A Dangerous Man ht-3

by Charlie Huston

  I am evidence.

  My body and its fingerprints and its new face. The fingerprints will lead to Henry Thompson. The face will lead to the photo in the paper. The photo will lead to Miguel. And sooner or later, after the questions start, Miguel will lead to David.

  He has to be careful.

  But I don’t.

  OUR CAR CIRCLES to the ground. The operator opens the door and we climb out. Branko leads me past a cluster of kiddy rides and back to the boardwalk. We turn left and start the long walk to Brighton Beach.

  We walk past the fried clam shacks and the beer booths and the Cyclone and the Aquarium. And then I turn left, heading for the walkway that will take me to the Aquarium subway station. Branko catches up with me and walks by my side.

  – This is not the way.

  – This is the way I’m going.

  – David is waiting.

  – You should go then. You can tell him I’m not coming.

  – I cannot let you go.

  – What are you going to do, Branko? You can’t drag me screaming. You can’t kill me here. Go back to David. Tell him I said no.

  – I cannot leave you.

  – OK.

  We get to the station. There are two cops standing next to the token booth. I walk up to them.

  – Excuse me, officers?

  – Yeah?

  I point at Branko.

  – This guy wants to know which train to take to get to Queens.

  One cop looks at me.

  – Sorry, I’m from Staten Island.

  The other cop points at the map on the wall.

  – Let’s take a look.

  He walks to the map, taking Branko over with him. I wave.

  – Good luck.

  Branko smiles.

  – And to you.

  He keeps the smile on his face and follows the cop to the map. I buy a MetroCard from the booth, walk upstairs and get on a Manhattan-bound F train. Cops just when I needed them, twice in one day. Go figure. Maybe things are turning my way at last. But probably not.

  I HAVE TO talk to Mom and Dad. I have to tell them I didn’t kill David. And that means Adam and Martin will be coming, coming to interrogate them.

  I never wanted to talk to them again, never wanted to see them. There are no explanations for the things I have done. No way you can tell your mother and father that you have murdered people to keep them alive.

  So while I sit on the train, I try to figure out how I’m going to tell them all of that. But, oh yeah, first I have to figure out how I’m going to find their damn phone number.

  – What city please?

  – Port Orford, Oregon. A residential listing for Thompson?

  I get two Thompsons. The first is picked up by an answering machine. The voice is not my mother or my father. The second is answered by a small child who tells me that her daddy is not home and her mommy is in the bathroom. Each time, as the phone is ringing, a pit with no bottom opens in my stomach and I fall into it. I am so relieved. Then I dial information again and try it with my mother’s maiden name and my father’s middle name and every variation I can think of. None of them work. But I’m not done. I remember what Adam told me about how they found out where my folks live in the first place. I get off my bench, walk out of Washington Square Park, and go looking for an Internet cafe.

  MagickBulletMan: No way! I’ve been to the El Cortez in Las Vegas. I tried to stay in the room Thompson and Sandy Candy were in and they told me it was closed off.

  MrTruth: That’s because you didn’t bribe the security guard like I did. You think they’re going to let you in there if you ask nice? Don’t be an asshole, MBM. You want something you got to go get it. Just like Henry.

  MagickBulletMan: A) Don’t curse at me! B) You don’t know anything about Henry. C) YOU’RE LYING!!!

  MrTruth: FUCK YOU, MAGICKBOWELMOVEMENT!

  Robert Cramer: No shouting in here guys.

  MagickBulletMan: Sorry, Robert. I’m just sick of MrTruth acting like he’s the only one that knows anything about Henry and pretending like he’s been everywhere Henry was when we all know he’s lying.

  MrTruth: MBM wouldn’t know the truth if it fucked him in the ass. Henry Thompson was captured at the El Cortez by a Special Forces Black Ops Squad. They then manufactured evidence to make it appear that he had escaped. They want to maintain a fiction that he is at large so they can use him as a cover story for state killings in the future. In the meantime, Henry was reprogrammed and sent to the Middle East to hunt for terrorists and insurgents.

  MagickBulletMan: OMG! That’s what I’m talking about. Every time he comes here he has a new story. Last time he said Henry was working a fishing boat in Alaska.

  MrTruth: My story changes because I am constantly gathering evidence and trying to get to the heart of the greatest criminal mystery this country has ever known and unlike some assholes I care about Henry and what happened to him so I work to find out what really happened instead of just parroting the crap that the police and the FBI would have us think. FUCK FACE!

  Robert Cramer: I said no shouting, MrTruth.

  MrTruth: FUCK YOU ASS CRAMMER! Just because you wrote a couple books about Henry you think you own him. That’s bullshit! Henry’s story is an American narrative that belongs to all of us. It’s part of our heritage and you can’t shut up the truth!

  USER MRTRUTH HAS BEEN BOUNCED FROM THE SITE

  MagickBulletMan: Thanks, Robert. That guy drives me crazy.

  Robert Cramer: Well it is an open forum, MBM, so you need to be patient with all points of view.

  SF Giants Fan: You think there’s anything to what he says?

  MagickBulletMan: No way, SF. All that conspiracy stuff is crap. SF Giants Fan: What about the Alaska stuff?

  Robert Cramer: The truth is, Henry Thompson is most likely dead. In The Man Who Came Back I wrote about the many enemies he had made. More than likely one of these killed him during the Las Vegas rampage and his body was disposed of.

  MagickBulletMan: Who do you think killed him, Robert?

  Robert Cramer: I have a theory, but you’ll have to buy my new book when it comes out. I don’t claim to know the truth, but I think when The Man Who Got His Due is released it will answer pretty much all the key questions about Thompson’s crimes.

  SF Giants Fan: I was asking about Alaska because I heard that his folks had moved to Oregon. That’s not all that far from Alaska. Maybe that’s where he really is. MagickBulletMan: where did you hear that, SF? SF Giants Fan: On another site.

  MagickBulletMan: Which one?

  :

  :

  :

  MagickBulletMan: SF?

  SF Giants Fan: sorry. I think it was Danny Lester’s site.

  MagickBulletMan: Danny Lester sucks! Ru one of his goons?

  SF Giants Fan: No I just went to his site.

  MagickBulletMan: Danny Lester floods other sites with links to his. He lies all the time. and he’s notorious for logging onto sites under assumed identities. Ru Danny Lester?

  SF Giants Fan: No.

  MagickBulletMan: Robert, I think SF is Danny Lester. I think he’s here trying to find out where Henry’s parents are so he can harass them like he did right after Las Vegas.

  Robert Cramer: OK, just settle down, MBM. SF, are you associated with Danny Lester?

  SF Giants Fan: No.

  Robert Cramer: Well, you’ve never been on my site before and you’re asking about Thompson’s parents. Danny Lester is known to have made a habit of tracking down those poor people to harass them about Thompson’s whereabouts.

  SF Giants Fan: I am not Danny fucking Lester.

  Robert Cramer: I’ll take your word for that. But I would prefer that there were no swearing on this site. And just to be on the safe side I’m going to declare Thompson’s parents as an off limits topic for the rest of this session.

  MagickBulletMan: Good idea, Robert.

  USER SF GIANTS FAN HAS LOGGED OFF

  And so it goe
s.

  I haven’t read Robert Cramer’s The Man Who Came Back and I can pretty much guarantee I won’t be reading The Man Who Got His Due. I can guarantee these things because I did read his first book about me, The Man Who Got Away. Once around the block with that shit was more than enough. It was apparently also more than enough to put him on an equal footing with Sandy Candy and Danny Lester as an acknowledged Henry Thompson expert. I guess I was lucky to hit his site on a day when he was doing a live chat, but it doesn’t feel that way.

  I look out the window. It’s getting dark. I’ve been sitting in this place on Twelfth Street for hours, setting up free e-mail accounts on Hotmail and Yahoo and using them to create screen identities at various Henry Thompson chat sites. But there’s only so much traffic on the sites. Most of them are devoted to posts, and it takes far too long to generate responses to my questions. And the freaks on these sites, my fan base, are cliquey as hell. They chat, post, and e-mail to each other constantly, but newcomers aren’t made to feel overly welcome. It’s not as if I lack for Henry Thompson trivia knowledge to prove my devotion to the topic at hand, but just getting anyone to acknowledge you is a challenge. I spend two hours slowly creeping my way into a chat on www.therealhenrythompson.com, but when I try to get any actual information about my folks I’m shut down.

  I put my fingers on the keyboard. They’re shaking. Hours of sitting here, staring at the screen and drinking coffee have fried me out. I need to take a walk.

  I log off and go to the counter. The NYU student at the register checks how long I’ve been on and rings me up. I hand her some money. She looks up as she’s handing me my change.

  – Nice hat.

  I put my hand on my head. I took off the sunglasses and put my jacket on over my wife-beater, but I’m still wearing the I NY hat.

  – You want it?

  – No. I was being sarcastic.

  – Your loss.

  I walk outside and drop the hat in a garbage can.

  It really is her loss. A hat like this, worn by Henry Thompson? She could sell it on eBay to one of those assholes for a few hundred easy.

  I WALK UP Seventh Avenue.

  Adam and Martin won’t get on a plane for Oregon right away. They don’t know what I’ll do. They’ll want to find me before I can tell David anything. They’ll want to protect their aunt.

  I walk out of the West Village and into Chelsea.

  David won’t do anything right away, either. He’ll wait for my next move. He knows the thing I’m most likely to do is come walking in just like he wants. But I know him, too. I know he likes to talk about the bottom line, about the expense of revenge. But I’ve seen the bodies; men and women killed to send a message. I’ve broken bones for his spite.

  I walk out of Chelsea and into Midtown.

  The cops. I can walk into a precinct house and turn myself in. But it will take time. Time before I can get anyone to listen about the danger my parents are in. Time before anyone who can do something about it appears. And then for how long? For how long do the police protect them?

  No.

  David has to die. Adam has to die. Martin has to die. Branko has to die.

  But first I’ll take another shot at the Internet. See if I can find someone with a phone number. See if I can talk to them. God, I don’t want to talk to them.

  I’m standing on the corner of Forty-second and Seventh. The southern edge of Times Square. I look down toward Eighth Ave., the block they used to call the Deuce. When I first came to the City, it was lined with titty bars and porn shops. It had already been cleaned up a lot when I left, but now it looks like a giant mall. Movie theaters, a McDonald’s, Chili’s, a Hello Kitty store. And a huge Internet cafe. I stand there staring at it, and a guy in a bright orange poncho forces a piece of cardboard into my hand and walks on. I look at the card.

  It’s an advertisement for Legz Diamond, one of the old Midtown strip clubs. I look at the guy who gave it to me. He walks down the street, pulling the cards from the kangaroo pocket in his poncho and handing them to the men streaming past on the sidewalk, ignoring the women. Well, at least that hasn’t changed. I start down the block headed for the Internet place, flicking the card’s edge against my thigh as I walk.

  I guess it’s a good thing, all this renovation, all this cleanup. But I miss the old city. I miss that feel. The character. I look at the card again. At least they haven’t cleaned it up entirely. At least there are still strippers.

  Strippers.

  At least there are still strippers.

  Oh, God, there are still strippers.

  PRIVATE EYES IS a strip club. Being a strip club, it is just like all other strip clubs. I pay my twenty-dollar cover, get my hand stamped, pay eight bucks for a soda, and take a seat at the bar. I am the only patron at the bar. Just me, a scantily clad bartender and scantily clad cocktail waitresses picking up drinks. I’m alone at the bar because of Rudy Giuliani.

  While he was still mayor, Rudy got a public decency law passed that targeted strip bars and porn shops. The essence of the law is that adult trade can comprise no more than 49% of a business. The strip clubs’ answer to this dilemma was to wall off the majority of their physical space, and enclose their stripping in a carefully measured 49% of their total square footage. Inside that 49% they wanted room for patrons and strippers and little else. Thus the bar at Private Eyes features a wide expanse of elbow room because you can sit there all night without seeing a single bare tit. I sit there alone and let the bartender fisheye me.

  She’s wondering what’s wrong with me. She’s wondering what a guy is doing coming into a strip club and paying eight bucks for a soda and not going into the next room to look at the naked girls. She’s waiting for me to start talking. She’s expecting me to turn out to be a talker. I don’t talk. I sit and I sip and I don’t go into the next room. The minute I go into that room, dancers will start coming to my table and offering me lap dances. I don’t want a lap dance. I don’t want to look at naked women. I want to sit here and wait. So I wait. And after about half an hour I hear what I’ve been waiting for. I hear the voice of the DJ, who sounds like every other DJ in every other strip club ever.

  – That was Misty. Misty. Misty coming around to your tables right now. A special dance from Misty coming your way. And now we’re gonna bring out our special guest dancer. She’s here just for the weekend. You’ve seen her on Howard Stern and Sally Jessy. She had a feature spread in Hustler. The most infamous dancer in the world. Sandy Candy!

  The DJ plays her song. Van Halen, “Ice Cream Man.”

  I go in.

  SHE’S GOOD.

  I’ve never actually seen her dance, and she’s really very good. Not a lot of titty and ass shaking, more a slow strip with some low-key pole work. Classy, as these things go. And she looks great. Still wearing the Bettie Page cut. Never did get rid of the tattoos, the half circle of stars along her collarbone and the pin-ups on her shoulders. The crowd is thin this early, but the guys like her. She stays up on the main stage for a couple songs, then scoops her discarded dress from the steps, shimmies back into it, and comes off the stage to a nice round of applause.

  There are a couple fans with a table up front. She goes straight to them and kisses them on the cheek. They probably follow her from gig to gig. She signs some 8x10s they have and a couple copies of a book that I assume is the one she had ghostwritten last year. Then she starts circulating, working the tables. She’ll do lap dances. The rate will probably be double what the regular girls get. I could wait, but she’s pretty popular with the clientele, and if she hits a big spender she might just camp out with him all night. Any stripper would just as soon cash in on one guy as dance thirty or forty. I wave down a cocktail waitress.

  – What’ll ya have, baby?

  – Just a seltzer. And could you ask Sandy to come over?

  – Baby, she’ll get around. You want to talk to her now, all you got to do is go say hi.

  I hand her a C-note.

&nbs
p; – I’m shy.

  She smiles even wider than she already was, takes the bill from my fingers and gives them a little squeeze at the same time.

  – Sure thing, baby. You just sit tight.

  She walks across the room. Sandy is leaning against the back of a chair, casually letting her breasts rub the head of the man sitting there, talking to him and his friends, laughing at everything they say. The cocktail waitress touches her shoulder and whispers in her ear and points at me. Sandy looks over, squinting into the dark corner of the room where I am seated on a banquet. She smiles, waves, holds up a finger to tell me to wait just a second, blows me a kiss, and turns back to the guys she’s been working. I wait a little longer, turn down several dances, thank the cocktail waitress when she brings me my seltzer that she still charges me eight bucks for despite the hundred she has tucked in her pocket. And while I’m watching her walk away, a hand slides onto my shoulder and Sandy smiles at me and pinches my earlobe and I jump and say something like Hi, hello, uh, hi, and the blank look and utter lack of recognition leaves her face as soon as she hears my voice, but she doesn’t scream and turn and run, she just drops her hand from my shoulder and lifts it to her forehead.

  – Fuck. This is gonna cost a fortune in therapy.

  WE SIT AT the far end of the bar, away from the bartender and the customers coming in through the front door and making a beeline for the main room. She drinks red wine that comes in little single-serving bottles with screw-off caps. I pay.

  – You’re handling this pretty well.

  She pours her wine into a glass.

  – Yeah. That would be the Librium. There’s not much I don’t take well.

  Librium. Antianxiety agent. Narcotic. Addictive. This information reels itself off in my mind, followed immediately by a strong desire to ask if she has any on her. I drink my seltzer instead.

  – When did you start on that?

  She’s sipping her wine. She stops in midsip, puts the glass down and looks at me.

  – When? When did I start taking Librium? Shit, Henry, I don’t know, maybe about five minutes after I turned myself in to the cops and they started showing me pictures of the shit that happened in my house.