These two were there to be seen. I wondered if they arrived together or met by chance. Their heads were close together in shouted conversation. He had his hand on her leg and she didn’t mind. She twiddled his tie in her fingers, at one point clenching the end of it between her teeth.
It struck me that one or the other of them might be in the same game I was. I watched closely to see that they were drinking their drinks. He had a couple of long necks, imports with labels I didn’t recognize. She had a tall slim tumbler with something green over crushed ice. I watched her drain it, sucking the last of it through the straw. The guy gestured and a bartender glided up. I almost missed it. A look passed between them, a silent acknowledgement. The guy laid a hundred on the bar and the bartender slid it out of sight to come back with a fresh drink for the lady.
And no change.
A very special drink. A very expensive drink.
I kept watching as the girl downed half of the new drink. A few pulls on the straw and she began to lose her poise. The level in the glass fell and she began to lose her balance. The guy slipped a hand around her waist, holding her up. He had his lips close to her ear. He said something that made her nod slowly, her mouth slack now. A faraway look in her eyes.
They brushed past me on the way to a lounge area off the main room. I followed as they passed rows of booths packed with people hollering at each other in what passed for conversation. The guy in black and the girl in rubber stumbled/walked down a hall lined either side with the openings to men’s and women’s lounges. The guy was almost carrying her at this point, the toes of her high-heels making furrows in the carpet. He was taking her past the rest rooms for a fire door at the end of the hallway.
I caught up, drawing alongside them. I put out an arm to block their way. The girl’s head swayed on her neck and she made an effort to look at me. Blue eyes registered nothing, the pupils open wide like buttons. The guy swiped out a hand to brush me aside.
“I think I know her,” I said.
“Yeah? She don’t know you,” he said. Trace of an accent.
I got a hand between them and pulled her out of his grip. With a push to the small of her back I launched her into the women’s room entrance. She was caught up in a gaggle of other women heading in and swept along.
The guy made a grab for my throat. His face was bunched in animal rage. I caught his wrist and had him turned around with his hand driven up between his shoulders. He yelped once as I marched him into the men’s. The room was empty. The smell of piss was driving me mad. I slammed him into the first stall I came to. He made to fight me, hands braced on the stall walls. I drove his head hard enough against the tiles to crack a few.
He was cold cocked but still semi-conscious when I sat him down on the commode. His eyes swam in the sockets. Blood trickled through white powder from the cracked tile. His mouth moved like he was chewing his tongue. I rifled his pockets and came up with a fat wad of cash in a rubber band, a vial of some kind of white powder, a gold cigarette case and a receipt from valet parking. Tucked into his waistband at the back was a little pistol. I know shit about guns. I guess it was an automatic. I guessed it wasn’t legal either.
The guy started making moaning noises. I wadded up some toilet paper and stuffed it in his mouth. He tried to focus his eyes on me but gave up to just stare into the infinite.
I dropped to my knees in front of him and rolled up a sleeve of his jacket. I opened a small vein on the side of his wrist and dropped my head to feed.
Outside the stall I heard shoe soles scrape on the tiles to approach the wall of urinals.
“Jesus Christ. You see this?” one guy said.
“What?” the other guy said.
“You didn’t tell me it’s that kinda club,” the one guy said.
“What are you gonna do about it?” the other guy said.
• 35 •
An ambulance arrived. Two cops parted the crowd for a pair of EMTs with a folding gurney. The music didn’t stop for a beat. A hundred phones came out to record the event.
I pretended to nurse a club soda and watched them roll the guy out of the men’s room. His head was strapped into a brace. No sign of the blonde in the rubber dress. She was probably sitting catatonic in a toilet stall.
It was a risk to stay, maybe. The cops left after a few words with one of the bartenders. The bartender shrugged and shook his head. The cops left. Simple assault and robbery. Happens a hundred times a night. The beat went on.
I dumped the club soda into a faux potted plant and went for a refill. I grabbed a section of rail closest to the bartender who served special drinks at a hundred a pop. I tipped my glass at him and he took it.
“Club soda again?”
“Yeah. I’m designated driver. My brother’s bachelor party.” I mimed regret.
“Shoulda sprung for a limo. Or Uber.”
“Hindsight.”
He shouldered past another bartender and topped off my glass from a syphon.
“Does it ever slow down in here?” I nodded toward the mob packed before the DJ stage.
“Around six. We close by seven usually. I’m out of here at four.”
“You must hate this job.”
“Naw! The money is crazy! I dropped out of pre-med to do this.” He scooped up the twenty I set on the bar.
Dropped out of pre-med. But he was still into pharmaceuticals.
The valet, a black kid in a parka worn over a tuxedo shirt, took the receipt from my hand and charged toward a lot down the block. I looked enough like the guy with the accent to pass. Or maybe he only had eyes for the fifty I stuffed into his hand. The valet was back inside of five minutes with a black BMW two-seater gleaming wet with snow melt.
I pulled down the block. No traffic at this hour. I hung a U-turn and pulled into an open slot that gave me a view of the front of the club. There was no line out front now. More partiers were coming out now than going in. Cabs pulled up now and again to let die-hards out. The night was moving toward morning, the club scene giving way to the working day.
The bartender who wanted to be a doctor came out just after four. He crossed the street and hiked toward me, head down and collar of a woolen coat pulled up. Hands in coat pockets. I rolled the window down as he passed.
“Hey. You want a ride?”
He stopped, bent to squint at me.
“Yeah? I know you?”
“Club soda.”
“What happened to your brother’s bachelor party?”
“That was bullshit.” No reason to keep up the sham. He already knew it was a lie.
“I’m not gay.” He turned to go on.
“I’m talking business,” I called.
He spun and came back.
“What kind of business?”
“What do you use? Pills? Powder?”
He studied me with new eyes.
“You a cop, club soda?”
“No. I want to buy.”
“Show me the cash.”
I knew better than that.
“You have anything on you?” I said.
“Fifty pills. Rohypnol. Three-thirteen grams. And some I crushed in a bottle.”
“How much for what you have?”
It was a thousand even. I peeled it off the rubber-banded roll. He handed over a baggie of pills and a tiny plastic bottle with a pop-off lid.
“You can get more?”
“All you want. Clonazepam. Lorazepam. Ecstasy. Viagra. I can hook you up.”
“You here most nights?”
“Thursday through Sunday. You need my cell?”
“I’ll find you,” I said. I pulled out of the slot. I could see him in the rear view watching me before he turned away to walk on.
The pills lay on the leather seat next to me. I was still hungry but the sun would be coming up over Long Island in little more than an hour. I found a parking garage wedged between two buildings. It was a reserved lot for a condo complex two blocks over. For a hundo the attendant gave me a spot
on the third floor as long as I was gone by evening. No problem, brother.
I pulled in snug between a Lincoln and an Infinity. No windows. No sunlight. I pulled the lever and dropped the seat back as far as it would go, my head below the windows behind deeply tinted glass. I lay there waiting to slide into darkness.
The evening went well. I had a whole new plan. I had this town figured out. I had it by the ass. This was going to work out for me, all on my own. No help from anyone. The sun was going to set on a brand new me when this day was over.
• 36 •
The pills went fast. Two, sometimes three a night. I moved around clubs all over Brooklyn. Gay and straight. Techno, salsa and blues.
Dosing a victim was easier than I expected. Drunks don’t have much in the way of discretion. Especially men. Some of them even took a pill willingly when I offered it. When they had questions I just told them it was something new.
The roofies kicked in fast, faster if the takers were already intoxicated. They were conscious but pliable. No problem shepherding them into an alley, garage or back room to feed. If the club was dark enough and noisy enough, I’d find an empty booth and feed there. A nick of the small vein on the side of the wrist at the base of the thumb was all it took. It looked like a more innocent public display of affection than what was going on in other booths.
I was back for a new buy two weeks later.
“I’m not carrying tonight,” the bartender said.
“I have cash,” I said. And I did. I took more than blood off my prey. My roll was fat with large bills.
“We’ve had cops in here the last few nights. I’m laying low.”
“But I need more.”
“You out already? That was fifty pills. It’s only been what? Two weeks? You some kind of sex maniac?”
“I want to build a stash. Five hundred pills to start.”
He eyed me hard before getting out a pen to write on the back of a coaster. He slid it across to me.
“I’m closing tonight then I have a thing. Call me in the afternoon,” he said.
“Night’s better for me. I have a thing too.”
“Okay. Cool. I’ll set you up.” He pushed away to take drink orders from a tipsy pair of girls next to me.
I moved on to grab a cab for a new club in Bed-Stuy. Virgin hunting ground.
“Yeah?” The bartender picked up on the other end.
“It’s me.” We weren’t on a first or last name basis.
“You still interested? Five hundred?”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
He paused. I could hear a basketball game on the TV behind him. He gave me an address in Bushwick a few blocks from the club where he worked.
“When can you be here?”
“Thirty minutes. I’m getting a cab now.”
He broke the connection.
The cab dropped me off on a street lined either side with storefronts. Older businesses like a dry cleaner and a pharmacy shared the street with newer, trendier stores. A coffee shop with a cute name, a health food store, pet clinic and a 24-hour gym.
The address the bartender gave me had a vestibule with a brass panel of buttons. I rang the one under the name Worley. After a beat or two the door buzzed in response and I pushed in.
It was a third floor walk-up and the door was ajar. Color commentary and ambient crowd noise from inside. Guy liked his basketball. I knocked my knuckles on the jamb. No entry without an invitation.
“Come on in,” the bartender called from inside.
I stepped inside. The bartender muted the b-ball game and greeted me with a fixed smile. He stepped past me to close the door and snap a pair of deadbolts in place.
“That necessary?” I said.
“The neighborhood isn’t one hundred percent gentrified yet.” A new voice.
Three men stepped from a back room. A smaller man in corn rows and two giants with heads shaved smooth. The bartender ducked away toward a corner near the windows, his eyes wide and darting.
“Friends of yours?” I said. The bartender just stared.
“You’re looking to buy a serious shitload of pills,” the smallest of the trio said. He might have looked ludicrous with tiny pigtails sprouting from his head but for the face below them. A face bunched like a fist in a perpetual scowl that revealed yellow teeth capped with silver. His eyes were yellow, too, and fixed on me with a predator’s glare. Scarred hands gleamed with rings. He was all thug but dressed for Wall Street in a cashmere coat worn over a designer suit and Italian loafers.
The man mountains behind him were dressed closer to their function. Sweats worn under starter jackets.
“So, I’m buying from the source. Does that mean a discount?” I said. I smiled easy. His scowl deepened.
“You gonna jew me down now?”
He stepped closer to press fingers into my chest. His eyes narrowed to slits when his shove didn’t move me. He pressed harder and I allowed him to shove me back into a chair.
“You ain’t using this shit on your own. You’re looking to sell.” He put a foot up on a coffee table, allowing me to see a shiny silver revolver tucked into a holster strapped over a sock.
“At these prices? There’s no room for profit there.”
“So you usin’ this shit yourself? Bullshit. Even rabbits don’t need that much pussy. You a rabbit?”
“Well, I’m some kind of animal.” I smiled at him.
He recoiled at that. His yellow eyes blazed with a new heat.
“See what this motherfucker’s got,” he said. He stepped back and waved the giants in.
I lunged out of the chair for them, the last thing the giants expected. They were used to fear in their victims. One swipe of the carpet knife opened the throat of one of them. Blood showered over the room. The other put up a defensive hand and my blade ripped a wound across the spread fingers. The big man stepped back, swinging his arm to send a spray of blood that spattered the smaller man. I drove in closer to get the giant by the throat and carry him before me across the room. I slammed him hard against a wall and watched his lips turn blue.
The sound of the little revolver filled the room once, twice. I felt a pair of swift punches to my back. I turned to see the little man standing with the pistol aimed straight-armed at me. The bartender stood backed into a corner with eyes goggling and mouth moving in a silent plea.
I stepped to the little man as he let fly until his little gun was empty. A third round took me in the chest. The final two went wild and then I had him by the neck. I pulled him close to me, our faces inches from one another. I lifted his feet from the floor to bring us level. His panting breath in my face smelled like tobacco and mint.
And the heady musk of fear.
He jerked in time with two muffled blasts from my own pistol that I stabbed tight into his side. The mean face went slack. The light faded from the yellow eyes turning them to tarnished gold. I released him to drop to the floor.
The bartender stared first at the little dead man on the floor and then at me. He sucked in a lungful of breath that I knew would come out in a scream. I stepped over the little man and drove the end of my gun’s barrel into his open mouth and pulled the trigger twice. Blood, bone and brains were fired up the walls and ceiling like they came from a hose.
I turned a chair around to face the big man seated against the wall, sucking in breath. He held his wounded hand to his chest where blood stained his sweat suit black. His eyes were on me. His mouth a wet oval with the effort to draw the next breath into his bruised windpipe.
I sat listening, the pistol warm on my knee. There were no sirens in the distance. No voices in the hallway. The bartender was right. This neighborhood had not totally surrendered to the gentry.
“Everybody’s dead, friend. Everybody but you,” I said.
The big man relaxed a bit when I stood up, leaving the pistol on the arm of the chair.
“So you’re the only one who’s any good to me.” I took the carpet knife from m
y jacket pocket and slid the blade free.
He didn’t have the breath to scream.
• 37 •
My clothes were soaked in blood. My hair was sticky with the stuff. I took a hot shower in the bartender’s bathroom. My fingers explored the bullet holes in my torso. There was no pain. And no blood, of course. There would be no healing either. The flesh along the lips of the wounds was whitish. I could insert my finger into them up to the second knuckle. I remembered the wound Roxanne showed me.
My pistol was covered in blood too. I left it on the bathroom floor on top of my sodden clothes.
I toweled off and went into the bedroom to find fresh clothes. I dropped them to the floor instead. Here I was full, satisfied. Frankly, too logy from feeding to face hunting up a new coop.
I went back to the living room and stepped around the sticky pools of blood to head for the door. I shot the bolts and secured the steel bar of a police lock in place. On my way back to the bedroom I pulled the phone lines from the wall. I drew the blinds and secured blankets over the pair of windows that faced an airshaft. Naked, I lay atop the covers. There were some magazines on a nightstand. Men’s Health and Forbes. I thumbed through them until sleep took me, surrendering to the comforting warmth of a good feed.
When night came again I searched the apartment. I found baggies of pills, in different shapes and colors, hidden inside a coffee pot in the kitchen. I pulled out the drawers of a dresser to find plastic-wrapped stacks of bills taped to the undersides. In the pockets of the men in the living room I found more cash, credit cards, a stiletto knife, and a set of car keys with a key remote. The little man’s shiny little revolver lay by a leg of the sofa. I picked that up. In a coat pocket I found some loose shells that seemed to fit it. I took them too.