The Shaft

by David J. Schow

  A disgusted projectionist played the whole scenario in the theatre of Cruz's mind. Dummy. Can't you guess?

  Marko invades, probably using keys or a good Lockaid gun. His turnover of 307 is rapid, methodical, professional. He knows the federal investigator search routine and flows from gag to gag like a dancer being judged. He's out in three minutes flat. While Cruz is trying to con a cabbie into driving to Oakwood, the asshole from 304 stumps home after an evening of petty theft and sees the door to Cruz's place ajar. After a skittish second, he peeks. Sees the ghetto blaster, the tapes, the camera. Marko would have taken the film from the camera already. The black guy decides to enrich one of

  Chicago 's finer pawnshops with Cruz's untended property. He is sloppy, taking three times as long as Marko and leaves a hellacious mess. Between the pro and the amateur, Cruz has been cleaned out, utterly.

  He slumped onto his bed, dejected. Even the beer had been liberated from the fridge. He hoped it had boiled.

  Something new broke.

  Not Kenilworth, busting another stitch. Not Cruz's shabby fourth-hand furniture. He felt the actual give inside of himself, like a taut rubber band relaxing.

  Bauhaus, Marko, the pain, the burglary, the hasslement - none of this mattered a damn. Cruz glimpsed, for perhaps the second or third time in his life, a bigger picture than the world as seen through his own baby browns.

  What mattered was that he take action. Something to cut Jamaica free of that slug swine Bauhaus. Something to ensure Jonathan would be in the clear. Jonathan, who Cruz knew barely at all, yet who had done for him. A stranger who did not need any of Bauhaus' psychic sewage smeared across his life. Cruz needed something with which to strike a detente with Emilio, back home. Absolution was impossible… but a deal was never vetoed without scrutiny. Even before he was King Stud of Miami, Emilio was foremost a dealer. Cruz had to offer a deal. He also had to exorcise the ghost of Chiquita, falling still; scour her from the space she had appropriated inside his head.

  He had to arrange a life that did not require him to constantly look back over his shoulder in unending fear.

  The need to phone Rosie's emergency number swelled up and burst and filled him now, overriding even the agony of his ruined arm.

  Abruptly he felt uncomfortable up on Kenilworth 's third floor. He no longer belonged here. It was too high. Too far to fall.

  He did not have to strain to hear it now - the ebb-and-flow moan of Kenilworth 's ghost, the signature noise of the building itself.

  He used what the intruders had left him inside of his own apartment. He found a sweatshirt and spent several minutes gingerly wrestling into it, adding a layer to his insulation, then climbed back into his nightfighting jacket. He resecured his sling, snugging his arm above the jacket's waist drawstring. He had to use his teeth to retie it. When he zipped up his arm felt locked down, safe.

  He abandoned 307 to the fates and headed back for the stairs, avoiding the cursed elevator. When he rounded the second-floor corner he collided with Jamaica, who had hustled posthaste out of Jonathan's apartment, to hell with closing doors.

  The wild look in her eyes attacked Cruz's congratulatory self-effacement, stomping it down, rolling over and swiftly killing it.

  Sure enough, she found Playtex rubber gloves in one of Jonathan's kitchen boxes. This was a lifesaver.

  Once she hauled in the knotted extension cord she had quickly become a mess. It was caked and gravid with some gelatinous discharge. She tried wiping her hands and only spread it around, as cloudy and slippery as olive oil yet lacking that distinctive olfactory presence.

  The odor of the slime was a kissin' cousin to the stench of the grainier, fecal stuff. This was not alarming. The gunk on the line held swimming soot, the stale tang of bad seawater, and assorted particulate matter. Jamaica thought of a gobbet of industrial lubricant left on a dusty floor, then mixed with rancid fat plus that canned blue jelly they made you wash your hands with in jail, plus a healthy scoop of droppings from a very diseased dog.

  Then fermented.

  The water took its time warming up, as usual. She held her hand under the faucet. The glob resisted for a moment, then slid off to thicken the drain, leaving a film on her palm. She scrubbed at it with a paper towel, then hunted up the rubber gloves in a hurry because Jonathan, not her, was the one down in the shaft wading in this shit.

  Her guess at depth was doomed to remain a guess. In the dicey light from Jonathan's lantern she could only perceive tilting shadows from two stories up, like trying to follow a gunfight at the terminus of a dark alley. Her perspective was completely disrupted. The ghostly acoustics of the shaft hampered true sounds the same way. No sensory evidence was trustworthy.

  Cruz's garbage bag came up with a ragged tear in one side, and was so inundated in organic grease that Jamaica knew she would leave it in the bathtub. With gloved hands she widened the tear, then undid Cruz's knots. The slime made that pretty simple.

  Whatever had punctured the bag down there had taken one kilo of cocaine with it. She lifted out a taped brick with a wide, wet mouth… and the mouth was empty, its white bounty lost to the water. Half the take, stolen already.

  The weight of the gun in the Whitman Sampler box had saved the other kilo strictly by virtue of trapping it within a twist of thick plastic. Jamaica unwound it and it had become so convoluted that she felt encouraged. The candy box, astonishingly, was as dry as the night she had delivered it. The brick held speckles of water but its seal was inviolate.

  Do your part, she thought, and hurriedly fed the line back down to Jonathan.

  By the time they were finished, his bathroom would be a total loss. Best to shower and scrub and leave the cleaning of inanimate objects to some future, less fortunate tenant.

  The pretzel knots slipped and slid past her grasp, all the way until the line was paid out. She heard sloshing coming at her from the shaft as she placed the kilo and the candy box on top of the toilet tank. Real stupid, to risk getting them wet now.

  One kilo. Forty grand, maybe fifty - they could cut Bauhaus' pharmeceutical grade almost thirty percent before its orbit of potency began to decay. That would gram the load out to approximately…

  Shit. She'd need a calculator just to estimate what the flake was worth.

  She held the line, poised over a fouled bathtub in a subhuman tenement, blizzarded in, fearful and desperate and suddenly incapable of the simplest add-up, and that made her so mad she wanted to kick down the wall. Life in the lightspeed lane sure was a hoot. Do you know me? My name is Jamaica - this week - and I used to be a human being.

  More heavy sloshabout echoed toward her. She tried to keep track of Jonathan, who was listing awkwardly in the muck below, but the updraft had dented her nostrils two times too many. It was the smell of dead animals and rot heavy with parasites. The extension cord groaned against the moldy casement. Fortunately the tub had slid all the way to the wall and could scoot no further under Jonathan's swinging weight. She had watched the topmost pretzel loop squeeze shut like the eye of a sleeping cat.

  She had known what was in the candy box. She had known from the first, even without seeing. The heft of that box had told her stories. In a twitch of unexpected clarity she saw the gun representing just as much freedom as the kilo of coke sitting on the toilet tank.

  They had all talked of changing things, of steering their lives. Now she was on the brink of implementation, feeling something inside of her shy back. No. Better to stay where you are. To hold what you have rather than risk it. When you risk, you gamble, and when you gamble you can lose. Embrace the security you've built and don't dare to ask for more. You've walled yourself into such a nice fortress; it would be stupid to walk away and leave those walls, and their safety, and…

  'Hurry up!' It was Jonathan. 'Hurry with the fucking rope, goddammit, hey!'

  He had broken his own directive and was shouting, his voice superamplified by the tunnel of metal, hollow and lost. A misfire. Something had staled for sure.r />
  The line was completely paid out. Jamaica stepped into the tub, her boots skidding on moisture and residual gunk from the Hefty bag piled near the drain like a dead manta ray, deflated yet still lethal. She wriggled through the window, braced at the waist, to agitate the line. If Jonathan did not have it in hand, it had gotten hung up or tangled. There was no slack on her end.

  Light from his lamp darted across her face and stung her eyes. She averted her head, blind for a second. She had recorded a glimpse of how lubricated the entire shaft was, in the play of the lightbeam over the thickly coated walls. Genuinely gross.

  Climbing loops had fouled to form a big knot. She felt it shake free.

  By now the two of them were scaring up a beastly racket. She heard another voice in a distant apartment yell back. Shut the fuck up. One more tenor in the tenement symphony.

  The light below danced. The line swayed, then drew taut. She heard the gong noise of Jonathan's boots hitting the corrugated steel, then a less controlled gong of impact. When she looked she saw only the light, veering in circles, slicing burn tracks across her vision and illuminating nothing.

  She heard Jonathan scream. Not a help noise. Worse.

  More thuddings and splashing. The line remained weighted, telegraphing his ascent to her.

  To hell with decorum, she thought. Why should she start following rules today?

  'Jonathan?' They'd already announced themselves to the building at large anyway. She leaned farther out, head and shoulders into the fetor of the shaft now, and grabbed the extension cord with her gloved hands. It was too heavy for her, but she tried to pull it in, to help him closer.

  Below, the lamp bulb vanished, a lone star in a black void, finally embracing death itself.

  'Jonathan!'

  The line went slack in her grip. She could not know that the next sound she heard was Jonathan's face striking the shaft as he did a backward somersault and picked up speed. Then he splashed and sank.

  Panic endorphins flooded her, turning Jonathan's name into a yell. Jamaica had never screamed before and did not now.

  She heard him make a low noise. Uhh. Like Cruz's imaginary ghost, the off-key inhabitant of Kenilworth. It was a quiescent purr, almost sexual.

  She pictured him fallen, the back of his head caved in, with whatever had holed the Hefty bag now jutting through his chest. Or throat.

  All her thoughts changed nothing.

  She hung. Fifteen seconds more. She heard bubbling. She called his name once more… but softly this time, realizing he was gone, taken away in an instant.

  On the tank the gun awaited her pleasure, a scepter of power. You do what I say. Point the scepter and they do what you say. It gets you into the apartment on the first floor with no credentials or questions. It lets you pass so you may shine a light. Solve the mystery. Then move your fine symmetrical butt, lady, because you're packing an illegal firearm plus enough even less legal dope to put you in the state hotel until your fucking eyes turn gray.

  A big part of her wanted to stick, and continue calling uselessly out the window. A bigger part craved lights out and deep, irresponsible sleep without dreams. She forced herself to move; it was like wading.

  The candy box was sealed in clear packing tape. When she tried to muscle it open she only succeeded in ripping off the box lid, exposing a grooved butt in matte black. When she tipped the box she felt the packet of cartridges slide heavily. Taped to the inside of the box were also two magazines, already loaded, the blunt copper noses of the headmost shells peeking out. Minuscule phallic symbols all in a regiment. She withdrew the pistol and got the clip in right on the first try. She thought she knew how to use this weapon.

  She was on her way out the door, determined, decided, gun in hand, when she nearly collided with Cruz, who looked like he had just wandered out of a freefire zone.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sometimes the place remembers holes. The cat knows this.

  The cat does not know the concept of a building. Merely place. It cannot know the building is older than its own span of years, the very bricks that comprise its walls themselves the remnants of other buildings, long demolished. The cat has no notions of age or death or time, or a time for dying. These are human conceits.

  Kenilworth Arms has been mortared together from the components of buildings long-dead. To the cat the bricks smell unstable.

  The cat pauses in its latest exploration of the basement, endlessly questioning, yet never extrapolating. All it knows is that new avenues of passage come and go in the place like sunspots. There are holes that exist for a moment to link ground floor to rooftop, or east fire escape to west corridor. Then they close up seamlessly. The cat is learning how to employ these deliciously random doorways. How to pull clear of them before the place recalls its own structure accurately enough to put solid walls back where they belong.

  Sometimes the cat squeezes through the far end bloodied or filthy. The cat dislikes this, but not enough to shun the curious holes as they open and close like blooms beneath a sunlamp.

  Just now the cat freezes on alert. It senses the proximity of another living thing. It crouches low and proceeds paw over paw to reconnoiter the corner.

  A large, sleeping animal is blocking the tunnel. The cat already finds the tunnel unhospitable. Too hot, too damp, too slimy down here. It is lost. It wants a new hole to iris open so it may go somewhere else. To its rear is nothing but more horizontal tunnel, terminating in a thick iron hatch that is bolted shut from the opposite side.

  The thing is coiled, sleeping in a pool of its own amniotic juice, and it looks enormous to the cat. The cat acknowledges the presence of quite a few long, needle-like, nasty teeth. It does not desire combat, but if cornered by the iron door, it will claw and hiss and attempt to inflict as much damage as possible in order to buy a chance at running around the big creature. Escape lay ahead, not behind. Just now, to pass the sleeping thing, the cat will have to squeeze around it or walk over it. This is not worth the risk of waking the creature up.

  The cat will wait, but never for long.

  The cat sits, feels dampness, rises back. It watches the creature breathe. It smells identity spoor: The blood of a recent kill, the hydrochloric waft of digestion and elimination. The place takes no more notice of this creature than it does of the cat; no more notice than the cat itself would lend a tapeworm.

  The cat lifts one paw and shakes it fastidiously. Hopeless. So much grooming to do, once it gets out. If.

  The cat has rapidly cultivated a sense of trust that a hole will open soon. But it feels the tilted equilibrium of the place. The place has become fitful and unreliable. The place has remembered to make the elevator function, then forgotten its purpose. The car remains jammed, doors agape, near the second floor. The cat knows this because it has padded to the edge and peered into the darkness of the shaft. The cat has heard some half-living thing, wet and angry and incomplete, wallowing about on the roof of the car. The cat did not check into that one. It did not want a fight then any more than it wanted to agitate this even larger creature sleeping some ten paces distant, blocking the metal tunnel with its bloated brown bulk.

  The creature is rather like a snake the cat had once caught and eviscerated, only lacking the serpentine symmetry. The only other applicable physical comparison the cat could dredge up - its attention span is extremely limited - is of a stale sausage casing it had once thrown up. This creature was like that, too. Dented and fat and stinky, exuding smells of grease and fat, curled into itself like a braid of excrement.

  Only this is much bigger. And alive.

  A measure of careful respect was to be accorded here. The cat would wait.

  The sound of slowly dripping water, to the rear, made the cat check quickly to see if another of the place's holes had decided to open up.

  When the cat looks back, the creature is shifting. Dreaming, perhaps. Its fatty hide hangs loosely, as though a sleeker corpus is trapped within a baggy monster suit. Gravid flesh drips fr
om the hump of back to pool around the creature, blocking the cramped accessway even more.

  Sleeping, it regurgitates bones, yawns wide and toothy, and resumes dreaming.

  The expelled bones are waxed in adipose and stomach acid. Curls of steam twist up into the cooler air. Broken rib struts, thin wings of calcium, airy and light. A human mandible with porcelain and silver fillings.

  The cat holds at ten paces, disinclined to assume the role of dessert or midnight snackeroo. For this creature, the cat would not even be two bites.

  When the creature yawns again the cat sees that the lining of its circular maw is ribbed and tessellated, with pimply bumps. It is a startling uniform white. The luminescent mold slathered about the metal tunnel makes this last observation possible. The cat cannot see colors so it does not see all the red. It can smell the blood, however, and recognizes it as recently fresh.

  The cat's feet are genuinely wet and uncomfortable now. It backs off nearly all the way back to the metal hatch, high-stepping and shaking each paw in turn. It is warmer back here. It stretches against the wall, out of sight of the sleeping creature. The wall yields. The cat sees its claws open scratching-post furrows.

  The cat's brain is not sophisticated enough to posit that perhaps it willed this opening to happen. It knows only to take advantage. In moments it has slashed the hole wide enough to permit passage. Worth the discomfort and damp, this time, just to get away.

  As was its nature, the cat forgets about the sleeping creature just as soon as it is gone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  'Calm down!'

  The first thirty seconds of hysteria were loud and useless.

  'Calm down! Shut up!'

  Strangers screamed for quiet. Threats were hurled from behind tilt-bar locks, but no one actually emerged to rumble as Cruz and Jamaica shouted in each other's faces near the second floor stairwell.