Death Wish

by Brian Garfield

  He left the building and walked through Grand Central to the subway steps, moving with a heavy deliberation in his tread. Walked down to the platform and waited for the crosstown Shuttle. The tunnel was hot and crowded, stinking of stale air and urine and soot. Grease-sweaty people jostled angrily along the brink of the platform. He had never actually seen anyone pushed off onto the tracks, but he knew it happened. Whole rows of people, jammed together, leaning vertiginously out over the concrete lip to peer down the tracks in search of approaching headlight beams.

  The trains were running slow today; when the next one came in he had to squeeze into it and suck in his belly against the closing doors. It was impossible to breathe. He flattened his hand over his wallet pocket and kept it there for the duration of the brief ride to Times Square. A black fist clutched the steel overhead strap by his cheek. Scarred knuckles, pink cuticles. He looked over his shoulder and for a moment he could have sworn it was the same man in the cowboy hat who’d been standing on his corner a few nights ago, staring at him, smiling. After a moment he realized it wasn’t the same face. Getting paranoid for sure, he thought.

  For some indeterminate reason the Broadway Express was less crowded; usually it was packed more thickly than the Shuttle. But he found a seat and sat with his legs close together and his elbows tight against his abdomen, squeezed between two women. One of them had a sickening load of garlic on her breath; he averted his face and breathed as shallowly as he could. The train lurched and swayed on its worn-out rails. Motes of filth hung visibly in the air. Some of the ceiling lights had blown out; half the car was in gloom. He found he was looking from face to face along the rows of crowded passengers, resentfully scanning them for signs of redeeming worth: if you wanted to do something about overpopulation this was the place to start. He made a head-count and discovered that of the fifty-eight faces he could see, seven appeared to belong to people who had a right to survive. The rest were fodder.

  I should have been a Nazi. A shrieking scrape of brake shoes; the train bucked to a halt. He dived out of the car onto the Seventy-second Street platform and followed the crowd to the narrow stairs. The funnel blocked everything and the crowd stood and milled like bees around a hive; it was an inexcusable time before he was on the stairs. They were cattle being prodded up a chute. Human cattle most of them: you could see in their faces and bodies they didn’t deserve life, they had nothing to contribute except the smelly unimaginative existences of their wretched carcasses. They had never read a book, created a phrase, looked at a budding flower and really seen it. All they did was get in your way. Their lives were unending litanies of anger and frustration and complaint; they whined their way from cradle to grave. What good were they to anyone? Exterminate them.

  He batted his way through to the turnstile, using his elbows with indiscriminate discourtesy; rushed outside onto the concrete island and stood there getting his breath while the light changed.

  He cried at the corny sad dramas on television; he knew every commercial by heart. At half-past nine in the middle of a program an announcer said, “… will continue following station identification,” and he stormed across the room and switched the set off.

  After, he thought, not “following.” Where the hell did those imbeciles go to school? It’s after station identification.

  I am strung out. Need something. A woman?

  No whores. With a whore it would be a mockery. Maybe a woman: a compatible stranger. In the city they were supposed to be easy to find, although he had never tried.

  A bar, he thought. Wasn’t that where lonely people were supposed to go? But he never went to bars alone. He had never been able to understand people who did.

  Still it was better than rotting in this caged isolation. He knotted his tie and shouldered into his jacket and went out.

  10

  He sat on the bar stool with his heels hooked on its chrome ring, holding his knees together stiffly to avoid touching the man next to him. “God damn right I’m a bigot,” the man was saying. “I’m a better man than any nigger I ever met.”

  He was big without much black hair left on top of his skull; a man who worked with his hands and probably with his back. Grease-smeared gray trousers, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and hair crawling on his arms. If he had tattoos they weren’t on his forearms but he looked the type.

  There had been a black couple in the place: well-dressed in flaunt-it-baby outfits, the leather and the bright colors and the Afro hair. When they had left the bar the big man had turned without preamble and started talking to Paul: “Fucking spades come in here like they own the place. You work for a living, right? I work for a living, my kids go to crummy schools, they don’t get to no summer camps—the fucking politicians ain’t worried about my kids, all they worry about is the fucking spades get the summer camps and the schools. You know how many million niggers we got on welfare you and me are supporting with our taxes? Here I read in the paper this morning some fat welfare niggers put on a demonstration march down at City Hall, you read about that?”

  “No.…”

  “Demanding—not asking, demanding a fucking allowance for Christmas presents for their fucking bastard kids. Anybody ever send you a Christmas allowance for your kids? Christ, I work for a living and I don’t get no fancy presents for my kids, I can’t afford it, they’re lucky they get a couple toy cars and a new outfit of clothes to go to school in. And everybody always bleeding about the fucking spades, Jesus H. Christ if I hear that three-hundred-years-slavery number one more time I’m gonna strangle the son of a bitch that pitches it at me, I swear to God. They don’t just want to move in next door to you, they want to burn your fucking house down, and what happens? Some niggerlovin’ son of a bitch says we got to pay more taxes and give the spades more of our hard-earned money and let them take our jobs away from us because that way maybe they’ll be nice to us and they won’t burn my house down after all. Well I’m tellin’ you”—he leveled a finger at Paul—“it’s all a crock of shit and any spade bastard tries to toss a brick through my window is gonna get his nigger hide blown in a lot of pieces. I got a legal registered shotgun by my front door and I see any black son of a bitch prowling around my place he’s gonna get killed first and asked questions later. You got to get tough with the bastards, it’s the only thing they understand.”

  A month ago Paul would have tried to find a way to show him it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that cut-and-dried. Now he was no longer sure the man wasn’t right. Permissive societies were like permissive parents: they produced hellish children.

  He thought bitterly, A man ought to be able to keep a few illusions.…

  Finally the man looked at the revolving clock above the bar, drained his beer and left. Paul ordered his third gin and tonic and sat rotating the glass between his palms, seeking something to look at. There were five booths along the wall behind him; two were occupied by couples who seemed to be arguing in tense whispers. A big woman sat alone in the front booth watching the street; now and then she would turn to signal the bartender and Paul had glimpses of a puffy face, too old and ravaged to go with the blonde-dyed hair. She kept getting up and putting coins in the jukebox by the door; the room vibrated and Paul wondered why saloon jukeboxes inevitably emphasized the heavy bass thumpings.

  All I’d have to do is go over and say, ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  He didn’t; he knew he wouldn’t.

  Once she even stopped on her way back to the booth and stared straight at him. He dropped his eyes and had an impression of her shrugging and turning away. When he looked up she was sliding into the booth, buttocks writhing, the cotton dress stretched tight across her fullnesses.

  The bartender refilled his glass and Paul tried to strike up a conversation but the bartender wasn’t the talkative kind, or possibly something had put him in a mood. There were five or six men clustered at the far end of the bar, half-watching the television ball game, talking among themselves with the easy famili
arity of long acquaintance; probably neighborhood shop managers—dry cleaners, shoe repairmen, delicatessen types—and they didn’t look as if they would welcome a stranger’s intrusion.

  He paid the tab and got off the stool and swallowed the fourth drink too fast, and felt the effect of it a moment after he hit the sidewalk. The traffic on Broadway seemed to be moving too fast for his eyes to track. He had to make an effort to walk without weaving. At the corner of Seventy-fourth Street he decided to cut across town on the side street because he didn’t want all the people on Seventy-second to see him in this condition.

  He was several yards into the block before the fear hit him. There was no one in sight down the entire length of the street; the shadows were sinister and the heavily massed buildings threw dangerous projections into the street—steps, awnings, parked vans: killers could be hiding behind them, or in the narrow service alleys.…

  He remembered the other night, his terror crossing the East Side in the Forties; he drew himself up. It’s about time to quit getting railroaded into panic. He walked forward with quicker steps; but his hand in his pocket closed around the sock-wrapped roll of coins and his bowels were knotted and it was no good pretending the soul-sucking darkness wasn’t alive with terrors. The beat of his heart was as loud as the echoes of his heels on the concrete.

  At first he did not hear the movement behind him.

  In the corner of his vision an apparitious shape. He did not stop or turn; he kept moving and kept his eyes straight ahead in the insane hope that if he pretended it wasn’t there it would go away. He was walking fast but he couldn’t betray his fear by breaking into a run. Life was suddenly all he had, and all he wanted. Maybe it was his imagination after all—maybe there was no one, only the echoes of his own steps, his own shadow moving across a stucco wall? Yet he did not look back, he could not. Half the long block yet to traverse, the street-lamp throwing a pool of light that made the shadows deeper.

  “Hey, hold it, motherfucker.”

  The voice like a blade against his spine.

  Close enough to touch. Right there behind him.

  “Hold up. Turn around, honkie.”

  I’m hearing things it’s my imagination.

  He stood bolt still in his tracks, shoulders tensed against awaited violence.

  “Motherfuck, I said turn around.” It was quiet, tense—high-pitched, a little crack in it. An adolescent voice, a tone of raging bravado—bravado to mask fear.

  Petrified. But: My God he’s as scared as I am!

  And as Paul turned slowly to face his fear he heard the snap-blade knife open with a click and something inside him exploded like a brilliant deafening burst of discovery:

  Anger.

  A furious physical rage.

  The adrenalin was shooting through him and he felt the heat exploding through his head; even as he came around and the attacker came in view Paul was lifting the roll of coins from his pocket, whipping his arm up overhead, stretching to smite this enemy the mightiest blow his inflamed muscles could deliver.…

  He caught the fragmentary race of reflected lamplight along the moving blade of the knife; saw it but did not register it, all he knew was the target and the weight of the kosh swinging from his hand, swinging down toward that dark narrow weaving skull.… And he heard the enormous bellow that thundered from his own chest, the bestial cry of berserk assault.…

  .…And the kid with the knife was falling back in panic, dodging, arms whipping up over his head; wheeling, scrabbling, getting his balance, digging in his toes—running….

  The savage downswing found no target and Paul stayed his hand before the roll of coins could smash his own knee but it made him lose his balance and he broke his fall with a palm—got one knee under him and knelt there watching the kid who wasn’t more than half his size or weight, the kid running away up the street, flitting into an alley, instantly absorbed into the city as if he hadn’t been there at all.

  The street was empty and he got to his feet but it hit him then, the reaction, and he began to shake so badly he had to reach for the railing of a brown-stone’s front steps. He hung on to it and pivoted on his hands, collapsing in a circle until he was seated on the third step from the bottom. Hot flushes and chills prickled his flesh, his vision spun, and a surge of uncontainable exultation lifted his voice to a high call of joy:

  “Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  11

  Trying to conceal the fact that he was breathing hard he gave the doorman an idiot grin and crossed the lobby on drunken legs and stood in the elevator until its doors closed; he slid to the floor and sat there until they opened, crawled out and let himself into the apartment with vomit pain convulsing his stomach. Leaned over the kitchen sink and catted up everything.

  He rinsed his mouth and threw up again and rinsed again. Hung in the sink with painful dry heaves until it subsided. Sweating, scalp prickling, he made it to the living room couch and lay down weak and wet. Felt himself pass out.

  .… When the grinding of the garbage trucks awakened him, his first thought was I wasn’t nearly that drunk. Then he remembered it all.

  But he hadn’t slept as well in weeks: when he looked at the time it was half-past eight. It couldn’t have been much later than eleven when he’d come home. There was no hangover; he hadn’t felt this well since—he couldn’t remember when.

  In the subway he got out of his seat to give it to an old woman; he smiled at her look of surprise. When he left the Express at Times Square and stood on the Shuttle platform waiting for the crosstown train he realized he was still smiling and he wiped it off his face with an effort; it was occurring to him that he was experiencing all the symptoms of a sexual release and that worried him.

  All morning in the office he tried to keep his attention on the figures and notes in front of him but last night kept getting in the way. Why hadn’t he called the police? Well, he hadn’t really seen the kid’s face, he probably wouldn’t know it if he saw him again; and anyhow judging by experience the cops wouldn’t accomplish a damned thing and he’d only have to waste hours telling the story half a dozen times, signing statements, looking through mug-shots. A waste of my time and theirs.

  But that wasn’t really it; those were rationalizations and he knew that much.

  Rationalizations for what?

  He still didn’t have the answer when Dundee came in and took him to lunch at the Pen and Pencil.

  “Christ, you’re eating like you haven’t seen a square meal in a month.”

  “Just getting my appetite back,” Paul said.

  “Well, that’s a good thing. Or maybe it isn’t. You’ve lost some weight—it looks good on you. Wish I could. I’ve spent the last two years on cottage cheese lunches and no potatoes. Haven’t dropped a pound. You’re lucky—you’re just about ready to have your clothes taken in.”

  He hadn’t even noticed.

  Dundee said, “I guess this Amercon deal’s put you back on your feed, hey? That’s a good break, getting that thing tossed your way. I kind of envy you.”

  It made him feel guilty because by now he ought to be on top of the case, he ought to have every figure and fact on the tip of his tongue; he felt like a schoolboy who’d daydreamed his way through his homework.

  That afternoon he made a great effort to buckle down to it. But when he left the office he realized how little of it had penetrated. His mind was too crowded to admit digits and decimals; they simply didn’t matter enough any more.

  Now damn it, straighten up. It’s your job you’re risking.

  He had a hamburger in Squire’s coffee shop on the corner and afterward he still felt hungry but he didn’t order dessert. He kept remembering Dundee’s compliments. He walked home and weighed himself and discovered he was down to 175 for the first time in ten years. The skin hung a little loose on his face and belly but he could feel his ribs. He decided to join a health club and start doing daily workouts in a gym—there was one in the Shelton Hotel a few blocks up from the off
ice, three or four of the accountants went there every day. You’ve got to be in shape.

  In shape for what?

  He thumbed through the Post and his eyes paused on an ad for a karate school and that put everything together; he said aloud, “You’re nuts,” and threw the newspaper across the room. But ten minutes later he found he was thinking about going back to that same bar on Broadway and he was now alert enough to realize why: it wasn’t the bar he was thinking of, it was the walk home.

  It brought him bolt upright in the chair. He wanted that kid to try it again.

  He got up and began to pace back and forth through the apartment. “Now take—take it easy. For God’s sake don’t get carried away.”

  He had started talking to himself sometime in the past week or two; he realized he was going to have to watch that or one day he’d catch himself doing it on the street. At least he began to feel he understood the people you saw doing it on the sidewalks—walking along by themselves having loud animated arguments with imaginary companions, complete with gestures and positive emphatic answers to questions no one in earshot had asked. You passed them all the time and you edged away from them and refused to meet their eyes. But now he was beginning to know them.

  “Easy,” he muttered again. He knew he was getting as filled up with inflated bravado as that kid had been last night. One accidental victory and he had become as smug as an armed guard in a prison for the blind.

  You were lucky. That kid was scared. Most of them aren’t scared. Most of them are killers. And he remembered the rage that had flooded his tissues, overcoming every inhibition: if he’d pulled that on a veteran street mugger he’d have been dead now, or in an emergency ward bleeding from sixteen slices.

  He’d had twenty-four hours of euphoria; it was time to be realistic. It wasn’t his courage that had saved him; it wasn’t even the poor weapon, the roll of quarters; it was luck, the kid’s fear. Maybe it had been the kid’s first attempt.