A half hour of wire brushing had made the junk steel gleam.
When he was done, he took it out of the vise and tested its balance. It was a little heavier at the end, just where the weight should be.
He took a step back and made a few practice swings, although there wasn’t much room there under the staircase. He made sounds: “Whoosh,” “Shoooom,” “Slice! Slice!”
“Hello?”
He stopped in mid-swing and put the blade down as quietly as he could on the lower shelf of the old workbench.
Light spread into the basement from the hallway door upstairs. “I heard some noise down here.” It was Mr. McShane at the top of the staircase, directly above him.
“I’m working,” he said. “I’m making a new part for my bicycle.”
“Please don’t start a mess down there because it takes me a long time to clean the basement.”
“All right, Mr. McShane, all right,” Yogi said.
“I’m going to come down and do my laundry in a little while. Both my socks!”
It was the same joke the old man always told. “Fine,” Yogi said.
Quickly, neatly, Yogi cleaned up the work area and packed away the new grinder. He put the blade inside some old T-shirts and went upstairs to his railroad apartment.
Mr. McShane never strayed very far from the building. He was tethered to it, like an astronaut to a spaceship. But every once in a while he went to the C-Town supermarket on Graham Avenue. Yogi knew when he heard the distinctive sound of the old man’s stepping his rickety shopping cart down the front steps that it was one of those days. Yogi ran to the window and saw the geezer wheeling his wobbly red cart down the block. Even though the supermarket was just three blocks away, Mr. McShane would be gone at least two hours.
Yogi flew downstairs, two steps at a time, back to the basement and put the blade in the vise. To avoid burrs, he kept the grinder moving along the blade, evenly sharpening, always moving, never stopping in one spot. He turned it over and did the other side.
The blade now had a rough sharpness, and it would have been nice to temper it in a forge. But Yogi didn’t think Mr. McShane would let him get away with building a forge in the basement.
He ground the edges to razor sharpness. He used sandpaper to remove any burrs.
He was halfway through making the handle when Mr. McShane returned.
“Is that you down there?” he said from the top of the stairs.
“Yes.”
“Are you gonna be a long time?”
“No, no, no,” Yogi said. “I was finished for the day.”
He went upstairs imagining what he could do to Mr. McShane if he didn’t stop annoying him. He was so thin. It would be like chopping weeds.
Two days later, Yogi had epoxied two pieces of decking spindle onto the tang of the blade to make a handle. With a rasp, he beveled its edges to make a better grip, and he added pop rivets to make it look professional. He found that he had become proud of it, and now he wanted to make it look pretty.
He drilled a hole through the handle and added a new leather lanyard that would hang around his wrist.
He had sewn a special pocket into his long shorts to function like a hidden scabbard. He slid it into the pocket and quickly whipped it out. “En garde!”
Maybe it was all just part of some midlife crisis, his red sports car, his hot blonde teenage girlfriend. If it was supposed to make him feel good, it was doing a great job.
The blade was to be anointed with blood, of course, like any atavistic weapon of sacrifice. So he took it for a test spin. He bicycled it around the neighborhood, unsheathing it at potential sacrifices. Some people laughed and took pictures. So he decided to be stealthier, more menacing, so he wore a balaclava. And then one guy just threw his knapsack at him and ran. He realized then that he needed to be more self-empowered.
He meditated. He chanted. He prayed. And then he found her, the first actual victim. She was a young woman. Maxine was her name, he found out later, and he still felt bad about what he’d done. Women had always been victimized, so it just didn’t seem fair and he didn’t want to contribute to that victimization, at least not for the first one. But she was just the perfect target. It had been late, maybe two in the morning, and he had been riding around and riding around, and he was getting tired. He had passed her on the corner of Wythe Avenue and Broadway. There was no one else around for a block or two. She had just gotten out of a taxi and was just standing there, hypnotized by her cell phone, headphones on, oblivious to the world. She was a white, young, pretty hipstress. He became nervous, his heart beating hard. He thought he might chicken out. But her bland, distracted face made the difference, made it easier to finally do what he had been dreaming about.
He had turned around, went up a block and came back down again, picking up speed. He unsheathed the new machete and held it out. He breathed deeply, channeling his life force into the blade. He felt it getting warmer, glowing with his qi. She was still completely concentrated on that cell phone, her fingers stabbing into it, probably asking her boyfriend where the hell he was or asking her bff where the club they were supposed to meet at was.
He cut right across her at full speed. In hindsight, he realized he had been going too fast to get good aim and accuracy. He heard her scream—a yelp really—but he didn’t look back. He biked faster, turned the corner near the river and booked out of there.
He had anointed his blade, and so he peddled to an open bar and had a beer and a whiskey shot to celebrate. And then another. And another. He lost count. Oh, what a headache he’d had the next day.
For the third time that day, the old man went into a coughing jag, coughing long, hard, bottom-of-the-chest coughs that seemed about to turn him inside out.
“Hold on, Mr. McShane. The nurse is going to be here soon.”
The old man whispered something that kind of sounded like “cocksucker.”
“It must be horrible to suffer so,” Yogi said.
When the visiting nurse arrived, the two put the old man into bed.
“He’ll sleep for a while. It’s cold in here,” the nurse said. “You shouldn’t keep it so cold.”
“The old man likes it that way, the air conditioner turned all the way up. What’s wrong with him now? I thought he was getting better.”
“I don’t know what it is. It’s not the gall bladder. It’s the rest of him. His blood pressure is through the roof. He’s pale. He’s listless. In my professional opinion, he looks like shit.”
“What should I do?”
“Listen, I’m recommending you take him in to the hospital doctor sooner rather than later. Have you contacted his next of kin?”
“‘Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought,’” Yogi said.
“Uh huh.”
“He won’t give me their numbers, and I can’t find it in all this crap he’s got around.”
“And they haven’t called all of the time you’ve been here?”
“Nope.” Yogi saddened at the thought of careless family members.
“Eesh, another one of these. Hey, I done my job. You want, I can call the ambulance for him. They can take care of him at the hospital.”
“I don’t mind.”
“It would take him off your hands.”
“That’s all right. What else have I got to do?”
After the nurse left, Yogi sat and watched the old man breathe. Every breath seemed like a struggle. It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t beautiful. What a horrible thing to live so long and die without any meaning.
Thinking about it made Yogi hungry, so he decided to go to the local bodega and get some beer and cold cuts for dinner. But first, he needed cash. He bent down and reached into the space under the old man’s mattress.
The old man’s gnarled hand grabbed his shoulder. Yogi looked up and saw Mr. McShane was giving him the darkest stinkeye of all.
“Cocksucker.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
She had be
en looking at his armadillo when she first had the idea.
Patrick was on top of her, pumping away, and Kirsten had been looking around, and her eyes rested on his stupid, pleather albino armadillo and she said, “We have too much stuff.”
“Really? You think so?” Behind her, he was breathing hard. Patrick had always worked hard at everything.
“Yeah,” she said, getting off her knees and turning to scoot up against the headboard. “It would be so great if we could get a bigger place but not have to pay so much. Ugh.”
“How much space do you think we need? I mean, it’s a little cluttered here, but I think we fit fine.”
“No, no, we can’t have anybody over. There’s just so much junk.”
“We could get rid of stuff.”
“That’s not the point,” she said, tugging casually at her own nipples. “You know, Rosa next door is paying less than four hundred dollars a month. It’s rent-controlled. That’s gold. That’s better than gold.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Imagine what we could do with that space.” She got giddy with the idea. She imagined having the whole floor, hosting parties, art salons, exhibitions.
“Is she moving?”
“No, but she’s old. She might die any day. Slow down.”
“That’s not nice to say,” Patrick said, pure sap that he was.
“Yeah, but they would renovate her place and rent it for market value, like they did for the violinist. He’s paying fifteen hundred. That is too slow. I can’t even feel that.”
“How do you know these things?”
“I ask,” she said. “Better, yes. The thing would be to get her to put us on her lease. I wonder how possible that would be. Keep going. Just like that. Just like that.”
That was how the idea began.
After Tony had come by and she told him a version of the truth, and after Gunnar went out after him and didn’t come back, Kirsten knew she had to skedaddle. She checked the news and saw what had happened with Tony at that boutique. Gunnar wasn’t coming back. Not even for his precious guitar collection. Didn’t matter. She took her best camera, and she wanted to take all her gorgeously framed photographs, but there was no way. She had them in digital format anyway. She would just have to frame them all again one day, wherever she was going. She packed her clothes and rolled up her gorgeous leather yoga mat then realized, dammit, she couldn’t take her gorgeous leather yoga mat. And then she made sure to take all the digital video and audio files, and she left.
She went straight for SubBar. Happy hour was just starting so Black Martin was there. Of course. She asked him if she could stay in his apartment. He looked at her and what was he going to say? At his place, she asked him to go out and get her some hair dye, and he brought it back and watched as she blackened her hair.
He also got two six packs and some tequila, so she stayed there while he got progressively drunker as he talked and talked and fell asleep. She was glad she wouldn’t have to have sex with him.
Her plan was to take his car early in the morning, but in the middle of the night he got up to piss and had his phone with him and he checked the news. He started freaking out at her. Ugh! So she left.
Bobbert’s phone was disconnected, and the Sentinel office was closed. Litvinchouk wouldn’t pick up when she called, and she didn’t know where he lived. Jackie Tomasello told her: “I don’t want to get involved in this slasher shit. Stay away from me. I got problems of my own.”
When they had first moved in, Kirsten instantly disliked the old lady. She didn’t like old people, period, but Rosa especially—she reminded Kirsten very much of her own grandmother. Her parents made her go live with GrandMeemer for entire summers, and you never knew what you were going to get with the old bat: the belt, the iron cord, a spatula across your back. That Rosa, she looked and smelled like GrandMeemer. It creeped Kirsten out that this woman lived next door.
Then one day, after Kirsten and Patrick had had their chat, the old lady came to them with a story about how someone had broken in and put roaches in her place. Ugh. Kirsten rolled her eyes. The lady was probably senile. But Patrick, good-hearted soul Patrick, he loved a lost cause. It was his idea to put cameras in the old lady’s apartment—always looking for the big exposé, that Patrick. But after he caught the super on video, it was Kirsten who suggested they bug the super’s apartment for more dirt.
Then she had the idea to blackmail the owners. Patrick was aghast, but she could see desperation in Bobbert’s eyes. They pressured Patrick into it.
After she left Black Martin’s place, she slept in Prospect Park. But she was humiliated to find a homeless man masturbating near her. She had to get out of town that day.
She took the G train to the 7 train to Port Authority. She figured if she showed off her new hair color and acted calm, she’d get past the cops. She bought a bus ticket for Philadelphia. From there, she would make her way to Texas. She had always wanted to go to Austin. There was a thriving artistic community there. She could show her photographs.
The lower terminal was a long hallway with doors every fifteen feet leading out to where the buses parked. In the terminal, there were very few seats, so most of the people just stood there like dumb sheep, and many of them slid down to the dirty floor to wait.
Kirsten waited outside her gate. She was too exhausted to stand, and slid down to the floor next to a family of fat out-of-towners. A fat dad, a fat mom, a chunky son, and a daughter who obviously was deceiving herself about her correct jean size.
Ugh. These were the kind of people she had been running away from her whole life.
It was a happy year of extra cash for photography equipment and rent and food and booze—and the promise that if the old lady moved out, she’d get the apartment, at a rent control price.
But then Rosa had moved back in. And that made everything suck.
Kirsten was furious. She didn’t say “Hello” on the landing, ignored the old lady’s requests to not store their garbage in the hallway.
One day, the lady knocked on her door and told her to take away the garbage because it was bringing flies. Kirsten told her to “Fuck off.” Rosa called her a “bitch,” which just sounded stupid with her accent.
That was it. She punched the old lady in the face. But Rosa was tough. She ran to her apartment, and Kirsten went after her. The old lady threw shit at her, a ladle, a glass, coffee grounds.
Kirsten punched the old lady to the floor and then bent down to put her hands around her throat.
Patrick came home late that night. He was always coming home late, working at that stupid newspaper for pennies.
She made him help her. She made him fold the body into the suitcase his parents gave them. She made him take it downstairs and put it in the trunk and drive it to the water. That car stank after that. Stank like old lady. Kirsten had sprayed and scrubbed and bleached but she couldn’t get the stink out. She loved that car, but she had no choice but to sell it. The new owner didn’t seem to have noticed the smell, so that was fine and money in her pocket.
Things were not the same between them after that. She had thought it might bring them closer together. But he kept crying about seeing Rosa’s face. Ugh. Cry. Cry. Cry. So she moved out.
But she didn’t like that he had the video copies. It was something he could hold over her for the rest of her life. So she bided her time, waiting till Patrick felt complacent. And, once she heard about the couple of slashings that had happened, she had another idea—a masterstroke, you could say, when she was in the kitchen looking at the stupid machete Gunnar had brought back with him from some drug-crazed trip to Belize. So she had Gunnar call Patrick. She knew how much he was fascinated by gangs, how desperate he was to tell what he called “an authentic story.” So Gunnar pretended to be a gang member looking to have his story told.
Poor Patrick. He had never questioned why a gang member had contacted him out of the blue. What a sucker.
The bus was late, very late, and Kirsten
needed to go to the bathroom. She asked Fat Mom to hold her place. “Sure thing,” Fat Mom told her.
Kirsten went to the ladies’ room, which was full of flies, and got into a stall, made a nest of toilet paper, and pulled down her pants. Ugh.
Then she heard a lady say to someone, “You sure you in the right place, honey?” And then the lady, in a half-whisper, “Okay, okay.”
Kirsten heard people scurrying. She quickly finished her business and exited the stall. There was no one in the bathroom. Very unusual. Outside the door she heard voices, lots of voices, and different from the usual hum on the Port Authority. She looked behind her. She looked all around the bathroom.
There was no place to run.
She was so close to getting away. She would have gone to Philly first. She had a few college friends there. They would have helped her, sure. And from there she could have gone anywhere in the country, or out of the country. She could have.
She opened the door of the bathroom, and a tall man with white hair and a mustache that was both white and yellow pointed a gun at her and said, “Kirsten Waters, you are under arrest.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Magaly hadn’t seen Luis since she came back from PR. He hadn’t called and he hadn’t come in to the El Flamboyan office for days. But she got in one morning (early this time, a new thing she had decided to start working on), and there he was in his office, making a lot of noise.
She did a quick chant under her breath, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, in hopes that he wasn’t having another tantrum, and walked toward his open door. Surrounded by boxes and open drawers, he was creating a jenga stack of file folders.
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