The Four-Night Run (10 page)

“We have to get off the roof before this building catches too,” said Donnie. “There’s a fire escape on the far side.”

The Nightingale grabbed her binoculars from Scrbacek and peeked over the roof’s edge. “Okay, now.”

Keeping as low as possible, they ran. The Nightingale, gun in hand, jumped on the fire escape and rode the ladder down as it skittered toward the asphalt. Before the ladder jammed to a stop a few feet off the ground, she was on the pavement, swinging the gun around, making a quick case of the area. After a moment she signaled for the others to follow. One by one they climbed down, dropped to the ground, and huddled in the shadow of the wall.

“What now?” said Scrbacek.

“I have to get to work,” said Elisha. “I’m late already.”

“You want me to walk you?” said Donnie.

She smiled. “Sure, sweetie.”

“Got to find a new place,” said Blixen, lifting her plastic bag. “To keep my things. Those bastards would kill to get a hold of my things.”

“What about me?” said Scrbacek. “What do I do now?”

They looked at him. Donnie and Blixen, Elisha and the Nightingale, they looked at him like he was an idiot.

“The Contessa told you,” said Donnie, finally. “Look to your past, your present, your future.”

“That nonsense?” said Scrbacek. “Oh, come on, Donnie. Get serious.”

“I am, Mr. Scrbacek.”

“I really have to go,” said Elisha. “Take care of yourself, J.D.”

She started off and then stopped, turned around, walked right back up to Scrbacek, and whispered in his ear. “It was Dirty Dirk.”

“Who?”

“The person Carlo was calling. When I redialed the phone before they came, the voice at the other end, I recognized it. It was Dirk. Be careful.”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and then she was off, slinking quietly across the asphalt, climbing through a hole in the fence. Donnie looked at Scrbacek for a second, nodded at him, and then followed. Scrbacek watched them go until the old woman grabbed hold of his bad arm, forcing a gasp.

“Be strong,” said Blixen, leaning so close that Scrbacek could smell the rot on her breath. “Be dangerous. Be warned.” She blinked both eyes before she too made for the hole in the fence.

The Nightingale put a hand on Scrbacek’s shoulder before following Blixen.

Scrbacek saw them stop at the fence, saw Blixen whisper something to the Nightingale, saw her look back at him and nod. Then both were through the hole and gone, and he was alone, in the shadow of that abandoned warehouse, just yards from a pack of killers hunting for him.

He waited in the shadows for a long moment, and then a moment more, paralyzed by indecision. Where should he go? What should he do? An assassin with a long leather trench coat and a personal grudge was after him, but Bozant wasn’t acting alone. A call to Dirty Dirk’s had set that pack of killers on his trail. So who was behind it all? Who was the magician, putting all the forces in play? Caleb Breest? Joey Torresdale? Maybe Dirk himself? Or was it someone other, someone he couldn’t even imagine?

He heard a sound. A rat rummaging through the heaps of garbage looking for a morsel? One of the killers rummaging through the warehouse looking for him? Shoved into action by a jolt of terror, he darted to the fence, climbed through the hole, and was gone again.

Lost again in the wilds of Crapstown.

17

E
D
’
S
E
ATS

The wash of headlights along a pitted black street. A hard bass rhythm pumping from a long brown car. Footsteps. Sirens. The crystalline crash of a glass bottle smashing on cement.

Moving through the shadows of Crapstown, chased by fear, J.D. Scrbacek felt a brutal sense of expectation in the air, darker than the night, pressing down upon the ragged buildings, the cracked asphalt, his spirit. It was the mirror image of the brilliant expectation he had felt upon entering Diamond’s Mount Olympus, but both held the same total indifference to his inner nature; something would happen to him here for no reason other than his mere presence in this domain, something violent, crushing, something unspeakable, descending upon him like a plague.

A can being kicked down the street. The snarling bark of a dog. Fabric ripping. Brakes squealing. An argument in the distance growing raucous.

He didn’t know where to turn, where to go, what to do. He didn’t know who was after him, who could help him, what this nightmare was at root all about. He was in a situation not of his own choosing, with no answers, no shelter, only death in his future. In that way, he supposed, it was like life itself, except without sex or popcorn. And in the face of its danger, he moved on, not knowing to where, just moving and remaining unseen, unheard, his jagged, random path confined by the lights of the casinos and the limits of the bay. Moving through the shadows of Crapstown.

As a mangy dog swayed by, turning his great rabid head in Scrbacek’s direction, he stopped suddenly, slinked against a street sign, and held his breath. Even after the mongrel made its way past, Scrbacek stayed there, pressed against the sign, frozen in place until the metal post marked a line down his back.

Enough of this nonsense, he told himself. Keep moving. Keep safe. He started off again, the full moon, the second of the month, keeping pace with his every step.

It was so late now the gates to the low-rise projects were shut tight, but the bars still were open, allowed to serve liquor all night to compete with the casinos. He passed one in a low gray building, its windows covered with cage wire, like the windows of the prison buses, as if installed to keep the patrons in rather than criminals out. Another was in a large brick building standing alone among a cluster of abandoned lots, its windows painted black, the outer walls still covered with the metal lath of the now-destroyed buildings on either side. Above the entrance was an intricate neon sign featuring a camel in bright yellow, a pyramid in bright blue, and two high-heeled legs—no body, just the legs—one kicking up and down, up and down, up and down. Beneath the graphic was the name
NOMAD’S
, and the motto
HOT AND COLD RUNNING STRIPPERS ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
.

A man in a ragged coat was asleep at the curb in front of Nomad’s, curled like a baby in a crib, his face covered by his arm. A survivor, no doubt, of a night of bumps and grinds, of cadged beers and bumbling passes and high-spirited fistfights. At least someone had a good time, thought Scrbacek bitterly as he stepped over the man’s body.

In the desolate lot beside the club, a clutch of shadows, dimly lit by the flashing neon and the silver light of the moon, circled over some struggling supine figure in a strange ritual of barbarism. A fist was raised, then lowered, again and then again, accompanied by a sound like that of a boot slapping into a slick of mud. The beating was slow and brutal, and Scrbacek thought of intervening, rushing in to save the day. But when one of the onlooking shadows turned his way, that insanity passed quick as a shot. He buried his face into a shoulder and hurried on, and in so doing, he missed the words slipped between the blows and the muffled cries, the words soft as a whisper, the very whisper, in fact, that had descended upon Scrbacek outside his burning building.

“He’s your screwup, Trent.”

Smack.

“Your responsibility.”

Smack.

“Find him, you fat piece of crap. And find him fast, before we do, or this will seem like nothing more than a canapé.”

Pound.

“Which for you is like a whole rack of ribs.”

Smack.

“Having fun yet, Trent?”

Smack.

“Because I sure as hell am. Can’t you see my smile?”

Pound. Smack.

Blocks from the club, still frightened by the vision of the beating he had fled, Scrbacek passed a long wall with a mural painted on its brick, a rough picture of the seaside, with boats and sunbathers and gulls. He found the sight of this miserable mural, so close to and yet so distant from the actual thing, cruelly sad. A pay phone stood by the mural, its plastic covering shattered, defaced with graffiti, its only possible purpose, he thought, to place a call for help. He passed it forlornly. Who would he dial?

He was tired, he was hungry, he was feeling very, very sorry for himself, when he turned a corner and was shocked to see, halfway down the block, a glowing funnel of warm, welcoming light. His instinct was to turn from it, to run, but, with no place to run to, his feet remained planted. He waited in the shadows for a long moment and saw nothing alarming. Slowly, he made his way, along the opposite side of the street, toward the warm glow until he could see what it fell upon.

A diner. A shiny chrome thing with cement steps, two old cars parked in front of a row of newspaper boxes, and a single streetlight bathing it all in gold. A diner. In Crapstown.

Ed’s Eats.

Since the bomb had blown up his car—what was it, a day ago, two days ago?—since then, all he’d had for nourishment were a couple of complimentary casino drinks and a mug of broth. The presence of that diner seemed fated for him. Weak with hunger, needing someplace to rest and think, he had turned a corner and there it stood, as if fallen out of the dark night sky like manna. Doused in light. With big plate-glass windows through which everyone inside could be seen by every passing car.

Ed’s Eats.

He stared pitifully at the diner, the collar of his raincoat turned up, his hands in the pockets, and forced himself to turn and walk away. His stomach growled, loudly, as if it were a cat ready to claw whatever was in the way of its next meal. He stopped, turned around again. He actually did need to eat to keep up his strength. And a couple cups of coffee would keep him awake for the rest of the long night as he paced the streets and figured out his fate. And it was so late that there was probably nobody there who would recognize him. He stood, staring, and as he stood, he caught the drifting scent of something sweet and greasy that set again his stomach to the growl.

Ed’s Eats.

A bell tinkled when he pulled open the door.

18

B
LUES IN THE
N
IGHT

It was brightly lit inside, and warm, and Sinatra was singing from the jukebox. The ceiling was chrome, the stools were covered in washed-out green leatherette, the booths were the same wan color, with spiky coatracks fastened between each. Black-and-silver napkin dispensers, red bottles of Hunt’s ketchup, cut-glass salt and pepper shakers with chrome tops, sugar dispensers filled to the brim. Beside two narrow doors leading to the kitchen, with oval windows cut in each, were shelves filled with small boxes of Kellogg’s cereal and tiny cans of Campbell’s soup. A blackboard with the word “Specials” painted in fancy script had one other word scrawled in chalk: “None.”

A man in a bus driver’s uniform huddled over a plate of eggs at the counter. A woman sitting alone in a booth dipped her tea bag, and dipped it again, and again. Another booth was filled with men, sitting shoulder to shoulder, each in a dark-red suit with narrow lapels, black shirt, yellow tie, and yellow pocket handkerchief. Red fedoras that matched the suits hung jauntily on the coatracks on either side of the booth. They talked in hushed voices over the trashed remnants of a devoured feast, a group of casino crooners after the late show.

Scrbacek looked around carefully; no one looked back. He tucked his chin into his shoulder and took a seat at the counter, away from the bus driver, his back to the plate-glass windows. Perched upon the counter, just to his side, was a chrome jukebox selector with a coin slot on top and the songs listed on a rotating menu.

When the waitress came and brought him a coffee, he avoided making eye contact by looking down at his filthy hands crossed atop the Formica.

“You need a menu, hon?” she said, her voice slack with boredom.

“No,” he said. “A couple of eggs, over easy, with home fries, crispy, and rye toast.”

“That it?”

“And a hamburger, scorched. And a piece of pie. Do you have pie?”

“Apple, French apple, apple crumb, blueberry, peach, lemon meringue—”

“Peach, with ice cream on top. Vanilla. And I want sausage with the eggs, burned. And extra pickles with the hamburger. Do you have pancakes?”

“Short stack or regular?”

“Short stack.”

“That all?”

“No. You’re right. Give me the full load. And some pudding.”

“Tapioca all right?”

“Big or little tapiocas?”

“Big.”

“Perfect.”

“Should I set another place?”

“Nope,” he said, before taking a gulp of his coffee.

She took out a pad and scratched all over it, ripped it off, placed it in front of him.

“That’ll be twenty-one forty-eight with the tax.”

“Thanks,” he said.

She didn’t move. “Twenty-one forty-eight,” she said. “With the tax.”

He looked up at her. She was pretty but tired, with an unfortunate set of teeth. “You want me to pay first?”

She lifted her chin toward a sign atop the wide serving window that led from the counter to the kitchen:
M
ANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO HAVE PATRONS PAY BEFORE FOOD IS SERVED
.

“I’m good for it,” he said, taking another gulp of the coffee.

She didn’t move.

“I told you I’m good for it.”

She didn’t move.

“I’m not going to pay first,” he said. “I’ve never paid first in my life.” He knew it was better to keep silent, but the lawyer in him couldn’t help himself. It was as if the closing argument delivered itself. “I don’t even think that sign is legal. Who decides who pays first, and on what basis? Have you ever heard of
Katzenbach v. McClung
and the case of Ollie’s Barbecue? Have you ever heard of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Have you ever heard of the Constitution of the United States of America?”

“Have you ever heard,” she said, still bored, “of Ed?”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

There, in the kitchen, peeking through the serving window tinted devil’s red by the heat lamps, standing huge and gnarled, with a scar on his lip, a filthy white apron over his T-shirt, a paper chef’s hat on his head, and gripping a shotgun with his fists, stood Ed.

“Twenty-one forty-eight, was it?” said Scrbacek, reaching into his pocket.

“With the tax.”

A bouquet of derisive laughter came from the booth with the red-suited men, which Scrbacek scrupulously ignored as he thumbed through his wad and dropped a bill on the counter.

“You got anything smaller?”

“Sorry.”

It was one of the new hundreds he had won from the casino, a note that looked like a bad copy of Monopoly money, and the waitress held it up to the light, checking all of its myriad security features before taking it to the register, marking it with her currency-testing pen, and making his thick wad of change.

“Two over, spuds extra crisp,” she called through the service window. “Sausage burnt, burger well, no cheese, stack of jacks.”

On his way to the restroom at the end of the counter, Scrbacek had to pass the booth with the four red-suited crooners. Their eyes were harder than he had first thought. He suddenly sensed danger in their identical suits and black shirts, in their narrow yellow ties, in their thin-brimmed fedoras. They were crooners like he was an acrobat. He kept his head down as he passed, but he could tell they were watching him.

“I never would have imagined it,” said one of the men. “Thomas Jefferson eating at Ed’s.”

Scrbacek ignored the laughter.

“Hey, Tom,” said another. “How about an autograph, Tom?”

“Or at least,” said a third in a voice as low as fate, “one of them dead presidents you tossing ’round.”

“Franklin was never president,” said the first. “He was too busy sticking his thang into anything that moved.”

“Since when did doggin’ ever stop a politician? Isn’t that right, Tom?”

Scrbacek pushed open the door of the restroom without breaking stride and quickly locked it behind him. He leaned back against the door and took a deep breath before falling into a spasm of coughs. When it subsided, he pushed himself off the door and bent over the tiny sink. He unwrapped the bandage from his right hand, the gauze now black with filth. The cut on his palm was scabbed and raw, seething with infection. He turned on the water, pumped out soap from the dispenser, scrubbed his hands back and forth hard, rinsed and pumped, and scrubbed again. From his raincoat pocket he took out the pills Squirrel had prescribed. He ignored the Tylenol, fearing the drowsiness of the codeine, but shook out two of the Keflex. As he downed the antibiotic, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

No wonder the waitress had demanded money up front.

His face was filthy, bruised, wet with sweat, and pale with fright. His jaw was darkly stubbled, his hair wildly unkempt and matted with dirt. He punched out more soap and washed his face, rubbing soap deep into the pores. He slapped water onto his hair and combed it back with his fingers. When he dried his face with a paper towel, the paper came up so filthy he did it all again. Then, as clean as he could get in that tiny space, he shucked off his raincoat—wrinkled, singed, streaked with dirt, a jagged hole through the left sleeve—and took a dump. Then he washed everything again.

He was in the restroom long enough that he held hopes the gang with the fedoras would have cleared out, but when he stepped back into the diner, Sinatra was still singing and the red-suits were still sprawled in their booth, as if waiting just for him.

“Hey, Tom, we thought you got lost in there.”

Scrbacek ignored the laughter.

“I think I seen you before, Tom,” said another. “Is that possible?”

Scrbacek kept walking.

“Yo, Tom, fuck,” said a third. In that instant the Sinatra song ended and the jukebox went silent. “My man he be talking to you.”

The bus driver stood, tossed a few coins on the counter, and walked out, the door tinkling behind him. The woman drinking tea buried her face in her purse.

Scrbacek stopped in front of his stool and turned around. All four red-suits were staring. The smallest of the men had twisted in the booth, leaning his face out the booth’s side so his view of Scrbacek was unobstructed, his Chiclet-toothed grin in no way masking the killing hardness of his eyes. Scrbacek stared right back at him.

“I never saw you before in my life,” Scrbacek said.

“You look mightily familiar.”

“I have that kind of face,” said Scrbacek.

“Nah, I seen you before.”

“A course you done seen him before,” said another of the men. “You even knowed his name.”

“What the hell nonsense you spouting?”

“Tom. You called him Tom.”

“Yo, Felix,” said a third. “Keep your mouth shut so everyone don’t know how truly ignorant you are.”

“I ain’t ignorant. If anyone’s ignorant, it’s the Worm.”

“You don’t even know what the word means,” said the small one, the Worm, with his brutal grin.

“Sure I do. It means you got some fiercely ugly teeth.”

“I seen him before. I know I have.”

“Who the hell cares,” said another of the men. “I’ve seen you before, and it’s not doing Mickey a lick of good tonight. Turn around and shut up.”

They laughed, and the little man with the grin stared for a moment more before turning away. Once more the red-suits were huddled over their dirty plates. Scrbacek waited a little longer, making sure they had lost all interest, before he sat down upon his stool.

It was all there in front of him, the feast he had ordered. Even with the fright from the red-suits, his hunger blossomed at the sight of it all. He mashed a yolk into the potatoes, cut a piece of sausage, scooped it all together onto his fork and into his mouth. A wave of satisfaction rushed through him. Before the fork was out of his mouth, he formed another pile with the edge of his toast. He ate like a wolf, gulping the food with barely a chew. He finished the eggs and potatoes as if in a race, and went right to the pancakes, pouring the syrup until the thick liquid lipped off the plate.

When the red-suits grabbed their fedoras and stood from their booth, Scrbacek froze, his fork stranded in midair. The men paid their bill and left, jangling out, laughing.

“Later, Tom,” said one.

“I tell you, dammit to hell, I seen his ugly face before,” said the Worm. “I know I seen it.”

The hugest of them all grabbed a handful of toothpicks from beside the register and stuck one in his gaping mouth, sucking loudly through the teeth of his oversize jaw.

When the bell tinkled and the door closed behind them, Scrbacek let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding and went back to his meal, eating more slowly now. Pancakes and syrup with the rest of the sausage. Hamburger, with ketchup doused atop the extra pickles. Peach pie, the ice cream melted into a creamy pool around its bottom crust. All of it washed down with his second, then his third cup of coffee.

In the middle of his meal, he leaned over to the jukebox selector on the counter and turned the song menu inside the box. Sinatra. Sinatra. All Sinatra. A hundred selections of Sinatra.

“What,” said Scrbacek to the waitress, “no Elvis?”

“Ed likes Frank,” she said.

Scrbacek shrugged, took a quarter of his change, slipped it in the slot, punched D7. He didn’t know the song, just liked the name. First, a flute, then a clash of strings, then nothing but a simple bluesy bass line to accompany the sweet voice as it eased its way through the speakers.

As Frank sang about what his mother had told him when he was in knee pants, Scrbacek turned to the last dish of food before him,
pale-yellow custard teeming with opulent beads of tapioca, glistening like pearls. There was no chance of really enjoying it—his stomach was too painfully stretched to accept another whit—but still he found himself unable to resist. He carved out a spoonful, put it in his mouth, tasted the clean burned vanilla, pressed the soft beads with his tongue.

His mother had made him tapioca pudding just like this. When he was sick in bed as a boy, she would bring it to his room on a tray, a little ramekin full, along with a mug of cocoa, and he would savor the warm vanilla custard, fresh from the pot, and the large squishy beads. He took another spoonful and tried to lose himself in a past of split-level tract homes and red bicycles, of blue station wagons and Little League baseball games and warm tapioca pudding. It had been just like that, his early youth in a suburb across the river from Philadelphia. Playing Twister with the neighbor girls, and the Game of Life, playing basketball in Kenny Park’s driveway, tall glasses of lemonade, hot dogs on the grill, Saturday cartoons. The tragedy of his father’s death. The triumph of an intramural championship. Springsteen concerts. Fourth of July parades. Necking at the air force base with Audrey Boccelli. He’d go there right now if he could, to the innocence of his little suburb, go there in a heartbeat if his mom was still making pudding and his dad was still alive and Kenny Park was still shooting hoops and Audrey Boccelli was still putting out and he could be seven or ten or seventeen again.

Was that the past he was supposed to examine, according to the Contessa’s cards?

Or was it the blur of college when, freed from the confining definitions of the suburbs, he found himself able to explore his inner self. Drugs, sex, Kerouac and Hermann Hesse, all to the sound track of Linkin Park and the Strokes. Studying philosophy and psychology, reading Kant and Camus, Goffman and Skinner. Getting nauseated with Sartre, trembling fearfully with Kierkegaard. He had tried to open his heart to the benign indifference of the universe, but the cap wasn’t a twist-off and there was no opener in sight. He toyed with being a writer, an artist, a photographer, he toyed with finding expression for all that flowed deep within him, but basically he toyed. He took his courses, wrote his papers, ingested whatever was around to be ingested, slept with whatever woman would let him slip between her sheets. He traversed the college years in a sincere haze only to discover, when the haze burned off, that he had found no inner self worth exploring.

No, the Contessa had said there was a choice in his past that had led him here, to this diner in Crapstown, hunted and in fear, with a hole shot straight through his arm. When he looked into his far past, his boyhood and his collegiate years, he saw no real choices. Whether to ask Audrey Boccelli to the prom or one of the primmer, prettier neighbor girls? Was that the choice? He had gone with pretty and prim, asked Susan Winship, who looked great but gave him nothing, not a thing. Whether to major in psychology or philosophy at college? Philosophy, because the girls in the classes were hotter. Whether to mix ecstasy with beer or with vodka? Let’s try both. Whether to quit the lacrosse team after getting beat up for two straight weeks by guys a hundred pounds heavier? Quit, definitely quit. Whether to go to law school or business school? Law, because they accepted him and if he didn’t go, he would have had to find himself a job.