I didn’t know what she was talking about. I felt fine, a little lightheaded maybe, but fine.
“Listen to the pretty ladies before a cop really does show up. Is that what you want tomorrow’s headlines to be, CHAMBERLAIN AND MANCINI’S HENCHMAN TEAM UP IN NEW YORK AS KNIFE FIGHTING VIGILANTES AGAINST PARISI’S BOYS?”
“I knew it!” My eyes sparkled. “So Mancini doesn’t want me dead.”
“Mancini doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. You’re just lucky his hatred for Parisi outweighs you. And consider this payment for all those bagels and variety of cream cheeses that you delivered earlier this morning.”
“Wait, those guys work for Parisi?”
“Jeez, you’re slow. It’s a wonder that you don’t wear a hard helmet. They’re local losers, but hired to hurt you all the same, Chamberlain. And it’s probably only the beginning. Now make like a prom dress and take off, you emotional adolescents, before the cops really do show.”
It only then occurred to me then that Leah and I were still holding hands, and she had maneuvered those ten intertwined fingers to the left side of my shirt, just below the ribs. The place that she touched me stung like a Catholic sighting in the Baptist neighborhood of heaven, and blood now covered those fingers.
Don't worry, it's just Albuquerque.
From somewhere below our feet, in the still-deeper underbelly of New York, a train rumbled into its station.
Leah said: “Joshua, that's us. Let’s go, now.”
I listened to her, briefly gazing into Sinatra's eyes and nodding in appreciation (he nodded back) before the four of us swiftly made our way down the final sprint of hall and another descent of stairs that finally connected us with the station platform, managing the train just before its doors closed.
There it was again, that feeling that I was being watched or followed.
It was when the train jerked to life that those suspicions were confirmed with my very first physical Shaggy Man sighting since the streets of San Francisco. He stood in the far corner of the platform with the stairs strategically in his view. I must have been too concerned with meeting the train’s departure to notice. But I was quite certain it was him. No need to doubt any of my senses now.
Only there was a new development in the mythos of our interconnected life. It all happened so fast, with the train chucking up a heaping of speed, but he was holding the hand of a little blond girl. I saw that much. Really, the train barreled away into the tunnel so quickly that I barely got a look at them (they clearly kept a careful watch over me though), but if my senses weren't deceiving me I'd seen that little girl before; photographs mainly, most of those in the Sisters Painted Lady. There was one in particular that sat framed on my estranged wife's side of the empty marriage bed that especially came to mind. And though I'd never actually met that little girl in person I knew her intimately well, starting with the adolescent years of her life.
That little girl was Elise.
It was only then, sitting on the subway next to an Imam in some sort of turban and an old woman who smelled of leaky piss as it screeched through New York’s flickering underbelly, when the realization that I’d been stabbed really kicked in. The pain had my full attention.
2
RICHIE APPARENTLY COULDN’T TAKE the sight of blood, much less the thought of it, so paced back and forth through 402 and in circles around his couch with both hands firmly planted on the back of his skull, so as to keep from hyperventilating, while Penny and Leah worked on patching up a fallen Marine in her bedroom.
Penny said: “Your wound is more than a quarter inch deep and I can even see some yellow tissue, which isn’t good.”
With her glasses on and a couple of latex condoms that doubled as the most awkward surgical gloves I’d ever seen, Penny leaned in for a closer look at what I’d grossly mislabeled to be a flesh wound. I was seated on Leah’s bed (the color crimson created a tie-dye effect on her sheets), naked from the waist up, and the pain was steadily growing worse. Leah removed the clump of silk that had only moments before been an Anton Fisher original (Susan and Elise helped me pick it out at Frank McCormick back home), but doubled now as a gauze to stop the flow of blood, so that Penny could execute that closer inspection.
“When was the last time you had tetanus?”
“Do Flintstones vitamins count?”
Only inches from my right nipple, Penny tightened her lips into a fist, sighed disapprovingly, and met my eyes with her own. They also spoke of disapproval. “No,” she finally said, just in case there was any doubt as to the interpretation of her body language.
“Then it’s probably been a while.”
“Oh goodie, expect muscle stiffness, cramping, feverish sweating, irritability, and muscle spasms in your face.”
“So you’re basically saying I’m turning into a werewolf.”
“Here, hold that tight.” Penny instructed Leah and scooted off the mattress. Lead did as she was told, applying extra pressure to the wound with my hundred and fifty dollar shirt.
“Hey, you know this used to be an Anton Fisher original.” I protested.
Penny patted me on the cheek. “The good news is, sweetie, it still is.” She turned to Leah. “Two questions, can you apply some alcohol to the wound and where can I find those needles and thread that we talked about?”
“Yes, and under the sink, in the bathroom.”
“Same place I found these little guys?” Penny held up both hands. Her fingers looked to be suffocating in the latex, which was obviously designed for another, well, body part. But knowing Penny they’ve probably taken on all forms.
“You know it.” Leah nodded with a smile.
“Little guys?” I shook my head as soon as Penny disappeared into the light of the living room, where Richie no doubt still paced the carpet. “Is that your standard in men?”
“Do I detect disapproval?” Leah held a cotton swab over a bottle of alcohol and flipped it upside-down.
“No, of course not; it’s just…they’d never fit.”
“I guess we’ll never find out.” Leah grinned. She removed the shirt from my ribs and swiftly applied the cotton swab.
Ow. I flinched from the sting, and also her statement.
“Stop being a baby.”
Leah gently rubbed the swab over my wound, applying her other five free fingers upon the flesh where my heart met my rib cage, perhaps to hold her balance, but I thought it might have been on the subconscious plateau of sensual. She blew a steady stream of motherly breath to ease its sting, stopping only for a moment to stare up at my eyes. There was something in them, aside from her newfound mission to apply motherly care, something so intimate and loving. She blew on it again until Penny returned.
“This is going to hurt only a little….” Penny tried not to smile as she sat both knees on the mattress and held up the needle tied with string. “Or maybe a lot.”
“I always knew you were sadistic.”
“Joshua.” Penny’s wide eyes and smile created a glow as she bent towards my naked ribs. “You’ve been working out.” With that, she stabbed the needle into my flesh. “He used to be a little pudgy.”
Ow. I tightened several dozen muscles, including my butt-hole. And there were more medical instructions from Penny.
She said; “Don’t be a candy-ass.”
Leah smiled. “Pudgy?”
“I didn’t used to be pudgy.” I tried not to flinch as Penny sadistically carved the needle out, circled around, and dove back in for another helping.
“Yes….” She bit her lower lip. “He did.”
“Where’d the pudge go, Joshua?” Leah smirked.
“Jogging. Ow. Lots and lots of jogging.”
“Hot.” Penny said. “I like that in a man; all sweaty and stuff, meaty gongs jostling around in there like a couple of wild-eyed pendulums.”
“I think they have netting for that now. Ow. Will you watch where you’re sticking that thing?”
“Funny. I’ve always wan
ted to say the same thing to you. You know how often I’ve tried to get your shirt off?”
“Long time.”
“Believe me.” Penny turned to Leah. “I have a boyfriend now, but I’ve been trying to get this stallion’s shirt off for years. He has to be so damned gentlemanly all the time. If only I knew it took a knife to do it, I might have hired somebody to stick it in him a long time ago.”
“Ow. Can you watch what you’re doing?”
“Oh stop being a wet meow-meow about it and hold still.”
“A scar too.” Leah grinned, licking her lips playfully. “I like that on a shirtless man. So hot.”
“Oh yeah. So hot.” Penny made a point to over-exaggerate how hot a scar could be with her lips.
“I’m glad you girls are having fun with this.”
“You know what else is hot?” Penny stuck me again.
“What?” Leah.
“Blood.” Penny.
“Ow.” Me.
“So hot.”
“So hot.”
“You two aren’t going to start making out on my account, are you?”
“OMG, I’ve never realized my obvious lifelong attraction to another woman….” Leah perked up as she turned towards Penny. “Until now.”
“Me too,” Penny lowered her thread and needle. “I’ve never realized I had the lifelong hots… for a woman…until now.”
“Hey, I’m bleeding here.”
“Oh shit.” Leah reeled as another stream of blood spilled from the bottom part of my scar. Apparently blood wasn’t nearly as hot as they made it out to be since nobody pounced on the other. She quickly applied pressure with my Anton Fisher original.
“Sorry.” Penny went straight back to work threading the needle with strings.
“How is it that I’ve lived in this city for almost a decade and never once encountered anything remotely close to a knife stabbing until you came along?” Leah said. “And yet I get the feeling that this sort of thing happens to you all the time.”
“Oh girl,” Penny sighed using one of Richie's signature lines. “If only you knew.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said.
“Let’s see. So far this summer Joshua’s gotten beat up in a Vegas bar fight, almost cracked his neck while surfing a coral reef in Hawaii…”
I opened my mouth to object, but found nothing to discredit her testimony. “That much is true.”
“A surfer…. in my bedroom…. with his shirt off,” Leah overemphasized her point by making a ridiculous display of licking her lips.
“I know, so hot.” Penny grinned playfully, and then continued her thought. “Had two sea urchins wedged into his money maker….”
“Excuse me. Only one sea urchin was wedged into my tush.” I held an index finger up. “The other was in my leg.”
“And came this close to getting deep fried by an exploding fuel truck on the drive back from Bakersfield.” Penny squeezed her index finger and thumb dangerously closed together when pronouncing this close. “Oh, and he was almost swallowed up by a tornado. I have pictures to prove it.”
“Correction, it was a waterspout. Contrary to popular belief…..”
“Close enough. There, all done.” Penny patted her stitching. “Anything else I’m missing?”
“No. I think that just about covers it,” I considered the topic at hand as Penny applied a band-aide, “though I was thrown into a car the other day by Mancini’s men.”
“Oh, poor baby,” Leah said.
“Poor, poor baby,” Penny added.
“Big guys. Very mean.”
Both women added a few more poor babies into the conversation, simultaneously kissing me on each cheek as they did so.
“They slapped me around too.” A few more kisses on the cheek and a poor baby from each of them. And just to make sure they hadn’t exhausted all of their kisses and poor babies, I said: “And when they slapped me, those were the biggest hands I ever saw.”
“Poor, poor baby,” they said.
I was right. They had at least one more kiss in them.
3
PENNY WAS THE FIRST to recognize the man standing at Leah's front door. She froze about halfway across the room and gasped. Leah stopped near her side. I had to place a hand on Penny's shoulder and wedge myself between the two of them, being careful not to brush my wound, to fully undress the identity of our late night visitor. Broad-rimmed sunglasses and a beanie cap masked much of his face, despite the current dead of night or the sweltering humidity of summer, and the hair crowning his head had only recently been bleached into an unattractive yellow. He wore an army jacket too, and probably hadn't shaven in a week, which meant an adolescent beard struggled for recognition on his neck and cheekbones. But the carry-on bag that he held in his hand, far too small for camera equipment, I recognized that immediately.
His name surfaced from my mouth before I had the time to even register who he was. “Alex,” I said. “You can't stay here.”
Richie immediately sprung his entire hind side against the wall, another perfect murder pose, and Leah clutched the kitchen island behind me. Even my own pronunciation of his name swept a handful of air from my lungs. Alex was himself gasping, probably drenched with fear and paranoia, and secured his foothold in apartment 402 by shutting the door.
“I've got nowhere else to go. I already came by earlier but you were gone. I even tried your Cousin Joe.” He bolted the lock in place, scheduled a second to collect himself, and just to make sure he wasn't being pursued, smudged his eye up against the peephole.
“Joe may be into a lot of money, but he's not interested in associating with criminals if they're wanted fugitives. Neither am I. Had he answered the door and seen your mug, you'd already have your photo session down at the 13th precinct.”
“I need your help. They're going to kill me.”
“All I want to know is, if you're standing here, then who died in Ho Chi Minh?”
He said: “It was a pre-arranged decoy. The timing was off, that's all.”
“If that's not your corpse rotting in Asia....” I pointed my finger towards Asia, or perhaps it was more of a northerly direction, like Canada. “Alex, what war zone did you just crawl out from?”
“Westfield. It's in Massachusetts, just west of Springfield.”
“I know where Westfield is. Anyone who's read the news today knows where Westfield is. A former member of your rock trio is dead. Did you kill him too?”
“Joshua, I swear to God, I didn't do it. He put me up in his basement while the heat was on. I was hiding out for a while, that's all.”
“And let me guess, he was taking out the trash when his skull just naturally cracked like an egg.”
“No, it was nothing like that. You won't believe me if I told.”
“You don't have a choice.” I leaned against Richie's sofa bed and started to cross my arms, except for the splurge of pain from my knife wound, and so gripped the rests instead. “Start talking.”
“I'm pretty sure it was....a man with a hook for a hand.”
“Uh-huh, he escaped from an asylum and now he's on a rampage for horny teenagers. I've heard this campfire story before.” I let the sarcasm exhale, despite Creepy Urinal Guy with the prosthetic arm flooding my memory.
Leah followed my disbelief by chuckling on the barstool, perhaps out of nervousness, or maybe for the theatrics of such a claim. Still she kept one hand in her purse. Leah was a big city girl, and I suspected pepper spray wasn’t far from her reach. Penny remained quiet, probably still frozen in place, while Richie grabbed his throat at the very thought that a hook might get a hold of it.
“I knew it. He does exist,” Richie whispered to himself.
“I said you wouldn't believe me.”
“Did you personally see this....man with a hook....kill your friend?”
“Yes. Well no, not fully. I was heating up a Hot Pocket, pulling another beer from the fridge, when I looked through the kitchen window and saw Nick stuffed there i
n the trash can. What kind of sick bastard would do that? I think his name is Arnie the Hammer. Don't even ask me how I'd know that. And for all intents and purposes, the man is practically a shadow.”
“A shadow,” I sighed again. “They don't do police line-ups of shadows, Alex.”
“I didn't come all this way for you to make fun of me. I barely got out with my own life. All I could do was hurdle kitchen chairs over my shoulders until I made a break for it out the driveway in Nick's car. I'm telling you, those teeth of his.”
“The police found your friends car a few miles down the road.”
“I had to dump it. I knew I wouldn't get very far.”
“How did you end up here?”
Alex responded with a steady gaze.
I said: “Better yet, don't answer.”
Richie dug through his duffel bag of clothes on the floor. Within seconds he retrieved his item of interest and slipped it over his brows. It was a karate headband with an unmistakable rising sun, beams of light ejecting from it; the empirical symbol of Japan, just as I'd seen in Mahoney's movie. Steady, concentrated breaths of deep-seeded concentration followed.
“I was expecting to hang out in Nick's basement for at least another month, just until things cooled down a bit. But then that hired assassin showed up.” If Alex suspected that I didn't want to be fooled by any of this, then he was right. “Look, I'm not holding any cards here. Everything's laid out on the table. And I'm not making any of this up. I was set up for Gracie’s murder. I barely got out with my own life both times.”
“You do realize that Mancini's got a guy parked down in the street, probably right now, just waiting for you to show, and the press was swarming Bleecker Street this morning, not to mention Leah's neighbor across the hall whose been shooting a documentary all weekend.”
“Try the last several years,” Richie said.
“I was careful.” Alex went for the window and peered onto the treetops of Bleecker Street below. “Are you sure he's one of Mancini's boys?”
“I'm not certain, but I'd put my money on it.”
“Good. It's not my father-or-brother-in-law that has me concerned.”
Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye (Wrong Flight Home, #2) Page 30