Molly’s voice had a rough, almost frantic edge to it, and after a time Sasha put her hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“You do not need to tell me these things, Molly, if it’s hurting you.”
“I …” Molly paused, shut her eyes, visibly struggling against tears. After a moment, she looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. “If I talk about it, I don’t have time to th—think about it.”
“Then by all means, continue, if it helps you.” In truth, Sasha found the stories fascinating, in their own gruesome way. She tried to imagine herself living in this place, selling her body to feed a ravenous addiction, and found it impossible.
“It doesn’t matter,” Molly said. “We’re almost there anyway.”
“I must admit, I’m curious to meet this person that you think can help us.”
“Jerry’s a fixer. He’s … you know … one time I needed some handcuffs with pink fuzz on them. Took Jerry about ten minutes to get them. Or like if Darren needed info on a guy who’d beaten up a girl, or skipped out on paying, Jerry could get that for him.”
“A fixer,” Sasha said. “Yes, I understand the concept.”
“You bring him a problem, he takes care of it. I bet you could bring him a body, and Jerry would know what to do with it. He was always good for free smokes, too. Once in a while maybe he’d ask for a handjob or something, but not always.”
Sasha grimaced, but said nothing.
“That’s his place there,” Molly said. “The one with the neon.”
Sasha glanced up the road. The only visible neon sign was for an adult bookstore.
“This trip just improves with each passing moment,” she said. Molly made a kind of sick laughing sound and nodded. They passed a basketball court, dimly illuminated by a single streetlight. A man was standing, staring at them, holding a ball. Two others knelt in the far corner of the court, passing a glass pipe back and forth. Sasha could smell an acrimonious odor in the air, not tobacco, not marijuana.
“‘Sup, ladies?” the man with the basketball asked.
“Goin’ to see Jerry,” Molly mumbled, not looking at him. She didn’t speed her pace, as Sasha might have expected, simply continued on.
“Yeah? ‘Choo want with that fatass anyway? Should come chill with us. You smoke rocks?”
“Not anymore,” Molly said, shivering a little.
“Shorty goin’ clean,” the man said to his friends. They laughed and returned to their pipe. “Come back if you need something. We got dust, chronic, chiba …”
Molly took in a deep breath, held it. Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes. Sasha looked down, frowning.
“Chiba’s heroin,” Molly croaked.
“If it will make you feel better, I can ensure that none of those three sell anything, to anyone, ever again,” Sasha told her.
Molly shook her head, wiped her arm roughly across her eyes, gritted her teeth.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can’t kill it. You get rid of those guys, some other guys take their place, and they have everything, and people keep on buying. Girls like me keep on smoking crack and shooting up and dropping pills. It doesn’t matter.”
They walked in silence for a moment, and then Molly slammed a fist into her own thigh. “Fuck, I want a fix so bad! Just a taste. Just …”
Sasha, who understood very well what it was like to need a particular substance more than anything else on earth, put her hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“Take me to Jerry,” she said. “After that, we leave, and we’re never coming back. Either of us.”
Molly nodded, still shivering. “OK. I … yeah, OK.”
“I understand that this is hard for you,” Sasha said.
“No, it’s easy. It’s easy when you’re here, or when I’m with my mom and dad, or my teachers. It’s not like I have a fucking choice. You’re not going to let me go buy a nickel bag and a needle. You’re not going to let me trade a blowjob for a couple of hits off the crack pipe. This isn’t hard. It’s when I wake up at, like, three in the morning, and I’m lying in my bed staring up at the ceiling, and all I can do is say to myself, over and over, ‘go one more minute, see if you can just do that.’ So I just lie there knowing that I could go outside and get on a train, and I could score before my parents ever found me, and I want it. I want it so bad! That’s when it’s hard.”
“What keeps you from doing it?”
Molly shrugged, gave a harsh little laugh, stopped in front of the entrance to Jerry’s building.
“Two coulda left me here,” she said. “Left me to rot and die, living at Darren’s place until I was all used up and worthless to him, or until I OD’d. Either way. She could’ve, and it would’ve been easier for her … but she didn’t.”
* * *
“Sweet Mary-n-Baby-Jesus! Is that Molly?”
The back room of the shop looked as if it had gone without cleaning since opening day. Papers, video cassettes and DVDs, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts; all were scattered around the office, piled high in the corners. Cheap bookshelves lined the walls, double- and triple-stacked with items, sagging under the weight. There was a path cleared through the debris, leading from the door to an easy chair set in front of an ancient console television, and from the television to a desk in the corner.
“Hi, Jerry,” Molly said, her tone less than enthusiastic. Sasha couldn’t blame her.
Jerry seemed to be in his early sixties, was grossly overweight, and must not have bathed for several days. Sasha could smell him from across the room, and she found the idea of this man enjoying any sort of ministrations from a girl Molly’s age to be nearly blasphemous.
“Figured you was long gone after what happened to poor Darren,” Jerry said.
“I won’t be back long,” Molly replied.
Jerry reached into the pocket of his jeans, which were old and threadbare, warped and distended by time and the pressure of the man’s enormous thighs. He brought forth a battered pack of Camel cigarettes, removed one, lit it and dragged. His gaze ran up and down first Molly’s body, and then Sasha’s.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked.
“My name is Sasha. We need information. Molly says you might be able to provide it.”
“Well, Sasha, I don’t know you, and normally this conversation would already be over. Molly’s done me a few … favors, in her time, so I’m listening, but information has a price. How’re you paying?”
He glanced again at Molly, and for a moment a look of ravenous desire was more than evident upon his face.
“Not with that,” Sasha snapped.
Molly gave her a grateful look and said to Jerry, “I don’t pay like that anymore.”
“Shame,” Jerry replied, not the least bit embarrassed. “Darren never would let me hire you.”
“How much is information in cash?” Sasha asked.
“Kinda depends on the info, don’t it?”
“I need anything you can find on a man named Aros Kreskas.”
“Shit, name like that, you can’t just look him up in a phonebook?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Molly said.
Jerry chortled. “All right, all right. You wouldn’t be here if it was easy. I gotcha. One more question, and I need the truth. You lie to me on this one, and I’ll throw everything I have at you.”
“Ask,” Sasha said.
“You gonna kill him?”
“Unlikely, but not out of the question. Can we do business or not?”
“’Course!” Jerry cried. “Just means the rates go up. Six grand, and you get everything I can find on the guy. Might be a page, might be ten. Ain’t my problem. You in?”
“I’m in. How is the information delivered?”
“Anonymous drop-off at a mailbox, or encrypted email. Your call.”
Sasha was impressed despite herself. “How do you want your payment?”
“Cash. We don’t take MasterCard in my line of work. Half up front, and you get a week to
deliver the other half after delivery. You hold out on me, and I use my network to find you and take it from you.”
“I have no intention of holding out on you.”
“Wish more ladies would say that.” Jerry grinned, gave a wheezing laugh that turned into violent coughing, and finally recovered, his face beet red. He stood, his chair groaning as its joints readjusted, and waddled over to his desk. He pulled a notepad and a pen from beneath a promotional box of bright green condoms and said, “Spell it.”
Sasha did, and also gave him an email address to send the information to. Jerry wrote the information down. “Kreskas, huh? Whassat … Russian?”
“It’s Greek,” Sasha said.
“I like Greek,” Jerry mused. “Shit, maybe I’ll go down the street, get me some gyros …”
“When will we hear from you?” Sasha asked.
“Four days from when you give me the first half of the money.”
“I can do that now.”
Jerry laughed. “You got three grand on you?”
Sasha reached into a hidden pocket in her jacket and pulled out a wad of bills. She stepped over to Jerry and flipped six of them onto the desk. Jerry made a choking, coughing noise.
“Jeeeeesus, lady!” he cried. “You can’t walk around with that kind of cash on you. You’ll get jumped. Hell, I’m thinkin’ about it now.”
“I would love to see you try,” Sasha said, “but I doubt you could catch me.”
Jerry shrugged and laughed again. “Probably right. I was gonna close up shop and go upstairs, but since you ladies are so good lookin’, I’ll do you a favor and get started tonight.”
“Fine. Are we done?”
“Far as I’m concerned, the both of ya can stick around as long as you want. Nice eye candy. But unless you need something else, I got what I want.”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Molly said.
“Indeed,” Sasha said. She turned and, without another word to Jerry, followed Molly out the door. She could feel the man’s eyes on her posterior the entire way.
Outside, Sasha turned to Molly and said, “That man deserves to die.”
Molly shrugged and made a sweeping gesture. “Pick a building, you’ll find someone who does. There are good people here. Really. But they get stomped underneath all the shit.”
Sasha nodded. “How are you?”
“Better. Kinda hungry though. I know this isn’t the best neighborhood, but there’s a killer diner two blocks down that’s open all night. S’OK if I get some food?”
“Certainly,” Sasha said, and they began to walk in that direction.
Molly continued with the previous conversation. “Some of the people here get out. Some don’t. Some do OK even if they stick around. I only got out thanks to Two.”
“Your friend’s story is a remarkable one,” Sasha said.
“I haven’t heard it. Not all of it anyway, just enough to figure some stuff out. I eavesdropped a little. I had to know … I didn’t get at first how she could have just quit. You know, taking smack. She, like, never thinks about it.”
“And you do.”
“Yeah. All the time. When it’s bad, I can still … when you shoot up, it makes your mouth taste like heroin. I taste that sometimes, when I really want a fix.”
“How did you get over it?”
“I didn’t. You never get over it. You just stop taking it. I heard somewhere that the relapse rate is like a hundred percent. I’m practically guaranteed to go back to it someday.”
“That sounds improbable,” Sasha said. “Surely some people quit and don’t go back.”
Molly shrugged. “Dunno.”
“How did you stop?”
“Rhes and Sarah, my mom and dad now, but back then they were just some people I’d never met. Two sent me to them. They locked me in a room and wouldn’t let me come out. Not for like a week, and then only with supervision for months. It sucked.”
“Was it painful?”
“I thought I was going to die. I … I said some horrible things. All kinds of stuff. Threats and begging and offering to fuck Rhes if he’d just let me go. I was so mad at them for so long. They just dealt with it. I don’t even know why.”
“They’re good people.”
“They’re the best people,” Molly said, and a moment later she was crying again. “They’re my mom and my dad, and they saved me.”
“You’re returning the favor.”
“Yeah … in four days!” Molly said. “What if they’re dead by then?”
“It will take the council four months to move. Would you prefer that?” Sasha asked.
“No.”
“Then this is the best we can do. Molly, I don’t want to sound like a condescending adult doling out life lessons …”
“I’m fourteen. You all sound like that.”
Sasha gave a small laugh and said, “Fine. Something that I think you should learn, then: if you are doing all that is in your power to do, then you must learn to be satisfied with that.”
“I know. I just feel like … so …” Molly clenched and unclenched her fingers. Her tears had come to a stop, but there were still tracks on her cheeks.
“Helpless?” Sasha asked.
“Yeah.”
“Thus far, you’ve been very useful. You brought us here.”
“Well, you’re the one who put up the three grand.”
“Yes, and I’m rather curious to see whether it will buy me any information I can use, but my point is that you’re not helpless. You’re actively doing something. That is better than most people would do, including the other – how did you put it? – ‘fuckheads’ on the council.”
“I get your point,” Molly said. They turned a corner, and she stopped in front of a small diner. “This is it.”
“Very well. I need to eat, too.”
“Oh,” Molly said. “I … how do you … I mean …”
“Relax. I’m not going to kill anyone.”
“OK.”
“I’d have fed on Jerry, but I need him to be working.”
“Yeah,” Molly said, and gave Sasha a sad smile. “That, and you don’t want to put your lips on his neck. Trust me.”
* * *
“Whoah … awesome! You’re doing it right here?!”
Sasha, attached as she was to the neck of the diner’s single waitress, was unable to answer Molly’s excited question. Instead she made a waving gesture with her hand, indicating that Molly should be quiet. After a few more swallows, Sasha pulled away.
“It defeats the purpose,” she said, “of waiting for the cook to use the bathroom, if you start shouting about it.”
“Oh,” Molly replied, her eyes wide and fascinated. “You have blood on your chin.”
“Yes, I know, thank you,” Sasha said, wiping her face with a napkin. “Now, no more talk about this until we’ve left, OK?”
Molly nodded. She was watching in wonder as the two bite marks on the woman’s neck faded and disappeared. The cook returned from the bathroom and made his way to the kitchen, not paying any attention to them.
Sasha turned to the waitress, who was standing and staring out through the window, her eyes far away. “Miss? Miss!”
The waitress’s eyes cleared, and she shook her head once, then laughed to herself. “I’m sorry, hon … zoning out. What was it you needed, again?”
“Just the check, please.”
“Oh, that’s right. Here you go.”
The waitress wandered off, rubbing her neck and calling out to the cook, asking if he had any aspirin.
“That was the coolest shit ever!” Molly whispered.
“Let’s go,” Sasha said, standing up. She set a twenty down on the table, more than enough to cover Molly’s meal. The girl followed, leaving the remains of her hamburger and fries behind, and the two were shortly outside.
Sasha made a noise of vague distaste and said, “That woman’s been drinking cough syrup when no one’s watching.”
�
�You can taste that?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you what flavor, but I’m willing to bet that’s what I’m tasting.”
“Funny.”
Sasha shrugged. “I’m going to call a car now, unless you have some desire to stay here longer.”
“Nah, I don’t ever want to come here again,” Molly said.
“A reasonable wish. You did well tonight, Molly. It is often hard to be confronted with one’s past. The first time I returned to the site of my parents’ farm in Russia, I fell to my knees and wept.”
Molly, who had a hard time picturing Sasha crying for any reason, shrugged. “Nothing about my life was good until I met Two, and I met her here … so I guess that’s something.”
“She’s causing you a lot of trouble now.”
Molly shook her head. “No, she was trying to keep us away from all of this. We just wouldn’t let her go.”
Sasha made a noise of understanding. She pulled out her cell phone, dialed a number, and asked to be connected to a taxi service. Within minutes, their cab arrived.
“Don’t normally get a lot of business out here at this time of night,” the cabbie commented as they got in. “Especially not two ladies. Rough neighborhood.”
“That is exactly why we’re leaving,” Sasha replied.
“Where to?”
“Manhattan. 75th and Lex.”
The driver grunted an acknowledgment, put the cab in gear, and began the drive home. Molly didn’t seem to have anything to say, sitting curled up against the door, staring out the window. Sasha didn’t press her, and spent the ride thinking of Jakob, wondering if he was all right. In four days, she hoped, they would find out.
Chapter 19
A Matter of Vision
“Aros, this is absurd,” Jakob said. He was standing at a window looking out at the grounds of the military base, illuminated under its giant lights. “You can’t keep us here.”
“So escape,” Aros said. “Surely a mighty Ay’Araf such as yourself should have no problem.”
“I’m a fighter, but I’m not suicidal,” Jakob said. “You have too many men with too many guns.”
“A wise choice.”
The II AM Trilogy Collection Page 53