Hero (6 page)

Zach said, “Listen, even if something had gone terribly wrong and he knew that he couldn’t pull out of it, he would have used his chute and bailed out. So why didn’t he do that?”

“Maybe there wasn’t time,” she said. “Maybe he just never got the chance.”

“But see, that’s the thing!” he said. “My dad was at his best under pressure! The worst trouble always brought out the best in him. That’s why there has to be a reason he didn’t
get
the chance to save himself. And I’m going to find out why.”

Neither one of them said anything now. Zach turned his head back toward the television, where somebody on Charlotte had just made this amazing dunk, throwing the ball down so hard Zach was surprised he and Kate couldn’t hear it over the mute button.

“Don’t do this,” Kate said.

“I have to.”

“You know I’ve got you no matter what you do,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I
know.
”

“But you’ve got to let this go,” she said.

He shook his head slowly, side to side.

“Please listen to me,” she said. “Listen, because I sometimes feel like I know you better than I know myself. And I know that if you
don’t
let this go, you’re going to get so lost in it that even I won’t be able to find you.”

“No.”

“No to which part?”

“No, I’m not letting it go. And no, I could never get that lost; you’d invent a new kind of GPS if that’s what it took for you to find me.”

“You really and truly believe somebody killed your dad?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s say you’re right,” Kate said, “even though I’m not really saying that. Who would do something like that?”

“You want the short list, just from the last couple of years?” he said. “Or the longer one from his whole career?”

“And you really believe a fourteen-year-old can find something that nobody else has?” Kate said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

ZACH
tried to stay with the game after Kate was gone but knew he was going through the motions with the Knicks the way he was with a lot of things lately. Letting people think he was the same old Zach, when he was never going to be that Zach again.

Maybe things would be a little different when he was back
playing
basketball again instead of just watching it, when he was back on the court with the guys, getting a chance to channel his energy.

Only it wasn’t just energy he needed to blow off. It was the anger he was carrying around with him, making him feel like some kind of ticking bomb.

All in all, he thought he did a pretty good job of keeping a lid on it, hiding it from everyone, even Kate. Maybe not doing such a bang-up job of hiding it when he tried to beat up the brick wall that day. But most of the time.

Problem was, he was mad
all
of the time. And as much as he needed to know everything he could about the crash, as sure as he was that somebody had sabotaged his dad, reading up on it only made him madder.

He knew he wasn’t the only kid in the world something like this had happened to. He knew that really bad things happened all the time, and to good people. They got sick and died. They got hit by hurricanes in New Orleans. Earthquakes. Tsunamis.

9/11.

It didn’t change what he felt, and what he felt was that he didn’t just have a dark cloud following him around lately; it was as if the thunder and lightning were inside him.

Were
him.

He was upstairs now, on the balcony outside his bedroom, staring out at the park. In his hand was the rare Morgan silver dollar, an 1879, his dad had given him once as a present, with Lady Liberty on it. He’d told Zach that even though it was made of silver, it was worth its weight in gold.

And something he should never lose.

“Why?” Zach had said.

“Are you chafing on me?” his dad had said, throwing one of Zach’s expressions back at him. “Because I gave it to you, that’s why. And because it’s gonna be the only good luck charm you’ll ever need.”

Zach tried to squeeze some luck out of the Morgan now as he stared at the buildings on the other side of the park. The view was amazing as always, but it was doing nothing for him. He kept replaying the conversation with Kate inside his head, thinking of ways he could have made her understand better what he was doing and why he had to do it. Only here was the person who said she knew him better than anybody, and probably did, saying he was nuts to think that somebody had knocked his dad out of the sky video-game style.

He needed to go out.

Needed to do something more than turn on his computer, even though it was past nine o’clock. Needed to
move.
Needed not to be here. Zach walked back into his room, grabbed his Knicks hoodie off a hanger in his closet, hoping that Kate and Alba were in their rooms at the back end of the first floor, knowing Alba would never let him go out alone at this time of night if he asked her for permission.

But Zach wasn’t asking.

All that dark stuff he was carrying around, maybe it belonged outside in the night.

 

He didn’t push the elevator button, didn’t want to take the chance Kate or Alba would hear it opening and closing. He went out the back door to the kitchen instead, willing to take the stairs all the way down to the lobby.

He knew that he didn’t have
all
night, that Alba would check on him eventually, around what was supposed to be lights-out time at eleven. But it wasn’t close to eleven yet. So he
had
time.

Time to do what?

That was a pretty solid question right there.

He had remembered to take his cell phone with him. If Kate or Alba came up looking for him before eleven and realized he was gone, he knew the first thing they were going to do was call his cell. So he had a cover story ready, that he just had to run to the drugstore for a printer cartridge so he could print the English paper that was due tomorrow. Even though he’d finished the paper two days ago.

So that meant bringing money with him also, in case they called and he did need to run over to the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade on Lexington Avenue and actually
buy
a new printer cartridge.

Zach Harriman, feeling like the new troubleshooter in the family. Except the only trouble tonight was the kind he was making for himself if he got caught.

Pat, one of the night doormen, with his big belly and big Irish accent, was at the security desk when Zach came through the lobby.

“No elevator for ya, young Mr. H.?” he said.

“Getting in shape for b-ball, Pat.”

“And where might you be rushin’ off to, since I never see ya out by your lonesome at this time a night?”

Zach said, “Homework emergency. Homework 911, Pat. Need to run over to the drugstore and get some school stuff or my English teacher is gonna kill me tomorrow.”

Pat said, “You want me to walk with you? I can get Mickey at the back to cover for me a little while.”

Zach made himself smile. “Pat,” he said. “I’m fourteen, not four.”

“Just make sure you’re comin’ right back, boy-o,” Pat said. “I don’t want that Alba of yours readin’ me the riot act if she calls down wantin’ to know if I seen ya.”

Zach banged him some fist.

He walked for a long time, north on Fifth, knowing he had walked a mile when he came up on the Metropolitan Museum of Art—twenty blocks equaling roughly a mile in Manhattan.

Zach crossed over to the west side of Fifth now, walked past the incredible entrance to the Met, lit like some kind of movie set.

Zach found himself standing alone at an entrance to Central Park.

He’d never even thought about going in there at night.

Until this night.

Until right now.

And it was real night in there, not some movie set. There was the usual traffic noise behind him, because you got that in New York day or night. People weren’t kidding in the song when they said this was the city that never sleeps. But for Zach it was very quiet now, as quiet as the park in front of him.

In or not?

Yes or no?

He felt like there was this fight going on inside him, Zach against Zach.

He took a deep breath, let it out.

And walked away. Turned and walked back across Fifth, not feeling as if he’d wimped out, just feeling as if he wasn’t ready. Which brought him back to the same question he’d taken out of the apartment with him and down the steps:

Ready for
what
?

Maybe Kate still knew him, but right now Zach felt as if he didn’t know himself anymore.

 

He walked over to Madison, one block east from Fifth. Then down Madison for a while, usually one of his favorite walking streets in the whole city. Zach was surprised at how many people there were on the sidewalks at this time of night, even with Madison Avenue’s shops and stores closed hours ago.

He crossed over to the east side of the block and walked past the Carlyle Hotel, heard singing from inside as the door opened, then heard applause. Zach Harriman, out in the grown-up world, the after-dark big-city world, knowing he should have felt some excitement about it.

But he didn’t.

He was walking faster now, heading north again, getting that feeling again, the one he was getting used to: the same one he’d felt the day his dad died, that he had to be somewhere.

He just didn’t know where.

It felt as if he was up at 90th and Madison in a blink. He took a left there and headed back toward Central Park, toward his favorite way in, the grand entrance at 90th and Fifth, the long stairway leading to the reservoir.

Zach stopped at the base of the stairs. Feeling the urge to walk up them, not knowing why.

Still not quite sure.

He was wearing his old New Balance gray sneakers. If it were daylight, he would go right up those stairs and start running, a mile and a half, probably do that in under ten minutes if he stepped on it. But he wasn’t there now to run laps. Nobody in his right mind ran the res alone at this time of night, unless they were begging to get mugged. Or worse.

But he was sure now that this was where he’d been headed all along.

Zach walked up the stairs.

That was when he saw the guy.

He was about thirty yards to Zach’s left. As dark as it was, Zach had no idea how he was able to see him. But he did see him, like he was wearing night-vision glasses.

The guy was crouched in the bushes.

Waiting for something, too. Or someone.

Zach didn’t stare. He tried to act like he was invisible. But the guy wasn’t watching him, didn’t seem to know he’d been spotted. His attention was focused at the far turn, the one that took you into a long straightaway where you could really let it out if you’d run the res counterclockwise and the stairs were your finish line.

There she was. A woman, ponytail bobbing along behind her. Running hard, as if this really was her finish line, maybe thinking she was safe running alone at this time of night because she could outrun anybody.

The guy in the bushes, keeping low, inched out toward the track, still trying to be invisible.

Watching the woman eat up the remaining distance between them. A hundred yards maybe.

Less now.

One of those bad things in the world about to happen to this woman, Zach was sure of it.

And he was the only one around to stop it.

He walked slowly toward the woman. When he got near where the guy was hiding, Zach stopped.

He turned and looked right at him. The guy was in a knit cap and looked to be only a few years older than Zach. His eyes grew wide. Zach could tell he was holding something in his right hand behind him.

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, how this was supposed to play out. Wasn’t sure, but wasn’t scared, either.

It was the other guy who looked scared in that moment, as if Zach had somehow faced him down.

As if the guy had seen something in him.

The footsteps of the woman were close now. Then she said, “Excuse me,” because Zach was right in the middle of the track, blocking her way.

So he moved out of the way, turned and watched her run down the steps and across the drive and go right across Fifth Avenue with the light, into the lights of the city.

When Zach looked back into the bushes, the guy was gone.

IF
Alba or Kate knew he’d left the apartment that night, neither one of them ever mentioned it. And Zach certainly wasn’t going to bring it up, especially not to Kate. He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d not only gone in there alone, he’d gotten in the middle of a mugging or managed to scare off a perv or whatever it was he’d done.

But whatever he
had
done, it had felt amazing.

When he’d finally gotten into bed that night, it had taken him what felt like hours to get to sleep, that was how excited he was. How
amped
.

Like he hadn’t just faced down his own fears, he’d finally put a face to the Bads and stared them down.

Looked them in the eye and chased
them
off for once.

He had to admit, he did think about going back the next night. And the night after that. But he’d stayed inside the apartment, kept himself busy at his computer. One time he even made it as far as the elevator, feeling those feelings coming up again like a bad moon rising, before he heard his mom, back from her trip by then, say, “Going somewhere?”

Standing there between the foyer and the living room.

Zach was quick enough on his feet to say, “I had a crucial Knicks question for Lenny, but then I remembered like a dope that he’s already gone home.”

“How about you go back upstairs and focus on some
school
questions,” his mom said. “So maybe that B in history becomes the A that it ought to be.”