The Big Wheel

by Scott Archer Jones

  “Sure. Name was Sean. Major ‘klono-dude,’ used to come in here a lot but hasn’t been around for a while.”

  “Klono?” asked Thomas.

  “Klonopins, man,” said the serviceman. “Your friend’s a stoner.”

  The bartender said, “Nothin’ wrong with that, except I prefer drinkers. That’s where we make the money.”

  Thomas said, “So do you know where he lived?”

  “No. Why should I? He was just around… you know what I mean?”

  “Any friends of Sean’s still coming in?”

  “No. He likes women and men, both. Prefers small, butch women to the soft, squishy type. He ran with one who was pretty hot—and domineering. She ain’t been in since I don’t know when.” He picked up Thomas’s empty beer bottle. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “No thanks. But if you see him, let him know Tom Steward was looking for him.”

  The bartender raised an eyebrow. “Right. That’ll be four seventy-five, and a twenty for the info.”

  Thomas handed over two twenties. “Thanks for talking with me.” The serviceman caught him by the elbow. “Say man, try the Dumpster. It’s two blocks over on Greene.”

  “Thanks. I will.” But not in a blazer, khaki pants and a pressed shirt.

  ***

  Robko lay on the couch; he watched the changing lights from the street on his ceiling. Flickering reds and greens filtered in from the Chinese medicine shop across the way. The shop was filled with fake rhino horn and most likely pig teats.

  He hadn’t been out at night since he had moved into his apartment. Chinese takeout littered the coffee table beside him, and he had a cruze going from some klonopin. A major sense of chemical-induced peace had pushed his troubles to the far edge of his mind. At three in the morning, a rapid knock shook his door. He rolled off the couch, staggered a bit, and ambled over to open the door.

  “Thanks for letting me in so fast, you gozo.” Sibyl slipped in, whipped around, and slammed the door. She slapped the deadbolt over. “Great neighborhood. Hot-and-cold-running Tongs, Chinese kids panhandling at all hours, and all the crank you’d ever need. I even saw a black Chinaman. The graffiti is cool, though. I saw one on the edge of Chinatown that said, ‘In the Balance is Love and Chastity.’ Fits my career.”

  “Don’t slam the neighborhood, Sibyl. I feel comfortable here. No white person can come within a block of us without looking like a bonfire on a hill.”

  “Next time let me choose the apartment.” She looked around the place—it had a single window that faced the street. Old metal blinds hung askew. Inside, the walls were toffee colored, flaked in places, and showing blue underneath. On the floor, a distressed lime green rug stretched out. “Interesting. Run down enough to make good photo.” She pulled out a slim little camera and fired off six shots.

  “Still taking snaps?”

  She walked over to the breakfast bar, scratched at some grime with her fingernail, and glanced at him.

  He nodded. “Yes, I know it’s all a bit tawdry, but the servants’ quarters in back are quite generous, and the pool is an added bonus.”

  “Robert, you always thought you were a smooth talker. Well you’re wrong. Stoned again, aren’t you?”

  “Just floating along with a mild feeling of euphoria, and most of that is your presence. Thanks for coming by.”

  She reached up to rub his cheek. “You look good… compared to my last customer.”

  “I always look good. It’s my Gypsy charm.”

  “You’re a Polack, not Romany.”

  “Well, I am a thief. That makes me kind of Gypsy.”

  She held up an exotic shopping bag from one of the stores up on Prince Street. “Look, I brought vodka for myself…,” she hauled out a premium Scandinavian brand. “and a bottle of hair dye for you.”

  “Hair dye?”

  “It’s for your persona. The Black Irish aren’t really black you know. They’re mostly brown-eyed with dark brown hair.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “I’m in the people business. Folks brag more about where they came from than where they’re going. They give you the whole spiel—everybody from the German Lutherans through to the Greek fishermen—they all have illustrious ancestors. Come on in the bathroom, and I’ll get started.”

  She took off his shirt and pushed his head down into the sink. Tugging on cheap vinyl gloves, she wet his hair and applied the dye, working it in. She held him by the back of the neck when he tried to straighten up. “Not yet. The dye sets for thirty-five minutes.” She stripped the gloves, threw them into the brown-spattered sink beneath his nose and disappeared. He could hear her in the kitchen. When she got back, she set a glass that tinkled with ice down on the edge of the bathtub.

  “How long’s it been?”

  “Couple of minutes. Uncomfortable?” Sibyl planted her hands up on his shoulders and ran them from his shoulders down to the small of his back. “You’ve stayed in shape.”

  “Virtuous life.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, really. Most days I eat right, and I go to a climbing gym.”

  “A what?”

  “A place where you climb… on walls, with harnesses… so you don’t fall on your head.”

  He felt her dig her fingers into his shoulders, kneading the muscles. Then she slapped him on the ass. “The dye’s dripped out enough so’s you can straighten up.” She fished out a shower cap from the dye box and snapped it around his head. She wrapped his shoulders and neck with a towel. “You can write this towel off, white to chocolate brown. I wish I had contacts to change your eyes from blue into cat-yellow to dark brown.”

  He said, “I like my eyes.”

  “That’s your trouble. You’re not into self-criticism. Sit on the john here, and don’t move around. This stuff can stain everything if you let it. You’ve already got a spot of it on your chin.” She scrubbed at him with a wad of toilet paper.

  “I just sit here for thirty minutes?” He could feel the plastic of the shower cap over his ears. It made her voice muffled.

  “No, I’ll do your mono-brow also.” Sibyl applied petroleum jelly around the eyebrow hair and used a toothbrush, his toothbrush, to push brown die into the single long bar of black hair. She sat back on the edge of the tub and took a hard swallow out of her glass.

  He liked this, the lazy feel, the way she touched him. “My, this is so domestic.” He sensed the air in the little room steaming up, even with his wet hair and a naked torso. His shoulder blades rippled out a tiny quiver—she was sitting so close, touching his knee with hers.

  “As domestic as we’ll ever get, bucko.”

  “I appreciate you thinking of me, helping me out.”

  “It’s just hair color, Robert, not a commitment.”

  “But you’re not waving the knife around this time.”

  “Can’t carry it when I’m working. I don’t need a weapons charge if I’m busted. I could go get a paring knife from the kitchen if you want, if you feel more comfortable around armed women.”

  She took a sip of the vodka. His turn. “I’ve been watching your place a bit.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nothing yet. I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Maybe you should move in here for a while.”

  “Give up a perfectly wonderful condo for this dump, a dump with a resident stoner? I don’t think so.”

  “Well, then, let’s go out together. I can keep an eye on you part of the time if you’ll let me hang around.”

  “I work nights.”

  “Every night?”

  “Wednesdays are slow. I don’t normally work Wednesdays.”

  “Tomorrow is Wednesday.”

  “So it is. What did you have in mind?”

  “How about the Comet Kitty?” He glanced at her to see the reaction.

  “Christ, Robert! Even when you’re on the run, you want to party.” She tucked the cap back behind his ears and swabbed at them with a corner of the
towel.

  “Officially, I’m between jobs, not on the run.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You’re officially frightened about a crew chasing you.”

  “I prefer not to think about that part. Yellows help a lot. I could use one about now.”

  “Stay still—the color isn’t done setting. Where are they?”

  “In one of the Chinese takeout boxes on the coffee table.”

  “Okay, I’ll get them for you, but only this time.” She got up carrying her glass and in a moment sauntered back with a new drink and a cardboard takeout box. “Your food looks about two days old. Congealed.” She stopped in the door and cocked her head at him. “That mono-brow is a trademark. We should change more than just the color.”

  He took the box from her hand, opened the top, and poured out white, blue, and yellow pills into his hand. He chose one, swallowed it dry, and dumped the rest back into the box. The pill was chalky and bitter—he shuddered. “Okay. What did you have in mind?”

  She looked him over. “We’ll make it, them. Less of a forest. I’ll pluck out about a pound.”

  “I’m all right with that. After all, it’ll grow back when this is over.”

  She got out tweezers and leaned over to him from her seat on the tub. He turned his face to her. In a moment, she said, “This isn’t working. I’ll twist my back at this angle.” She got up and straddled him on both sides of the john. Her tush was very firm, hard, nearly boney. She took his chin and tipped his head back, jerked the first of the hairs out.

  He could feel tears collect in the corners of his eyes. He could smell her, and he could feel her small breasts pushed against his chest. He wanted her to lean down just that little bit and kiss him.

  She shifted her bottom and continued to pluck out a center section of hair, a trench that would allow the skin of his nose to link up to his forehead. Tears ran back towards his ears. He sucked a gulp of air in hard. He could feel her breath drifting down onto him.

  “Ah,” she said. “Stop that!” She slapped him lightly on the side of his jaw and continued, “I’ll slap something else down if you can’t control it.” Perverse in all things, she rotated her bottom again, screwing it into him.

  Chapter Seven: Too Clever by Half

  Thomas began anew. Bars for young professionals were all wrong. The thing he needed was fast and loud. The SoHo provided a population of bars that catered to the thousands of tragically ace and rebelliously hip, the young and unemployed, the self-marginalized trust babies. He couldn’t do much about his short hair, but he could dress to fit. He sought advice. Angie referred him to what she called old-school gangsta boutiques on the Lower East Side. Thomas transformed, even if still white and professional, into the type of guy who spiked his hair and dressed like a slam wannabe… or a film director.

  He bar-crawled down one of the party streets of SoHo on his way to a definite club. On the journey, he wrapped his mind around the types of patrons and the nuances of alcohol and loud music. With regret, he passed by a jazz joint. He knew his own feet wanted to turn in, not Zlata’s. Thomas strode around the corner onto Greene Street; there in a walk-down, under the steps hunkered the Comet Kitty. One of Sibyl’s neighbors, a loser named Arnie, had told Garland’s people this was her local bar.

  The club wailed hot and rolling, even at ten p.m. He caught blasts of sound each time the door at the bottom of the stairs opened. Taking a big breath, he started down and slid into the chatter and party of three couples on the way in.

  Comet Kitty shown forth as a glam-punk slammer, dressed out in hot pink with much emphasis on strobes and flickering floods. A red bar ripped across one wall with leopard print stools. The male bartender wore heavy eye makeup. Above the bar, they had hung a banner he took as a warning, “Join In With the Rogues at Kitty’s.” Black silhouettes bracketed the sign, shapes of something he took to be cats or squirrels.

  In spite of the joint’s little-girl colors, many of the patrons draped themselves in black, drab browns, and olives, the perennial uniform of NYC cool. He found a place at the bar where he could watch the dance floor and the surrounding tall tables. He determined to settle in. He would let Zlata come to him, if possible.

  The band alternated between pure thrash and lovely ballads about drugs and death, often within the same song. By twelve, he had separated out the crowd into archetypes. Those who came for the music surrounded the stage where the band played. Other patrons dropped in to hook up. A third crowd patronized the club to buy, sell, and use various mood enhancers. From what he could tell, a fourth group, which included female impersonators, came to strut their stuff. Kitty opened her welcoming, eclectic arms to anyone who liked their music loud.

  Not him—loud was boorish. The place didn’t smell lucky, at least not for him. He tried laying out a broken pentagram of bar straws, just in case, to lure the black cat in.

  At the moment he was about to give up, full of sour disappointment, he saw her. Sibyl Boxwood appeared from the back and made her way through the crowd. He lost sight of her a couple of times because of her diminutive size, but each time, her sharp face, bruised-looking eyes, and shag blonde hair reappeared in the blue and pink flashing lights. She had someone in tow, a man. She joined four of the music lovers near the stage. They all bumped heads, and she nodded at the man. Heads bobbed and lips semaphored greetings back and forth. Thomas craned his neck to peer at Sibyl’s date. His coloring was all wrong. On the other hand, he appeared to be the right size, the right age—older than the average Kitty-danian. High cheekbones, cut chin and a scowl. Forget coloring. It had to be Zlata. In a city of ten million people! Thomas knew it; he was certain.

  By one a.m., he had proven to himself—by use of subtle tests of dexterity with his swizzle stick—that inebriation had captured him. The band took a break, and the house music roared up. He teetered on his bar stool and caught a glimpse of Zlata and Sibyl as they wiggled down a crowded hallway towards the restrooms. Maybe intent on sex? Or making an exit? He wound his way through the seething mosh with those high steps of pretended sobriety. Once in the hallway, he found a door propped open that led up stairs to a narrow dingy yard. He tripped in his haste and fell across a trashcan, followed by a spill across an uncomfortable, dismembered bicycle. Both shins burned. The yard led him to another in back and to a gap between two buildings. He sucked in a breath as he spotted his couple up ahead. Chin down, he followed them for six blocks. He didn’t recognize the last blocks. He felt lost—not a good thing in New York. A red dragon in neon—the edge of Chinatown. Two blocks later, a real Chinese street—not the streets tarted up for the tourists. He lost the pair.

  Storefronts lined the street—groceries, cleaners, furniture stores, herbal pharmacies—and apartments stacked up overhead. They had gone to ground in this block; he knew it. He stumbled back to the corner and read the street signs. Even drunk, he would remember. Feeling conspicuous in an Oriental world, he tramped back a block or two to restaurant row.

  He tripped on sidewalk cracks and fought hard not to weave or lurch. He told himself he was sharp and on top of it, in spite of the evidence. His brain told him that a little food would temper the booze, so he stopped by a harshly lit food stand and bolted down three palm-sized mu xu pork, slathered in hoisin sauce. Limp and drooping at the counter that ringed the stand, he slurped a cup of green tea.

  A thought crawled through the vodka and into his forebrain—he could get a look at Sibyl’s condo. She and Zlata would be blocks away in Chinatown.

  No taxis, no luck. Hustling fast, he wove off north for Canal Street—it must be north, he thought—stopping to pee between two dumpsters on the way.

  At her building, a small box van squatted all akimbo up over the curb, and a couple moved furniture into the foyer. Only in New York would people be moving at three in the morning. The door to the foyer had been wedged open by a wad of packing paper; he slid in. Two flights up, he found her door. The foolishness of his plan struck him. He was an MBA, not a professional
burglar. He squinted at the two serious deadbolts and a keyed doorknob between him and his goal. He sighed, placed his hand on the door, and willed it to unlock. The door inched away and swung into the apartment.

  Jesus! Someone had broken in here before him, maybe before he even had the idea. Someone pro. He glanced at the jamb and saw the deep marks of a crowbar. He eased the door further, made himself a narrow gap, and wriggled inside. A bright light in the hallway behind him cast a spear of light into her front hall. Once in, he half-closed the door and froze, listening. He tried to breathe as shallow as a whisper. He could hear nothing beyond his own wheezing, the panicked bass beat of his heart.

  A small, lancing light in the room beyond flickered across objects—so fast he couldn’t recognize anything. Someone prowled the apartment with a flash. He took a careful step forward, his hands out, timid.

  A force like a truck crashed into his left side and threw him up against a wall. Something smashed him in the gut with two quick blows. He doubled over, with no way to breathe. Someone picked him up like a floppy toy and threw him down onto the hard floor. In a second, two-hundred-and-fifty pounds slammed down onto him. He tried to roll out from under but only ended up on his back. He sobbed for air. A big man on top of him spat out curses in a stream. Thomas writhed, an eel trying to wriggle away. The man hit him again, pinned his throat with one hand and squeezed hard.

  Thomas panicked. He was choking! With both hands, Thomas shoved. His left hand slid across metal—gun? He slapped his hand on the steel, grabbed the grip, and shoved as hard as he could. A flash lit the space between them, and a concussion rocked his senses. His head spun; his eyes blinked. Rolling away, his attacker screamed, “I’m hit!” Now free, Thomas still sprawled on the floor, a turtle on his back.

  The lights in the apartment blazed on before Thomas could move. He lay blinking, blinded in front of two men who glared at him. His attacker, wrapping a forearm across his gut, crawled away looking over his shoulder. To his left crouched another giant.