It was shortly before nine when Mercer drove into the quiet street. There were no residential buildings, a scattering of stillused warehouses, and four galleries that probably wouldn’t open on a summer Sunday until after one o’clock, if at all. As Mercer parked, I pointed out the Hi-Line tracks that sliced through the middle of Twenty-second Street, north to south, rife with weeds, just as they had looked when they passed through the Caxton Due gallery and ran on downtown. It still surprised me that neither one of us had ever been aware of the tracks till we saw them when we were here with Mike the week before.
The entrance to the new gallery was quite discreet, a rectangular white sign with very small letters printed in jet black ink: F OCUS.
Mercer put his hand on the doorknob to test it, expecting to find it locked. It gave at once and opened into the dimly lit space. A young woman came forward and invited us in. “Good morning,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I recognized her immediately as the receptionist who had been at Bryan Daughtry’s office on Thursday, when the three of us had gone there with the subpoenas. The face was less distinctive than the four silver studs in her right ear, the three in her left, and the small ring piercing one of her eyebrows.
I followed Mercer inside. “Is Ms. Sette here yet?” he asked.
“I’m not sure who’s coming, exactly, but you’re the first ones to arrive. I was told to be here to open the gallery and let the police officers in. You’re welcome to look around. I’ll be up front at the door if you need anything. Hope you don’t get seasick,” she said to me, smiling. “It’s a really weird feeling inside those things.”
Mercer and I stood at the prow of the first sculpture, which loomed over us like the hull of a great oil tanker. I rounded the corner and stood in the space between two ends of the first ellipse. When I looked back at Mercer, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was so unusual to see any physical thing that dwarfed him so completely.
“What’s it like inside?”
I stepped between the enormous curved surfaces and started to walk to the far end. It was immediately confusing and disorienting to the senses. I knew I was standing still on a flat surface, but the arrangement of the pieces made the entire thing feel out of proportion and dizzying. To my left, the structure bowed outward and was wider at the top, more than ten feet above my head. The one to my right sloped inward, and when I raised my eyes to see its top, I had a claustrophobic reaction, as though the entire steel frame might fall on me if I so much as brushed against it.
“Whoa, c’mon in, Mercer. It’s almost like a brilliantly artisticfun house. I see what she was talking about-it’s a very bizarre spatial illusion.”
Mercer paused in the entry while I kept walking, about to exit the first ellipse and trail around its outer side to get to the second one, in which the side shapes were set up in reverse. Each of the five forms was angled in a dramatic fashion, different from the others. He caught up to me inside the third figure, bracing himself against a wall the reverse in shape from the last one, which surprised him so radically.
“Don’t lean on it,” I said, half jokingly. “Doesn’t it seem like it would fall over and crush us instantly?”
Mercer was fascinated with the composition of the colossal steel plates, and stopped to bend and rub his hands up and down against the skin of the sculpture. “This mother isn’t going anywhere, Alex. It must have been like moving a bunch of battleships to get it in here. Man’s a genius.”
He straightened up at a sound coming from the front of the warehouse space. “D’you hear that?”
“Sounded like the door closing. Let’s go meet her.” I moved to find my way out of the ellipse and toward the front of the gallery.
“Hold it. That noise after the door closed, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“I didn’t hear it. I must have been speaking to you.”
“Wait here, Alex. Let me see who came in.”
Mercer passed by me, motioning me to stay put as he walked out of my line of sight.
I could distinguish the sound of the hard-soled bottoms of his loafers clicking on the concrete floor, moving away from me. I heard him call out “Hello,” then pause and call it out again, but the words only echoed in the cavernous expanse of the room without eliciting a response.
“Oh, shit!” he exploded. “Hold still, Alex, stay there. I’m coming to get you.”
I heard his first exclamation and started to run, screaming, “What?” as I did, until I heard his command for me to stop.
I was turned around inside this torqued ellipse, not certain where the front or back of the gallery would be when I emerged. I could make out the sound of what I thought was Mercer’s shoes pounding toward me, and then something softer, perhaps rubber-bottomed, coming at me from another direction. There was nothing to hide behind or duck under within the shell of the sculpture, and I didn’t have the least idea about whether there actually was an office in the rear of the exhibition space, and if so, whether it would be locked or open.
I was frozen in the same spot, accustomed now to the obscure lighting and the lack of contrast between the gray steel mammoths and the interior walls and ceiling. My yellow linen suit stood out against the dark colors like the bull’s-eye on a target, and my head whipped back and forth, not knowing from which direction my friend would appear.
At the same moment as I saw Mercer’s hand grab the end of the ellipse, I heard him yell, “Alex, DOWN! Now!” The discharge of his gun resounded like a cannon in the open space between the sculptures as he fired at someone I could not see.
I squatted on my haunches as though I were on the starting blocks of a relay, fingertips poised to lift me up and out the moment Mercer gave the next order. His single shot was met by a return salvo of two or three bullets, which pinged off the side of the steel almost even with the level of my head as I crouched and cowered.
Mercer’s left hand reached around for me, and I moved to meet it. Without more than a glance, he grabbed me by the wrist and we started to jog in the direction of one of the other structures, Mercer’s large frame running interference for me as we searched in vain for something that would provide a shield.
“It’s your stocking-mask guy from the garage,” he whispered, trying to catch his breath and check the gun that he usually kept holstered on his ankle.
“The girl?” I knew the answer before I asked the question.
“Dead.” He stopped to listen for noise and heard none. “At some point I’m gonna signal you to run, and you’re gonna move like a gazelle to get to that front door and call in a ten thirteen.”
Word on a police radio that an officer needed assistance was the universal beacon to summon cops to any emergency situation in which another cop’s life was at risk.
“Not without-”
“That’s movie bullshit, Coop. When I send you, you fly.” There was no point arguing. It was a decision I would have to make if an opportunity even presented itself to us.
Mercer stepped in front of me, practically flattening me against the side of one of the exteriors. He must have heard a sound that I had not picked up. He cocked his ear in the direction of its source and moved in a 180 -degree arc as he turned to fire off another round. He swung back in front of me and waited for the return fire, as my sweaty palms pressed an imprint on top of the dark steel.
Now the padded footsteps had drawn closer, and I could actually hear them running across the floor on the far side of this ellipse, toward our position.
“We’re moving,” Mercer mouthed to me as he briefly turned his head to face mine. Again he took me by the wrist, and we dashed around into the sculpture we had stood behind, and through its far end, bullets chasing us and bouncing off the cylindrical walls as we zigged and zagged together.