No Such Thing as a Free Ride

by Shelly Fredman

  At least I was beginning to understand how Crystal operated. She had two modes, pissed off and seriously pissed off, and she was gearing up for apoplectic.

  “Look,” I said, “believe it or not, I’m not the enemy. All I wanted to do was help this girl get back with her family.”

  “Yeah? Well, what if her family doesn’t want to get back with her? Did you ever think of that?”

  Before I could entertain the notion there was a sudden burst of activity down the opposite end of the corridor. Medical personnel converged from every direction as the hospital paging system blared, “Code Blue.”

  Crystal stared wild eyed at me. “Code Blue. That’s—” she didn’t finish her thought. Ashen faced, she bolted down the hall as I limped along behind her on my one good leg.

  By the time I caught up to her she was, once again, locked in the security guard’s arms. He cleared her out of the way as doctors and nurses crowded into the patient’s room, dragging a code cart filled with medical supplies and equipment.

  “Let me see her,” Crystal screamed. Tears flowed down her swollen cheeks.

  “Take her out of here,” barked a doctor, as he applied defibrillator paddles to the girl’s sunken chest.

  The guard took a few cautious steps back with Crystal in tow.

  She turned to him, desperation in her voice. “Please. I’ll be good. Let me stay.”

  After what seemed like hours, but was in fact only minutes, the flurry of activity stopped.

  “What’s happening?” Crystal sobbed, but I could see in her eyes she already knew the answer. “Why aren’t you doing something?”

  “Honey, I’m so sorry.” Nurse Morrison’s somber look said it all.

  “No!” Crystal tore herself from the guard’s grasp and ran straight into the room. She stared down at the bed, at the mass of wires and tubes that hung from the frail body.

  “It’s—not— her,” she said and promptly passed out.

  I had no time to mourn the loss of the tragic stranger lying in the bed. The one on the floor needed me more now. Crystal revived quickly, probably more out of her need to be in control than the smelling salts that were shoved under her nose. She sat up and swore at the nurse, slapping his hand out of her way. With a little orange juice and some admonitions to take it easy she was good to go. The question was “where?”

  *****

  “Listen, I think we should talk about what happened inside.” We were standing on the corner of 11th and Locust. It was late in the day and yet the temperature still hovered in the 90’s. It was going to be fun sleeping in my house tonight with no working air conditioner.

  Crystal shot me a look that would have been menacing had she not appeared so completely wilted, and I was struck once again by just how young she was.

  “I passed out. It’s no big deal. I’m fine.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” There was a guy standing next to a kiosk selling water ice and soft pretzels. We walked over and I bought two pretzels and handed one to Crystal. “What kind of water ice do you want?”

  “Cherry. Thanks,” she added as an afterthought.

  We began walking to my car. “I know why you passed out. We witnessed someone die. That is a big deal, no matter how tough you are. She was a kid and she was all alone, and it’s…” my voice trailed off.

  Crystal looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Hunh,” I almost laughed. “Not really. But don’t tell anyone I said that. I’ve got a reputation to protect.”

  I hesitated for a beat and then plunged right in. “Listen, you said something just before you took a header. You said, ‘It’s not her.’ Obviously you were worried that girl was someone you knew. Who were you talking about?”

  She didn’t answer me right away. She just studied her soft pretzel like it was the most fascinating thing on Earth. When I’d just about given up on her ever answering me she slowed her pace and then stopped altogether. “I want to tell you,” she decided.

  We sat on a stone bench in one of those little turn of the century parks that are dotted throughout the area. Some pigeons scoped us out to see if we had anything good to offer in the way of dinner. Since it was only 4:00 in the afternoon, I guessed that would qualify as an Early Bird Special. I tossed a couple of hunks of pretzel over in their direction and watched them devour them.

  “Before I tell you anything, I’ve got to ask you something,” Crystal said.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Are you really a reporter? Like on tv and all? Because, no offense or anything, but you sure don’t look like any news reporter I’ve ever seen. I mean you look like a kid. You’ve got stains all over your tee shirt, your hair’s all messy—and—”

  “Gee, Crystal, no offense taken.”

  “I just thought you had to be more glamorous if they were gonna put your face on t.v.”

  “I clean up nice. Listen, could you just forget about me being a reporter? I’m not interested in turning your story into some kind of career boost for me. I just think—for whatever reason—we fell into each other’s lives and you need some help. I’m asking you to take a risk with me. You can walk away at any time.”

  Crystal sighed. “My best friend’s gone missing. When you told me about that girl in the hospital and the way you described her and all, I thought it might be Star. She’d never just take off without telling me. I think something really bad’s happened to her.”

  “Could she maybe have gone home?”

  “What the fuck’s with you and home? Some people don’t have a home to go to. Get it?”

  I got it. I just didn’t fully understand it.

  “When was the last time you saw Star?”

  “One night about two weeks ago. We were at our squat and she was heading out to work.”

  “Star has a job? Where does she work?”

  Crystal rolled her eyes at me. “Are you for real?”

  “Ohhh. You mean—jeez, sorry. Go on.”

  “Anyway, I told her I didn’t think she should go. Kids who hook are always getting the shit beat out of them. Some even get killed. Not that anyone on the outside would notice. Nobody gives a fuck about street kids.”

  “Are you worried that that’s what happened to Star?”

  “I don’t know,” Crystal told me. “Star’s smart. She knows how to take care of herself.” She stopped for a minute, thinking. “We really hit it off, y’know? Star’s a little older than me and she’s been out on the streets longer, so she kinda looked out for me.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, sometimes the newbies get hassled by the old school kids, ‘cause they’ve been out there longer and know the ropes, so they kinda run the show. There’s this one girl-she just won’t leave me alone. I don’t know, she’s a real sick bitch and she thinks she owns me or something. Anyway, when Star was around, I didn’t have to worry.”

  “Is that why you were hanging around the gym? So that you could learn to protect yourself?”

  “Yeah,” Crystal admitted. “But it didn’t do me any fucking good. I wasn’t gonna join those lame-ass weirdos.”

  “Um, Crystal, out of family loyalty, I need to point out that one of those lame-ass weirdos is my uncle.”

  “Oh,” she blushed. “I didn’t mean—”

  “That’s okay, don’t worry about it. Listen, who have you talked to about Star being gone? Maybe somebody saw something.”

  “I talked to Little Red—her pimp—but he says he hasn’t seen her. He’s always trying to get me to be one of his girls but I wouldn’t work for that piece of shit. I’d rather starve. Star was talking about quitting him. Too bad she didn’t do it sooner. That guy you saw me with today,” she added, “was one of Star’s regulars… y’know, a john? He was pissed off that he couldn’t find her and he’d seen us together, so he thought he’d take the next best thing. I’m not into that scene but he didn’t believe me.”

  I took in all this information, as if I were watching a movie. If I thought abou
t it in any real sense, I would throw up.

  “Okay, you said you last saw your friend about a week ago. What day was it?”

  Crystal shrugged. “I dunno. Last week sometime.”

  “Could you be a little more specific?”

  “Wait, I’ll check my calendar.”

  “Sarcasm, right?”

  Crystal laughed, breaking some of the tension. “Look, I know you’re trying to be helpful and all, but things don’t work the same way out on the streets as they do in your world.”

  “Okay, so educate me.”

  “Why do you care so much?” she asked suddenly. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Does everybody have to have an ulterior motive for helping someone else?”

  “Lesson number one. In my world, yes.”

  If something bad really did happen to Star, it made an already intolerable situation for this kid that much worse. I wanted to tell Bobby, but my hands were tied. According to Crystal anyone responsible for getting the cops involved in street business was an automatic target for retribution of the worst kind.

  I needed someone who understood the code of the streets, someone who could offer real help, without jeopardizing Crystal’s street cred in the process. Someone who felt the need to flee the continent after I professed my undying love for him, but was still the only person in the world I’d trust with Crystal’s life as well as my own.

  Swallowing a huge gulp of pride I took out my cell phone and punched in his number. “Nick, it’s Brandy. I need your help.”

  Chapter Four

  Nick’s Mercedes truck has been parked directly outside my house since Alphonso brought it to me three months ago. I move it once a week for street cleaning and sit in it every night, because it smells like Nick and, yes, I’m that pathetic. I don’t drive it because I feel like he loaned it to me as a consolation prize for not loving me.

  Crystal and I sat in it now, on our way to Nick’s studio. We’d made a pit stop at my house so I could feed the dog and grab the truck. Turns out, Adrian had already eaten. I found the chewed up remains of a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos strewn about the kitchen floor. Adrian sat nearby wagging his overgrown tail, his snout sprinkled with red dye number six. Great. There goes my dinner.

  I left Crystal in the living room playing with the dog while I ran upstairs to change. Not that I was trying to impress Nick or anything. I just figured with my ankle still being swollen and all, I’d be more comfortable in sandals and, technically, strappy stiletto heels qualify as sandals.

  I paused on my way back downstairs, peering over the railing at Crystal and Adrian. The dog was licking her face and she was laughing. It was pure and sweet and very childlike. I fake sneezed to let her know I was coming and the mask went up again.

  She glanced over at me as I descended the stairs. “How come you’re wearing hooker shoes? You like this guy or something?”

  I turned around, walked back upstairs and changed back into my All Stars.

  *****

  Nick’s martial arts studio is a two-story, red, brick building located in a section of the city the verbally indelicate would refer to as “the slums.” The accuracy of the label is inarguable, and yet there is a Zen-like quality to the little patch of land the studio sits on that can only be attributed to the man who owns it.

  I’d been here on several occasions and had gotten to know some of the locals. I waved hello to Lonnie Juarez as he stepped out of the bail bonds place next door.

  “Yo, Brown Eyes. Whaddup?” Lonnie grinned, showing a lot of gold teeth, one of which had a diamond glued to the center of it. Franny’s husband, Eddie, is a jeweler and he could tell if it was merely cubic zirconium, but my eye isn’t that discerning.

  Lonnie runs a lucrative extortion business, but, according to Nick, most of his profits get eaten up by a rather hefty addiction to black tar heroin. Nick says Lonnie’s harmless and maybe to a fifth degree black belt that holds true, but personally, the guy gives me the creeps, and I could tell Crystal wasn’t lovin’ him either. She slipped her hand into her back pocket and extracted a butterfly knife, palming it discreetly against her leg.

  Lonnie hocked a good sized lugie and winked at Crystal.

  “Okay, then, Lonnie, good to see ya,” I said, steering Crystal toward the studio.

  As I reached for the door bell my stomach began to tighten. That unfortunate encounter in the Betsy Ross wig not withstanding, I hadn’t been face to face with Nick since the morning I’d poured my heart out to him and he’d handed it back to me with a polite “thanks, but no thanks.”

  Then I got to thinking. Maybe I’d read the situation all wrong. Maybe he’d been up all night nursing a sick friend, (and it must’ve worked because she looked like the picture of health to me), so when he answered the door he was delirious from lack of sleep and he didn’t know what he was saying. What he meant to say was, “I love you too, Brandy, let’s get married and have many beautiful, mysterious little bambinos together,” but it came out as “I don’t love you” by mistake.

  Then there was the whole “snooping in his bedroom” thing and finding my photo in his nightstand drawer. I wanted to confront him on why he’d spent so much money on a portrait of “just a friend,” but I wasn’t quite ready to confess I’d been pawing through his personal belongings.

  As I’d already polled every friend I had on the subject, including a few I hadn’t seen since elementary school, I was about to ask Crystal her take on the matter, when the door opened and out walked Nick.

  Crystal’s mouth hung slightly ajar as her eyes roved over five feet ten inches of male perfection. His lithe, muscular body was dressed in workout clothes; loose black pants and a tight white tee shirt, damp with sweat. On his wrist he wore his ever-present silver band. His hair was pulled back in a pony tail, revealing a two inch scar under his left ear that worked its way down along his jaw line. I was the reason Nick sported that scar. I felt guilty and honored at the same time and it only made me love him more.

  “Does he always smell this good?” Crystal whispered, forgetting for a moment her “tough girl” persona.

  “Uh huh.”

  If Nick overheard he had the good grace not to show it.

  “Hey, darlin’, come on in,” he said, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. He held the door open and we stepped inside.

  There was a class in session. I recognized Tanya, one of Nick’s instructors, as she put a group of Samoan body guards through their paces. Tanya is one of those annoyingly beautiful women who thinks she’s better than everyone else just because she’s drop dead gorgeous, incredibly competent and unfailingly sweet. She looked up when she saw me and smiled in greeting. Gaah, what a loser!

  “I’m just finishing up here,” Nick told us. “You’re welcome to stick around for a few minutes or make yourselves comfortable in my office.”

  “We’re okay, here,” Crystal said quickly and with uncharacteristic reverence. “I mean if that’s alright.”

  I looked at her and tried hard not to laugh. Even “Ms. In-Your-Face-Tough-Girl” couldn’t escape the indescribable quality that was the essence of Nicholas Santiago.

  No one volunteered to go mano e mano with Nick so class ended early.

  “You need to tone it down a little, Nick,” Tanya told him, picking up the mats and stacking them against the wall. “You broke that guy’s leg this morning.”

  “He wasn’t paying attention. It’s a good way to get himself killed.” His voice was hard and dispassionate and was the reminder I needed that you don’t want this man as your enemy.

  Tanya shrugged. “You’re right,” she said, smiling. “You always are.”

  Was she flirting with him? I guessed it wouldn’t do to bitch slap her in front of Crystal. Besides, I was way out of my league.

  Nick finished helping Tanya stack the mats and then he walked her to the door.

  “Nice seeing you again,” she called back over her shoulder.

  “You bet,” I told her. Y
ou bet? Why did I say that? I sound like an idiot. “I mean nice to see you too,” I called out lamely and too late. She was already out the door.

  “Now,” Nick said, turning his dark liquid eyes on Crystal and me, and I got a rush in parts of my body I’d all but forgotten existed. “What can I do to help you?”

  We sat in his office, a cozy sanctuary located in the back of the studio. It’s quiet in there and insulated from the worries of the outside world. I’d always felt nurtured and protected curled up in Nick’s red velvet armchair, and I hoped it would provide the same comfort now for Crystal.

  There was a cigarette butt in a ceramic ashtray on the desk, and I noted with some surprise that he’d started smoking again.

  “Just a minor setback, Angel.” He smiled, first at me, and then at Crystal. “Don’t start if you haven’t already. It’s a nasty habit and a bitch to kick.”

  Nick listened intently and without interruption as Crystal filled him in on her missing friend. I was surprised at how freely she spoke to him, as if she sensed a kindred spirit.

  “I’m going to run this by a couple of guys who work for me,” he told her when she had finished. “They have a lot of contacts on the streets and sometimes they hear things other people aren’t privy to. It would help if you had a recent photo of Star,” he added.

  Crystal visibly stiffened. “Oh great. Some fuckwad walking around with Star’s picture asking questions about her. That won’t draw too much attention.”

  Oy. I held my breath. This kid had no idea who she was talking to. Nick, however, didn’t appear to take offense. His response was remarkably calm and respectful.

  “These people understand how important it is to be discreet, Crystal. They would never do anything to put you or your friend in jeopardy. A photo would just help make identification easier if they do run across her.”

  Crystal was quiet for a moment. Then, making up her mind she dug deep into her backpack and pulled out a worn strip of photographs, the kind you get in those photo booths at the mall.