Page 20 of No Safe Place

To add to this commuting pleasure, the bus couldn’t get over twenty-five miles an hour before it had to stop at the next stop and you got a good healthy blast of the nails-on-chalkboard shriek of its rusty-sounding brakes.

Injured in an Accident? he read off a cheap lawyer billboard as they rattled past the Bruckner Expressway overpass.

Emilio shook his head.

Does hearing loss count? he wondered.

“Conduccion dura,” said Victor, shaking his head as the window went off again.

“Hard riding,” Emilio mumbled to himself as the window started to rattle again. He thought about his time in the war again.

“Story of my life,” he said.

Emilio had just gloriously zoned out when a new sound started. It was a light drumming, sporadic little clicks. He looked out through the dust-and fingerprint-streaked plexiglass into the dark gray afternoon.

Freezing rain was falling now onto the death-pallor gray concrete universe of the Bronx.

Perfect, Emilio thought.

Then he remembered something at least a little hopeful. Today was the day the investigator, Colleen, was going up to Connecticut to find out what had happened to his daughter, Olivia.

He checked his phone but there was nothing.

Oh, well. Maybe later or tomorrow, he thought.

As he put the phone away, something caught his attention. Outside the window of the opposite side of the bus, a guy on a motorcycle, a loud Japanese bike, zipped up and stayed along one side of the bus, keeping pace with it.

The biker was a big dude, made the bike look like a toy. He was wearing a full helmet with a black visor and as he rode along, he seemed to peer into the bus windows. Like he was looking for someone up near the front.

Then he slowed and came around the other side of the bus and looked in at Emilio and Victor next to him.

“Joder es esso?” the old man said as the biker suddenly tore away.

“Beats me,” Emilio said.

Forty minutes later at just after five, Emilio was back in his fifth-floor apartment on 188th Street and Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights.

His favorite chair was a used leather La-Z-Boy he’d bought on eBay, and he was fully stretched out on it, watching the beginning of a Netflix movie about a hot-looking Pam Anderson–like city slicker lady who inherits an Alaskan gold mine when it happened.

Behind him, he very distinctly heard the front door of his apartment open.

“What the?” he said, putting down his fork in the chicken salad he’d put together for himself.

Was it the super? Emilio thought as he laid down the bowl on the floor. He’d do things like that. Open your door with his passkey, wouldn’t even knock sometimes. Dude was an enforcer for the landlord, wasn’t he? he thought as he stood up. He treated all the renters like garbage.

“What’s up, Angel? You ever hear of knocking? What the hell, man?” Emilio said as he came into the hall.

But no one was there. He could see the front door at the end of the hall and it was closed and seemed locked.

Did Angel open it and then close it? Emilio thought, peering at the front of his apartment. Was he hearing things?

He walked over and looked down at the lock. It was fine. Then he tried the knob. It was definitely locked.

Then he turned around and looked at the doorway to his kitchen and saw that he hadn’t been hearing things after all.

Because standing there was a large man wearing a balaclava.

19

---