by Brian Hodge
That covers the stories in this book. I’ve written ten times the number that has made the cut to appear here, and I hope to see many of the others in later volumes. I hope I’ll find some new readers, particularly in the UK, who haven’t experienced my work – I hope I’ll inspire a few of you to search out my novels. Most of all I hope you’ll be entertained.
DNW
2006
Defining Moments
The moon rose slowly, sending silver tendrils of light through the bare branches of the trees. Groping shadow fingers slid across the cool white stone images and the leaf-coated ground. Albert watched, fingering the hilt of his knife idly and leaning back in the arms of a stone angel. His angel.
The blood on the knife was sticky, not quite fresh, and not quite dry. The angel watched in stoic silence, as always. She never judged. That was one reason Albert came to her when things didn’t go quite the way he’d planned. Like the blood. He hadn’t planned to stab anyone. He had planned to snatch a thick wallet from some guy with too much money to really care about the loss, get a bottle and sit with Chance and Maudlin at the factory. There would have been a fire, maybe someone with a guitar, or a harmonica. Maybe even a stray girl or two, if their own business was slow enough to drive them to the fire.
Not tonight. Albert had seen the guy leaving Sid’s and spotted him for a sucker. Sucker-man had worn jeans and a black t-shirt like everyone else in the club, but they weren’t quite old enough, the t-shirt still bright and colorful, and the jeans, not Levis, or Lee, some other name. Long and Italian. The guy’s hair was combed just right. Slumming. Albert had summed it up in an instant, and made his move.
The alley where he’d waited was three blocks from Sid’s, far enough away to keep the bouncers and the staff off his ass, close enough to be certain the mark wouldn’t reach his car or snag a cab before he passed. Same plan as a hundred other nights that he’d kept carefully spaced far enough apart not to draw unwanted attention from the police. Reaction time for the local finest was slower near Sid’s. They didn’t have a lot of sympathy for someone dumb enough to bring cash to that particular area of town. Most of Albert’s marks had been business men, and the only thing they’d lost was the cash they’d meant to blow two streets over on hookers. Not many such thefts were reported; they spawned too many embarrassing questions.
It was a good plan, and when Albert’s shoulders had pressed to the brick wall of the alley, his tall rangy form cloaked in shadow, the hilt of the knife had felt good in his hand. Other men clocked in 9 to five, Albert earned his living in the span of short, defining moments.
Heels, clicking in a slow, uneven staccato against the sidewalk had announced sucker-man’s approach, and Albert’s muscles tensed. The mark was not a big man, but looks could deceive. Albert didn’t work with guns, so he had to use extra caution. Not everyone accosted with a blade was afraid. Not everyone was wise enough to fear the sharp cut or the hot flow of blood. Albert was a tall, thin young man, hair dropping over his shoulders in front and back. His eyes were a deep, piercing grey, and his voice was low enough to finish off the image. Most times it was enough.
The steps drew even with the mouth of the alley and Albert moved, driven by instinct, gripping the man’s arm and spinning him quickly into the alley and against the wall. The blade rose, flickered in the dim-light, and pressed blade-first to the man’s throat.
“Don’t do anything stupid we’ll both regret,” Albert said, voice low. “Pull your wallet out, let it drop behind you.”
Silence followed, punctuated by heavy, quickened breath. Smooth, it was going as smooth as any other night of his life, and Albert had gotten careless. Too many alleys, too many suckers. Too many easy marks and Albert had forgotten the first rule of the streets. Trust no one. Believe nothing.
The man slipped his hand back to his hip pocket, just as Albert told him. The wallet slid into view, dropped, and for that split second, Albert’s concentration wavered. He watched the wallet fall, watched the little puff of dust as it hit the alley’s floor, and in that moment, everything had changed.
A knee slammed into Albert’s groin with incredible quickness. All thought focused on that point of contact. Albert doubled over, pressed the blade forward and down. The blade was sharp and the man’s skin soft. Albert’s knees hit the street and the man staggered to the side, toward the alley. That made all the difference in the world. If he’d staggered to the street, in that moment, someone would have seen, and Albert’s life, such as it was, would have been over. Albert himself had been in no condition to prevent it.
The ache was still there, hours later. Albert’s eyes burned from the tears dried in the corners. No more helpless moment in a man’s life, but thankfully spent alone. He’d seen the wallet, flat in the dirt and trash of the alley floor, where the man had dropped it. It was thick, black leather with some designer name emblazoned across the back. Albert’s first instinct when he could move had been to grab it and be gone. Then he’d looked deeper into the alley. The trail of blood was thick and the man hadn’t moved. Albert knew where he’d stuck his blade, and he knew this one was not getting up again, ever. No hookers over on Fifth or slumming at Sid’s to listen to the music. He was gone, and Albert had sent him. That wallet was a trap he couldn’t allow himself to fall into.
He flipped it open with his knife, worked the blade inside and pressed it tightly through the wad of bills. Mostly twenties, a couple of hundreds, more than Albert had counted on. Dragging that money free without actually touching the wallet, he’d staggered up and out of the alley, pressed the cash into his jeans pocket and slid the knife into his waistband. He was coated in blood, but it was dark, and there was no one but his Angel close enough to see.
By now the others would be half into their bottles and their night-dreams, fighting off the shadows with music and chemicals. Maudlin would be dancing, maybe to their music, maybe to her own. Chance would be playing his harmonica and watching. They wouldn’t miss Albert for another hour or so, if at all.
The shadows swelled, curling down around him. In his pocket, the wad of bills sat, cold and silent. The blood dried slowly on his clothes, and on the blade, and Albert sat, drawing idle characters in the dirt with the sharp tip. Defining moments.
Albert leaned back and stared up at the angel’s dingy, stone visage. Everything had changed. The mark was not home with bruised dignity and empty wallet. He would soon find his own angel, or at least a fine granite or marble marker. Albert was not playing his guitar, leaning back on a rooftop with his friends performing warped renditions of Bob Dylan and the Indigo Girls; he was leaning on the angel of his own night’s creation, enough money in his pocket to shift his focus.
He knew he would have to clean up soon. He would need a new knife, because the one in his hand would have to be buried in the mud at the bottom of the river before dawn. All that would remain would be Albert, and the money. His angel stared into the darkness, oblivious to the magnitude of the moment. Albert leaned back, closed his eyes and let the cool stone leech the tension from his back. Only clear thought would bring him through this one unscarred.
One day he’d been a long haired boy with attitude and a nebulous future. One, long moment and he’d transformed to a killer with a pocket full of cash, and a mind adrift in questions.
The breeze washed over his skin. The drying blood itched, but he ignored it. He let his thoughts drift back. The alley flickered across the screen of his mind’s eye, but he rewound past that. That image was clear enough. He slipped back through the hours and across the days. The stars twinkled against a dark sky one night older than the one he’d banished beyond his eyelids.
In a rare lull between songs, Chance had been talking. That was what Chance did. He talked, or he played the harmonica, or both, an endless cacophony of sound, images blurred to notes and words and back again. With sweet red wine running through his blood, mixing with straight lines of pure white crystal, Albert had almost been able to make sense of it.
Fragments of thought blended with Chance’s voice.
Possibilities. Every moment a sixty-second world, whirling with possibilities. Moments. Defining the world, defining the universe and changing with each breath, each motion. Every sound is a vibration on the strings of a cosmic Stratocaster, shifting the vortex of all we see or seem, dreams within so many dreams the night swallows us. The moments define us. We define the moments. Reach out, snatch them from the ether and clasp them tight to your heart before they shift.
The sound shifted to the soft, sweet strains of Chance’s harmonica, vibrations in the ether. Maudlin swung closer, turned to Albert and captured him easily in a snare of eyes and hips and flashing lace. Her movements pounded to the beat of his heart. Her hips swung toward him, iron to a magnet, and he stared. Nothing else existed. The music faded to a deep, dark place far away and time slowed. The black velvet melted to her skin as the crystal pounded against Albert’s chest from the inside. The night sky beyond her shoulders flickered with brilliant stars and pale moonlight. Maudlin’s eyes sparkled in competition with those stars, her hair as black as the velvet … as black as the sky … and her face as pale as the moon. Her lips curled in a soft smile as she danced, drawing Albert into the memory.
And then it was gone. Cold stone poked into the bones of his spine and the breeze, once cool, had grown chill. Albert shivered and the images dispersed. He opened his eyes and all that met his gaze was the cold, un-emotional glare of the angel. She did not dance, nor did the deep strains of the harmonica permeate the air. Still the moment shifted, and Albert drew his legs up slowly, stretching to ease the stiffness in muscle and bone, and levered himself to his feet.
The moon was preparing to depart her throne, and the wind had picked up, sending leaves dancing through the gravestones randomly. Each leaf skittered off along its own path. The wind vibrated the strings of the world, and each fate was decided. Albert shook his head slowly, clearing the cobwebs and headed off through garden of the dead. He turned, just for a moment, and glanced over his shoulder. Shadows slipped oddly over his Angel’s face. In that moment, she smiled. Without hesitation, Albert turned and disappeared into the shadows.
The sun was just dipping red-orange and sticky behind the skyline as Albert mounted the fire-escape. Shadows lengthened slowly and inexorably, defining the alley in a chiaroscuro wash of grays and blacks. Albert slipped from darkness to darkness, climbing higher and pressing close to the wall. No one ever came to the Factory but Albert, Maudlin, Chance, an occasional guest, but there was no sense in taking chances. Everything had changed.
He was early, but not by much. Albert’s pattern shifted more than those of his companions. He interacted with the world, Chance and Maudlin interacted with the night, the shadows, and one another. Albert stepped onto an empty rooftop and made his way quickly to his seat.
Territory had been staked by time and circumstance. Albert ruled a throne of loose brick with dry mortar crumbling from the edges. He’d created it over a span of years. Each brick had loosened and dropped from its original place on the building’s wall, or the eroding retaining wall that kept Maudlin from dancing off into space and crashing to the street below. The seat was four layers of loose brick, eight on either side, tapering down to the rooftop.
He sank back into his shadowed alcove and let the bottle, wrapped in its brown paper cover, rest between his knees. As the sun rose, and the night settled, Albert laid his head back against the bricks and waited. It didn’t matter if it were an hour, or days. He had to see them. He had to tell them what had happened. He had to move on.
In his pocket, most of the roll of bills rested against his thigh. He hadn’t counted it yet. He hadn’t even unrolled it, just peeling a single hundred from the outside of the roll for the clean clothes and the bottle.
No Mad Dog this night. No Night Train, nor the familiar bite of Ripple. The bottle curved out, wrapped tightly around a narrow neck, the bag had crumpled to the shape of Albert’s hand.
Cognac. The wine of the soul, Chance would say. Albert waited, and he remembered the words that had spawned his strange extravagance.
“Take the Night Train, you ain’t never comin’ back … Ol’ Jim Beam and his cousin Jackie D can rock your world, Tequila steals the walls of the world, but Cognac, boy, Cognac is the wine of the soul. Hot lips and no bite, sweet as silk and burns like redemption, like those long nights where you stare into the heart of the stars and sleep won’t touch you with a ten-liter shot-glass of anything, where the world pulls back and stares at you, comparing you to everything and nothing and coming up even.”
Chance’s voice drifted off into the recesses of Albert’s memory, coming up even with the night’s silence, and Albert shook his head, tossing aside the cobwebs that had shivered over his mind. He reached to the bag between his knees and began, slowly and carefully, to remove the plastic coating from the cork that sealed the Cognac.
There was a light echo of footsteps floating up from the fire-escape. Albert cocked his head to the side, and then smiled. Chance. Maudlin almost floated when she moved, very little sound, and always rhythmic. Chance was a steady flow from point to point. He would hit the roof and take his place with a minimum of interim motion – and the harp would sound off before his body was fully settled against the brick and stone.
Chance’s chosen spot was more shadowed. A corroded vent rose crookedly from the building below. No air had flowed through those cavernous pipes and flues in decades. Bird’s nest remnants dangled from the crooked, broken edges and caught the last of the evening’s light, tossing shadows to scratch at the floor and blend with the shadow of Chance’s hair to create an odd, spectral scarecrow of deeper darkness.
Albert watched his friend’s arrival in silence, smiling and tugging the cork stopper free from it’s glass sheath. Chance looked up, whites of his eyes flashing. Albert would have sworn the man tilted his nose to the air like a dog on a scent.
“Wine of the soul,” Chance said softly. “Money night.”
A whisper of long, loose linen and Maudlin whirled into view. She’d come up from the inside, the old way, the dark way, winding her way up stairs, skipping those broken or missing, and pulling herself the last three feet across a void of time and shadow. It was for the entrance. The fire escape would have announced her in its stoic, whining voice. The shadows and the depths of the dead building coughed up no sound.
Albert took a quick swig from the bottle, tipping it over his wrist as if it were a jug of Jack Daniels. The smooth, rich liquor flowed over his lips and down his throat, washing the final dust of the day’s travels into the deep red remnant of the sun. He closed his eyes and leaned back again, letting his back rest against the rough stone throne, and his mind rest on the notes of Chance’s harmonica, which had risen to a low wail as he drank.
In a single fluid motion, Albert was on his feet and moving, slipping the bottle to the ground between Chance’s legs and avoiding Maudlin’s whirling form with a graceful sidestep. The three of them were a well-oiled machine. The motions were rehearsed to instinct, second nature to the night. Albert slipped back to his throne, Maudlin turned to him, her face a quizzical mask of bright makeup and sparkles, dancing on her skin and flickering in her hair. The harmonica’s voice stilled, the notes fading into the distance as Chance sipped at the bottle almost reverently.
The silence grew deeper, and Chance whispered.
“Big money night.”
Albert smiled. He hadn’t skimped on the cognac. He’d stood at the counter, questioning an increasingly uncomfortable clerk on the nuances
of French brandy. He’d fingered each bottle as if it might give him an indication of what lay within, just by the cool feel of the glass. XO – Extra Old – VSOP – Very Special Old Pale – so many choices. Five years old is old enough, 35 years, past its prime. That last was a little gem of information Albert could have done without. Twenty-two years. One for each of the brightly-colored Major Arcana of the Tarot, one for each letter in the Hebrew alphabet. No way to know the correlation of men and brandy.
The bottle Albert had settled on was deep green. The name and entire label were in French, and the age was well over fifteen years. The return on his hundred had not been good, but that wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t his hundred. It was borrowed against his future from a very cold corpse in a dark, empty alley. It was borrowed against little Tim and Grace, the two children Sucker Man had left behind (picture on the front page of every paper and film at eleven). Everything had changed.
Tim and Grace and Albert had one thing in common this night. They carried the blood of a single man with them. Not just what had soaked through Albert’s skin and into his soul. He had a small swatch of cloth folded and tucked into the pocket of his new-used white shirt, compliments of the “Stuff 'n' Junk” thrift store on Elm. That bit of cloth was dried and brown, faded from the glory of red that had been the last testament of Sucker man.
Albert’s look was as new as the cognac was old. He wore tight fitting, black dress pants, a button-down white shirt with French cuffs. His hair was combed, and he was freshly shaved, showered and groomed. The last time he’d spent so much time on his appearance, his father had died. Some moments screamed for celebration.