New York Minute

by Bob Mayer

  “Men! Listen up! Field Seven might be attacked unless we get there first. We’ve got one more march to make. I give you my word. Just one more.” He points to his left, along the dark stretch of road. “We only have to get there. That’s all. We don’t have to be tactical. We’ll take the road. That’s easy enough.”

  “Why not take the fucking trucks then?” Ted mutters, but no one laughs. Curses of despair and rage ripple through the ranks, but Beckwith seems not to hear.

  “I’m going with you men,” Beckwith says.

  “Lucky us,” Ted says to Kane.

  “Gut it out minute,” Kane replies to his Beast roommate.

  “I don’t think Field Seven is a minute away,” Ted notes.

  The class begins to move. Two columns, one on either side of the road. No one knows how far they have to go except Beckwith and the RIs.

  As he staggers along Kane hears someone crying in the darkness. Others are cursing repeatedly, a mantra of hate toward Beckwith.

  There’s a clatter as a student throws away his rifle and falls to his knees. “I can’t. I just can’t.” He curls into a ball, sobbing.

  The columns leave him behind. Occasionally a civilian car rolls past, wide eyes staring at the line of dirty zombies staggering on either side of the road. Beckwith is everywhere, exhorting, cajoling, threatening, praising, cursing them to keep moving.

  Eventually, after seven miles, they cross the bridge from Santa Rosa to the mainland and that gives them a rough idea how far they are from Field Seven.

  Ten more miles.

  Another man collapses at this realization. Beckwith pulls him to his feet and pushes him stumbling in the right direction.

  They lose track of time except when BMNT tinges the eastern horizon.

  “Will?” Ted says.

  Kane hears his friend with some distant part of his mind. He focuses on the minute. That’s all he has to do. He passes it and focuses on the next minute.

  “Will?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I can’t go any farther.”

  Kane glances at Ted. He looks like a ghoul. Face drawn, good eye bulging, the other swollen shut, drool on the sides of his mouth. Dried snot under his nose. Caked sweat. The left side of his face a mass of blisters and sores.

  “Bullshit,” Kane says. “You can do it.”

  “I can’t. These people are crazy. You got no idea.”

  “Gut it out for a minute, Ted,” Kane says. He holds up his wrist, peels back the Velcro covering on the Army-issue watch, the same camouflage band as the one on Ted’s wrist, which they’d bought at Ranger Joe’s on Victory Drive outside Fort Benning just before signing in to Ranger School. “I’ll time it. You can quit after a minute. Okay? Just a minute.”

  “Just a minute? You promise?”

  “Just a minute. I promise.”

  They stagger along.

  “That’s gotta have been a minute,” Ted finally says.

  “You’re right. How about just one more? Then I’ll quit with you.”

  They continue on. Each ‘gut it out minute’ gets longer and longer, until it’s almost ten minutes before Ted asks. And each time Kane promises he’ll give up with his friend after just another minute.

  Finally, Ted says: “Fucking New York minutes, Will. You’re using New York minutes.”

  “Yeah, Ted. Another New York minute.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Ted says, but he gives a small laugh and Kane knows his friend will make it.

  Beckwith suddenly appears in front of Ted. “You going to make it, Ranger?” His eyes widen as he sees Ted’s face. “You’re the one! I heard about you. You’re one tough son-of-a-bitch, Ranger. I’d serve with you anywhere.”

  “Fuck you, Beckwith,” Ted mutters.

  Beckwith moves to Kane. “Going to make it, Ranger?” He goes to the center of the road. “Oh yeah, boys. You want to run? Why don’t we run this last part?”

  And Kane realizes Beckwith is telling the truth, it is the last part. Because there are the bleachers and there’s Field Seven and here’s the smell of hot chow in the air.

  “Come on, Ted.” Kane breaks into an accelerated stagger, a mockery of a run. Ted automatically follows.

  Beckwith howls something almost inarticulate at the students as they cross the final line.

  Kane finally understands as Beckwith howls it again.

  “You’re Rangers now!”

  A New York Minute:

  The smallest measurable time in the universe. Approximately equal to the time a traffic light turns green and the cab driver behind you starts honking his horn.

  Urban Dictionary.

  Friday Morning, 8 July 1977

  MEATPACKING DISTRICT, MANHATTAN

  Kane put the five spot on the edge of the table. The corner booth in Vic’s Diner was across from the swinging door to the kitchen and through there an exterior kitchen door. To the rear were the bathrooms, with no exit or windows. With his back to the wall, Kane faced the rest of the diner, one end of the u-shaped counter anchored just past a pay phone on the wall between kitchen door and counter. There were six booths along Washington Street. Six more on the other side of the counter along Gansevoort Street. Cheap linoleum tables, sagging and slashed red vinyl booths, faded black and white tile floor all bore witness that Vic hadn’t been big on upkeep. On the flip side, the floor, the counter and the windows were spotless.

  The ceiling was made of tin tiles, artistic for those who were into old things and bothered to look up. The diner was air-conditioned, but the old industrial unit was having a hard time with the heat and humidity. While it seemed a tad chilly to Kane, everyone else was teetering on the verge of comfortable, leaning toward barely tolerable. Kane had clear fields of fire and a quick escape available through the kitchen.

  The corner diner had two customer doors, one facing each street that formed the intersection of Gansevoort and Washington in the Meatpacking District on the northern edge of Greenwich Village. A faded sign above the diner’s windows on each street proclaimed and promised:

  Vic’s Diner!: Good Food!

  It was BMNT in military and nautical terms: begin morning nautical twilight, when the sun is just below the eastern horizon and the eye has difficulty discerning shapes. When the French and Indians attacked and vampires returned to their coffins and the city hovered between the denizens of the night and the workers of the day.

  This area in southwest Manhattan confused even some native New Yorkers who were used to the regular grid system of streets, numbered south to north and east to west that constituted most of the island. That pattern had been dictated by the city master plan in 1811, displayed on one of the prints leaning against the wall in Kane’s apartment. By then the area that became Greenwich Village and lower Manhattan had been settled for almost two hundred years, businesses and houses established, and the irregular pattern of streets retained many of their Dutch names. Similar to the piers, the meatpacking element of the neighborhood was in steep decline, overtaken by the widespread use of refrigerated trucks and frozen foods.

  The diner was on the southeast corner. Angled across the intersection was the stub end of an elevated rail-line, the High Line. It had originally run all the way south to the Battery, as indicated on another of Kane’s maps, but as its use declined with the rise of the Interstates and truck usage, it had been amputated bit by bit, much like the industries it supported.

  The waitress put a cup of coffee and a glass of tap water bobbing two cubes of ice in front of Kane along with a folded order ticket. Her nametag block lettered MORTICIA and that was bolstered by her long ebony hair with a single streak of white in it, pale face, and tight, ankle length black dress. Slender and a smidge under six feet tall, she was a presence. She’d first appeared on the job thirty-three days ago. She’d taken Kane’s specific instructions reference coffee and water and cubes without comment that first morning and never asked again.

  She was too old to have been named after the charact
er on the TV show from only a decade earlier and either she’d modeled herself after the Addams Family matriarch and changed her name or she’d been christened with it by parents who valued the obscure. She was gone as abruptly and silently as she’d appeared, tending to another booth. She moved in a beguiling manner, taking short, smooth steps underneath that long dress so she appeared to glide over the floor.

  The handful of customers in the diner represented the end of the night shift in a rough part of town and well before the 9 to 5 breakfast crowd. A quartet of truck drivers sat at the counter, finished with their nightly runs to the outer boroughs delivering fresh meat to local butchers. A trio of creatures of the night, two female, one transvestite, were wearily exchanging miseries of the trade in a booth. There was a scattering of others, all worn out, ready to sleep after imbibing some food. Kane was none of the above, sometimes starting his day here or ending it; the morning stop in the diner a ritual anchor in his wandering days and nights.

  Kane wrapped his callused hands around the mug, absorbing the warmth. He spooned the two cubes out of the water and into the coffee. Watched them slowly dissolve. When the last trace was gone, he took a sip. He unfolded the ticket. Three blocks of five letters in the first line and two in the second, all in unintelligible sequences, unless one had the Special Forces trigraph memorized, which an experienced commo man or a savant could do. Thao, the cook, had been the first years ago and had always been the second. Kane retrieved the moleskin notepad from his shirt pocket and used the trigraph with their personal one-time pad, which was the diner’s sign. He quickly decoded the message.

  TONIA TELEV ENXXX

  CALLF ARRAH

  Kane struck a match from the book next to the ashtray and burned the ticket, stirring the remnants to dust in the tray.

  The Kid bounced in through the Washington Street door, checking out everyone, a grin at the ready. He had a newspaper tucked under one arm. He wore old jeans, both knees shredded, brown work boots that had never seen a construction site, and a red and black checked lumberjack shirt, the sleeves cut off at the shoulders revealing string-muscled arms. The shirt was unbuttoned to the navel exposing a smooth chest. He was five-ten, too skinny, and his face was struggling against acne. A street-hardened teenager with long sandy hair freshly combed. He blew a kiss at Morticia, walked directly to Kane’s booth, tossed the New York Times too close to the coffee and had the fiver in his pocket in one smooth movement.

  “It’s gonna be a sunny day,” the Kid said. His accent was tinged southern trying hard to sound New York. He was most likely a refugee from some small town where his high school classmates flew rebel flags on their pickups and had guns in rear window racks.

  “Hot,” Kane said. “And humid.”

  “But sunny.”

  “Hold on,” Kane said as the boy turned to go.

  The Kid turned. “Yeah?” He was smiling yet his body was tense, ready to flee, but that was a learned trait of his lifestyle.

  “Were you at the piers last night?”

  “Nah. The piers tend to rough trade. I only go there with a buddy I trust or a safe hook up. I was around Washington Square most of the night. Why?”

  “You know a junkie who hangs out on the waterfront, white, scruffy, thirties, veteran who wears a fatigue jacket with a screaming eagle patch on the left shoulder, winged dagger on the right, both with Airborne scrolled above them?”

  The Kid laughed. “I don’t do junkies and they aren’t interested in me. They like their stuff better. Plus, people don’t score at the piers. Very frowned upon. No one wants the cops coming by. It’s one place they leave us alone.”

  “This junkie knocked over Dino’s last night.”

  The Kid shrugged. “That place gets ripped off every week. The night guy has to slip any cash over twenty into a safe he can’t open. Everyone knows that. And the pizza sucks, not enough cheese, but where else can you go that late?”

  Kane removed a brown manila envelope from the map case. Put a picture on the table. “Ever meet this guy?”

  The Kid glanced at the picture of Delgado in flagrante delicto. “Nope.” He walked away.

  “Hey Kid—“ Kane began.

  The Kid turned. “Yeah?”

  “Nothing.”

  The Kid was gone via the left door, not looking back. Kane put the photo in the envelope and into the map case.

  Morticia set a plate in front of him. “I don’t know what it is.”

  Kane eyed the concoction he hadn’t ordered. Rice, vegetables, and a brown sauce. “Thao knows I don’t like peppers.”

  “I don’t think he cares what you don’t like,” Morticia said.

  Kane glanced at the high bar behind the counter dividing that area from the kitchen. Thao was short, even for a Montagnard, barely topping five feet, which was the height of the bar. At that moment just a pair of brown hands snatching an order ticket from the carousel.

  “You want me to take it back?” Morticia asked, crossing her arms across her chest.

  “Funny,” Kane said. “I did that once. A long time ago in a faraway place. Big mistake.” With his left he surreptitiously drew the .45 and rested weapon on thigh, under the table. “Send my regards to Chef Thao.”

  “Your regards to the chef. Sure.” Morticia slid away to serve another customer.

  Kane picked up the fork right handed and, with Morticia out of hearing, thumbed off the safety.

  Alfonso Delgado came in the door the Kid had gone out of. Two men accompanied him. One, a muscle-bound weightlifter, bald, Cro-Magnon forehead, stayed by the door. The other, a tall, slim knife of a man dressed in white pants, red shirt and white linen jacket, flanked Delgado, eyes hidden behind aviator glasses. His face was narrow with flawless pale skin, but there was an odd triangular section of skin, an inch tall and half an inch wide just below the right lens that was scarred reddish black. He sported black, pointed boots. His thick red hair was styled straight to the rear. Kane spotted a glimpse of dark metal under the jacket on the guy’s right hip, not enough to determine specifics.

  Delgado wore a rumpled gray well-cut suit, no tie, collar open. His dark hair was disheveled and there were deep pockets under his eyes, above his thick black mustache. There was a bulge under his left shoulder, the sign of an amateur because it was a long way from the shooting hand’s resting position; a man could be perforated several times before he made the reach up and across his body.

  Delgado stopped at the booth. “You’re a hard man to find.”

  “Not really,” Kane replied. “You found me. Can’t be that difficult.”

  “Funny guy. I was told you was a funny guy.”

  “You have the wrong person then.” Kane was looking at Delgado, but watching the red head.

  “I talked to your uncle earlier this morning,” Delgado said.

  “Which one? I’ve got a bunch of uncles.”

  “The one that gives up where you go to breakfast every morning with just a phone call,” Delgado said.

  Kane shrugged. His fork was still hovering over the plate. Around his right wrist was a brass bracelet. “Like I said. I got several uncles.” He shifted his obvious attention to the other guy. “I’m Kane.”

  The guy nodded. “I know. That’s why we’re here.”

  Kane noted the slight accent. “You’re not from around here. Australian?” he deliberately wrongly guessed.

  “Doesn’t matter where I’m from,” the man answered. “I’m here now.”

  Kane pointed the fork at Delgado. “Him, I know. We met last night, actually earlier this morning. And you might be?”

  “I’m talking to you,” Delgado said.

  “I’m nobody important.” The guy smiled joylessly and sat across from Kane, his hands out of sight. Kane slid his finger from alongside the trigger guard, inside, tenderly feeling the sliver of metal, for the first time considering how the top of the table would affect the trajectory of a round.

  Delgado was out of the loop. He thumped a fist on the t
able. “I want the fucking camera.”

  “Have a rough night, Alfonso?” Kane asked.

  “Only my friends call me by my first name,” Delgado said, his face red. “You ain’t my friend. Unless you want to be my enemy, I want the fucking camera.”

  Kane put the fork down, reached across his body, and drew the envelope out of the map case. “Here.”

  Delgado blinked. Snatched the envelope. “What’s this?”

  “The pictures.”

  “Where the fuck did you get them developed?” Delgado demanded.

  “Did it myself. Aren’t you going to look at ‘em?” Kane asked.

  “If these ain’t the pictures,” Delgado said, “you’ll regret it.”

  “I’m already regretting a lot of things,” Kane said.

  “The negatives?” the guy across the way said.

  Kane pulled out a smaller envelope and handed it to Delgado. “You got it all.”

  Delgado peeked in that envelope. He smiled. “I heard you couldn’t make it in the Army, Kane. They booted you out. Think of that,” he said to the man across the table. “This guy got booted out of an army that lost a war and had to draft people. That’s pretty fucking sad. Isn’t it Kane?”

  Kane was staring at the enforcer across the table. The aviator glasses were dark, no way to see behind them. Kane briefly wondered how he got that red hair to stay in place.

  Delgado thumped the table again. “I heard you’ve had a sad life, Kane. I heard your ex and your kid—“

  The enforcer held up his left hand, interrupting Delgado. The fact Delgado heeled indicated who held the real power.

  Kane was focused on the man’s moving right hand, indicating he was re-holstering whatever he’d drawn when he sat down. Kane returned his trigger finger alongside the guard and the situation de-escalated from mutual suicide.

  The enforcer was quiet, but firm. “Time for us to be going, Mister Delgado.” He exited the booth. “We have what we came for. A successful morning all around, wasn’t it, Mister Kane? No hard feelings?”