Never Go Alone

by Denison Hatch

  “I guess . . . I knew all that,” Tony said.

  “You and I aren’t really that different, you know. Both of us wanted something different from our lives. And we were gonna get it—come hell or high water.”

  “That’s why I protect you, Jake,” Tony said, his eyes locked on the cement pathway below him. “Something else I gotta brief you on . . .” he finally said.

  “What?”

  “Hector,” Tony answered.

  “What about him?”

  “DA’s not going to prosecute,” Tony shook his head lightly. “Whole thing was messy to begin with, and . . . Whatever. They didn’t like what you did to that girl. They’re calling it entrapment, even though it’s obviously not. We don’t want to expose you, especially not right now. So we can’t get you deposed or on the stand to take him down. It’s all bull in my opinion, but he’s going to skate.”

  “What the hell?” Jake’s dumbfounded.

  “Sorry. Keep the cig. You’re right. I gotta get home,” Tony said.

  Tony stood up and paced away from Jake on the top of the High Line.

  When Jake was by himself, he reflected. The whole system was such a goddamned circus. Problem was he was the lion tamer. He was the guy standing in the cage with all the motorcycles spinning around him. Nah. If Susan was the conductor and Tony her eunuch, maybe Jake was just a clown.

  ▪

  Later that night, Jake hung from the iron sides of the Brooklyn Bridge with a single hand. Suspended and staring down into the depths of the water below, he couldn’t help but wonder how he’d gotten himself into this state of affairs. The case. But was it? He’d always flown a little closer to the sun than necessary. Jake was the guy who would always say one more thing to his dad. He was liable to smash through that last desk with his crowbar during a search. And he was certainly inclined to say yes to a girl. He stopped philosophizing as the height took hold—its transcendental power whispering to him. No. That was a person. Someone yelling. But the words were modulated by the wavelengths of his own brain into a mushy echo. He couldn’t quite figure out.

  “Jake!”

  Jake broke out of his reverie. He jerked. The source of the sound: Mona. There she was, standing above him, already having ascended the side of the bridge’s base. She was holding out her hand. He grabbed it. Jake climbed up on top of the giant concrete abutment that held the cable spans in place. They crouched down on the concrete pad as a heavy mass of traffic whizzed past below.

  “Are you insane?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “Guess I didn’t take you for one of those people that believes you can just toss a baby in a pool to teach it to swim.”

  “There’s a better way?”

  “Thought you said you were going to help . . .”

  “I’m going to help you help yourself,” Mona announced. She gazed up the bridge’s suspension cable ahead of them. “Now’s the easy part. You’re going to walk right up that span to the top of this bridge.”

  Jake gazed at the incredibly thick suspension cable as it arced parabolically into the night sky towards the iconic elevated brick towers of the bridge.

  “Christ,” was all he could emote.

  “It does become tricky at the end. Let’s worry about that when we get there. Don’t worry. Keep your core aligned. Head straight ahead. I’ll be there.”

  “What the hell. It’s only my life,” he exclaimed.

  “And aren’t you happy that you’re living it?”

  At first, the ascent was fairly easy, like the beginning stages of a long, swooping mountain pass. But once they were halfway up, Jake’s pace slowed. When he glanced down to make sure his feet were in position, he couldn’t avoid noticing the distance between himself and the bridge surface. His equilibrium was further altered by the blackness of the water below, like a mass of infinity ready to eat him up in the event of any minor error. He stopped moving. As he took a series of deep breaths, Jake realized that his hands had turned clammy—a cold and paralyzing sensation spreading to the center of his chest.

  “Proceed!” Mona yelled from above, having turned around to check on him. She extended her arm out, attempting to help him climb up past the next divider.

  “I’m going to puke.”

  “No. Grab my hand,” she said.

  But he didn’t. Jake suddenly collapsed over the parapet guide wire. His eyes were drawn to the water below—transfixed—a panic attack taking hold.

  Mona backed down towards Jake. She grabbed his face.

  “Jake!” she yelled.

  Jake’s eyes finally cleared up. “Wh-what?”

  “We’re halfway.”

  “I’m . . . I’m fine.”

  “You got this far. You can do this. Your body is more than capable. The only thing pulling you back is your head. Who’s in charge? Take control.”

  Jake looked up. The ascent began to pitch sharply up, turning from a mountain path to scaling K2 with a ladder. He wasn’t sure what to do, until the beam of a strong flashlight flowed over both him and Mona.

  Jake gazed down. A Port Authority worker had parked his official pickup truck on the side of the road. With the blinkers on, he was interrupting the flow of traffic and causing quite a commotion. Actually, Jake reflected, they were the cause of the commotion.

  “Get down from there! Right now! I called the police on you already!” the worker was screaming.

  Mona nodded at Jake, a worried look in her eyes. They slowly traced their way down. His heart pounding deeply out of his chest, Jake led. He did his best not to look down. For some bizarre reason, the adrenaline of the trouble awaiting them kept him focused. They finally reached the cement pad where the cable met the end of the bridge. Jake twisted over his shoulder. The Port Authority supervisor was backing up along the bridge, still in pursuit. The vehicle beeped as it did so, yellow flashers going wild. But due to the flow of traffic, it wasn’t going very quickly. They had just a few more seconds to escape. Jake dropped off the side of the abutment and onto the street below. He reached up for Mona and helped her down.

  As they sprinted away from the bridge, Jake noticed a large park across the street, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

  “Over there, the park . . .”

  They scurried across the street and into the relative darkness of the park. As they walked through a grove of trees surrounded by a stone wall, Mona pulled her backpack off. Out with the towelettes.

  “Think they’re going to chase us?” Jake asked.

  “Abso-hella-lutely,” Mona said. “Rory’s going to be pissed.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say that if we get nailed, he’s going to disappear into the ether . . .”

  “Come on, you guys are family. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Stuff changes. You gotta know that,” Mona said. “Come on. Quick, quick, clean me up too.”

  She wiped off Jake’s face. He did the same to her. Now they could hear shouting coming from the side of the park closest to the bridge. Two police cars converged, their lights on.

  “Should we leave our stuff?” Jake asked.

  She began looking through the grove of trees for an adequate hiding spot.

  “Ever heard of a bear bag? One of the only good things I learned upstate,” Jake said. He scanned the trees above while he pulled a rope out of the back of his bag. He flung the rope over a knot of branches in a tree. After it flopped back down, he secured both of their bags and quickly ratcheted them vertical until they were well secured—about twenty feet off the ground.

  “Pretty impressive,” Mona said. “Albany, right? How’d you get down here?”

  “Rather not talk about it. It’s not like you tell me a lot either . . .”

  “You haven’t asked,” she said.

  “Want me to?”

  “Don’t care. But you do.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Let me put it this way. Between the two of us? You’re the closed book.”


  The vibrating sound of helicopter rotors ricocheted through the park. Jake angled up and spotted an NYPD helicopter flying above, scanning for them.

  “Instead of standing around and talking out our family histories, maybe we should get out of here,” he said.

  “Superb idea,” she responded.

  “Want a drink?”

  ▪

  A few blocks from the back of the park, it finally seemed as if they’d escaped unscathed from the police presence. Jake spotted a dive bar across the street. They crossed towards the bar, striding past another couple smoking cigarettes. As they were about to hand the bouncer their IDs, Jake noticed a police car roll down the street. He pulled back and put his arm around Mona’s waist. As the officers drove past and shined their high-powered, car-mounted spotlight at the bar’s entrance, Jake pulled Mona in.

  They kissed. The moment was brief. At least it should have been. But then they didn’t find themselves stopping. Even when the spotlight had passed. After thirty seconds, they broke.

  “A drink?” Jake asked.

  “That’s probably enough lessons for one day.”

  “Well, you’re the only teacher I ever got to make out with at the end of the class.”

  Mona smiled coyly.

  “Is that a problem?” Jake asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With Rory?”

  “Rory’s not a problem. I live my own life. I make my own decisions.”

  “Me too,” Jake replied. “So should we try again tomorrow night?”

  “Don’t think I can. The crew’s going out . . . It’s been in the works for a while.”

  “Let me come? Come on.”

  “Not my call.”

  “You’re going to hold out on me? Thought you trusted me . . .”

  “He invites you,” Mona shook her head, “not the other way around.”

  “When do I get to not feel like a second-class citizen?”

  “Initiation.”

  “What’s that, Mona?”

  “I’d tell you, but I don’t know.”

  “So what can you tell me?”

  “Listen, Rory is more observant than you’d guess. He goes right for the gut, Jake. Rory goes for your Achilles’ heel and he knows what it is.”

  For once, Jake didn’t have an easy quip.

  “It’s late. I’m going home,” Mona said. She turned and walked down the street.

  “Hey . . .” Jake yelled after her. “Thank you!”

  She didn’t look back. She never did. Maybe that’s what he liked so much about her.

  ▪

  Rivett ripped the motorcycle north along the west side of Manhattan, on his way back home to the Bronx. Passing an ancient retaining wall he’d probably seen a thousand times before, Jake noticed something new. The embankment had been built over an old sewer entrance, iron bars preventing access. He slowed. He noticed the keystone of the arch above the entrance was imprinted with a hydra. The hydra. A recurring piece of the city that formed a texture in and of itself—and largely for itself. The hydra was a map to a landscape that Rivett had never noticed before. He had never even known it existed. Now he couldn’t avoid it.

  Ring. Ring. Jake’s phone was blowing up as he rode. He could hear the Bluetooth-enabled speakers inside his helmet blaring. He answered.

  “A little late for you, Tony? Why aren’t you resting your little head?” Jake said.

  “Let’s talk Emanuel Vipa . . .”

  “What’d you get?”

  “His rap sheet’s long enough that you and I are pulling cable guy duty.”

  “When?”

  “All day, every day,” Tony said.

  THIRTEEN

  JACK CASTLE CONSIDERED HIMSELF SOMETHING of a chameleon. Castle had originally met the Visco brothers—Rory and Will—in the halcyon days. That was long before websites and social networks had proliferated with detailed instructions and play-by-play routines for urban exploration. Nowadays anyone with a cell phone could find the most coveted locations across the globe. It certainly hadn’t always been that way. Times had changed. For a long while, it had just been the three of them out there in the urban wilderness. They had no proof that anyone else was doing what they were. When they’d started out, there were no rules for urban exploration. The culture didn’t even have a name. Rory invented one when it became too distasteful to mention in casual conversation that he’d spent all weekend “trespassing.” Rory had coined most of the phrases of the scene too: rooftopping, drainsledding, sewering, geotagging, and many more.

  But Castle had been there the whole time next to him.

  They were a good combination. Castle taught Rory about the streets, and Rory imprinted the power of behavior on Castle. Castle didn’t go to MIT like Rory. He was barely educated. He’d actually dropped out of high school in eleventh grade and begun working at a tattoo shop as an assistant, where he’d later met Will Visco. That’s also the place Castle perfected the small details of his chic greaser look: the shaved sides of his head, hair up high and Brylcreem slickback applied every morning without fail, the tight dark jeans with an inch of roll up. That was Castle’s natural appearance, his preferred style. What Castle had learned from Rory, over the years, was that appearances could be very deceiving. Castle dressed the way he did because it offered a glimpse into the emo bravado that pervaded his soul. But you could also dress in a way that you were not. You could also offer an artificial façade to the world. The devil was in the details. A man could be perceived as banker if he dressed in a blue Brooks Brothers suit with a lightly patterned silk tie, but a poseur if it was double breasted or if his shoes had the cheap stitching of Chinese leather goods. You might be let into a club if you wore a simple Alexander Wang T-shirt, but the velvet rope wouldn’t budge if you were wearing Hanes. Yes, they were the same color and style of shirt. But they signified diametrically opposed arenas of life. No one had taught Castle this lesson more completely than Rory. Upon meeting, Castle did not guess that Rory had scored a 1600 on his SATs, that his mind could render engineering diagrams faster than a CAD program, or that he made tens of thousands of dollars a year self-publishing urban exploration books online. Rory didn’t advertise his past, present, or future. He just did.

  By taking his life lessons from Rory, Castle was able to transcend the tattoo shop. He had wanted to experience the world and occupy a larger sphere than his own. He had wanted to be around people who would show him an interesting viewpoint upon reality. He worked as a backstage manager at music venue for a year, and followed that up by bouncing the hottest nightclubs in town. He’d moved to the private crew of a Russian-owned yacht, memorized every working detail of the boat, before jumping into the hospitality business. Of course, there was an ulterior motive to the jobs Castle picked. He wanted to know what these worlds were like—and learn how to act like the people who occupied them. And he wanted more than that. He wanted nothing less than to become the people he idolized.

  Rory didn’t know what Castle was doing tonight. Castle felt it was his job to protect and insulate his boss, his buddy—his best friend. It was something about the brash attitude. Jake Easton rankled Castle. It went beyond the fact that Castle was the tough guy, the one who’d try anything. Jake wasn’t gonna take that spot from him, ever. No fucking way. But it wasn’t only that. It was something about the man himself, about the way he observed the world, about his essence. Maybe a sycophant can recognize himself in another. Castle had spent his life trying to become someone other than who he was, and by most measures he’d succeeded. And now someone else had entered his realm and he knew that person was doing the same thing he had. He didn’t like it.

  He’d listened to Mona intently when she described her conversation with the new guy. He knew where to find Easton, or at least people that knew him. And if his mission came up with nil? At least he’d done the dirty work. Someone had to keep them safe. Someone had to turn over each and every stone. Rory would be so proud of him. That’s why Cast
le was pounding down the pavement deep into the Bronx. He was dressed as a lower-key version of himself, or perhaps an earlier iteration. It was back to the tattoo shop, back to piss in alleyways and two or three knives on the body. That’s what the Silver Pickle called for and he wasn’t going to be fucked with. He’d fit right in. They wouldn’t glance over him twice.

  ▪

  Nikki was struck by the new guy’s protruding, angular cheekbones. She’d been working the Pickle for three years. She’d bonded with all the regulars. Not only that, but she could spot semi-regulars and even people who’d been in just a few times. It didn’t take much. A few trips around the block and she knew ya. That was part of her charm, because most men and women alike appreciate being remembered. The feeling was universal—no matter who or where one was. For a person at the end of the long barrel of life, there was nothing more special than the brief feeling that their existence had a purpose. But this one? She couldn’t place him.

  Jack Castle idled up to the bar, only occupied by an elderly gentleman at a corner and two construction workers in the middle. Castle sat one stool away from the older man whose presence seemed permanent. The man was glued to the television, his personal belongings strewn in a circular fashion around the bar as if a workspace. An ashtray with multiple cigarette butts sat ahead.

  Nikki approached the newcomer, “What can I get ya?”

  “A beer. A lighter one.”

  “Coors? Heineken?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Which?”

  “I’ll take the Coors, thanks.”

  “Don’t need to ID you, right?” Nikki asked.

  “You can do whatever you want,” he grinned.

  “Wasn’t a compliment,” Nikki said. “I know you’re over twenty-one. But most men know exactly what they want to drink.” Zing. Nikki was always memorable.

  While she rummaged around a cooler in search of a Coors, Castle turned his attention to the elderly gent sitting next to him.