Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  Mike shrugged. "Hey, I don't question gifts from God, man. All I know is that it makes grass feel like Winstons."

  Devlin thought for a moment, remembering the one time he had smoked grass that had been laced with opium, not realizing the presence of the additive until he had come down from his first toke, a whiff of magic that had sent him into what seemed like a half hour's romp through the most colorful and vivid landscape he had ever dreamed of. "Good shit, huh?”

  “Dynamite. You wanta try it?"

  They met after their shift was over, grabbed a burger, and took a train up to 155th Street. Devlin was nervous about going so far uptown, but Mike only laughed. "Hell, Butch, we ain't goin' to Harlem, we're goin' to Washington Heights! There're white guys up there, don't worry."

  Mike led Devlin to a run-down apartment house, where they went around to a back stairway and down to cellar level. Mike knocked and after a minute a small panel slid back, showing a pair of white eyes set in a black face. Mike smiled at the eyes, and the door opened. Mike and Devlin went in, and Mike led the way down a long corridor past the doorman, who, Devlin noticed, had a holstered revolver in full view.

  "Hey, Mike," he whispered, "what the hell is this? Prohibition or something?"

  "Nah, they just like to make sure the customers don't have to worry about bein' interrupted. No sweat."

  Devlin followed Mike to the end of the corridor, where he knocked again, and again the door was opened by a man wearing a holster and pistol. The man smiled and beckoned them in, murmuring "Howya, Mike?" The room was large, with several more doors opening off it. It was thickly carpeted, and comfortable looking chairs and sofas were placed in clumps centering around a smaller forest of green glass water pipes. Several people were sitting in these islands of comfort, smoking from the pipes. Lights from the floor lamps glowed dimly in the thin mist, soft music played, and a sharp, indefinable odor filled the air.

  "Step right up, Butch," Mike instructed, walking to the far wall. He took out a ten dollar bill, put it into a drawer that slid out from the wall, and closed the drawer. In five seconds the drawer slid open, and Mike took from it a small vial that contained some yellow white pellets. He held it up so that Devlin could see. "The automat of dreams," he whispered, grinning. "Do it."

  "Ten, right?" Devlin asked. Mike nodded, and Devlin took two fives from his wallet, put them in the drawer, and slid it shut. When it reopened, he took his vial and joined Mike.

  Two hours later he had spent three hundred dollars. He had never smoked any grass that could compare with the crack. Even hash, which he had bought once or twice, was not its equal. He spent his money and didn't care about spending it, until he realized he had none left.

  "Then the party's over," Mike grinned, making a gesture with his hands like a genie granting a final wish. "Let's go."

  The next night after work, Mike asked Butch if he wanted to go back to the base house again. He wanted to all right, but he had no more cash. He'd purposely stayed away from the bank during his lunch hour, figuring that if he didn't have it, he wouldn't spend it. "No thanks," he told Mike. "I'm tapped out."

  "Well, look," Mike told him. "I got fifty bucks. It won't last long, but we could get a couple good hits out of it."

  "No man, I don't want you paying for my dope.”

  “Hey, consider it a loan. You can pay me the twenty-five when you got it."

  Twenty-five dollars didn't seem like much, and Mike really seemed to want Devlin's company, so he agreed to go with him. When they got there, Devlin found that he was right, twenty-five bucks wasn't much. In fact it wasn't nearly enough. So he cashed in his watch for three more vials.

  It went like that for a number of weeks, until Devlin grew slowly addicted to crack. He denied that fact to himself, of course, and was finally forced to deny the drug to himself as well, as his savings account was depleted within a month. His options were simple—either stop smoking crack, or start stealing.

  Butch Devlin was not a thief. He'd been brought up Irish Catholic, and the one time that he'd taken a comic book from a drug store without paying for it, he had felt guilty and told his father, who, in the time-honored tradition, took him back to the drugstore and made him confess, give back the comic book, and work for the druggist two hours after school for a week, suffering the druggist's suspicious glares and searches when Devlin went home each night. He had never taken a thing since. It was not in him to steal.

  So he crouched on the floor, scrubbing the grout between the tiles, wishing that the floor was one flat slab of concrete that he could merely mop and be done with it. Payday was three days away, and he wondered if he could hold out that long.

  Before too long he had finished in the men's room, and went out into the alcove where the rental lockers stood. The room was long and narrow, and he decided to start at the far end, from where he could see some of the passengers walking to their trains. It was summer, after all, and a lot of the women in the city seemed to like to show off what they had in the chest department. Butch Devlin always appreciated that. He scrubbed, one eye on his work, the other on the opening into the terminal. Unfortunately, the scenery was dull, and in a half hour of rubbing and scrubbing, he had seen only one girl in a halter top, the kind of girl whose belly dictated against such exposure.

  Devlin was thinking of crack of a different sort when the bearded man came into the locker area. He was tall and gaunt, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He smelled vaguely of sweat, not as strongly as some of the people who, Devlin suspected, lived out of lockers. He had a key in his hand, but stopped when he saw Devlin looking at him.

  Devlin stopped too. The man's eyes were hot—that was the only way that Devlin could think of them. They burned, as though the man had a fever, and Devlin felt as if they seared right through his own eyes and into his head. It was a nasty feeling, and Devlin looked away quickly, turned around, and went back to his job. Junkie, probably, he thought angrily, surprised at the effect the man's presence had on him. Working in the rest rooms of Penn Station, he had seen every kind of human sludge imaginable. Funny, then, that this man made him feel so insecure, almost frightened.

  Devlin finished digging out a particularly tough deposit of something he didn't care to identify, and turned to put more cleaning compound on his brush. The bearded man, he saw, had opened the locker, and was removing something from a leather bag. In the glimpse he had of it, Devlin could easily see that it was money, and that, though the man took only a few bills, there was a large wad that went back into the bag.

  The man's head turned in Devlin's direction, and he jerked his gaze back to the floor before the man could tell for sure that he was being spied upon. Devlin heard the sound of a zipper, then coins dropping into metal, and the slam of the locker door. He did not wish to meet the heat of that glare again, so he kept his head down as the man walked past him and out into the terminal.

  When the footsteps died away, Devlin stood up and walked over to locker number 4602, where the man had been standing, and thought about what was inside.

  Money.

  That much was sure. He had seen it. The pile of bills had been at least an inch thick, and that bag was big. There was no telling how many packets might be inside it. Hundreds? Maybe even thousands? More? Maybe the man wasn't a junkie at all—maybe he was a dealer. Yeah, that was it—he was a dealer, and this was where he stashed his money. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, how the hell much money was in there anyway? Enough to buy one helluva lot of crack, that was damn sure. And to take it from that guy, from that drug dealer, well, hell, that wasn't like stealing, was it? No, that was just like getting some of his own back, that was all. Shit, that guy probably sold heroin to school kids, when you came right down to it. And if he hadn't yet, he sure enough would, unless somebody put him out of business.

  Now how the hell, Butch Devlin thought, do you get into one of those fucking lockers?

  CHAPTER 14

  "This is it," Jesse told her. "This is the Beast. Not much to see, is i
t?" They were riding the eastern spur of the Number 2 IRT line, heading out to New Lots Avenue.

  Claudia made a sound that was almost a chuckle if there hadn't been so much unease in it. "We've only started, after all. Is it really that bad?"

  "You're the one who told me about it. That article."

  “Well, it said it was the worst. The scariest."

  Jesse finally turned to look at her. She was dressed in a pair of Pumas, designer jeans, a red-checked blouse, and a Mets cap. She carried no purse, just a note pad, into which she occasionally scribbled. "The scariest. That's what you're after? Thrills? A fun house ride?"

  "I'm after people. I just thought that the more interesting ones might be on a line that's a little… well, looser."

  "Loose." Jesse nodded. "You'll get loose." He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Eventually the train slowed, the clatter of wheels on rails became less urgent, and Claudia stood up. "Let's get off," she said.

  "Get off? I thought you wanted to ride this to the end?"

  "I do," she said, moving toward the door so that Jesse had to rise and follow. "But I want to get off at some of the stations too."

  "You know someone on Utica Avenue?"

  She smiled. "No, but maybe I'll get lucky."

  Maybe you'll get killed, Jesse thought savagely, as a wave of rage swept through him, so unexpected that it startled him. His emotions toward Claudia had been perplexingly ambivalent. There were times when he wanted to hold her, not in a sexual sense, but simply for warmth, to feel a woman in his arms again, and then there were times when he wanted to do nothing less than smash her head against the walls. Her presence freed him when he did not want to be free, reminded him of his humanity when he needed to be inhuman to survive.

  "It's nine o'clock at night," he told her as he followed her onto the platform. "You're safer on the train than on the platform. Let's stay on the train."

  "You're with me," she answered so simply and smugly that he felt furious again.

  "I'm not Superman. I can't be responsible for your safety."

  "I'm not asking you to be. I just want you to come with me. I'm a fast runner, I wore my sneakers."

  Jesus, he thought, sneakers. Like she was talking about a Sunday afternoon jog through Central Park. She looked as though she jogged, tan and healthy. He couldn't see an extra pound of flesh on her anywhere. Desire rose in him for a moment, but he bit it back. There was no room in his life for desire.

  The doors shut behind them. A few other people had gotten off the train, and were now moving toward the stairs. Down the platform Jesse saw two men sitting on a bench. The one closest to them was leaning back, his arms stretched over the back. The other one was leaning forward to look around his seatmate. They were dressed shabbily, and Jesse felt sure they were skells. Plain muggers would have looked better. There was something else too—they looked at home, like Rags, like Baggie, like me, Jesse thought.

  "Who are they?" Claudia asked easily, as if she expected him to know every sleazy denizen of the tunnels.

  "I haven't been introduced," Jesse said quietly, wishing another train would come.

  "Are they skells, do you think?"

  "I think."

  "Let's talk to them."

  She didn't understand. She was playing fucking games. "You don't want to talk to them," he told her.

  "That's what I came down here for, isn't it?"

  "Claudia, they don't look friendly. The fact is they look mean. Now there are a lot of old skells, harmless, not dangerous at all—but they aren't on this line."

  "Jesse, I want a cross section. Sure, I want to talk to some of the old ones, but it's the young ones that fascinate me—they're still able to talk sensibly about things. They haven't —"

  He finished it for her. "Gone crazy yet."

  She smiled sheepishly. "I didn't mean—"

  "It's all right." He looked up the platform at the two men. "So what's going to be the topic of discussion with our two friends there?"

  "I just want to talk to them, that's all." She didn't know what the hell she wanted.

  Jesse and Claudia walked toward them. The nearest one was bald in a patchwork way. There were still tufts of hair sprouting here and there, but the general effect was that of a defoliated forest. He was also the bigger of the pair, paunchy but muscular. Even sitting down he looked tall. The other man was small and weasel-like, his face crossed with scars. As Jesse and Claudia got nearer, the men began to put their backs up, and their faces got meaner and uglier. But when they saw the man and woman more clearly, Jesse thought the hostility seemed to go out of them. The meanness and ugliness of their souls were still there, but now they seemed cowed, like mad dogs not quite mad enough not to recognize a man with a whip. There was energy there, and violence, but it was held in.

  Claudia sensed it too, and her voice shook when she talked to them. "Hello. Do you . . . live down here? In the subways?"

  In spite of what seemed to be their fear, they looked at each other and turned back to her with a smirk. "Why, you want to rent a fucking room?" said the weasel-faced man. Jesse thought about telling him to watch his mouth, but didn't. This was their place — and his. The woman was the invader, and if she wanted to communicate with them it had to be on their terms. He wasn't going to help her. They had not been close for many years, and he owed her nothing. All he would do would be to keep her from getting hurt. Or try to.

  "No, I just want to talk to you."

  "Tell them why," Jesse said.

  Startled, she turned to him. "What?"

  "Tell them why you want to talk to them."

  "I…" She looked back at the men, who were both eyeing Jesse suspiciously. "I'm writing an article. A magazine piece. On the people who live down here.”

  “Yeah?" the bald man said.

  "Yes. I want to know… why the people who are here… are here."

  The smaller man twisted his mouth in what was supposed to be a smile. His teeth were green. "Rent control," he said.

  "I'm… sorry?"

  "What do you wanna hear? My life story?”

  “If you want to tell it to me."

  "I don't. And neither does he," the small man said, gesturing to his companion. "Now why don't you leave us the hell alone. We ain't done nothing wrong."

  Jesse thought it seemed strange. The man was talking to Jesse almost as if he were a transit cop. "What's wrong?" he said, addressing the man for the first time.

  "Nothing's wrong, and I don't want no trouble," the smaller man said.

  "What makes you think we're trouble?"

  "'Cause I know you."

  Jesse's gut felt cold. "You know me?"

  "You're that guy. We heard what you look like."

  "That guy," Jesse repeated, feeling stupid and scared, wondering how they knew who Jesse Gordon was.

  "That . . ." The bald man paused before he said it. "That guy who's been fuckin' around down here."

  "The one who messed that deal," the other man explained. "You're him, ain't you?"

  "What else have you heard about . . . this guy?" Jesse asked.

  "That he done some other things," the weasel-faced man said. "That he messed some people over." He narrowed his eyes. "That he made himself some enemies."

  "Where did you hear all this?"

  "People."

  People. It was true enough. Jesse wondered if they'd heard about him making the heroin disappear, or the mugger Rags had killed, or the other things he'd done in the few weeks since. It didn't matter. What mattered was that they had heard of him through the network. The skells knew. And since Jesse always wore the same clothes, they knew what he looked like.

  He didn't ask the two men any more. Claudia looked at him oddly, then tried to break through the wall they'd put up, but it was no use, and before long Jesse and Claudia were back on the train heading toward New Lots.

  "Tell me about it," she said when they were alone again.

  "About what?"

  "
About what they said, what else?"

  "It's nothing."

  "Those two didn't think it was nothing."

  "It's just… something I've been doing."

  "What? What have you been doing?"

  He felt like he was ten years old. "I've been . . . helping people."

  "I don't get it."

  "Helping. When people get. . . in trouble."

  "You mean like in crimes? Like stopping things?”

  “Yes, yes. . ." He didn't think he'd ever felt so embarrassed.

  "Like . . . like Death Wish? Like Goetz?"

  "No, not. . . well, sort of. . ."

  "You. . . you kill people?"

  "No, not if I don't have to, no, no, not at all, no, I don't kill people." Which was a lie. He had.

  "You'll be killed," she said flatly, and he wondered if what he had told her had numbed her somehow.

  "No. I'm careful." He smiled thinly. "But if I do die," he went on, "it doesn't matter much, does it?"

  "Yes, it matters. It matters to me." She put a hand on his arm. "You're a good man, Jesse. What happened to you, to your family, it was awful. But you've let it bury you down here. You've done nothing wrong. You can come back up, be who you were before, be Jesse Gordon. You don't have to be this person they're talking about, you don't have to prove anything. . ."

  "I'm not trying to prove anything."

  "You are . . ."

  "I don't want to talk about it, all right? You wanted to ride the Beast, you're riding it." He stared hard at her. "So just enjoy the trip. Ask your questions to the people. But don't ask them to me." He shook his head. "Not yet."

  CHAPTER 15

  Gladys H. Mitchell stared at the man and listened. It was two in the morning at the Rector Street station of the IRT line, and everything was quiet. The man was drunk, that much she was sure of. She had smelled the whisky on his breath as he walked past her when he came into the stations and he had tottered as he moved. Oh, he was drunk all right. She had seen enough drunken men, rubbed enough of their limp cocks to recognize a drunk when she saw one. He sat down on a bench at the end of the platform, no doubt to wait for his train, or to wait for a train that he thought was his.