Past Echoes

by Graham Smith

  The smell of the scarring agent causes one or two of the bar’s patrons to look at me, wrinkle their noses and move seats. I figure they think I’ve soiled myself. They can make whatever assumptions they like.

  I leave the bar and make my way towards Union Hall Street. According to the newspaper’s reporting of crimes, it’s one of the worst areas in Queens. If I can’t get mugged here, I can’t get mugged anywhere.

  With my hood pulled over my head, I stagger and lurch my way onto Union Hall Street. It’s a residential area and it wouldn’t look too bad were it not for the occasional boarded window, and the basketball courts encased by rusty, broken, chain-link fences.

  Some young punks loiter across the street, and there are a few knots of girls – three parts attitude, one part scared children – who’ve been forced by circumstances to grow up way quicker than is natural.

  None of them look like they’ll tackle me, so I cut through a side street and find myself in a different kind of place.

  The buildings here are taller and closer together; there is an air of menace, and those who inhabit these streets are older and meaner than any of the kids on Union Hall Street.

  Beneath the cover of my hoodie, I smile.

  57

  I exaggerate my lurch into the alleyway. It’s dim, dark, and has piles of garbage everywhere. Most people would have more sense than to go anywhere near a place like this, but I feign a stagger as I walk halfway along it.

  I pause by a dumpster, undo the zip on my jeans, and widen my feet to shoulder width. Anyone looking at me will think I’m taking a whizz. Anyone who wants the contents of my wallet will think all their Christmases have come at once.

  I hear footsteps behind me but I don’t give a visible reaction. Instead of turning my head, I’m listening, and calculating how many would-be muggers there are and where they are positioned.

  A hand grips my shoulder and I smell breath that’s even fouler than the stench coming from the dumpster.

  ‘S’matter? Can’t a dude take a whizz?’ The slurring I add to my tone isn’t perfect, but it should be good enough to convince the hand’s owner.

  I feel something press against my right kidney, and get a second, stronger, blast of the foul breath.

  ‘You forgot to pay the tax, buddy. Just hand over your wallet, cell and watch, and you can walk outta here.’

  The speaker’s accent is low and guttural. There is no refinement in his voice, no suggestion that he’s had even a half-decent education. The wisecrack about the tax shows as much. It’s the kind of line you’d get in a bad movie.

  From the corner of my eye I see a second person. If Bad Breath is at my six o’clock, Compatriot is at eight.

  The fact they’ve pulled a weapon so early on, neutralises any qualms I have about hurting them.

  The hand on my shoulder removes itself, as Bad Breath waits for me to turn round.

  When I do turn, it’s a lot faster than he’s expecting; I drive myself round and throw my left elbow towards his head. As I spin, my body whirls away from whatever weapon he’s holding against my right kidney.

  My elbow catches the side of his jaw; whether it’s dislocated or broken isn’t important. My right hand follows up and slams into his temple.

  As Bad Breath is collapsing, I’m stepping towards Compatriot.

  He pulls a knife from his pocket and waves it in front of my face. I raise my hands into a boxer’s stance and watch his eyes. There’s uncertainty and fear.

  I feint a jab. He slashes his knife wide.

  A fraction of a second later, my hand is on his wrist and I’ve got it twisted until he’s in an armbar.

  I drive the heel of my hand into his elbow and hear the double crunch of breaking bone and tearing sinew before he howls in agony.

  Compatriot drops to his knees so I introduce his chin to my boot. They don’t get on.

  I search the two prone bodies for weapons, and find two knives and just over a hundred dollars.

  The knives get tossed into a dumpster and the money goes into my pocket. I’m not a thief and this is the first time I’ve ever taken something that wasn’t freely given to me. The money I’ve taken from them will find its way to a charity. I’ve only taken it as it seems like poetic justice to mug the muggers.

  The next two alleyways I walk down see me collect another one hundred and fifty bucks for charity. The nearest emergency ward also got another three patients, but hey, while I may have intimated I was an easy target, I didn’t force them to mug me.

  I pass an alleyway between two apartment blocks but choose not to go down it. There’s too much light and there is nobody around to follow me.

  Perhaps the local muggers have seen me followed three times already, and emerging unscathed. If that’s the case I may have to give up on my plan.

  I decide to give it one more go and cross the street. There’s an alleyway on the left that I stagger along. I have one hand on the coarse brick wall, and I’m going through my taking-a-whizz routine when I hear footsteps.

  I stay in position and wait to see what happens.

  ‘Yo.’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘Yo, dude. I’m like, talking to you.’

  I turn around and see three people. All are wearing hoodies that shade their faces.

  Their faces don’t matter.

  What matters is the gun the one in the centre is holding. It’s pointed at my nose and he thinks he’s being cool by holding it at ninety degrees from upright, but he’s being stupid and reducing his chances of firing with any great accuracy.

  I give up the pretence of drunkenness and address the man whose gun I plan to steal. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘We been watching you, dude. You think you can come here and take my bros down? You think you’re some vigilante? Man, you are sooo wrong.’

  He adds an insult which suggests I have intimate relations with my female parent.

  I’m from Glasgow, where the c-word is used as a term of endearment. If he wants to insult me, he’s going to have to try a lot harder.

  ‘I’m not a vigilante. I’ve just come here for something, and I’m not leaving until I get it.’

  The calmness and certainty in my voice triggers something in him. He steps forward so his gun is three inches from my nose.

  ‘All you’re getting, is your ass well and truly whupped.’

  As Gunman speaks, his buddies circle round from behind him.

  ‘You’re wrong. Let me tell you what I want, and if you give it to me, I’ll let you walk away unhurt.’

  Gunman’s buddies halt. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve kept my tone conversational, or that I have never flinched, despite having a gun inches from my face. Whatever the reason, it’s enough to make them cautious.

  ‘Before we kick yo’ ass, you can give us a laugh and tell us what you want. Whatcha after, Mr Vigilante? What’s down here that you want?’

  I duck my head left as my right hand grabs the gun and twists it upwards, breaking the finger he has in the trigger guard. As he drops the gun, I smash an elbow into the face of the guy on the left. The guy on the right is coming for me with balled fists, so I let him throw a wild punch and counter with a hard shot to his gut.

  The gunman is kicking at me, so I grab his raised foot and twist it until he flips and lands face down. My boot connects with his genitalia hard enough to score a fifty-yard field goal. His buddies have recovered enough to straighten up, and the guy on the left is pulling something from his jacket.

  I charge at him and drive him backwards towards an abandoned shopping cart. He falls over it and smashes his head on the hard cobbles of the alleyway. While he’s still groggy, I arrange a meeting with my boot for his already shattered nose.

  A hammer blow to the back of my head has me reeling forward. The guy I turn to face is the one who thinks he’s a boxer. Tempted as I am to prove him wrong with a sustained series of punches, I just want to get this over with.

  His right hand snakes towards
my head, I duck back and use the toe of my boot to lift his kneecap upwards. He yelps, and hops on his good leg with both hands wrapped around his broken knee.

  One quick punch to his temple crumples him into an unconscious heap.

  It’s taken me no more than ten seconds to drop these three, and it takes me another twenty to search them. I get the best part of five hundred bucks for charity, one gun, and a collapsible baton.

  The collapsible baton goes in my pocket as I walk towards the entrance of the alleyway – I need more light for my next task.

  I position myself where I can’t be ambushed and check out the gun. It’s an automatic. Guns are not my area of interest and as such I don’t know a lot about them.

  I fiddle with it and find a lever that releases the magazine. I count the bullets in it. All seven of them.

  There’s another lever, which I presume is a safety catch, but in this light, I can’t see which way is on and which is off.

  I return to the three bozos and reach into the right pocket of Gunman’s hoodie for the lighter I’d felt earlier.

  It sparks on the first flick of the wheel, and illuminates the gun enough for me to ensure the safety catch is on. I stuff the gun into the waistband of my jeans, cover it with my shirt and, for the first time in my life, set off to commit murder.

  58

  I dump my hoodie in a trash can and cross the street. The neon lights of The Elite Club flash in a cursive script that suggests familiarity and welcome.

  Like titty bars everywhere, there’s a person on the door who resembles a gorilla that’s been levered into a suit, and fed a regular diet of steroids until the suit bulges at every seam.

  There’s red rope hanging from brass pedestals to give the illusion of class. As if class can be associated with disillusioned women painting on fake smiles and stripping for men they would normally cross the street to avoid.

  A bunch of guys wander towards The Elite Club and the gorilla lets them in. I might be a half block away, but I can tell from the way they’re shouting and laughing that they’re liquored up.

  I approach the door and wait for the gorilla to step aside. He gives me a long, hard look; I know he’s looking at my scar, trying to work out how much trouble I might be. I keep my face neutral and voice polite when I ask what the entrance fee is. The last thing I need is for him to refuse me.

  The gorilla moves out of my way, so I pay the bored-looking woman in the kiosk and walk into the strip club.

  It’s as bad as I’d expected. All the tropes are there in evidence. Red flocked wallpaper adorned with pictures of models who’d refuse to set foot in here, let alone perform a strip.

  The bar is long and in need of some maintenance, let alone a thorough cleaning. When I look at the seats I see a synthetic covering that may, just may, have resembled leather when it was installed.

  Bad music is blasting out with an emphasis on the bass. I guess it’s that way to give the dancers a rhythm, or it would be if any of them were actually in time with the music. Every one of them is dancing to a different beat with a fixed smile and a marked lack of sensuality.

  I buy a soda and take a seat at the back of the room to observe things. The girls range from nearly pretty to somewhat attractive. They aren’t ugly, they’ve just buried their true selves beneath a thick layer of cosmetics.

  An inspection of the security arrangements confirms two roving doormen, six CCTV domes, and a pair of doors with electronic keypads.

  Another look at the bar makes me reassess my count of the doormen – two of the bartenders are also big enough to stop most patrons who decide to act out.

  I take a sip of my soda and ponder on the cliché that is organised crime and strip clubs. It’s like one can’t exist without the other. I guess it’s because they are a good way to launder money, and recruit girls into prostitution, while providing criminals with a steady income.

  Whatever the case may be, The Elite Club is owned by Cameron’s employer and is the place he was always summoned to when his boss wanted him.

  Alfonse has done a thorough search on the name Cameron gave me. Olly Kingston features on a few business pages here and there but, even when Alfonse had dug deep, he’d found nothing to suggest that Kingston was anything other than a self-made man. This tells me he’s clever, well-connected, and has enough steel about him to hold an elevated position in a very dangerous industry.

  The one thing Alfonse couldn’t find, was an address. Cameron was no use on that front either – he’d always met Kingston at one of his businesses. He may have been trusted – wrongly, as he proved – but he either wasn’t close enough, or liked enough, to be invited to his boss’s home.

  Cameron’s insistence that Kingston likes to be known as The King, implies delusion regarding his status, or a serious obsession with Elvis Presley.

  I see one of the girls wander among the rows of seats. Her eyes flit back and forth as she seeks out a likely target. I’m given a half-second glance as she moves on to the bunch of guys I’d seen entering before me.

  A moment later she’s leading one of them by the hand towards the private booths.

  They emerge a song later with him grinning like someone who’s just been promoted from village to town idiot, and her already looking for her next mark.

  59

  A dancer approaches me and introduces herself as Mandi-with-one-I. Despite her having two eyes, I can’t help but think of her as Cyclops.

  ‘You okay, sugar? You been sat here all on your lonesome and you ain’t had no company.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I give her a tight smile.

  ‘Sure you are.’ The hand she lays on my leg is warm and has false nails that resemble talons. ‘A twenty buck dance from me will make you even better.’

  If I let her dance for me, I’ll blend in.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

  Not only do I want to stand out, but strip bars have never been my thing. I have no interest in paying a woman to take her clothes off for me. Even less so when I’m avenging a murdered girlfriend.

  I watch Cyclops as she walks away. She turns her head to the barman and gives it a little shake.

  The barman plays it cool, but two minutes later he’s chatting to one of the roving doormen.

  It takes a few minutes, but the roving doorman eventually speaks to a dancer who is wearing a long silky dress.

  She doesn’t look my way, but she does work her way round the room until she’s heading in my direction.

  As she approaches me, I give her a thorough appraisal. She’s the most attractive girl in here by a considerable distance. She moves with a seductive sway and she has the quiet confidence of a woman who’s used to manipulating men. In another time and place, I know I’d find myself attracted to her.

  When a guy goes into a titty bar and doesn’t engage with the titties, or the bar, people notice. When the right people in a bar notice something, they get antsy. When people get antsy, they react. Sending the best-looking girl in the place over here, is their reaction.

  She takes the same seat that Cyclops had and crosses one leg over the other, causing the slit in her dress to part enough to give me a good view of her upper thigh.

  She doesn’t speak as she returns my appraisal. Her eyes lock on to my new scar; that’s the reason the scar is there.

  It’s a focal point, not just for the eyes, but also the memory. Anyone I encounter tonight will be able to describe my scar in detail, but when pressed about the shape of my nose and jaw, or the colour of my eyes, they’ll struggle to recall details.

  She curls her lips apart and uses a forefinger to caress them, before dropping her hand back in her lap. ‘You’ve got us puzzled, mister.’

  Her words are an opening gambit, in what I’m sure will become a discussion about why I’m not having any dances. Or why I’m not sitting near enough to gawp at the girls doing lazy gyrations on the stage. Perhaps she wants to know why I’m not drinking alcohol.

  ‘I’m a puzzling kind o
f guy.’

  ‘You sure are. You’re not interested in the girls, and you’re not hitting the beer – despite stinking of whisky.’ She slides her tongue from left to right between plump lips. ‘So, Mr Puzzle, why are you here?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nobody you know.’ That might be a lie, but while I have no cares about henchmen and muggers getting hurt, I don’t want to see any innocents harmed.

  ‘Are they meeting you here?’

  ‘Possibly.’ I give a nonchalant shrug and adjust my position so the gun isn’t digging into my back. ‘I’m waiting to see what happens.’

  She gives a nervous smile. ‘Can I interest you in a dance?’

  I shake my head.

  The girl stands and leans over me. At first, I think she’s trying to use the view I’m getting down her dress to change my mind about the dance, until she opens her mouth. ‘Please leave. They’ll hurt you if you don’t.’ Her words are little more than a breathy whisper.

  ‘Thanks.’

  I wait until she’s crossed the room then haul myself to my feet. It’s time I got another soda.

  60

  I watch as one of the bartenders leaves the bar and speaks to a roving doorman. As soon as the bartender pulls back a half step, the doorman walks to the entrance.

  The suited gorilla walks in and scans the room. His eyes find the bartender, who’s standing by the DJ’s booth.

  A moment later the bartender is walking my way, with the gorilla following at his heel like a well-trained puppy.

  He stops a respectful distance away and gives me the once over. It’s nothing more than a show. He’s sent two dancers my way, so he’s aware of what I look like and has the information I want him to have.

  The gorilla at his heel is also for show. He wants me to feel intimidated. If he thinks that King Kong’s baby brother is going to scare me, he’s very much mistaken.