I look for the knife. It’s lost in the darkness. But Adam is crawling after something. I crawl after him. I grab his ankle and pull. Pain worms through my rib cage. I yank Adam’s right leg out from underneath him and he balances on his left leg and his arms and looks back at me, kicking and jerking, trying to rip free. I clutch his leg with both hands. He gives up on the knife and tries to turn himself around, coming back at me.
Martin is getting up. He stands, his right foot planted, his left raised gingerly, blood leaking from his shoe. He looks at the ground, bends, picks up his sap, and looks at me.
Adam flips himself onto his back and kicks me in the forehead with his left foot. I let go with one hand and feel at the cobbles, my fingers dig in around a loose stone and pull it free.
Martin is hopping toward me.
Adam’s left foot tags me on the ear. I heave my weight on top of his right leg and pin it. I raise the cobblestone and smash it down on his ankle. He screams and stops kicking me. I bring the stone down again and feel the bone give beneath it. He screams again. I hammer him once more. He doesn’t scream this time.
I let go of the leg and roll onto my back, the stone in my hand. I feint a throw at Martin’s leaking foot. The memory of the balls I fired into him at Coney pops up in his eyes. He flinches. I throw the cobblestone at his good knee. He’s back on the ground.
I take off my shoe.
I stand up.
Hunched over the pain in my ribs, I walk to where Martin is trying to figure out the best way to stand up on his mutilated foot and his cracked kneecap. He looks up at me. I hit his face with the shoe. I keep hitting him until I’m sure he gets the point. He collapses, blood and snot leaking from his nose.
Adam has pulled his leg up close to his body, his foot dangling from the pancaked ankle. One of his hands is scampering over the ground, feeling for his lost knife. I take a couple steps, bend, and pick up the knife.
I point at the ankle.
– Can you walk on that?
– No.
I put out my hand. He takes it. I pull, wincing at the pain in my ribs.
– Come on.
He leans on me, hopping on his good leg as I lead him over to the railing.
– Wait here.
He slumps against the rail, digs a cigarette out of his pocket and lights up.
I walk over to Martin. He’s out. I look at Jay. His face is cracked and swelling. Bubbles of blood inflate and pop between his lips. Miguel shifts. He groans and puts a hand to the back of his neck. His eyes open.
– What the. What the fuck, man?
– Jay’s hurt.
– Huh?
– Jay’s hurt.
– Where? What?
He sits up too fast and his eyes spin. He starts to go back down. I kneel. A new and different pain in my ribs. I hold him up until he stops spinning.
– OK?
– Yeah. Yeah. OK.
I point his face toward Jay.
– You see.
– Oh fuck. Oh shit.
– Can you stand now?
He stands.
– Get Jay in the bus.
– Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh, Jay.
He walks over to his friend, squats, slips his arms under him, and easily lifts him off the ground. He carries him toward the bus. I look at Martin. I still have the shoe in my hand. I tuck it into my armpit, bend over and grab Martin under his arms and drag him toward his brother. Miguel sticks his head out of the bus.
– He’s in. Should I call 911?
– Just wait in there. Put a towel on his face or something.
He disappears back inside the shuttered bus.
I get Martin to the rail. Adam reaches out and helps me pull him up and lean him there. His hands open and close a couple times and his puffed eyes open to slits. He grabs at the rail and holds himself up, but there’s nobody home yet.
I move my arm. The shoe drops out of my armpit to the ground. I push my white-socked foot back inside, not taking my eyes from Adam, his knife still in my hand.
– You been following them since you lost me?
Adam chains a fresh smoke, blood from his fingers smears the filter.
– No. We went home. Tetka Anna. There were things broken in the house. She was gone.
– Uh-huh.
– David.
– Uh-huh.
– Martin wanted to go there. To get her.
– Uh-huh.
– But they would have killed us. I thought you. David will want you. You tried to kill him.
– Yeah. He does.
– We followed your friends.
– You followed these guys, came looking for me?
– Yes.
– That wasn’t a bad idea.
– No.
– No, it wasn’t.
He takes a drag.
I blink. Wait to change my mind. But I don’t.
– A bad idea, was when you threatened to torture my parents.
The knife is very sharp. It pokes through his windpipe with great ease. I pull it out and blood sputters from the hole on a stream of cigarette smoke. His mouth opens and closes. The cigarette falls from his fingers. I bend over, grab his good leg, haul upward, and he tips over the rail into the bay. Martin turns his glazed, slitted eyes to me, but I am already pushing him back over the rail. He grabs at me, barely conscious of what is happening. His back is bent over the rail. He is held balanced only by the grip he has on my forearm. I rake the blade of the knife across his knuckles, and he falls.
I don’t bother to look. Adam with his slit throat, Martin with his lamed foot and knee and addled head, they will both drown. I turn and walk toward the bus, collecting Martin’s sap from the ground as I go.
Having made David’s end of the deal that much easier.
I climb into the bus. I close the door. I look at Miguel sitting on the floor next to Jay, holding a dirty T-shirt over his face.
– How is he?
Jay’s hand comes up and pushes the towel off.
– Fucking fine, Scarface. Fucking fine for a guy who’s gonna look worse than you.
And he passes out.
– You were fighting.
– What?
– You were fighting. You were drunk and you got into a fight with each other and you beat the crap out of him.
– Oh no. No, man. I don’t want to say that.
– Listen. If it’s a fight between friends, no matter how bad it is, the cops won’t fuck around if neither of you presses charges.
– Oh, man. That sucks. That just. It sucks. I don’t want people to think. Fuck! Who were those guys?
– They were. They’re like business rivals. Like people who have a problem with David.
– Shit! Oh, shit. Are they? What if they-Look. Don’t worry about those guys. I ran those guys off. They won’t be a problem.
I take a left on Maiden Lane, drive another couple blocks, and pull over on Gold Street.
– Come here.
Miguel gets up. I push the button that opens the door and get out of the driver’s seat. I try to lift the box, but it hurts my ribs too much.
– Pass me that thing.
I go down the steps. Miguel hands the box down. I set it on the curb.
– Thanks. There’s a hospital just up the street here. Beekman, I think, at the university. Just drive straight up and start honking.
– Right, OK.
– And, Miguel, it was a fight. You beat him up.
– Man.
– Do it. Handle it that way. Cops go poking into tonight and shit will hit the fan.
– OK. OK. Got it. What about. Wait. What about you?
– I took off when everybody else did.
– No. Where are you? What are you?
I put my hand on the box.
– I have to take care of this thing.
– OK, yeah, but you’ll be back. Here. You’ll.
– Just call your agent, OK. Him you can tell anything you want.
He won’t be letting your ass get in any trouble.
– OK. But what?
– Tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow, OK? At the game.
– Yeah. Yeah. OK, man. I. This is fucked up, man.
– Take Jay to the hospital.
– Yeah. Yeah, man.
He gets behind the wheel, looks at me, nods, and pushes the button that closes the door. I watch the party bus lurch down the street. Then I drag the box back to Water Street where I can find a cab.
It’s heavy.
The fucking box is heavy.
And it hurts me.
THERE WAS THIS bar Yvonne liked to go drinking at in Brooklyn. Nights when neither of us had to work at Paul’s, we’d sometimes take the A train over to the Heights. We’d walk up Henry Street to Clark, to this place. It was a dive, all our favorite places were dives. I’m not sure how she found it. We’d drink. I’d suck down bottles of Bud with a few Turkeys neat thrown in to keep me going. She’d have Corona and shots of tequila. Tequila made her crazy in bed. We’d play pool and darts, get good and drunk, and on summer nights we’d walk back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge, stopping a couple times along the way to make out. Those were good dates.
The owner of the place was nuts. He was a bit of a hood. Yvonne told me he was the local loan shark or something. Whatever else he was, he was crazy. He had this big dog, a huge mongrel. The dog would wander around the bar, sniffing the floor, looking for a peanut or a piece of beef jerky that might have been dropped. The owner left the dog in the bar overnight as protection for the place. There was a big old hotel across the street, a transient hotel that was chock-full of crackheads. He worried about them breaking into the bar. He had a training program for the dog, a program designed to make it hate crackheads. He’d do it a few times a week, whenever one of the crackheads got hard up enough to need the cash.
One of them would come across from the hotel and knock on the window until he got the owner’s attention. The owner would ignore him for awhile, then finally look over and nod. The crackhead would start banging on the glass, and the dog would run over, barking. The crackhead would walk back and forth in front of the place, banging on the window and the door as the dog barked and the owner knelt down next to it and whispered in its ear.
– Kill. Kill the nigger. Kill.
The dog would be utterly spazzed out and the owner would nod at the crackhead again. The crackhead would come over to the door, edge it open, and stick his arm inside with a jacket or an old sweatshirt wrapped around it. The dog would latch on and jerk the arm back and forth as the crackhead struggled to keep from being pulled inside, and the owner laughed his ass off. After about a minute he’d stop laughing, drag the dog off, and pass the crackhead five bucks. The crackhead would wander off looking for his man, unwrapping his arm to check out the massive bruises that would be there for weeks.
After the show was over, anyone in the place who hadn’t seen it before would tend to put their drinks down and take off. It wasn’t the kind of joint most people felt comfortable in. But if you stuck it out, saw the scene go down a few times and kept coming back, the owner figured you must be his kind of people. We’d go in a couple times a month. Saw the whole thing three or four times. But I don’t think either of us ever considered ourselves the owner’s kind of people.
Anyway, if it wasn’t for that bar, I wouldn’t know about the hotel. So there’s that.
THE BAR IS gone. There’s something there in its place, some kind of cafe or diner. But the hotel is still across the street, right on the corner. I give the cabbie a couple extra bucks and he carries the box inside for me. The place is cleaned up. I see a kind of plaque above the check-in that tells me they’re using it as housing for the Brooklyn campus of Long Island City College, but the desk clerk is still housed behind a couple inches of Plexiglas, and there are still crackheads in evidence.
– I need a room.
She doesn’t say anything, just slips a registration card under the window. I find a pen on the end of a chain and fill in the information. I don’t have the energy to make up anything new so I just use the vitals from my Las Vegas identity.
– Can I pay cash?
She looks at me this time, takes in the dirty jacket and undershirt. I wiped my hands clean of blood in the party bus, but they’re still filthy.
– Yeah. Gotta leave a deposit.
– Sure.
I ask for a room next to the elevator and she gives it to me. I pay for the night, plus an extra night as the deposit, plus extra to have the TV switched on, plus another deposit to have the phone. I give her the cash. She gives me a receipt and a key and buzzes me into the lobby. I drag the box in, wait for the elevator, go up two floors, drag the box across the hall and into my room, close the door and do all the locks, collapse on the bed and close my eyes.
Immediately I see Adam and Martin.
I open my eyes.
Jesus. Jesus.
Who are they? Where do they all come from? All of these orphans I collect. All of these brothers I’ve killed.
THERE ARE SOME take-out menus in the night table. I call the twenty-four-hour deli down the street, a place called Pickles & Peas. I can remember stopping there with Yvonne on the nights we walked home across the bridge. We’d buy cans of beer and tuck them into brown paper bags so we could sip them as we went. I call and get a woman with a heavy Korean accent. She’s fine taking my order for a sandwich and bottles of water, but we run into problems when I ask if they have any first aid stuff. Finally I work out that they don’t have anything but Band-Aids. I ask if she has duct tape.
– Duck tape?
– Duct tape.
– No duck. Deli. No grocery.
– Duct. Tape. Silver tape. Sticky.
– Silver tape! Yes! Silver tape. Yes.
– One roll, please.
– Yes. Yes. Where?
– The hotel. Room 214.
– Yes, yes. Ten minute.
– Thanks. Wait!-Yes?
– Bleach? Do you have bleach? Clorox?
– Yes. Bleach, yes.
– Send a bottle of bleach.
– Yes. Yes. Ten minute.
I hang up. Exactly ten minutes pass before the desk clerk calls and tells me I have a delivery. I tell her to send it up.
The delivery guy smiles when I open the door. He hands me the receipt. I give him some money and tell him to keep the change. He smiles again and bobs his head. I take the bag, close and relock the door.
I turn the bag upside down and empty it on the bed. Everything tumbles out. I crack one of the bottles of water and drink. I tried the water from the taps before I called the deli; it tasted like rust. I drink half the bottle in one go, my ribs bursting with pain every time I swallow. I take the half-empty bottle and the bleach and go into the bathroom.
I pull up the plug in the sink and start to fill it, then turn on the shower. I take off all my clothes and toss my wife-beater, underwear and socks into the shower. When the sink is full, I turn it off and pour a cup of bleach into it. I climb into the hot shower and stand under the water. I unwrap a tiny bar of soap, bend over and pick up my underwear and start scrubbing at the urine stains from when Mickey’s mother had her gun stuck in my neck and I almost completely pissed myself. I give the wife-beater and the socks a good wash, too. Then I scrub the sweat and dirt and blood from my skin and hair.
The bruise on my ribs is huge. It’s darkest about eight inches under my armpit, and then spreads in various shades of purple, black, blue and red down my side and around to my sternum. I have to wash that side very carefully. Even the jets of water hurt.
I get out and dry myself, blotting the bruise softly. I wring out my whites and drop them in the sink with the water and bleach. My mouth tastes funky. I should have bought a toothbrush and some toothpaste. Oh well.
I go back into the room with the towel wrapped around my waist, get my sandwich and another bottle of water, and ease myself onto the bed, propped
up at the headboard by the two flat pillows. I unwrap the sandwich and take a bite. They put mayonnaise on it, even though I asked them not to. Shit, I hate mayonnaise. I take off the top piece of bread, scrape off as much mayo as I can, put the sandwich back together and eat.
There’s a remote chained to the nightstand. Students must be as bad as crackheads. I turn on the TV and start flipping. I flip and chew. There’s not much, just very-basic-cable stuff. I roll around the same dozen or so channels while I eat. When the sandwich is done I get up and go into the bathroom. I drain the sink, rinse the bleach from my things, and hang them on the shower rod. I look at my jacket and jeans. I take a damp cloth and rub at the worst of the stains, then give up. I go back into the room where I’ve left the TV tuned to the Madison Square Garden Network. I get back on the bed, pick up the remote, but before I can change the channel I see Miguel’s face. He’s on the TV.
I panic for a second. Then I realize that they are not breaking a story about the Mets’ top prospect and two bodies that are floating in the Hudson Bay. It’s just a rebroadcast of the day’s Cyclones game. I watch it. I watch how well Miguel plays. I watch the homer Jay told me about. I watch.
I watch a baseball game.
It’s not a great game. Hell, it’d barely be a good game if I didn’t know one of the players. But that doesn’t matter. I watch the game. Somewhere in the eighth inning I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. The chatter of the announcers, the hum of the crowd, the crack of the bat; all the sounds of who I once was, they lull me finally to sleep. And that’s really the best part.
I SIT ON the couch with the controller in my hands, trying to make the players on the screen do what I want them to. We’ve been playing for hours now.
– This is boring.
I hit a button and the pitch flies at The Kid’s hitter. He slams it, the ball shoots down the right field line and he clears the bases, scoring two more runs.
– Shit! That was foul.
The Kid laughs.
– Argue the call. Get kicked out of the game. I love that.
– This sucks.
– For you. I’m having a great time.
I look at the score, 63-1, top of the sixth.
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