The Animal Hour (28 page)

She felt the air stir on her neck. Glanced back over her shoulder. Saw the glow of the train's headlights spreading up over the tunnel walls. She held her breath and ducked her head into the alcove. She could see it as the tunnel grew brighter: the humped gray thing in there. The soft rotting thing.

She had to breathe. She turned her head and gasped and the stench swarmed into her mouth, into her lungs. She groaned and her stomach went all the way over. She held her breath again. Narrowed her eyes to slits. Reached out and shoved her hand into the mound at the back of the alcove.

The juicy mass closed around her hand, squeezed between her fingers. She gagged, her tongue coming out between her teeth. The ground was really bouncing under her knees now. The tunnel was beginning to fill with the rattle of the train, with the light. She worked her hand deeper into the muck and when she had to breathe this time it was like swallowing vomit. She dug around in the mound as the racket of the train grew louder, as the wind of it pushed at her and the glow spread.

And it wasn't there. The gun: It was gone. The cops must have gotten it. They must've searched the place and found it.

“Ah …” She gave an inarticulate cry. Pulled her hand free of the mound's suction. She worked her way to her feet. Staggered back from the platform until her heels touched the track rail. She gasped for breath. Her hair blew across her eyes. The train's rumble seemed to shake her from the inside.

She looked up to the platform. She was going to climb up there to get out of the train's way. She looked up and saw the spreading outglow play over the walls. As before, the graffiti seemed to come to life in the spreading light. The letters seemed to move. Great brown boas of paint seemed to squirm and wriggle. Slashes of green coiled and turned. Maroon swaths twisted.

And then one large black shape writhed violently amidst the others. It curled away from the rest and began to come toward her.

Nancy's lips parted. Even as the train's lights broke out of the tunnel, two circles of glaring light growing larger by the second, she could only stand, she could only stare. The shape that had broken from the wall was shambling toward her. It was hunched and enormous. It was leering at her, glaring at her from two marble eyes that caught the oncoming subway's light.

A man. It was a man. Jesus Christ. He lumbered toward her. Lumbered to the edge of the platform. Rose above her like a behemoth. Rose to the dark heights from which his eyes burned down at her. From which his gray grin gleamed.

His shoulders shook as if he were laughing, but she could not hear him above the roar of the train. He opened his mouth and lifted his arm as if he were laughing, and his mouth gaped wider.

And then he pointed something down at her face. And she saw it was the barrel of her gun.

T
he light of the late October afternoon was dying over Sheridan Square. The sun was touching the flat roofs of the cafés, and the last rays of it were going golden on the fenced-in flora of the Viewing Garden. Long shadows spilled onto Seventh Avenue. They fanned the flames of Perkins's dread: Time, he thought, was a-wasting.

He came into the square from West Fourth Street. Passed through to the corner and stood at the red light, absently wiping chicken grease off his fingers onto his jeans. He could feel the time passing, minute by minute. And it was only a matter of time before Mulligan tracked down his brother. When the traffic light changed, he charged across Seventh. His arms swinging, his shoulders hunched. He was thinking about Tiffany now. About how she would resist him.
I don't want to talk to you, Oliver. You know how you are. I'm not talking to you at all.
Then she would smile at him, that superior, ethereal smile of hers. His mouth worked as he thought of how he'd tell her off. He was itching to shove her back against a wall and shout the truth out of her.

The bookstore where she worked was called The Womyn's Room. It was on the ground floor of a yellowing brick building on Bleecker Street. Perkins barreled down Grove, just off the open square, deeper into shadow. Bleecker, at the next corner, was more shadowy still. Perkins was bent forward urgently, pushing forward with long, urgent strides as he reached the intersection.

And there he stopped. Pulled up like a reined-in horse. The bookstore was just across the street, a little to his right. A new red brick facade under the yellow brick. There were two large display windows full of books, framed by black metal. The front door was set in between them, forming an entrance alcove. The door within the alcove was swinging out.

And out, under the alcove, to the sidewalk's edge, stepped Detective Mulligan.

“Fuck me,” was Perkins's comment.

He pulled back around the corner. Clung to the wall of the apartment building at the end of Grove. Peeked around the edge of it, feeling like Peter Lorre in some old spy film. Curly-haired, baby-faced Mulligan just stood there. Hands in his trench coat pockets. Eyelids batting behind the round wire rims. Perkins had to yank his head back as the lenses turned his way in a slow scan.

“I can't believe this,” he said to the cold bricks against his cheek. He waited a full minute before he dared to peek his head out again.

Mulligan was moving by then. Walking to the black Dodge parked alone—illegally—at the curb. He slid in on the passenger side. Perkins could not see the driver, but he heard the engine fire up at once. The car pulled out. Perkins had to draw in again, like a turtle, as the Dodge sped past the corner.

The second the car was out of sight, Perkins resumed his charge. Strode across the street to the bookstore. In past the windows with their prim displays: clusters of an author's books, huddled together as if for warmth. Those photographs, the severe women, their grim intellects in their eyes.

He pulled the glass door back. Stepped into a small shop. The door hissed shut behind him. The warm amber of the wall-to-wall shelves embraced him; the smell of books, the stillness of them.

Trisha—or Leatherhead, as Perkins called her—was behind the counter, an octagon of low shelves in the middle of the room. Perkins stomped over to her impressively. Trish did not so much as look up. She was a woman in her twenties, pole thin. Even her head was a thin cylinder, topped with spiked white hair. Only the broad shoulders of her studded leather jacket gave her any bulk at all. She was leaning over an inventory list. She was chewing gum.

Perkins leaned in toward her, his fists pressed into two stacks of lesbian poetry.

“What'd you tell him, Trish?”

“Fuck off, Ollie.”

“What'd you tell Mulligan?”

“Eat me.”

“Where's Tiffany?”

She flipped him the finger. She chewed her gum.

“Look, Trish,” Perkins said. “I know how you feel about me, okay? But try to understand. There are your feminist theories and feelings and opinions. And then there's reality. See? Reality's important. Your theories and feelings are meaningless. Now we're dealing with reality. Have you got that?”

She glanced up long enough to sneer around her spearmint. Perkins saw the five gold rings through her right nostril. He sniffed—they always made him want to sneeze. “It amazes me that you would just come in here and be so phallic,” she drawled.

“Oh Christ.”

“Do you really think I'm just going to accord you your masculine privileges?”

Oliver hung his head.

“We shouldn't even let you in here,” said Trish, “the way you objectify women.”

“Hey. Hey. I haven't objectified a woman in over a week. Can't a man change?”

“Lethal misogynist.”

“Not lethal enough for you, baby.”

“Your poems should be hung in effigy.”

Perkins's face went red. His arms, braced against the books, trembled. “You can't make an effigy of a poem, Trish. It doesn't make sense. Now who do you want Tiffany to deal with, me or the fucking police?”

Something sparked in Trisha's eyes at that. She made a show of casually reviewing her inventory, mashing her gum with pistoning jaws. Finally, and without looking up, she said sullenly, “The cop said there'd been a murder.” She raised her eyes to him. “That true?”

He nodded. “There's been a murder, yeah.”

“Great. That's just great.” Her lips twisted. “You bastards. You and your brother. What did you get her into?”

“Did you tell Mulligan where she is?”

“I don't know where she is. I didn't tell him anything. All right? Now why don't you just get out of here, semen-breath.”

“It's me or the cops, Trish,” Perkins said again. “She's gonna have to talk to one of us.”

“Yeah? Which is worse?”

Perkins didn't answer. He wasn't sure.

“Shit,” said Trisha. “Why don't you just fuck off, you macho shit. Damn you. You and your brother. Damn the two of you.”

He was surprised by the red flood of rage in him. He wanted to drag her over the counter by her leather jacket front, mash that sneering face a little. He backed away from her instead.

“I told her there was nothing in men,” Trish muttered.

“Yeah,” Perkins snapped. “I'll just bet you did, you jealous bitch.”

Now it was Trisha's turn: She flushed scarlet. Her eyes grew damp. “Go suck some little boys, creep-o,” she nearly shouted at him. “You do anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said.

And that's intellectual discourse in the Village
, he thought, as he turned his back on her, waved her off.

He stomped to the door. He had his flattened palm braced against the metal frame.

“Hey!” Her bark stopped him but he didn't turn. “Hey,” she said again. “Testicle-head. Hold on.”

He glanced back over his shoulder. “What?”

There was a pause. A breath, a long breath; forlorn. “Are you actually telling me they're gonna arrest her?” Trish said.

“That's my guess, yeah.”

“And what're you gonna do to her? Fuck her over somehow, I'll bet.”

Perkins didn't say anything. He sensed he had her and he didn't want to muck it up. He came around slowly until he was facing her and, sure enough, she was wrestling with it, her mouth working, her chin lowered. He waited in silence; let her come to it on her own.

“Fucking pig cop,” she said finally. “He'll go there eventually anyway.” Still, Perkins kept quiet. She glanced up at him angrily. “All right,” she said. “All right, you shithead, but you better not fuck with this. You better not fuck her up anymore.”

“At least I'll give her a chance to explain,” Oliver said. That was true enough, at least.

Trisha made a short, nasty gesture. She had pulled something from a pocket. A small rectangle of paper. She tossed it onto the countertop. She looked away.

Perkins decided she had gone as far as she would. He walked back to her, his tread heavy. The paper on the counter was white with blue markings. It was a schedule for the Metro-north trains out of Grand Central. He picked it up. It was the schedule for the trains to Scarsdale.

“I found it in her desk,” the woman said. “This morning, when she didn't show up for work. I called her there. A couple of times. But there's no answer.”

The schedule was marked. Perkins could see two small scratches that seemed to have been made by a pen that had run out of ink. One scratch was near the 12:03 out of New York; the other was by the 4:35 return, which arrived in the city just a few minutes after five.

“I don't even know if it's for today,” Trisha said. “It's just she hasn't gone home like that in ages and I …” She hardened at once. “If you give it to the cops, Oliver, so help me God, I'll kill you dead.”

He nodded at her. “Thanks, Trish.”

“I swear it, Ollie.”

But he had already turned away again. He was already heading back toward the door.

“B
ang!”

The man waved the gun barrel in Nancy's face. She heard him shout the word above the wind and rattle of the onrushing train.