Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (3 page)

He bites down on the jawbreaker; his perfect teeth, polished and hardened by the Vyrus,
crush it like an eggshell.

--Before I got infected, 'bout half the teeth in my head were ready to fall out because of
this place. Growing up off Water Street, my mom used to bring me and my sister up here
after church on Sundays. Give us a buck to split between us.

He rips open a Fun Dip packet, licks the white candy wand, dips it into the sugar powder
inside and pops it in his mouth and sucks on it.

--Still got that sweet tooth, man. When I first found out the business old man Solomon ran
in the basement, the real moneymaker, I was a little disillusioned. Got to say. Kiddies
upstairs getting fixed on sugar, Vampyres in the basement scoring. That's kind of jacked
up. Even in my book.

I pick up a necklace, beads of pastel candies strung on a choker of elastic.

--You got over it.

He takes the candy wand out of his mouth.

--Hey, get hard up enough, who isn't gonna come see the Candy Man? Telling me you never
darkened his doorway?

I drop the necklace in the side pocket of my leather coat.

--I was a Rogue. I didn't have a Clan or a gang backing me up if I went off my home turf.
Coming down here before I hooked back up with Terry, that wasn't an option.

He waves the wand.

--Shit, Joe, we would have had your back.

I go behind the counter and poke around in the drawers and the register.

--Yeah, and that would have cost me something.

He dips up more of the purple powder.

--Never said nothing in life wasn't free.

I find the hogleg back of the counter and put it next to the register.

--Never said you did.

He points at the sawed-off double barrel.

--Loaded?

I pick up the gun and crack the breech and show him the two 12-gauge shells inside.

He shakes his head.

--Imagine keeping something like that around in a shop fulla kids.

I snap it closed and tuck it into my belt at the small of my back, letting the coat fall
over it.

He takes a look.

--Pretty good conceal. Long as you don't start doing jumping jacks it won't show too bad.

I find a half-full box of shells and put it in the pocket with the necklace.

Christian drops the remains of the Fun Dip in a wastebasket and wipes the back of his hand
over his purple-stained lips.

--Makes you wonder, though.

--Huh?

--Why he kept the gauge up here with the kiddies instead of downstairs where the real
dangerous types were coming in.

I walk to the stairs.

--Solomon wasn't stupid. Some junkie walked in here looking to clear out the register, he
could handle that just by showing him the gun. Downstairs? Any infected stupid enough to
try and knock out the only dependable dealer south of Houston would have to be stone
strung out. Shotgun wouldn't have been worth a shit. Hit a burner with both barrels, take
his head off, his fucking body will walk across the room and rip you in half.

--Know that for a fact, Joe?

I'm half down the stairs. I stop and look back up at his silhouette at the top.

--I know it.

He starts down.

--Still and all.

--Yeah?

--Shame he didn't have it down here today.

We hit the bottom and look at the corpse of the Candy Man.

--Shit, Christian, he wasn't one of us. Fuck did he think he had to worry about from real
people?

--Got a point.

There's a box of garbage bags in the corner with the cleaning supplies.

I pick up a mop.

--Ready to get started?

--Sure.

He tears a bag out of the box.

--Why you think they done it?

I stick the mop bucket under the tap in a big slop sink.

--Could be the Van Helsing is only half smart. Killed him before he realized he wasn't
infected. More like, he knew Solomon was the Candy Man. Knew it would cause a shitload of
trouble cutting off the supply down here. Did it Stoker style to make a point. Something
like that. Fits with poisoning the blood in the fridge.

He squats and starts picking up the smaller pieces.

--Sounds about right.

He drops a hand in the bag.

--Sorry, Sol, you were a hell of a confectioner.

Evie won't talk to me.

When I call, the night nurse says she's fine, watching TV, but doesn't want to talk to
anyone.

That could mean anything from she really is watching TV to she's bent over her plastic
bowl with chemo-heaves. I know which is more likely, but I try to pretend it's the other.

Not that she wants my sympathy. Not that she wants me lying in bed staring at the ceiling,
chaining Luckys and thinking about the virus that's eating her alive. Far as she's
concerned, I can fuck off whenever I want and just stop hovering around asking how she's
feeling.

Or I can do something to save her.

Not that I take it seriously, all that shit. That's just the chemo talking. The misery and
the pain and the acid they're pouring into her. She doesn't really think I can do
anything. She's just fucking desperate.

She's just sick.

Girl was sick the night I met her. I knew the score then and I got in the game anyway.
Nothing's changed between us. She's still sick. We still don't sleep together. I still eat
my heart out every time I look at her.

The pity party's in the other room if you feel like joining it.

I won't be in.

Only thing that's changed is she's dying faster. Faster than she was before. And faster
than me. She's dying really fucking fast.

'Course, she doesn't know I'm dying. She doesn't know shit about me. The nighttime
schedule she chalks up to a sun allergy, solar urticaria. The guns and the rough and
tumble and the padlocked fridge in my apartment and the donor blood I get deposited on her
behalf so she always has enough for the transfusions she needs because of the anemia
caused by the chemo? That's all because of my job.

Organ courier.

Transporter of healthy tissues between those with perfect kidneys, healthy corneas,
melanoma-free skin, pink lungs, unperforated intestines; and the miserable disease-wracked
bastards with nothing but money. Nice work if you can get it.

Except that it's a lie.

Yeah, I told my girl a lie. Just one on a long list. Once you skip over telling someone
the part about needing to consume blood in order to feed the Vyrus that's keeping you
alive, there isn't much room for truth in a relationship.

So it's built on lies. So if she knew what I am, what I do, she'd slap her hands to her
face, scream
NOOOOOOOOO
and run from the room crying for help. Or not. Being Evie, she might just kick me in the
balls for lying to her. Then she might ask a lot of questions. Then she might ask me if
having the Vyrus in her would kill the virus in her.

And I'd have to tell her the truth for a change.

It would. The Vyrus will kill what's in her. It will kill anything that invades and
attacks its host.

It will save her.

No more puking. No more hair loss. No more oral ulcers. No more loose teeth. No more
chemo. No more Kaposi. No more AIDS.

No more cold showers. No more hand jobs. No more dry humping like the high school kid I
never was.

Just me and her and all the time you could want, as healthy as a human being can be.
Healthier. As healthy as something not quite human and not quite alive can be. For just as
long as we can keep it together. For just as long as we can score and lay low and live
with the constant scrabble to find the next hit. For as long as we can stay out of the
sun.

It's a life.

And who am I to bitch. I may not have asked to be infected, but I haven't hurried to get
out of the deal. Been over thirty years now, and I can bow out anytime. A bullet is still
a bullet, whether it goes through your brainpan or mine. And dead is still dead. Or so I'm
told. I'll know for sure soon enough. Just like everyone else.

We're all going the same place.

I'm just taking a different road.

If the scenery sucks, I can drive into a ditch whenever I want.

And I can take Evie with me. All I got to do is one simple thing. I just got to do what
she's begging me for. I just got to save her.

I get off the bed, stub my smoke out in the tray on the nightstand and throw down the last
swallow of Old Grand-Dad in the water glass there. I take Solomon's hogleg from my dresser
and put it and the shells in my gun safe with a couple other pieces I've acquired in the
last year. Used to be I had a pair of handguns that suited me more or less to a tee. The
work I've been doing lately, I've found I go through them in a hurry. It pays to collect
an extra or two when you get the chance.

The phone rings and I answer it and talk to someone and hang up.

I head for the door, in a hurry to be somewhere else, to be doing something else. To be
thinking about anything else. I go fast and I leave the guns behind.

I won't need one where I'm headed.

Unless I plan on shooting my boss.

God knows I've had worse ideas.

Organ courier.

I wish.

Freelance. My own boss. The way I used to have it.

That was cherry.

It was a scrabble being a Rogue, not having a Clan to look out for you and keep you in the
drink, but no one looks over your shoulder and tells you what to do. You fuck up,
someone's gonna put you down. Nothing but blood, sweat and tears. And damn little blood.

Hell, I pine for it.

--The Candy Man? That's a real bummer.

I get out of my own head and look at Terry, the man whose dime I've been on for the last
year. Not that he'd put it that way. He'd say I'm simply a pledged member of the Society,
serving the greater good. But I know better. After all, it may be a dog's life, and I may
be the dog, but I know whose hand is holding the leash.

--Yeah, whole bunch of SoHo ragtags are gonna have to find a new hookup.

He holds his index finger and thumb an inch apart.

--You're still taking the short view.

He spreads his arms wide.

--What I'm trying to get you to see is the big picture. Expand your vision, get into your
peripherals, man. See the vistas. The trees, they're beautiful. But the forest, when you
see the whole thing? That's a mindblower.

He shades his eyes with a flat hand, gazing into the distances beyond the walls of this
tenement kitchen.

--When you really open your perceptions and take it all in, the view is breathtaking.

I look at Lydia. She's got her eyes squeezed shut, fingers rubbing her temples.

I tilt my chin at her.

--Got a headache?

She peels her eyes open and flips her hand in Terry's direction.

--You don't?

I check out Terry, his eyes still shaded, smiling at us.

--I've been listening to it for a long time. Guess I'm building an immunity.

Terry drops his hand.

--An immunity to truth, Joe? I hope not, man. I hope not.

I fiddle with the unlit smoke in my hand. Terry and Lydia don't like me to smoke in
Society headquarters. Like secondhand smoke is gonna kill them. The
principle
of the thing, they'd say. Like there's any principle involved in breathing smoke other
than it tastes good.

--The big picture, Ter, I'm missing it, so fill me in.

He lowers himself to the floor, slowly bending his legs till he's folded into a full
lotus.

--The Candy Man is dead.

--Got that.

--Sure, sure you do, that's basic. The Candy Man is dead. Which, you know, he was a guy in
a high-risk market. The blood, I mean, not the candy. So getting murdered isn't like a
statistical improbability or anything. But, and this is the
down the rabbit hole
part, he's killed in a fashion that suggests a pretty well-versed Van Helsing was
involved. A Van Helsing with enough, I don't know, foresight, savvy, whatever, to poison
the Candy Man's stock so no one could scavenge it. And then the final tree in this, well,
not really forest, but grove, maybe, or
copse
is a better word. The final tree in this copse is the really relevant fact that Solomon
wasn't what a Van Helsing would call a, you know, a
vampire.
So that's our copse, our thicket of trees within the forest. The question is, What's out
of place here? What tree, or shrub even, doesn't belong in the thicket?

I light my cigarette.

--You lost me at copse.

Lydia points at the NO SMOKING sign above the door.

--You mind?

I take another drag.

--Sister, if you can get through this without a smoke or a drink, more power to you. Me,
I'm made of weaker stuff.

She crosses to a black-painted window over the sink, pinches the heads of the thirty penny
nails driven through the frame into the sill, draws them out with a squeak, the
upside-down pink triangle tattooed on her shoulder jumping as her muscles flex, and shoves
the window open.

--I'm not your sister. My sisters share my values and concerns. They don't put money into
the pockets of death merchants.

She drops the nails on the sill.

--And, Terry, a little support on the no-smoking policy would be appreciated.

He rests his hands palms up on the points of his knees.

--Trees, guys. Forest. Copse.

Lydia folds her arms.

--The Candy Man wasn't infected. The Van Helsing killed him like he was infected. He or
she
knew all this other stuff, but didn't know Solomon was a civilian. That's your odd tree.

He snaps his fingers.

--That's it, that's what I'm talking about. That particular piece of foliage seen on its
own is just another fragment of the ecosystem, just another link in the chain of life. But
in context of
our
forest? It stands out like a sequoia in the Amazon. An uninfected dealer in the forest of
the Vyrus. Solomon has always been an exotic, yeah? So now, now something happens, someone
yanks that tree, uproots it and salts the earth. But the way they go about it, it looks
like they got a handle on the terrain, like they should maybe know better. So why kill
that tree like it's a, and I don't like this analogy any better than you will, Lydia, but
I'm talking here from this
gardener's
point of view, why kill this tree like it's a weed? Seeing as you know the difference.
The Van Helsing I'm talking here.