Underground

by Craig Spector

  Must have been around

  for a thousand years

  a thousand years or more…

  Somewhere outside, a gun went off, two quick pops like firecrackers. Maybe a backfire, who knew? Tires screeched. A dog barked. Somebody screamed. Someone was almost always screaming. In her head, anyway.

  Amy’s head lolled, dark hair spilling back in a mass of unbound curls. From the far side of the rumpled covers came a sigh and a shift of body weight, revealing blond hair and smooth skin. A sprinkle of tiny moles dotted the curve of her back from sacral dimples to shoulder blades, like a distant constellation. A delicate tattoo graced the base of her spine, filigreeing the wide expanse of her hips. Cindy something. NYU undergrad from someplace nice and harmless in Connecticut. Currently taking a walk on the wild side, soon to be heading home. Amy’s lovers always did, after a month or a week or a night. Amy preferred it that way.

  After years of soul-searching, occult studies and desperate longing for the answer, punctuated by periods of state-mandated medication and treatment, Amy had arrived at her own way to make it through the long nights. To quell the screaming in her head that began one night some twenty years gone, and hadn’t really stopped since.

  By the next beat of her heart the smack hit her brain. The light from the overhead bulb went starry and diffuse. Amy nodded out.

  It was well past midnight by the time she picked her way down a dark and scummy section of Avenue D, stepping over derelicts and dog crap, dodging a knot of crackheads clustered on the sidewalk. This part of lower Manhattan was suited as much to her philosophy as it was to her social station: anonymous and transient, the sheer magnitude of its collective pathos forced her not to care.

  A garish neon sign proclaiming THE REAL ORIGINAL FAMOUS RAY’S PIZZA shone at the corner like a greasy Valhalla. She was down now and craved the carbs of a post-high slice, maybe an orange whip for the vitamin C.

  Amy's life was a precarious balancing act. Remaining a low-maintenance addict meant never having to break into apartments or descend into full-fledged criminality, a burden she could not abide, though in her younger days she was not beyond trading the occasional sexual favor for a choice bag. Her habit was only twenty bucks a day, not too much more than a two-pack-a-day smoker at Manhattan prices; of course, she was also a two-pack-a-day smoker, so the advantage effectively cancelled itself. She only scored from known suppliers, kept her kit scrupulously clean and did not share needles, and otherwise had learned to live frugally, artfully carving out an existence on the jagged-edged underbelly of the city: picking up odd jobs, handing out flyers for clubs, doing sidewalk Tarot and flea-market fortune telling, hawking Dove Bars off St. Mark’s Place or World Trade Center gewgaws near Ground Zero, or anything else that could hustle a buck with a minimum of expense and no paperwork.

  This week her choice item was “Magic Rear-View Shades.” The "As Advertised on TV!!!" tag was well over a decade old, but no one was counting; she got them from a similarly spurious capitalist pal who got a free boxload from a disgruntled job lot stocker in exchange for two rocks and a dime bag of beat weed, which in turn was scored for a slightly used and freshly hot MP3 player, all in the free barter flow of trade that characterized bohemian bottom-dweller subsistence. Amy was wearing a pair of the glasses now, despite the night's entrenched darkness. Against her pale complexion they looked hip and sinister and projected just the right amount of fuck-off-and-die vibe.

  Moreover, the shades really did allow her to see behind herself, due to a miracle mirror-coating on the outer edges of the lenses. Not a bad thing to have when you were a single thirty-something psychic druggie dyke on the dark side of Avenue D.

  Famous Ray’s glowed garishly, dead ahead. Amy was almost there when suddenly a shadow loomed right behind her…

  Amy's heart skipped a beat. She gasped, turned. There was no one there. She looked down the block at the clot of wasteoids. None had followed.

  Jesus, she thought. That’s some bad shit. A shudder rolled through her reedy form as she wrote it off to strong drugs and stronger hunger.

  But the tiny hairs on the back of her neck continued to prickle, and the feeling didn’t fade. She turned again, peering carefully into the reflective shades. A dark, cloaked figure stood by an empty tenement doorway. As she watched it reached inside its cloak and withdrew its hand. The fingertips glowed a pulsating bluish white as the hand touched the wall and began to write.

  “What the fuck?” she gasped, and turned to face it, heart thundering now. There was nothing there. She turned back, peered out the corner of her eyes. Again, the figure was there, writing in swoops and swirls.

  J…U…S…T…

  Amy gasped as the swirls continued …I…N…

  Just in? She thought, conjuring some mad news flash from beyond. Then it hit her.

  Oh God. Amy gasped again as the screaming in her head welled up, a mad chorus of despair forever burned into her neurons. Cold sweat formed despite the New York heat. She turned. The shadow figure was gone. Dull brick loomed, unmolested. She turned again, looked through the slender reflections. The graffiti shimmered, spelling a word. A name.

  JUSTIN…

  Amy began shivering uncontrollably. For years, she had been waiting for just such a sign. Waiting for the payoff on an obscure pattern laid some two decades before. In her mind's eye, the writing dripped ominously.

  “Justin…” she murmured. A name she hadn’t spoken in a long, long time, which had never really left her mind.

  Four hours and forty minutes later, Amy was at Penn Station, using the last of her cash to score not drugs but a one-way ticket on the morning train, bound for that which once laughingly qualified as home. She had sent Cindy-something packing, then spent the better part of the night packing what mattered (very little), dumping what didn’t (everything else), and throwing the I Ching over and over and over again. She had to: it kept coming up the same.

  The I Ching, the Book of Changes, was a five-thousand-year-old method of divination from China and generally regarded as perhaps the oldest book in the world; it was also, to Amy, the clearest and most sublime of the divination forms. Throwing Tarot cards may have made for great flash in Washington Square Park — and scored more cash from tourists and passersby — but when Amy wanted a straight, no bullshit answer to a burning cosmic question, she went straight to the Ching.

  It was a remarkably simple technique: focus your mind on the question or object of your query and then throw the coins. Three coins thrown six times, yielding solid or broken lines depending on how they fell, then stacked neatly in two trigrams from bottom to top to form one hexagram.

  This she had done tonight, again and again. Again and again, it had come up the same. It looked like this:

  She had done it a billion times before when she faced a big life decision — should I try to get a real job? — or a million smaller day-to-day ones — should I hit on that cute waitress at the B Bar? But tonight, with one question burning in her mind and with each new throw of the coins, her blood had run that much colder: two heads one tail, one head two tails, in perfect staggered sequence, again and again and again. The mathematical odds were so astronomical as to guarantee her a high-roller’s suite and a showgirl on each arm if she were in Vegas. It just wasn’t possible.

  But there it was: hexagram 29, K’an.

  Danger.

  Amy didn’t need to read the corresponding text; she knew it all by heart. It had become her mantra these last few hours, which even now she murmured under her breath.

  “This situation is one of real danger, caused and manifested by the affairs of man,” she whispered. “Your desires have led you to danger again and again…”

  Two hours ago she had found Josh’s number scratched on an old bookmark. She had called him collect. He told her very little, but it was enough to put her here.

  Amy bought her ticket, paid for it with the last cash to her name. The ticket agent looked warily at the wired woman with the ratty backp
ack who seemed, if not high, then otherwise altered. Amy ignored her, counting her meager change, and headed for the track.

  “You have become accustomed to evil influences and no longer fight them…” she murmured. ”You must now meet and overcome them…”

  An MTA cop eyeballed her suspiciously as she stood on the empty platform; only then did it dawn on her that she had left in such a hurry she had forgotten her backup stash. Amy groaned, envisioning the ghost of jonesing yet to come.

  “Great,” she muttered. “This’ll be fun.” A nine-hour ride lay before her, and then…

  She sighed. Oh well. Josh said he would cover her once she got there.

  If she was lucky, she just might live to scrounge the return fare.

  4

  Thursday, August 28th. Titillations. Stillson Beach. 8:17 p.m.

  Seth Bryant watched the bar from his perch near the door, dark eyes scanning for trouble from behind even darker shades. Seth’s preferred approach was to see it coming and convince it that it really didn’t want to make the trip; at six-two and two-forty, Seth could be very persuasive — even the most alcohol-addled hard-on wilted when one of his broad hands landed gently but firmly on a wayward shoulder. For the more recalcitrant hardass, a black belt in Kenpo sufficed to communicate where words fell short.

  Titillations billed itself as ‘A Gentlemen’s Club’, “gentlemen” being a highly generous term encompassing horny salesmen, redneck construction workers, buff fratboys sporting fake IDs, sailors on shore leave, and pudgy tourists packing traveler’s checks and dreaming of getting lucky with one of the dancers. The club was gearing up for the approaching holiday weekend, and already the crowd was double its usual Thursday night load: some thirty patrons lining the stools flanking the main drag, with another fifty or so packed into the tufted vinyl settees that lined the walls to either side. The smoky air was chilled to peak erectile efficiency and dense with hopeless pheromones as a total of eight girls worked in steady rotation — four on stage, grinding toned flesh against gleaming chrome poles and undulating in ersatz boudoir bonhomie as the other four slinked through the crowd, hawking private dances and overpriced drinks.

  The sound system cued up Ashanti’s “Baby” as the new girl tottered onstage, balancing precariously on 3-inch heels as she navigated the narrow runway. Her stage name was Sasha, and she hailed from one of the lesser former Soviet nations whose principal export in the post-Communist era seemed to be killer cheekbones and estrogen. Sasha’s manager, a pocked and vulpine Slav in an Armani knockoff who called himself Yuri, sauntered up to Seth. He nodded cheerfully; Seth nodded back, vaguely wondering what was the Russian translation for “pimpstick”.

  “How you like my girl?” Yuri said. “Isn’t she hot?”

  His accent leaned heavy on the e’s and h’s, sounding like eezn’t she haht?

  Seth nodded absently. Truth be told, Sasha was almost disturbingly beautiful: long and lithe with shy dark eyes that projected a sensual and very human vulnerability far from the brittle-edged perfection of the other girls. She was clad in a tiny thong bikini bottom and waste-length sequined jacket, which she held closed as she swayed to the beat, dark hair falling to obscure her face. Seth liked her, not in the bone-jumping sense of some Eastern Bloc booty call, but as a very nice — dare he say it even, sweet — girl. Sasha hadn’t been dancing long, maybe six months, and this was her first night back after a six-week absence. When she’d taken off, Seth had privately hoped and prayed that she had dumped this place, and Yuri, and moved on to better things.

  “Check it out, bro,” Yuri said. “New assets…”

  Something about the way Yuri said “bro” and “assets” made Seth want to punch him; instead he followed his gaze to the stage, where Sasha was throwing her head back and stripping off her little jacket to reveal freshly augmented, almost comically enlarged breasts. The crowd cheered; Sasha smiled and dipped down to let the resulting flurry of dollar bills slide into her thong strap.

  Seth rolled his eyes as Yuri leered. “Not bad, eh bro?” he said. “Like I tell her, bigger cups make bigger bucks.” He cupped his hands in front of his chicken-bone chest. Seth rose from his stool, towering over the sleazy Svengali.

  “Don’t call me ’bro,’” he said. He didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t have to. Yuri looked up at him and visibly shriveled.

  Seth let it slide; at the moment he was more concerned with reading the crowd. The reaction to Sasha’s new hydroponic equipment ranged from Cro-Mag hooting to the moon-eyed equivalent of a Margaret Keane painting, for all but the two men sitting at the far end of the bar. Seth hadn’t seen them come in, but he noticed them now. They were dark skinned and somber, quietly nursing drinks, not tipping the girls, barely even watching them, seemingly immune even to the pounding pulse of the music.

  Something about their pointed indifference tripped his radar. The whole strip was braced for incident, while craving a much-needed infusion of end-of-season cash; if they wanted to start something, Seth resolved it would not be here and not on his watch. Seth left his post at the door and made the stroll across the room, the crowd parting before him and closing behind.

  As he approached them, Sasha moved down the line and another girl was up, a young black girl who went by the name of Angel. Seth positioned himself between and behind them, hands crossed casually before him. He leaned forward. “Having fun?” he said.

  The two men turned. It was then that he recognized them: a pair of local homies from Hood Street who had gone away on low-grade felonies and came back calling themselves Mohammed and Rajim. They were clad entirely in black, wore matching crocheted skullcaps and large metal Star of David necklaces on heavy link chains. The smaller one, Rajim, looked up at him.

  “Terrible thing to see a beautiful African sister debase herself for the Man,” he said. Up on stage, Angel arched her back and shook her moneymaker, oblivious. Seth leaned forward, big hand resting on Rajim’s shoulder.

  “If you don’t like the show,” he said, “perhaps you should just go.”

  “Relax, brother,” the larger man, Mohammed, said.

  Seth looked at him. “Last time I checked, my mom had two girls and a boy,” he said. “I don’t recall any of ’em being you.”

  Mohammed glared back and reached inside his jacket. Seth instinctively moved in, gripping his wrist tightly. But when the man’s hand emerged, it contained nothing but a small and innocuous piece of paper.

  “What’s this?” Seth said.

  “A message,” Mohammed said cryptically. “From a friend of a friend.”

  Seth released his grip, read the note. His expression soured, then went steely.

  “Outside,” he said. “Now.”

  The three men stood in the alley behind the bar, the distant thud of music rumbling behind them. Seth pulled out a Kool light, lit it.

  “Okay,” he said, blowing an acrid plume into the night sky. “One of you knuckleheads want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “Says what it says, nigga,” Rajim replied.

  Seth whirled and straight-armed him, grabbing Rajim by the collar and slamming him back into the brick wall. The sheer speed of the movement took Mohammed off guard; as he moved to intercede, Seth’s left leg cocked back, clipping Mohammed’s knees from behind and knocking his legs out from under him. Mohammed pitched backward and smacked into the pavement, the full weight of impact cracking his head against the pavement. Rajim squirmed like a bug in a science project against the massive hand now pinning him.

  “I abhor violence,” Seth said levelly. “But I promise you if you don’t start giving me some very straight answers very quickly, bad things are gonna happen.”

  “I don’t know, man! I don’t know!” Rajim sputtered, eyes bugging. Seth tightened his grip, hiking the man up until his feet barely touched the ground. Suddenly Seth felt a cold ring of metal press against the base of his skull, heard the soft but foreboding click of a hammer cocking.

  “Let him go,” Moh
ammed said. He pressed the gun barrel into the nape of Seth’s neck for emphasis. Seth released his grip and raised his hands; Rajim dropped, sucking wind. The moment he did, Mohammed backed away, the gun still leveled at Seth’s head.

  “Now you can be stupid and dead,” Mohammed said, “or you can be smart and do like the man says.”

  Seth looked at the crumpled piece of paper again. It was short and blunt:

  Seth —

  Justin is gone. Mia is alive.

  Friday, Church of the Open Door.

  I need you.

  Josh

  Seth’s heart pounded. The message was a bomb lobbed in his lap, catching him in the blowback from his own past. And much as he might desire, he could not escape its emotional shrapnel range. For Seth too had a secret buried some two decades past. And he owed what life he had to Justin Van Slyke.

  The message left lots of questions unanswered. Like, for example, just exactly what Josh was doing with Mohammed and Rajim, and vice versa.

  “Just a friend of a friend, man,” Mohammed said, lowering the weapon. God only knew what that meant.

  Seth thought about his life. He had a wife for whom the word love was not nearly strong enough and a baby on the way. He had a deep and personal relationship with God that was exactly that: personal. He had a small greenhouse, spent his days making things grow; he had his moonlighting gig, bouncing rowdies with raging boners, to make ends meet. And the scars had pretty well healed over. The physical ones, anyway.

  “Well?” Mohammed spoke calmly. “What should we tell the man?”

  “Tell your friend of a friend,” Seth said, “that I'll be there.”

  5

  Thursday, August 28th. Stillson Beach. 9:00 p.m.

  Wallace Jackson made his way down the basement corridor leading to the Medical Examiner’s office, a low-slung cinder block building several blocks away from police headquarters and far off the main drag of the beach. In the normal course of events it was a way station for human tragedy, from traffic fatalities and drug OD’s to simple heart attacks and other, more mundane causes, along with the occasional drowning or boating accident that came with any seaside community and the somewhat less occasional homicide or suicide. The mayhem ratio swelled proportionately in the on-season months, from roughly May to September; the of-season calmed considerably, as the town winnowed down to its local population and the rhythm of life became as dull and predictable as the tides. In his eighteen years on the force, including the last five as chief, Jackson had seen his fair share of death, natural or otherwise, but he still shuddered as the doors hissed shut behind him and salt sea breeze gave way to the cloistered scent of air conditioning, disinfectant, and formaldehyde. It was one thing to view the sundry sad cases of human demise as a procession of paper, forms and photos, quite another to visit one of them in the flesh.