by Rob Hart
“Nothing in particular, just a name I heard.” I reach into my pocket, pull out the photograph of Spencer. Hold it up. “I’m looking for this kid. He’s missing. I heard Brick was a player. I’m guessing he’s pretty important if you braced me for dropping his name.”
“Well, you ain’t a cop,” he says. “Figure guy who ain’t a cop show up asking questions about Brick, got to find out why.”
“Sure. With a gun. How come you know I’m not a cop?”
“I didn’t take the motherfucking gun out, did I? We could have had a perfectly pleasant conversation if you didn’t need to go Jackie Fucking Chan on me. And I know you ain’t a cop because you told Kathy you weren’t. You were a cop, you would have used it.”
I gesture with the picture. “You seen the kid?”
He shakes his head.
“Where can I find Brick?” I ask.
At this, he laughs. Long and hard. “You think you’re gonna roll up on the hill and he’s going to invite you in for tea? Maybe some scones? You a dumb motherfucker, or else you got a death wish. That ain’t how it works.”
“I guess we’re done here,” I tell him. “Sorry I hit you in the face.”
He nods slowly, holding my eye with his. As I step through the hedges I hear him say, “You better hope we don’t see each other again.”
Something tells me we might.
Because now I know where to find Brick.
It takes an hour of playing bus hopscotch to make it to Park Hill. Could have driven here in ten minutes probably. I’m hoping this’ll be my last job on Staten Island for a while.
When I get off the bus I walk through the parking lot of a Home Depot, toward Park Hill Avenue. It’s a long street, with apartment complexes on either side. Privately-owned but federally-subsidized. Birthplace of the Wu-Tang Clan, which, even stuffy white people who hate rap music will brag about, because it’s about the only positive claim to fame Staten Island has. That, and David Johansen from the New York Dolls lives here. I saw him in the supermarket once. He was wearing sweatpants. Punk has been dead for a while but that was another fistful of dirt on the grave.
When the guy in the red do-rag referred to “the hill” I have to imagine this is what he meant. That’s what people call it. And no, I don’t plan to go looking for Brick. My plan was never to track him down. At least, not yet. I’m not a complete idiot.
I only wanted to know where he operated.
Because if this is where Brick works, he’ll have customers.
And customers, I can work with.
Given my history I feel slightly more comfortable around drug users than I do trying to work with people like Kathy. May as well lean into that.
There’s no good place for me to camp out to keep an eye on things, so I walk down Park Hill Avenue. Keep going until I get to the end, then circle back. Probably bringing too much attention to myself. A white face in Park Hill usually means one of two things: I’m a cop, or where do I score?
Luckily, it’s winter. The street is abandoned, except for an older lady pushing a grandma-cart of groceries, and a young guy hustling out of a building like he has someplace to be. I do see a flash of movement on one of the rooftops. A lookout, maybe, reporting back to someone that there’s a goofy white kid outside.
I make it halfway down when a doorway at one of the buildings opens. A big man in a heavy denim jacket steps out. He looks at me like I’m food. Wants me to know that’s how he’s looking at me.
I keep walking.
This isn’t going to work.
I go back to Home Depot. There’s a food truck parked outside, so I get myself a dirty water dog and a bottle of water, stand there and eat in the cold. Look out over the parking lot.
The cars are arranged funny.
There’s a bunch close to the entrance of the store, then a big stretch of empty spots, then more cars crowded together, all the way on the other side of the lot. As far from the front door as you can get, closer to the apartments.
Maybe people who visit the apartments use it for parking. It would be a good spot if you were stopping by for a short while. That’s promising. I go back to the truck, get another hot dog and a pack of chips, climb onto the bench of a picnic table and sit on the top, someplace that I’ve got a good view of the landscape. Eat the food slowly, so even though it seems a little crazy that I’m sitting out in the cold, at least I’m doing something other than nothing.
My phone buzzes. Message from Bombay: What’s the word?
I reply with my free hand. Doing a thing.
Coming back soon?
Later.
New Thai place down the block. You game?
Duck yeah.
Stupid autocorrect. Not worth fixing. He’ll know what I mean.
Once I’m done with my food I sit there, cinch my jacket around my throat, pull down my hat, think warm thoughts.
Pizza. Coffee. Aruba. Smelting.
An employee in an orange vest helps an old lady carry heavy bags to her car. He gives me a funny look on his walk back.
I don’t know how much longer I can realistically do this. Either they’re going to give me shit for loitering or I am going to freeze to death. I look at my phone, pledge to give it five more minutes. After two, there’s a flash of movement, and then a stream of people moving toward their cars. Young, mostly. They come all at once, like a bar just let out.
A few of them don’t get into cars, they veer toward the bus stop, so I figure on heading that way, but then one person breaks off from the crowd and makes his way toward the food truck.
And he looks familiar.
Small kid. Sandy hair. Freckles. Gaunt. Wearing a black bubble jacket and brown, beaten construction boots. He stops at the truck and mumbles something to the old man inside.
When I knew him, his face wasn’t gaunt.
I hop off the bench, get a little closer.
“Timmy?” I ask.
He turns, surveys me. It’s him. I know it’s him. I don’t know if he knows it’s me.
But after a moment his face splits into a grin.
“Ash McKenna,” he says. “Where the hell have you been?”
I walk over, take his hand, smack him on the shoulder. I’m surprised it doesn’t knock him to the ground. He’s so much smaller than the way I remember him; the kid I sat near in high school a lot because his last name is Murphy. If we were in a class together, the alphabetical draw would put him behind me.
He was a nice kid. Smart, quick with a joke, friends with everyone. The kind of person you have a perfectly pleasant relationship with in high school and never see again. And then you run into each other in the supermarket or something and reminisce briefly before making plans to get together and catch up, and you both know you’re lying but it still feels nice to pretend like you’re not.
“Long time,” I tell him.
The guy in the food truck hands him a bottle of water. He takes it and pats at his pockets. It might be a ploy to get me to pay but I do it anyway. He smiles as I hand over a bill. “Thanks man. Yeah, it’s been a long time, you know? What you been up to?”
“Traveling a bit. You?”
“Eh, out of work. It’s a long story. If you’re back on the island, why don’t we catch up sometime, huh?”
“How about now?”
He pauses. I’ve broken protocol. He looks nervous.
“Look,” I tell him, lowering my voice. “I’m not here to judge. I’m not here to give you shit. But it’s not hard to guess why you’re here. I’m trying to find someone who’s missing. He travels in circles I don’t have access to. So… I know you don’t owe me anything, I know you might have shit to do. But it would be a big help if I could pick your brain for a couple of minutes. We can grab something to eat.”
He hesitates.
“My treat,” I tell him.
He nods, smiles. It’s a painful smile, like he doesn’t really want to be doing this, but at least there’s something in it for him. I don’t know if
it’s the chance to help someone or the food.
“Okay,” he says. “You got a car?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll drive,” he says, turning toward the jumble of cars on the other end of the lot.
He drives us to Bay Street in a white Dodge Neon that’s beat-to-shit on the outside but pristine on the inside. We catch up a little. Where-you-been, how-you-doing stuff. He’s happy to hear that Bombay is well, and that I just got back from Prague. I leave out the sordid and violent details and tell him I had a good time. It’s not entirely a lie.
We find parking on a side street and head onto Bay, the corridor that runs along the northeastern shore of the island. Head into a small diner that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 1950s. Take a booth in the back. Pick up our menus. When the waitress comes over I settle on coffee and a cheeseburger deluxe. Timmy asks for the same and ducks off to the bathroom. While I’m waiting I shoot a quick text to Bombay, let him know to eat without me.
Timmy returns tens minutes later looking quite content. The tension in his shoulders is gone. His eyelids look heavy. He’s smiling. He half-sits, half-falls into the booth. I think about making a smart comment about his drug use, but realize that would be hypocritical, and anyway, it’ll be more helpful for me if he’s not sitting here jonesing.
He sighs with his entire body and says, “So.”
I take out the photo of Spencer, put it on the table. He takes it, gives it a good look, shakes his head. “Never seen him.”
“Been missing for a bit. Trying to find him. He’s tied up in the scene.”
The waitress comes over, pours opaque coffee into ceramic mugs. I plunk some ice cubes into mine. Timmy slides the cup close, inhales the steam. Part of me regrets doing this. He looks like a shell of himself. Like the inside parts of him, the parts that make him a person—hopes and dreams and wants and needs—have been carved out. I’m about to tell him this was a mistake and that I’m sorry, but he starts talking.
“My folks died,” he says, his voice even with acceptance. “Car accident. About five years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He waves me off like he’s shooing away a fly. “You know how it feels. A little, right? Your mom okay?”
More guilt. “Yes.”
“That’s good. Hold her tight, man. It’s weird how losing your parents upends your life. I mean, you get it, I don’t have to tell you.”
“I only lost my dad.”
He laughs a little, takes a sip of coffee. “It’s not a competition. I’m just saying, you know how your parents are your parents? They’re like this anchor. Regular as the sun. There since the day you’re born, and then they’re not. It’s like this big hole in the world you don’t know how to fill in.”
“That how it started?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, first thing I did was throw myself into work. I was doing construction stuff. Managing sites and stuff, but after they died, I needed something to do with my hands. Noise to fill up my head, y’know? So I started pitching in on every little thing I could. Worked too much. Eventually fell and hurt my back. Then came the pills.” His voice drops. “Then came the rest.”
Timmy looks up at me, eyes misting.
“I didn’t mean for it to get like this,” he says.
My heart twists. When my dad died, I threw myself into some very bad things—violence, drugs, alcohol. Timmy did something so much more constructive—threw himself into his work. And yet here I am, sober-ish, and he’s the addict. Started out and ended up on opposite ends.
“You don’t need to justify anything to me,” I tell him. “I know the feeling. And I know how hard it is it cover up that thing that’s missing. It’s like… you know how they say time heals all wounds? Even when a wound heals, it leaves a scar, right? And that scar never goes away. You can always feel it. Sometimes it tugs when you move. Sometimes it aches. It’s always with you, no matter what you do.”
He nods. “That makes sense. That’s a good way to put it.”
The waitress interrupts with our plates. Timmy tears into his burger like he hasn’t eaten in days. We eat in silence for a couple of minutes, but then I figure it’s time to get down to business. I put down the last quarter of my burger so I can dump some ketchup onto the plate for the fries. “So what was with the procession?”
Timmy looks up and raises an eyebrow, his mouth full.
“All these people coming out at the same time,” I say. “Looked like a wave of zombies.”
Timmy finishes the food in his mouth. “Guy makes us wait. We line up in the stairwell. Sometimes an hour or two. That way he only has to come out once.”
“Brick?”
“How do you know about Brick?”
“I’m resourceful.”
“One of his minions,” Timmy says, laughing at the term. “I don’t even know what Brick looks like. He has a guy. But everyone wants his stuff. Quality is always good and he keeps us safe.”
“How so?”
He pops some fries into his mouth. “Never gotten jacked in that neighborhood. Once you’re a customer you’re protected. No one will touch you. I used to cop at the Berry houses. Got rolled four times ‘cause the dealers there did not give a fuck.”
“So I want to find this kid,” I tell him. “You tell me. What do I do?”
“Best bet? Check out the shooting galleries. Highest concentration is down in South Beach, because of Sandy.”
“The hurricane?”
“Yeah, fucked up the island good. Ruined a lot of homes down there. Made them unlivable. The government is supposed to be renovating and fixing them, but they’re dragging their feet, so there’s a lot of empty space. Plus if it gets found out, it’s easy to pick up and move to another one nearby. You got a pen?”
I hand him one from my bag. He pulls the paper mat out from under his plate and writes down some street names and addresses. When he’s done he folds it up and gives it to me. “Those are the ones I remember. Not all of them might still be active but you hang around that area enough, you’ll find plenty of people to talk to. I put my phone number on there, too, in case you need anything.”
“That’s really helpful. Thank you.”
Timmy shrugs. “Kills me to think this kid’s parents are out there and don’t know where he is. It’d be nice to help somebody. Maybe all this shit might end up actually counting for something.”
He smiles when he says that and I see a little of the old Timmy.
I could probably walk to Bombay’s from here—it’s a little over two miles, but Timmy offers to drive. Five minutes later we’re pulling up in front of Bombay’s building. I reach across and shake his hand.
“I appreciate the offer for help,” I tell him.
“And I appreciate the burger. A word of advice?”
“Sure.”
“Be careful fucking around with Brick. Last guy I heard about who crossed him? Gone. Disappeared from the face of the earth. He doesn’t fuck around.”
“Yeah, well, the ones who last the longest usually don’t,” I tell him. “Thanks for this. For putting yourself out there.”
“Hey, sending you out to a few addresses doesn’t infringe on his shit,” he says. “I’ll help you when I can, but anything that’s going to cause trouble for him, you’re on your own, you know?”
“Fair enough.” We shake hands again. “Take care, okay?”
“You too.”
I get out of the car, watch it speed off. Feels like I’m skirting the edge of something bigger than I thought. I think back to last year, when Bombay’s apartment got trashed because I was staying with him. Someone was looking for something they thought I had. It’s adding some urgency to finding my own place. I’ve got to limit his exposure.
I try. I really do. And yet, here we go again.
Bombay isn’t home. I don’t feel like being inside and I’ve got that feeling of electricity under my skin. No chance of sleeping anytime soon. Used to be, t
he way I handled this was: drink until I passed out. That option is pretty well off the table so I get dressed and walk down the block and wait for the next ferry to Manhattan. Figure I could do with a walk around. Check the old spots. See if they’re still around.
It’s a thin crowd in the terminal. Most people are coming the other way, headed home from Manhattan. But still there are a couple of wide-eyed nerds excited to be making a jaunt into “the city” for the evening.
That’s what Staten Islander’s call it. The city. Like a different country, even though the island is a borough. All part of the same organism. But that’s the island’s lot. Left in the cold. It’s why a group of politicians here got together and tried to secede in the early 90s.
The boat doors open and the crowd shuffles over the dual ramps. I’m no longer drinking myself into a stupor but it’d be nice to have something to take the edge off. I order a Bud tallboy at the snack bar and find a quiet spot, watch the dying glow of the sun fade below the horizon. Sip the beer and feel a mix of anticipation.
And something else.
Fear. Should just come out and say it.
I’m afraid of what I’ll find on the other side.
After the boat docks I wander to the R train, take that up to Prince Street. Make the long walk east and cross-town to Alphabet City. It’s two weeks to Christmas and it shows. Dead trees strung up with glittering lights, storefronts filled with pleas to come in and shop. On Houston I pass a man in a skimpy Santa suit and a woman in one-third of an elf suit. It’s far too cold for the amount of skin they’re showing but from the way they’re stumbling and slurring, I doubt they feel it much.
My phone buzzes. Take it out, and the number associated with the text is all zeroes, but I know who it is.
Status report?
Nothing worth discussing.
Do hurry, darling.
Doing my best.
I stash my phone, keep walking. Let my feet carry me. Cut up and down streets where I used to stumble and rage.
On East Third I stop. Stand outside the boarded-up storefront that used to be Apocalypse Lounge. When it felt like the world was going to shit, I could always take refuge in Apocalypse. It was a bar that looked assembled from the remainders of a warehouse fire, the walls covered with haphazard graffiti. Dave, one of our crew, was the bartender, and the owner was a no-show, so we had run of the place.
