Darkbound (2 page)

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Jim's first
indicator that he should have
waited for the next subway was the skull driving the train.

But no, that was
wrong, wasn't it?  Because it happened even before that.  It came
when Jim was holding the picture.  Looking at the picture of his two
girls, wishing that he hadn't fought with them.

Maddie was looking
at her mother, looking at Carolyn, both of them smiling at each other like they
didn't have a care in the world, like there was no such thing as sickness or
disease or bills or even so much as the occasional shortage of a favorite
sugared cereal.  Just them.  Just love.

No family
fights.  No angry words.  No misunderstandings.  No remorse.

Then Jim smelled
it.  Smelled it before he saw it.

The smell was sweet. 
But not pleasant.  Sweets, as any post-Halloween child could tell you,
were great to a point.  After that, though, they were nauseating. 
And, indeed, Jim immediately felt sick as an almost overpowering smell of
bubble gum and lollipops and sourballs and Skittles and Starburst and a hundred
other kinds of candy that he couldn't define wafted into his face.

"Pretty,"
said the voice.

Jim looked toward
the sound.  He felt his nose and mouth wrinkling in disgust at the smell
of sickly sweetness.  He tried to stop it from happening, but
couldn't.  Some fights couldn't be won, some emotions couldn't be hidden,
not even by someone who was trained as he was.

"Sorry?"
he said.  And his mouth was still curled, so much so that the word sounded
less like he was apologizing for failing to hear and more like he was issuing a
threat.  Like he was on the verge of punching the man who had spoken.

Maybe he was.

In his travels
through life, Jim had found that there were a few, a very
unlucky
few,
who engendered immediate disgust bordering on hatred in others.  And the
hunched, ferret-eyed, balding man beside him had just that effect.  He was
wearing a trench coat, the official garb of pedophiles and flashers everywhere,
and Jim couldn't help notice the strange stains that turned it from tan to
brown in certain spots.  The mousy man looked like he was about
thirty-five, though he had the balding pate and bad comb-over of a man who
could be as old as fifty.  Hard to tell with some people.

"I said she's
pretty," said the man.  He was eating some kind of colorful candy,
and had a purple half-chewed lollipop in one sticky-looking hand.

Geez, thought Jim,
this guy is diabetes waiting to happen.

Then he realized
that the guy was still looking at the picture he held.  At his
girls.  At Carolyn.

At Maddie.

Maddie was only
seven, and the picture was small.  No way to tell just by the other guy's
eyes exactly who he was looking at.  And Carolyn was a knockout, no doubt
about it.  So most red-blooded males that Jim had ever met would no doubt
be drooling over the mother in the picture.

But not this
guy.  No.  Jim's hackles raised.  He had experience with guys
like this.  He knew.  He could just
tell
.

He pulled the
picture away from the man.  Slowly.  Like he was someone who had
somehow found himself standing naked in front of a hungry lion while holding a
piece of bloody meat.

The other man's
eyes tracked the picture hungrily.  He put the lollipop in his
mouth.  "Pretty," he mumbled around the sucker, and then slurped
on it as Jim put the picture into the small journal he always carried with
him.  He put the book into his pocket.  A tight fit, but it went in.

"Thanks,"
said Jim.  He tried to say it in a way that would communicate "Don't
take this personally but leave me the hell alone."

His new friend
didn't seem to get it.  The man grinned around lips that had been stained
cadaver blue by the lollipop and then shoved out his hand. 
"Fred," he said.  "Fred Piper, but everyone just calls me
Fred – Freddy, actually."

The air, already
almost unbreathable due to the heavy smell of sweets, now seemed almost
toxic.  Jim felt like he might pass out.  It was only the thought of
Fred-Piper-Fred-Freddy-Actually rifling through his pockets and removing the
picture from Jim's journal that kept him from going over in a nauseated faint.

He managed to stay
upright, but beyond that he didn't know what to do.

Jim looked
around.  It was early, so there were hardly any people on the platform
with them. 

Closest to Jim: a
stunningly beautiful woman with dark hair.  She held a leather satchel and
wore expensive clothes and four hundred dollar high-heeled boots.  Looked
like she was probably one of the high-priced midtown Manhattan lawyers that
worked ungodly hours in return for bragging rights, a cramped apartment, and
the hope of making partner someday.  And, of course, those boots. 
Totally impractical winter wear, but they screamed money.  Jim knew that
was important to some people.

Just past her stood
a thick-necked black man whose dark sweater and winter coat couldn't quite hide
the gang tattoos that curled up his neck before disappearing under the heavy
knit hat that covered most of his head.  Not to mention the four black
tears tattooed directly below his right eye.  Jim knew from his work what
those meant: one tear for every gang-confirmed kill: the equivalent of painting
an "x" on the side of his plane during World War II.  Only the
war this man had – or still – fought in was a gloomier, more unruly war than
that fought by the Greatest Generation.  A war fought with drive-by
shootings and beat-downs in alleys, with rapes of rivals' cousins and sisters
and wives, with Molotov cocktails tossed into ramshackle tenements where
firefighters dared not go.

A few feet beyond
the gangbanger was another man who was even larger and who somehow seemed to
Jim even more dangerous: a white man with a spear-bald head.  He looked
like he was in his late forties or early fifties, and though he wore only a
white button-up shirt and a light suit coat, he seemed utterly immune to the
late autumn chill that had made its way even down to the underground subway
platform.  His forehead was a wide block that looked like it had been
formed from an exceptionally ill-tempered piece of granite.  His nose was
crooked and flattened: broken more than once.  His eyes stared straight
ahead, but Jim felt certain that the man was not only aware of everyone on the
platform, but could also tell where the exits were, where the phones were, and
everything else of tactical importance.

Jim knew there
would be no help from any of them. 

New Yorkers weren't
actually the jerks that many comedians and television shows made them out to
be.  Jim found most of them to be pleasant and helpful.  But there
were exceptions, and he didn't get a "Just call and I'll be there"
feel off of any of the folks on the platform.  More a "Just call and
I'll help whoever's mugging you to hold you down and then we'll split the
take" kind of vibe.

All this
observation took only a moment.  Less.  A split-second.  Even
so, Freddy was starting to jitter, like the trench coat-wearer was considering
throwing himself at Jim for not answering him fast enough.  He had given
his name, and it was clear he expected to get Jim's name – his
full
name
– in return.  Not to mention a discussion of the "pretty" girl
in the picture now safe in the journal in Jim's pocket.

And that was
something Jim had no intention of getting into.  No intention of engaging
this creepy guy in a conversation about
anything
, let alone about a
discussion of Carolyn or Maddie.  Especially Maddie.

But what
should
he say?

He looked around
again.

And then Freddy
jumped.  He yelped.  Jim thought for a second that the crazy guy was
going to jump on him, then realized that the short shout had been one of pain. 
At the same moment the weasel, who had been holding his half-chewed lollipop
when he screamed, also jumped up.  He jerked convulsively and his lollipop
punched upward into his mouth.  He screamed this time as the jagged shards
of the candy rammed through the top of his soft palate.

"Ow!" he
yelled.  He spit, and candy fragments and blood came out.  Jim almost
smiled.  Almost.  But didn't.  He was still too freaked
out.  And now worried as well.  What had just happened?

A moment later he
had his answer as Freddy whipped around, revealing a short, portly woman. 
Jim hadn't seen her on the subway platform: she must have been exactly behind
Freddy.  But when the man turned he could see her easily.  She looked
like she was in her seventies, probably Hispanic, dressed from head to toe in
black.  She stared up at Freddy from all of five feet three inches of
latina
fury.

"You go
away!" she hollered, her voice thickly accented with the warm tones of
tropical upbringing.  "No one wants you here!"

"What right do
you have –?" began Freddy.  Then Jim found out what had caused the
creep to jump and stab himself with his candy in the first place as the older
woman unleashed a quick double kick with her right foot, slamming a thick
orthopedic shoe into each of Freddy's shins.

"Shut
up," she shouted, punctuating each word with a kick.  "Go away,
pervert."

"
Pervert
?" 
Freddy looked genuinely horrified.  "I'm no pervert.  I think
kids are… they're
angels
.  They're perfect
angels
.  I
coach the soccer team for Christ's – Ow!"  He broke into another
scream as the old lady tagged him with another kick.

"Don' you take
the Lord's name in vain!" she said, shaking a withered finger in his face
as Freddy hopped from one foot to another as though unsure which one deserved
more babying.  It was a comical scene, and one that Jim would have laughed
at if he hadn't been so close to freaking out less than a second ago: the
pedophile being faced down by the black-clad old lady who looked like some
bizarre escapee from a Mexican ninja training camp, said pedophile doing the
hokey-pokey while desperately trying to salvage what remained of his lollipop.

"What the
hell's
wrong
with –
ow
!"

Another kick.

"You gonna
curse, too?" shrieked the old woman.  "You one of those naughty
boys who needs to be all 'F this' and 'A that' and 'Double-S on
those'?"  More kicks. 
Bam-bam-bam
.  Her voice was
starting to rise, moving toward a hysterical shriek, and Jim wondered if Freddy
might not be the only crazy on the subway platform: the old lady seemed like
she might have a bagful of cats hidden somewhere nearby – or maybe it was an
invisible bag and she was already holding it.

Then Jim saw her
eyes.  There was a twinkle in them.  She was
enjoying
herself.  And not in the maniacal way that the crazies did, not in the way
of those who belonged to the Cult of the Tinfoil Hats and Commandeered
Brainwaves.  No, he could see now that this little woman was in total
control of herself.  But she had found someone who needed a bit of a
talking-to – or shin-kicking – and having found such a person, she was enjoying
herself immensely. 

Jim started to
smile, the look coming over him unconsciously, but she caught his gaze and gave
the smallest shake of her head – a motion so minute that he was certain no one
else could have detected it.  He understood instantly: it was one thing
for
him
to know what she was doing.  But if they were to get rid of
Freddy, this had to seem serious.

The
latina
kept kicking at the geek, flailing at his legs with her heavy leather footwear
until he retreated across the platform.  He veered away from the beautiful
woman like she was a Gucci-wearing cattle prod.  That wasn't surprising,
Jim thought: many pedophiles were threatened by anyone who was assured,
confident-seeming.  It was one of the reasons they turned to children in
the first place: they knew they could bully them into subservience, into
silence, into invisibility and ultimately into dissolution.

Freddy moved toward
the black guy, but the gangbanger cracked his knuckles and that was enough to send
the geek scuttling away, past the gangbanger and then the huge white man, until
he had practically disappeared in the shadow of a supporting column at the far
end of the platform.

Jim felt
sick.  He wished there was something he could call the cops about. 
Something he could get Freddy in trouble for.  But what was he going to
do?  Call 911 and then say, "Yes, I'd like to report a man looking at
a picture of my little girl"?  That would just get
him
in
trouble.  And he didn't want that, either.

He looked away from
Freddy.  Back to the Hispanic gal.  She was still staring at Freddy,
looking at the man who was now all but hidden in the shadows at the other end
of the platform like he was a dangerous life form. 

That's not far off,
thought Jim.

There was no doubt
in his mind Freddy
was
a child molester.  He had all the
signs.  Not just the outfit, but other things.  He was fixated on
sweets, he had a childlike way of expressing himself.  He spoke of
children in terms that were over-idyllic, almost worshipful.  Looking at
him was like looking at a textbook of pedophilia made flesh.