Lights Out

by Peter Abrahams

  Eddie had another look. He located the numbers one through fourteen, all on the Franklin side, inscribed in black ink. Some of them were written under individual digits of the serial number, B41081554G. The one, for example, appeared under the four. Other numbers were elsewhere: ten in the borders of the S in “ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.”

  “This is it,” Eddie said.

  “How do you know?” asked the maitre d’, peering over his shoulder.

  “By the cigarette smell.”

  The maitre d’ sniffed the air. “You have a good nose, monsieur.”

  “Armagnac lovers. We’re all like that.” Eddie handed over the two fifties.

  The maitre d’ looked at them doubtfully, tried snapping one of them between his fingers.

  “That doesn’t prove a thing,” Eddie said. He’d known a few counterfeiters.

  Eddie took the bus back to New York. On a pad of paper he realigned the printed letters and numbers on the bill according to the order suggested by the inked-in numbers, one through fourteen. That produced the following sequence: 4650571914THST

  Meaningless. Eddie knew nothing about codes. He made the obvious move, assigning a letter value to each number, governed by its place in the alphabet: four becoming D, six becoming F, and so on. The only problem was the zero. He decided to substitute the letter O for now, and change it later if needed. Soon he had a line of fourteen letters: DFEOEGAI-ADTHST

  He played with those letters all the way to the city. The best he could manage was this: DIE SAD THEFT AGO

  Eddie stared again at the original line: 4650571914THST. He began at the letter end. ST. TH. TH was short for Thursday. It also made the sound th. ST could be short for Saturday. It was also short for saint and street. Thursday Saturday. Thursday Saint. Thursday Street. Was there a Thursday Street? He hadn’t heard of one. He had read and half understood a yellowed paperback called The Man Who Was Thursday, but he recalled no Thursday Street. TH ST. TH Street. His gaze slid back into the numbers. 14 TH ST.

  14th Street.

  Fourteenth Street.

  There were certainly 14th streets. Were there 914th streets as well? Probably not. So stick with fourteenth.

  Eddie went back to the beginning. He now had this: 46505719 14THST

  Was it an address? 9 14th Street? 19 14th Street? 719 14th Street? 5719 14th Street? And if so, in what city? It suddenly occurred to him to check what Federal Reserve Bank the bill had come from.

  B. New York.

  He dropped 5719 because he didn’t think street numbers went that high in New York; high street numbers meant out west. So, it was 9, 19, or 719. Then what were 46505 all about? He tried to fit them into some form of address and couldn’t.

  A voice spoke, “Let’s go bud. Haven’t got all day.”

  The bus driver was standing over him. They were in the station and the bus was empty. Eddie rose, but slowly, the driver’s words lingering in his mind.

  “What’s the date?”

  “The sixth. All day.”

  “Of April?”

  “Yeah. Where you been?”

  Eddie got off the bus. April 6. 4/6. 4/6 505 719 14th St. 4/6 5:05 719 14th St. 5:05.

  5:05. A.M. or P.M.?

  Eddie checked the clock in the terminal: 4:15.

  He went outside, stuck up his hand at a passing cab. It passed, as did several others. Then one stopped, but a woman with a shopping bag jumped in ahead of him. When the next one stopped, Eddie jumped in ahead of someone else.

  Eddie gave the driver the address and asked, “Is it far?”

  “No far.”

  “Can you get me there by five?”

  “Fi dollar?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  “Eas’ or wes’?”

  “What?”

  “Eas’ or wes’ fourteen?”

  Eddie didn’t know. They tried west, but found no 719. There was a 719 East Fourteenth. The driver dropped Eddie outside it at ten to five, by the clock hanging in the window of Kwik ’n Brite Dry Cleaners next door. It was impossible to see into 719 itself. The windows had been painted red to eye level. The neon sign said: “Adult Books, Mags, Videos, Peeps.” A secondary, hand-lettered sign added: “Male-Female, Female-Female, Male-Male, More.”

  Eddie went inside. There were two men in the store. One wore a ponytail and a Harvard sweat shirt. He stood behind the counter, inhaling nasal spray. The other wore a stone face and a suit. He browsed in the all-amateur section of the video department. Neither looked at Eddie.

  He left the store, crossed the street, waited with his back to a florist’s shop. The rain had softened to a light drizzle. It glistened on the flowers in their bins outside: tulips, roses, others Eddie couldn’t name. He smelled their smells and kept his eyes on “Adult Books, Mags, Videos, Peeps.”

  The browser came out, a plastic shopping bag in his hand. A woman in a black sombrero walked quickly past. A young man, not much older than the bookstore boy, went by the door of 719, turned, passed the other way, glanced around, saw Eddie, checked his watch as though he were on a schedule, and slinked inside the store. Then came a woman with a leashed mongrel that pissed against the wall of the store, a bare-chested man on roller blades, and an unleashed mongrel that sniffed the wall and raised its leg in the already pissed-on place.

  At 5:04, by the clock in the Kwik ’n Brite window, a taxi stopped in front of 719 and a man got out. He wore a trench coat and a hat, the kind of hat men wore in old movies-a fedora maybe, Eddie didn’t know much about the names of hats. He had fat cheeks reddened by the sun, curly graying hair, a trim gray beard: a potential department-store Santa. Eddie couldn’t name him at first. That was partly because of the coat and hat, mostly because the man was so far out of context. But Eddie knew him, all right. How could he forget a man who had taken a gram of muscle from his forearm with a big square-ended instrument for some drug company, who had labeled him an inadequate personality, who had predicted that Eddie would be back in prison soon? It was Floyd K. Messer, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Treatment.

  The taxi drove off. Messer stood on the sidewalk. He glanced around, his gaze passing over Eddie, not ten yards away, with no sign of recognition. Eddie ducked into the florist’s, watched Messer through the window.

  Messer looked behind at 719, saw the sign, and moved in front of Kwik ’n Brite. He checked his watch. Cars went by. Messer eyed every one.

  “Can I help you?”

  Eddie turned and saw a little Asian girl-Korean, he supposed: hadn’t he read somewhere about the coming of Korean shopkeepers? — gazing up at him. He remembered the olive-skinned girl in the dancing shoes at the bus station down south; and the water snakes: “O happy living things.”

  “I’m just looking,” Eddie said.

  “We’ve got some nice iris.” She brandished purple petals at him. “Special-five dollars a dozen.” An old woman watched from behind the cash register.

  “I’ll take a dozen,” said Eddie.

  The girl withdrew. Eddie looked out the window. Messer was pacing now. The Kwik ’n Brite clock read 5:11. The woman with the leashed mongrel came by, going the other way. The dog sniffed the still-damp stain on the wall, pissed again. The girl returned with a bouquet.

  “How about these?”

  “Fine.”

  She left, busied herself with wrapping paper. The door of 719 opened and the young man came out, red-faced, with a plastic shopping bag. The unleashed mongrel appeared, sniffed, pissed. Messer checked his watch. The Kwik ’n Brite clock read 5:20. Messer kept pacing.

  Rain fell harder. The old Korean woman went outside, began bringing in the flowers. The girl left her wrapping to help. A passing car splashed Messer’s shoes. Messer said, “Shit.” Eddie couldn’t hear him, but he could read his lips.

  At 5:29 the Korean girl said, “Here you go, mister,” and handed Eddie the bouquet wrapped in green paper. As he took it, Eddie saw an empty taxi come up the street. Messer saw it too. It was almost past him when his arm shot up. The taxi
stopped. Messer got in. The taxi drove off. Eddie ran into the street. The old Korean woman ran after him.

  “Fi dollar,” she cried. “Fi dollar.”

  23

  One door down from the Korean flower shop stood the Cafe Bucharest. The table in its front window commanded a good view of Kwik ’n Brite Dry Cleaners and 719: Adult Books, Mags, Videos, Peeps. Eddie sat at the window table, checking out the posters on the walls of the Cafe Bucharest-rugged mountains, green valleys, crumbling castles, Bela Lugosi as Dracula-and drinking a steaming cup of espresso. His first espresso; Eddie didn’t like it much. He kept his eye on 719 and resisted the urge to buy cigarettes.

  Night fell. The rain slanted down out of the darkness, shimmered through the yellow cones of street light, disappeared. Not a good night for the pornography business. In an hour, three customers-all of them male, all of them alone-entered 719. One came out with a plastic shopping bag, the others empty-handed.

  Eddie ate a thick sandwich of roast beef on black bread, served with a strange orange pickle, and imagined he was getting the feeling of Bucharest. A cigarette, unfiltered, Turkish, would make it perfect. Brightly colored packs of them all with foreign names, were displayed beside the cash register. Eddie ordered another cup of espresso instead.

  “Some strudel?”

  “No, thanks.” Desiccated pastries posing under that name were served in the cafeteria shared by E and F-Blocks every Sunday night.

  Eddie began to like espresso. He was taking his last sip when a truck, rusty and dented, bearing the words “Simon Poultry Farms” on the side, parked in front of 719. The store’s neon sign flashed off, glowing dully for a few moments, then fading to darkness. Eddie rose, laid some money on the table.

  The ponytailed man in the Harvard sweatshirt came out, rolled down a steel door that covered the entire front of the store, locked it in place. Then he climbed into the truck on the passenger side and started arguing with the driver. Eddie left the Cafe Bucharest.

  The truck pulled into traffic, headed down Fourteenth Street. Eddie followed, first walking on the sidewalk, then running on the road, as though connected to the truck by an unseen force. The truck picked up speed. It had an unroofed cargo space, surrounded by slatted wooden sections about five feet high. Running at full speed, Eddie caught up to it and leaped, grabbing the top of one of the wooden sections.

  He hauled himself up. A slat cracked under his weight. Eddie got his feet on the edge of the steel platform and vaulted over. The slat snapped. He lost his balance and landed hard on stacks of wire cages, knocking some loose. Chickens began squawking all around him.

  The truck swerved to the side of the road, skidded to a halt. Eddie crawled over the cages, dropped into a small space against the back of the cab. He lay down in it. A chicken pecked his hand through the wire.

  Eddie heard one of the doors of the cab open. Then came a grunt of effort, followed by the sight of the ponytailed man leaning over the side, squinting into the back of the truck. If he had glanced straight down, he might have seen Eddie, but he did not.

  Eddie heard the driver call, “Que pasa?”

  “The fucking pollos,” replied the ponytailed man.

  At that moment there was a tremendous burst of rain. “Fuck the fucking pollos, Julio,” yelled the driver.

  Julio ducked out of sight. The door slammed shut. The truck jerked back out into the street.

  Rain lashed down on Eddie and the chickens. The chickens went quiet. Eddie felt around for a tarpaulin. Wasn’t there always a tarpaulin in the back of a truck? Not in this one. He sat huddled between the cab and the cages. Rain swept down, cold and hard. Eddie bounced around on wet steel. None of that bothered him. The espresso was still warm inside him, and if he tilted his head back he had a wonderful view of skyscrapers rising into the night. It reminded him of a line from his reading: “Alps on Alps arise.” That was the city of Karen de Vere, champagne and Armagnac. He lost his enthusiasm for the view.

  The rain stopped abruptly; the skyscrapers vanished. They were in a tunnel. The chickens shifted nervously. Newspaper rustled on the floors of their cages. Eddie made a clicking sound. It failed to soothe the chickens. He was struck with the mad idea of opening the cages and letting them all out.

  Then he was back in the rain. The truck swung onto a ramp, halted soon after at a toll booth, then sped off on a turnpike under sodium-orange skies. The rain stung. Eddie got his back against the cab, hunching below the window; the chickens tucked their heads under their wings and endured. They all did it, even though the only ones getting wet were in the top row.

  The truck seemed to be heading south. Eddie confronted the possibility that while there had to be a connection between Dr. Messer, Senor Paz, El Rojo, and the hundred-dollar bill, the ponytailed man might have nothing to do with it. Why would he, especially since Messer hadn’t even entered 719? Maybe it was only the outside of 719 that mattered. Julio could be on his way home to the wife and kids, or to a bowling alley, or, more probably, to a second job at a meat packer’s. A beer can flew out of the cab, and then another.

  Eddie was soaked and shivering by the time the truck left the turnpike. They followed a two-lane road, going more slowly now. The sky lost its orange glow, went black. The only light came from headlight beams that flashed from time to time across the cages. Eddie caught glimpses of the chickens; they appeared headless, as they soon might be. More beer cans flew by, faint whizzing shadows in the night.

  Time passed, how much time Eddie didn’t know. His watch was on Prof’s wrist, locked up in F-Block. Eddie was wet, cold, unsure; but free, and therefore happy, right?

  The truck slowed, down to a speed where Eddie could have jumped off safely. He considered it, and was still considering it when they turned onto a dirt road and bumped through a wooded flatland. The trees stretched overhead, catching some of the rain. Under their shelter, the chickens came to life, shifting around in their cages, nervous again. Just like inmates: catatonic when things were at their worst; agitation always following slight improvements.

  They were alone on the dirt road. Five or six miles passed before the truck came to a stop. Eddie rose, peered over the side. The headlights shone on a fence, not especially high but made of barbed wire, stretching out of sight in both directions; a closed gate on which hung a sign-“Simon Poultry Farms”; a gatehouse with a motorcycle parked inside; and a man standing in the road with an automatic weapon over his shoulder and a shotgun in his hands. He approached the truck.

  The man spoke in Spanish. “Late,” he said.

  “You drive in this piss,” the driver told him.

  “Try standing in it all fucking night,” answered the man with the guns. He opened the gate, backed into the shadows. The truck rolled through.

  The truck mounted a long, low rise, turned right off the main road, came down in a clearing. In the changing angles of the headlights, Eddie picked out an old two-story farmhouse, a barn, outbuildings. The truck passed the barn, turned toward the house, slowed. The door of the house opened, framing a short, round man in a yellow rectangle of light. Eddie hopped off the truck, slipped on wet grass, came up running. A fruit tree, gnarled and bare, grew between the house and the barn. Eddie crouched behind it.

  The short, round man unfurled an umbrella and walked to the truck. Julio and the driver got out. The driver was a big man, perhaps six and a half feet tall. The short, round man went as close to him as the umbrella would allow.

  “You’re late,” he said. He spoke Spanish, but Eddie recognized his voice: Senor Paz.

  “It’s the weather.”

  “And you’ve been drinking.”

  “Just one beer on the way.”

  Paz reached up from under the umbrella and slapped the driver’s face with the back of his hand, the way he’d slapped Eddie.

  “Sorry,” said the driver.

  Paz wasn’t listening. He had moved in front of Julio. “You too,” he said. “I can smell it.”

  “Not me.”r />
  Paz spoke to the driver. “Hit him.”

  The driver threw a punch at the ponytailed man’s head, knocking him down.

  Paz said, “Now get busy,” walked back into the house, leaving the door open.

  The driver helped Julio to his feet. “Did it have to be that hard?” asked Julio.

  “Just doing my job,” the driver replied.

  The driver went around to the back of the truck, climbed up, began hoisting off the rear slatted sections and stacking them to the side. Julio went into the house, returned with an empty cardboard box. The driver opened one of the cages, tossed the chicken and the newspaper flooring onto the ground, picked up the cage and dumped it out into the cardboard box. The chicken skittered across the grass and into the barn.

  The driver opened another cage and went through the same routine, tossing out the chicken and the newspaper, dumping what was left into the cardboard box. He kept doing that until Julio said, “Enough,” and carried the box into the house. He came back with an empty one, and they did it all again.

  And twice more. The last time the driver followed Julio into the house and closed the door. Eddie came out of the shadows.

  He made a wide circle around the house, approached it from the back. Lights shone through the windows on both floors. Eddie dropped to the wet ground and crawled to the nearest one, raised his head above the sill.

  He looked into a big kitchen, saw a cozy rural scene. Julio and the driver sat in front of a stone fireplace, roasting marsh-mallows over a snapping four- or five-log fire. A glossy German shepherd lay beside them, staring into the flames. At one end of the long table in the center of the room sat Paz, reading a newspaper and eating vanilla ice cream; pure white against his olive skin, his red tongue. Three old women in kerchiefs and shawls sat along the far side of the table, facing Eddie, chatting to themselves.