A Little Trouble with the Facts

Author:Nina Siegal [Nina Siegal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061748493
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

12

Talking Bridge

Summer nights in July, the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge is an angry furnace of overworked and overheated nine-to-fivers, fuming as their cars inch toward the bridge. To get to the entrance of the bike path, I had to brave the metallic spew of commuter traffic and the lines of cars its jaws engulfed into the crocodile belly of Long Island.

And the walk up the bike path, entered by way of a tunnel in the bridge’s stone pilings, isn’t a sunset stroll either. Gray concrete, chicken wire fencing, cracked rusted paint, the sky as yellowish gray as a weathered tombstone, the river that muddy green you get when you go wrong mixing paints. The landmarks: black-windowed corporate towers, the Roosevelt Island tram swaying on its cable, the island they used to call Welfare, where an old castle, once a lunatic asylum, has fallen to rubble. If desolate had a destination, this was it.

I wasn’t completely alone as I trekked toward the Queens side. But I didn’t know what kind of help I’d get—in an emergency—from the old man walking his yapping Maltese, or the two bikers in orange Lycra speeding past, or the Chinese lady absorbed in silent tai chi. A few workmen high in the cantilevers waved charmlessly. I wondered how Wallace had found himself here at two in the morning when he was supposed to be out buying ice cream. I wondered whether the night air strangled his screams if he was chased, if he was caught, if he was thrown off the bridge. The wind creaked mournfully up through the metal girders and I quickened my pace. I tried to imagine walking up this bridge, climbing up on that high, shaky railing, at night, in the pitch-dark, with just the sounds of cars roaring behind, and that ugly river below, deciding it was time to jump.

In about a quarter of an hour I spotted Cabeza. His look was 1950s Havana chic. Pale yellow short-sleeved guayabera, brown slacks, white boating sneakers, a pair of sunglasses hanging from the V of his shirt. He gave the impression of a man on vacation from his own life. He had a video camera in his right hand, and he seemed to be filming the brown river below.

“What’s that for?” I asked, about the camera, when I was a few yards away. He saw me and turned, still filming. He said something but I couldn’t make out the words. It was deafening up there. The hum of the steel, the clank and groan of every truck, the wind in the girders, all ate our words. I put up a hand to signal that I didn’t want to be in his movie. He let the camera drop to his side. I got closer and screamed, “Why do you have that?”

“The movie version,” he shouted back. “Once the story comes out, we make a short doc.”

“You really do have big ambitions for this investigation,” I said and, realizing he couldn’t hear, repeated, simply, “Big ambitions!”

“For you,” he said.

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