Cell Read online

  Clay didn't want to imagine.

  "All right." Tom was nodding reluctantly. "I see where you're going with this. Someone--some terrorist outfit--rigs the cell phone signals somehow. If you make a call or take one, you get some kind of a... what?... some kind of a subliminal message, I guess... that makes you crazy. Sounds like science fiction, but I suppose fifteen or twenty years ago, cell phones as they now exist would have seemed like science fiction to most people."

  "I'm pretty sure it's something like that," Clay said. "You can get enough of it to screw you up righteously if you even overhear a call." He was thinking of Pixie Dark. "But the insidious thing is that when people see things going wrong all around them--"

  "Their first impulse is to reach for their cell phones and try to find out what's causing it," Tom said.

  "Yeah," Clay said. "I saw people doing it."

  Tom looked at him bleakly. "So did I."

  "What all this has to do with you leaving the safety of the hotel, especially with dark coming on, I don't know," Mr. Ricardi said.

  As if in answer, there came another explosion. It was followed by half a dozen more, marching off to the southeast like the diminishing footsteps of a giant. From above them came another thud, and a faint cry of rage.

  "I don't think the crazy ones will have the brains to leave the city any more than that guy up there can find his way to the stairs," Clay said.

  For a moment he thought the look on Tom's face was shock, and then he realized it was something else. Amazement, maybe. And dawning hope. "Oh, Christ," he said, and actually slapped the side of his face with one hand. "They won't leave. I never thought of that."

  "There might be something else," Alice said. She was biting her lip and looking down at her hands, which were working together in a restless knot. She forced herself to look up at Clay. "It might actually be safer to go after dark."

  "Why's that, Alice?"

  "If they can't see you--if you can get behind something, if you can hide--they forget about you almost right away."

  "What makes you think that, honey?" Tom asked.

  "Because I hid from the man who was chasing me," she said in a low voice. "The guy in the yellow shirt. This was just before I saw you. I hid in an alley. Behind one of those Dumpster thingies? I was scared, because I thought there might not be any way back out if he came in after me, but it was all I could think of to do. I saw him standing at the mouth of the alley, looking around, walking around and around--walking the worry-circle, my grampa would say--and at first I thought he was playing with me, you know? Because he had to've seen me go into the alley, I was only a few feet ahead of him... just a few feet... almost close enough to grab..." Alice began to tremble. "But once I was in there, it was like... I dunno..."

  "Out of sight, out of mind," Tom said. "But if he was that close, why did you stop running?"

  "Because I couldn't anymore," Alice said. "I just couldn't. My legs were like rubber, and I felt like I was going to shake myself apart from the inside. But it turned out I didn't have to run, anyway. He walked the worry-circle a few more times, muttering that crazy talk, and then just walked off. I could hardly believe it. I thought he had to be trying to fake me out... but at the same time I knew he was too crazy for anything like that." She glanced briefly at Clay, then back down at her hands again. "My problem was running into him again. I should have stuck with you guys the first time. I can be pretty stupid sometimes."

  "You were sca--" Clay began, and then the biggest explosion yet came from somewhere east of them, a deafening KER-WHAM! that made them all duck and cover their ears. They heard the window in the lobby shatter.

  "My... God," Mr. Ricardi said. His wide eyes underneath that bald head made him look to Clay like Little Orphan Annie's mentor, Daddy Warbucks. "That might have been the new Shell superstation they put in over on Kneeland. The one all the taxis and the Duck Boats use. It was the right direction."

  Clay had no idea if Ricardi was right, he couldn't smell burning gasoline (at least not yet), but his visually trained mind's eye could see a triangle of city concrete now burning like a propane torch in the latening day.

  "Can a modern city burn?" he asked Tom. "One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?"

  "That lantern-kicking business was nothing but an urban legend," Alice said. She was rubbing the back of her neck as if she were getting a bad headache. "Mrs. Myers said so, in American History."

  "Sure it could," Tom said. "Look what happened to the World Trade Center, after those airplanes hit it."

  "Airplanes full of jet fuel," Mr. Ricardi said pointedly.

  As if the bald desk clerk had conjured it, the smell of burning gasoline began to come to them, wafting through the shattered lobby windows and sliding beneath the door to the inner office like bad mojo.

  "I guess you were on the nose about that Shell station," Tom remarked.

  Mr. Ricardi went to the door between his office and the lobby. He unlocked it and opened it. What Clay could see of the lobby beyond already looked deserted and gloomy and somehow irrelevant. Mr. Ricardi sniffed audibly, then closed the door and locked it again. "Fainter already," he said.

  "Wishful thinking," Clay said. "Either that or your nose is getting used to the aroma."

  "I think he might be right," Tom said. "That's a good west wind out there--by which I mean the air's moving toward the ocean--and if what we just heard was that new station they put in on the corner of Kneeland and Washington, by the New England Medical Center--"

  "That's the one, all right," Mr. Ricardi said. His face registered glum satisfaction. "Oh, the protests! The smart money fixed that, believe you m--"

  Tom overrode him. "--then the hospital will be on fire by now... along with anybody left inside, of course..."

  "No," Alice said, then put a hand over her mouth.

  "I think yes. And the Wang Center's next in line. The breeze may drop by full dark, but if it doesn't, everything east of the Mass Pike is apt to be so much toasted cheese by ten p.m."

  "We're west of there," Mr. Ricardi pointed out.

  "Then we're safe enough," Clay said. "At least from that one." He went to Mr. Ricardi's little window, stood on his toes, and peered out onto Essex Street.

  "What do you see?" Alice asked. "Do you see people?"

  "No... yes. One man. Other side of the street."

  "Is he one of the crazy ones?" she asked.

  "I can't tell." But Clay thought he was. It was the way he ran, and the jerky way he kept looking back over his shoulder. Once, just before he went around the corner and onto Lincoln Street, the guy almost ran into a fruit display in front of a grocery store. And although Clay couldn't hear him, he could see the man's lips moving. "Now he's gone."

  "No one else?" Tom asked.

  "Not at the moment, but there's smoke." Clay paused. "Soot and ash, too. I can't tell how much. The wind's whipping it around."

  "Okay, I'm convinced," Tom said. "I've always been a slow learner but never a no-learner. The city's going to burn and nobody's going to stand pat but the crazy people."

  "I think that's right," Clay said. And he didn't think this was true of just Boston, but for the time being, Boston was all he could bear to consider. In time he might be able to widen his view, but not until he knew Johnny was safe. Or maybe the big picture was always going to be beyond him. He drew small pictures for a living, after all. But in spite of everything, the selfish fellow who lived like a limpet on the underside of his mind had time to send up a clear thought. It came in colors of blue and dark sparkling gold. Why did it have to happen today, of all days? Just after I finally made a solid strike?

  "Can I come with you guys, if you go?" Alice asked.

  "Sure," Clay said. He looked at the desk clerk. "You can, too, Mr. Ricardi."

  "I shall stay at my post," Mr. Ricardi said. He spoke loftily, but before they shifted away from Clay's, his eyes looked sick.
>
  "I don't think you'll get in Dutch with the management for locking up and leaving under these circumstances," Tom said. He spoke in the gentle fashion Clay was so much coming to like.

  "I shall stay at my post," he said again. "Mr. Donnelly, the day manager, went out to make the afternoon deposit at the bank and left me in charge. If he comes back, perhaps then..."

  "Please, Mr. Ricardi," Alice said. "Staying here is no good."

  But Mr. Ricardi, who had once more crossed his arms over his thin chest, only shook his head.

  15

  They moved one of the Queen Anne chairs aside, and Mr. Ricardi unlocked the front doors for them. Clay looked out. He could see no people moving in either direction, but it was hard to tell for sure because the air was now full of fine dark ash. It danced in the breeze like black snow.

  "Come on," he said. They were only going next door to start with, to the Metropolitan Cafe.

  "I'm going to relock the door and put the chair back in place," Mr. Ricardi said, "but I'll be listening. If you run into trouble--if there are more of those...people ... hiding in the Metropolitan, for instance--and you have to retreat, just remember to shout, 'Mr. Ricardi, Mr. Ricardi, we need you!' That way I'll know it's safe to open the door. Is that understood?"

  "Yes," Clay said. He squeezed Mr. Ricardi's thin shoulder. The desk clerk flinched, then stood firm (although he showed no particular sign of pleasure at being so saluted). "You're all right. I didn't think you were, but I was wrong."

  "I hope I do my best," the bald man said stiffly. "Just remember--"

  "We'll remember," Tom said. "And we'll be over there maybe ten minutes. If anything goes wrong over here, you give a shout."

  "All right." But Clay didn't think he would. He didn't know why he thought that, it made no sense to think a man wouldn't give a shout to save himself if he was in trouble, but Clay did think it.

  Alice said, "Please change your mind, Mr. Ricardi. It's not safe in Boston, you must know that by now."

  Mr. Ricardi only looked away. And Clay thought, not without wonder, This is how a man looks when he's deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.

  "Come on," Clay said. "Let's make some sandwiches while we've still got electricity to see by."

  "Some bottled water wouldn't hurt, either," Tom said.

  16

  The electricity failed just as they were wrapping the last of their sandwiches in the Metropolitan Cafe's tidy, white-tiled little kitchen. By then Clay had tried three more times to get through to Maine: once to his old house, once to Kent Pond Elementary, where Sharon taught, and once to Joshua Chamberlain Middle School, which Johnny now attended. In no case did he get further than Maine's 207 area code.

  When the lights in the Metropolitan went out, Alice screamed in what at first seemed to Clay like total darkness. Then the emergency lights came on. Alice was not much comforted. She was clinging to Tom with one arm. In the other she was brandishing the bread-knife she'd used to cut the sandwiches with. Her eyes were wide and somehow flat.

  "Alice, put that knife down," Clay said, a little more harshly than he'd intended. "Before you cut one of us with it."

  "Or yourself," Tom said in that mild and soothing voice of his. His spectacles glinted in the glare of the emergency lights.

  She put it down, then promptly picked it up again. "I want it," she said. "I want to take it with me. You have one, Clay. I want one."

  "All right," he said, "but you don't have a belt. We'll make you one from a tablecloth. For now, just be careful."

  Half the sandwiches were roast beef and cheese, half ham and cheese. Alice had wrapped them in Saran Wrap. Under the cash register Clay found a stack of sacks with DOGGY BAG written on one side and people bag written on the other. He and Tom tumbled the sandwiches into a pair of these. Into a third bag they put three bottles of water.

  The tables had been made up for a dinner-service that was never going to happen. Two or three had been tumbled over but most stood perfect, with their glasses and silver shining in the hard light of the emergency boxes on the walls. Something about their calm orderliness hurt Clay's heart. The cleanliness of the folded napkins, and the little electric lamps on each table. Those were now dark, and he had an idea it might be a long time before the bulbs inside lit up again.

  He saw Alice and Tom gazing about with faces as unhappy as his felt, and a desire to cheer them up--almost manic in its urgency--came over him. He remembered a trick he used to do for his son. He wondered again about Johnny's cell phone and the panic-rat took another nip out of him. Clay hoped with all his heart the damned phone was lying forgotten under Johnny-Gee's bed among the dust-kitties, with its battery flat-flat-flat.

  "Watch this carefully," he said, setting his bag of sandwiches aside, "and please note that at no time do my hands leave my wrists." He grasped the hanging skirt of a tablecloth.

  "This is hardly the time for parlor tricks," Tom said.

  "I want to see," Alice said. For the first time since they'd met her, there was a smile on her face. It was small but it was there.

  "We need the tablecloth," Clay said, "it won't take a second, and besides, the lady wants to see." He turned to Alice. "But you have to say a magic word. Shazam will do."

  "Shazam!" she said, and Clay pulled briskly with both hands.

  He hadn't done the trick in two, maybe even three years, and it almost didn't work. And yet at the same time, his mistake--some small hesitation in the pull, no doubt--actually added to the charm of the thing. Instead of staying where they were while the tablecloth magically disappeared from beneath them, all the place-settings on the table moved about four inches to the right. The glass nearest to where Clay was standing actually wound up with its circular base half on and half off the table.

  Alice applauded, now laughing. Clay took a bow with his hands held out.

  "Can we go now, O great Vermicelli?" Tom asked, but even Tom was smiling. Clay could see his small teeth in the emergency lights.

  "Soon's I rig this," Clay said. "She can carry the knife on one side and a bag of sandwiches on the other. You can tote the water." He folded the tablecloth over into a triangle shape, then rolled it quickly into a belt. He slipped a bag of sandwiches onto this by the bag's carrier handles, then put the tablecloth around the girl's slim waist, having to take a turn and a half and tie the knot in back to make the thing secure. He finished by sliding the serrated bread-knife home on the right side.

  "Say, you're pretty handy," Tom said.

  "Handy is dandy," Clay said, and then something else blew up outside, close enough to shake the cafe. The glass that had been standing half on and half off the table lost its balance, tumbled to the floor, and shattered. The three of them looked at it. Clay thought to tell them he didn't believe in omens, but that would only make things worse. Besides, he did.

  17

  Clay had his reasons for wanting to go back to the Atlantic Avenue Inn before they set off. One was to retrieve his portfolio, which he'd left sitting in the lobby. Another was to see if they couldn't find some sort of makeshift scabbard for Alice's knife--he reckoned even a shaving kit would do, if it was long enough. A third was to give Mr. Ricardi another chance to join them. He was surprised to find he wanted this even more than he wanted the forgotten portfolio of drawings. He had taken an odd, reluctant liking to the man.

  When he confessed this to Tom, Tom surprised him by nodding. "It's the way I feel about anchovies on pizza," he said. "I tell myself there's something disgusting about a combination of cheese, tomato sauce, and dead fish... but sometimes that shameful urge comes over me and I can't stand against it."

  A blizzard of black ash and soot was blowing up the street and between the buildings. Car alarms warbled, burglar alarms brayed, and fire alarms clanged. There seemed to be no heat in the air, but Clay could hear the crackle of fire to the south and east of them. The smell of burning was stronger, too. They heard voices shouting, but these were back toward the Comm
on, where Boylston Street widened.

  When they got next door to the Atlantic Avenue Inn, Tom helped Clay push one of the Queen Anne chairs away from one of the broken glass door-panels. The lobby beyond was now a pool of gloom in which Mr. Ricardi's desk and the sofa were only darker shadows; if Clay hadn't already been in there, he would have had no idea what those shadows represented. Above the elevators a single emergency light guttered, the boxed battery beneath it buzzing like a horsefly.

  "Mr. Ricardi?" Tom called. "Mr. Ricardi, we came back to see if you changed your mind."

  There was no reply. After a moment, Alice began carefully to knock out the glass teeth that still jutted from the windowframe.

  "Mr. Ricardi!" Tom called again, and when there was still no answer, he turned to Clay. "You're going in there, are you?"

  "Yes. To get my portfolio. It's got my drawings in it."

  "You don't have copies?"

  "Those are the originals," Clay said, as if this explained everything. To him it did. And besides, there was Mr. Ricardi. He'd said, I'll be listening.

  "What if Thumper from upstairs got him?" Tom asked.

  "If that had happened, I think we'd have heard him thumping around down here," Clay said. "For that matter, he would have come running at the sound of our voices, babbling like the guy who tried to carve us up back by the Common."

  "You don't know that," Alice said. She was gnawing at her lower lip. "It's way too early for you to think you know all the rules."

  Of course she was right, but they couldn't stand around out here discussing it, that was no good, either.

  "I'll be careful," he said, and put a leg over the bottom of the window. It was narrow, but plenty wide enough for him to climb through. "I'll just poke my head into his office. If he's not there, I won't go hunting around for him like a chick in a horror movie. I'll just grab my portfolio and we'll boogie."