The Zero (3 page)

And paper. What percentage paper? Much of the paper had made a dramatic escape; that’s what Remy recalled, watching the paper flushed into space, a flock of birds hovering over everything, and then leafing down on the city. That would help, somehow, knowing what
percentage of the pile was paper. And people. Most of the pile was steel and concrete and window blinds and you became grateful for these because they mostly stayed put. You could figure out how much steel and how many window blinds; you could account. It was a simple math problem. But the people were different. And the paper. The people and the paper burned up or flew away or ran off, and after it happened, they were considerably less than they had been in the beginning; they were bellowsed and blown, and they scattered like seeded dandelions in a windstorm.

This seemed to upset everyone, not just him, and he supposed this explained the new agency, the Office of Liberty and Recovery, with its two independent bureaus: the Remains Recovery Department, the R&Rs—former military coroners, forensic specialists, top medical and EMS people—and the even more secretive Documentation Department, the Double-D’s, the Docs, comprised mainly of retired military intelligence officers and some handpicked librarians and accountants rumored to have Special Forces training. The very difficulty of the Docs’ job was what made it so essential, as The Boss had testified before Congress and later on the morning talks and prime-time panels, his words adopted by the administration and repeated every few minutes on cable news:
There is nothing so important as recovering the record of our commerce, the proof of our place in the world, of the resilience of our economy, of our jobs, of our lives. If we do not make a fundamental accounting of what was lost, if we do not gather up the paper and put it all back, then the forces aligned against us have already won. They’ve. Already. Won.

Staring at the massive ribs, the shattered steel exoskeleton in pieces as far as he could see, smoldering bones draped with gray, like a thousand whales beached and bleached, rotting in open air, it was hard for Remy to imagine that they hadn’t won. But the thought ebbed away as he stepped over thick bands of electrical cord and fire hoses and made his way to the pit, which was the hardest place for him, because it was
the same endless, shapeless debris as the pile, but concave. Sunlight sparked off the helmets of rescue workers as they dropped down into voids, drawn by the enigmatic pull of gravity; one after another, like strings of pearls, they went in one hole and came out another. Those holes, he thought, were made by something beyond even fire, by a force that could push a half mile of vertical steel and life into a banked pit fifty feet deep. Maybe, he thought, there are
gray
holes.

Remy squinted his eyes, trying to make himself comfortable with the view, imagining a high mountain lake surrounded by acres of smoldering iron forest, the smoke not smoke, but warm autumn fog, a floating memory of some misted morning at camp when he was a boy. It was familiar, not like an actual place he’d seen before, but like a postcard committed to memory, a sharp pit of regret that he couldn’t quite locate. He told himself it didn’t mean he was deadened; a person could grow used to anything.

It occurred to him then that he had kept a pretty good line on this day so far. He hadn’t lost track of it, and in this he felt a small measure of pride. Maybe he was getting better. Maybe the gaps were going away, the crack in his mind—or wherever it was—was sealing itself. Maybe his thoughts were coagulating. And that’s when something on his waist vibrated. Remy took it off his belt and stared at it, not sure when he’d gotten a pager. He pressed the button on top and a single word appeared on the little screen: “NOW.”

Remy stared at the pager. Now? Now
what
? Something about the message chilled him and he backed away from Guterak, who was watching the bucket brigade intently. Remy stuffed the pager in his pocket and moved south, edging down the street toward a familiar storefront—his favorite ghost bar, windows broken and jagged, dust covering everything. He pushed open the busted door and stepped in.

Just inside was a small round table waiting for a busboy who would never come: two martini glasses, one still holding a gray olive, a highball
glass with a stir stick. The chairs that went with this table were dumped, as if its owners had leapt up and run off. Remy had come here the second day and noticed three bills beneath one of the gray martini glasses. Every day he expected someone to take that tip, but the rescue workers only added to it—for luck maybe, or more likely, irony—until a flower of twenty or thirty singles fanned out beneath the dusty glass. Steal the booze; leave a tip. Remy pulled a dollar from his own wallet, lifted the glass, and slid the money beneath it. He patted the table.
Now
…what to have? Behind the bar, the top-shelf bottles were gone; the guys had begun going down-shelf to the well booze: empty Canadian Mist and Gilbey’s and the like, although there was still a bit of Bookers. Decent gin, just what he wanted. Cool, clear, unambiguous. Remy looked beneath the counter for a clean glass. Beautiful ghost bar.

When he looked up, a slender man in a dark suit was standing in the doorway, holding a briefcase. He was younger than Remy, but about the same height, with a short, military haircut. But his exact age was hard to determine because he had the youngest face Remy had ever seen on an adult, as if a ten-year-old’s head had been grafted onto the body of an adult lawyer. He wore a name tag (“Markham”) tucked into his lapel pocket, the way Feds did it, but if he was a Freddie, the tag didn’t identify which agency. Markham smiled and set his briefcase on the bar, sliding a dusty highball aside. Remy thought about pretending he was just a bartender, a holdover who hadn’t fled that day. He thought about offering this baby-faced Markham a drink, and for a moment he flashed on what a nice life that would be, the simple transaction of warm comfort for cold money, glass clinked on a counter, the long pour, a bar rag to clean off the dust, and what else could you possibly need? What ghost bartender ever had gaps in his memory, or woke with a gunshot to his head? What ghost bartender ever lost track of days, or had to convince his partner to stop talking? What ghost bartender ever suffered temporal streaks and floaters?

“I see why you wanted to meet here,” the baby-faced man said. “Appropriate.”

Remy didn’t know what to say. Had he wanted to meet there?

“I should begin by saying that we’re all thrilled,” the man said, “to get someone with your experience to help us”—he smiled slyly and thoughtfully—“expand our responsibilities. Obviously, we don’t have the institutional history of other investigative agencies.” The man leaned forward. “To tell the truth, we’re all eager to show the bureau and the agency that we’re not just some kind of clerical service. And, if I may add a personal note, may I say that I’m looking forward to—”

A cell phone rang and Markham held a finger up to Remy while he took the call. “No, no problem at all. Yes. In fact, I’m here with him now.” Markham looked up and met Remy’s eyes. “I’ll ask him.” He covered the mouthpiece of his phone and asked Remy: “Is there anything else you’ll need?”

Remy looked down at the glass. He needed this gin, but that didn’t seem to be what the boy-man was asking. He lifted the dusty glass but it slipped out of his hand and with it slipped the moment, Remy reaching for the falling glass and finding—

TWO YANKEES,
it turned out, were all that showed up to take the tour that day, much to Guterak’s apparent dismay. Remy looked back and recognized a big second-year relief pitcher and the bullpen catcher in the backseat. Looking down, he saw he was still cradling the glass that was no longer there. He hoped at least he’d gotten to drink his gin. He shook his hand and looked back at the marginal Yankees. “I guess The Boss took most of the big-name guys down,” Paul said. He was pissed. Remy recognized the players: a young reliever everyone was hoping would develop a curve and the stones to become a setup guy, and a backup catcher who’d once given The Boss’s kid some pointers on
hitting. It didn’t matter to Remy which Yankees they got, but Paul was clearly angry, and seemed to wonder what it meant—if they’d fallen out of favor, somehow. He told Remy that he heard Bannerman and Dooley were taking Bruce Willis around, and that Lopez and Dunphy got the cast of
Sex and the City
.

Paul was furious. “What I’d give for an hour in a car with that goddamn Sarah Jessica. Fuggin’ Carey…he knows how I feel about Sarah Jessica. It’s disrespect.”

Remy looked around the truck.
Be quiet, be quiet, be…

“It ain’t a sexual thing, either. I think she’s got style. I like them little skirts and she wears a lot of…what would you call it…
flouncy
stuff.” He turned to face Remy. “I wish Stacy would wear more flouncy stuff.”

Remy stared out the window.

“You think Stacy’s too fat for flouncy stuff?”

“I…I don’t know, Paul,” Remy said.

“You think my wife’s fat?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Aw, I’m just fuggin’ with you, man. ’Course she’s fat. I know she’s fat. Krispy Kreme knows she’s fat. White Castle, Schwann’s, Burger King knows she’s fat.” Paul turned back to the road. “I’m just sayin’…you and me, we almost die in here and all we get are a coupla scrubs—” He looked in the rearview mirror. “No offense.”

The pitcher shrugged. The catcher, who didn’t speak English, smiled and gave them a thumbs-up.

Paul looked over at Remy again. He spoke more quietly. “It just pisses me off…fuggin’ Lopez takin’ Sarah Jessica around.”

“Paul—”

“What the fugg is he gonna show her? Here’s the building where I hid under a desk and shit my pants?”

They drove down the West for the second time that day, the gray
cloud drawing them down, passing beneath people on banisters and fire escapes, leaning out windows, cameras following them. The Yankees were staring out the windows in the backseat, quiet and respectful. Every few minutes, Paul chirped the siren to clear the traffic but Remy could tell he wasn’t into it.

“Something else,” Paul said to the car, and Remy sensed danger and closed his eyes. “You notice how the number keeps dropping? Eight thousand. Seven thousand? Six. It’s like the swelling going down. I was thinkin’, maybe it’ll go back to zero. You know? I mean, where are the bodies? Maybe it’ll turn out that everyone was at home that day. Maybe we’ll actually
gain
people when this is all over.”

As usual, no one knew how to respond to Guterak, so he just kept talking. “How would they explain that? More people than we started with? Wouldn’t that be some trick, huh?” As they approached The Zero, Paul began to fidget, the words struggling to get out. Remy could see him getting ready. Everyone who took tours had his own version of this place, names for different landmarks. Remy saw a firefighter and a welder get into it one time over whether the deep part was called The Pit or The Hole. Among the guys who took tours—and especially on The Boss’s detail and staff—it was acknowledged that Guterak’s names were the best. A few of them had even become standard:
The Ribs, Cathedral, Spears, The Void, Big Peach, Dry Falls
. Maybe this was Paul’s art: He couldn’t stop talking about the things that so many others had trouble talking about. Guterak always started his tours on West Street, where he and Remy had come in that day. He’d circle below to east, then north, and finally back south, and always end right across from the hole, where Remy’s car was still visible, its windows shattered, up to its axles in grit and paper. Even though they’d only gotten two Yankees and no Sarah Jessica, Remy knew that Paul would set aside his disappointment and do what he always did. Talk.

“So this is where we came in,” Paul said to the Yankees as they approached the West Street checkpoint. “I was on a mission in midtown
for The Boss—there’s this frozen yogurt he likes—when I got the call. Brian was on his way down, so he stops and gets me and we run his car down the West just like we’re going now, smoke everywhere, and we get down here, on the south end, and we’re just standing around, watching all this shit, and
bang,
the second one comes in, and then we’re running around—and here’s what you didn’t get on TV, it was so
far up there,
it didn’t seem real, not until someone jumped, arms flapping crazy like they could change their minds, but of course, they couldn’t…and you’d watch ’em grow as they came down…hitting like fuggin’ water balloons, but deeper, you know—thumping and…and…bursting…and then Brian wanders off and I’m alone, just walking along, lookin’ at all these people and this kid firefighter, I’ll never forget his little face, some probie starin’ up at the sky and I don’t even have to look at what he was seeing because I hear this groaning noise and this pop and then it’s so quiet—
eerie
quiet, you know, just for a split second, not even long enough to think, Oh shit, it’s quiet—but I can tell by the look in this kid’s eyes that it’s not good, and then comes this horrible grinding and a roar, like thunder in your head, ten fuggin’ seconds of hard thunder as the floors pancake, and as soon as it starts, this firefighter does the crazy bravest thing I ever seen, he starts running
toward
the thing, as I start goin’ in the other direction, toward Brian’s car, and throw myself against the car and then it’s like we’re in the middle of a hurricane of shit, and this wave crashes all around us, black and thick, pushes me under Brian’s car and all the way through to the other side and I know I’m gonna get buried with all this shit that’s flying around and I can’t breathe or see and the wind is still blowing hot shit—see on my arm here, this burn came from some shit blown against me, and this cut, four stitches there—I’m crawling on my hands and knees until I bump the corner of a building and I crawl through a broken window and over people and I can’t tell if I’m inside or out—it’s all black—except the floor beneath all the dust is marble, so I think, I must be inside and it seems like I crawl forever, and then I get up and walk, and all
of a sudden there’s a hundred of us, ghosts, gray and choking, and we come out of this cloud one at a time, like little fuggin’ kids waking up on Christmas morning, and no one says a word, not a single word, and we’re walking toward Battery Park, like someone threw a switch and we couldn’t speak no more. All we could do was walk. Just walk.”