Shovel Ready (19 page)

I want you to know I want to hurt you.

Some people undress you with their eyes. Some people go a lot further than that.

Dave does, often.

So maybe, just maybe, this will work.

Dave the doorman leaves the lights out in the bedroom. Stands framed in the doorway. A square splash of city light falls on the bed, so he spots them.

Bra. Panties. Discarded.

And, from what he can tell, recently worn.

Don’t tell me I caught her in the middle of a shower.

Better yet. Bubble bath.

He steps in gingerly, makes the here-kitty-kitty noise, like in a movie. Not too many more places left where she could be. Maybe the closet.

Maybe she’s in the closet watching him right now.

He prods the panties with the gun muzzle.

Scoops them up.

Retrieves them from the end of the pistol, like a fresh-caught fish on a hook.

Balls them up.

Inhales them.

A perfumer’s inhale.

Eyes slip closed for a second.

Her hand joins his from behind, her body up against his, breasts pooled against his back, and he almost thinks, for a second, that he conjured her. Her hand is clutching his hand that’s clutching the panties and now she’s pushing them into his mouth. Panty taste.

Her other hand takes its best educated guess at where his kidney is and slides the knife in, searching.

Twists it twice, a full rotation. Like working on a stubborn screw.

To leave a more raggedy wound.

He struggles to shrug her off but she’s already disarming him. Funny what you can pick up after a few weeks living in tents.

Gun falls softly to the plush carpet.

He follows. Less softly.

She straddles him. Improvises on his neck with the blade.

She’s not a medical student, after all. But more or less anything that’s there to be cut, she cuts.

The plush soaks up most of what pumps out.

She has discovered a streak inside herself of late that she does not recognize. She tries to credit it to carrying the baby. If credit is the word.

Something instinctual, born of being a mother. Some new primal drive to protect.

Though that doesn’t quite explain it.

Those two guys in Red Hook, for example. She lingered long after she should have left them.

Working. Slowly.

And now here.

Dave the doorman. In his sad little epaulets.

She wonders where it comes from. Or if it was always there.

Latent.

Maybe her father saw it in her all along.

He kept a claw-foot tub in the basement for one purpose. Called it the Baptismal.

Bare lightbulb jumped when he yanked the chain. Black shadows danced like a campfire.

Started back before she could remember, really. Became a weekly ritual. Saturday nights. Her mother standing silent as he marched her down the stairs.

Faucet roared, openmouthed, until the tub filled to the top.

Then the timid mouse-squeak as he twisted the spigot shut.

Last drop trembling on the mouth of the faucet.

Drip.

He made her strip down. Kneel naked on a stepstool. Curl over. So he could dunk her head underwater.

One. Two. Three.

Pull her up.

One. Two. Three.

Pull her up.

All the while reciting scripture.

Her long hair, her mother’s pride, never cut, left a wet slash on the wide wooden boards of the wall as he yanked her up quickly.

Then dunked her.

One. Two. Three.

Four. Five.

If she’d been especially bad.

Then he handed back her flannel nightie, folded neatly. Freshly laundered.

Told her, Now you are clean.

Her mother never once mentioned it.

Not once, and then she died.

The weekly ritual. She almost came to—what? Not enjoy it exactly. But rely on it? Maybe that’s it. This weekly cleansing.

The comforting consistency of rules.

It let her know that, whatever she did, she could be exonerated.

Washed clean.

Through this weekly reminder of her father’s unwavering love.

Though as a teenager, she started to feel rightly more ashamed to remove her nightgown.

And her father had to find a sturdier stepstool.

Still. Nothing happened. Not of that sort.

Maybe to Rachel.

But not to her.

Not to her.

Until he saw those pictures.

He exploded into her bedroom wielding the glowing tablet.

The light from the tablet lit his furious face.

Slapped her with a bony backhand.

First time he’d ever hit her.

Drew blood. Just a trickle though.

Then he marched her downstairs.

She accepted it meekly.

Stripped. Knelt. Prayed.

As he held her under.

One. Two. Three.

Four. Five.

Six. Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Long enough for her to worry this was more than punishment.

Still under.

Every muscle tensed.

Tendrils of blood curled and sniffed around her face like a school of curious fish.

She gasped and breathed water.

She had to breathe something.

He pulled her up.

She spat and sputtered and tasted something salty and metallic and then he pushed her under again.

One. Two. Five. Eleven. Nineteen.

She lost count.

The frigid water set her ears to ringing.

She was curled over, on her knees, naked.

With one hand he held her head under.

His other hand went wandering.

Sounds of the room muted.

He was saying something. Not scripture.

Her eyes open underwater.

Sick.

Feeling a fullness.

Edges of her sight blacking out—

—like a curtain falling.

He pulled her up.

Fingers still in her.

The next time under she just let go.

Stopped struggling. Started to float.

Loosed her breath in a school of lazy bubbles.

Perhaps she’d always deserved this.

One last bubble, like a hiccup.

The room so faraway and quiet.

Calming.

She only felt a joyful sinking.

Fringed in black.

Black bubbles. Arriving to carry her upwards.

To whatever reward awaited her.

Then a last rude yanking and a gasp and one last watery slash painted on the wide-plank wall, crude calligraphy left by the wet brush of her long hair, never cut, her mother’s pride.

And now here.

Dave the doorman. In his sad little epaulets.

Painting his own wet slashes.

He long ago stopped spasming.

Yet these dirty fucking panties still won’t fit all the way in his mouth.

So she cuts him a wider smile.

That’s better.

Something about becoming a mother, she tells herself. That’s what she likes to think.

Mother’s pride.

Then she likes to stop thinking, and that helps, for awhile.

By the time I get back to Mark Ray’s apartment, there is a body, and a wet swamp of blood, and Mark’s there, and he is crying.

I’m sorry. I should have been here. I’m sorry.

Hands me the note.

A kid’s scrawl. Thumbprints in blood like lipstick kisses in the margins.

You said you would protect me
.

Persephone’s gone.

We lock the front door behind us and figure we’ve got at least three days until someone reports the stink.

Speaking of three days and stink, Harrow’s Crusade is rolling into town.

In three days.

Ready or not.

Back in Hoboken, I read about Rick in the
Post
.

Body in a dumpster.

Tattoos closed the case.

GANGLAND SPRAY SLAY
.

The
Post
really needs to find a new synonym.

Mark Ray doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t curse, but right now, on my sofa, he’s drinking, smoking, and cursing.

The smoking’s not going so well. He gets through two puffs. Rick’s brand. In memoriam.

These are fucking gross.

Stubs it out.

Pardon my language.

Swigs a beer. Holds it up to the light.

So people throw away their whole lives just for this?

It’s an acquired taste.

Mark puts the bottle down.

Okay. What now, mastermind?

You’re the mastermind, Mark. I’m the muscle.

Well, we have to find her. That’s first.

Is it? What for? We haven’t exactly done a bang-up job on her behalf so far.

Are you kidding? You saved her.

The only person I really saved her from so far is me. Everyone else, not so much.

Mark stands up. Paces. Hard to imagine how he ever lies still in a bed. He turns to me.

So what then? That’s it?

No. Like you said. Three true outcomes.

Okay. Well. Giving her to them is not an option anymore. Not that it was.

No, it wasn’t.

So that’s out. And without her, we have no prayer of luring Harrow into the dream. Which is fine, because without Rick, we have no prayer of crashing their construct in any case. Unless you know of someone else who you trust who can pull that kind of thing off.

Not offhand.

So that part’s out. Which also means I’m more or less useless to you now, because if it comes down to a street
fight out here, in the nuts and bolts, realistically, you’re on your own.

Seems so.

And I don’t know what you may have in mind, but I can’t see a way for you to pull this off cleanly by yourself.

Me neither.

So there you go. There aren’t three outcomes anymore, Spademan. Only two. Maybe not even two. Just one.

Which is?

He kills you. He kills her. He kills us all.

That’s a terrible outcome.

No kidding.

Mark slumps back on the leather sofa. Knees bobbing. Can’t sit still. I can tell he wants badly to puzzle this out. I can also tell he can barely wait to tap back in and be rid of this puzzling world. But he won’t abandon me. I like him for that. He also doesn’t have his answer yet.

But I do. So I tell him.

You’re wrong, Mark. There are still three outcomes.

Really? Are you planning on sharing them with me?

Yes. Three outcomes. He kills me. I kill him. Or both.

Mark stares me down. Silent for a moment. Then scoffs.

Sure. Back to the kamikaze plan. Brilliant.

You said yourself, no way we get close enough to Harrow out here and still get out alive.

Yes, but you’re missing the most important part of that statement, which is the getting-out-alive part.

You and I both know she’s out there right now, running. Alone. Thanks to us. Thanks to me. And Harrow won’t stop until he finds her, Mark. You know that. Which he will.

Spademan, stop it. It’s suicide.

I shrug.

You have a better idea?

Come on. It’s not an option.

It was for you.

Here’s the part I can’t explain to Mark.

It’s been a long time since I needed to do something.

I’ve done a lot of things, but not out of need.

And I’ve learned there are a lot of ways, and ugly places, where things can end.

Backyards. Garbage bags. Subway trains.

Most people don’t get to choose.

We don’t discuss it further. Watch football instead.

While Mark works on acquiring a taste for beer.

Overtime. Fumble.

Miami scores.

I flip the channel.

Fucking Jets.

Another note.

This one hand-delivered.

Slides under the door like a base-runner stealing home.

By the time I get the door open, hallway’s empty.

They just want us to know that they know.

Note’s from Milgram.

I believe I mentioned we’d be getting back in touch
.

Milgram meets me the next day at dawn at the Hoboken waterfront in a stretch limo. Morning air is just cold enough that you can barely see your breath. The sun’s rising across the river, over the city, peeking through the curtain of towers like a shy actress on opening night.

Lights come up.

A farmboy, this one in khakis and a button-down, frisks me with impressive inventiveness. Makes certain not a square inch goes unfondled. Finds a few hollows I’d forgotten existed.

This Harrow fellow. Real hands-on operation. At all levels.

Farmboy pockets the box-cutter he finds hidden in my boot. Left there more as a test than anything else.

Milgram dismisses the muscle.

Just the two of us in the backseat.

He knocks twice on the dark glass.

We drive.

Milgram gestures at Manhattan.

It’s a bit of a cliché, I know, this meeting in the limo. But it’s quiet, it’s private, and it’s a great way to see the city.

The skyline passes. Actually, it doesn’t pass. We pass.

Amazing, isn’t it? After all that’s happened? The city still has a grandeur, don’t you think?

I tend to favor this side of the river.

Well, why not? Over there, they have to look at sunset over
New Jersey. You get to watch the sun rise over New York. Pastor Harrow doesn’t understand the allure of this city, frankly. Sees it as a cesspool, a kind of new Sodom. But I get it, though. I do. New York. The greatest concentration of human potential in the history of the world. So much so that they had to start piling the people one on top of the other. An island so crowded it had nowhere to go but up.

Yeah, well, it’s not so crowded anymore.

I’m amazed you stayed, all these years. After what happened. So many people vacated.

Not all.

No. But most. And many of those who stayed simply dropped out of life, holed up in their metallic cocoons. Well—look at this woman. That’s curious.

A jogger huffs up the waterfront, trailing steam clouds, like a locomotive. I’ll admit, it’s a strange sight. I haven’t seen a jogger in years.

Now that’s hopeful, isn’t it? People out again. Out in their bodies again. That’s what our crusade is all about, Mr Spademan. New York. Reborn.

I understand you have some other business in the city while you’re here.