Bastard, he was going to use them to torture her. Bastard, bastard, bastard. She’d had her gun out. Her finger had been on the trigger. Slow. Slow and foggy.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself. You’d never have gotten the shot off.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
Drum mirrored her. The little bitch still had some spirit. He rested his open hand on his inner thigh. “What if I said you could have a pill if you performed fellatio on me first?”
Sharon already knew the answer: not yet. Give it another hour, though, when the sweats started in and she’d blow a dead horse. She stared at him.
“Don’t worry. I’m not interested in that sort of intimacy.” Drum reached around and put the pill bottle on the floor behind the crate. The click the bottle made as it touched the concrete was as loud as a gunshot. “You just go ahead and tell me your story. We’ll talk about medicating your condition if you do a good job.”
That skinny little bitch with the expensive manicure and brassy dye job that insisted Sharon call her Doctor Sally during their sessions whispered in her mind, Let go. Let go and let God. If she were here now and Sharon had her gun… She might still put a slug in Fine before Dr. Sally. Might.
“You’re throwing a lot of anger, Sharon.”
Her eyelids slid to half-mast. “Yeah?”
“Is that the reason for the pills?”
“Why you so interested?”
Drum sat back on the crate and shadows ate his head. “You’re afraid enough that I shouldn’t have to answer that, Sharon.”
Smug prick. How the fuck did he know how she felt? Well, that was his job right? She knew who Dr. Drummond Fine was. Anyone who’d browsed the self-help section knew who he was. Besides, it wouldn’t take a mind reader to know that she would be freaking out in a position like this.
“Can I have a cigarette, then?” she said. “They’re in my—.”
“Shirt pocket, I know. And no, you may not. Disgusting habit. Stinks.”
If she got out of this before the other guys got here, the second thing she would do would be light up a smoke, take a nice deep drag and then put it out in his shiny left eye. She sighed. Just let go. Aw, hell.
Sharon thought for a second. “What’s the worst thing you ever saw?”
Drum, in shadow, was headless and silent.
“I see terrible stuff all the time on the job. Some of the shit I see you wouldn’t believe.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You know what happens to a human body after it’s been in the water for a while?”
“I suspect the bacterial respiration has a rather impressive effect.”
“Bacterial respiration?” Good lord, but this one liked the sound of his own voice. “If you mean a floater swells up to about twice his normal size after a while, then yeah.
There was this one time when I still working the Bowery, we yanked a floater out by the head. Or we tried to. Body got all caught up in like a snarl of cable or somethin’ under one of the old docks. The ME’s guys couldn’t get the hook around a limb or anything, so they threw a loop around the head and attached the other end to a winch.”
Drum chuckled.
“Head popped right off. Tore off like with the same noise a wet paper-bag makes. But that wasn’t the worst part. That was what came with it. The fucking thing whooshed like we’d uncorked one of those In-A-Minute air-mattresses. I was standing fifteen feet away and when the smell hit I actually fainted.” She glanced down and swallowed. “Woke up in a puddle of my own puke.” She looked back up. “I still catch hell from the other guys because of that, and that was four fucking years ago.”
Ah, the cussing was starting. She always cussed like a sailor when she started to hurt real bad. Or like one of them Tourette’s people she saw on Springer that one time.
“That was the worst thing?” Drum asked.
Sharon peered into the dark, found his eyes. A drop of sweat laden with hairspray slid into her eye and burned, but she didn’t blink. “Not. Fucking. Hardly.”
“Well, then?”
“I seen way worse than that. I just wanted to establish—what is it?”
“A baseline.”
“Yeah, that’s it. A baseline. I seen way worse than that floater. I seen babies all swollen up and dirty like they were wet balloons that someone dragged through the gutter. I seen parents fucking their own children, pimping their own children. I seen animals…” She trailed off.
Drum inhaled deep and long through wide nostrils. There it was.
“Animals, Sharon?”
“You’re a fucking bastard. You know that?”
“I know this.” Drum reached around and brought the bottle back into the light. He popped the top and shook a single pill into his hand. Sharon groaned. It just slipped out before she could choke it off. Drum grinned. He capped the bottle and put it back around behind the crate. The solitary pill floated on his palm. “You a Catholic, Sharon?”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“This is my body.”
Drum tossed the pill over his shoulder like a spent peanut shell. Sharon heard it tick off the cement floor deep into the gloom and a little shriek ran out of her mouth.
“And then there were four, Sharon.”
“Ani-animals,” she said. “Animals! I seen people do bad things with animals!”
“Bestiality? Zoophilia?”
“No, no. I mean I seen that, but that’s just kinda’ gross and, and kinda’ funny.”
Drum held her with his silence for a long time.
The lower lid of her right eye filled and gleamed, spilled down her cheek. A quiet sob hitched her shoulders, once, twice. She sniffled and a calm descended on her, the calm that comes with surrender.
“Little boy,” she began. “About, ah, ten? He was this little Asian boy. Ten. Ten years old. His father showed us this video he’d taken during a spelling bee. Emancipation. This little boy on a stage. Emancipation. And he’s all happy before he even gets around to spelling it out, ‘cause you know, you can tell he already knew that one by heart. He’s smiling all huge an’ all and practically shouting the letters. E-M-A-N…” she chuckled. Another tear slid down her face. She wiped it with her free hand, leaving a gray smear.
“Turns out daddy wasn’t quite legit. Fucking runner for the Tong, if you can believe that shit. The motherfucking Tong in New York. We’re like the United fucking Nations of crime. Anyway, daddy-san fucked the wrong group of guys and they snatched his son. He gets so shit-scared he actually calls the cops. Shows us this video. Emancipation.” She shook her head and choked on another sob. “I got two kids. I had two kids before that fucker of an ex-husband took ‘em. I got visitation rights, but he has to be there and so does she. Mousy little, tight jeans wearing bitch.”
“Animals, Sharon?”
“Fuck you!” She strained up but the cuffs jerked her back. “I was getting to that.” She sat back and calmed once more. “I was getting to that.” She blew out a long breath. “I can’t have a smoke? Not even a smoke?”
“No.”
“You. Suck.”
Drum started to reach around behind the crate.
“Okay, okay. Relax with the pills, all right? So the men who take this sweet little boy finally call. They set up a basic ransom switch, but everyone knows it’s bullshit. These guys drive brand new Escalades and the Daddy was driving a fucking Schwinn. So we all know it’s some kind of shake down, but we go to the spot they say to go to. They didn’t even say to come alone or nothing. They just wanted Daddy to have some hope, like if he brings the money, they’ll hand over his little spelling champion.” She barked a laugh.
“We get there, this shitty motel room, and there’s nothing in the front room, but we can hear someone in the bathroom.”
Her eyes went elsewhere, far.
“I was the first in. I got kids, too, you know? I could hear… I was the first in.”
“What did you see, officer?”
“He was, uh, in the bathtub.
Tied up with tape. It was blue tape. I remember that. Blue tape. They had put him in the bathtub and he was, uh, he was still alive.” Her voice dwindled to a sibilant scrape. “His stomach was big. There were stitches. Big black. Like Frankenstein. There were stitches on his stomach. And it was, ah, his stomach was um sticking out and, ah…moving.”
Sharon was quiet for a long time. Finally, she spoke, her voice a dead thing.
“It was a rabbit. They cut open his stomach and sewed a live rabbit up in him. It tore him apart from the inside trying to get out. Trying to emancipate itself. He died right in front of me.
“When we walked out, those Tong pieces of shit were waiting. They laid down a hell of a lot of gunfire. Automatics like I never seen before. Military-type hardware. We had Glocks. I took one in the hip, another in the collar bone and my left shin got shattered. It took a long time to learn how to walk right again and it still hurts.” She finished. She looked at him.
“No pension?” Drum said. “No workman’s compensation or whatever they call it for the police?”
“They offered early retirement with full bennies, yeah. I told them to eat shit. I told them that they had to take me back if I could pass the physical. I did.”
Drum started to feel an emotion sluice over him like none he had ever felt. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t pin it with an abstract or comparison. It made him want to physically stand up. He was just able to keep his control and his seat. It passed a moment later.
“Why didn’t you take the early retirement?”
Office Sharon Dimke burned in the dark.
“Because you got away.”
~~~~~~~~
Chapter 17
CHARLIE STARED AT the words on Mrs. Telemaque’s chart—squirmy little bugs—and processed not a single letter. There was something on here about gastrointestinal something or other. She needed some kind of pre-operative cleansing?
Emily had great legs.
Mrs. Telemaque was due for a blah, blah, blah and her electrolytes had to be at a certain whatever.
Emily had the roundest shoulders, like an Italian model.
Mrs. Telemaque’s white count couldn’t rise above the thing with the other thing.
Emily’s eyes had these crazy amber rings that floated inside the predominant green fields of her irises.
Mrs. Telemaque had been checked into the hospital twice in the last year.
Emily had this sideways smile that had the ability blank Charlie’s mind, focus him on her mouth, her lips. When she slept she sighed every now as if she were remembering some far away vacation. When she laughed, endorphins exploded in his head. In the few days he had known her, Charlie’s brain had rewired to prioritize her happiness over just about everything other than breathing and sex. And the cool part was that the latter of the two involved the hottest woman he had ever known. And, and, and…she appeared to be a Jedi.
“What are you smiling about, young man?”
The creamy, clipped accent grabbed Charlie by the ear lobe and yanked him up. Mrs. Telemaque was from Trinidad and Tobago; TNT, as she liked to call it. She was sixty-one, had been in this damned hospital twice too many times already for her damned gastroenteritis and wasn’t about to put up with some white boy laughing at the symptoms written on her chart. “I asked you why you’re smiling? Something funny ‘bout an old lady being laid up in hospital?”
“Huh?” Charlie focused in on the woman sitting up in bed. She had fox eyes and her hair floated in an electrified white halo. “I’m sorry ma’am?” She had deep smile lines but was frowning at him. He straightened.
“I said, what you laughing about?”
“Laughing?”
“Oh, great.” She threw up her hands. “I’ve got a hearing impaired nurse.” She pantomimed a flutter of hand signs and distorted her mouth. “Whaaat do yooOOOuuu think is soooo FUNeee?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Telemaque.” Charlie shook his head and blushed. “I’m very distracted today.”
“No kidding.” Mrs. Telemaque crossed her wide arms over the pathetic excuse for a napkin they made her wear and tried to stay angry. Truth was she couldn’t help but be charmed by a young man in love. It was all over him.
“So,” she said. “What’s she like?”
“I’m sorry?”
“This girl you so distracted over. What’s she like?”
He looked at her, those bright eyes, and laughed. “You don’t miss much.”
“I’m bored,” she said. “The TV in here don’t get cable and I can’t get my stories. You’re the best entertainment I’ve had all day. So, what she’s like?”
Emily’s sideways smile materialized in his mind’s eye. Charlie grinned and was about to tell Mrs. Telemaque when his pocket vibrated. “Oh shoot, excuse me a sec’.” He pulled out the cell.
“Hey, wait a minute!”
“Yes?”
“You can’t go having one of those celly phones in hospital.” She waved her hands around as if shooing flies. “The waves can mess up the machines and things.” An’ tings.
“No worries, ma’am. That’s just in the ICU. We’re okay here.” Charlie flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
Mrs. Telemaque grumbled, “Not sick enough to matter about the celly phones.”
“Harlan?” Charlie put his free hand against his open ear. “Hey, man, what’s doin’? I’m at work so..”
Mrs. Telemaque watched the white boy’s face change. The ghost of his thoughts on that pretty girl of his browned like butter in a hot pan. She paid close attention to his side of the conversation.
“What’s all that mean, man? Yeah. But what if the other one—.” He nodded. “Okay, okay.” Charlie checked his watch. “Can we meet at your place? No, I’m working Sinai tonight; shift’s over in another ninety minutes. Okay, yeah. See you.” Charlie flipped the phone closed and stared at the floor, brow creased.
“Everything okay with your lady?”
“What? Oh, no—yeah. Everything’s fine, I think.” Charlie picked up Mrs. Telemaque’s chart. There it was, she was due in for a colonoscopy and needed an enema. Wonderful.
* * *
ONE HUNDRED MINUTES later Charlie stood outside a weathered brownstone and punched Harlan’s apartment number into a keypad by the door. He stood back and gazed on the rounded stone blocks that made up the place, great pieces of melted baker’s chocolate, almost purple in the street light smear of electric twilight. If everyone on earth disappeared tomorrow and the elements were left to chew on the city, what would the brownstones look like in ten thousand years? A cab honked in the street behind him. A woman on a bicycle whizzed by, the gears and chains sounding like a cicada’s call. Probably they would still look like brownstones.
The speaker above the keypad threw a mangled voice, “Yes?” It sounded like a 1970’s Japanese robot monster.
Charlie stepped up and hit the talk button. “Harlan.”
“Charles?”
“In charge, man. Lemme’ up.”
The keypad buzzed and Charlie stepped into a cool foyer scaled in black and white tile. A flight of hardwood stairs glowed caramel in the light of a dusty chandelier. A blend of cooking smells painted the walls. Harlan stuck his head into the dim hallway at the top of the steps, his glasses flashed, obscuring his eyes.
“Mr. Bayo,” he nodded, dry as old paper. “I got some serious weirdness to lay on you.”
Charlie trotted up the stairs and into Harlan’s two room—not counting the bathroom—apartment. When the brownstone had sufficed as living space for a single family Harlan’s apartment had been the master bedroom and accompanying parlor. Since then, the old house had been cut into eight separate flats. Harlan’s was decent-sized in Manhattan terms. The front room served as the kitchen nook, foyer, and study. The back room was divided up into a living area with small couch and reading chair and a twin bed half hidden behind an ornate Egyptian screen, the hand-carved woodwork intricate enough to have blinded the artisan. Books were the dominant decor
ative touch; rows and stacks in perfect right angles to their respective case or the surface upon which they rested. A small black and white television sulked, unused and cold, behind a couple of piles of paperback mystery novels.
Charlie hadn’t bothered to change out of his blue scrubs. He collapsed on the couch and rubbed his face with his hands while Harlan clinked around in the fridge. Charlie opened his eyes and looked around at all the books. After a moment his brow furrowed.
“How do you have all these arranged?”
“What?” Harlan asked the inside of the refrigerator. He pulled out a bottle of milk, checked the sell-by date, grimaced, and put it back a little further in than where he found it.
“Your books—nothing’s by author.” Charlie leaned over and squinted at a bookshelf made out of scrap wood. “Or even genre.”
Harlan sauntered over and handed Charlie a bottle of Rolling Rock. He as much fell back into a sprung leather chair as sat. The chair screeched a short protest. He held up his bottle. “To your new lady.”
Charlie grinned, “Good one,” and took a pull on his beer. Thin and cold, yeasty. The ol’ Double R was always a good bet if you were going cheap. He swallowed and said, “Hey, should you even be drinking one of these?”
Harlan considered the bottle. His expression was hard to read behind the brick-thick lenses, but he’d probably be pretty hard to read with contacts too. Some people just held their stuff close. “I dunno’,” he said. “I mean if you’re alluding to the whole drug addicts should stay away from alcohol thing, then yes,” he nodded, “I probably shouldn’t be drinking a beer.”
“But?”
“But, when you compare getting drunk with getting high on pharmaceutical-grade morphine, alcohol’s not even in the same league. It’s not even a sensation.”
Charlie looked hard at his friend for a moment and said, “You safe?”
Harlan sighed. “Charlie, I’m exhausted. I want a fix almost all the time, but I’m also aware that I’m never going to get to have another pop again. It kind of feels like accepting that someone I loved has passed away. It’s always going to be hard, but it’s always going to be. There’s no going back.” He looked at his beer bottle. “Am I safe? Yes. I’m too damn miserable not to be clear about this.”
“Good ‘nuff, I guess,” Charlie said. He took another swig and clunked the bottle down on a coffee table scared with cigarette burns. “So, that’s the deal with the books?”