by Don Winslow
Nico forced some rum down.
They took him outside, put him in the back seat of a car and drove him to Elmhurst Hospital. Pulled up in front of the E-room entrance and told him to get out. He had a hard time with the door, but managed and walked into the hospital.
He felt dizzy.
The nurse asked him what happened.
“I fell. On the stairs coming down from the train.”
“Where are your parents?” she asked.
“I live with my aunt and uncle.”
“Where are they?”
“At work,” Nico said.
“Honey, we can’t treat you without their permission.”
He called his aunt. They gave him an ice pack and told him to have a seat. Half an hour later, Tío Javier got there. “Nico, what happened?”
“I fell.” He could tell Javier didn’t believe him.
Javier got up and talked to the nurse in Spanish. Nico heard him say that he didn’t have health insurance or very much money, but please help his nephew and he’d find a way to pay over the next few months.
The nurse took Nico into an exam room.
A doctor came and they did X-rays. He showed Nico the picture. His “ulna,” his forearm, was broken. It would take a few weeks but he’d be all right. The doctor set it, put Nico’s arm in a cast and wrote a prescription for pain pills that Javier could get at the pharmacy.
They took a taxi home.
“Do you know the chance we take, even coming to a hospital?” Javier asked. “Don’t you know they’re looking to throw us out of the country, especially now?”
Nico felt bad. His aunt and uncle saved their money to open a business, and this would hurt them. “I’ll pay you back.”
“You’re a child. It’s not your responsibility.”
“It’s not yours, either,” Nico said. “I’ll get the money.”
“Stealing? Selling drugs?” Javier asked. “This was because of the gun, wasn’t it?”
Nico didn’t answer.
“Your ‘friends’ hurt you. Won’t you get out now?”
No.
If anything, he got in deeper.
“We have work to do,” Davido told Nico earlier tonight. They were grinding at Krispy Krunchy Chicken. “Come on.”
Because 18 is moving heavier into drugs. They were just slinging yerba, but now they’re looking for the payout that comes with the chiva, and Davido is buying heroin and putting it out on the street.
They walked out to Ninety-Second near Northern. Davido gave him a burn phone and a boost up onto the fire escape, told him to go up to the roof. “Keep an eye out. You see anything looks like it shouldn’t, hit me.”
“Okay.”
He climbed to the roof and looked out.
Jackson Heights is beautiful.
Nice view of Northern Playground. Nico can see Flushing Bay and planes coming in and out of LaGuardia so low they’re like to hit him in the head. Then he realizes that he shouldn’t be doing that, he should be looking just down at the street.
Nothing happens.
He has to pee. Stamps his feet to try to distract himself.
Then he sees a black Escalade roll up.
Black guys get out.
Nico hits Davido on the phone. “Some mayates are getting out of a car.”
“Those are the guys we’re meeting, stupid.”
“Oh.”
“Good looking out, though.”
Nico keeps looking out. Can’t be more than twenty minutes, the black guys come out, get in the car and drive away.
The phone rings. “The street clear?”
“Yeah.”
Davido meets him on the street, slips him a hundy and a bag of weed.
This is how Nico gets into the drug trade.
Jacqui’s giving a front seat blow job.
Because she won’t give a back seat blowie.
For one thing, you’d have to open the front door, get out, open the back door, get in and close the door. The dome light comes on, goes off, comes on again. It attracts attention, too easy for cops to spot, as if they gave a shit anyway, except when the mayor’s wife sees some slut giving parking lot head and tells him to tell the cops to give a shit.
Too many bad things can happen in the back seat. You get in the back, the guy usually tries to lay you down and fuck you. In the front, you bend over, you suck him off, that’s that. Anything happens you can usually hit the eject button and get out the front door. Sometimes, if the guy feels sketchy, she’ll blow him with one hand on the door handle anyway.
This guy is sketchy.
Cruised her in his old Camry four or five times before he pulled over.
Middle-aged white guy (go figure), big sloppy gut hanging over his belt (go figure), balding (go figure), no wedding ring (a little unusual and kind of a red flag because married guys are usually safe, they just want some head they can’t get at home). She would have told him to keep moving, but it’s fucking cold out and the Camry’s heater works. Plus she needs the twenty to get high.
Let’s face it, Jacqui thinks, some old sayings are true. Like the one that goes, “A junkie will do anything to get high.” Must be true—I’m in the front seat of a shitty car sucking off a big sloppy bald guy.
Or trying to.
The asshole just won’t come.
As a kid she had one of those toys where this wooden bird keeps tilting down and dipping its beak into a tube of water over and over again, and that’s what she feels like now. Once you started the bird it never stopped, but she’s not sure she has the stamina of a wooden bird, not to mention the economics don’t work—at this pace she’s getting paid about twelve cents an hour.
She sits up and sighs. “Problem?”
“You’re not doing it right.”
Not doing it right? Jacqui thinks. Like it’s what, a cappuccino? It’s a pretty simple equation there, dumbass.
It’s suction, basic physics.
“What do you want me to do different?” she asks. Like be Fergie, Jennifer Lawrence, a Kardashian?
“Use your tongue more.”
Jacqui sighs and goes back down. Uses her tongue more, but what does this guy want for twenty bucks—porn sex? In the front of a Camry in the middle of winter with the motor running? This is drive-through sex, asshole. It’s McDonald’s sex, it’s not even Wendy’s sex or Carl’s Jr. sex. We’re not going to cook it special for you—you pay your money, get your Quarter Pounder and drive away.
He presses her head down. “Deep throat me.”
Deal breaker.
Jacqui forces her head back up but the guy is strong and holds her down. She starts to choke and maybe this is what the sick fuck wants (Oh, your dick is so big, I’m choking on it, I love it), maybe he’ll get off but she doesn’t care about that anymore, she just wants to breathe and then get the fuck out of there.
He won’t let her up.
His hand twists into her hair and grabs. “Do it.”
She bites him.
He screeches.
But he lets her go.
She pushes her head up and reaches back for the door handle, but he grabs her by the collar and pulls her back. She tries to kick the handle with her foot but it’s not happening. “I’ll give you your money back, just let me go.”
“No, now I want it all, bitch.”
She feels the gun barrel poke the back of her head. “No, please.”
He throws the car into drive, goes up Washington and turns right on Powells Lane. There’s nothing there except vacant lots and trees and he pulls over, puts it into park and pokes her with the pistol barrel. “Turn around. Pull your pants down. I’m going to fuck you, whore.”
“Okay, okay.” It’s hard—she’s terrified and it’s tight in the front seat but she manages to turn around, brace her back against the door and wriggle her jeans down around her ankles. “Don’t hurt me.”
“You bit me, you bitch.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
&nbs
p; “I’m going to fuck the shit out of you.” He crawls on top of her.
He’s heavy, she can’t breathe but she goes into the routine she thinks he wants. “Yeah, fuck me, fuck me, give me that big cock, you’re going to make me come, Daddy.” Anything, anything to save her life. “You’re going to make me come, Daddy.”
He groans, arches his back.
The gun loosens, slides by his waist.
By her hand.
He fumbles for it, but Jacqui grabs it first.
And pulls the trigger.
Twice.
“Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!”
Jacqui kicks, wriggles out from under him. The door opens and she falls out on her back. She gets up, pulls up her pants and runs back up the lane, is halfway to Washington when she realizes that she still has the gun in her hand. She jams it into her coat pocket and keeps walking.
Walks all the way down to Motel 19, where she has a room with Jason.
Jason’s an asshole, but she can’t live under a bridge in the winter so she stays with him in the cheap motel as long as they can make the rent. Which they only can because she’s out there giving blow jobs while Jason tries to figure out what kind of work he can’t get.
When she gets to the room, he’s high.
Skinny ass splayed out on the bed, staring at the television.
“Did you score?” she asks.
His head lolls, sort of nods at the side table.
He’s an asshole but he saved her some. She cooks and fixes. It’s hard, because her hands are shaking.
Straightened out, she says, “You got any money?”
“Why?”
“I gotta get out of here.”
“So go.”
Fuckin’ asshole, Jason. “I mean out of town.”
He’s just awake enough he senses his meal ticket slipping away. “Why?”
“I killed a guy.”
Jason laughs. “Fuck you, you didn’t.”
Fuck me, I did.
His jeans are on a chair. She goes through his pockets and finds six dollars and thirty-seven cents, wonders how much bus fare to New York is. Probably more than six dollars and thirty-seven cents. “This all you got?”
“I dunno.”
Well then, who would, dickwad? She sits on the bed beside him. “Jason, he raped me.”
“Oh.”
Oh. That’s it. Oh. What you have to remember about this world, Jacqui knows, is that at the end of the day no one gives a shit. Not at the start of the day, either. At no time during the day does anyone give a shit. “Jason—”
“What?”
“Do you have any more money, dude?”
“No.”
This is why everyone hates junkies, Jacqui thinks.
Shit, I hate junkies.
The bus is a nonstarter so she walks to Route 87 and sticks her thumb out. Hitchhiking is dangerous. Some creep might pick her up and try to rape her.
Then again, she thinks, Jacqui’s got a gun.
And she ain’t ever gonna get raped again.
She keeps her finger on the trigger in her pocket and the barrel pointed at the guy most of the way down.
Another middle-aged guy.
This time married with a ring on his finger.
Pulled over, rolled down the window of the Subaru and said, “I don’t like to see a young lady like you out here alone like this. Where are you going?”
“New York.”
“I’m going as far as Nyack, if that helps you.”
“I don’t have gas money,” Jacqui said.
“I didn’t ask you for any.”
Jacqui got in.
Keeps the gun pointed. It feels good in her hand.
The guy wants to make conversation. “My name is Kyle. What’s yours?”
“Bethany.” Like, why not?
“Are you going home or away, Bethany?”
“Huh?”
“Is New York home, or Kingston?” Kyle asks.
“I came down from Albany,” Jacqui says. “My last ride dropped me off in Kingston.”
“So where do you live?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Got it.”
You got it, Kyle? What’s there to get? She takes a closer look at him and sees he’s a little younger than she first thought, maybe in his early fifties. Sandy hair, starting to recede, blue eyes under glasses.
Around New Paltz he asks, “Are you hungry, Bethany? My treat.”
“I could eat,” she says.
He pulls off the highway and into a Dunkin’ Donuts. She gets a coffee and a croissant with egg and sausage and it tastes damn good. Somewhere in the Harriman Forest she falls asleep, which she didn’t mean to do, and when she wakes up Kyle is smiling at her and says, “You dropped off.”
He turns onto the 287 through Nanuet.
“I can drop you off on the highway if you want,” Kyle says, “or I can contact St. Ann’s.”
“What’s that?”
“The church my wife and I attend,” Kyle says. “They have a program in the winter to find places for homeless people. You’re homeless, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Yeah, I guess so too,” Kyle says. “They can get you a bed and can find a program for you.”
“What kind of program?”
“A drug program,” Kyle says. “Come on. Who are you kidding?”
“What do you know about it?”
Kyle pulls off on Route 9 and heads into Nyack.
“I don’t feel good leaving you on the highway.” He takes two twenties out of his wallet and lays them on her lap. “I’ll take you into town. Take a cab over, and that should get you to New York.”
“What do I have to do for this?” she asks.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Just drop me off in town.”
Kyle pulls over and says, “Here you go. I wish you’d let me take you to St. Ann’s, but it’s your life. If you change your mind . . .”
He gives her his card.
“Thank you,” Jacqui says. She gets out of the car.
“You got it.”
Jacqui watches him drive away and then puts the card in her pocket.
She needs to score.
Junkies have an unerring radar that leads them to other junkies.
They can find each other even on strange and foreign ground.
Jacqui quickly finds another user in a little park on Main Street. Another young woman, addict emaciated.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You know where I can score?” Jacqui asks.
“You have any money?” the woman asks. “Hook me up, too?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll make a call.” The woman gets on her cell phone and walks away from Jacqui. A minute later she walks back and says, “Come on.”
They walk down Franklin to Depew, then take a left toward the Hudson River to a group of five-story redbrick apartment buildings. They go into one of them and take the elevator to the fourth floor. The woman rings a doorbell, the door opens a crack and she says, “It’s Renee.”
“What you want?”
“Two bags.”
Jacqui hands her a twenty. Renee slips it through the door. A few seconds later two balloons come out. The two women go out of the building to a parking lot in the back. They cook and shoot up.
“You have a place I can crash?” Jacqui asks. “Just for one night?”
“Yeah, okay.”
They walk back up Depew to an old house, then upstairs to a room that Renee rents. A mattress, a microwave on the floor, an old TV. There’s a bathroom—a toilet, a sink and a shower—in the hallway.
All of it stinks.
Of urine, semen, shit, and sweat.
Jacqui falls out on the floor, takes off her jacket and puts it under her head for a pillow.
Keeps her hand on the gun.
For a little guy, Nico has a big mouth.
A good thing, because he can put a lot of ball
oons in it.
The balloons are full of heroin.
Now Nico rides his bike east along Forty-Fifth Avenue, a cell phone strapped to the handlebar set on Google Maps and the nice lady giving him directions to the address.
He’s a delivery boy.
Davido gave him the bicycle, called it a “late Christmas present.”
“Thanks!”
“You’re an idiot,” Davido said. “This is for work.”
The drug business has changed, Davido explained. It used to work like this—kids like Nico would stand out on the corner or in a park and the customers would walk or drive up and hand the kid the money. The kid would then go around the corner or into a building, get the dope from one of the older guys and slip it to the customer.
“That’s how I started,” Davido said. “I was one of those kids.”
The system worked, he explained, because it insulated the dealers from the buyers. If one of the customers turned out to be an undercover cop, he could only bust the kid, which meant family court and maybe a stint in juvie, not hard time upstate.
That sling-from-the-corner shit still exists, Davido told him, dealers still do it, but it’s stupid and risky. Why stand out there in the open when you got cell phones and texting and Snapchat and shit and the customer can contact you and you just deliver?
And this way, the white customers don’t have to come to some sketchy hood filled with niggers and spics, they can stay in their nice places watching Fixer Upper or some güero shit and their high comes to them.
Which is pretty much the life that white people expect.
“You got to keep up with the times,” Davido said, “to stay competitive. We live in the service age. If you’re not providing service, someone else will. You heard of Blue Apron, GrubHub, DoorDash?”
“No.”
“Anyway,” Davido said, “we need to provide service. Deliver. That’s why I got you the bike. The customer calls us, puts in his order, we deliver. I’m going to call our product Domino’s—because it delivers.”
Well, Nico delivers.
The same principle of using kids as couriers applies because if the kid gets popped it’s no big thing. The kid takes a vacay in juvie and there are always more kids who want to make a little money and get cliqued up. What they do is they put the heroin or the coke into balloons and Nico puts the balloons in his mouth and goes out and delivers.