CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (23 page)

He folded his arms. The room was silent. “You gonna find who fronting these fake Cobra jobs, so pencil-dick Lindfors get off my butt. You gonna get my man Rev out the can, any way you got to. Then things gonna settle down. Then I get me a new liaison,” he said, savoring the word, “and the Cobras be back in business. And it all be thanks to my own private eye!”

He laid a finger on his cheek, pulled his lower eyelid down, leaned his face very close to mine. I smelled his sweat, saw thin veins of blood in the white of his eye.

I said again, “I’m not working for you.”

He straightened up, nodded to Broad-nose. That looked bad to me. I started to stand. Broad-nose grabbed me from behind, slammed me back onto the chair. One of the guys with the guns circled closer. The gun was a 9-mm SIG Sauer automatic; I suddenly, irrelevantly wondered if the kid holding it had ever fired anything that big before. It has a kick, I thought. It’ll hurt your shoulder, if you fire it one-handed, like that.

“Snake—” I started.

“Shut up.”

The barrel of the SIG Sauer nuzzled my chin.

Broad-nose reached into his pocket, came out with a roll of adhesive tape. He snapped off the cover, pocketed it. An organized guy. Maybe he kept the Cobras’ books. He pulled the end of it. It made the ripping sound tape makes, coming off a roll. There might have been other sounds in the room; I only heard that.

“What—”

The gun pushed against my jaw. I shut up.

With a quick smooth motion Broad-nose taped my left wrist to the arm of the chair. Then he stepped between me and Snake and did the right; but this one he turned over, so my palm was up.

My hands, I thought. Oh, Jesus. I felt a line of sweat trickle down my ribs. “Snake—” I started again.

“I told you, shut up!” Snake’s voice was ice on a griddle.

No one’s interested in your hands, Smith, I tried to tell myself. No one except you gives a shit about your hands.

“Want me to do his mouth, Snake?” offered Broad-nose.

“We gonna need that?” Snake asked me.

I shook my head. I didn’t know what was coming, but I was fighting to control my breathing already, to make my breathing control the crashing of my heart.

And the ability to yell might be useful, though the chances of this neighborhood responding to sounds from this apartment, I thought, were small.

Snake stuck his hand out. Someone put a switchblade in it. Snake sprang it open, stuck the tip under my right jacket cuff. With a jerk he sliced the sleeve open to the bend of my elbow. He did the shirt too, peeled them both away.

Then he stepped back, smiled. He reached under his sweatshirt, lifted the golden cobra from around his neck. Its chain made a slithering sound as he slipped it from the loop, dropped it on the kitchen counter.

He rooted around in a drawer, came up with a pair of tongs. I realized everyone in the room was moving, slowly, dreamily, positioning themselves to see. The guys with the guns both stood next to me now, one on each side; but I wasn’t watching them. I couldn’t take my eyes off Snake.

At the stove he twisted a knob. Blue flame sprang up. Snake held the cobra over the flame with the tongs, until he was ready; then he walked back, stood above me.

“Now, my brother,” he whispered, “you working for me.”

I heard the hiss before I felt anything. What I felt when it came was pain that seared down into my fingertips, up to my shoulder; and then, unable to escape, it ricocheted back and forth, building up, becoming unbearable, centered in my forearm but now, finally, everywhere.

I smelled burning flesh, my own flesh, and gagged on the smell.

It was over fast. Ten seconds maybe, maybe not even. It wasn’t until Snake pulled the cobra off my arm that I heard myself start to cry out, a strangled sound. I choked it back. Breathe, dammit, I told myself, breathe, it’s only pain, and I tried, pulling air in through my half-closed throat as I watched my right hand beyond the tape clench, open, clench again, rhythmically, uncontrollably, alone.

T
HIRTY
-S
EVEN

M
y memories after that are sketchy. I’ve been told that’s because of what happened later. Maybe; but the images in my mind are confused and disjointed enough to make me think that the next few minutes would never have been mine in any case.

I remember Snake, and the knife. The blade glinted; so did Snake’s gold tooth. “So.” He hovered above me. “Who you work for, white meat?”

I didn’t answer until he touched the glistening snake on my arm with the knife point. I drew air sharply, forced the words through my teeth. “You, Snake.”

I remember the stink of garbage, and the guy in the hooded sweatshirt on the stoop. He hadn’t moved, I marveled. All that, and this guy never moved.

Then I was alone on the sidewalk. It was cold, I remember that, much colder than before. I wanted to zip my jacket but my right hand wouldn’t cooperate. Foolish, I told it, you’ll feel better; but it wasn’t interested. My sleeve dangled. My left arm held my right in a grip like a vise. I forced my hand not to touch the burn, because I knew that was right, though I couldn’t think why.

Later, after everything was over, through all the other bruises and the mess I was, I could see the marks I’d made myself, gripping my arm.

I started up the hill, because that was right too. Back to the lot, to my car, home; I could put something on this, ice, I didn’t know,
something, but I knew it would hurt less, out of the Bronx.

I didn’t make it out of the Bronx that night, of course, and my last clear memory is of the parking-lot gate, my own hand reaching for the bell. Then, sounds behind me, moving shadows. A thick arm coiling around my neck. I remember the first blows, though those memories are hazy, and I don’t remember fighting back, though I’ve been told I did.

Just before the blackness, though, I do remember something: running footsteps approaching, and loud cries for help. Through the pounding pain and the darkness I felt myself curiously reassured by the shouting voice. It was, I thought, a voice I could trust. It seemed important that I see the owner of the voice, know who it was. I tried to see, reached out to find him, but it was like struggling through thick black water, and it was too hard. I gave up, slid back, and everything was muted as the sea closed over me.

T
HIRTY
-E
IGHT

C
old, and darkness, and noise and pain: pain like a sea, flowing over and around me. I hurt everywhere; I struggled for breath.

Warmer. Quiet. But still the darkness, and the pain.

Something new: a hand in my hand, warm and soft. A mooring. I clung to it, to keep from disappearing in the pain sea.

Later: a woman’s voice, and a man’s. His impatient, hers soft but unyielding. “Do what you have to do,” she said. “It’s not my problem. He’s supposed to be kept quiet and I won’t let you wake him.”

I didn’t understand, but I knew the voice: it was Lydia. I wanted to see her, to talk to her, but the darkness wouldn’t lift.

The darkness wouldn’t lift.

Panic ignited in my chest and sizzled through me. The jolt of it clenched my hand on the hand I was holding. I forced out a word, in a voice I could barely use: “Lydia.”

It was a whisper, too soft to be heard, but she answered me. “Bill? Bill, are you awake?”

Through the fear clanging in my chest I told her, “I can’t see.”

“I know,” she said, “I know. It’s okay. It’s just swelling. It’ll be all right in a day or two.”

Her words worked on my panic like cool water on a burn.
It’ll be all right
. I let them ring inside my head.
Be all right. All right
.

“Bill?” Lydia said, bringing me back. “Are you strong enough to talk? Detective Lindfors is here. Just for a minute?”

“Smith?” Lindfors’s voice, gravelly, close, urgent. “Just tell me who it was. It was Snake, those fucking Cobras, wasn’t it? Just say it.”

Snake. Impassive faces; glinting gold; searing pain I could feel now.

“Smith? C’mon.”

Snake.

“No.”

“No? No what? I have him in the fucking can, Smith, but I can’t keep him without your I.D. Just finger him. Just say it.”

“No.”

A pause.

“What the hell is this? What’s he doing?” Lindfors’s voice was farther away now; Lydia answered, something I couldn’t make out. Then he came back. “Is she right? You’re telling me you didn’t see? That’s bullshit. There’s a fucking cobra on your arm. You saw that.”

“Before,” I said. My mouth was dry as felt; words were difficult.

“Okay, before.” Lindfors’s voice was impatient. “And then they beat the shit out of you after. Right? The Cobra crew. Snake and the Cobras.”

“No.” I felt the room moving, swaying on the tide; it was hard to think. I knew what he wanted, and I knew he was wrong, but I couldn’t put two words together to tell him why.

“Dammit!” Lindfors exploded. There was a thud, a fist hitting a wall. “Fucking cowboy! You don’t need the fucking cops, is that it, Smith? You’re gonna wait, you’re gonna get him yourself, in a year or two, when you’re walking again? Motherfucker!” I could feel his rage boiling through the room. Lydia’s hand tightened on mine.

“If you died I could take ’em up for murder!” Lindfors snarled. “You gonna live, you gotta help me. Come on, Smith!”

His voice was hard to hear; it came from many directions, it echoed. I did what I could, working hard.

“Not them,” I finally managed. Then, as I floated away on the sea, I laughed, silently, just for myself.

I had done it: put together two words.

T
HIRTY
-N
INE

B
y the next day I could see, a little. I didn’t know it was the next day until Lydia told me. I didn’t know much, until she told me.

I watched her, a fuzzy shape taking fuzzy shapes out of her fuzzy shoulder bag. I wasn’t sure she’d wakened me when she came in; it seemed to me that I hadn’t been sleeping, just staring at the blur of yellow walls and the moving shapes outside the soft gray rectangle of window. But it was early afternoon, she said; Bobby had been with me most of the morning, was downstairs now getting something to eat. She’d gone home when he came, for the first time since I was brought here. Now she was back.

I didn’t remember any of that, so maybe I had slept some.

She moved forward without coming into focus, kissed me lightly. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Is it very bad?”

“No.” My voice, weak and coarse, had a hard time getting past my lips, which seemed twice their usual size. “Doesn’t hurt.”

This was true. I felt no pain at all. I was floating, drifting on a gentle sea. Sometimes I got dizzy from the swells, but dizziness isn’t so bad, really. It all would have been fine, except I was thirsty. Enormously thirsty. Floating on the sea, not a drop to drink.

“Water?” I tried.

Lydia moved to where I couldn’t follow. I heard a soft rushing. When she came back she brought a plastic cup with a straw stuck in it. I tried to reach for it, but it was impossible.

“I’ll hold it,” she said, so I drank until she took it away, which was much too soon.

“More?”

“Later. Not too much at once, the doctor said.” She put the cup beside the bed. “Lindfors is ready to kill you.”

That, actually, was one of the few things I knew.

“Bill, can you tell me what happened? Do you know who it was?”

It seemed like a very hard question, with an answer much longer than I had the energy for. I floated for a little bit, watched her be blurry.

“There’s a cop outside,” Lydia said. “I’m supposed to go get him as soon as you wake up. Lindfors stuck him there last night. Lindfors was here when they brought you in, and he was here late. Do you remember that?”

“Think so.”

“You wouldn’t tell him who it was, but you kept saying it wasn’t the Cobras. But there’s that.” She gestured to my right arm, thickly bandaged from elbow to wrist. I was suddenly afraid she meant to touch it. I moved it closer to my side. I thought her face changed then, softened, but I couldn’t see well enough to be sure.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

I closed my eyes, but I started to drift too far away from her. I opened them again.

“Snake,” I began.

“Lindfors is right? It was the Cobras? Why did you tell him it wasn’t?”

“No,” I said. “Wait.”

In a softer voice, she said, “I’m sorry. I won’t interrupt. Tell me.”

So in two- or three-syllable phrases, with pauses in between, I told her.

It was a short story, but it took a long time to tell. A few times the tide I was floating on seemed to turn, to take me away, and she had to bring me back with a touch or a word. It became an effort to stay with her, working against the tide. She understood that.

“Bill?” she said. “Just finish. Just tell me the end, then go back to sleep. When you got up the hill to the parking lot, who was there?”

“Don’t know.”

“Why do you say it wasn’t the Cobras?”

“Had me.” I took another breath. “If they … wanted this … why not then?”

“Okay. Tell me about the man who jumped you.”

“From behind. Didn’t speak.”

“How big?” she asked. “Black or white? What was he wearing?”

Good, Lydia, I thought drowsily. Get the witness to tell you things he doesn’t know he knows.

“Strong.” I thought as hard as I could about the arm tightening around my neck. “Shorter than me. Dark fabric.” I wanted to give her more, but that was all I had.

No, it wasn’t. “Someone else. Maybe he saw. Called for help. Recognized the voice …”

As the sea rose, lifted me away from her, I heard her, dim and distant, from the shore.

“Al Dayton?” she said. “No, he didn’t see. But he saved your life.”

F
ORTY

T
he blurry walls were a cheerful yellow, a color I could come to hate. The air smelled, even tasted, of disinfectant. A thin shape traveled slowly across the window. The neck of a construction crane? Or a dinosaur. I couldn’t tell.

I tried to turn my head, look for Lydia.

“I’m here.” She touched my hand, moved into view. “How do you feel?”

“Better.” I must be getting better; I hurt everywhere, dull aching pain mostly, with some sharp spots. One of those was my right arm. “Samaritan?”

“No, Montefiore. Dr. Madsen had the ambulance bring you here.”

“Oh,” I said intelligently. I squinted at her, to see if she was still
fuzzy. The warmth of her hand on mine was reassuring and familiar. A vague memory, more like a dream, came to me. “You were here. The whole time. You were holding my hand.”

“It helps,” she said simply. “It keeps the spirit anchored.”

“Chinese superstition.”

“Tell it to my mother.”

“No way.” I thought about my mooring as I was lifted on the tide. “Lydia? It helped. It did help.” I closed my fingers around hers, not very impressively, but as well as I could manage.

She smiled a small, smudged smile. “Tell it to my mother.”

Something else was trying to push through the sludge in my brain, something Lydia had said before I’d drifted away. I fished around for it, then gave up. As soon as I quit it popped up by itself.

“Dayton.”

“Yes,” said Lydia. “He’s here. He’s down the hall. Shall I get him? He’s been waiting to talk to you.”

I was confused, so I said, “Yes.”

She left; she was gone; then she was back, with a fuzzy black man, his right arm in a fuzzy sling. He wore a bathrobe over a hospital gown.

A sudden wave of memory broke over me: pain, yelling, a kick to the side of my head. I closed my eyes. “Oh, Jesus.”

Lydia’s hand fit itself over mine. “Mr. Dayton saved your life.”

“Dayton.” I opened my eyes. “That was you?”

“I never saw his face.” The deep, measured voice was Dayton’s, was the shouting voice I’d heard through the darkness. I squinted again. The bristling mustache, the graying hair. Fuzzy, but there. Also a swollen bruise, and an adhesive patch on one cheek. “A black man. He jumped you outside the parking-lot gate.”

“Dr. Madsen and I heard Mr. Dayton shouting,” Lydia said. “I fired a warning shot as we ran out of the building and he ran away.”

“Who?” I said.

“We don’t know who he was, Bill,” Lydia said gently.

I knew that; I couldn’t think why I’d asked the question.

“Why?” I said; then, realizing I was about to be misunderstood, I added, to Dayton, “… were you there? Why were you there?”

“I was following you.”

I closed my eyes again. I tried to add that up to something, but
the drugs were making me stupid. Or maybe not the drugs; but the result was unquestionable.

“Following me?”

There was silence, then Dayton’s voice. I could hear the frown in it. “I know you knew. You lost me on the Concourse, and I had to go some to lose you in Riverdale.”

“Green Chevy? Tan Dodge?”

“The Dodge is mine. The Nova is my wife’s.”

“Why?” I asked.

There was more silence. I was suddenly afraid he was going to tell me why he’d bought his wife a Chevy Nova.

“I didn’t know what was going on between you and Howe,” Dayton finally said, “but I thought Mr. Moran deserved better than he was getting.”

Forget it, part of me thought. This conversation is hopeless.

“What?” asked the other part. I opened my eyes. Might as well have fuzziness everywhere.

“The morning after Howe was killed, I broke into his locker while you were on the door. I found a hundred dollars and a note from you. I thought the note was to him.”

That made sense. No, it didn’t. “Why break in?”

“I didn’t like Howe and I never had trusted him. I didn’t trust you either. I thought something might be happening that someone should know about.”

“The police?” Two or three words at a time seemed to be the most I could handle, and I was pleased with myself that I was getting the hang of it.

“I might have gone to them later,” Dayton said. “I wanted to know first what was going on.”

“Why?” That one was the best—an all-purpose, one-syllable question.

“For Mr. Moran.” I suppressed the urge to say “Why?” again, just waited. “Mr. Moran has been good to me over the years. He’d already lost his nephew and he’d taken Howe’s death hard. He’d spoken very highly of you, but you acted in strange ways once you came to the Home. I’d watched you.” He paused. “I wanted to prevent Mr. Moran’s being hurt again, if I was able.”

Some things floated through my mind, some things I used to know.

“Ducked Bobby’s phone calls,” I said.

“I didn’t want to speak to Mr. Moran until I was sure.”

Phone calls. Phone calls. Why was I thinking about puppies? Then I heard, from somewhere long ago, a puppy-friendly voice:
Are you sure you didn’t just call? I was sure I gave this message to someone
.

“My service,” I said. “My messages.”

“Mr. Bruno called me for the number of your answering service. He told me it was for Martin Carter. I knew who Martin Carter was and who he had been.”

“How you knew … how to find me.”

“That first evening,” he agreed. “And after that, whenever I lost you, I returned to the Home. You always appeared there eventually. That’s why I was there last night. I’d lost you, but your car was in the lot. I waited there. I knew you’d be back.”

“Jesus,” I said, more to myself than to them. “I …” That wasn’t going to work; I started again. “Bobby …”

“Miss Chin has told me,” Dayton said. “And I talked to Mr. Moran last night. I’m sorry, Smith. I had you wrong. I should have had more faith in Mr. Moran.”

“Me, too. He wanted … to tell you. From the beginning.”

“I wish you had. I might have helped.”

That struck me as funny. “If you trusted me … you wouldn’t … have followed me. Saved my life.”

“True enough,” Dayton said.

He started to say something more, but the door opened behind him. He stepped aside to let Bobby near the bed.

“Jesus, kid.” Bobby leaned on his cane. His voice was shaky. “I’m sorry.”

“No. I’m stupid.”

“Maybe. But I never heard stupidity was punishable by death.”

“Very stupid.”

“I talked to Lydia,” he said. “I want you two to turn over whatever you have to the cops, and get lost. The job is over.”

I looked for Lydia, found her. “No.”

“Yes.” Bobby’s voice was under control, the words all careful and right, but I could hear the effort that took. “Too many men down, kid. I don’t want to lose any more.” Abruptly, hoarsely, he said, “I don’t want to lose you.” He pivoted on his cane and left.

Dayton looked from me to the door. “I’ll come back, Smith.” He went after Bobby.

“He’s serious.” Lydia kept her hand lightly on my arm, as though she knew that with my eyes so bad I needed a different set of connections. “You should have seen him when he got here last night, Bill. He looked scared, and … old.”

“No.”

“Maybe we should. Maybe it would be better for him, not to have to worry about you.”

“No.” Howe, I was thinking. Mike. Madsen. Too much going on, too much to hide. My job, to make it all come out right. Carter. No way to stop, now.

Lydia smiled. “ ‘No’? Short and easy to pronounce, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Go to sleep,” she said. “When you wake up I’ll tell you a story.”