“If I was so smart, you wouldn’t have had to drive me home.” Cleo smiled, her eyes closed. “I’d kiss you for real, but I have puke breath.”
Byron stood, smiling. “I’ll take a rain check.”
He pulled open the door and left. As he walked down the stairs, he realized he’d left the car running and parked by a fire hydrant. He ran down and yanked open the front door.
The car was still there, intact, untowed, unticketed, and purring.
Byron took a deep breath of relief. An invitation to steal untaken, in New York City. This was a good omen.
As he jumped into the front seat, he looked up at Cleo’s building. Her light was off. He felt the bulge of the envelope in his pocket, thick and oppressive, and imagined it gone. Then he threw the car in gear and edged away from the curb.
He was only vaguely aware of a movement in the rearview mirror. But a moment later he heard both back doors opening.
One last fare wouldn’t hurt. “Where to?” he asked, turning around.
In the darkness he thought one of the passengers was offering him an iPod, holding it right up close to his face.
It took a moment to realize it was a knife blade.
“G-g-give us everything you g-g-got,” a voice stammered. “Or you ain’t going nowhere.”
Byron recoiled.
His foot slammed down against the accelerator, and the car careened into the street.
40
JIMMY
October 18, 2:07 A.M.
“Turn left, now!… Off COURSE! ReCALculating!…”
The limo’s GPS device was going haywire. Jimmy could swear it sounded angry.
HONKK! HONNNNNK!
They had stopped in midtown to visit an all-night diner Cam knew about. As a result, Ripley the Driver seemed to want to make up for lost time, and the whole thing had Jimmy pissed. “I thought you wanted to find Byron,” he snapped.
“I do,” Cam replied, finishing off the last part of a double cheeseburger.
“Then what the fuck did you stop for?”
“I haven’t eaten for six hours. These are New York’s best burgers!”
“Where did you get your license, Toys “R” Us?” Ripley shouted out the window, then winked happily into the rearview mirror. “You have to show them who is boss.”
The car zoomed down the West Side Highway, detouring into the pier service road to avoid lights, emerging into a string of green lights that took them straight from Midtown to the West Village.
“He does this for a living?” Jimmy said, hurtling against the door with the centrifugal force of the Twenty-third Street curve.
“And he’s still living,” Cam replied with a grim smile.
They hit their first red in front of Chelsea Piers. Once they got through this, they’d be minutes from Blowback.
“You know, Jimmy,” Cam continued, “that took balls, what you wrote to Waits. About me being dead. Dang. I never thought I’d say this, dude, but you are pimpin’.”
“I finally have something to be proud about in my life.”
“So what do we do when we get there? Maybe I should, like, pretend to be a corpse. Put powder on my face or something. You could carry me out. Drop me at Waits’s feet. My wrist will fall, ever so limply, upon the floor. And in the hush you say in a choked whisper, ‘Good night, sweet prince… ’”
“That is so gay, Cam.”
“It’s fucking Shakespeare!”
“Impressive. I thought you were still working your way through One fish two fish red fish blue fish.”
“Suck my dick fish.”
“That’s more like it. Thought I’d lost you there.”
As the car took off, Jimmy felt a light blow to his right bicep. He turned to see Cam, who was giving him a mock grimace, and it brought to mind a phrase from an old Hardy Boys book that Jimmy had never quite understood. “Did you just chuck me on the arm, Frank Hardy?” he asked.
Cam grinned. “‘I do believe so, ’Frank answered zestily.”
Ripley swerved into the right lane, flooring it to get past traffic lined up at Little West 12th. “Whoa, this is it, Ripley!” Jimmy cried out. “You have to turn here!”
EEEEEEEEEE.
They were warping across three lane of traffic now. “It is okay, I will make a U-turn,” Ripley announced. “We will need to approach from the downtown side anyway!”
Jimmy and Cam held tight as the driver cut off three cars just in time to get the green at Clarkson, deftly passing a left-turning yellow cab on the right in order to make the U.
HO-O-O-O-ONNNNK!
“Your mother was a gerbil and your father smelled of gooseberries!” Ripley called out the window to the cab driver.
“Whaaaat?” Cam and Jimmy said at the same time.
“To Blowback!” Ripley shouted triumphantly. “No retreat, no surrender!”
“No retreat, no surrender!” they echoed.
All three of them whooped at the top of their lungs as they roared up West Street, past a string of construction sites and clubs.
They were one block away from Blowback when a black Lincoln Town Car ran a red light on Gansevoort Street and came careening directly toward them.
41
BYRON
October 18, 2:14 A.M.
Byron slammed on the brakes. He hadn’t seen the red light. Or the Highlander. Screaming, he yanked the steering wheel to the right.
“Ho-o-o-o-oly-y-y shi-i-i-i-it!” wailed one of the masked guys in the backseat.
The car lifted upward on the right side. With a sudden lurch and a sickening crunch, it smacked against the dark blue limo, which skidded sharply away, jackknifing across West Street.
There, the cars in all three downtown lanes scattered like bowling pins. One of the cars smashed through a wooden guard rail and a cement planter. People on the pier dove for cover. The vehicle was an enormous black Hummer that seemed to flout the laws of physics as it flipped over on its side.
With a sickening, drawn-out crunch, the black Hummer slid into the darkness of the Hudson River.
HONNNNNNNNK!
Byron floored it again, taking the turn in the clear. People in front of Blowback were diving onto the sidewalk. In the rearview mirror he saw his two attackers jostling to sit up again.
He yanked the wheel to the left, right, left. As he’d done all the way across town.
This time the knife wielders weren’t falling. They were still upright.
Right. Sharp.
The car skipped the curb. A steel light pole rose up in front of Byron, and he stepped on the brake.
EEEEEEEEEEE…
Byron heard a bang. He felt a body blow, head to waist, smacking his head backward, and saw white.
I’ve been shot.
Around him came the muffled din of shouting, cursing, footsteps, doors opening. Byron felt himself drooping forward. As he fought to breathe, light began seeping into the edges of his peripheral vision. It took a moment to realize the driver’s-side airbag was slowly deflating before him.
He felt as if he’d just been kicked by a giant foot. All around him, faces peered in through the windshield. The car’s hood now had a sharp pyramidal point in the center, the pole rising out of the top.
He forced himself out of the car, short of breath and doubled over with pain. Someone had pulled open the back door. Inside were the two men in ski masks, unconscious and slumped over each other.
The surrounding gawkers seemed to be frozen, staring at Byron as if he were a vampire. He leaned into the backseat and pulled off their masks. One of them was a pimply guy, probably no more than fourteen. The other was a girl about the same age with braces.
Their chests were rising and falling, their pulses flowing. The knife had fallen to the floor, and Byron carefully picked it up. It was plastic.
“Oh, fuck…,” he murmured.
On the floor was a mesh-fabric Pioneer Supermarket bag hidden in the shadow. He lifted it and looked inside.
The co
ntents were impossible to see without turning the bag toward the streetlight. As he did, crumpled little portraits of Washington, Franklin, and Jackson stared up at him.
Lots of them.
42
REINA
October 18, 2:15 A.M.
“Get your hands off that!”
“Yo, I found it first!”
A fist, meant for someone else, headed for Reina’s face. She jumped back, trying to get as far away as she could from the center of the dance floor.
Spilling the bag was an unfathomably stupid thing to do.
The word had spread. Now people were leaping on each other’s backs, moshing, screaming, fighting, stuffing bills into their pockets and shoes and mouths, whooping as if it were a big game. Waits was in the midst of it, threatening everyone in earshot, grabbing at money like a wild animal.
Where was Gino? When you stepped away from the melee, it was hard to know what was happening. It didn’t look so different from dancing. Which was a good thing, she guessed. Maybe it would all clear itself up. No cops meant no trouble for Gino.
Reina wished she could roll back the minutes and do it over again, control her temper. She backpedaled, catching a glimpse of MC in the crowd. She called out her name but saw that MC was being pulled toward the bar by the Amy Winehouse clone.
As Reina neared the door, she heard another commotion. Outside, on the street, people were shouting about something else. Police cars were closing in from all around, and she could see an SUV stopped diagonally across the road, blocking traffic.
She ducked back in. This sucked. Big-time. The cops would close the place down. She had to get to Gino now.
As she headed back to the crowd, someone plowed into her from the left, catching her off balance. Reina screamed, tumbling downward among a sea of stomping feet.
Another body fell on top of her, smothering her.
“Get off!” she screamed, pushing upward.
“Reina?”
She sat up, staring into a face of a maniac who knew her name, his hair matted to one side, his eyes red, and his face cut and bloodied past recognition.
43
CAM
October 18, 2:17 A.M.
“I love this,” Cam said to Jimmy as he limped toward the front of Blowback. “I love this a lot.”
“Did you see that car that turned over?” Jimmy said. “Someone might have gotten killed. We almost got killed!”
“It was a Hummer,” Cam said. “Those things are built for that kind of shit. I’m not sure about the dude driving that Lincoln. What was he smoking?”
“He’s the one who almost killed us!”
“We’re alive, Capitalupo. Jesus, you have no fucking sense of adventure.”
Cam began mounting the stairs. It hurt like hell to walk and he’d just banged his head against the side of the car in the spinout. He knew he’d lose the next few weeks of the season to injury and might not even play all year.
Still, it didn’t matter. It felt good not to be dead. And back in his old stomping grounds. He couldn’t wait to see Waits, scare the shit out of him. Money shmoney. He would give Jimmy back his ATM cash. The payment didn’t worry him anymore. These things worked out.
They just did.
The bouncer was gone from the front door. It was noisy inside. A wild night. This would be fun.
He pushed open the door.
44
BYRON
October 18, 2:19 A.M.
“Reina, it’s Byron.”
Reina stared at him with disbelief, as if he were scanning a face in a lineup to match something in her memory.
“Is it that bad?” he asked, feeling the cuts that ran along his jaw.
“Yes! What the hell happened to you?”
“Long story.” He stood up, clutching a green bag to his chest. “Where’s Waits? I need to see Waits. I have to give him something.”
“He’s—”
But Byron was already racing past her, his eyes intent on the center of the dance floor, where Waits was either dancing or brawling with two women.
Byron staggered forward, thrusting the bag at Waits. “Take this!” he shouted, then dug into his own pocket and pulled the thick wad of cash he’d earned in the car. “And this.”
Waits looked at him, flabbergasted. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Take it all, Waits. Take it and go away. Because if I ever see you anywhere near Olmsted again, I’m going to fuck you up. Don’t ask me how, but I will find a way.”
“Byron?” Waits shook loose from his attackers, dropping a few bills and letting them fight over the loot. “I didn’t recognize—”
“Stop it, you’re giving me a complex,” Byron said.
Waits took Byron’s bag but didn’t open it. “What’s this?”
“What does it look like, you asshole?” Byron said. “It’s what you want, right? It’s the reason Cam had to sacrifice his life for your fucking greed.”
Waits tucked Byron’s bills into his pocket and clutched the bag to his chest. “Cam… agreed,” he said weakly. “No one forced him to buy… or you.”
“He’s dead, Waits!” Byron said. “Eighteen years old, his whole life ahead of him—and that’s all you can say? ‘No one forced him’?”
Reina was beside him now, her mouth pulled down in an expression Byron had never seen. “How can you say that, you lowlife piece of shit?”
She was lunging at Waits, who stumbled backward. The crowd, who had managed to pocket the dropped money, stood there watching as she screamed at him, sobbing.
Byron hadn’t realized how much Reina had cared about Cam. Cam had an unexpected effect on people.
Byron backed off, tears in his eyes. He had done what he’d intended to do. Cleo was right.
He turned to go, staggering through the throng, feeling the breeze from the front door as it opened and then shut again.
It felt good, the fall air, but it wasn’t good enough. It would never be good enough, not for the rest of his life. Not after what he’d done that night.
He began running. Blindly.
As he approached the door full speed, bracing to push it, it swung open.
45
MC
October 18, 2:20 A.M.
“Dang, you’re strong for a—”
MC cut herself off. The extremely tall girl with a beehive, who had taken her by the arm and forced her over to the bar, had hair on the back of her hands.
Just her luck that her only customer of the night was a two-hundred-pound transvestite with a complaint.
“I swear, I take these all the time,” Beehive said in a deep, rumbly voice, glaring at MC and then over to the bartender, who was rummaging for something behind the bar.
He held up three small plastic bottles. “Which one?”
“That one,” Beehive said, pointing to the one on the left, then slapping down onto the bar one of the pills that MC had sold her.
The bartender turned over the little bottle, and MC read the label.
“Holy shit…” she said.
She felt herself turning red.
46
WAITS
October 18, 2:22 A.M.
“Reina, I’m sorry,” Waits said, wending his way through the crowd, trying to find where Byron had gone. “But I didn’t do anything.”
Reina followed him, still in a rage. “You set him up! You set both of them up.”
“Do you know how Byron got this money?” Waits asked.
“Is that all you can think about? I don’t know where he got it! I don’t know who did that to his face either.”
Waits heard a scream near the front door. “Over there.”
Byron was staggering, lurching toward the door. He seemed disoriented. Waits picked up the pace. “I’m worried about him,” he said.
“Oh, bullshit,” Reina said. “You’re worried about how you can get more of it. Just take your blood money, Waits, and stop trying to play good guy.”
She didn’t underst
and. She would never understand. “Reina, I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
He stopped, holidng out the bag of cash. “This, Reina—this. This fucking business. I hate it. I’m over it. But people are after me. Somewhere in Bay Ridge, they’re preparing cement shoes in my size. I’m trying to get out. Can’t you understand?”
“Don’t you think it’s a little late for—”
Reina stopped cold.
As the front door opened, her jaw dropped.
47
BYRON
October 18, 2:23 A.M.
“C—C—C—?”
It was a fucking ghost.
48
REINA
October 18, 2:23 A.M.
“I believe in God.”
Tears blurred her vision, as she ran to the door with open arms.
“I believe in God. I believe in God. I BELIEVE IN GOD!”
49
CAM
October 18, 2:23 A.M.
Bingo.
50
JIMMY
October 18, 2:23 A.M.
It was chaos.
Reina was all over Cam, sobbing. Byron, who looked as if he’d been in a terrible fight, was grinning like a kid on wobbly legs.
And Waits’s face, for the first time he’d noticed, was arranging into a look of something resembling surprise, as if there was actually something in the world he had never seen before.
Cam just made this kind of stuff happen.
Like the Greeks. Like Orestes.
He wondered if he could work this into a dramatic five-minute piece.
Nahh.
51
WAITS
October 18, 2:23 A.M.
“Holy shit…”
He was alive.
Fucking alive!
The text message was a lie. Cam had been dicking around with his brain.
Cam looked a little banged up, although not as much as Byron did.
Wtf Page 12
