A Cool Breeze on the Underground

by Don Winslow

  Or maybe Allie wasn’t begging. Maybe she was trying to steal in the Underground. Neal hoped this wasn’t the case, and really didn’t expect it to be. Despite popular legend, subways are terrible places to pick pockets. Picks like a crowd all right, but they also like to be able to get away if something goes wrong. Subways are full of things such as turnstiles, gates, escalators, and narrow passageways that make running damn near impossible. Add to this the fact that crowds of commuters have been getting increasingly irritated with increasing delays. But it was the possibility that Allie was finding her daily bread in the Underground that sent Neal on his daily tour of purgatory. It brought to mind a sermon he’d once heard when the priest really got cooking on hell, about how it was a place where murderers, thieves, and lechers baked in perpetual, torturous stench. At the time, that had sounded like the West Side Democratic Club’s steam room when all the Ryan brothers were in it. But now, he knew differently. Neal, who had been raised on New York’s subway, had never felt anything like London’s Underground.

  Steamy didn’t quite describe it. Neither did grimy or any of the other dwarfs. It was killer heat. Godlike heat. All-pervasive heat that denied even the possibility of the existence of cool. Still and sullen heat. As if the air itself were heat. As if a cool breeze was just a memory of something that once was but would never be again.

  Not that there was any room to breathe even if there had been something resembling oxygen. The horrific crowding on the cars began to break down even the fabled English stoicism. Stiff upper lips wilted. And that was when the train was moving. When it got stuck between stations, as it frequently did, and a polite announcement came over the PA system, the crowd responded with a single groan. People dropped their heads and stared at their feet and watched their sweat drip on their shoes. Then the train would jerk forward again, the movement providing no relief except the knowledge that the end of the ordeal was a bit closer.

  Except for Neal, who wasn’t riding to get anywhere, and who wasn’t getting anywhere riding, either. Allie wasn’t on the Underground. No cool breeze, no Allie. Six weeks left.

  Like aging women, cities are prettier at night. The softer light shades the insults of aging. Darkness fades the lines and wrinkles that every good woman and every good city wear on their faces as signs that somebody has lived there.

  If life in the city seems impossible in the daytime, at night it is irresistible. The night is for playing. For dining and dancing, for flirting and fucking. For making eyes and making love. The feet step a little lighter, and the blood flows a little faster, and the eyes race to the flash of neon blues and reds and ambers set off by the silky soft black of night.

  People do things at night they wouldn’t dream of by day. They see things differently. What was harsh becomes soft. Sordid becomes colorful. Whores become courtesans; hookers are ladies of the evening. Light reflects prettily off the broken bottles in the gutters. Everyone has a bit of the devil in them at night. There’ll be time to deal with God in the morning.

  The barkers stood in Soho doorways proclaiming the virtues of nude, absolutely nude, dancers inside. But not one of the dancers was Allie. And the bouncers guarded the gates to the flashy discos, beckoning the pretty and the well-dressed and the hip and turning away the rest. But none of the blessed or the cursed were Allie. And waiters served food and drink to the stylish after-theater couples and parties who mobbed the West End pubs and cafes after the curtains had rung down. But Allie was not to be found among the servers or the served.

  Back on the square, Neal watched the phone box, and every once in a while he would ring the number to see who, if anybody, answered. But it was never Allie or her dealer. And Neal kept watching; only at night, he watched more carefully. He never sat still for long at night, when the scent of a solitary, sedentary stranger would waft its way to the delicate senses of the larger predators who prowled the night.

  Neal knew that the night, like most pretty things, was dangerous. The money stakes were higher, for one thing, which brought the more serious players out. And too many of them were fueled by booze and drugs, which lent an ugly air of the unpredictable and Neal hated the unpredictable.

  So Neal patrolled the area, but he kept to the shadows, using corners and doorways, buying snacks at street-side windows, fading to the back of small knots of people as they checked out movie times, disco signs, and buskers. He used all the shading and masking and other subtle shit that Graham had taught him, and he didn’t trust to the “cover of darkness.” Darkness covered everybody.

  “Everybody” was the hard core. The ponces checked their ladies and the dealers checked their turf. And the thugs worked the porn trade and the bodybuilders looked for poofters to roll. And the gangs were dangerous, looking for an excuse to fight. And the schizoids were worse, because they didn’t need an excuse, just the ever-present jangle of the voices in their heads. And they were all out there.

  Except Allie. Except her dealer. They were nowhere.

  Five weeks.

  That’s how it went for a month. Neal was left with his slim lead and a bunch of maybes. Maybe the dealer had fucked up and was in the slammer. Maybe he hadn’t paid his fees and was in the river. Maybe he’d decided on a career change and had taken up actuarial science. Maybe Allie had been with him that one night and that was it. Maybe all this was futile.

  So Neal would sit in his room in the small hours of the morning and choke down his carton of Chinese take-away, wash it down with two warm room-service beers, and make his check-in call to Graham. Ask if he should call it quits and come home. Get told no. Bitch about it for a minute and hang up. Take a bath to try to wash off the day’s accumulation of sweat and sleaze. Never quite manage it.

  Then he’d think about calling Diane. Hell, he thought one night, you have two women in your life and you’ve lost them both. One you can’t find, and the other can’t find you. Brilliant.

  And you’re about out of time—with Diane as well as Allie. So call her. And say what? Tell her all about Friends and your fascinating line of work? Tell her that grad school is finished because you’ve fucked up the dirty job of finding an abused child and taking her back to her abusive father?

  So he’d think better of it. Try to read. Give up and drink scotch.

  Day after day, night after night. And the nights were bad. Worse as the days went by and he hadn’t found the kid. Worse as images of the Halperin kid crept into his head when he tried to sleep, infecting his thoughts with images of death.

  Face it, he thought. Allie could be anywhere. She could be sick and she could be hurt. She could be beat-up aching, or clapped-up aging, junked-up dying. Dead like the last kid they’d sent him after.

  More and more, he went to sleep with the picture of Allie in his mind. And in his mind, she was dead.

  18

  She looked great.

  He saw her reflection first as he was passing by one of the more expensive eateries that flanked the square. He happened to glance up, and her reflection caught his eye and jerked his head up and around. She was inches away. Behind a pane of glass. And she looked great.

  Her blond hair glittered from the light of the lamp hanging above her, and even in the shadowy light of the restaurant, she looked healthy, alive. At this moment she was laughing. She wore a black sleeveless T-shirt tucked into black jeans tucked into black ankle boots, sort of a demonic female Peter Pan. Her hair was cut short and uneven, above her ears, and her left ear sported a delicate silver chain that hung almost to her shoulder. She wore blood-red lipstick. She was drinking beer from a bottle. She was a beautiful girl having a wonderful time. And she was stoned out of her gourd.

  For one awful second, Neal thought he might actually tap on the glass and yell, “Allie, come on. Time to go home.” But he backed off quickly, found an eddy in the traffic flow, and watched. He was surprised to hear his own heart beating.

  Allie was sitting with three other people. One was a young man of about Neal’s build. His head was rough
ly shaved to a stubble, and he wore an impossibly filthy T-shirt that had been white in a time beyond memory. The shirt was torn in several places and the message FUCK THE WORLD had been crudely stenciled on the chest. He had a safety pin jammed through his right earlobe. He showed outrageously bad teeth when he grinned, which was often, as he was pointedly laughing at the witticism of the other man at the table, the dominant one. The laughter of the fawning ape. This one would be no problem.

  A young woman sat beside him. She sported an orange, purple, and yellow crew cut, black eye shadow and lipstick, and had enormous boobs barely contained in a black leather jacket. She was chunky, her hips and butt jammed into leather pants, and Neal could barely imagine the rivulets of sweat that flowed underneath. She might have stretched toward attractive, but she was pretty enough for the laughing boy, who was all over her. She could be trouble, Neal thought, but not too much.

  The other man was trouble. He was the A male, the leader of the pack. This was his table, his party, and his guests; his Allie.

  He was of medium height, wide, stocky build—rugby type. He wore a pale khaki suit over a plain black T-shirt; no socks under soft brown loafers. A tiny stone that looked like an emerald adorned his left ear, and three fresh shallow cuts ran straight down from his left eye to his cheekbone. They had just scabbed over and Neal guessed they were self-inflicted. He was drinking something that looked like a tall gin, and he sipped at it as he looked over his glass at Allie and smiled. He was trouble: major league.

  He uttered some fresh snippet of wit that sent Fuck the World into a new paroxysm of laughter. This was for Allie, and FTW probably didn’t realize the joke was on him.

  One very pissed-off waiter came to the table. Neal saw from his look that the staff here would like nothing better than to throw this punk quartet out into the alley and maybe set fire to them if the chance arose and they had a spare match. But the punks had money and lots of it. The manager probably just wanted to get them fed and get them out before the regular customers got the idea that this was more than a fluke. The other customers were already getting nervous but looked too intimidated to complain.

  The Suit ordered for all four.

  Neal stepped back for a minute to think it over. He had a choice to make here: stand back and follow them or move in. Following was probably the safer choice. There was a small chance that the smart one could make him, but he doubted that. He could follow them through the night, get an address, and then make a nice slow move. But there was a chance, as there always was with a one-man tail, that he would lose them and he might never get another shot.

  On the other hand, if he moved in unprepared, he might blow it for good.

  He took a deep breath, edged his way through the crowd on the sidewalk, and entered the restaurant. The headwaiter greeted him with the wooden smile reserved for lone diners that says, “I have to seat you but you ought to have gone to a counter, where you wouldn’t take up a whole table, so please, at least run up a big liquor tab.” That smile.

  “Table for one, please.”

  “Yes, sir. Follow me, please.”

  Neal pointed to an empty deuce across the aisle from Allie. “How about that one?”

  “Really, sir?”

  “Honest to goodness.”

  The man shrugged. “As you wish, sir.”

  He seated him at the table and handed him the menu. “Enjoy your meal.”

  Now what? Neal thought. Come on, genius, what next? You could reach over, tap her on the shoulder, and say “Gotcha.” You could explain that you’re on a scavenger hunt and you have to bring home a seventeen-year-old girl to a Vice Presidential candidate and get twenty thousand points, you could … actually smell her perfume, which was some wicked variety of musk. You could suddenly understand how some poor prep school teacher could …

  Steady, lad. Let’s take it easy. Let’s wipe the sweat off your palms. Christ, you’ve only done about a thousand undercovers, and the basic rule is always the same: Get close, stay close, wait for an opening.

  He studied the menu. Might as well get a good meal out of this. But there was nary a cheeseburger to be found. He decided on the lamb. “Waiter. Oh, waiter!” he heard the Suit say. So he was local East End. But he did a fine parody of an Oxbridge twit. The harried waiter came over.

  “Where are our steaks?”

  “Cooking, sir. Did you want them raw?”

  “When I want any shit out of you, I’ll squeeze your head.” His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like being fucked with.

  “Kill ’im, Colin,” laughing boy said.

  A name. Colin. Thank you, baby Jesus. “If sir isn’t satisfied …” said the waiter.

  “Sir isn’t leaving, if that’s what you’ve got on your mind. Now get us our bloody food. Wimpy’s have better service.”

  “Better food, too.” Laughing boy was serious.

  “Run along,” Colin said.

  Laughing boy chimed in dutifully, “Now!” The shout lifted every head in the place.

  “Easy, Crisp,” said Colin. “There’s an art to this. Eat your salad.”

  “If you don’t, I will. I’m starving.” Oh, Allie, if you knew how long I’ve waited to hear you say that … or say anything.

  Crisp pushed his plate to her. “You’re always hungry. How come you don’t get fat?”

  “Yeah, Colin, how come?” she asked. It was a joke between them. “Better living through chemistry, love,” Colin said. “Better loving, too.”

  Oh boy.

  “Have you decided, sir?”

  The waiter startled him,

  “I’ll have the lamb, please.”

  “And the wine, sir?”

  “You decide.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Colin was playing to a full house and loving it. He knew just how much he could bait the crowd of locals and tourists without forcing the manager to toss him. He had just the right edge, loud and sharp enough to disrupt the place. Putting it to the middle class he was, and no mistake.

  “Well,” Colin asked his mates, and anyone within earshot, “have you ever met a bloke from Oxford who wasn’t a buggerboy?”

  Crisp tried to keep up with him. “Have you ever met a bloke from Oxford?”

  “Not me. I hate buggerboys.”

  “Or do you just hate Oxford boys?” asked Allie.

  “Oxford boys, Cambridge boys, Eton boys, Arundel boys … they’re all buttjockeys. What they get up to between the sheets when the lights go out would make me mother weep.”

  “Your mother’s dead.”

  “All the same.”

  “I need to hit the loo,” Allie said.

  “Again?”

  “It’s been a while.”

  Do I detect a slight tinge of the defensive? Neal asked himself.

  “So go.”

  “Come with me.”

  “You’re a big girl now. It’s the one with the frock on the door.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Their voices had dropped. This was private business. Neal saw that Colin didn’t like his act interrupted.

  “Later,” Colin said.

  “C’mon, Collie. Now.”

  Collie? As in Lassie, as in woof-woof, come quick, Timmy fell down the well?

  “C’mon, please?”

  Neal checked out her eyes. He could never remember whether the eyes were supposed to be the windows or the mirrors of the soul. Maybe both, like those one-way mirrors they use in precinct houses and your finer department stores.

  Allie’s eyes were tilting toward teary. Moist and soft, and Neal could swear they had been sharp and clear when he came in. A look like that on Seventy-second Street would draw the sales force for blocks around.

  Colin took control. “Have another beer.” Allie’s fingers started doing a Buddy Rich imitation on the bottle. Her nostrils, as they say in the romance books, flared. Then she turned on the charm she’d learned from Mom and Dad.

  “Maybe just a little something for my c
old. Runny nose?”

  Is it ever thus? Neal wondered. He had a friend at Columbia who claimed that life was just a stack of record albums on an automatic drop. Problem was, they were all the same record.

  Colin smiled back at her. A compromise had been reached. “Yeah, those summer colds are always the worst. Got a bit of a sniffle meself.” He stood up. “Come on then, love. You two hold the table, eh? You can go when we get back.”

  The loos were in the basement at the end of a dark, narrow corridor. Allie leaned against the corridor wall as Colin screened her from view and held the spoon to her nose. She steadied it against one nostril and rested her finger against the other to keep it closed. She inhaled sharply and deeply and held her head back while Colin carefully dipped another spoonful from the vial in his hand. She snorted this one and shook her head gently back and forth.

  Colin dipped into the vial again for a quick hit. Then he ran the little finger of his right hand around the rim of the vial, and with his left hand pushed Allie’s shirt up and over her breasts. He gently rubbed a little coke around each nipple and bent over and licked it off. She bit down on the knuckle of her index finger and whimpered once, softly, as her right hand found his crotch and rubbed. He pulled her shirt back down. Her nipples stood out against the thin black fabric.

  Colin smiled and removed her hand. “Very sexy, love. Very nice. Now be a good girl and pop back upstairs. I have to use the shitter.”

  She brushed past Neal on the stairway. His hand almost reached for her. Instead, he ignored her and followed Colin into the gents’.

  To find that God had given it to him on a platter. Colin had draped his jacket over the stall door.

  19

  “Yes, sir?” the headwaiter asked as Neal stood at his station.

  “Somebody lost a wallet. I wanted to turn it in.”

  “Oh dear. How good of you, sir.” He looked through Colin’s wallet and managed to mask the flood of what was welling up in his soul.