Chapter 6: The Dorian Collective
Remember Their Names
Lights don’t usually go dark in the city, not even the eerie mustard-melon sheen of the interstate’s overhanging streetlights miles out, which is what makes the April 2, 1999 occurrence on the George Washington Bridge such a puzzle. Not a single Manhattan-bound vehicle took notice of the three minutes and twenty-seven seconds the bridge lost power.
That, or they didn’t care.
***
Dom hailed a taxi from the Lenox Hill side of 2nd Avenue just before three in the morning, slumping into the back seat to hide his face from the windows.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Just head to the bridge.”
The driver—a fleshy man with thick jowls and magnifying lenses for glasses—turned his shoulders to peer through the plexiglass divider. Dom slunk further into the worn cushion.
“Turn around. I mean it. Don’t look at me.”
The scattered sweeps of hair atop the driver’s otherwise balding scalp fluttered as he returned to the steering wheel.
“Which bridge?” the driver asked.
“Any bridge. The closest one. Just drive. Take the long way if someone’s following you.”
The driver chuckled, but it wasn’t returned.
“That’s a joke, right? You’re not actually serious.”
The driver once again waited for a response, but the back seat silence persisted.
“Please,” Dom growled. “Just drive.”
The taxi pulled away from the sidewalk enough to accelerate through an empty intersection and out onto the rolling pavement of 2nd Avenue.
“What’s your name?” Dom asked.
The driver flicked his gaze momentarily to the rearview mirror, but his passenger was nothing but shadows among the passing overhead lights.
“Keefe,” he answered. “It’s Keefe.”
“Nice to meet you, Keefe. I’m Dom. Sorry we’re meeting like this, but honestly? You're probably better off not knowing what’s going on,” Dom explained. “Just do what I say and keep the car moving. If you do that, you’ll be fine. I promise.”
Keefe’s heart began to race.
“Jesus,” Keefe murmured. “It’s always the last ride of the night. I should’ve just gone home.”
“Probably,” answered Dom, “but we’re both here now, so let’s just make the most of it and get out of this alive, okay?”
Following several hundred feet behind the taxi, two cars—both black sedans—came into view. Keefe watched through the rearview as they accelerated, gaining ground.
“Is that them? The two sedans behind us?”
“That’s them alright. Just keep driving and we’ll be o—”
But Keefe swerved into an adjoining alleyway and came to a stop parallel to a section of sidewalk covered in a pile of black-bagged garbage. A pair of unattended cabs similar to his were dark, parked side-by-side behind him.
“Get out,” the driver barked. “Whatever this is, I don’t want to be a part of it.”
“It’s too late for that now, Keefe.”
“Get out or I’ll call the cops.”
The first of the two sedans sped by the turn, but the second slowed enough to jar its front end into the oncoming lane and recalibrate. A flash of headlights let them know it had found them.
“Listen to me, Keefe,” said Dom, lowering his voice into genuine sincerity. “Do you know what will happen to me if I get out now? They’ll take me away and kill me. You’ll never see me again. But here’s the thing—chances are they’ve already caught your license plate, so they’ll wait a day or two and then they’ll be after you. Just like they are with me right now.”
Dom leaned into the plexiglass separating the two of them.
“Keefe,” he said, eyes wide. “Do I sound like a guy that would lie about something like this?”
There was no time to process Dom’s question before the sound of the approaching sedan manifested itself in panic. Keefe stomped on the gas and broke free from the curb, but not quickly enough. The sedan found his bumper and nudged it enough to jolt Keefe’s hands into a violent swerve.
“Hang on,” Keefe yelled.
He kept his eyes forward, watching the upcoming intersection for a pattern in its passing cars, but Frogger had never been his forté growing up, although now, he wished it had been. He gripped the steering wheel with as much power as he could muster and prayed the streetlight would snap to green before his final approach.
“Watch out!” Dom screamed.
The intersection became a series of gold and red streaks. A city bus rolled its way through the crossing, littered with a smattering of late-night passengers visible through its half-cabin windows. Keefe’s heart stopped. The streetlights had yet to change and they were headed for impact.
There was no time left.
He cranked the steering wheel until the tires sang underneath them. Everything smelled of boiling rubber as the nose of the taxi cleared the back-end of the bus by mere inches, fought the urge to tip to its side, and finally reclaimed enough stability to break away into the next strip of road ahead.
But that’s when they heard the crash.
Through the rearview, Keefe made out the crushed frame of the sedan, the bus’s now torn-away tilted bottom, and the dull shimmer of shattered glass scattered across the asphalt.
“Was that them?” Dom asked. “Did they make it?”
“That looked bad,” Keefe said, quivering through each word. “What do we do? Shit…”
“This is the best thing that could’ve happened, Keefe! We bought ourselves some time,” Dom said. “Keep going.”
“But—”
“Keep. Going.”
Keefe gripped the wheel tighter, no longer able to speak. His throat crushed the words he wanted to say like a vice.
“How far’s the nearest bridge?” Dom asked. No answer upped the already ceiling-high ante. “Keefe! How far?”
“F...Five…Maybe six minutes.”
“Which one?”
“The GWB.”
Dom scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“Figures,” he said.
But that was it. Nothing more.
They reached the George Washington Bridge in nearly half the time, safely rolling to a halt in the breakdown lane under an overhanging structure. The cement barricades on either side of the street loomed large overhead, like frozen monsters ready to pounce. The orange buzz of streetview construction lights didn’t help, either. It casted heavy shadows stretching like claws down their sides.
“This is where you want to get out?”
Dom tossed a roll of twenty dollar bills through the seam in the plexiglass barrier. It tumbled delicately onto the front passenger seat beside Keefe.
“For your trouble,” he said. “I’m really sorry I roped you into this.”
Dom swung the door wide and slid out into the open air before Keefe could think of what to say. The city air flooded the cabin of the taxi—the smell of sulfur and wet cement came through most prominently. Dom slammed the door shut and slid his hands into the pockets of his overworn jacket and he slunk away from the taxi.
“Hey! Dom!” Keefe barked. “Wait!”
He knocked at the passenger side window with the knuckle of his pointer finger, then bent sideways at the waist to stick his head far enough over to keep the conversation as private as it could be on the side of an interstate highway.
“I can’t leave you like this,” Keefe said. “Look at this place. And at this hour?”
Dom smiled, but pity consumed what Keefe interpreted as empathy.
“Don’t go home tonight,” Dom answered. “Do you understand me? I mean it.”
His voice crept into ominous territory—the kind of low whisper-growl that preceded something tragic.
“Why?” Keefe asked. “My family’s there—”
“And if you go there, you’ll lead them straight to the people you love most. That’s what these people do. They use people,” he answered. “They’ll use them to get to you, they’ll use you to get to me, and then, poof! We all disappear. Let’s just hope they haven’t figured out who you are yet.”
Dom scribbled a phone number onto a shard of paper he found in his pocket and handed it to Keefe. Each digit connected with the next, splintered into near-ineligible blots of longhand.
“Call this number. Ask for Agent Manetti. He’s the only person in this entire country that can keep you safe from these people. Do you hear me? Do it as soon as you leave.”
“But—”
“Just promise me.”
Keefe sighed. No matter how hard he pushed, the answers he sought never came.
“I promise,” he answered.
Dom nodded reluctantly.
“Hand me that napkin,” he said, pointing to a wrinkled one settled on the floor by Keefe’s feet.
Dom slapped it to the hood of the taxi and used his off-hand to flatten the surface enough to scribble sideways along the car’s curve.
“This is the number to Stella’s Diner. It’s in the city. When you get off the phone with Manetti, call and leave this message with whoever picks up - 1112. Keep it safe. And find it before they do,” Dom said. “Don’t leave your name—don’t tell them mine, either—just say it’s for Harvey Divvy. Remember that name, Keefe. Harvey. Divvy. And the message needs to be exact, understand? Can you remember that?”
Tension built between the two of them—the awkward kind that filled empty space with invisible glue—separated only by the frame of the passenger side door.
“Dom, seriously,” Keefe answered. “What’s really going on? You know this isn’t normal, right? You can’t expect me to just leave you here. Let’s go get you help.”
“I don’t have time for this. I told you all I can.”
The leveling of Dom’s tone forced Keefe to withdraw into himself. Emptiness replaced the colors in Dom’s irises.
“I’m sorry,” Dom said. Every one of his words felt solemn, still very much sincere. “I wish there was more I could do.”
And, with that, he backed away from the window, stared down at his feet in a somber moment of clarity, and walked in the direction of the George Washington Bridge.
“Call Manetti,” he shouted. “Then the diner. I mean it.”
Keefe called out to him, but heard nothing in return, so he cranked the taxi into drive and caught up, creeping alongside Dom through the orange-tinted darkness.
“Get in the cab. Don’t be stupid. I’ll bring you wherever you need to go.”
Keefe accelerated just enough to cut Dom off, slammed on the brakes so Dom would be forced to square his shoulders.
“Why won’t you just leave?”
A knot squeezed the base of Keefe’s throat.
“Because I’m worried you’re about to do something you’ll regret. Let me help you.”
“That’s just it, Keefe. That’s what you don’t understand. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no one to turn to. They’ll track me down here just like they tracked me down last night, but you know what? Once I’m off the grid, I’m gone. This is the only way.”
A flurry of vehicles whizzed by, leaving only the whoosh of air to fill the void between Dom’s deflated demeanor and Keefe’s nervous energy.
“Don’t worry about me, Keefe. I’ll be alright. Off the grid doesn’t mean dead. I’ll just be unreachable. That’s all.”
Pre-dawn had yet to light the sky, but its cover was dwindling and Dom knew it.
“Remember their names—Agent Manetti and Harvey Divvy,” Dom repeated, “and get the hell out of here.”
There was nothing more Keefe could do, so he watched Dom slip away from the taxi and disappear beyond the strip of steelwork ahead. Beyond that, only darkness.
Keefe told himself to drive, to put his foot on the pedal and zip back into the city before he gave himself the option to do anything else, but his fingers were frozen to the steering wheel, his eyes fixed to the jutting expanse of the bridge beyond.
Knock. Knock.
Reality returned to Keefe in the form of a violent flinch. A strong beam from a flashlight penetrated the glass and riddled his vision with stars.
“License, registration, proof of insurance.”
A rugged young man in uniform stood at Keefe’s seven o’clock, flexing the forearm he used to flick the light between his face and the backseat. There was no inflection in his voice, not even the slightest glimmer of personality.
“Hi, Officer. I guess I didn’t see you pull up.”
The officer spat a particularly wet loogie to the pavement at his feet before returning conversation.
“You look a little out of it. Late night?”
The flashlight shielded most of the man’s physical details, save for a noticeable bulge in the cheek-pocket of his jawline where he packed a wad of chew. It slowed his words as he spoke them, complimenting the rounded edges of his well-defined city accent.
“I should’ve gone home hours ago,” said Keefe. “I thought a few minutes off the road would be enough to clear my mind and get home safe.”
The officer snapped his teeth against the inside of his cheek, sucking audibly at the pooling spit around his gums. Keefe offered a disingenuous smile to curb the unpleasantness of it, but the flashlight’s beam turned it into a squinty grimace.
“Where’d your friend go?”
The question was so abrupt it chilled every cell in Keefe’s body. The color—whatever was left—drained from his face.
“F...Friend?”
“Don’t lie to me,” the officer barked. “Where’d he go?”
A wallet-sized radio at the officer’s hip crackled into life. It saved Keefe from the panic walling off his thoughts. His inability to speak manifested in the quiver of his lower lip, the fidget in his fingers atop the steering wheel.
“Barnes,” the radio said. “Confirm threat level.”
The officer flicked away the sound of the woman’s voice with a snap of his tongue as he reached for the microphone at his shoulder.
“Stand by.”
“Threat? What does she mean by that?” Keefe asked. “I’m not a threat!”
It wasn’t that the voice on the other side of the radio sounded unprofessional, more so just odd.
“Listen,” continued Barnes. “Just tell me where your friend went and this is over.”
“Barnes, please copy. Confirm threat level.”
“Stand. By.”
A frustrated twitch spasmed the muscle in Barnes’s jaw, inflating the artery pulsing heavily up his neck.
“I won’t ask again,” he said.
He slid his sidearm from its holster at his hip and raised it to the base of Keefe’s window, enough to notice light glinting off its metal frame.
“So,” Barnes continued. “Answer the goddamn question.”
The growl in the officer’s voice was enough to send a trail of warmth across the seat of his pants.
“Please,” Keefe quivered. “I don’t want to die.”
A simple tap of the handgun’s barrel against the body of the taxi was enough to raise a shaky pointer finger out ahead of him, toward the shrouded area of brush beyond the overhead steelwork.
“That way,” said Keefe.
“Now was that so difficult?”
The radio chirped louder now, forcing an exaggerated sigh from Barnes. He reached for the handheld attached to the velcro of his collarbone, but before answering, noticed the fresh stain across Keefe’s pants and the shaking of his hands atop the steering wheel.
“Dispatch?” Barnes answered.
“Go ahead, Officer.”
“Threat is negative. We’re good here.”
“Ten-four,” answered dispatch. “Suspect’s confirmation needed before return to headquarters. Please copy.”
“Ten-four. Stand by.”
The blood in Keefe’s veins had thawed enough to deflate his shoulders. The entirety of his body felt numb, cold to the touch.
“You’re not a police officer, are you?” Keefe asked.
“What gives you that impression?” Barnes answered, his thumb still resting on the call switch. His eyes drifted to the badge pinned to the right side of his clean-pressed uniform. “NYPD through and through.”
The presumptuous smile that followed was enough to send another rush of whatever urine was left in his bowels to the wet sponge of his seat cushion.
“Stay put,” he said, turning his sights to the outer edges of the roadway.
He leaned into the mic at his shoulder as he talked.
“Suspect heading in the direction of Fort Lee across the GWB. I’m in pursuit.”
“Ten-Four.”
Barnes returned with mic settled at his shoulder and shifted his weight so the entirety of his upper body came into focus. For the first time, all of Officer Barnes’s rugged qualities came into view.
“This guy—Dominic Warwick—is extremely dangerous,” he said. “You're lucky he let you off the hook like he did.”
Keefe swallowed hard, eyes forward.
“Don’t worry. We’ll catch him, okay?” Barnes continued. “But right now I need you to go home and snuggle up to that wife of yours. I need you to tell her how much you love her and how close you were to losing them forever.”
Keefe flinched.
“Make sure your son and daughter know how much you love them, too.”
Instant nausea. Dom had warned him of this.
“If you so much as touch them—”
Keefe stumbled through each word, panicked and scared and confused all at the same time.
“You’ll do what exactly?” Barnes growled. He raised his pistol to Keefe’s forehead. “Hunt me down? Kill me?”
Another arrogant smile stretched the corners of Barnes’s mouth.
“Don’t go there,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”
Keefe stared forward, tears welling in his eyes.
“Nothing else to say?” Barnes pushed.
A single tear rolled down Keefe’s cheek.
“That’s what I thought,” Barnes growled, finally releasing the pistol from his forehead. “Go home...straight home. Do you understand?”
Keefe nodded.
“We’ll take it from here.”
He waited for Barnes to separate before he slid from the window to the gearshift, propped himself up against the tepid squish of his own cooling urine, and jammed the shifter into drive. He floored the gas pedal until the bridge was safely in the rearview.
“Agent Manetti,” he whispered. “Harvey Divvy.”
Remember their names, he thought.
By the time feeling returned to his limbs, the bridge was nothing more than a series of tiny parabolas across the horizon. He veered out of view and into New Jersey, keeping his eyes fixed to the road ahead, but the moment he gathered the strength to glance back at the city through his rearview, the absence of light where the GWB had once been was the first thing he noticed.
Weird, he thought.
But by the time he made the loop back into the city, the lights had already returned and, oddly enough, they burned brighter than he’d ever seen them burn before.