Joe Pitt 5 - My Dead Body (2 page)

--No, you can keep that, I got my own.

I jump, push off, arms out, leaving my feet as if to make a tackle in a football game, except leading with a fifteen-inch amputation blade I found in the rusted tangle of an old shopping cart at the mouth of an outlet three months ago. I used a river stone to hone away the rust, losing about two millimeters of the blade’s width in the process, but after wrapping a quarter of a roll of yellow friction tape around the tang to replace the bone handles that had rotted away, I had a serviceable piece of cutlery that could fend off most trouble just through the act of slipping it from the drop sheath I’d rigged inside my jacket with a section of bicycle inner tube and more tape.

This guy never gets a chance to see it. Not unless the sensation of it coming in under his rib cage and pushing up into his right lung is so distinct that it paints a picture in his mind’s eye. Normally I’d jerk it around a little once it’s in there, make sure things get settled quick, but we go down hard with me on top and the blade making a new hole for that carbon dioxide to hiss out of and that knocks the blade around more than enough. He’s not exactly dead when I pull it out, but near enough not to quibble with me when I poke a hole in his neck and catch the last few strong pulses of blood from his carotid before things become official. After that I have to get a good seal with my lips against his skin and suck pretty hard. When my mouth pulls off, it sounds like the half-clogged drain nearby.

Do I feel bad about it, killing a sad man who just went a little nuts when he lost the only thing he cared about to maybe a sadder case than he was? Yeah, I do feel bad about it. Thinking of where I’ve been in my life, where I could be right now, the kind of plays I’ve made over the years that put me down here, I feel very bad about it.

I’m not saying I’m better than this, just that I don’t like where I’ve come to. Even if it is my own fault. I’d been the type to get along and go along a little more, I’d be doing OK.

Not that it matters.

I changed who I am, I’d have to change everything. I changed who I am, I’d never have made it as long as I have. I changed who I am, and likely as not she’d never have looked twice at me.

Thinking about her while I’m drinking this guy’s blood in the filthy dark makes the taste go sour in my mouth. Not that I stop. I’m no fool. Eat what you kill.

I finish it, as much as I can take, then roll the corpse toward the sucking sound and feel the current grab him and pull his foot from my hand and he’s washed down to a lower place. I find the wall and use it to guide me back around the hole and out the way we came. It’s too dark to know how bad I look, how much blood is coating my mouth and cheeks and chin and neck, but I’ve looked at myself in the mirror before so I have a pretty good idea. When I find some light I’ll clean up a little. Not that it’ll require a great deal of grooming.

Standards down here being what they are, a man only has to do so much to pass as human.

There’s not much to know.

A guy living in the sewers, what do you need to be told that you can’t figure out for yourself?

Figure he fucked up somewhere along the way. More than once. Figure he’s got enemies. Many. Figure he’s got reasons for not just running far away. One reason is, he’s got nowhere to go. Never been out of the City. Another reason is, he has certain minimum requirements as far as living conditions.

Anonymity. If not crowds to get lost in, then a place where no one cares who you are or what you’ve done.

Darkness, he needs. Night is best, but protection from solar UV rays will do. Too many of those and he erupts in a welter of pustules and wet scabs. Seen pictures of guys with severe eczema? Picture that in your mouth and ears and nose and on your eyes. That’s what the sun does.

And people, he needs. Not to practice his social graces, but as a food supply. Blunt, but there it is. Not like I’m hiding anything. No food supply, he starves in short order, goes crazy just before he dies, crazy strong and crazy fast and woe betide the motherfuckers in his immediate proximity when it happens.

Sound like something’s been left out of the equation?

Yeah.

Figure there’s a girl.

Guy living in a sewer. There’s got to be a girl in the story somewhere. My story, it’s thick with them. Lost girl, rich girl, smart girl, dyke girl, crazy girl, tough girl, pregnant girl. Over the years, I’ve dealt with all of them. Dead girl. Yeah, her too. But only one matters. My girl. A girl worth sitting in filth for. Waiting. Watching. Feeling the walls of the tunnels for vibrations that will tell you something about what’s going on up top.

What the hell is going on up there? Who’s bought it? Who’s still kicking? How are the cards coming off the deck and where’s my play? Confused? Well come late to a tale, you got to expect to have to tread a little water.

Last thing is this, I’m not the way I am because of god or the devil. I’m like this because it’s who I am. I’m a bastard. That I happen to be a bastard that got infected with something called the Vyrus that turned me into something called a Vampyre, that’s just bad news for a lot of people who happened to cross my path over the years. Not because I’d have left them alone if I wasn’t infected, but because being infected makes me a damn sight harder to put down than I’d have been otherwise. Some people, they’ll argue against that. They’ll tell you there’s something mystical about the Vyrus. Some will tell you it’s nothing but a bug, a bug that makes us special, makes us dangerous. Some will say it makes us sick, makes us need to stick together, makes us better off if we went public and got help. Some will say that we need a cure. Some hover around the top of the fence and put off making a choice about which yard they’ll jump into.

Those people, they’re all at war against one another.

My bad.

I’d have kept my mouth shut, it wouldn’t be happening. But that girl, I needed to see her, and I needed a distraction to make it happen. Starting a war seemed what the occasion demanded.

Looking back, I maybe made a mistake. Not about starting the war, but listening to the girl. When she said to leave her where she was, I shouldn’t have listened. I should have dragged her out. I’d done that, we’d be gone from here already.

So I like to think. In the dark. With nothing else to think about. Sit and brood on what I should have done. What lives saved. Which throats slit.

Even a guy like me, we get one go-round, and regrets come with the ticket.

Just I never had time to entertain them before. And now they’re all that’s come to the party. Makes me want to kill.

Chubby Freeze finds me curled in a ball in the shack I took over from Q-line Dave after he went under the tracks of the Hudson Valley Express.

Chubby makes a lot of noise coming up on the shack, which is good. It keeps me from acting rashly and slipping the amputation blade behind his windpipe and pulling it toward me. But it doesn’t keep me from putting it at his throat while I ask him what the fuck he’s doing down here. What does keep me from putting the knife to his throat is the gun his boy Dallas is holding on me.

Probably for the best. Me and Chubby, we’ve always been friendly for the most part, I’d hate to kill him without a good reason. Of course, the fact he’s found me is a pretty good reason. But I’d maybe like to know if there’s anyone else knows I’m down here.

If there’s killing to be done, I’d just as soon have a complete list.

--You don’t look well, Joe.

Some people, they feel strongly that the obvious must be stated. Me, I’d take it for granted that some poor son of a bitch holed up in the tunnels was gonna look like shit and spare the commentary. Not that it hurts my feelings, just that there’s only so much time in a man’s life, so why waste it stating what’s clear to start with.

Chubby squints and purses his lips.

--No, you do not look at all hale.

I point at the grease stains on the trouser cuffs of his three-thousand-dollar custom-made suit.

--You’re gonna need some sprucing up yourself, Chubby.

He fingers the material gathered in pleats at the front of what passes for a waist on a man that big around.

--I made a point of wearing one of last year’s. I generally give them to a charitable organization when my new wardrobe arrives from Hong Kong, but I’ve found it’s wise to hold back one or two. For grubby work.

I nod at Dallas, the pretty boy with the well-defined muscles and the gun.

--That what I am these days, grubby work?

There’s more gray in Chubby’s afro than when I last saw him. More fat being held in by the five-button vest he sports. More wrinkles around the eyes. It’s cold in the tunnels this time of year, our breath puffs out white. Even so, Chubby’s top coat is draped over the arm Dallas isn’t using to point his gun. The fat man has worked up a sweat coming down here.

He fingers a handkerchief, a plain white one, not the blue and white silk that fans from his breast pocket, matching his tie.

--I’m not certain I could say what kind of work you are these days, Joe. It’s been some time since we crossed paths. Some time since anyone has crossed your path. I’d hazard to say that the nature of your work these days is a subject for wild conjecture.

The place is lit by a fluorescent bulb Q-line Dave scavenged from a demo site somewhere up top. It hangs from a hook of coat hanger that’s been twisted around the scrap-wood beam that supports the sagging sheets of waterlogged Sheetrock over our heads. Power comes from a daisy chain of extension cords that snake and tangle through the shanties; little more than bare wires wrapped in electrical tape in some places, they disappear into the darkness, running to a source I’ve never bothered to explore. The head of our Nile down here. There’s a dozen blackouts a week from people tripping over cords in the dark. The lifers live in fear of the real thing: some city engineer noticing the drain and cutting the juice.

I wouldn’t miss seeing the surroundings, but I don’t have much to pass the time other than reading the moldy paperbacks that get passed around. Right now the light is bright enough for me to see that Chubby’s eyes aren’t just decorated by new wrinkles, they’re also cracked with red.

I move for one of the patch pockets on my Ben Davis mechanic’s jacket. I took it off a greaser who came down slumming. Clinking along the tracks with a sack of Thunderbird pints, looking for an experience he could impress his friends with. He left in his underwear and a pair of yellow plastic flip-flops someone with a kinder soul than I gave him so he wouldn’t shred his feet on the broken glass and ballast lining the tracks. I got the jacket mostly because he was a big guy and it didn’t look to fit anyone else. Which is to say that I got the jacket because I’m pretty much the biggest guy down here. I had another jacket, about the only thing I owned that I cared about. I left it topside.

Better not to think about that jacket. Or who’s holding it for me. It’s a distraction. Something I don’t need when Dallas lends a little more emphasis to the way he’s pointing that gun at me because he doesn’t like me sticking my hand in any pockets he hasn’t gone through first.

I put my hand in the pocket anyway.

Dallas wags the barrel back and forth a little, like the thing is shaking its head at me.

I nod my head at him.

--You go ahead and pop one off.

I fill my hand and it comes out of my pocket.

--I’d rather take the bullet than go another second without a smoke.

He flinches when he sees the fluorescent flash off what’s in my hand, but give the kid credit, he’s not half-cocked, gives himself enough time to see the light’s just reflecting off the cellophane on my pouch of Bugler. Truly, I’m grateful he’s a touch gun-shy. I want the smoke, sure, but I was just talking big about the bullet being a fair trade.

I pull a paper from the cardboard sheaf tucked inside the pouch and fill it with cheap dry tobacco. Given my choice, I’m a Lucky Strike man, like my father before me, may he and my mom both be suffering in a miserable ditch somewhere. Not that I want to introduce a note of bitterness to the story. In any case, store-bought smokes come dear, and I can’t make a pack last more than an evening. I can tease out a pouch of Bugler for a couple days. If anything might drive me to the surface and into the eye of the shit storm up there, it’s the taste of a Lucky.

I lick the strip of glue at the top of the paper, roll it up, strike a match from a pack with an advertisement for a phone sex line on the cover, and get the thing going.

Chubby pats some more sweat from the back of his neck.

I tear the spent match from the book and flick it into a corner littered with a couple thousand of them.

--Tell me, Chubby, who is it up there doing all this conjecturing about me?

He refolds his handkerchief and slips it into his pocket, smoothing the front to be sure no bulge shows to ruin the hang of the material. Not that is really hangs on him. Clings, more like.

--I’m not one to name names, Joe.

--Unless it’s a name you’d like to see dealt with.

He takes a moment to consider his manicure.

--I’ve never been one for spite or rage. Any dealings I’ve had with you have concerned business. And I don’t recall either of us ever expressing any squeamishness about how matters were closed. Not I when I asked for details. Not you when you’ve been paid.

I’m still sitting on the ground, a chunk of broken concrete digging into the back of my thigh. I reach under my leg to move it.

Dallas, a little more relaxed after the tobacco incident, doesn’t wave his gun around this time. Which makes me feel better about my chances when I whip the chunk of concrete at his head. It doesn’t bounce off his skull, more like it skips off it when his head is snapped back. Either way, he drops the gun without shooting me, and he drops himself immediately after. I don’t bother to go for the gun. Dallas won’t be making a move for it anytime soon. And if Chubby decides to make a play, I trust I can reach over and scoop it up a full minute before he manages to bend his knees to stoop.

I blow some smoke his way.

--Sorry, Chubby, I know he’s your boy and all. Just the gun was a distraction.