly referred to as HR.”
Straining to hear over the noise of the cafe, Anton knows he’s missing chunks of the conversation despite sitting right next to it. Briefly, he debates about sliding around to the other side of the booth, but that’s… that’ll get him noticed, and besides, he wouldn’t be able to tell if they’re paying attention to him. Two bad things. Stay put.
“Paid a large sum of money,” the guy says, “to ignore any criminal activities involving a man named Elias.”
And then, shortly: “I notice things, officer. Things the rest of the world ignores.”
Another piece in the jigsaw puzzle.
“I’m a pretty observant guy myself,” Simmons says, his voice rough, and Anton chokes on his own spit and breathes heavily, fighting down the urge to cough. At least the cop can’t look at him directly, not through the other guy’s head.
The conversation comes through in bits and pieces, around the clinking of silverware and the light chatter around them, as Anton tries to make sense of the parts he can make out:
A firm hand on the reins of organized crime. But he also stands for other things.
The guy with the limp slides something across the table to the cop… sounds like papers, which the cop is now sorting through.
Surveillance of HR police officers and their families.
Not just a kidnapper, but a spy? Or—
This man will go to any length to get what he wants, including kidnapping children. Detective Carter’s son is only his most recent victim.
Wait—Carter’s got a kid?
Carter’s son has been… what, kidnapped? Hurt? Murdered? “Victim” could mean so many things. Is that why she took that bag of weapons, to try to avenge her son?
(Is his breath coming faster?)
The guy with the limp takes a breath. “Look, I recognize, officer, that I’m placing myself in danger by sitting here with you. I need you to understand that you’re placing your family in danger by doing business with Elias.”
“What the hell is this?” Simmons rasps, temper flaring.
“The man following your wife is an ex-con—”
Anton’s stomach clenches and a chill rushes through him. This guy’s threatening a cop. (A dirty cop, apparently, but still.)
The guy with the limp is a kidnapper who spies on cops and threatens their families
and runs toward bombs trying to warn people—
How does any of this fit?
“Until his plan is finished,” the guy with the limp continues. “After that… who knows whether he’ll have any use for you?”
The threat hangs in the air for a long moment, hidden in the background hum of a busy diner, a waitress taking an order somewhere behind him. Drinks getting poured in the kitchen. Anton’s heart hammers in his throat.
Officer Simmons scoffs. “How do I know this guy doesn’t work for you? Huh?”
“I imagine you don’t,” the guy says, reasonably. “But are you really willing to bet your family’s life on it?”
Wait… maybe this isn’t a threat? Is he… is he just trying to pass along some kind of warning?
There’s another pause, and then: “What do you want?”
The demand comes instantly, with unexpected steel in the man’s voice: “You need to get me the location of Detective Carter’s son, and call off any men you have working on Elias’s behalf. HR severs its ties with Elias, as of this moment.”
That’s not just a warning. That’s an ultimatum.
And the cop doesn’t put up a fuss.
What kind of man is this guy?
Long after the cop and the kidnapper have left the diner, Anton plays with his fries, stomach churning as he tries to piece things together.
The killer, the kidnapper, and the cop.
Carter’s son. Possibly kidnapped.
A woman—so you kidnapped her?—and a baby. A guy named Elias, involved in criminal activities, somehow connected to the crooked cops.
And the kidnapper’s being trailed by Fusco one day, and giving ultimatums to Simmons the next. (Well, a couple months apart, but still.) Two crooked cops, and the kidnapper doesn’t even seem to care. Carter calls him a kidnapper to his face, in public, and yet doesn’t arrest him.
Okay, wait.
Maybe these guys have something on Carter?
She has been acting awfully squirrely, lately.
But why Carter? If they can get the crooked guys to help them, why risk the one honest cop?
Unless it’s because she’s known to be honest. Who’d suspect Carter of working with criminals?
What can an honest cop do that the other guys can’t?
When the waitress starts giving him annoyed looks, he leaves, not even bothering to dump his completely uneaten burger. He’s not even paying attention to his surroundings; the thoughts still whirl through his head as he tries, yet again, to make sense of it all.
What can an honest cop help with?
Smuggling, maybe? Maybe she could make it past the kind of checkpoints that stop the other guys.
Maybe that bag hadn’t been full of guns. Maybe it’s drugs, or cash, or fake IDs… or it could still be weapons, but the more illegal kind. (Seamus only ever touched the edges of that.)
Wait.
It was stolen.
What got stolen?
Maybe it’s not the common stuff that gets smuggled through the city. Maybe it’s… he doesn’t even have a guess, but something… unique. Or powerful.
So… maybe the killer and the kidnapper persuaded her to move some goods for them. In exchange for the safety of her kid? Nah, she’d been far too calm in the diner photos. Not the kind of upset that you’d be if someone threatened your kid. (If you actually cared about your kid. He can’t picture her being as callous as Seamus is.) She couldn’t have been that calm if her kid were at stake.
So the kid got targeted… last night? This morning? By this Elias guy?
You need to get me the location of Detective Carter’s son.
The kidnapper, trying to find a kidnapped kid… what, to hold him as hostage? Or to free him?
Maybe he’s trying to get on Carter’s good side, make sure her son’s all right. But then, they already have Carter working with them. Or something. But it’s a balancing act, isn’t it? If you want the most honest cop in the city to leave you alone, when she knows full well you’ve kidnapped someone, you probably need to provide some benefit now and then.
Even so, that was a pretty ballsy move, strong-arming a cop into cutting off ties with a guy who’s been paying them off and is threatening their families.
The thoughts dog Anton long into the night, long after he’s made his way back home and pushed the wedge under his door again and made up his bed (leaving one blanket in the closet in case he wakes to another nightmare). Long into the wee hours, as he sits atop his blankets and listens to the sounds of the city and wonders whether Carter’s son got rescued, or just recaptured, or even hurt or killed.
And he knows the kid doesn’t look anything like Corey, but every time he closes his eyes, he sees Corey’s face.