Kockroach

by Tyler Knox

  The man with the straight razor cleans off his blade and strops it on a leather strap hanging from his belt.

  “Today’s collections is on target,” says Mite. “Pinkly’s late with his hundred, but I talked to his mom and she says he don’t come up with it in a day or two she’s good for it. I think she’s got a stash somewheres underneath a mattress so it pays to let him get behind. Rickland paid, Somerset paid, Bert is out of town but his girl’s still around so he’ll come through. And you’ll love this. Seven twelve came up, which is Toddy’s number, son of a bitch. He owed us six plus, but as soon as I heard the number I got to his runner afore he did, so he’s up to date.”

  “Show me,” says Kockroach.

  “Sure, Jerry, sure. You know I’m always square with you.”

  Mite reaches into his jacket, pulls out a thick envelope, drops it onto the coffee table with a solid thwack. The female working on Kockroach’s nails slips and digs a knife into the cuticle. Kockroach’s hand suffers not a twitch as blood wells on his fingertip. The female cleans it off nervously with a white towel.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Who isn’t?” says Kockroach.

  “I marked out with a paper clip the Nonos’s cut, for you to give him the way you like,” says Mite.

  Kockroach nods.

  “The Nonos wants to meet everyone at midnight. Nemo made sure for me to tell you not to be late.”

  Kockroach shrugs.

  “That’s it, I guess.” Mite drops his feet from the table, slaps his thighs and stands. “I’ll see you at midnight then. Have yourself a good night, Jerry.”

  “What about Cooney?” says Kockroach.

  Mite freezes for an instant, and from behind his glasses, Kockroach notices.

  “I told you he made up three payments a couple weeks ago,” says Mite.

  “I didn’t see the cash.”

  “He made it up in trade. He gave us this.” Mite screws a thick gold ring off his finger. “I had it sized for me and took the spinach out of my cut, but if you want it, Jerry, be my guest.”

  Mite flips the heavy ring to Kockroach, who examines it carefully, notices how small it is, notices the shiny metal, the square diamonds, the ruby, and then bites into it as he has seen others bite into gold.

  “Swell,” Kockroach says, tossing it back to Mite. “Keep it for yourself. But what about this week?”

  “He’s due, yeah,” says Mite, examining the ring with evident disappointment, a bite mark ripping now through its face, “but I think we should give him time. He’s been jabbering something about the city holding up his deal. I checked out what he’s saying and it’s on the up. Once the deal closes and he flips the building he’ll have plenty to pay what he owes and a premium to boot. He’s got a wife and three kids, he needs a break.”

  “I think so too, sweet pea,” says Kockroach, his grimace, half hidden by the foam, growing wider.

  Mite nods, turns to leave.

  “Hey, Mite,” says Kockroach, “how about a game?”

  The attendants have departed. Kockroach, still in his white robe and his dark glasses, sits at a table across from Mite. Between them lies the board with its array of brown and white squares and the little wooden pieces. Together they are performing a human ritual that Mite has taught to Kockroach, a ritual called chess.

  “What are you up to, Mite?” says Kockroach as he stares at the board.

  “You know me, Boss. I’m never up to nothing.”

  “Sweet pea.”

  Kockroach has learned to enjoy the give-and-take over the board. Mite’s was the first name he learned in the human world and he relies on Mite for much as he runs the business of running Times Square, but Kockroach is not certain he can trust Mite anymore. If you know what a human wants, you have control. But Kockroach is no longer sure of what Mite wants. At first he assumed that Mite wanted exactly what he himself wanted: money, power, sex, shrimp, sex. But Mite was never about sex, and money, power, and shrimp seem no longer enough for him, and that is the cause of Kockroach’s concern. This mistrust has leaked into all their business dealings. The hesitancy Kockroach noticed this very night is merely another example. But Mite, who is suitably deferential to Kockroach in business, is anything but deferential in the ritual. He schemes, he traps, he attacks without mercy. The only time now Kockroach feels Mite is being completely honest with him is during the ritual of the game.

  It took Kockroach a long time to gain an understanding of the ritual. Not the pieces and the moves, that was easy. The slopey pieces move entirely on an angle. The piece shaped like the head of a wasp jumps up and over. The moves and rules of this chess were easy, it was the purpose of the ritual that confused him. It seemed to him at the start a type of battling. When Mite first slipped his large female piece into Kockroach’s side of the board like a knife and knocked over Kockroach’s boss piece with the cross on top, Kockroach felt a spurt of fear. Now what? he wondered. He tensed his whole body, ready for a confrontation, sad at what he’d have to do to the little man. But Mite merely reached out his hand. “Good game, Jerry,” he said. “Keep at it and you’ll get the hang,” and that was it. Everything after the ritual was the same as before. It seemed to have no meaning. Kockroach didn’t understand. Time after time Mite toppled Kockroach’s boss piece and nothing changed.

  Until something did change, and it slammed into Kockroach like a revelation.

  In his first games, Kockroach examined the board and made what appeared to be the strongest move. If a square could be occupied he occupied it, if a piece could be killed he killed it. Cockroaches live eternally in the present tense and he performed the ritual like a cockroach, but each game ended with Mite knocking Kockroach’s pieces off the board one after the other before swooping in and killing his all-important boss piece.

  “Where did you learn this chess?” said Kockroach early in their practice of the ritual.

  “From Old Dudley, what taught me the ways of the world,” said Mite. “I ever tell you about Old Dudley? He said chess was a good thing to cotton to, teaches you how to think ahead.”

  “Think ahead,” said Kockroach. “What’s that?”

  But slowly, game after game, Kockroach began to understand. Mite moved that little piece there for a reason; if Kockroach killed Mite’s little piece, Mite could kill a stronger piece. If Kockroach moved here, Mite would move there. If Mite moved there and Kockroach moved there, then Mite would move there. Kockroach saw deeper into the game, the rituals lengthened, Kockroach came closer and closer to killing Mite’s boss piece.

  But that wasn’t the fantastic change. As Kockroach stared at the board, sequences of moves played out in his head in glorious ribbons of possibility that grew and lengthened and weaved from the now to the then until, like some sort of strong magic, he was no longer playing only in the present, he was playing in the future, too.

  “You’re getting tougher, Boss,” says Mite as their current ritual heads toward its conclusion. “You been taking lessons?”

  “From you, Mite. Only you.”

  “You got me pinned here. You got me pinned there. Looks like I’m in serious trouble.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Except watch this.” Mite moves his wasp. “Check.”

  Kockroach stares at the board. The ribbons of possibility that had been reeling through his head suddenly shrivel. His boss piece is under attack. He has one possible move. He makes it.

  Mite moves the female piece that had been protecting his boss piece, leaving his boss piece vulnerable. Kockroach is ready to rush in and kill Mite’s boss when Mite says, “Checkmate.”

  Kockroach stares at the board for a moment longer before he topples over his own boss piece.

  “Nice game,” says Mite, reaching out his hand as he stands. “It won’t be long afore you own me.”

  Kockroach, still staring at the board, ignores Mite’s outstretched hand as he says, “I own you already.”

  “Maybe ne
xt time, Boss,” says Mite. He pulls back his hand, hitches up his pants, heads to the door. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  Kockroach keeps staring at the board, willing the ribbons of possibility to reappear and flutter in his brain. The purpose of the ritual, he has learned, is not the game itself, not who kills whose boss. The purpose of the game is these ribbons rippling into the future. Through the practice of the ritual, he has leaped out of the arthropod’s slavish devotion to the present tense.

  And suddenly, a whole new territory has opened up for Kockroach to plunder.

  Pressed and pleated, shaved and shined and buffed, tie tightened, belt cinched, shoes double-knotted, jacket double-buttoned to his throat, glasses on, hat on, grin on, cigarette burning like a warning in his teeth, Kockroach saunters out of the elevator and greets the world.

  “Good evening, Mr. Blatta.”

  “Anything we can get you, Mr. Blatta?”

  “Should I check your mail, Mr. Blatta?”

  Kockroach stops at the main desk, tells the clerk a guest will be coming during the night.

  “Very good, Mr. Blatta.”

  “Your car is here, Mr. Blatta.”

  “Step away, please, and let Mr. Blatta through.”

  A path is cleared as if for a tycoon and doors are opened as if for a starlet. Kockroach walks through the crowded lobby, leaving gapes and green tributes in his wake.

  Istvan is waiting for him outside, leaning on the hood of the big humped Lincoln, chocolate brown and encrusted with chrome. Istvan is Kockroach’s driver, promoted by Kockroach from the pack of lowly gangsters who police the Square. Istvan’s huge arms are crossed, his peaked cap is tipped up on his wide blond head, his narrow blue eyes light up with devotion when he sees Kockroach exit the hotel. Istvan jumps away from the hood and reaches for the door.

  “Good evening, Mr. Blatta.”

  Kockroach ducks into the car without breaking stride.

  “What’s on the agenda tonight, Mr. Blatta?” says Istvan, his accent thicker than his arms.

  “Beeswax.”

  The Murdock Hotel is a desiccated pile of cracked brick wedged between a dusty supply warehouse to the east and a failing shirtwaist factory to the west. The desk clerk, perched on a stool, hunched over something pornographic, glances up to see Kockroach standing before him and jerks back so hard he slams into the boxes behind him, sending mail and keys clattering to the floor.

  “Room two-two-four,” says Kockroach.

  “Right away,” says the clerk as he drops to his knees and searches the floor for the key.

  Kockroach climbs the steps slowly, sensing their rotting boards, their foul stench. He slams his fist on the damp wall and a slab of plaster dislodges to crash upon and tumble down the steps. He opens the door to Room 224 without a knock and finds Sylvie shivering beneath a blanket on her bed. She startles when she sees him, sits up, teeth chattering. The blanket slips down, baring her sagging, mismatched breasts and the ribs beneath them.

  “Get dressed,” he says. “We’re going out.”

  “I can’t, Jerry. God, I can’t. Don’t you see how sick I am?”

  Kockroach steps forward and sits on the bed. He gently caresses the side of her face. She leans into his touch.

  “I don’t want to see you like this,” he says.

  “I miss you too, Jerry. We’re never together anymore. Remember when you used to take me out, when I taught you to dance at the Latin Club? Those were times, weren’t they? I know I haven’t been working enough, but I’m still sick. Even with the medicine you been giving me, I can’t do it anymore. I have to get away. I got a sister in Pittsburgh. I was thinking of visiting her, just for a while, to get back my strength.”

  “You’ll be swell. You need to get up, step out. We’ll go for a ride.”

  “I can’t get up. I can’t move.”

  Kockroach reaches into his jacket, pulls out a small wax-paper bundle tied with a bright red string, and drops it onto her bed. The faint aroma of vinegar rises from the blanket.

  “Medicine,” says Kockroach.

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” says Sylvie, “the sickness or the cure.”

  “Get dressed,” he says, standing. “I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

  Sylvie stares at the bundle with the red thread for a long moment, as if deciding on something, and then snatches it to her chest.

  “And Sylvie,” he says, his smile brightening, “put on something sharp.”

  Istvan drives the Lincoln slowly through Times Square, the phantasm of light and color reflecting off the brown, the chrome, the glass like a scrambled message from a neon god. Kockroach sits jammed into the corner of the backseat, a cigarette in his teeth, one hand clamped on Sylvie’s knee. She is in a black dress with sequins, high heels, a fluffy boa wrapped around her neck. Her face is pale, pale as death, but her lips are painted red.

  Istvan slows the car and then stops. Kockroach’s door opens, a red-haired woman in a tight sweater and bangle earrings leans into the car. “Sylvie,” she says, “dragged your skinny ass out of bed, did you?”

  Sylvie snuggles up to Kockroach and licks his ear. Without turning her head, she slips a stare at the woman. “Get back to work, Denise. There might be a sailor still who hasn’t filled your mouth.”

  “Leastways I’m working, baby.”

  “Since you’re in the dough, let me give some advice. Do something about them snaggleteeth.”

  The red-haired woman smiles.

  “Please,” says Sylvie, “before you start frightening small children.”

  “How’s beeswax?” says Kockroach.

  “Started slow, must be a Bible convention in town, but it’s picking up.”

  “Let me see.”

  The woman pulls a wad of bills from inside her sweater. Kockroach takes them, sniffs them, jams them into his jacket. “Any trouble?” he asks.

  “A tall hat from Texas thought he was so good he should get it for free. Janine whispered your name and he near pissed himself trying to take the wallet out of his pants.”

  “I’ll be back before dawn. Tell Janine I want her to wait for me.”

  The red-haired woman nods her head at Sylvie. “Why she get to ride tonight?”

  Sylvie leans over Kockroach. “’Cause Jerry is tired of your fat ass and wanted a dose of class.”

  “Dose of clap is more like it.”

  Kockroach pushes the red-haired woman out the door and slams it shut. Istvan pulls away, down Broadway, as Sylvie leans over and sticks her tongue out at the window.

  The great face rising above the car, its mouth open as if in perpetual surprise, blows a ring of smoke.

  The brown car slides through empty streets.

  “Where are we going?” asks Sylvie.

  “I have something to show you.”

  Sylvie cuddles up. “Some out of the way club? Some exotic gangster hangout?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Anyplace is fine,” she says, drowsily leaning her head on his strong left arm. “Surprise me.”

  “That’s the intention,” he says. “Feeling better?”

  “Much.” She yawns.

  “Are you too tired to dance?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she says, rubbing his stomach with her left hand. “I’m never too tired to dance with you.”

  The streets narrow, twist and turn. The car purrs along, turns right, squeezes through an alleyway. It comes out on a wide stretch of asphalt, lined with blocky brick buildings fronted by wooden frames, the frames empty now of the carcasses hanging daily in the mornings. The thick smell of meat, rotting, luscious, hovers over the puddles and the cracked sidewalks, the dim streetlights, the overturned trash bins being scavenged by rats.

  A huge dog in an alley, gnawing on the raw haunch of something, bends in respect as the brown car passes.

  “Where are we?” says Sylvie, suddenly sitting up.

  “Go to the end, Istvan,” says Kockroach.

  “
Is that the club?” says Sylvia.

  “The far end.”

  The car pulls to the end of the street, turns right, then left again, where they reach a wide, uneven strip of cobbles leading to a row of desultory wooden piers, ill lit, swirling with fog, seeming to be in the very process of slowly, agonizingly, collapsing into the Hudson River. Sylvie shrinks from Kockroach when she sees the piers.