The Nightworkers

by Brian Selfon

Emil Scott doesn’t hurry, that’s not his way. But then again he doesn’t usually have a bag heavy with cash. Doesn’t usually have a secret stopover.

  The subway doors bang on the rolling suitcase a few times and then reopen. Emil springs to his feet. A breath later he’s on the platform. His express train awaits, its open doors a personal invitation. Emil Scott is not athletic. His heart pounds as he dashes across the platform. Fumbles over a battered wooden bench. Runs at his express train and then skids to a stop. “This is a J train going on the local line,” the PA bleats. “For express service on the Z line, please take the M train across the platform to…”

  The trusty old M train, the one he just left, is still chewing on the rolling suitcase, unable to close its doors. Emil steps over it, squeezes through, despite his little belly. Back on the right train, he catches his breath.

  And yet can’t get settled.

  As the adrenaline burns off, Emil processes something he observed on the platform. For over a decade he’s been an around-the-clock artist, his eyes trained to pick up odd movements and details. His pulse responsive to cracks in the humdrum. What just happened? A shadow raced off the J train. Followed him. And now Emil and this shadow are together on the same train. Am I being followed? The evidence is slim, and yet Emil is “working street,” as Henry put it. And Henry’s voice calls up from training.

  “Trust your body,” Henry had said. “It knows danger.”

  part three

  the marked wallet

  chapter 11

  The day starts well enough. It’s June, one month back, about an hour after breakfast, and Kerasha is reading in bed, her door open so the breeze through the window can flow. A soft knock, Henry pokes his head in. “Hey, you seen the old man?”

  Kerasha lowers the book. Henry is tall and muscular, good-looking in a rough kind of way, and very, very respectful of her privacy. Even now, he’s not stepping inside, even though this room was his just this past spring. Even though he’s obviously curious. She notes his shy way of scanning the towers of books. She sees him lean in to look first at Lit, the top book on the tower to the left, and Directed by Desire, the top book on the tower to the right. She likes this, his interest in her, likes that it’s not asking for anything.

  “Uncle Shecky went out about a half hour ago,” she says. “He had the tote bags, so—”

  “Farmers market,” they both say at the same time. They share a smile.

  Then his eyes are again on the stacks of books. He looks like he wants to say something, but he just waves and heads out.

  Later that afternoon, Kerasha returns home with a backpack full of new books. There’s a different smell in the house: sawdust. Seems to be coming from the basement—that door is open. She can hear Henry down there—he’s on the phone. She’s picks up a word or two, but nothing explains the smell.

  Until she gets to her room.

  Three new bookshelves, her books placed neatly, in roughly the same order they were in when they were stacked as towers. The shelves are huge and a little crude, banged together out of unmatched wood, but when she grabs the nearest shelf and gives it a shake, it’s sturdy. She looks at her hands: dust on her fingertips. Being thought of, being a part of a family—this is a new feeling.

  It doesn’t last.

  * * *

  Some buildings invite break-ins. This one demands it.

  Camera out front: mounted low on the wall, pointed down and across the front door. It covers some of the largest ground-floor window, Kerasha figures, but not much.

  Camera across the street: covers the far side of the same window.

  Look left, look right. Look across, up, down—no peepers. The left window, not covered by cameras, opens up in two minutes—thank you, pick-and-hammer combo. Most of her kit goes untouched, as usual. She’s overdressed.

  Open, slip in, close.

  Kerasha catches her breath. Listen. Good habits die hard. This is a nothing job, and it will only get easier. On behalf of her talents, she’s insulted.

  Smell, the younger Kerasha insists. Take it in.

  Kerry the girl thief was more methodical than Kerasha the ex-con. Thinner, too, no hips.

  Listen, she repeats. An AC hums. Smell.

  Perfume. Febreze. Tobacco.

  Perfect. Her own scent masked, she may end up carrying a little of this one away with her—a false trail.

  There are no unpeopled rooms for Kerasha Brown. In this one: a female, definitely. A secret smoker, or maybe just permissive with certain visitors. Either way, Kerasha decides, this woman has a soul. Outside: a truck huffs by—white noise. She moves to the door and unlocks it. Enters a hall, where she wonders if you can judge a headfucker by the women who work in his building.

  Kerasha has a sixth sense for blueprints and layouts, a feel for floors and walls, corridors and closets. Office space, always the same everywhere, navigates itself: left to the staircase, up two flights, first right, and here’s the door. His. Just a knob knock, three pick-points. She feels the click even before she’s at a full kneel.

  Door open, enter, door close. Breathe. That’s skinny Kerasha again, her younger self just won’t shut up. Listen. Smell.

  She is alone. The windows, she knows, face an alley, so it should be safe to turn on the lights. Secure the door, skinny Kerasha says. Silly, the idea that at three in the morning, some lonely headfucker is just hanging out in his office. Be humble, skinny Kerasha insists. Or maybe this is Saint Augustine? You just spent six years in the cage, you don’t know everything. Definitely Saint Augustine. Broke into a church, had sex to the rhythm of the church bells, got himself canonized. Brother played the game—and fucking won it.

  She takes off her outer shirt, rolls it tight, and presses it along the bottom of the door. At last she turns on the light. Here we are, Dr. Xu’s office, minus Dr. Xu … It feels smaller. Sadder, somehow, and less hostile. Consider the coffee table, so loathsome during her sessions. Now it’s just an ugly, out-of-place thing. A mistake, a miserable something she has to check herself from overidentifying with.

  Back to business. Young Kerasha is delighted to see that the file cabinet has a real lock. Enjoy, skinny girl, Kerasha says. You know why we’re here.

  Dr. Xu is, by all evidence, balding self-importance. He doesn’t know her, doesn’t understand her—and can’t. As she’s revealed nothing of herself, he has no facts on which to base an understanding. And yet it’s his opinion—this man whose judgment acquired this coffee table, grew that ponytail—it’s his report to the probate court that will determine whether she can remain with Uncle Shecky. His report that can put her back in the cage. She and the ponytail have met several times now. Usually his hands are empty, and his fingertips touch as if to form a ball. Every ten or fifteen minutes, though, he nods in response to some silence or evasion from her—nods in deliberate response to nothing, it seems—he nods and takes a silver pen out of his hip pocket, and he writes something down. Notes taken with this pen will indicate which way he’s leaning, how he’s perceiving—to use language from the court order—her “progress and compliance.” His notes will decide whether the man needs to be interfered with.

  The lock should have yielded already. A little extra pressure should do it—doesn’t. She turns harder, jiggles it, and then skinny Kerasha whispers—definitely not Saint Augustine this time—for her to pay attention to her technique. Force it and you’ll break the lock or the tool. Pause and listen. Listen, breathe, listen. Be not impatient, as Whitman would tell her.

  Fucking Whitman.

  At Franklin, Kerasha had lived on poetry. Arguably she was born into it, her mother considered the poet laureate of the Moses Houses. Mama always reciting poems, even when her own writing gave way to heroin.

  But here’s the thing about reciting poems when you’re smacked: you don’t always get the words right. Here’s the other thing: you don’t always bother with attributions.

  The terrible revelation hit in Franklin’s dank library. It was ther
e Kerasha discovered that “The Noiseless Patient Spider”—one of her favorite poems, which she had always thought of as Mama’s—had actually been written by a dead white man named Walt. Kerasha hated this man—hated his name, hated his foul-smelling beard. (Yes, it smelled. Look at the picture.)

  But it was too late, in that dank library, to unlove the poems.

  And Kerasha was too tenderhearted—despite everything—not to feel a new wave of loss. Addiction had taken her mother’s present, death her future, and now came Walt, estranging even the past. Goodbye, Mama, whoever you were.

  But come on, Kerasha, you remember. The most important fact about Mama, the decision that changed everything, you know in your bones.

  The heroin started after Kerasha was born.

  “After!” It was Mama’s last man who broke the news. Smiling, that beast, every time he explained the progression, which she now recites like an epic poem. Stanza one: Complications from Kerasha’s birth. Stanza two: Mama’s back problems, her painkillers. Stanza three: Smack.

  He was clever, for a beast. Knew damn well how little Kerry would put the pieces together. Before me, she was okay. After me … because of me.

  Mama, though, to her credit, never put it like this. “I’m still strong, Kerry, still going up and up and up,” she’d say. At Franklin, Kerasha discovered that this was a riff on some lines by Langston Hughes. “You’d better not fall,” Mama said. “Look at me, I’m still climbing.”

  Kerasha still can’t make sense of this, how Mama—whom Kerasha saw only in freefall—believed herself climbing. How the woman who became a mother and then a junkie could still mumble—aiming at Hughes again—about “going on and on in the dark.”

  As if Mama ever went anywhere but down.

  Look at me, Kerasha thinks, a girl in her psychiatrist’s office, thinking the sad-sad about her mama. Alone in the office; who needs the doctor?

  Kerasha looks down at her hands. They aren’t on the cabinet. Aren’t even on the pick, which has somehow made its way back into her utility belt. No. Her hands are before her, fingertips touching fingertips. Making a ball.

  Apparently the office does his work, creates the doctor in whoever’s here. So again, who needs that fucking ponytail?

  Well, maybe she does. It’s three-something in the morning. While Brooklyn sleeps, dreaming of everything but her, she stands alone in her headfucker’s office—by choice. Head full of darkness, her heart bleeding June Jordan: I am the history of the rejection of who I am.

  “You’re a rejection,” she says to herself.

  Quiet, skinny Kerry tells her. Focus.

  Before her is a cabinet, unremarkable in every way. She has unlocked cabinets just like it. But this one defeats her, humiliates her, endangers her, prolonging her trespass. Has forced her, by the black magic of association, back into childhood.

  Just a cabinet, she thinks. I’m still climbing.

  This cabinet is not in control. It was designed to be opened. But she’s letting it defeat her. Why? The question comes in the doctor’s voice, the answer in her own.

  Want.

  Franklin’s library had a half shelf of psychology books, and from them Kerasha learned that every human brain is controlled by a toddler-god called want.

  Okay, for the sake of sanity, let’s take that as truth. Let’s think it through.

  Kerasha wants the cabinet closed. Why?

  She wants this not to be her fault. Why?

  The answer takes so long that when it comes, it’s like a sucker punch.

  She wants it not to be that she’s afraid.

  Fear. It’s that simple—she’s afraid of what’s in the files. And though she doesn’t understand this fear, and can’t banish it, somehow, just by owning it, she gets it under control. Still going, still climbing—here comes your girl, Mama—in the dark.

  And now it’s easy.

  She upsizes her pick. Poke, twist, press, and the lock springs, and the drawers open. Ponytail is a careful labeler, well organized, good penmanship. The file for Kerasha J. Brown is right where it ought to be—and then it’s not.

  “Patient was referred by…”

  She skips ahead, not caring about the referrer or his bullshit. Needing only Dr. Xu’s. Less than five minutes later the notes are back in the file, the file back in the drawer. The drawer is closed, the cabinet locked. Lights off. Shirt out from under the door. Outside, hours till daylight, she puts two pieces of gum in her mouth. The word of the dark morning is recalcitrant.

  “Recalcitrant and uncooperative, the patient has evinced no interest in her treatment.”

  She smiles at this, always enjoys good bombast, but her pleasure is hollow. Recalcitrant, she knows, means the cage. Her parole is “absolutely conditional”—the court papers, all riddles and legalese, were clear on that.

  She crosses a street. An ambulance rounds the corner just behind her, lights on, sirens off. She watches it make another turn. Waits to be alone before letting her thoughts back in.

  Be not impatient, Walt says again. Saint Augustine whistles Jesus, while Mama and Langston speak of still climbing. As for little Kerry, she’s with the history of her rejection. And she’s afraid.

  There are places without light, there are rooms without exit. And then there’s that other place Kerasha knows, where once upon a time, a famous girl thief got lost.

  chapter 12

  July again, unlit stairwell, Moses Houses Tower B. Lipz lights a spice joint and her face glows sinister, glows beautiful. Henry can almost taste her whispers: “Shit’s going down.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Boom the door. Grab my stash.”

  Henry takes her joint. “Fucking Tiger.” Pulls on it, hands it back. Exhales. “Why’s he fucking with you? Where’s his stash?”

  “Red Dog won’t supply him.”

  Henry begins to say something. Stops. The faint warning bell he’d heard before—the last time he talked to Lipz about Tiger—now it’s ringing loud and clear.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she says.

  We’re already a bickering couple, he thinks. So why not … actually couple? He looks her over, the bright, loony eyes; the barbed wire tattooed around her neck. This ink goes all the way down, he knows—he saw some of it get needled in. And the warmth of her body, and the hot and fetid stairwell, and the bubble-gum smell of her breath, and that I-dare-you look on her face … It would be so easy.

  “Shut the fuck,” she says.

  “I didn’t say shit.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Henry sighs. “Red Dog does smart business. If he won’t supply Tiger, he’s got a reason.”

  “Fuck reason.”

  If Lipz has a credo, this must be it—Henry enjoys hearing it aloud. “Listen,” he says, “this is no disrespect to you, okay?” Her body stiffens. She waits like a predator. He puts a hand on her shoulder and lowers his whisper. “Tiger got arrested—you told me that. He got arrested, then they let him go. How did that happen? He’s got a record, and he probably has warrants. The only way the cops let him out like that—”

  “Fuck you.”

  “—is if he’s working for them.”

  “Fuck. You.” She pushes his chest. She’s done with her whispers. “Tiger’s not a snitch. He’s a bitch, but he’s one of us. And that bitch is handing back my stash, or whatever bread he got for it. Tonight.”

  Henry picks up the joint, which must’ve fallen when she pushed him. Studies it—bleh—drops it and stomps it out. “Tiger have a gun?”

  “He’s slow.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “If he reaches, I’ll take it.”

  “Great plan.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” Lipz says. “This doesn’t involve you.”

  Henry wonders if he’s just been uninvited to a party he never wanted to go to. He feels a little hurt.

  “If you come in with me,” Lipz says, “then it’s you getting my stash. And I’m this weak
girl people can take shit from.”

  “So why the fuck am I here?”

  “You’re not my bodyguard,” she says. “You’re my medic. If he kills me, fine. You can whatever. Go out and get fucked. But if he just hurts me, you’re taking me to the hospital.” She shudders, and Henry remembers that Lipz is afraid of hospitals. Remembers her bout of acute pancreatitis, back before she put a full stop to the hard drugs. Remembers the complications.

  He tries to get in a word but she cuts him off with a touch. Just her fingers on his ear, but touch doesn’t happen between them without a total body freeze. Is this happening? his body asks. He feels the blood rush. Now? Here?

  “You came out for me,” she whispers. “Thanks.” She pulls his face down to her mouth and then vanishes, leaving him with a warm spot on his cheek.

  Alone in the dark, Henry tries not to think of Emil, who still hasn’t surfaced. Henry hasn’t stopped reaching for his phone, feeling phantom buzzes, this whole time. He also bats away his feelings for Lipz, and what went through him when she held him. He’s leaning against the cinder-block wall, his hand on his phone again—where is he?—when he hears the scream.

  chapter 13

  Earlier that morning, Shecky goes to the corner bodega and buys a Daily News. He takes a reading walk around the neighborhood, peering over the pages, circling and then counter-circling his block. Looking for a green Mustang, for a blue Impala, for him, whoever he is—the monstrous cop/assassin who haunts his life. Everyone looks suspicious. And somehow not seeing the watcher becomes, as the hours pass, most unsettling of all. The watcher is beyond human, it seems. A spirit of evil.

  Around lunchtime he makes his rounds at the “bean banks”—coffee shops, quiet places with Wi-Fi he uses for wire transfers and to open and close accounts. At the Muddy Cup he gets a muffin and, while sipping his first cup of black, moves forty-thousand dollars through Mexico into Russia. At Crespella, as he picks through his usual lunchtime salad—kale and spinach, light on the tuna, heavy on the wasabi peas—he completes a complex restructuring of narco money through legitimish shell companies. He meets a client at Bean Stalk, and when the client asks if Shecky might give him a 2 percent discount—“as a favor”—Shecky annihilates the request with a hard, cold stare. In between his visits to the bean banks, he comes home to walk the block. He scans the curbs, the driveways. The passing traffic, the open garages. He finds nothing; he feels the spirit everywhere.