“Don’t—” Joe started, cutting him off. Robbie plowed on.
“It’s worse than that, though, isn’t it? Maybe you did murder your fucking mother and your ex-girlfriend. This is what happens when you stay in the dark and don’t look at things, Joe! Everyone looked down on me, but I looked at our mother leaving us. I let it sink in. If it fucked up my life, at least I dealt with it. I didn’t walk around pouring liquor on it until it went off inside me like a time bomb.”
“We’ve both kept things in the dark,” Joe said. He spoke low enough that Robbie had to lean in to hear him. The next thing he said was more than a snipe. The gloves were off. The string that held Joe just above hate where his brother was concerned snapped. He had never said anything like it. “For me, yeah, maybe it was the full impact of her leaving. But I know what it was for you, Robbie. It was that night. I still remember what happened, and what it did to you.” Robbie opened his mouth, then shut it again. Joe felt cold satisfaction slide through him. It wasn’t right, but it would shut his brother down. Then Robbie’s mouth turned up in a mean little grin. The weird gleam was back too.
“The light has been looking for you, little brother,” he said. He drew the last half inch from his cigarette and pitched the butt in between Joe’s legs. “Get ready to be blinded by it.” He turned and walked off. Joe felt like he’d been punched. The satisfaction was gone. There was just the coldness. It was bitter and dark and deep. He put his head in his hands and thought about drinking.
CHAPTER 38
Wednesday, July 13, 1977
West Seventy-Ninth Street
Upper West Side, Manhattan
10:38 p.m.
The first intersection west of Riverside Drive was up a little hill to West End Avenue. It was eerily quiet but otherwise nonthreatening. The heat pressed on them both; it seemed to be getting even hotter, the air heavier, as they moved into the city. The buildings on either side were huge and stately, with stone or brick facades and balconies. Windows were open and dim; flickering candlelight emanated from most of them. They could hear radio broadcasts from a few of the windows, echo-laden male voices announcing details that meant nothing to them: street closures here, hospitals dissuading new patients there, admonitions against using the telephone for anything other than emergencies. Joe figured one of them must be George Michael.
It was as they approached Broadway, where more cars and people seemed to be moving up and down the street, that Joe heard heavy breathing behind him. He and Robbie spun around in unison, ready to scream. A young man with a dark, sweaty face was carrying a parking meter over his shoulder.
“Out of the way!” he bellowed and ran past them, turning south on Broadway. Parked at the corner was a station wagon, its tailgate down and another shirtless man standing beside it. The parking meter was thrust into the back of the wagon; the men jumped in and sped off.
The next thing that drew their attention was straight ahead, across the wide two-way boulevard on the east side of the street. It was the unmistakable murmur of a crowd: people talking over each other, laughter, shouting. There was the tinkle of breaking glass. At first, they couldn’t tell what they were seeing; in the intermittent glow of passing cars, it looked like people in throngs were trying to muscle their way into the same door all at once. There was the screech of metal and then more breaking glass. A cheer went up from the crowd, pressed against the building like a writhing mass. Then a young man in gym shorts and knee-length tube socks wiggled his way out from the scrum. He was carrying an appliance box. Another guy in a pink shirt and a white fedora followed with a load of clothes over his arm.
“They’re, like, breaking in,” Robbie said. “Stealing stuff.” On Broadway, cars drove by in both directions, a few of them honking horns and yelling out open windows. A fat man in a tank top was standing some distance from the crowd, scratching his chest and screaming at everyone. He wasn’t the only one. There were shouts and screams from the windows above them.
“It’s a Woolworth’s,” Joe said, pointing at the sign above the mess. It was a neon sign, grayed out and lifeless. On the second floor there were windows behind the sign with mannequins and display cases. From time to time a flash of light or a flicker of flame could be seen in them. Figures moved about up there, upending things.
“Let’s get out of here,” Robbie said, motioning toward the south side of the intersection. “This way.”
Then Joe’s heart leaped into his chest. A really big car, like an old Cadillac or an Imperial, moved past them going east on Seventy-Ninth and crossing Broadway, which had become a four-way stop, and cars just waited their turn. As the big car moved away, its headlights illuminated a bar on the left with a massive sign in the shape of a harp that hung suspended over the sidewalk. There was a little stoop with iron railings in front of the entrance, and people were milling about in front, raising glasses, talking, and singing. A few feet from them, a woman stood alone, smoking a cigarette in her left hand. The scene was at least a football field’s length away from him, across the big intersection and up the block, but in the glow of the headlights, she looked like she was tapping on the cigarette butt with her thumb. Also, her right hand seemed perched on her hip. It was a familiar pose.