Johnny V and the Razor

by Ryssa Edwards

  “Done?” Sloane said.

  Not exactly looking at him, Johnny said, “You’re not going to eat that?”

  “I was pretty full when we got here.”

  Johnny remembered Sloane saying he was hungry, but Sloane wasn’t a man to contradict with facts. And he wasn’t a man to keep waiting either. “Yeah. I’m done.”

  “Come on.” Sloane pushed away from the table. “Let’s go get cleaned up and take a walk.”

  Leaving a diner without paying didn’t bother Johnny. He’d done it when he had to, when he’d been so hungry he’d chewed on grass. But Sloane was a hood. Donnelly had been a big player in the booze game. Anyone who bumped off Donnelly had to be even bigger than him. Sloane might want Johnny for a night, but he was a witness. After Sloane had his fun, Johnny would be the next thing to dead.

  He had to find some way to stall leaving the crowded diner ’til he could think what to do. “You didn’t pay,” he said.

  Sloane got to his feet. “Dora runs a tab for me.”

  Glancing at the door, trying to figure if the train had pulled out yet, Johnny said, “I should go get a bus or something.” He felt Sloane’s dark eyes on him. “Blow out of town, get lost.”

  Leaning down, his fists on the table, Sloane said, “You scared of me?”

  Sloane’s bald question surprised the truth out of Johnny. “Like you were lightning and I was a tall tree.” Stupid. Stupid. First the tire, now talking to a hood like that.

  “Good,” Sloane said. “Means you’re as smart as you look. Get up and come with me, Johnny. If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t have made it out of the car.”

  Truth wasn’t a big part of Johnny’s life, but he knew it when he heard it.

  Following Sloane, Johnny took a good look at him. He was a couple inches over six feet. Black hair swept back from his face. Just by the way he moved, you could tell that if he had to hurt someone, he wouldn’t blink twice before he took them down.

  They wound through tables, then went past the men’s room. When Sloane went behind the counter and pushed open the door to the kitchen, Johnny hung back.

  A man bore down on him, a beefy man big enough to break Johnny in half without losing any breath over it. “Hey,” he said, “get out from behind my counter.”

  Johnny froze.

  Sloane glanced back at the walking slab of a man. “He’s with me.”

  The guy looked like he’d stepped into his own grave. “I didn’t know,” he said. “Sloane, I—”

  “Forget it.” Sloane turned to Johnny. “Stay close to me.”

  If Johnny had been any closer to Sloane when he went into the kitchen, they would have been like those twins in China, all joined up together.

  Just on the other side of the door, a sizzling grill stretched to the wall. Johnny pushed through a wall of heat, heavy with the smell of grease and frying meat. A man in cook’s whites shouted through a small window that looked out on the diner. “Order up! Number two.”

  As if he had every right to be there, Sloane said to him, “Door open?”

  Not looking up from the burgers on his grill, the cook said, “Opened it when you got here.” He flipped two burgers, then stuck his face out the window. “Hey. Who’s got number two? Gravy’s going hard.”

  Five or six men in whites whipped around the kitchen, bouncing around Sloane and Johnny like they were wrapped in rubber. Steaming plates passed over Johnny’s head. Orders for more potatoes, heavy gravy, extra biscuits whirled past in a storm of shouts. Johnny noticed how no one yelled at Sloane for being in the way. No one so much as looked at him.

  The door said “Storage.” Sloane pulled it open and said, “Watch it. Steps going down.” From behind Sloane on the top step, Johnny saw nothing but darkness. Somebody closed the door behind them. When they started down, it was so dark Johnny closed his eyes because that was better than having them open and feeling like he was blind. The steps went down so far the sounds of the diner died away.

  “It’s an elevator.” Sloane’s voice was low, tight, like he was straining against something. “Get in as soon as I open the gate.”

  The darkness smelled damp and felt big somehow. Johnny was sure that if someone got lost down there, it would be forever. He followed Sloane’s voice through the dark. “How far up does it go?” he said.

  There was the sound of heavy metal grinding on metal, a door sliding up. “Far enough for you to be down here by yourself if you don’t get a move on,” Sloane said. “Get in here.”

  Johnny shuffled forward and reached out. Sloane pulled him into the cage. “Keep your hands down. You don’t want a finger pulled off.”

  Like getting a leg ripped off if it was hanging down the wrong way off a moving train, Johnny thought. No. He didn’t. “We’d have to be going awfully fast for that to happen,” he said.

  “I had it built fast,” Sloane said.

  The car jerked once, then again, then it blasted straight up, like someone had fired them from a cannon. Johnny grabbed for the metal cage, trying not to fall on his ass. Sloane yanked him off balance and caught him in his arms. “You’ll like life better with all your fingers,” he said in Johnny’s ear.

  What Johnny liked was the feel of Sloane’s body against his, the feel of his hard arms around him. Johnny told himself his heart was pounding because they were rushing up so fast air was blowing hair back from his face. But part of him knew the truth. The real reason was because Sloane’s hardness was pressed up against Johnny’s ass.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Sloane’s voice jolted Johnny back to the darkness, shooting up into someplace he couldn’t imagine. “Sorry,” he said, sure he’d done something wrong.

  The elevator car didn’t slow down. It just suddenly stopped moving. Johnny didn’t fall over because Sloane’s arms were hard and strong as iron.

  “I said,” Sloane was talking slow, taking his time with every word, “there’s a narrow strip. We have thirty seconds.”

  “Or what?” Johnny said.

  “It pulls into the wall.” Sloane let him go, and there was the sound of metal clashing, gears grinding.

  Johnny had no idea how far up they’d gone, but he knew it was high enough for a man to smash like a melon if he took a dive.

  Sloane let him go and said, “Hold onto my hand. Slide your feet.”

  “What’s at the bottom?”

  “Boards with long, rusty nails sticking up.”

  Johnny bet no one at home had ever got on an elevator that shot straight up like that, or walked across a ledge they couldn’t see. Excitement rushed through him. But letting Sloane see it would make Johnny feel like a kid, so he put on his best tough guy voice and said, “Sounds bad.”

  “This isn’t a game, Johnny.” Sloane’s voice was hard-edged, cold. “If you fall, you’re dead.”

  Feeling for Sloane’s hand in the dark, Johnny thought about Bennie.

  Even though he was thinking about summer, a cool shiver slid down Johnny’s spine. Last August, he and Bennie had been riding topside of a boxcar to beat the heat. Bennie had been walking toward Johnny. Past Bennie, Johnny had seen the tracks curving ahead, and he’d yelled at Bennie to get down. But he’d been too slow. The train had flipped Bennie off like a fly.

  Bennie’s screams echoing through his mind, Johnny carefully slid his feet along the ledge and gripped Sloane’s hand tighter.

  “Not far,” Sloane said. “Keep moving.”

  “You don’t have a front door?”

  “Forgot my key,” Sloane said.

  The ledge was pressing into the middle of Johnny’s feet, and it hurt. His ankles were shaking from taking his weight. But when he heard the low snick of a door opening, he froze.

  “It’s me,” Sloane said. “Keep coming.”

  Johnny opened his mouth to ask if they’d eaten up thirty seconds yet. But somewhere in the darkness, metal gears rumbled, chains clanked; the ledge shuddered and started sliding out from under Johnny’s feet. He panicked.
Sloane yanked Johnny’s wrist hard enough to snap it off. And oh God, he was falling. He’d stayed off topside, survived thousands of miles after Bennie, and now Johnny was going to die on a bed of nails.

  Johnny didn’t realize he was falling forward, not down, until his face crashed into Sloane’s legs. Ending up with his mouth inches from Sloane’s crotch was so much better than hurtling down toward rusty nails that Johnny laughed.

  “Hey.” Sloane pushed Johnny off him. “I’m not that cheap a date.”

  Heat rushing to his face, Johnny rolled onto his belly. A light came on. Johnny scrambled to his feet, glad it was just a night lamp, hoping it was dark enough to hide his flushed face.

  Sloane slid out of the shadows and wrapped his arms around Johnny from behind.

  This, Johnny guessed, was part of his new job. It was better than being dead. Trailing his trembling fingers over Sloane’s hands, Johnny said, “I’ll do what you want.”

  “I know.”

  Johnny felt how hard Sloane was, heard him breathing too heavily, smelled the low, sharp scent that meant a man needed something tight and warm to sink into. At night on the rails, he’d learned that smell over and over. He’d learned what happened when you were too small, too weak to stop a man who had that scent on him.

  After a job, Sloane always needed the same thing—rough, no-questions-asked sex. He needed it tonight, same as every other time. The difference, the thing that was driving him crazy was that he couldn’t do it to the boy in his arms. Better to get more lights on.

  Sloane unwrapped himself from Johnny and went around turning on lights. Three doors were set in the brick walls like hands on a clock: noon, three o’clock and nine o’clock. The first two were bedrooms. The third one led to 39, his brother’s speakeasy. He could get what he needed down there.

  Sloane knew that for a boy with Johnny’s looks, riding the rails alone was about the same as doing hard time. After a while in prison, a man learned that if he did what he was told, fewer bad things came his way. Standing with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his eyes on the carpet, waiting for Sloane to say what he wanted, Johnny was like a convict waiting for the next blow to fall.

  “I have to go downstairs.” Sloane kept his voice low, moved slow, and stayed on the other side of the room from Johnny. “If my brother’s not looking for me, he will be. I need to go find him.” He pointed at the door behind Johnny. ”There’s a bathtub in my room. Clean up. The other bedroom’s yours.”

  “I get my own room?” Johnny said.

  Leaning against the wall between two doors, Sloane pressed his hands to the rough brick behind him. If he crossed the room, he’d pull Johnny close and tell him that yeah, he got his own room, because it didn’t matter where he went, Sloane would find him. And what the fuck was he doing, thinking about that right before he went to see Nick? “Game starts at noon,” Sloane said. “Get some sleep.”

  Outside the door, Sloane waited ’til he heard water running before he went down the twisting steps that led to 39.

  In the club, men stood against the bar drinking, acting like what they were doing was legal. Sloane grabbed Stephen, the first wait-boy he saw. Blond, hard body, hard gray eyes. ”Where’s Nick?”

  Stephen, who was working off his boss’s debt, tried to pull away. “I’m not his secretary.”

  “Find him.” Sloane pulled harder, squeezed. “And don’t take anyone in a back room,” he said. “You’re with me tonight.”

  Sloane went to the bar. Tommy, the bartender, had Canadian whiskey neat waiting. Men made room for Sloane.

  In the packed club, men talked to wait-boys, who offered time in back rooms at five dollars a half hour. A jazz quartet on a low stage roughed up a tune Sloane had heard Ellington’s band play. Up against the back wall, poker tables were full. Muscle was walking between tables, keeping the games friendly.

  Nick came out from the alcove that led to his office and signaled Sloane.

  With an office barely big enough to hold a desk, two men, and two chairs, no one would have guessed Sloane’s brother ran more than half the bootlegging operations in the city. The small room was sideways, like a short hallway. Sloane had told him to set it up like that. If a man came in with a gun, he would have a tough shot unless Nick was facing the door, and he never did.

  Nick was sitting behind his toy-size desk. The green-shaded lamp perched on the corner threw shadows across his narrow face. He looked like the stingiest accountant in the country.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “Stopped.” Sloane slid into the chair on his side of the desk.

  ”Done?”

  “All but the cops and the pictures.”

  “Witnesses?”

  Sloane slouched down in his chair, something he’d learned to do in grade school when he didn’t want the teacher to see a lie in his eyes. “Think I suddenly got dumb?”

  “Where’s the car?”

  “Dumped.”

  “Someone saw you at Dora’s.” Nick leaned over his desk, palms against the wood. “Said you had a pretty new face with you.”

  Sloane leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, deadly hands hanging down between his legs. “So?”

  Nick pushed his chair back. It scraped the concrete floor. “Nothing,” he said. “Been worried about you. Nobody’s seen you with anyone in months.”

  “Been busy.”

  “Deal was, we get more than half the territory locked down, we get sixty percent of the profit.”

  “And?”

  A slow smile stretched Nick’s face into something that should have been pleasant, but wasn’t. “With Donnelly gone, we have 65% of the territory locked up,” he said.

  Before tonight in Dora’s, before Johnny, Sloane would have cared. As it was, he said, “Donnelly told me where his stash was. Said I could have it if I let him go.”

  Nick twisted his face into something no one would have wanted to see, not in their darkest nightmare. “Where?”

  Sloane told Nick what he’d gotten out of Donnelly before he sent him into the dark for good.

  “Half is yours,” Nick said.

  “You know where to put it.” A twinge of guilt twisted through Sloane’s gut. Nick had never been anything but fair to him.

  Nick went on talking—interest rates, percentages, stock margins—things Sloane had never cared about. Restless, Sloane stretched out his long legs, let his head fall back against the chair. Years ago, he’d given up fighting the urge that always came after a kill, like thunder after lightning. Up in his rooms, he could have had Johnny on the floor, just held him down and taken what he wanted. But he’d fought it, and it was eating him up because he still wanted it.

  “…candles?”

  Silence made Sloane pop his head up and focus on Nick. “What?”

  Sighing, Nick pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, drew a smoke, and lit up. “I said a bad storm’s blowing in. You have candles?”

  “Yeah.” Sloane got to his feet. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Long night,” Sloane said. “See you in the morning.”

  His fingers were brushing the doorknob when Nick said, “Little brother?”

  When Nick said it like that, he was smelling around for trouble. Sloane turned, his heart pounding, his moves slow, easy. “Yeah?”

  “Everything go all right with Donnelly?”

  If Nick scented anything, he’d be on Sloane’s back trail like a hound. He pushed thoughts of Johnny out of his mind. “Went slick as oil on water.”

  Nick puffed smoke toward the ceiling in slow, lazy rings and nodded. “Sleep good.”

  Out in the bar, Sloane caught Stephen’s eye just as he was delivering a drink order. When he came over, Sloane said, “Upstairs.”

  Riding across country when you were nineteen and most men around you were bigger and better fed, you didn’t admit to being scared about anything. So Johnny had never told anyone how much storms frightened him. He’d seen tornadoes
lift whole houses into the sky and smash them apart like wood toys.

  Thunder rolled across the sky. He turned over and drew the heavy blanket over his head. Sloane’s place didn’t have any windows. But the whole roof was made of what Johnny thought of as glass bricks. The sky showed through, distorted. When lightning flashed, the whole bedroom lit up, like flash bulbs from a hundred cameras.

  The storm was getting closer. Lightning crackled. Thunder clapped, and it sounded like it was right over his head. Johnny jumped out of bed, ran toward the door, and stopped. Past the door, he heard something worse, something he’d heard in boxcars in the middle of the night.