Blood Rubies

by McDowell, Michael

  “You want to talk about the bust,” said Andrea. “Well,” she said, when he did not reply, “I’m glad to see that you’re out of it . . .”

  “Out of it?” he repeated mockingly.

  “Yes,” faltered Andrea. “I mean, if you’re here now, you weren’t arrested, you weren’t put in jail, I mean—”

  “How do you know I wasn’t arrested, how do you know I wasn’t put in jail?”

  “Were you?”

  “Why should you care?” shrugged Jack. “You got away whole-skin.”

  “Well, I was just lucky that I was in the bathroom when the police came. I could see them from the window, they—”

  “Very lucky,” repeated Jack.

  “Well it wasn’t my fault,” cried Andrea. “You dragged me to that house—”

  “Dragged?”

  “Well, you persuaded me—against my better judgment.”

  He licked the paper and twisted the ends of the joint. “So you went upstairs to the bathroom, and hopped out the window, and got away.”

  “Yes,” said Andrea. “I did. I hid in the forest. I would have warned you if I had had time, but I didn’t. The police had already surrounded the house when I saw them.”

  The telephone rang in the kitchen. Andrea jumped up and crossed to the steps. She was almost surprised that Jack did not attempt to stop her.

  The telephone stopped in the middle of the second ring; Andrea could feel the cold air that blew up from the kitchen below. She was certain that she had not left any of the windows open.

  A man appeared in the deep shadows at the foot of the stairs.

  “Who is it?” cried Andrea.

  Dominic twisted his head into the light. He held up a plastic credit card and touched it to the tip of his nose. “You ought to get better locks,” he said, smiling.

  Andrea retreated into the living room. Jack’s soft laugh filled the space behind her.

  Dominic came up the stairs, and as he passed the front door, he jerked it open. Andrea uttered a small cry when she heard the storm door pulled back. In another moment Morgie and Sid were in the foyer.

  “Do you want money?” Andrea hissed at Jack. “What do you want?”

  “You have any money?” he asked lazily.

  “Hi,” said Morgie, moving into the living room. “Oh great,” she said, staring at the tree. She thumped a glass angel that hung from one of the higher branches, and laughed as it swung. “Can I have this?” she said, and pulled it from its perch.

  “Yes,” said Andrea weakly.

  Sid and Dominic stood beside Jack’s chair and puffed on the joint.

  “Better get your coat,” Jack said to her.

  “I can’t go anywhere now. I’ve got this friend coming over.”

  “Your friend will have to be disappointed,” said Sid, and smiled.

  “Better dress warm,” said Morgie, slipping a porcelain figurine of a balloon-woman into the pocket of her trench coat. “It’s real real cold out there.”

  28

  Andrea was seated between Morgie and Sid on the backseat; Jack drove, and Dominic had fallen asleep with his head pressed against the shotgun window, employing someone’s sweater as a pillow. They were on the Massachusetts Turnpike, heading west, away from Boston.

  They were paying her back, Andrea thought, for having skipped out of the Dedham house just seconds before the police arrived, for not providing a warning, for having escaped when they had been caught. She still didn’t know how they were free now—it would have been quite obvious to the police, Andrea was sure, that they had been dealing in large amounts of drugs—but she was determined not to bring up the subject. She hoped that they were merely frightening her: they would drop her off in some godforsaken town at the far end of the Pike, and she would have to hitch back to Weston. They did not know that she had money; to reassure herself, she lightly touched the pocket that held the bank deposit slip and the fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills. She could take a bus, or the train, and be back before her parents returned on New Year’s Eve. If ever she even heard a motorcycle again, she’d call the police and claim harassment.

  “I want a mint,” said Morgie. She held her cupped hand before her face, and blew into it. “I’ve got Hoboken breath.”

  Sid whistled through his teeth. “Take a down, and get off my ass.”

  “Fuck you,” said Morgie flatly.

  Sid leaned across Andrea and grabbed Morgie’s thigh. With his other hand he rubbed his crotch vigorously. “Wouldn’t you just love it?”

  Morgie brushed a hand through her white hair, extracted a barrette, and brought the sharp end of it down hard on Sid’s hand. He withdrew with a grunt of pain. “Not from what Rita tells me, I wouldn’t,” said Morgie.

  “Where’s Rita?” said Andrea meekly, attempting to make everything more casual than it seemed to her then.

  No one answered. Andrea caught Jack’s momentary gaze in the rearview mirror.

  “Rita gets carsick,” said Jack.

  “Rita’s got a pain in her snatch,” said Morgie.

  The jeep ground on through the night. Dominic snored in the front seat. Sid rubbed his leg against Andrea’s—probably because he knows it annoys me, she thought. Morgie read a John Saul novel by flashlight.

  Jack took the exit marked Hartford–New York City. Now they were turning southward, would end up in Connecticut or New York. This business suddenly had grown darkly serious. Andrea had no idea what they would do to her. “Where are we going?” she demanded. “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re taking you to see the world . . .” whispered Jack.

  “This is illegal,” Andrea pleaded.

  “You bet,” said Sid, and rubbed his thigh against hers. “We’re taking you across state lines for immoral purposes—”

  “Hey,” cried Morgie, “do you remember that joke about ‘immortal porpoises’? I heard it once, but now—”

  “Shut up, Morgie,” said Dominic flatly.

  “You can’t do this!” hissed Andrea.

  “Sure we can,” said Jack lightly. “Don’t you want to know how we got out of that bust? It was close, and it was no thanks to you. Marty and Donna-Louise got it on possession, but we were just present, we didn’t know anything about any drugs, we came over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner—”

  “There wasn’t any food!” cried Andrea.

  “Shut up!” Sid snapped.

  Jack smiled at Andrea in the mirror. “I got us all a lawyer, a big lawyer with lots of rep, a big lawyer with lots of strings that he can pull anytime he wants to, a big lawyer who’s got a great big craving on for smack, a big lawyer who convinced the judge that we’re over at Donna-Louise’s being thankful, and the cops jump through the window and interrupt the blessing.”

  “And it’s all your fault,” said Morgie, looking up from her book.

  “No it’s not,” protested Andrea. “Even if I had screamed bloody murder up there, you wouldn’t have had time to get away. There were cops everywhere.”

  “You should have warned us,” said Jack. “If I had had ten more seconds, I could have hidden that money where the cops would never have found it. We’ve been strapped for weeks. So it’s because of you we’re making this trip.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Seattle,” said Sid.

  “Truth or Consequences, New Mexico,” said Morgie.

  “Alcatraz,” said Dominic.

  “This is kidnapping,” protested Andrea weakly.

  “Really?” said Morgie, brightly. “I mean, is this really a kidnapping? That’s hot, you know, a real kidnapping!”

  “No!” cried Jack, “of course it’s not a real kidnapping. We’re just taking little Wenham girl here for a little ride, we’re going to show little We
nham girl a little bit of the world she doesn’t know anything about. You don’t learn everything there is to know at Wenham, you don’t know everything when you’ve spent your whole life in a split-level in Weston, do you, little Wenham girl?”

  Andrea said nothing. In the midst of her anger and terror, she found room to be resentful at being called girl.

  “Roll a couple of joints,” said Jack to Dominic. “Little Wenham girl needs to get mellow in the backseat.”

  Andrea closed her eyes. Sid pressed against her on the right. The roar of the engine filled her ears as Jack’s foot eased down harder on the accelerator and they crossed the Massachusetts border into Connecticut.

  Andrea was shaken roughly awake by Morgie. “Hey,” she said, “we’re here.”

  “Where’s here? “said Andrea, and pulled open her eyes. It was still dark out, but the car had been parked beneath a street lamp in a neighborhood of cramped low row houses with tiny, smudged yards in front of them and twisted television aerials on their pitched roofs.

  Her back ached, and she longed to slip her hand round to massage it, but her position between Morgie and Sid made this impossible. She ran her fingers through her hair and felt it tatty. “Where are we?” she said.

  “Can’t you tell?” said Sid. “This is the World Trade Center.”

  “We’re in New York City,” said Morgie, with pride. “We’re in the Big Apple! This is the City of Dreams!”

  Andrea looked around her with more interest: the neighborhood appeared distinctly lower middle-class. At this hour of the night it was grubby and deserted. The only lighted house was the one before which they were parked. It didn’t look much like New York, but then, she hadn’t visited the city since 1978.

  On the front seat, Dominic was slouched against the window, snoring. “Where’s Jack?” Andrea asked.

  “Inside,” said Morgie, and then giggled: “He’s selling soap.”

  “Soap? What kind of drug is that?”

  “No,” said Morgie, with exasperation, “the stuff you take a bath with.”

  “Why is he selling soap?” said Andrea, the sleep still not cleared from her mind.

  “They think it’s meth!” cried Morgie, laughing at the wonderful joke of it.

  “Shut up!” said Sid. “It’s because of you we’re doing this,” he grumbled to Andrea.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah you, bitch. We never sold bad stuff in our lives, not once. But all our supply went to the lawyer, and all our cash got confiscated at the raid, so we’re just about starting over again. There’s no credit in this game, and now we’re having to sell soap in fucking Queens!”

  “I thought this was New York.”

  “You ought to take geography at Wenham,” said Morgie. “Queens is part of New York, if you read more you’d know that. There’s five boroughs that make up New York City, there’s Queens, and Manhattan, and the Bronx—”

  “Can it, Morgie!” growled Sid.

  Jack emerged from the house and moved swiftly down the walk. “God, let’s get the fuck out of here before they find out the stuff isn’t meth.” In another moment they had taken off again.

  “Why’d they trust you to begin with?” said Morgie.

  “Because they’re friends of Donna-Louise, and they hadn’t heard of the bust yet. I didn’t tell ’em, either, they’ll find out soon enough.”

  “How much did you get?” said Sid.

  “Two thousand. It was one of Donna-Louise’s regular runs.”

  “Good,” said Dominic, rousing himself slightly, “we can start over now . . .”

  Andrea was pleased that when they left Queens, Jack headed for Manhattan. She could escape in Manhattan: when they stopped she would jump out of the jeep into a taxi—there were always taxis in Manhattan, at any time of the night. She would ask to be taken to the train station. The first train for Boston would be leaving probably in a few hours, and she could get on that: her only worry was that the taxi driver would balk at a one-hundred-dollar bill.

  Manhattan was larger than she had remembered. She had a glimpse of the tall buildings, but when Jack turned north, these were quickly lost to sight. She saw signs directing them to the George Washington Bridge, and it was this route that Jack took. Andrea grew more frightened in the backseat.

  With some complex maneuvering that Andrea tried to memorize, they arrived at a little terrace overlooking the Hudson River. Five or six small apartment buildings shared a splendid view of the New Jersey shore, and Jack pointed out the one they were interested in. “Everybody out!” he said.

  Despite the fact that he was selling hard drugs, despite the fact that he had kidnapped her, Andrea in her well-bred propriety could not understand how Jack could bring himself to visit someone, previously unannounced, at four o’clock in the morning. Jack rang the bell, and they were immediately buzzed in.

  A pale, thin man with a sparse beard and shaggy black hair sold Jack a small quantity of Demerol and fifteen grams of heroin. Andrea was rather attracted to this man, Paul, because of his benign smile. He wore a short-sleeved madras shirt, and Andrea noticed that the insides of both forearms were covered with clusters of reddish puncture marks.

  From the drawer of a magazine rack he brought out a glass syringe and a plastic tie-off cord; he produced a packet of heroin from his own supply. While Morgie, Sid, and Dominic talked with Paul, who was evidently an old acquaintance and once had lived in Jamaica Plain, Andrea sat in a dark corner and watched, fascinated, as the heroin was prepared for injection.

  He mixed the white powder with a small amount of water inside a small tin measuring cup, and held it over a candle flame until it was heated through. This cooled for a few moments while he listened with half a mind to Morgie’s ramblings; then he poured the liquid into the syringe, depressing the plunger just enough to expel the air trapped within. Conversation stopped as Paul tied off his arm and then inserted the tip of the needle into a vein just deep enough to produce a drop of blood. Jack nodded: “Good,” he said, “you’ve got it.” Paul plunged the needle in deep, and depressed the plunger by degrees until the syringe was empty.

  Andrea cringed, sucking in her breath. Jack turned to her and laughed: “Want to be our guest?”

  Andrea stared back coldly.

  A smile of even greater benignity crossed Paul’s face, and froze there. He withdrew the needle and yanked the cord free. As he continued to talk, he became more effusive and less coherent. His moods and his speech changed, it seemed to Andrea, moment by moment.

  What was left in the tin measuring cup was offered to his guests, and Sid and Morgie readily partook. Because he was driving back to Boston in a while, Jack refused the hospitality; and he refused Dominic permission as well, saying that he might be required to take his turn at the wheel.

  “Stay here,” whispered Paul, “everybody stay here. It’s getting light out, you can’t drive to Boston when it’s light out, ruin your eyes driving when it’s light out . . .”

  Jack, admitting he was tired, accepted this invitation.

  Andrea watched as Morgie, Sid, and Dominic—permitted by Jack—repeated the ritual with the heroin. Jack contented himself with rolling joints.

  Andrea decided that she would escape when they had all passed out. She wished she had change for the subway—did the subway reach this far up in Manhattan? Probably—and perhaps she could find some quarters in Paul’s apartment. New York subways were dangerous, but no more dangerous than this place.

  She didn’t want to take the joint that Jack offered her, but he quietly insisted. She puffed twice, then tried to pass it back. “I have my own,” he said, “you play with that for a while.”

  She tried to stay awake. She stood at the window and watched the dawn breaking against the Palisades. When she turned round, she saw that Sid lay unconscious on th
e couch. Paul was not to be seen. Jack, who lay on the floor at a right angle to the couch, opened his eyes slowly. “Come here,” he said.

  Andrea went to him, and he made her lie down beside him on the threadbare carpet. He turned her over and wrapped his arms tightly about her. His regular breathing in her ear told her he slept.

  For a while Andrea looked through the door into the kitchen. There, at a Formica table beneath a garish fluorescent light, sat Morgie and Dominic, holding an incoherent conversation. She began to sweat in Jack’s tight and unrelenting embrace. Morgie’s and Dominic’s endless babbling droned in her ears. Her eyes grew heavy, and she fell into an exhausted sleep.

  29

  Andrea groggily opened her eyes and immediately closed them again when a dull pain welled up at the base of her neck. She turned her face into the pillow. Her body ached and she was cold, but she didn’t have the strength to reach down for the covers. A draft blew across her naked back. She took a deep breath and tried to draw herself up into full consciousness, but she was without strength or coordination.

  The draft was suddenly warm. Andrea snapped her eyes open and turned her head. Inches away from her was the clean-shaven face of a man she did not recognize. She stiffened, and a fine shower of cold pinpricks covered her naked body. The man, also naked, was sprawled on his stomach close to her, one hand clutching the dirty case of the pillow beneath his head.

  She stared at him for a long moment, certain that she had never seen him before. She ran her eyes about the darkened room, realizing in that moment that she had no idea where she was. The door into a hallway was ajar, and pink light fell in a strip across the bare wood floor. Blinds were lowered, and curtains had been pulled hastily across the two windows. Andrea could not tell it if was day or night.

  Perhaps she was in one of the back bedrooms of the drug dealer’s apartment in Manhattan. Falling asleep in Jack’s arms was the last thing she remembered. She listened for the voices of the others, but could hear nothing. If they were still asleep, maybe she could escape.