"I know damn well what you were looking at. Let me guess. All alone for Christmas? Or was it a girl?"
I shrug. He's right on both counts, but it's not his business.
"Whatever the reason it's not good enough. Believe me, it's a long, cold drop to a hungry old sea. Tomorrow may seem like a long way off, but it always comes around. Why don't you stick around and see if I'm right?"
I give him another shrug. It's a good movement, and I don't have to let go of the guy line to perform it.
He's not done talking.
"Take a look at the statistics. Christmas time, folks just seem to want to kill themselves. If you hold on until the new year, things'll look a hell of a lot brighter."
I shake my head.
"You're wrong about the statistics. I wasted enough years as a psych major to know them. There's more people who kill themselves after Christmas than before it. Santa jumps down the chimney, and the Times Square ball drops off a building. Do the math."
He grinned at that.
"Then forget about statistics. They'll only give you a headache. Depress you enough to make you want to kill. Come on. There's lots to live for."
"Look. I was just curious was all. It comes from being a psych student. Even if I wanted to do it, I've got every right. I've been bouncing off the walls of an empty apartment for the last six months. The woman I figured I'd marry ran off with some asshole with a beard and a briefcase full of bad poetry."
The waves are singing to me now, and I'm thinking about a dance club. A little music, a little mindless shaking, and a little alcohol might be just the ticket.
The night wind howls across the guy wires like a maddened harpist. I can feel them humming and thrumming through my winter gloves. My feet are getting tired, and it's too damn cold to stand here forever.
The old man grabs me by the shoulder.
"You think you got it bad? You see any crowds hanging around me? I've been living alone for a hell of a lot longer than any six months. Try six years, and you're close. I've seen a hell of a lot of people take a flyer off this bridge, and most of them had better reasons than you."
I pull off his grip.
"What the hell is this, tough love?"
"Love ain't got nothing to do with it. I'm just being practical, is all. Just give it until the new year. If by then your mind hasn't changed, you can come on back. The bridge has been waiting a hell of a long time. The ocean, even longer. Neither of them are going anywhere."
I'm getting bored with this any way. I hadn't really planned on jumping. This was just an experiment. A private joke. A trick.
He extends his hand. I reach for it, swinging my leg over the railing.
For a moment I am off balance.
He catches my hand and holds it fast.
A smile slices across his face, and in the dim sodium light I can see his eyes gleaming like a small boy at play.
"Fooled you," he said, and pushes me backwards.
My arms swing wildly, penduluming in a vain search for lost balance. My feet slide away from under me, betrayed by a patch of hidden ice.
All at once I am airborne and falling fast.
I see the old man laughing, holding his sides in near hysteria. I hear my own scream racing past my chilblained ears.
Smell the sea's salty dead breath and feel....
Back in the toll booth the old man's partner hands him a cup of coffee. He does this without looking up from a three year old National Geographic.
"Another leaper?" he asks.
The old man hides his smile in the coffee cup before answering.
"Yeah, another leaper."
SOUL SURVIVOR
"Two, four, six..."
I've been counting them for the last five years. Once a week. Usually on Sundays.
They keep vanishing.
"...eight, ten, twelve..."
I count them twice today. Twice to be sure.
"...fourteen, sixteen."
One can't be too careful with one's socks.
I insert the necessary silver. The third coin jams. Like some kind of anti-charm, it is always the third that jams.
I curse and bang the coin slot, freeing the offending bit of lucre. With a satisfied belch the dryer rumbles into action. Leaping like caged salmon, the damp clothes begin their slow caper.
I find a seat. Take shelter behind a tattered yellowing copy of National Geographic.
When I look up I see her. Reclosing my dryer door. I couldn't say how I'd missed her approach, but there she stood. A hag, ancient and wrinkled as my unstarched shirts, standing in front of my dryer with two soggy unmatched socks.
"Stop!" I shout, vaulting over the magazine rack and the woman bending over in front of the magazine rack.
Like a crippled cat, I almost land on my feet, skidding in a pool of liquid detergent, falling face first into a basket of unsorted laundry. I am interred beneath soiled sweat socks, tainted underwear and a small child's suspiciously stained trousers.
The hag ran for the door while I was trying to stand up. The owner of the basket, the woman whom I had vaulted over, gave me some assistance with a few well-aimed kicks. Fortunately she was wearing soft sneakers.
I pushed past the kicking woman and grabbed the hag, who has paused long enough to reach into someone else's dryer. Leaning with my weight, I slammed the dryer door against her arm.
But she's stronger than she looks, and apparently ambidextrous. With her free arm she catches hold of my throat, nearly ripping out my Adam's apple.
"Help me," I call out to the Laundromat patrons, but to no avail. The kicking woman has returned to her washer. The attendant is calling out for someone to cover his bet on the hag.
I'm tempted by the odds he's offering, but for the moment I was too busy strangling to death. I thrust my entire weight against the dryer door, like a renegade slam dancer, vainly trying to break the hag's arm.
"Stop, stop," I croak.
I sink to my knees. Nearly blacking out. The hag frees her arm and pulls a knife from beneath her skirt. She's making a very determined effort to simultaneously throttle and eviscerate me, when I yield.
"Take the socks."
She turns for the door, socks in hand. No one tries to stop her.
"Wait," I rattle, reaching out one weak hand to clutch at her bony ankle. "Just tell my why you need them so badly?"
"Oh I don't need them. These are for my master."
"Your master?"
"The Devil. He buys all the socks I can sell him," she shrugs. "It's honest money."
"Why would he need so many socks?"
"Hooves are hard on socks, not to mention the hellfire. That's what the Devil's really after. Soles. The other stuff about souls, that's just propaganda, started by you-know-who."
"Why doesn't he just sew up the old ones?"
"Who has time for darning, when you're too busy damning?"
"Okay," I said, trying to clear my throat. "But why the odd ones?"
"The Devil's work. He just loves to see misery spread."
And then she swung the knife.
She had amazing aim, and a sense of humour to boot.
When she left someone was kind enough to call an ambulance. Seemed I was bleeding on their laundry.
Well, I guess she fixed me for sure, but I still can't keep from laughing. I'm one of the few living men who has truly beat the Devil. He can have all the odd socks he wants from me.
I'm not miserable.
Still, I wonder who finally opened that dryer door, and found what the hag left there?
It's one thing to find an extra sock in the dryer.
But when that sock has a foot in it...?
DOPPLE DRIBBLE
His name was Adam Kyler. He had eyes as black as jujubes and a curl on his forehead that reminded me of Superman. He was nine years old. It wasn't his fault he was standing in the alley, but I shot him just the same.
All I saw was a shadow, you understand – from somewhere out of the corner
of my instinct. Just the impression that someone was standing there, watching me run out from where the bodies of the three men I'd just shot lay dying.
The boy didn't hear a thing. The silencer I'd jury-rigged on to the end of my Glock had that much shush left. He didn't hear the bullet that blew his voice box right out of his throat. He died quickly enough, I suppose. Just shush-bang, and then it was over, nothing left but the sound of the basketball that he'd chased into the alley way – thump, thump, thump.
It was supposed to be an easy deal. Bing-bang, in and out. I mean, how was I supposed to know that Chico Fat would have inspired that kind of loyalty in his bodyguard?
Here's how it all started.
Chico Fat ran the most crooked poker party east of Poughkeepsie, and I played patsy to his take-me-card, big time. I was into Chico Fat for more than I could pay him off in a couple of lifetimes.
So I decided to kill him.
It should have been easy, like I said, but should-have, would-have, and could-have were the three stooges of destiny, always hungry for another ripe fall guy.
Namely me.
I walked in through the front door, cool and calm and ready to bounce. I had it all down by the numbers. I'd stick my gun in the big man's face, and we'd reason.
And then I'd shoot him.
He was supposed to have been alone, only he wasn't. He was with a customer. Some guy with a tattoo of Jesus on the cross carved on the back of his shaven skull bone. A string of purple barbed wired dangling from his left ear lobe. He looked like he probably answered to the name of Screaming Pigvomit.
Pigvomit had a pretty good set of reflexes. He spun around in his chair when I kicked down the door. The next thing I know the guy jumps at me. I mean he freaking came out of his chair like he was part Doberman, going straight for my throat.
Then things got real slow. I could see Pigvomit floating towards me like a playful helium-filled guided missile, while Chico Fat's bodyguard was stepping out in front of Chico Fat's desk and dragging a pistol out from under his extra-extra-large dirty gray sports jacket. At the same time Chico Fat was standing up and pulling out a sawed off shotgun that was big enough to blow away half of Cleveland.
It happened so fast and so slow that all this time I still kept thinking how easy this gig was supposed to go down. The next thing I know I'm staring at Pigvomit's ugly face down the barrel of my Glock. I squeezed the trigger and things got real fast again.
Silenced or not, the bullet sounded loud to me, BOOOOM, and I wished I'd thought to bring earplugs, only it must have been twice as loud to Pigvomit. At this range it blew clear through Pigvomit's skull cap, blowing half of Pigvomit's meager brain mass into and onto the bodyguard's left shoulder.
Which is a good thing for me because at this point the bodyguard has his pistol out. From this close up it looks like the pistol has got a barrel wider than the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. What was left of my first bullet and Pigvomit's brains slowed him down just long enough for me to get a bullet into his chin.
Which made a hell of a dimple and caused him to sink to his knees, which was why his face disappeared when Chico Fat blew his wad and fired his shotgun through his own bodyguard, straight at me.
I half-dropped, half-fainted to the ground, rolled like I thought I was in a Quentin Tarantino movie and put three quick shots into Chico Fat's desk and everybody except me got real dead, real quick.
It was real quiet, and that was the scariest part of it. I mean it was so quiet I could hear my own sweat drop. I was begging myself to scream, only I didn't. Every part of me wanted to run, but I stuck around long enough to torch his office. I did a pretty good job of it, even though I dropped the tin of lighter fluid twice because my hands were slick with fear sweat and lighter fluid and spattered blood and my pack of Redbird matches refused to sing and my nerves jittered like the lead foot of a coked up swing musician.
Once I was sure that Chico Fat's desk and filing cabinet were going up like skyrockets on the Fourth of July I headed for the back door. It took me two, maybe three minutes tops. It went sweet and quick and maybe a little wetter than I figured but I figure I'm done. I mean in this neighborhood the cops all wait to read about it in the morning paper before they bother to make their crime scene reports.
I was still keyed up on adrenaline and fear when I stepped outside and caught that movement out of the corner of my eye, and it could have been a cat and it could have been a cop, only it wasn't either of the above.
It was that kid.
I saw him once, clearly, just before the bullet hit him. A little Italian-looking kid with a cowlick hooked over his forehead like Superman, only the bullet forgot how to bounce off of his chest. I got one half a second's full of his black jujube eyes boring like laser beamed heat rays into my memory for a twice or two of forever when the bullet blew it all away.
It gets weird from here on out, because I don't remember much of anything, but I guess I must have knelt over the kid's body, like I figured I could save it by saying a prayer, and then I guess I dug two pennies out of my pocket and set them down where the little boy's eyes had been, because when they finally caught me, it was the bloody fingerprints on those two pennies that sealed my verdict.
When I came out of the alley I knew enough to be cool. I slowed down, like I was out for a Sunday stroll, even though it was only Wednesday night. Then I tucked my hands in my pockets and whistled, something I'd heard my grandmother play on her old stereo, Beethoven's Fifth.
Soo-soo-soo-sooooo.
Soo-soo-soo-sooooo.
That's when I first heard it. That damned basketball, bouncing up behind me like Wilt Chamberlain was trying to sneak up on me.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
I turned around, only I couldn't see a thing. Just the street and a couple of rummies crawling around outside a burnt out barroom like mourners standing outside a funeral, and a cat that was sniffing around near the mouth of a sewer drain.
Then I heard it again.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
Lazy and slow, like a salesman's knock on a hot summer day. I heard it just in back of my left ear, like it was somebody trying to get my attention in a crowded room.
There's a word for it.
Insidious.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
Slow and insidious.
And relentless.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
That's when I started to run.
It followed me clear across the city. By this time I'm running and looking over my shoulder, and jumping at every shadow I think I see. I must look like one of those crazy street bums you see every now and then, just running right down the center of the road, screaming and yelling at nothing.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
I remember it sounding like it was getting closer, like it was trying to climb right inside my brain, and I kept thinking there's no way in hell I ought to be able to hear that thumping over the pounding of my heart and the banging of my footsteps. I'm breathing hard and heavy, like a half-backer headed for the goal posts of hell, and my heart is shouting in the back of my throat, and the coat I'm wearing feels sweaty and gross only I don't want to take the time to take it off for fear of that thumping sound so close behind me.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
Then I swing around a corner. I figure I've lost it, because I don't hear it following me anymore.
Now that I've stopped having a galloping heart attack I can hear the sirens. Either someone has finally called the cops over at Chico Fat's place, or else somebody got excited over the notion of a full grown man running down a New York street in the middle of the evening waving a silenced gun.
I want to slow down, to try and act cool. As scared as I am, I sure don't want to wind up serving a term at Riker's. But every time I start to stop, I think about that thumping sound.
So I kept running, leaning towards the shadows and trying to blend in, and then there's this pile of crates do
wn by a wharf, a bunch of them thrown around like so many kid's blocks, all empty and too big to be easily dragged away. It looked to me like an oasis in the middle of a blue suited Gobi, so I crawled in under one of the boxes, and waited.
I was always the best at hide-and-go-seek in my neighborhood. Nobody knew how to lay low like me. See, whenever you're running and trying to hide, there's always this half a reflex that keeps you looking over your shoulder, and that's usually when you get caught. As long as a fellow is quiet and calm, odds are he'll remain hidden until the end of the game.
That's what I'm counting on. Staying hidden until there's enough of a backlog that the cops have to go and chase some other poor asshole. See, I figure they figure I'm just some harmless nut. It all depends on what they got called in on. If they're down here looking for whoever shot up Chico Fat's, then they might want to hang around a while. But if they're just down here following up a complaint about some nut running down the road waving a gun that was probably a toy, they're apt to give it up and go home, or where ever the hell cops go when they're done for the day.
I crossed my fingers and kept real quiet. A couple of times I heard footsteps going by, and once somebody even kicked the boxes on the edge of the pile, but I kept trying to think about those dead rats that die in tenement walls. Nobody ever finds them. They just rot and stink their way into forever soup. That's what I want to do right now. Just lie here under the boxes for the next couple of forevers or so, and hope the world will quietly forget about me.
For a while, it worked. I heard a couple of squad cars pulling away. There was still a few voices out there, a few diligent policemen plugging away, but I knew that sooner or later they'd receive orders that would send them somewhere else.
For the time being I'd just have to keep still and wait.
Then I heard it again.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
Christ, it's that ball again. They'll hear it, and be on me like lice on rice.
Thump - thump - thump - thump.
It was getting closer, thumping louder.
Steve Vernon Special Edition Gift Pack, Vol 1 Page 24