Kill da bum, she screams again. The mayor’s in the audience with a hooker in each arm.
“Mikey, there’s no reason to–”
As if hearing his name is going to make a difference to him now. Of course it won’t. It can’t. It’s not his name. Not his secret name, which is the only one he can hear right now. Who knows what it might be. Captain Power maybe. Lord Wellus of Planet Fromfox. Jungle Kid. We all have our secret selves waiting to burst through.
Get your hands up. Defend yourself. Draw the blade. Cram it into his gut. Your mind is loud. You’re on your way to the Tombs or maybe Sojourner. It happened to Hale. What happened to Hale will happen to you.
Jenks got his hands up, blocked the next two left hooks that Mikey threw, and then flicked off two short jabs into his face. Not all that different from how he’d laid out Angela. He flicked another, just a quick bap, but he caught Mikey just right on the nose and the guy’s eyes began to well. Tears flowed down his face and he was blind for an instant. Jenks thought about the crowd in his head wanting blood. It kept roaring. It wanted a long, prolonged fight that left both men in bleeding heaps. Fuck that. End it now. Jenks hauled off and chopped Mikey in the throat.
It was enough. Mikey dropped to his knees gagging. Jenks let him flop around like a fish for a minute and then grabbed the guy by the ankle and dragged him back inside his own apartment. Jenks shut the door and locked it.
The place was small. Two bedrooms. Even on 210th Street it probably cost sixteen hundred a month. More than Jenks could have paid even back when he had a steady job. There was something to be said about people who could bust out the rent month after month. He suddenly felt ashamed for having hit the guy.
Mikey had stopped coughing and was just sucking air deeply through his teeth, staring at Jenks wondering what the hell was coming next. Good question. Jenks had no idea. He looked around the place. He needed to see a photo of Trina Beck. He checked the walls, the coffee table, the end tables, the top of the television, and there was nothing. No pictures of any kind. Just like Angela’s office. The fuck was wrong with these people.
Then he spotted it. Above the doorway to the kitchen. Some kind of a poem: GOD BLESS MOTHER’S KITCHEN. And a tiny photo of Mikey, when he was about ten, and a beautiful raven-haired woman.
Then Mikey crawled to the couch, managed to heave himself up and flopped down on it still gasping. Jenks sat down next to him and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to fight. I’m just trying to find Katrina Beck because she might know something about my friend Hale. He’s dead. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”
A few more minutes passed before Mikey was breathing regularly again. He turned to Jenks, hacked once more, and said in a lifeless monotone, “You can try the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge. Sometimes she pulls tricks there.”
Saying thanks probably wasn’t the best thing to do, so Jenks just hiked off the couch, went to the door, and reconfirmed, “I won’t hurt her. I just want to ask her a question about my friend.”
The slow deranged smile that we all hide slipped out of Mikey’s soul and smeared itself across his face. “I hope you cut her into pieces.”
10
Jenks knows exactly where the whores hung out on the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge. He and his high school friends used to drive out from eastern Long Island and come down this way in an attempt to fire up their courage and enter the world of manhood via the skeeviest, slipperiest, most unhealthy and chancy way possible. As Jenks remembered it, no one ever got out of the car back then. Twelve, thirteen years later, one of his buddies became a regular whoremonger, wound up spending an unbelievable amount of his weekly paycheck on redlight ladies. The buddy called himself a sex addict, went into rehab and everything, came home looking for his wife and two toddlers and found an empty house and divorce papers.
A few months after that, Jenks and his old crew were drinking beer in a local pub when one of the other guys asked the sex addict why he didn’t just find himself some young gold digger. Put her up in an apartment, give her an allowance. It would’ve been cheaper than driving all the way out to the Bridge to give all his money away to skanky, toothless, Christ knows what the fuck-disease-they-got hookers. The sex addict shrugged and said, “A girlfriend would’ve wanted to talk just as much as my wife.”
Everybody nodded like something had just been put into perspective, but nobody wanted to say exactly what it was.
Jenks found a donut shop. He got something to eat and tried to figure out what he should do with the rest of the day. It wasn’t even noon yet and the prostitutes wouldn’t be out until midnight. He had twelve hours to kill. He looked towards Sojourner and wondered if he should brace the shrink, see what else he might be able to find out about Hale. The doc and his socks would talk a bit more freely without the cops there putting Jenks under the microscope.
He checked back over his shoulder and stared off over the bridge towards Manhattan. His ex-wife was less than ten minutes away. He’d driven right past her block on the east side. Jenks had never gotten a look at the boyfriend. He didn’t want to see the guy now, but there was a strange draw that wanted him to go to the front door of their fancy apartment and introduce himself. Tell them both, “Hey, here I am. How’s it all going, eh?” Announce himself, explain himself. Show her he wasn’t dead yet. As if that might matter.
He drank his milk and ate his donuts. Working men on their lunch hour were sucking sugar down hoping to find the energy to get through the rest of the day. A construction crew, a furniture delivery crew, and the girl at the counter plucking donuts and croissants and crullers out and putting them in napkins, bags, or flimsy pink boxes. All of it seemed so normal. It connected him back to his father, his brothers, his uncles, his friends. It brought him back to his wife. Sunday morning treat every couple of months, chocolate glaze, strawberry with rainbow sprinkles. He’d watch her eat, humming to herself, the sprinkles snapping against the Sunday paper and bouncing onto the floor where the dog would lick them up.
“I think it’s time for you to move along, buddy.”
Jenks looked up. The owner, the chef, whoever the hell it was, stood in the kitchen doorway staring at Jenks. Another one who wouldn’t let a man down on his luck just relax for ten minutes. You always had to be forking money over; you always had to smell like cash. Jenks knew he was a little rank, he hadn’t showered in a few days, hadn’t changed his clothes. He wasn’t at his best, but who the fuck would be in a donut shop at noon? Guys like this chef, they’d sniff out your weakness and then lash you to death with it.
Jenks still had half a donut and half a glass of milk in front of him. Chef moved in on him another step and the door flapped closed behind him. Jenks hadn’t even given him more than a glance. Now he’d have to look. Now he’d have to assess and confront. Stare down and sneer. All because of what? Because Chef had his own boxing match going on inside his head and he hadn’t punched anyone out all day long?
Jenks thought, I really want to finish my donut.
He could imagine Hale, reaching for the stale cheese Danish and thinking, I really want this fucking Danish.
That’s what the world came down to sometimes. You and some baked goods. The universe on your tongue. Daring to eat a peach. Sucking down some rainbow sprinkles.
Chef coming a little closer. “You hear what I said?”
“I heard,” Jenks said, sipping his milk. How hard-assed did you look drinking milk? How big a threat? How awful an enemy?
“Finish up and go.”
“Sure.”
“Now.”
“As soon as I finish up, I’ll go.”
It surprised Jenks a little to think that he’d spoken more to people over the last two days than he had in the entire year beforehand. All of it with a mean edge, maybe just a touch of a whine or a growl. Out on the boat the crew never asked him anything except about the rigging and nets. On the beach he could sleep and watch the waves and the kids swimming and the love
rs walking and nobody said anything besides “good morning.” So what was the difference? It had to have something to do with Jenks himself. His mission. His rage, his fears, his defects and deficiencies. They read it in his face, sniffed it in his sweat.
“Now,” Chef said.
Jenks thought, it really could happen. You could kill a man over a donut. How had he gotten to this place? His chest tightened and his breath hitched. His pulse began to hammer. His heartbeat hurt. He winced against the throbbing pain and finished the last bite of donut. He swallowed the last of the milk as Chef got within arm’s reach, his hands hidden beneath the counter. You had to wonder what was under there. A pistol, a shotgun, a fire extinguisher, a cast-iron skillet. What would you say to St. Peter when you showed up at the pearly gates, your brains still leaking out of your head? I didn’t live my life well enough. I failed in loving my neighbor. I drank too much milk. I took too long with the chocolate donut. I died an idiot but not a murderer. And St. Peter flipping pages through the great book of life, pursing his lips, checking off your sins, underlining your failures. Not enough gold stars for you, take your bitching to hell with you, loser.
Jenks hopped backwards off the stool and watched as Chef overreacted to his movements and nearly flung himself backwards into the freshly made tray of raisin muffins. Jenks cut out the door and got to his car, the veins in his throat still snapping. He got behind the wheel and stared the engine, let it roar like his own scream. He wheeled out of the parking lot and drove around blindly until he found an area of waterfront where he could pull off. He discovered he was holding his breath and when he let it out he swallowed down great lungfuls of air. He turned on the radio and listened to music he didn’t like but that somehow calmed him. He hadn’t killed anybody yet. He wondered if Hale had. The girl or someone else.
“What did you do next?” he asked as the sun burned through the windshield and dried the tears of frustration on his face. He hadn’t realized he’d been crying and it was a shock to find that he could still weep.
11
He finally thought about tracking down Hale’s family. He wasn’t even sure if Hale’s ex-wife knew that he was dead, although the cops had probably already notified her. Maybe it was something that would matter to her, maybe not. Jenks tried to imagine how it would go down, whether Hale’s suicide would be dismissed as another stupid move by a madman or whether it would carry more weight than that. He watched the water and found an oldies station and let him mind wander back to when he was a kid and the songs were fresh. He saw himself back in high school, standing at some girl’s locker, trying to act suave and hip and doing a fair job of it, as she stared at him with a kind of selfish contempt. He asked her on a date and she turned him down, and kept staring just to see how he would react, if his reaction itself would be funny or worth discussing with her friends later. He felt then as he felt now: As if the next thing in the world could not be as terrible as what had led up to it.
With the music playing softly he fell asleep. An hour later he awoke from a nightmare he couldn’t remember, his hands flashing out like he was wrestling with something. He took the key out of his car to keep the battery from dying and thought about the nameless little girl that Hale had been found with. It soothed him somehow. He dropped his chin to his chest and fell back asleep.
He awoke at 8pm very hungry and drove back over to the donut shop. The place was empty. A different girl was working the counter. She was much friendlier than the last one and was chatty as hell. Jenks liked listening to her. She didn’t ask any questions, just launched into a slew of chatter about the weather, some political topics, and some situation going on with the bears in the Bronx Zoo. He ate a half dozen donuts and drank three glasses of milk and nodded to her and laughed and went “Oh ho!” in the appropriate places, sounding a lot like his old man. His old man never gave a shit about anything that anybody else ever said but he made the right noises to sound as if he did.
If Chef or another chef was in the back, he never showed himself. The girl threw today’s paper down in front of Jenks, which he took as an invitation to stay in the shop as long as he wanted. He read it through and ordered another half-dozen donuts, and by the time he was done it was almost eleven o’clock and the whores were on the street and there were cars lined up at the curb.
He watched the brazen women walking in the center of the street yelling and laughing. Some drinking coffee, some swilling and spitting mouthwash across the asphalt. When he was in high school he remembered the women leaned toward the fat, wearing leather bikinis and fishnets, with red-wax lips burning in the street lamp glow.
Now the ladies seemed to be better dressed, wearing average clothes, prettier on the whole, older but appearing more like the woman next door. He realized that a lot of the men in their cars parked at the curb weren’t customers at all, but husbands and boyfriends playing the role of pimp. The recession must’ve done it to them too. As unemployment skyrocketed, this was a way for them to get back into the workforce. Some of the husbands were on their phones, some texting or playing videogames.
Trina Beck emerged from the shadows much later than expected. It was after two when she met up with the other women and started shouting towards the passing traffic. Someone picked her up immediately. Jenks watched as she directed the driver down a nearby alley. You could tell the guy didn’t like the idea, so he pulled up on the opposite side of the street right on the rim of the streetlight’s radiance. It was just bright enough that Jenks could see money being exchanged. Trina Beck’s head ducked down into the dude’s lap and began to bob. It took about three minutes. Then she climbed out of the car, threw a knotted condom in the gutter, and the car drove off as she crossed back to where the other ladies congregated.
Katrina Beck was still a beautiful woman. Jenks hadn’t been expecting that. She looked a great deal like she had in the photo in the frame hanging above her kitchen door. Older, a touch more worn, but still with that extra something that would make men want her desperately. Trina was wearing a black dress, something more appropriate to a night out in the theater district than slipping from car to car beneath the 59th Street Bridge.
After performing oral sex on nearly a dozen men in little more than ninety minutes, a black SUV pulled up beside her and she handed over a wedge of money to the driver. They spoke briefly and laughed together.
The dude was young, thirty, younger than Mikey, her son. Handsome dude, wearing a white button down shirt and a black sport coat and tie. Jenks caught the flash of cufflinks. The dude made a phone call while Trina Beck returned to work.
They both exuded a sense of money, self-reliance, and power. They showed no fear of cops coming around or any kind of sting operation. They were slick, earning long green, seemed happy to be there doing their thing. Was it just the result of the new Depression? In the twenties you robbed banks and ran moonshine. Now, is this how the new poor survived? You got under the bridge and dressed better than you ever had before. Jenks couldn’t see this woman in a homeless shelter stealing a two day-old cheese Danish.
He had to get closer, face to face, ask her about Hale, figure this thing out.
Jenks waited another hour and a half while Trina Beck continued her action, only twice getting into the back seat of vehicles to lift her dress and go the full ride. The men had too much on their minds, didn’t want to put any effort into it at all, willing to just sit there with their pants open while she took control and got it done. No wonder the economy was in the shitter, Jenks thought, we’re all too damn lazy.
The kid returned again and she handed him another bundle of cash. She was clearly the hottest item on the street but none of the other ladies seemed to be angry or jealous about it. Jenks watched a few of the other women sneaking off to sniff coke or smoke meth in the alleys.
She was getting more popular as the night went on. He actually had to get in line in order to make a date with her. They were bottlenecking right there in the street, cars backing up, pulling over, moto
rs running, waiting their turn. He was fourth out of six. No, seven. Everyone patient, nobody in a mad rush, guys knowing she was worth the extra time it would take. And none of them even wanting to get laid.
Finally, at a quarter to six in the morning, the sun still down, Jenks drew up beside Trina Beck and she gave him a short smile and a flash of leg.
“Are you lonely this morning, baby?”
“I’m lonely every morning,” he admitted.
“Well, that’s too bad. You should come see me more often then.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yes, you are.” She gave him her prices. If the other ladies charged as much he would’ve thought it was a ripoff, but for Trina Beck they didn’t seem unreasonable. He did a quick calculation and was astonished at the amount of cash she’d pulled in already. He wondered why she didn’t go high class, work the best hotels in town and find private customers instead of wandering the streets.
Whores get their money first. He paid for head and she climbed around to the passenger side. She opened the door and asked if he was a cop. He said no and she slid in beside him and pointed down the alley. He drove off and she worked her hand into his groin and began to unzip his fly.
He stopped short and pulled to the curb. She had his fly down now and was leaning forward.
There was no reason to jump the gun. He’d paid for her. He was lonely. He hadn’t had sex in a year and a half. He wanted her lips on him. But the question was there and wouldn’t let him relax. She saw he was tight and anxious and said, “It’s okay, honey, you lay back.”
”Are you Trina Beck?” he asked.
It was the worst thing he could’ve done. Why the fuck did he ask? He knew it was her. Her eyes widened in alarm. There were a lot of people watching them, all the men staring through their windshields ready to pull up, spot by spot, until it was their turn. The dude with the cufflinks was around somewhere nearby in his SUV.
Short Ride to Nowhere Page 5