A Diet of Treacle (16 page)

God!

The worn pigskin wallet fitted into Shank’s pocket. The gun—empty now, and useless—fell clattering to the ground. For a shadow of time, Shank stood poised in the alleyway, listening to the potent silence, waiting for something undefined. Then he ran. He raced out of the alley to the street, turned down the street and headed west as fast as he could go. He ran at top speed for three blocks without stopping, expecting the high-pitched squeal of police sirens, the whine of a bullet, the voice of a cop shouting,
Stop or I shoot
,
stop or I shoot
, the bullets whistling and hitting, piercing skin and flesh and bone. Still there was nothing but silence. So Shank halted for a moment, finally, and then began walking more slowly, forcing himself to stay cool, calm and cool, cool and collected. He stopped by a mailbox and removed the money from the wallet. Enough to get them to Chicago and not much more. The man had not been rich. An old man, a poor old man. Dead. The man had talked about youth. His whole life ahead of him. The future. Oh, the old man was wrong. Dead wrong. Run, Shank thought. Run, run, run. And you ran as fast as you could and you didn’t get anywhere. The most you ever got to was the one pretty minute of power, the gun smoking and a man all broken and bloody and dead. And then you had to run some more, and God in heaven there was never a place to hide, never a pillow to rest your head on, never a hiding place, hiding place, place to rest. God!

Shank walked to the bus station. Because there was no time to return to the hotel for Anita and Joe, no time at all. Soon the dead man would be found in the alley. Maybe ten minutes of grace remained—maybe an hour, a day. The cops would run down Shank. They could trace the gun, trace it to the dead cop with the hole in his chest, trace it to Shank and Joe and Anita. Cleveland was far too small. Too small to hide in, too small to stay in.

Run.

Run!

He ducked in a phone booth in the Greyhound station, dropped a dime in the slot. The man in the alley was dead. His wallet was in a mailbox. His money was in Shank’s pocket. Run, damn you. Run like hell and where do you hide? Where? He dialed the number of the hotel. The desk clerk answered, his voice thin, whiny.

“Room 304.”

Joe picked up the phone. His hello was guarded, frightened. We’re all afraid, Shank thought. Afraid and running, running scared. No way to do it.

“Greyhound station,” Shank said. “Fast as you can. Don’t waste any time.”

Joe rang off without reply. Shank walked to the ticket counter where he obtained the information that a bus was leaving for Chicago in less than an hour. He bought three tickets one-way.

He entered the Post House and ordered a cup of coffee. It was bitter, weak. He drank it anyway and went out to the waiting room. He felt conspicuous.

Joe and Anita came. They walked like somnambulists, their eyes open but sightless, their feet leaden. Shank told them they were going to Chicago. They nodded vacantly.

Anita sat on a hard wooden bench and stared at nothing. Joe took a paperback novel from his blue jeans and began to read.

The bus left on time. They were on it, nervous, waiting, headed for Chicago. The night was black and the sky was starless. The bus raced to Chicago and they raced with it. It went fast but not fast enough.

“Joe—”

He looked up. Anita was speaking to him. She had said hardly a word in days. She had lowered a copy of the
Chicago Tribune
to talk directly to him.

“He killed a man, Joe. In Cleveland. That’s how he got the money for the tickets. He stuck up a man and shot him six times in the back. He used the same gun he got from the cop in New York, He killed him, Joe.”

Joe had guessed as much. He wished Anita hadn’t said anything. It was bad this way. Best to forget it, to sink gracefully into immobility, to bury your head in the sand. Shank was out now. They were waiting for him in the hotel room that in effect reproduced the rooms in Buffalo and Cleveland.

Now Shank was looking for someone named Bunky. Bunky would give them money, or a connection, or something. Bunky would save the day. Then the trio would be safe again; the three could stop running. Joe wondered how it would feel to stop running. They had been running for a long time.

“He’s a killer,” Anita persisted. “He didn’t have to kill that man, Joe. He didn’t have to kill the cop, either. He could have let him live. He meant to kill him. You don’t shoot someone six times unless you want to kill him. He’s a murderer.”

“We’re all murderers.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe we are. I don’t know any more. We were going to live clean, Joe. Do you remember? Our own apartment on 19th Street near Gramercy Park. All by ourselves. You were supposed to have a good job and I would be keeping the apartment nice for you. So wonderful. It would have been so wonderful.”

“A dream, Anita.”

She looked at him.

“A dream,” he continued in a monotone. “Everything’s a dream. No apartment, no clean. No anything. Just running.”

“Can we ever stop?” Anita’s voice climbed higher.

“I don’t know.”

“They’ll catch us, Joe. He must know that. You can’t get away from murder by crossing a state line. You just can’t do it. They’ll catch us.”

“Maybe.”

“And then what? How far can we run? How fast? They’ll kill us. Just like he killed the cop. And just like he killed the man in Cleveland.”

Joe was silent.

“What next, Joe?”

“I think he wants to get out of the country.”

She laughed. Her laughter was low, bitter, humorless. “Of course,” she said. “Out of New York, out of the state, out of the country. Run like a rabbit and wind up dead as a doornail. Where to?”

“Mexico.”

She was all eyebrow.

“I think that’s what he wants to do,” he explained. “Connect with this Bunky. A guy he knew in Frisco or something. Connect with Bunky and get some bread together. Then head for Mexico. He thinks we’ll be safe in Mexico.”

“Until he shoots somebody. Then what? Guatemala? Brazil? Spain? Where next?”

“If we get to Mexico—”

“We won’t get to Mexico. We won’t get anywhere. We’ll be killed.”

Joe lit a cigarette. “You can still walk out,” he said “Shank won’t mind, he won’t even know where you went.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly,” he said reasonably. “Chicago’s a big town. You can walk out on us and disappear. You’ll be safe. The cops know about you, sure. But they don’t know who you are. They don’t have your picture. You can find a niche for yourself and be safe.”

“Do you want me to do that?”

He glanced away from her. “I don’t know. I want you to be safe. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Joe—”

“I really don’t know,” he said. “I think I…this is silly, Anita. So silly.”

“Go ahead, Joe.”

“I still love you, Anita. Isn’t that silly? All washed up, the whole world, all falling in. And I just plain love you. I don’t understand it.”

“I love you, Joe.”

“Don’t talk silly. I ruined you, loused you up. You had a life.”

“It was an empty life.”

“This one’s worse.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe everything is the way it is and we can’t do anything about it.”

“Run, Anita. Before he gets back. We’ll make out. Shank and I. We’ll manage.”

“I can’t, Joe.”

“Leave me, Anita. I’m no good. I can’t move. So I’m impotent without you—so what? Leave me.”

“I can’t, Joe. I can’t.”

He took her in his arms. “There ought to be a way out,” he said. “Some way. There honest-to-God ought to. This is a mess.”

She stroked his forehead. He was sweating.

“What do we do, baby?” Joe said, hopelessly.

“I guess we stick together.”

“But how do we get out of this?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “God in heaven, I wish I knew.”

They held each other and waited for Shank. Shank’s entrance was something special.

The door swung open. A second or two later Shank came through, his shoulders hunched, his white face more pale than usual. His eyes had a hunted look. He closed the door, slid the bolt home. He turned to face them. The smile on his lips did not include his eyes.

“I found Bunky,” he said.

They stared at him.

“It was tough,” Shank said. “Had to turn the town upside-down. Big city, Chicago. I figured Bunky would be on the North Side. I combed that North Side. Went to all the hip hangouts, all the places a cat like Bunky would probably hang. Took time. Too much time.”

“What happened?”

“I found him.”

“And—”

Shank sighed. “Good old Bunky,” he said. The smile grew but the eyes became more dead than ever. “He was glad to see me. Auld lang syne. That type of scene.”

They waited.

“Something funny,” he said. “Never would have expected it. Big change in Bunky. Fundamental difference from old Bunky. Big change.”

Why didn’t he get to the point? Anita and Joe wondered. He had connected with Bunky. The three could leave the country. Why did he have to drag it out forever?

“Funny,” Shank said. “You know what it is about Bunky? Funny. It makes a poem.”

They stared at him.

“Bunky is a junkie,” he said. “Bunky is a junkie with a forty-pound monkey. It rhymes, dig? Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard?”

   “Junkie Bunky,” Shank said. “No good at all to me. Horse is his whole life. Forty dollars a day. Forty dollars a day to put in his arm. He couldn’t give me a connection.”

“What then?”

A wider grin. “But don’t panic. He told me the way. The way to Mexico. There’s a plane making the trip once a week.”

“You need some kind of a passport,” Joe said softly.

“Not for this plane, baby. This is a private plane. It goes straight to Monterrey. From Chicago to Monterrey. Makes three stops at private airfields. Carries a dozen passengers, no more. You don’t need anything like a passport for this one, baby. All you need is money.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred a person.”

“That’s six hundred dollars.”

“You add good, baby.”

“How the hell can we get six hundred dollars?”

“Easy.”

“Easy? Are you going to kill some more men, Shank? Shoot more old men in alleys?”

“It made the paper, huh?”

“It made the paper. And they traced the gun. They know it’s us, Shank.”

“I figured they would.”

“So no more hold-ups, Shank. You can’t pull a hold-up without a gun. Right?”

“Right as rain, Joe, baby. You’ve got a head on your neck. You truly do.”

“Then how?”

Shank found a cigarette, placed it between his lips. He took a pack of matches, ripped one out and struck it. He lit the cigarette and dragged on it.

“Same way Bunky feeds his habit,” he said. “Bunky uses almost three big bills a week. That’s a lot of bread. And he gets it.”

“How?”

“He’s got a stable of girls, man. Three of them. Good little girls. Hustling girls. Working girls. Fly chicks. They take good care of Bunky. They go out and earn a habitful of money.”

The message was beginning to sink in.

“We’ve got an asset,” Shank said. “A natural resource. We’ve got little Anita. She can take care of us, Joe, baby. We carried her this far. Now she can carry us a little bit of the way. She can go wiggle her behind and carry us all the way to Mexico.”

“I won’t do it,” Anita said, her tones flat. Shank looked at her. She was standing up now, fear and disgust in her eyes. Shank walked to her, put his hand on her shoulder. She tried to shrink away, but his hand held.

“Sure you will,” he said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No—”

“You listen to me,” he said. “You shut your mouth and listen. They’re going to kill us. All three of us. Strap us in the chair and turn on the juice. We’ll die. Die for murder.”

“You did the murders,” she said. “You killed the cop. You shot the old man. I read in the paper the old man had three children. A wife and three children.”

“So they’ll get his insurance.”

“You bastard!”

He laughed. A loud laugh. But he did not take his hand from her shoulder. “You took my money,” Shank said. “And you ran with me. Both of you. You were there when I killed the cop. And I killed the old man for you, for both of you. I could have run alone. I had enough money to make Chicago. I killed so you could come with me. So don’t pin it on me, little girl. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Shank—” She stopped. She had nothing to say. She could only stare at him and listen to him.

“Now you’ll hustle,” he told her. “We need six hundred dollars. Sounds like a lot of money. It’s not that much. Say you get ten bucks a trick. It’s only sixty tricks. You can handle twenty a day easy. Just quick tricks. Fast and easy and simple. Three days and we’re ready to roll. Plane leaves in four days. So we can’t miss. All you have to do is turn your tricks.”

“I’m no whore.” Easy laughter rolled out of Shank.

“Whoever said you were?” he said. “I’m not telling you to make a profession out of it, baby. Just sixty times. Just sixty quick tricks to save us all. That’s all, Anita. Maybe less, if you can get some guys to go more than ten bucks. Say, twenty. And the more tricks you turn, the faster you’re done. And then—”

“You filthy son of a—”

“You’ll do it, Anita. You’ll do it whether you like it or not. Because it’s the only way.” She tried to imagine herself as a prostitute. She pictured herself walking the streets, picking up men, taking their money and letting them use her body as a mute receptacle for their lust. She thought about the last thing he had suggested, the twenty dollar tricks, and she thought she was going to be sick to her stomach.

“Don’t play virgin with me, Anita.”

She turned to Joe, “Joe,” she said. “I can’t do it, Joe. Do you want me to do it? Do you want me to be a whore, Joe? Is that what you want?” Joe’s eyes were filled with pain.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me to whore for you and I will. Tell me that’s what you want and I’ll do it. I can’t think straight any more, Joe. I thought I was your woman. I thought I was just for you. But tell me to do it and I’ll do it. You tell me, Joe.”