The waters of New York City, whether they be river or bay, were not simply polluted, they also did not act the way other waters did. The currents, as with the city’s inhabitants, spurned direction and the waves bounced off each other and never seemed to take into bigger ones. Even the thought of them lapping at the feet of the city’s countless bridges was enough to drive Alistair mad. The sounds they made in his head was like the squelching of saturated navy-issue boots amplified many fold. He needed a distraction. Speed was the first impulse, but Route 36 was clogging up as the city loomed large, so a conversation would have to suffice. Alistair had already considered that contingency: hitchhikers were not hard to find or conjure with drifters continually flowing in and out of the cracks of the metropolis and he swerved roadside to scoop one of them up now.
‘What are you doing?’ a man cried out in a thick Brooklyn twang as Alistair came within an inch of running over his feet.
‘Offering you a chair with an engine under it.’ replied Alistair through the open window. ‘A chance to save for another day some of the tread on the soles of your shoes.’
The man had a mustache of thick black bristles and running over his head was a stream of wiry ginger hair. His tweed jacket was worn through at the elbows and he was carrying an old leather bag with one of its handles broken and dangling. He looked tired and undernourished. He leaned into the car about to give Alistair a serve, only to pause when he sensed the invitation might in fact be sincere.
‘I wasn’t hitchhiking.’
‘You’re walking like a man too used to ice skates,’ said Alistair. ‘I mean, your knees are hardly even bending.’
The man’s cheeks staunchly tightened, pulling back his lips from a prominent bucktooth and accentuating a bump on the bridge of his nose. He was again building steam for a sharp rebuke, but was this time dissuaded by a quick glance at the comfortable looking seat on offer. Silently he relented, pulling open the door and clutching a sore back as he climbed in. He brought with him the odor of dried mud and stale sweat.
Alistair impatiently put the car back in motion. He had drafted the passenger aboard for the conversation and started one without delay.
‘So, what’s your name, friend?’
‘Turner. Robin Turner. You?’
‘Alistair.’
‘Strange name, wouldn’t you say?’ gnarled the passenger combatively. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t sing it, ‘cause you’d have to be a choirboy with a name like that.’
Alistair did not compliment his surliness in case it threw him off his game. ‘I was named by a priest and he didn’t get a song out of me, so I don’t fancy your chances now.’
‘Named by a priest? Did your parents abandon you at the doorstep?’
‘I got beaten well and good when I was sixteen or thereabouts and don’t remember a thing before that. Not even who my parents were or the house where I lived.’
‘If you don’t remember anything, how do you know you were sixteen?’
Alistair shrugged. ‘That’s how old the Father said I looked. And everyone needs an age.’
The stranger’s interest had been piqued. ‘You don’t know who was responsible for putting you on this earth and you can lie about your age without any sense of guilt? Some people have all the luck.’ He offered Alistair one of his precious cigarettes and did not mind that he was perfunctorily knocked back - the simple state of knowing his parents suddenly made him feel superior.
‘So, you’re not coming to New York to see Ma and Pa,’ he continued once cigarette smoke was curling out his nostrils. ‘Where are you headed?’
‘I’ve got an appointment with a friend in a hotel room,’ replied Alistair. ‘That’s all I can say about that.’
‘I can say something. If it’s woman, you’d better watch yourself. There’s only so much you can forget and still keep your mind.’
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ replied Alistair, getting the feeling they were no longer talking about him.
‘It means you’d better watch out for the ladies of New York.’
Alistair idly watched a few white lines run by before looking back his way. ‘Is that your predicament?’
Turner nodded jerkily. ‘My old lady has run off on me. Taken the kid with her. My only son. Calling that a predicament is like calling a cemetery a hotel.’ With the squeeze, his voice almost did not make it to the end of the sentence.
Alistair quieted his tone solemnly. ‘Know where she is? Give me an address and I’ll make a detour.’
Turner replied in an acridly spiteful tone. ‘It won’t be so easy as that. The bitch didn’t just run off on me. After six years of marriage she could still find it in her conscience to call the cops on me. Not over much mind you. Just delivering a few packages for friends. But there’s nothing more cops enjoy doing than putting away the poor bastards whose wives have turned against them. Probably they think those bitter, twisted dames are the only ones they might have a chance at themselves.’
‘You look free enough to me. And there aren’t too many escaped felons out there hitchhiking.’
‘I wasn’t hitchhiking. You almost ran me over, if you recall. But it’s fair to say I got away with one. You see, I was lucky enough to be double crossed twice on the say day. The cops had been directed by the old lady to a warehouse I had been renting and using to store a lot of hot property such as guns and dope. But one of my associates had beaten them to it. Snapped off the lock and cleared the place out. I know exactly who it was and when this is over I’m going to send him some flowers. Without his little burst of treachery I’d be right now in the slammer and the cops would be setting the key in concrete.’
‘He gets flowers, what does your wife get?’
Turner glanced out the window at the emerging outskirts of the imposing city. ‘For the moment at hand, she gets my full attention. She’ll know I’m after her by now and have gone to ground. Never mind. Your average hooker doesn’t have much of a social circle. I’ll jump right in the middle of it.’
‘Ok,’ said Alistair, firmly taking the accelerator all the way to the floor; his car responded with a good deal more kick than wind, the traffic suddenly drifting along like snowflakes in an asphalt sky.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ barked Turner, anxiously latching onto his kneecaps.
‘You’re lucky you ran in to me. The situation with your wife may have gone down the way you say or there might be something else at play here. Maybe the friend that cleared out the warehouse also sent the cops after you. Or maybe you’re just a royal pain in the backside who no one wants to be near anymore. Who knows? But with anger clogging you up, you aren’t in a fit state to see things clearly. And that’s where I can be of service. Anger is like a particularly unpleasant and stubborn kidney stone. You’ve just got to keep jumping up and down until it passes through your system.’ He screamed exaltedly at the Hudson’s speed and leaned into the steering wheel. ‘Fun is like a gearbox. You can just keep working up and up.’
‘Are you mad?’ cried Turner as Alistair scraped between a dawdling flatbed Dodge truck and a Ford sedan.
‘It’s going to feel like it. But that’s an especially nasty stone you’ve got wedged in there, friend, and it’s going to take some prying loose.’
There was a red light and stopped vehicles ahead and he tore into the opposite lanes to avoid them; cars were coming that way fast, but somehow he squeezed through them with just a tap of bumper bars. Still, the smirk was easy and slow. ‘Close.’
‘Stop the car,’ demanded Turner, his tired face now even paler.
He was thrown against the door in a vicious left hand turn. It was into a main street, with a strip of restaurants, barbers and delis – one of the countless foothills to the mountains of New York City. It was there that the sirens began to wail.
Alistair looked excitedly at the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. ‘Look what we have here,’ he said wildly. ‘I bet yo
u aren’t going to be talking about my brakes anymore.’ He took his hands off the wheel, spat into the palms and rubbed them together. ‘But trust me, this really helps.’