“I’m sorry to have troubled you, brother,” Sign Guy said to the man, and held out the hundred like one might a peace offering.
But that it was not, and that it would never be, because the balding man first looked at the refund as though surprised by it, his lips pursing and breath hissing in and out, sweat twinkling on his face like a galaxy of mini stars. Very quickly, though, he quashed his shock at the reality that the bum was giving up a hundred bucks without so much as a verbal parry to outrage directed him and grabbed the money that had been his that morning. An hour ago, he thought. That was when he had given it to the bum, this nut with the sign, and why had he done that? Why? He couldn’t remember the why as to it, but he had, not ten minutes ago while seated at his terminal readying trades for the day, recalled that for some insane reason he had given the bum money, and that money had been a hundred fucking dollars!
Well, that money was back in his possession now, and the man slipped it back into his wallet and took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the bolt of white linen over the damp heat wicking atop his bare head.
“Peace, brother,” Sign Guy said to the man.
“Peace nothing,” the man replied, tucking his handkerchief away and turning from the bum just as the light changed.
Jay was still looking at Sign Guy as the man moved past him and into the crosswalk, the first one to step between the fat white lines, and all that he witnessed next came so fast that he hardly had time to look away from the bum and see the car that had roared through the red light, and glimpse two people behind the bald man jump back just in time, and hear the engine revving as though the accelerator was being mashed to the floor, and catch sight just feet away of fingers clamped hard on a steering wheel, and eyes wide behind the windshield, and between the fingers and that gaping gaze a grin cut upon the face of a woman as she steered her car into the man who had troubled the bum.
The bald man only had a split second to glance left, and no time to react beyond a futile scream. His legs crumpled on impact by the Jaguar’s bumper, his body bending onto the hood as his lower limbs had new joints snapped into them. His head thudded sickly off the sheet metal as the rest of his body tumbled toward the hood, the Jag’s sleek profile scooping his shattered body and vaulting it into the air, sending it spinning in a macabre aerial cartwheel until it slammed into the street to a chorus of screams that nearly drown out the crackle of his spine snapping.
People rushed to him. Pedestrians who had witnessed it, drivers waiting at the light. Someone ran for a phone to call for an ambulance.
Jay, though, stayed back from the commotion. Stood back and looked again to Sign Guy.
“Peace, brother,” the bum said, flashing him the V as the first sirens began to wail in the distance.
* * *
The police got there first, a blue and white cruiser having pulled up to the intersection of Broadway and Pine just as the Jag screeched to a halt and skidded onto the curb a hundred feet past the crosswalk. EMS came next, but by the time the first paramedic gloved up and got a look at the man and the crown of his head split open, taking a pulse would have been a waste. An ambulance came, but ended up tending a woman who had fainted after seeing the horror play out before her eyes. The photographers came, too, taking shots of the Jag, and of its hysterical driver, balling uncontrollably and screaming ‘what happened, oh my God, what happened’, and of course plenty of shots of the corpse splayed out in the middle of Broadway, covered by a sheet that was spotted red.
People were crying, others consoling, and to each and every one of these people who had seen what happened the police wanted to talk. Including Jay and Sign Guy.
“Did this guy have the light?” a cop was asking Jay. His collar was soaked a darker blue, as were the armpits and sides of his uniform shirt. The heat was bad. So were other things.
“He did,” Jay answered, looking past the officer who was questioning him to the bum. He was being questioned as well, and was cooperating fully, Jay could just hear, telling the tale as it appeared. Man walks into crosswalk, crazy driver runs him down. That was the way it had played out, wasn’t it? That was what had been seen.
Except in this case, appearance wasn’t everything. It was hardly anything at all.
“And this Jag just ran him down, right?” the cop inquired further, looking for more confirmation of what everyone had witnessed. And what could be said against something so concrete as that which had happened in front of two dozen sane and reasonable people? What truth could be spoken that would be believed?
“Right,” Jay replied, watching the maker of the truth he understood give his own inquisitor what he wanted to hear. Watching that officer nod approvingly as he was fed the convenience of rational thought. Watching as they shared a smile, and as the wagon from the morgue backed toward the body, photographers rushing forward to get a bead on this part of the drama. Watching as one of the cameramen peeled off of the pack—the same one who had some months earlier snapped that ‘slice of life’ photo of Sign Guy’s downcast mug—and shouted a ‘Hey!’ as he brought his camera to his eye and aimed it at the cop and the bum, maybe wanting a ‘background’ shot for this event. Watching the bum and the cop both look up and away from Jay as the strobe flashed, and then as the photographer lowered his camera and continued on toward the meat wagon. And watched as Sign Guy’s eyes tracked the man who had just snapped his picture, his head turning so that Jay could see his face again, a face that was not what Jay had known all these months. A face whose expression was bland, and ashen, and slack.
A face without a smile.
Twenty
Shorted
It was becoming a ritual of sorts. Jay and Jude, out for a nice meal while Steve and Bunker held down the fort. Usually lunch, but this time it was dinner, at the Hudson River Club, Jay’s choice a plating of duck breast over greens, and Jude’s a perfectly charred strip steak paired with rosemary potatoes and summer squash.
But ritual or not, it was no ordinary meal, because it had been no ordinary day.
“Poor bastard,” Jude commented, sawing chunks of his steak off while images of that Wednesday’s main happening spun in his head. He’d heard most of it from Bunker, who’d gotten the lowdown from someone at Braintrust who had been witness to the entire thing. Argument, accident, the whole shebang. Including Jay’s presence, front row and center. “Was it as bad as I heard? The guy’s head split open and brains running out and all?”
Jay stabbed greens with his fork and fed them into his mouth. He chewed and said nothing.
Jude understood—almost. His buddy hadn’t wanted to talk about the incident all day. Not at the office, nor on cab ride to dinner. He’d spoken to no one about it, it seemed, and to Jude that wasn’t too strange. His parents had been killed in a car accident, after all. Not like what had happened in front of Trinity Church, albeit, but, well, cars were involved, so his reticence on the subject could be somewhat expected.
But on the other hand, it wasn’t like someone his buddy knew had been the one squashed.
Still, Jude would let it go. He had given it a shot. Had tried to get his buddy to open up about it. Let it out. Wasn’t shit like that supposed to be good for you? Maybe if he decided to try analysis for kicks someday he would get the true blue on that. But for now, it didn’t matter. He didn’t have to talk about the accident. There were more important topics he could broach.
“Guess who called today,” Jude said, wiping a smudge of potato from his chin with his napkin.
“Who?” Jay asked, his interest threadbare. At least Jude wasn’t on the former topic anymore.
“Ever hear of Lou Carillo?”
Jay had. “Developer, right?”
“Built the Castleton Towers in Philadelphia, the Harvey-Gray Trade Mart in St. Louis. He’s got two hotel projects going in Vegas right now.”
“I thought Vegas was dead.”
“If Lou Carillo is there, it ain’t.”
“So he’s very green, is what
you’re saying.”
“Makes Teddy Malone look like a pauper,” Jude said, sipping his Jack and Coke. “Green indeed, Grady. Green and interested in us.”
Jay nodded. Business was still business. He could focus on work. On making green. That would keep his mind off things that were futile to trouble over. Futile. Right. There was nothing he could do, or could have done. What happened, happened. Mitchell, the bald man. Past history now. Just get on with things. Make some green. Some more sweet green.
“How interested?” Jay asked.
“He wants to meet us,” Jude told him. “All of us.”
“When’s he coming by?”
Jude shook his head. “We’re going by. His place, this Friday night.”
“Just us?”
“He’s having a party. Wants us there. Said to bring dates if we want.”
“Huh. This is a new one.” Jay took one more bite of duck, then pushed the plate away, his appetite still meager after that morning. But it would come back. It would.
“You ever been to a party given by a guy more than half way to a billion?” Jude asked. He knew Jay hadn’t, and neither had he. “I’m expecting gold goblets and platinum toilet seats.”
Jay nodded and actually smiled. A normal expression it was. But that morning on the bum’s face the opposite had seemed so...abnormal. He had stopped smiling. Right after the photog had taken his picture. Why? Of all the things in the world to force the grin from his face, why that? Why not the indignant demands of the bald man? Wasn’t that enough of a reason to slap a dour mug upon him?
Questions, Jay thought to himself, his own smile flattening now. All there were about the bum, and the things he did, were questions. How had the bald man known that his pocket had been picked, without knowing how it had been picked? How could Sign Guy do what he did? Steal, bequeath, kill? Where did his power to do so come from? Questions. So many questions.
And still the one that troubled Jay most of all. Why could he not turn away from any of it? Was it fear of the bum? Maybe. Was it want of the dream? Maybe. But...
...but it felt like more than that. He feared the bum, but he was not afraid of him. Passed him every day, in fact. And the dream? He had it. Riches. Green. More money than he would ever need, and more coming in all the time. He could walk away and never worry about things financial again. And still he stayed in the orbit of the bum, not too far, not too close, just...in proximity. As if he was supposed to be close by. As if there was some reason for him to stay. But what reason could there be for that?
He hated this. Hated wanting to know things he could not know. Like he’d thought while seated at the counter of Greenie’s Diner so long ago now, recollecting briefly the burning want of an explanation for his parents’ death, sometimes there just weren’t answers. And damn if this still wasn’t one of those times.
“Sir?”
Jay looked up from his wandering thoughts and saw the waiter standing very properly at their table, hands folded behind his back.
“Are you finished, sir?”
Jay looked at his plate, and thought, yes, I am finished. With that, and with questions that could not be answered. He would chew on them again, he was certain, but for now he was done. For now it was doing no good.
“Yes. Take it away, please.”
The waiter gathered the plate and smiled at Jude, who was still working on his jazzed-up American fare.
“Dessert tray in five minutes,” Jude told him.
“Certainly,” the waiter said, and was turning to leave when Jay stopped him and handed him a one dollar bill.
“Can you bring me change for that, please?” It was Jude’s turn to spring for dinner, so there would be no chance to bring coins into his presence here, and unless he stopped on the way home or went out later, neither of which he was inclined to do, he was going to have to get the next day’s pick right here and now. As yet it hadn’t come that day, not that there had been much opportunity—just some spilled change from their receptionist’s purse scattered about his feet as he came in after the...happenings, and the forgotten coins mounded in the change bowl of the candy machine up on sixteen, where he’d gone that afternoon for a sugar pick-me-up when lunch seemed too much a chore. And neither opportunity had been fruitful. Just random piles that were heads and tails. Two strikeouts.
So this it would have to be, and when the waiter approached their table a minute after taking the single to an unseen register, as Jude talked on and on about Lou Carrillo and his money and how the vision was for Vegas to be a family destination someday, Jay readied himself. Made himself ready to know what he would know, ready to see the heads, ready to get the next days pick. Ready to carry on the dream.
“Here, sir,” the waiter said, placing the small platter of coins on the table and backing away.
“There’s talk of like five thousand room hotels, Grady, and theme parks and shit,” Jude was saying as he ate. “Vegas could be another Disneyla...”
But Jay didn’t care what Vegas would be, or could be. All he cared about at the moment was the tray of change the waiter had brought him, a mix of coins upon it. Two quarters, three dimes, four nickels. No pennies, because who needed pennies anymore? Well, right then Jay would have taken pennies. Five pennies, six pennies, ten pennies. Any number of the little bronze rounds if they would have all been heads. Because what was on the tray was certainly not all heads. The nine coins were distributed very randomly upon the small silver slab that contained them.
Jay reached out and took the coins in hand, hoping that his touch might do the trick, while somehow knowing that it would not. But still he held them, and pressed his flesh tightly upon them before letting them fall onto the tray.
Jude stopped talking and eating for a moment and spied his buddy doing something with the change he’d requested. “What’s the matter, Grady? You get shorted?”
Looking at the arbitrary mix of heads and tails that had come to rest on the tray, Jay wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t.
Twenty One
Headless Wonder
Something was wrong.
It was after eleven in the evening and nothing had happened.
“So this guy has lots of money?” Christine asked Jay as she came out of the master bathroom and laid next to him on the bed. She was wearing a silk nightshirt so sheer that the dark buttons of her nipples showed through like a pair of eyes gaping with surprise.
“Yeah,” Jay answered. He lay in a pair of boxers, one hand behind his head and the other at his side, clenched tight around a mix of coins.
Christine brought her knee up and rested it on his thigh, her nightshirt riding up over her bare hips as she did. She began to play with his chest hair, something she had come to know he liked. A touch that got him going. It was that way with him recently, she had noticed. He was becoming some kind of sexual animal, it seemed, any time she touched him. A single touch from her almost always set him off, now. She had even thought that the only time he wanted her to touch him was when they were fucking, but that was silly, wasn’t it? They practically lived together, after all (though she still had her apartment at Jay’s insistence), and people who lived together had more than just the bedroom in common, right? Plus he bought her things. Nice things. Clothes, jewelry. God, yes, jewelry. The most gorgeous necklace, diamonds all around. She had wanted this bracelet she saw, too, but he didn’t seem to want her to have that, and so bought her some earrings instead. So they had more than just sex. Thinking otherwise was stupid. Just stupid.
“So how should I dress for this party?” she asked him, the soft inside of her thigh sliding up and down his leg. “Seductive or conservative?”
“He’s old and single and a potential client,” Jay told her. “You figure it out.”
Okay, that was a little harsh, but it had been a rough day for him. That accident out front of the church and all. Sheesh! How gross that must have been. “Mid thigh, black, tight, no panty lines. That should do the trick.”
Tr
ick. Right. That should do the trick. Rev a rich old man’s engine. Some trick!
But what about the trick that mattered? The trick that wasn’t happening? Where were the damn heads? Where was the knowing? Where the hell was it?
“Black blazer to match,” Christine went on, mentally wardrobing herself for the event still two nights away. “Maybe just a bra underneath. Or a camisole.” She imaged the ensemble. “Or maybe just the blazer.”
Whatever, Jay thought. His mind was elsewhere, dwelling on heads. Heads that hadn’t come at the restaurant, and hadn’t come when he’d made a stop on the way home at the newsstand. Not at the diner where he’d bought a cup of coffee and then left it when the change disappointed, or the market where he’d bought one apple, or from the doorman who’d obligingly broken Jay’s last one for him. They hadn’t come at all, and that made Jay nervous. It made him wonder if they would come again at all. If not...
If not, what would become of the dream?
“I’ve got a new pair of heels that will go really good with—”
“Take these,” Jay said to her. He had rolled onto his side and was holding a handful of change out to her. The change from the doorman, the last he’d gotten that night. “Take these and drop them on the bed.” He scooted back from her, opening up a space on the mattress. It was flat enough, he thought. “Right here.”
“What?”
He instructed her next like a teacher might a kindergartner, hitting every syllable. “Take-the-change-in-my-hand-and-drop-it-on-the-bed.”
The request was odd enough that the tone did not even insult her. He wanted her to do what with the change? Drop it? Why?
Well, what he wanted done was kind of, uh, weird, so she decided to partly honor his wish. Maybe have a little fun with him. And so she sat herself up in bed, but only long enough to pull the nightshirt over her head, and then she plopped back down on the mattress, flat on her back and naked as a newborn, and reached over and took the change from her slack-jawed boyfriend.
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