by Ronald Malfi
“No shit?”
“You pull any weight around here or just clean up dog shit?”
The handler smirks. But he is offended—that much is clear. Battleship skin, New York City somewhere just beneath the glittering, smoky viscera. Maybe New York City, maybe Timbuktu. But on the outside he’s pure Baltimore. He holds out a hand and introduces himself as Jonathan Frick. Maxwell pumps Frick’s hand once then drops it.
“Come on around back,” Frick says.
We follow him, along with the muzzled pit bull, into a hallway that communicates with a narrow chamber lined with wire-mesh pens. Most of them are empty, although there are a few dogs in some. They strike up a chorus of barks as Frick leads Abracadabra to one of the pens. Abracadabra appears unusually solemn. Frick opens the pen and the dog pads inside, still muzzled and looking forlorn. The thing is bleeding from his jowls and there is a torn bit of bloody flesh, pink with puckered tissue, running from the corner of his right eye straight back across its meaty neck. It’s painful just to look at it.
Distaste must be evident on my face, because Frick glances at me and says, “I know it looks bad, but he’ll clot up. Gets regular vitamin K injections.” Frick’s eyes shift to Maxwell. “Your friend ain’t a fast laner?”
“He’s green,” Maxwell says. “Just drives the truck.”
There are truck tires hanging from the beams in the ceiling by lengths of chain. They hang nearly five feet off the floor. The lower portions of the tires have been shredded, I assume, by dogs’ teeth.
“So what kind you boys breed?” Frick wants to know.
“All different kinds,” says Maxwell.
Dougie lights a cigarette and Frick, embarrassed, asks him not to smoke in here. Eyeing Frick over the cigarette, Dougie murmurs, “They get they throats ripped out and you’re worried ’bout second-hand smoke?”
Frick nods nervously at the shelves of bottles, medical supplies, equipment. “Flammable chemicals.” To Maxwell, Frick says, “We only want fighters. Got no interest in schooling dogs. Only want dogs already learned.”
Maxwell walks past the wall of cages. “These monsters look half dead already. This one’s blind, this one’s missing ears, this one’s got half its face torn out. Ugly fuckers.”
“You bring any pictures?” Frick wants to know.
“This sorry son of a bitch’s got its voice-box dangling from his throat,” Maxwell continues, still peering into the cages. Then he glances back up at Frick. “Pictures?”
“Of the dogs. Most guys looking to unload dogs, they bring pictures.”
“Hell,” says Dougie, the unlit cigarette still poking from his lips, and Frick’s head snaps in his direction. “Hell, we got ’em outside in the truck. The real deal in the flesh.”
This is when I realize things are going to go bad. I am standing here, sweating in my coat, thinking of how I can get out of here. My head is still dizzy from the drinking session with Timmy Donlon and my thoughts are slow forming.
“I ain’t got the money to buy ’em tonight,” Frick tells them.
“You can still take a look,” Dougie says. “Ain’t no charge for looking. Yeah, Maxie?”
“No charge for looking.”
Frick thinks for a moment. At one point, his eyes swing toward me. He is searching my face, trying to read my expression. He can’t read me. I’m a different language. But surely he senses this is all wrong, whatever this is. You don’t hang around a place like this without learning how to read people, to read situations…
“Yeah, okay,” Frick says.
We exit through a wrought iron spiral staircase toward the rear of the chamber. It crawls up to a set of tornado doors which Jonathan Frick pushes open, spilling cold air and snow flurries down the chute. Outside, fireworks are exploding over the water in the distance. Around us, the world rings in a new year.
Crossing the street, I lag behind the others. As we draw closer to the burgundy Lincoln, Maxwell turns to me, placing a flat palm against my breastplate.
“Stand guard, yeah?”
“Guard for what?” I say.
Maxwell winks. “We’ll make it quick.”
Farther ahead, I hear Jonathan Frick ask where the truck is. That is when Dougie punches him in the face. Once, twice—a third time and Frick staggers backward and drops against the hood of the Lincoln. Frick is a big, muscular man, and the car bounces on its shocks beneath his weight. He slides off toward the pavement, able to get one hand beneath him to catch his fall. This is when Dougie Devine kicks him sharply in the throat. Maxwell joins in and together they beat the piss out of the man while I watch. I am rendered speechless, motionless. I see this ending badly—with a lifeless body being dumped into the harbor. And when the police come to arrest me they will ask my name and I will tell them I don’t know. When they ask why I came here tonight, I will tell them I don’t know. When they ask why we killed Jonathan Frick, why I watched the Devine brothers kick his head in, I will tell them I don’t know.
I don’t know, I don’t know.
It goes on for I don’t know how long. Dougie and Maxwell are strong and fast, but they don’t seem to move with much energy. Anyway, Frick is on the ground the whole time. Bastard didn’t stand a chance. They beat him senseless, probably within inches of his life, and when they are done, straightening their shirts and sliding their sleeves back down their brown arms, Jonathan Frick is a bloody heap of muscle and a too-tight T-shirt on the wet pavement. There is something innately pathetic about a muscular man on the ground in pain. I watch as Frick’s chest shudders as it rises and falls, rises and falls, rises and falls. Snow begins to collect on him.
Casually, Dougie pops open the Lincoln’s rear door and nods for me to get in. He is already lighting his cigarette.
I move toward the car, but don’t immediately get in. Instead, I stand over Frick’s hitching body, looking down with what I feel is little emotion. I hate the fact that I do not feel anything—surely I am supposed to feel something, surely something—so I fake it. I fake it and crouch down to one knee. I can see Frick is hurt bad, but he’s still alive. He’ll live. Maybe. I don’t know; I’m not a doctor. Some broken bones, maybe some internal bleeding, but he’ll live, I convince myself, he’ll live, the poor son of a bitch will—
Frick reaches out and grabs the sleeve of my coat. His fingers are curled into talons and he hooks the fabric, tearing it with a dry, brittle sound. I am reminded of my dream, ripping the flesh from my skull. He leaves traces of his own blood on the sleeve. Startled, I jump back and nearly fall on my ass. One of the Devine brothers is behind me, keeping me upright.
Maxwell stomps Frick’s face.
On the pavement, Frick stops moving.
“Get in the car, Wurlitzer,” Dougie repeats.
An automaton, I get in. There is a word for this. I am a co-conspirator. I am a criminal.
Somehow, as we drive, I find my voice. “What was that all about?” It is my voice but it is also the voice of a child. And for some reason, I am thinking of tanker trucks turned over in the Harbor Tunnel, spilling poison into the bay.
“The bastard killed Johnny,” Maxwell says from the passenger seat after a long silence.
“I thought Johnny died in a car accident?”
“Frick was drunk. Hit him head-on.”
“Did you kill him?” I ask. “Just now? Frick?”
“He ain’t dead,” Dougie assures me. “He’ll be hurtin’ plenty for a long while, that’s for sure, but he ain’t dead.”
I don’t know if I necessarily believe this.
“Dead ain’t for us to decide,” Maxwell adds. “Dead, that’s for God to decide. You dig?”
“Jesus,” I mutter. “Sure.”
Maxwell turns in his seat, his black eyes cutting right through me. “You gonna be all right, Wurlitzer?”
“Yeah…”
“You look green, man.”
“I’m okay.”
“You just drunk.”
“Yeah,” I repe
at, shivering, and wonder what the dogs would think of all this.
TWENTY-TWO
I suffer a fever the following day. No doubt stumbling around with the Devine brothers till all hours of the night, coupled with my already tenuous condition, has broken down my system. Naked, wrapped in a sheet, I am content to remain in bed for most of the day. Then, at one point, Nicole Quinland shows up. She takes one look at me and her face goes white.
“You’re dying.”
“I’ve just got a cold.”
“You look terrible.”
“I’ve been run down.”
“I can’t believe how you look.”
“It was bound to happen.”
She goes across the street and gets chicken noodle soup. She makes the soup on the stove while I sit propped in bed, wanting nothing but sleep. I eat about half the soup to make her feel good then apologize for all her effort.
“No effort,” she assures me.
She stays until dark, scribbling furiously in a notebook while seated on the floor at the edge of my bed. Finally, after too much time has past, I ask her what she’s writing.
“Stories.”
“What stories?”
“All sorts of stories. The kinds I used to write when I was a little girl. The kinds I used to write with my grandfather.”
“I didn’t realize you still wrote.”
“No,” she says. “I just started up again. You’ve inspired me.”
* * *
Then, two days later, three peculiar things happen, one right after the other. Or, maybe, each happens because of the other.
It is early evening, January third. I am standing outside a convenience store with a giant inflatable milkshake secured to the roof. I peer around the alley, rummage around in the trash back there, in hopes of jogging my memory. The memory of fake Paul Howard, according to the driver’s license. But nothing can be jogged. A shape shifts somewhere in the darkness ahead of me and I catch the glint of a man’s eyes. Tall, dark-skinned, his jaw set. He wears all black so he is hard to make out in the darkness of the alley.
So I go inside and revel in the warmth of the store. The Hindu clerk behind the register does not like the looks of me. Catching my reflection in the wall of glass refrigerator doors, I cannot blame him. So I feign interest in the junk food aisle, but am not very hungry. And when I’m done with the junk food aisle, I make my way over to a magazine and newspaper display. I am humming softly to myself, Eres mi amor, mi amor, and am aware the clerk’s eyes are still on me. After all, I am the only customer in the store. What else does he have to do but watch me?
He starts beckoning me from behind the counter. “Excuse me—excuse me, sir—excuse me, excuse me, excuse me—”
“I’m just getting a paper.” I grab a copy of the City Beat because it is the first thing my eyes fall on. The front page is a full-color photo of two prizefighters banging it out in a ring at the Palladium. To prove my intention, I open the publication and glance at the first page.
“You read it, you buy it, sir,” chirps the Hindu clerk.
But I hardly hear him now. Because I am looking at the first peculiar thing of the evening.
It is a black and white photo of Clarence Wilcox above which floats the caption:
local hero saves neighbor’s life
“Son of a bitch…”
After hearing the shouts of a woman in the apartment above his, Clarence Wilcox, according to the article, raced up the stairs and down the hall and listened at his neighbors’ door. After identifying the sounds as a woman’s “cries of distress,” Wilcox broke into the apartment to find his neighbor Barry Witham threatening his wife, Patrice Witham, with an eight-inch serrated carving knife. Wilcox wrestled Witham to the floor and managed to disarm him, sustaining only superficial lacerations to his own forearms and palms. Patrice Witham called the police and her husband was arrested. Patrice Witham incurred a number of lacerations and was taken to Mercy Medical although, according to police, her injures did not appear to be life-threatening. Police said the incident occurred after a heated argument got out of hand. Police said Mr. Witham, who had recently learned of his wife’s infidelity earlier last month, snapped and tried to kill her. “If it wasn’t for Mr. Wilcox,” one of the officers is quoted in the article, “Mrs. Witham might be dead.”
“Sir!” The Hindu clerk drums his little brown knuckles on the countertop. “You read, you buy, sir!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah—sorry.” I lay the paper on the counter and dig into the pockets of my jeans for cash.
“Sir.” The clerk looks very annoyed.
“Hold on,” I say, and pull out a handful of bills and toss a dollar on the counter.
When I turn from the counter, my eyes still glued to the article, I do not see the plastic tub of gumballs on the counter’s edge. My elbow strikes it and the tub jumps to the floor. Startled, I watch as colored gumballs scatter like debris from an explosion: they roll under aisles, pool along the rubber mat by the doors, bounce tat-tat-tat along the linoleum, and scurry beneath the refrigerator unit against the far wall.
“Oh good goddamn!” barks the clerk.
I cannot take my eyes from them—all of them, all of them, all of them. This is the second peculiar thing of the evening—peculiar not in the incident itself, but in the way it grabs me and will not let go—and I cannot tell if it is a memory or a fear or an obsession. Something like a fist tightens around my guts, squeezing the air out of me. Unable to breathe, powerless to move, I can only watch the gumballs roll and bounce and settle on the rubber mat.
“Get out!” the clerk shouts. “Leave! Now! See this mess you make? You go now!”
I push out the doors—ding!—gasping for breath like a skin diver breaking the surface of the sea. Traffic is heavy along Lexington. Doused in sweat, I stand for a moment, breathing in the crispness of the air. The wind freezes the sweat to my body. All interest lost in the paper, I set it atop a trash receptacle and prevent myself from tumbling over with one hand against the brick wall of the convenience store.
Ding! Behind me, the door swings open and the Hindu clerk, striking the air with a fist, warns me that he will call the cops if I do not leave.
“Sorry…sorry…” My voice is sick, is dying. I sound like a cassette player whose batteries are running out.
I stagger down the sidewalk. My legs are too weak and I do not trust them to carry me safely to the other side of the street. Instead, I hook a right and slip into the trash-ridden alley where, like a junkie, I lean against the brick alley wall to prevent myself from collapsing to the pavement.
In my mind, I am watching the gumballs roll across the linoleum floor, each one glinting with reflected light from the ceiling fixtures, each one a whole world unto itself. I cannot stop seeing them, cannot stop thinking about them.
I do not see the dark-skinned man approach me until he’s jabbing something hard and pointed into my side.
“Your cash!” he snarls. “Your wallet!”
“I don’t have a wal—”
He tears the rear pockets off my pants then, incensed by their emptiness, pats down the pockets of my canvas coat. There are many pockets.
“Here,” I say, digging around the inner pocket. I bring up a fistful of small bills, which he jerks from my hand. A few bills flutter to the pavement.
“What else you got in there?” He is breathing sour, fetid breath into my face, that hard object pushing farther and farther into my gut. With his free hand, he reaches around and dives into my pockets. The force tears one of the inner pockets away from the lining of the coat and, to my surprise, more bills flutter out.
The mugger curses at me and elbows me directly in the stomach. The world goes blotchy, tilts, and I spill like liquid to the pavement. Through bleary eyes, I watch him grab a few more bills off the ground before taking off in a sprint through the darkness. After a moment, only the pounding of his sneakers can be heard. Then: nothing.
I pull myself into a fetal position
. The world around me blurs, and I struggle to keep it in focus. There are a few bills still scattered around the alley; I watch as the crinkled, origami shapes tumble along the ground in the strong winter wind. Nothing has a history as colorful as a dollar bill. I watch them twirl, flutter, spiral in a tornado…and find something else folded among them. A crinkly bit of yellow paper, perforated at one end. Something that has been in my old canvas coat all along. It is heavier that the money and sits where it dropped, one corner flapping in the wind.
Curious, I pick it up and unfold it. There is a post office logo in one corner, a date—August 31 of last year—stamped in purple ink at one corner. I see the carbon-copied handwriting in the center of the paper. The handwriting matches my own—matches the address I keep writing over and over on my hand.
It is a receipt from a package I mailed from the post office on Madison.
Mailed on the day I was hit by the bus.
The third and final peculiar thing—has been with me all along.
While my name and return address are nowhere on the receipt, I apparently mailed this package to:
Madeline Troy
1212 Cappestrandt Way
Ithaca, New York 14850
“Madeline Troy.” I speak it to taste it, see if I recognize it. Reality, if only briefly, swims back into focus. “Madeline Troy, Madeline Troy, Madeline Troy…”
The name means nothing to me.
PART III
TWENTY-THREE
It is a seven-hour drive from Baltimore to Ithaca, New York, give or take. Several times I think Clarence’s rusted red pickup truck will not make it—that it will sputter and die on me and I will have to leave it to fossilize on the side of the interstate while I hitchhike the rest of the way. But that does not happen. It shudders and rattles like a maraca and coughs up plumes of black exhaust, but it holds itself together. There are cassette tapes tossed pell-mell around the cab, rap music, and I play them to drown out the disconcerting noises of the old truck.