by Gerry Boyle
“Is the car place around here?”
“End of the street. You find bums, you find Georgie. You know, his mother, she’d turn over in her grave. She tried with him. Not her fault. Just a bad seed. I told her that. ‘Nothing you can do,’ I said. ‘Some people are just like that.’”
“You’re right,” I said. “Some people are.”
“And you can’t tell when they’re babies,” the woman said. “They all look cute. I always say, you don’t want to know what the future brings. Because—”
“What kind of car was it?”
“What car?”
“The one with the tough guys.”
“You’re not putting this in the paper, are you?”
“No. I’m just trying to find him so I can talk to him.”
“ ’Cause I don’t want anything to do with any of ’em.”
“This is between us.”
“Okay. It wasn’t a car. It was one of those little vans you see now. Like them, whatcha call it, the soccer moms drive. They got out, two of ’em, and they went up and stood beside the door for a minute and then they fiddled with something, the locks, I guess, and they went in. And then they came out after a few minutes and I could see one of them, he shook his head to the guy in the van. And they left.”
“Was the van blue?”
“Yeah. Saw it under the light when it went by.”
“You get the plate number?”
“No. Like I said, I mind my own business.”
“Good idea.”
“You got that right. Now what’s this story about, anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” I said as I turned away.
“When’s it gonna be in?”
“I’m not sure of that, either.”
“Kind of a loose operation, that New York Times, ain’t it?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
When I got in the car and looked back, her door had closed. The curtain in one of the windows was moving.
The car place was a junkyard ringed by a falling palisade fence. In the front there was a twisted house trailer on which the words car parts had been sprayed in black paint. There were men in the door of the trailer and more men outside the dark hole of the garage door. I parked in front, opened the notebook, and scrawled the cell-phone number on a dozen pages. I tore them out and stuffed them in my shirt pocket. I left the notebook on the seat. The knife, too. Glanced out and gathered myself up.
As I walked toward the garage, the men turned toward me and stared impassively. They were white, black, Hispanic, but the look was the same. It was the impregnable stare they used for cops, for Immigration, for strangers whose motives were unknown.
When I reached them, I said, “Hey.”
They stared. Barely blinked. Nobody made a sound.
“I’m looking for a guy named George Drague,” I said.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
“Lady down the street says he stops in here sometimes. I just need to talk to him.”
They seemed to have stopped breathing.
“I’ll tell you why I want to talk to him,” I said. “And this is the truth. A friend of mine, a woman friend, was beat up yesterday in Brooklyn. Ripped her clothes off and broke her fingers. George didn’t do it. In fact, I’m told he’s going to be next. On the receiving end from the same people. And I want to find him so I can find them. Anybody else been looking for him?”
They didn’t answer, but their eyes said yes.
“So I figured I could either go to the cops or I could find George myself.”
I reached for my pocket and they flinched. I took out the pieces of paper and they stared at them. I tried to pass the papers around, but the first two guys put their hands in their pockets and looked me hard in the eye. Same for the third and fourth. Finally, the fifth guy, an older man with graying stubble, reached out a grease-stained hand and took one. I kept going around the circle and two other men took the papers.
“My name’s Jack,” I said. “I’ll be in the area for an hour. Anybody gets an idea where I might find George, call this number.”
The older man nodded. They stood there, holding the papers like they were tickets for a door prize.
“You have wives, girlfriends, daughters? There were three or four of these guys. They wrote something on her stomach with a knife. Closed her hands in her car door and left her there.”
I saw eyes narrow. A couple of them turned the papers to read the number.
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “I’m pretty nervous doing this. I’m a little off my turf. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, right?”
It was corny, but they didn’t disagree. I didn’t think they would.
So with nothing else to say, I walked to the car and got in and very deliberately arranged myself. And then I started the motor and revved it, and waved as I started off. One man shook his head. Another spat. A couple of papers fluttered to the ground. But not all of them.
At the same bodega, I bought a coffee in a paper cup and a bag of pretzels. I paid the same man and he carefully put the coffee and pretzels in a bag, like I was in first grade and he was packing my lunch.
I started to turn away and then I turned back.
“If you were looking for girls around here, where would you go?” I said.
His face clouded over and he shook his head.
“I don’t care about that. I’m trying to find a guy who does.”
The man started rearranging things on the counter. Then he took a rag and started wiping.
“You’re not police,” he said, still looking down.
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Reporter. From a newspaper.”
He kept wiping.
The man said something in Spanish. Then, “Bad places.”
“One nearby?”
He was scraping a grill.
“When you leave here, you going north?”
“I can.”
“You go out to the boulevard. You take a right. You drive that way and you look to the right. See the sign—xxx, all that trashy stuff. But alone, you be careful, sir. Very tough place.”
“That’s why I didn’t wear a tie,” I said and I smiled.
He glanced at me, then turned away as though he couldn’t bear to watch.
I took the right and started up Southern Boulevard, underneath the highway, driving slowly, clenching the wheel. My heart started to pound and my breath came quickly. I tried to tell myself it was anticipation, but it wasn’t. It was the stomach rumble of fear, and when the phone rang, I jumped.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Beaver’s,” a man’s voice croaked. “On Southern.”
And then he was gone. The car was quiet. I drove on, slowing to look at the dingy buildings. Warehouses. Stores. A tire shop that was closed. And then there it was. I pulled over and parked. Opened the bag and took out the coffee. Took out the pretzels and opened them, too.
Sipped and watched and procrastinated. Picked up the knife and considered it, then tossed it aside. Bring a weapon, you’d better be damn quick to use it, my friend Clair always said. Or it would be used on you.
I’d ask my questions and leave. In and out.
But the doubts crept in. These people wouldn’t talk. I’d be better off just telling the cops. Take a chance that Drague wouldn’t be silenced. Maybe it would come out, whatever it was. Maybe it would come out without me.
But then I pictured Christina, pinned to the window. I felt the relish in the young guy’s voice as he talked about Roxanne. I heard Butch’s voice, asking for help. And I swallowed some coffee and a little of my fear, and went in.
40
It was like walking into a sideshow tent at a grotesque sort of carnival.
There was a narrow entranceway that smelled of beer and urine, and then a door that opened to a dark room with a plywood bar. Next to the bar there were a few metal patio tables at which a half-dozen men sat drinking. A waitress came from behind th
e bar and threaded her way between the tables, a round tray carried below her bare, jiggling breasts.
That was the topless part.
The men and the waitress turned in unison, staring at me with sullen disinterest. And then they turned away. I didn’t wait to be shown to my table.
I sat on one of the three metal stools at the bar. The other two were unoccupied. There was a basin on the floor behind the bar and it was filled with Budweiser bottles and ice. There was nothing on tap. No liquor in sight. The thick half of a pool cue leaned against the wall.
Someone’s cigarette was burning in the ashtray in front of me.
The waitress came back with her tray, walked behind the bar, and picked up the cigarette and took a drag. I smiled. She blew smoke in my face.
She was white-blonde, olive-skinned. There was a burn scar on the side of her neck, another scar, long and white, across her breastbone. She had a rose tattooed on her left shoulder and it was the flesh-pink color of a birthmark. Her breasts hung from her chest like clinging children and her expression said she could be neither insulted nor flattered.
“Could I have a Budweiser, please?” I said.
She turned to the basin and bent over. Her spike heels were white and wobbly, and her skirt was short and red. Her underpants were black lace with a tear at one of the seams and her legs were thin and bare. She swung back and her breasts swung a moment longer.
She put the bottle in front of me and stubbed out the cigarette.
“Four,” the waitress said.
“Four dollars?”
“No, pesos,” she said.
“I thought this was happy hour,” I said.
“It is,” she said.
I smiled. She didn’t. I handed her a ten. She pulled the front of her skirt away from her sagging belly and took out a small roll of bills. Pulling off two, she dropped them on the bar, where they lay like fallen leaves.
Like my mother always said: Don’t put money in your mouth. You don’t know where it’s been.
The waitress started loading more bottles in the tub, her underpants in my face. I took a sip of beer and a man came through the curtain and stared at me. He was short and solid, with a barrel chest and dark hair swept straight back. I nodded. He did, too, but he turned and said something to the waitress. Without looking at him, she shrugged.
I drank the beer and turned toward the tables. A couple of the men turned to look at me, then turned away. I saw tattoos and tank tops. Two other men turned to stare at me, like they were standing watch on a ship. The waitress turned back and took a pack of cigarettes from under the bar. She lit one and inhaled.
“Place fill up at night?” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “When the girls get here.”
“There’s more?”
She looked at me, her eyes narrowed.
“You trying to pull my chain?”
“No. Not at all. Place just seems small. Where’s the stage?”
She jerked her head toward the far end of the room, which wasn’t very far away.
“You know most of the people who come in?”
The waitress half-smiled, and gave a little snort.
“Why you asking, Detective?”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you, lost?”
“A reporter. Want to see my press pass?”
“That a come-on?”
“Nope. I just thought you might want to see it.”
“Keep it. I got no comment.”
I could feel the men watching.
“I’m not working,” I said.
“Slumming?”
“Looking for somebody.”
“You and everybody else.”
She stubbed out her cigarette.
“I mean a guy.”
“You’re in the wrong bar.”
“No, I mean I need to talk to him. This guy.”
“And you think he comes here?”
“That’s what they told me down the street. In the Point.”
The waitress shrugged, then bent down to get something. I could see the freckles on her back, the snake of her backbone. And then she came up with a pail of ice and dumped it in the tub.
“George Drague,” I said. “That’s his name.”
The waitress dumped another pail.
“What’s your name?” she said, not looking at me.
“Jack. Jack McMorrow.”
“I think I heard of you somewheres.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. What paper?”
“The Times.”
“Don’t read it. Musta been someplace else.”
“So what’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Your name.”
“Mercedes.”
“Really?”
“No, but close enough. What you looking for this guy for?”
“His name came up in a story I’m doing. You know him?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Probably not.”
I smiled and took a sip of beer.
“Think those guys over there might talk to me?”
“You shittin’ me? They wouldn’t tell you if you was on fire.”
“Can’t hurt to try,” I said, and I started to swing off the stool.
“No,” the waitress said.
I swung back.
“Hey, I don’t want you to get hurt,” she whispered. “Not here. ’Cause I’ll get stuck cleaning up your blood.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“You got a gun?”
I shook my head.
“Then you’re not tough enough. I don’t think you get it. This isn’t—”
The big man came through the curtain and stood with his hands on his hips. He looked at the waitress and jerked his chin upward.
“No, not a cop,” the woman said. “A reporter.”
I smiled.
“You got questions for me?” he said, his accent Greek, or something like it.
“Nah, he’s looking for somebody named Joe Green,” the waitress put in. “I told him we never heard of him.”
The man scowled at me.
“Don’t bother the help,” he said. “This is a place of business.”
I held up my beer.
“And I’m a paying customer.”
I held his gaze until he turned to the waitress, gave her his boss look, and stepped through the curtain.
“The Times could put this place on the map,” I said.
“Yeah, right. We’ll put that plastic stuff on your story and put it in the window.”
“Laminate it,” I said. “Right.”
“You can’t buy that kind of publicity.”
“Sometimes publicity is a bad thing.”
“I suppose,” I said.
She put another beer in front of me. I took a long swallow and finished the first one. She took the bottle and the bills from the bar.
“Keep it,” I said.
She did.
“You find this guy, it gonna be a good thing or what?”
“Better than if other people find him first.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They might kill him, if they can find him.”
“And if you find him?”
“I might keep him from getting killed. Then again, he may be beyond help.”
“What’d he do?”
“Raped a woman. Beat her up.”
The waitress looked at me and for a moment she looked troubled. But only for a moment.
“The one I know about was a few years ago,” I said. “Nice girl, worked downtown. This guy grabbed her and pulled her into an alley on the East Side. Near where she lived.”
“Did he kill her?” the waitress said softly.
“No. Just made her life hell.”
“He’s a pig,” she said. “For doing that, I mean.”
“You know him, don’t you?” I sa
id.
She turned around and dumped another bucket of ice.
“Nope. Never heard of him.”
“Know what happened to another woman?” I said.
I told her about Christina, and she closed her eyes, put her arms across her breasts.
“I hate these guys, think they can do that,” she said.
“You mean Georgie?”
She frowned and shook her head, her nipples against her forearms. I heard a chair scrape the floor.
I turned and she did, too. Three of the men at the tables were walking toward me. The others were getting up, too. I swiveled toward them but stayed on the stool. The first guy, a fat balding man with big arms and hair on his shoulders, stood in front of me.
“You’re bothering the lady,” he said.
She shook her head.
“Ray-Ray, it’s okay,” the waitress said. “We was just talking.”
“Talk’s over,” Ray-Ray said. “Hit the fucking road.”
“It’s okay. He wasn’t bothering me.”
“Hit the road,” he said, his friends crowding closer.
“Ray-Ray,” the waitress said, “chill.”
The curtain whirled and the big guy appeared. Ray-Ray didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m gonna count to three,” he said.
“If you get stuck, we’ll chime in,” I said.
He lunged for me and got my shirt and pushed me back off the stool and onto the floor, and he was on me and I could smell him, hear shouting, the waitress screaming, “Stop it!”
I came up on my side and I got to my knees and someone shoved me from behind, onto Ray-Ray, who wrapped his big arms around my neck and squeezed.
The screaming was louder and I swung at his face with both arms, felt teeth and his wet mouth and he started to bite me. I couldn’t breathe and I clawed at his arms, his face, his eyes. She was screaming, “You’re killing him,” and I could hear myself gurgling. Somebody kicked me in the back, in the legs, and his grip tightened. We both stopped thrashing but he didn’t let go. I couldn’t get a breath. I kicked. I couldn’t get loose.
The breath wouldn’t come.
I screamed but no sound came out, and I tried to say, “Stop,” but it came out a cough. I felt weaker and something hard hit my shoulder, over and over, a club, and a man’s voice was saying, “Let go, let go,” but it was too late. Everything was gray and black and I was going limp, couldn’t see, heard a scream but it was faint, like a dream.