Ladykiller (17 page)

Everyone has a place they go to in times of stress. Some retreat to
their homes, to bed or a favorite chair. Others head to a park, take a
certain walk, sit under a favorite tree.

When Nita emerged from the elevator lobby onto the windswept
open platform, she breathed in the brisk, clean, cold air with a sigh of
relief. She had never told anyone, even Megan, how often she came
here. It was her place and here she could think.

Ignoring the knots of tourists who mostly clustered around the
coin-operated viewing machines set at intervals around the deck, Nita
climbed a narrow metal ladder set into the wall. It led to another platform above, this one not screened in by chicken wire fencing.

She approached the waist-high railing.The day was clear and she
could see for miles across the crowded city from her vantage point
atop one of its most famous buildings. She removed her sunglasses and
scarf and let her hair blow in the wind. She tipped her face to the late
afternoon sun.

She had no need for binoculars. She disdained the fools who
came all the way up to the top of the Empire State Building and then
squinted through a tiny aperture to get a close-up view of something
down below. And, she marveled, they paid for the privilege.

She bent forward to look over the rail.Where she had come up,
the platform looked onto the main observation deck. On this side,
the drop was vertiginous, all the way to the street, a dizzying distance
below.

She straightened and closed her eyes briefly, feeling the sun and
the wind. For the first time in days she felt good, the knot of anxiety
loosening, confidence in her ability to cope surging back, filling her
with peace as she filled her lungs with deep breaths of cold, clean air.

Nita stiffened and turned.The short, wiry man who had come up
behind her had the dark curly hair and swarthy good looks of a young
Arab. His dirty suit and stained white shirt, open at the neck to show
a cheap gold chain, proclaimed him to be a street hustler. Nita gave
him a cold once-over and turned back to the railing.

“Where you from? You speak English? I can show you the city,
Broadway, the Bronx, New Jersey.You name it.”
Nita continued to ignore him. They usually went away if you
failed to engage.
“No kidding. I show you. Where you from? Europe? France,
maybe?”
When he put his nicotine-stained fingers on her arm, Nita
turned slowly, looking down at his hand where it touched her. Not
taking the hint, he gestured expansively with his other hand.
“No kidding. I show you. Take you shopping. Take you to a club.
You like to dance? I show you.”
“No,” said Nita, “I’ll show
you
.” Grabbing his gesturing arm with
one hand she swung it around behind him and reached up with her
free hand to grab a handful of his collar. She bent him forward over the
railing until she felt his feet go out from under him.
The Arab teetered precariously over the railing which caught him
at the waist. His left arm was twisted painfully behind his back and her
hold on his wrist and on his collar were all that kept him from plunging to the street hundreds of feet below. Helplessly he rocked forward
and back, making small, high-pitched sounds in his throat, his eyes
bulging wildly as his view swooped from sky to surrounding buildings
to the street with its yellow cabs and blue buses the size of ants.
“Take a good look,” Nita said. “Look at the whole thing. The big
picture. How do you like it?”
After a few seconds that seemed like an eternity during which he
had forgotten everything, even prayer, Nita released him.
He backed away, suppressing an urge to vomit, wanting only to
get out of there, get off this roof, out of this building. He backed away,
rubbing his throat where his shirt had nearly strangled him, staggering
a little.
Nita did not turn around. She was gazing serenely over the city
again. Her city.

Ace looked longingly at Billy Ray’s beer, but lacked the gumption to
ask the big man to buy him one. “She’s one crazy bitch, man. I’m
telling you.”

“Well, now, crazy is how I like them.They taste better that way,”
Billy Ray drawled and rewarded his oratorical effort with a long glug
of suds.

“Little farthole like you never gonna shoot nobody,” Billy Ray
said. He drank again.
“I’m serious. I done them bitches and that Reuben guy, but the
cops ain’t smart enough to pin it all on me. So I’m out.” The cold beer
in Billy Ray’s mug was amber ambrosia.
“Sure as shit,” Billy Ray said. “You’re one vicious, goddamn motherfucker, is what you is.” He laughed and drank some more. “What’s
the bitch’s name?”
“Nita Bergstrom. Billy Ray, I can’t afford to leave town. I got no
money.”
“I am totally aware of that fact.You falling in love with my beer?
You keep fucking mooning over it.” Billy Ray finished his draft and
signaled Tony Topnut for a refill. “She a social worker lady, right?”
Ace nodded vigorously. “West Side Crisis Center. Shit, you saw
her. She was shooting at my ass.”
“Well, well. A person of the female persuasion is scaring little
you to death.You are one sorry turdball.”
“She may be a woman, but she’s got a gun. And she’s real good at
using it. No fucking fooling, Billy Ray.What would you do, if you was
me?”
“I’d grab her popgun, rip off her fucking fancy clothes, and fuck
the bejesus out of her, is what I’d do.” Billy Ray reached for the mug
that Tony Topnut plopped in front of him.
Ace laughed mirthlessly. “Shit. She’d blow you away before you
got near her.”
Billy Ray’s big hand grabbed him by the chin and scrunched up
his lips and cheeks so Ace resembled a stricken fish. “Watch your
mouth around me, boy,” Billy Ray growled. Ace made pained sounds,
and Billy Ray released him. “Can’t stand no disrespect.”
Ace rubbed his jaw. “Wasn’t no disrespect, Billy Ray,” he whined.
“It’s just that she scares me.”
“Scares you?” Billy Ray said derisively.
Ace saw the woman in the scarf and sunglasses at the other end of
the bar. Sunglasses even in the pit-dimness of the bar. “Holy shit,” he
breathed. “It’s her.”
“Huh?”
“Christ,” Ace yelped. He shoved off the barstool, which went
clattering to the floor. With legs and arms flailing, he raced out the
back.

With growing annoyance, Nita strode through the sleazy girlie joint,
past the lowlifes lining the bar, into the back with its ladders and
buckets and mops. Never taking off the sunglasses. Tripping over a
box. Almost falling. Catching the fire door as it closed after Ace.

Ace was hopping and dodging as much as running. But
Bergstroms were strong. Her footsteps kept pace with his along the
lurid maelstrom of the Deuce. In and out of the gaggles of people.
Around their slow-moving clusters. Ace up ahead, all elbows and
lurching. Past the peep shows and porno movie palaces.

He skipped twice beneath a marquee advertising its double
feature in blood-crimson letters:
Pussy Whipped
and
Hot Hooters from
Hell
.Ace dodged into the theater’s dank mouth, bolting past the ticket
window.

The ticket collector did a double take when Nita swerved around
him and charged through the closing door into the auditorium.
“Hey,” he called in vain. “Get back here.”Yet because it was too
much aggravation, he gave up the chase and went back to his post,
where a half-eaten meatball sandwich awaited him.
Panting from the run and the adrenaline, Nita pulled off the sunglasses. She had to find Ace in here, and no one could identify her in
the flickering darkness. Thanks to the shades, her eyes quickly adjusted. On the screen, a demonically leering farmer had pinned a
naked woman to the barn floor and was pumping into her with his
remarkable anatomy. Solitary male heads were scattered throughout
the theater. No one was running down the aisles toward the exit signs.
Thrusting her hand into her bag and gripping the good steel, Nita
stalked down the center aisle.The men sat as still as mummies. Except
for one who was busy pulling at his lap. The whole bunch of them
should be exterminated.
Nita was very deliberate in her search. Ace could be crouched
among the seats, low to the sticky floor.
Then Nita heard the slapping of feet behind her. Somehow, Ace
was crashing through the door they had just come in. She doubled
back after him. Ace squirted past the ticket collector, who sat on a
stool clutching his dripping sandwich.
When Nita reached the door to the street, the ticket collector
was half out of his cage and managed to snag her left arm. She gasped
at the pain in her shoulder socket.
“Okay, lady,” the ticket collector fog horned. “None of your fucking games.You owe me seven-fifty.” He put down the sandwich. One
of its meatballs had plopped out onto the filthy floor.
Nita’s free right hand pulled out the .45 and stuck it in the man’s
flaccid face. “Let go of me, you piece of scum,” she yelled. The ticket
collector did as ordered. He held up his meaty hands in supplication.
“Hey, no problemo. I’m cool.”
Nita jammed the gun back into her bag and slapped the sunglasses in place. It was easy to find Ace in the bobbing, throbbing mass.
He was the only one running. He almost had the length of a block
on her.
Nita pounded after her quarry, twisting through the thicket of
hips that separated them.Then Ace made a mistake. He looked behind
him for Nita and collided with a bag lady’s heavily laden shopping cart
of rags, bundles, bottles, and cans. Ace and the cart toppled onto the
sidewalk. Bottles smashed.
Ace lay there, dazed.The old woman hovered over him, flapping
her arms hen-like and nattering her outrage. Passing pedestrians gathered for a drama. A gang of teenage boys in turned-backward baseball
caps emerged from a subway station and broke into laughter at the
sight.
Shaking the shock out of his head, Ace focused on Nita as she
bore down on him. He struggled to his feet and sent bottles and cans
flying.
“Ace, you clumsy bastard,” the bag lady howled.
“Fuck you, Stinky,” Ace yelled. He threaded through the knot of
teenagers and catapulted himself down the subway stairs.
Nita neatly skirted the bag lady’s debris on the sidewalk and
pounded after him. She threaded through the teenagers and loped
down the steps. Ace was limping —
limping
— ahead in a long, lonely
tunnel.
The boys, however, suddenly ran past Nita with their turbocharged youthful energy, turned around, and formed a line in front
of her. She came to an abrupt stop.
“Where you going, pretty momma?” the largest one said. He had
a ring through his nose and a cocky grin.The boys circled around her.
The large one stepped close, ogled her breasts and said, “What’s a
fine-looking thing like you doing hiding herself behind them shades?”
Nita pulled out her .45 and jammed it it into his waistband,
pointing downward. “I’ll blow your balls off, you worthless parasite,”
she told him, an inch from his instantly slack face.
“Sh-sh-sh-sh-shit,” he stammered.
In a squeak of sneaker rubber, the other boys took off for the
street.
“You’re no damn good and you deserve to die,” she said.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Please, God, n-n-n-n-n-no.”
Nita noted with pleasure that he had wet his pants. She withdrew
the gun and aimed it at his right eye. “I ought to,” she said. But then she
lowered the gun. “There will be time. Believe me.”
She ran after Ace’s hobbling form.
The boy sank to his knees and sobbed.
The blood lust pounded its savage tattoo in Nita’s temples.

To Ace, the pain was an anklet of fire. Every step with his left leg shot
shafts of agony up to his hip and into his groin. He made little sobs of
hurt and fear as he chugged up to the subway turnstiles. He had no
token. So he hoisted himself up and slid his butt along the turnstile’s
metal casing. On the other side, he came down hard on his left foot
and howled in torment.

He was on the subway platform, an empty wilderness of stained
concrete and girders that offered no sanctuary, no hiding, no salvation. The trench for the subway tracks ran either way, damp and relentless as the River Styx, into tunnels of final darkness. He peered
desperately down the tracks for some inspiration. No one was there to
help him.

“Turn around, Ace,” Nita said, slightly out of breath but thoroughly in control.
He turned slowly, the boiling air whooshing in and out of his
lungs, to confront the dark zero of the gun barrel’s opening. “Why?”
“It’s for the best, Ace,” she said. “You’ll be better off.”
“Bullshit,” he whined. “I don’t deserve to die.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Hold on a minute,” he pleaded. His entire body was shaking.
She tensed her arms to fire.
Tears slalomed down Ace’s cheeks, into his scraggly half-beard,
and dripped onto the platform. “I love you, Nita,” he said. “How can
you do this to me?”
“It’s not hard,” she said. Her finger began pulling the trigger
back.
“Billy Ray Battle knows about you,” Ace blurted.
Nita stopped. “Who?”
“My friend Billy. I was sitting with him in the Foxy Lady when
you came in.”
“Is he the one Dillon arrested first?” Nita asked, lowering the gun
slightly. Ace nodded, and she said, “And is he the one who shouted at
me on the playground?”Ace nodded again. “What does he know about
me?”
“That you want to kill me.”
“Well, he sounds like another candidate for removal,” she said,
and she raised the gun again, prepared to fire.
A train roared into the station in a metallic clatter and a gust of
foul wind. Surprised, Nita momentarily froze. The subway doors
parted and a walrus-moustached transit cop sauntered out onto the
platform.
“Help. Police. She’s gonna kill me,” Ace shouted.
Nita quickly stashed the gun into her purse before the cop
turned. She walked briskly toward the turnstiles.
“She’s getting away,” Ace cried.
“What’s your noise, scumbag?” the cop said to Ace.
Ace stood wordlessly and watched Nita’s head kerchief recede
into the dank distance. When the suspicious cop pushed him against
the wall to frisk him, Ace smiled gratefully. He could have kissed him.