The Shaft

by David J. Schow

  'No, no!' Jamaica was prattling, rapidfire. 'You don't understand; he's hurt, he's down there; we've got to help him-!'

  The gun, forgotten in her own grip, was randomly aimed right at Cruz's groin while she spoke. He snatched it right out of her hand. 'Will you just wait one second!'

  She overrode and shoved him back roughtly. 'You wait. He could be drowning while you just stand there!'

  With a sound like a growl she shoved past, colliding with his injured arm and spinning him halfway as she lit down the stairs. Drugs, Cruz thought. She acts like she's on something.

  Who was drowning?

  He wanted to chase her then, but the cocked door to 207 deterred him. The gun in his hand offered bravery. He squirmed around the airlock doors and poked his head into Jonathan's place.

  Maybe Jonathan was drowning?

  Inside: Boxes, clutter, the cot, more boxes. Bloody footprints. He trailed them to the bathroom and saw his own Glad bag slowly deflating in the tub. Blood and shit were smeared everywhere and the window was open. It looked like an open mouth. When he saw the orange extension cord feeding out and down, he thought of plugging it in to perhaps electrocute the ghosts of Kenilworth and sterilize the dead or dying things down in the shaft.

  When he saw the kilo of coke stationed on top of the toilet tank, Cruz forgot all about poor old Jonathan.

  Half the stash had been salvaged. Half at least. Whatever else had gone down while he was trapped in hospital dreamtime, half his payoff was here, now, and it was good enough. It would need hiding. Bauhaus' pet mugger, Mr Marko of the fullback body and golf tee brain, would return here just as soon as he found out he had been foxed.

  And five minutes ago Cruz had just accidentally discovered the perfect hidey-hole.

  On the closed lid of the toilet seat was the candy box, ripped open. Inside were a clip and a box of cartridges. Gun's in your HAND already, homeboy, Cruz's brain informed him.

  He lurched, vision spotting momentarily. His arm pounded. He hurt and couldn't quite deduce what the hell had transpired during his brief absence, and by the way…

  … there is still a police car parked on Garrison Street, right outside, and you are standing here like a dickless mannequin with a gun in your hand and enough pharmeceutical cocaine to get you butt-fucked by convicts for five or six more lifetimes.

  Chaos thundered back from the stairs. He tried to whirl and draw a bead. The muzzle didn't dip when he knew it was Jamaica, knew it was his name being called.

  You could always toss the kilo back out the window. It was time he stopped repeating mistakes. In an instant he decided that he was capable of blindsiding a lone cop. Knock his ass down the stairs. Run like hell. Disappear into the blizzard. Stop someplace where he could dope it all out. Later.

  No time.

  He thought of Rosie's crisis cool. The shit was flying grandly now. He had to be careful not to inhale any.

  She was at the bathroom door. 'Come on, come on, you've gotta come, hurry UP!'

  One-handed, he lofted the kilo onto Jonathan's cot and got a positive grip on the Sig Sauer. He wouldn't be able to shoot worth a tick fart with his left hand, but life's rich cornucopia of options did not afford him a choice. Sidewise, gun drawn, he edged down the stairs to 107 right behind Jamaica.

  Dark in there. Cold. He saw her hesitate at the threshold.

  She had come down here, seen stuff, and bolted back up the stairs. Twenty seconds, tops. Too much for her mind to process without distance.

  He saw the look on her face as she urged him ahead.

  The only light that seemed to work blazed from the bathroom. Cruz saw the dried blood all over the living room walls by its pale, canted luminescence. Some splashes reached nearly to the ceiling. Blood stained the blinds and soaked the flapping curtain in the busted casement window. Broad smears of it across the floor. Gelid little ponds, still tacky, where gravity had pooled it. The furniture was overturned and sundered.

  He stepped carefully around the blood. The bathroom vestibule, identical to those in his and Jonathan's rooms, was like the drainage gutter of an abattoir on beef bashing day. There was an eye on the floor, roots already dried stiff. The bathroom itself was even worse.

  Cruz could not make his lips and tongue cooperate enough to ask stupid, obvious questions. This was nothing like seeing Chiquita perform her swan-song dive. This was an overload of unending meat and fluid and carnage; a corpse pit empty of corpses, yet retaining plenty of clues.

  Wadded into a corner and soaked with blood was a policeman's hazard jacket bearing an Oakwood patch and single hash marks. In the far corner there was a cap, upside-down, with some bloodied hair still inside. Cruz crossed to the broken Garrison Street window and sure enough, the cruiser was right outside. Still vacant.

  Jamaica 's face held the expression of a woman who had just been punched out by her one true love. Or punched from the inside. Only now did Cruz notice she was wearing a pair of bright orange Playtex rubber gloves.

  This was the old Jew-hater's apartment, he realized. He spotted an open dresser drawer and purloined a handkerchief, folding it to mask his nose and mouth from the stench. His throat wanted to gag. He had zero desire to look at what he might chuck up, thanks.

  The bathroom was awash in dry maroon. A cleanup challenge worthy of Mrs Bates' best boy, Norman. The airshaft window was smashed out and there were bloody bootprints marking the exterior sill. The extension cord hung in the blackness, pretzel loop swaying dreamily - a Daliesque component of weirdness texturing this tableau of slaughter.

  Cruz saw the straight razor in the bathtub and shivered. It had nothing to do with the biting cold. The bloodied razor stuck to the porcelain was Emilio, raising his platinum shaver and saying, remember me?

  He was shaking now, trembling with that bone-deep loss of control that heralds the shudder you cannot suppress. It takes you and shakes you until it is done with you.

  The storm backhanded Kenilworth with a blow of sub-zero air. The curtains sucked out, then blew inward. Both Cruz and Jamaica felt the building shift. The metal in the airshaft clicked and groaned. When air is cold enough, it fails to carry odors, and that, at least, was a small relief.

  Jamaica moved closer, equipped now with her own bandana, unable to close her eyes or avert her head. She gaped at the bathroom window, not dumbly, but with the opposite of any expression - empty, drained, null.

  'Jonathan,' she said. 'Is…'

  The silence did the rest for both of them.

  Cruz leaned out to case the shaft and found the corrugated steel dense with slime. Below he could just make out the bobbing red and white plastic of the dead lantern. A handful of wooden matches floated on the surface of the water, which looked thick and mulchy. He reached out to stir the extension cord; matches were drawn to its wake. When he reeled in the free end he found nothing attached. Just one more climbing loop.

  'If Jonathan is down there, he's underwater. He's past tense.'

  It was too dark for Cruz to perceive the muddy crimson tint the water had assumed.

  When he looked back, Jamaica had drawn away and the blizzard's howl and keen had dropped a notch. The living room casement had not been broken, and she had closed it.

  Somehow it was better and worse that there were no actual dead bodies, or parts thereof, to step around in 107. The blood, so much of it, only reminded Cruz again and again of Chiquita, fallen woman, dead center in her personal pool of lifeblood, a liquid corona of bubbly red, expanding.

  More Red? No thanks ever so much, I've had enough.

  (Clink.)

  Cruz had never liked wine much.

  With the window closed the cold air in the living room settled, bringing the raw meat stench back for a powerful encore. It sent Jamaica back to the hall.

  He found her in the corridor near the foyer - the place where they had all been rousted two nights before. Her knees were bent, her back to the wall, and she hugged her saddlebag purse to her chest like a shield. Her striking gre
en eyes were fixed and wet but no tears had broken loose. She looked to Cruz like a person teetering on the brink of circuit fusion.

  He took her arm. She still wasn't seeing him.

  'Come on. Back upstairs. For just a minute.'

  She shook her head no, vigorously, pulling away, her shoulderblades thumping the wall. Distantly, somebody thumped back.

  ' Jamaica.' He softened his tone. 'Hey.'

  Amber cooked hotly through the green, and now the eyes had him targeted. 'I'm fine, goddamnit, just don't touch me. I am fine.' She sniffed hard, as if blasting mildew from the crannies of her head. The cold air cleared her sinuses.

  He started to move his lips again. To talk shit, to try evening her keel, because with typical macho lead-headedness, he thought he had a Hysterical Female burdening his flight path. He needed to get Important Stuff done and here Jamaica was, falling to pieces.

  She met his gaze and saw that she wasn't special, wasn't anything apart from a panicked whore.

  Fuck that, she thought.

  Bloodbaths infiltrated her brain, immersing it and whispering you'll never forget me, babe. She used anger to shove the images away. Time enough for them later; they'd be with her the rest of her life.

  Before Cruz could even commence his calm-down speech she interposed. 'I don't need a pat on the head. And I don't need a Valium. Get your ass back in there and close those doors. Bauhaus had your room turned over tonight; he wants to nail your ass, and if I was you I'd devote some serious meditation time to your potential for being dead within the next few hours.'

  He blew out a frustrated breath. 'Marko. That fucking meatball. When I first got here I thought Marko had gone on a rampage and killed everybody

  'This isn't Marko's style.' She pictured the methodical way with which Cruz's room had been dealt… before some amateur had done a smash 'n grab mop up. 'But I told you: Nobody takes from Bauhaus. He never forgets.'

  O.D. City, thought Cruz, of Bauhaus. Guy's on so much chemical he thinks he's some land of deity, just like Emilio. All the subterfuge and behind-the-scenes double-dealing made Bauhaus smarmier. At least Emilio's straight razor was a plain threat, and Cruz almost longed to face it rather than continue this secret agent crap. Take Emilio mano-a-mano and resolve something. Don't call in Rosie. Do it yourself.

  He wanted a blast of toot very badly now, and knew just where he could ease that craving. It hollowed his stomach and made his temples bang.

  'You've got to stash that kilo,' she said. 'That's all we've got left and we're about to lose that. Company's coming.'

  'Any second,' he said. 'I know just the place.' He motioned her back toward the stairs but she resisted.

  'I promised I'd be at Bauhaus' tonight. If I don't show he'll know something stinks. He probably already knows you've split from St Jude's. Marko has been here and gone.'

  'I sent him to check out Jonathan. To buy time.'

  Her eyes might have accused him of selling out a near stranger, but she knew that given the options she might as well have made the same choice. 'I've got to go. Give me a couple of hours and a place where I can meet you.'

  'The Bottomless Cup will be open at dawn. On Weedwine.' She nodded.

  ***

  Back in Jonathan's apartment Cruz examined the climbing set-up in awe while Jamaica re-donned her bomber jacket and zipped up for the tempest. He did not want her to see him slicing open the kilo and vacuuming a palmful of Columbian Cremora up his snoot. He wanted her to leave so he could get on with the nasal action news.

  'Better give me 'til noon,' she said. 'Christ knows what Bauhaus has planned, and I don't want him to tip for the better part of a day.'

  Get out of here, he thought, pretending to pay attention.

  'I'll meet you and we can bug outta here. Pass the dope to your pal in Florida. Nobody'll be expecting your unannounced flyby and we'll be gone before your buddy Emilio can do anything about it.'

  'And before Bauhaus can nail my ass to a flaming tree.'

  'So resign yourself to the idea of being a fugitive for a piece, bud,' she said. 'Maybe your pal Rosie can introduce us to a new city.'

  When Cruz nodded Jamaica thought: Jesus, it worked! Cruz was so anxious for a short snort that he didn't care how flimsy her story was. He was set to tuck into that kilo before she was past the front door.

  Fine. She left him to it. Dope dealer, damn thyself.

  Jonathan, sorry I got you into this mess. She pulled shut the door to her late friend's apartment.

  As soon as she was out of Cruz's sight she unzipped her jacket, hiked up her Beverly Hills sweatshirt, and transferred to her bag two items she had collected downstairs while Cruz was busy trying not to smell the gore drenching the bathroom: A ring of keys belonging to Officer Stallis, who was still MIA. And a matte-finish.357 Mag with one shot fired and five still in the cylinder. Also Stallis'.

  No time for eulogies to Jonathan. His life would have to serve by salvaging her own. Time enough for appreciations later, when she knew if she had been salvaged.

  Five slugs should be plenty.

  Her original plan was back on track. And the keyring made her think of other, more brutally subtle embellishments.

  It had been like a million years of waiting, compressed into his brain, itching to inflate.,

  Cruz's thumbnail fumbled against the steel teeth of his Swiss army knife. His knuckle was jabbed open in his vast rush; he licked off the dot of blood. Finally he pried up a blade and used It to carve an erratic incision across the top of the kilo package. He'd used toilet paper to blot the beads of moisture from the plastic first. The brick reminded him of one of those vacuum I wickets of coffee, hard as a kiln tile yet slightly yielding, like the business end of a padded sparring staff.

  Fssss. Product of Columbia.

  The brick grew a smile for him, frosted with white granules. He jabbed the knife blade and lifted a miniature Everest for each nostril.

  Like the kilo that had died in battle, this blow was Bauhaus' hit-single 90% cut - extra-extra dry, barely stepped on. There was just a hint of some light stimulant. Methylphenidate, thought Cruz, though he couldn't have spelled it if a Luger was stuck in his ear. Or phenmetrazine. Nothing that would seriously hurt him if he topped off his tanks, so he destroyed about a gram. He matched the blizzard raging against Kenilworth with a blizzard inside the snow-globe of his skull,, and felt his metabolism slam to stride. Boom-cha-cha; good music in his heart and thunder in his hyper-caffeinated highway of veins.

  The ache in his arm turned itself down to MUTE and his brain was hang-gliding. He felt near optimum again - alert, primed, attentive, satellite eyes ready to target and dispatch deadly laser judgement, ready for goddamn anything. The next act would be critical and he needed to remain on this plateau of efficiency. He could feel calories burning while he stood there.

  He found Jonathan's Excedrin in the sink cabinet and crunched up five, swallowing the chalky powder with a palmful of sink water. These pills, too, would be his ally against the constant headache and the staplegun pain that possessed his ruined arm. He pinched running water and rinsed his septum with a hard sniff. He found he could now focus with extreme clarity on each particle of dust swimming down the saline in his eyes.

  Perfect.

  He was breathing harder and faster now, the cold air feeling good, cleansing, sharp, bracing, biting, goddamn good. His exhaustion had been shucked like a dirty shirt.

  When he felt the thing clutching his leg he thought first of a living dead hand, and that nearly springboarded him right through the ceiling. He yelped, screwing to one side and barely avoiding a head-cracking fall into the bathtub.

  Cat. Just the cat.

  The black cat he had seen in the corridor a few days ago was at his feet, rubbing insistently against the lace eyelets on his army boots. Perhaps this was Jonathan's pet; it certainly seemed to have mistaken Cruz for a friend.

  At first he thought the cat was injured; it had tracked in some blood. But it did not seem to
be in any pain. Cruz checked the door and found it still closed. It sure as hell hadn't come in through the bathroom window, as the song went. No cat, not even presuming cats had brains, was good enough to shimmy up Jonathan's improvised rope against all the slime and rot Cruz had seen in the airshaft.

  'Okay, Cat Man. Where the hell did you come from? You been in here all along?'

  No response. Stupid cat.

  It followed Cruz back to the living room - like Cruz's apartment, the box with the biggest window was, by default, the 'living' room. It was the only true room apart from the bathroom. Jonathan owned more books than Cruz had ever seen in his life. Still boxed from the move; fated now to stay boxed until someone who didn't give a damn about Jonathan's reading taste recycled them piecemeal.

  Cruz had not been inside a library or bookstore since the fourth grade. He checked out a few spines. Collected Wilde. Jujitsu for Christ. Winner Take Nothing. Whores. Something called The Diamond Bogo. Cold in July. The Simple Art of Murder. How in hell did this guy know which books he'd like; how did you even decide to buy a book without fucking reading it? The covers were all confusing and didn't help. Just another aspect making books an impenetrable codex to Cruz: You couldn't even judge them by their covers. Where the hell did you even start? He opened one at random and tried to make flyby sense of Neitschze. On a Post-it note stuck to one page Jonathan had written:

  No more distance from fear

  Now it's in your face

  Deal with it or DIE.

  It was all like trying to read alien UFO symbols.

  It was with this comparison - imaginative, for Cruz - in mind that he glanced up and saw the bloody fissure in the wall near the window. It had shifted about three feet from its original position, though Cruz could not know that.

  He muttered something automatic and indecent.

  The fissure was akin to a cut in thick flesh, dermal layers of plaster and lath and wallboard and pressed ash. It exuded blood like sweat. Not from a rupture - it just kind of beaded forth, to drip. If you stressed the edge of the split you could make it ooze a bit more vigorously.