by Gerry Boyle
And then everything was quiet.
And cold.
“Come on,” the voice said, from very far away. “Come on.”
I heard her, felt something wet. I opened my eyes and there she was, staring down at me so that her white-blonde hair hung down, her breasts, too.
“Oh, thank God,” the waitress said. “You all right? You gonna be okay? Jesus Christ, what a day.”
I looked at her. Tried to swallow, but it hurt and I grimaced.
“Hey,” she said, “just take it easy for a minute.”
She swabbed my face with a rag. It smelled like old beer and I pushed it away. I looked around. Saw my stool. Cigarette butts. Dead cockroaches. A peanut.
“Christ, you passed out for a minute there. Good thing you didn’t die or something.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I looked around.
“Where is he?” I rasped.
“Ray-Ray? He left. Chico kicked him out. He was pissed.”
“Oh,” I said.
“He doesn’t want any more trouble here. Just got his license back after somebody got shot. They’ll shut us down, they keep getting calls. You okay now?”
I raised myself on one elbow and looked around.
“How long was I out?”
“Just for a couple minutes. I think your windpipe got squeezed.”
“It’s called being strangled.”
“He just gets carried away. ’Cause you insulted him.”
“I did?”
“About the counting.”
I sat up.
“Good thing I didn’t start in on his mother.”
“Ah, Chico whacked him pretty good. Got him off you.”
I turned my neck in a slow rotation.
“Where’s Chico now?”
“He went out.”
“What? Move the drugs in case the cops come?”
She shrugged, moving her rose tattoo up and down.
“No cops?”
“No. Nobody called ’em.”
I sat there and thought for a minute. Felt my face and my neck. The waitress was on her knees in front of me, peering into my eyes as though she were looking for clues.
“What if I call them now?” I said.
“Who?”
“The cops.”
“For what?”
“Report an assault that took place inside Beaver’s. Big guy tried to strangle me. Another guy hit me with a pool cue or something.”
“He was saving your ass.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I just told you.”
“Then you could tell them.”
“The cops? No way.”
“You’re a witness,” I said slowly. “You give a statement. I sign a complaint. They round up everybody else. Poke around the place a little, run everybody’s name through the cop computer.”
I paused.
“Your name, too.”
I stood up slowly and stretched, feeling the bruises in my back, my legs. The waitress stood, too. Pulled down her skirt, an odd gesture of modesty. She looked at me coldly.
“Or else,” I said.
“Or else what?”
“Or else you can tell me where Drague is.”
“How the hell should I know?”
“You know him. Where’s he shack up when people are looking for him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I call the cops. I’ll just dial 911.”
“You can’t use the phone.”
“I’ll call from the car.”
“I thought you were a nice guy.”
“I am. That’s why I’m here.”
“Drague would kill me.”
“He won’t know.”
“Sure he will. He’ll find out.”
“I’ve been talking to people all day. Maybe it was one of them.”
She teetered on her heels.
“I shoulda let ’em beat the shit out of you.”
“Too late.”
“Maybe not,” she said.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “I’ll go call.”
The waitress looked at me and then her shoulders sagged and she shook her head, then leaned close.
“Down the street,” she whispered, her cigarette breath warm and moist. “There’s a mattress store, but it’s closed. There’s a house attached to the store part. In the back. Second floor. But let me tell you, Jack whatever your name is, you already pushed your luck. I don’t know what this story is, but you oughta quit before you get killed.”
“Thanks for your concern,” I said.
“You think I’m kidding?” the waitress said.
“No,” I said.
“You think it can’t happen to you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that, either.”
“You don’t get nine lives around here, let me tell you.”
“How many do you get?” I said.
“Not as many as you’re gonna need, you start screwing with these people.”
“What people?”
She didn’t answer.
“How ’bout a bathroom? You have one of those?”
The waitress motioned toward the hallway with her chin. I walked out, saw a door on the right with a gouge in it. I pushed it open and stepped in, hooking the door shut behind me. My kidneys hurt and I felt like my bladder might burst. There was one bowl and I urinated into it, watching for blood. I didn’t see any and was zipping my shorts when there were footsteps in the hall, then voices.
“Whaddya mean ‘guys’? I had a guy in here a little while ago. Said he was a reporter. Now we got more guys?”
It was Chico’s voice.
“White guys,” another man said. “First I thought they was fucking cops, but then they started offering cash for the son of a bitch.”
“How much?”
“Two.”
“Two hundred?”
“Two thousand.”
“For Drague?”
“For his ‘location,’ they said.”
“Jesus. What’s that piece of shit gotten into now?”
“I don’t know. But two thousand bucks. You know where he is?”
“He’s around. Saw him last night. He was cranked, eyes popping out of his head. He said he was going under for a while, but he left with a coupla the girls.”
“He better keep his mind on business, he wants to stay alive,” the other man said. “This kid, he talks like he’s in a movie, but he’s got a big gun and he’s itching to ram it down somebody’s throat and pull the trigger.”
“The other guy?”
“Two more. One I could see was older. Mean-looking. Might be a cop, but if he is, he’s on his own. I mean, I seen the cash. So what do you think?”
“About what?”
“The money. Two grand for Drague.”
Chico said something I couldn’t hear.
“You don’t want it?”
“No. That’s garbage. Their first offer. Don’t you know shit about business?”
“They got cash. Kid showed me a buncha money.”
“We ask for ten.”
“For Georgie Drague?”
“We go low as five. But we work ’em for a while. Walk away and make ’em sweat if we have to. We got what they want.”
“What do I get?”
“You get a grand.”
“You cheap mother. I brought you the deal.”
“I know where he is.”
“Two.”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“All right, but that’s on five. I want three if we get ten.”
“We get ten, I’ll kiss you on your junkie mouth. Where are these guys?”
“Up the block, in a van. I told ’em to wait.”
“Let’s go. But let me do the deal.”
“May need a gun, get the money loose from that little punky bastard. Probably thinks we’re dumb shits.”
“He’ll learn,” Chico said. “You drive.”
I
heard the jingle of keys.
“They’re gonna kill Georgie, you know,” the other guy said.
“Uh-huh,” Chico said.
“You think they’ll kill the girls, too?”
“I don’t know,” Chico said.
“They’re big girls. They know what they’re gettin’ into.”
“Or they don’t,” Chico said. “Sometimes it’s better that way.”
41
Did I know what I was getting into? No, and maybe that was better, too.
The mattress store was a quarter-mile south of the bar, where the boulevard bends away from the elevated highway. The building was a house with a store stuck on the front, and a faded sign, futons. The windows were covered with plywood, the plywood covered with graffiti. I drove by once, circled back, and drove by again. Down the side street, I parked and watched the mirror for a blue van. Three of them drove by. One was full of kids. The others, I couldn’t tell.
So I drove for ten minutes, winding through the tenement streets, and finally parked a half-block back from the mattress place. I shut the car off and looked around. The houses were close-set and run-down, and kids, mostly of color, were clustered on the stoops like seagulls. They looked at me and called out something and laughed. I nodded and then I looked up the street to the rear of the building. There was a beat-up Toyota parked near a wooden stairway. The stairs led to a door on the second floor. The door had a window. The window had bars.
I got out of the car, notebook in hand. The kids said, “Hey, mister,” and I smiled at them and tried to hold that pose as I walked toward the building, climbing the stairs like steps to a gallows, still deciding what to say.
Drague was holed up. He had drugs and girls and probably a gun. At least one. I climbed the last stair and stood in front of the door. Pad in hand, I smiled at myself in the window glass and knocked on the metal door.
I waited, knocked again. Smiled blissfully, like someone selling religion. I looked at my pad and made a notation. I’d raised my hand to knock again when the shade moved aside.
I peered in and kept smiling.
“George there?” I said.
The shade moved aside and a woman’s face appeared behind the bars. Or was it a child? She saw me and jerked back, out of sight.
“I gotta talk to George. It’s an emergency.”
I knocked again. Dropped the smile. A different face appeared. A haggard woman, gray-skinned, her hair greenish-blonde. She peered at me and then waved me off and shook her head.
I held up my pad.
“I’m a reporter. I have to talk to George.”
The women looked at me blankly. I put my face next to the glass.
“Really,” I said. “They’re coming to kill him. They’ll kill you, too, if you don’t get out of here.”
That must have made more sense in her world, because the door opened a crack. I pushed it and the woman pushed back, but I pushed harder and it fell open. The woman backed away from me, a kitchen knife held in front of her.
She was hollow-eyed and gaunt, dressed in a black slip. Her legs and feet were bare. The slip had a stain on the front. The knife was dirty, too, like it had been used to cut cheese.
“Get the fuck outta here,” she hissed.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about it.”
“That won’t help you. Who’s he with?”
“She don’t know nothin’ about it, either. She don’t know nothin’.”
Her eyes searched me, like she was trying to place me. But her look was glassy. There were pipes and bags on the table, beer cans and cigarette packs.
“This is fucked up,” the woman said. “This is so fucked up.”
“Where is he?”
She pointed the knife toward a hallway.
“Just him and your friend?”
She nodded.
“What are they doing?” I asked, but then I listened and heard the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings.
The woman looked at me, taut and tense and confused.
“You gonna kill him?”
“No.”
“Don’t kill her.”
“I won’t kill anybody.”
“You’re gonna kill him, ain’t you? You’re here to kill him.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to interview him.”
She looked at me blankly again.
“Can I leave?”
“Go,” I said, and she took keys from the table and circled me slowly, the knife still in front of her, her bare feet making a shuffling noise on the filthy floor. And then she was out the door, tripping down the stairs like a tawdry Cinderella.
“Hurry up,” George Drague called from deeper in the apartment. “I want both of youse. And bring me some beers.”
I quietly crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator. Inside, there was a torn cardboard twelve-pack of Heineken cans. I took two and started down the hall.
There was a door on the right. It was open a crack and light spilled out into a dark room opposite. I could see a couch. I could hear the bedsprings squeaking.
I walked slowly until I was standing at the door. I paused. Took a deep breath. Clenched my notebook. Gripped the cold cans.
“Hurry up,” Drague called. “And don’t forget the beers.”
The squeaks quickened and a woman moaned.
“Come on, you can make more noise than that,” he said.
She moaned more loudly. I knocked.
“What the hell you doing?” he said. “Get in here.”
I pushed the door and it opened slowly. Drague was naked on the bed and the girl was on top of him. She was naked, too. There was a red garment beside her and when she saw me, she grabbed for it.
Drague looked at me, his mouth gaping open.
“What the—”
The girl slid off him, holding the red cloth against her chest. Drague rolled away from me, fell to the floor and came back up. He had a pistol and he pointed it at my face.
“Don’t,” I shouted. “It’s not me. I’m not the one looking for you. I’m a reporter.”
“Don’t move,” Drague screamed. “Keep your hands up.”
‘I’m from the Times,” I said. “The New York Times.”
“Shut up. Hands out. Drop the paper.”
I let the pad fall to the floor, and the beers, too. They rolled under the bed.
“I’m here to help you.”
“Shut up. Shut up or I’ll fucking kill you.”
Drague stood slowly. His gut hung loosely, and his penis had gone flaccid. He had tattoos on his shoulders. One was a red devil. The other was the dragon Kim Albert had described.
“They’re gonna kill you,” I said.
“Shut up or you’re dead.”
The gun was on me. He had it by both hands.
“On the floor,” he screamed.
“I’m not armed,” I said, but I fell to my knees.
“Down.”
I dropped to my belly, my chin on the carpet. He came around the bed and stood over me. I could see his feet. His toenails were gnarled and ragged.
“Search him,” Drague yelled.
The woman padded toward me. Her toenails were painted red. They passed my face and she paused and then sprang for the door.
“You bitch,” he shouted. “Get back here.”
She kept running. He stood over me for a moment, and then I felt the gun barrel against the back of my head.
“Don’t move.”
I didn’t. He felt my waist at my back, slid his hand around to the front. Switched hands and did the other side. I could hear him breathing heavily. Cursing to himself.
“They’re coming to kill you,” I said.
“Shut up.”
The gun barrel pressed hard against the back of my head and I grimaced and then I felt him dig my wallet from the back pocket of my shorts. I heard him sorting through it, felt cards drop onto my back like playing cards from a dealer.
“Jack McMorrow? Who
the hell is Jack McMorrow?”
“That’s me. I’m a reporter.”
“I hearda you. Why’ve I hearda you?”
“Butch Casey. The mayor.”
“You been on TV. What is this? What the hell is this?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You need to shut up. What do you need to talk to me for?”
“Kim Albert.”
He paused.
“I don’t need to talk to you about anything. A newspaper reporter? What the hell kinda newspaper reporter comes in here? I need to blow a fucking hole in the back of your head is what I need to do.”
“They’re gonna kill you for Kim Albert. That’s why they’re looking for you.”
“Nobody’s looking for me.”
“Sure they are. That’s why you came here.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Somebody told me. But somebody’s gonna tell those other guys, too. Chico at the bar was trying to sell you for five thousand bucks.”
“What?”
“He’s doing the deal right now.”
His feet shifted and I saw him reach for clothes. He put on underwear, big blue bikinis.
“Don’t move. Don’t even think of it.”
Shorts went on next, baggy black ones. Then running shoes, Nikes. He scuffed them on, stumbling once, and didn’t lace them. The shoes came around me and Drague stood by the door.
“Up. Sit on the bed. Hands on top of your head.”
I moved slowly to my feet. Turned to face him. He was wearing a white T-shirt with the words ralph lauren on the front in big block letters, like it was the name of a college. He was wild-eyed over his black goatee. His gun hand was trembling.
“Talk. But you friggin’ move, I’ll blow your head off.”
I nodded. Swallowed, but my throat was dry.
“I ain’t kidding.”
I nodded again.
“They’re going to kill you for Kim Albert.”
“Who?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I think the mayor’s guys.”
“The mayor’s killed. You mean the dead mayor?”
“Yeah. But his friends are alive.”
“What are they looking for me for?”
“Kim Albert.”
“That’s all over.’
“It’s only over when you’re dead,” I said.