The Four-Night Run (35 page)

“What have we here?” said Regina. “Why, bless my heart, it’s J.D. Stifferdeck, bloodied but still alive, come to join the party.”

57

T
HE
F
URIES

They had come from the crumbling buildings of west Crapstown, from the tenements in the south, gangbangers and schoolteachers, weight lifters carrying the lame and the halt. They had come from church shelters and from squatters’ dens and from town houses in the Marina District. Shopkeepers, shoplifters, the guys who sell vegetables from their trucks. One by one and in clumps and in streams, they had joined together, turning themselves into the Crapstown Furies, feared avengers seeking justice for all. Waitresses and drug dealers, taxi drivers and bicycle messengers, blind men clutching their tin cups, sunburned women walking in packs, talking to themselves as if talking to each other, together approaching normal. There had come pimps in business suits, there had come women in whorescloth, there had come kids with skateboards, wizened old women, bookish men with wire spectacles. They had come from the basements of shattered buildings, they had come from the cardboard boxes under the colonnades on West Harrison. Girls with guns, guys with cell phones, old men with tattered clothes falling like stripped skin off their backs. There were bookies taking bets, and gamblers searching for better odds, and men and women both who had found the one true God and were exclaiming to the world at the glory of His word. They had emptied out the crack houses on Coolidge. They had emptied out the mission centers on Pierce. Hoops players and craps players, rappers and twelve-steppers and addicts who hadn’t yet stepped, the coughing, the limping, predators and prey. They had come from west, north, south, from even within the penumbra of Casinoland’s neon glow. They hugged and laughed and fought as they marched together in the rain, ready to violently assert their collective will against that which had torn apart their home.

Scrbacek stood in the middle of the advancing army, amidst a group with which he had become strangely familiar in the past four nights. Regina, still on her Harley, and Ed, shotgun in his arms and cleaver in his apron, and Aboud with his Zastava, and Sergei the Russian, brandishing a tommy gun, and Blixen, a ragged old rifle leaning on her shoulder, and Elisha Baltimore, holding on to Donnie’s arm as he pulled a heavy wooden crate on a dolly. Scrbacek felt a surprising fondness for them all as marchers streamed by on either side. If he had friends outside this ragtag crew, he couldn’t bring them to mind just then.

“Well, we’re doing it, Stifferdeck,” said Regina. “Just like we told you we would. Don’t you be trying to stop us.”

“If you wait a bit,” said Scrbacek, “they’ll do your work for you. When I left there was a war going on inside of Dirk’s.”

“That don’t matter none,” said Regina. “We’re wet to the bone and tired of waiting. If it’s only mopping up, all the better.”

“Suit yourselves,” said Scrbacek. “Did you get me what I asked for?”

“Behind us, Mr. Scrbacek,” said Donnie. “Waiting for you.”

Scrbacek glanced at the crate Donnie was dragging. “What’s in there?”

“Just a few little treats,” said Donnie, grinning. “Homemade.”

“You’re a damn good artist, Donnie. Too good to waste your talent on guns. After this, no more silencers, all right? No more grenades. You can make a fine living from your artwork.”

“I’d like to believe that.”

“You fix up that model, someday it will be on a postcard. You saved my life, Donnie. All of you did. Thank you.”

“You’re the one we owe.”

“Malloy maybe, but not me. I’m just the fool. Ed, when this is over, you’ll keep the grill warm for me, make me some of those special home fries?”

“On the house, Mr. Scrbacek. And from now on, you’ll never have to pay afore you eat, only after.”

“Then all this hasn’t been for naught. You’ve got the common touch, Ed. You ever think of politics?”

“Hell no. I’m an honest man.”

“Well, be careful. All of you. Sergei, take care of Aboud.”

“He safe as puppy with me.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Of course, in Russia now they eat puppy like chicken.”

“Aw, I can take care of myself,” said Aboud, casually waving the Zastava. “You come to the club when this is over, Scrbacek. With Dirk’s gone, business will improve. We’ll be able to hire us some of our girls back, have a whale of a time.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Maybe I’ll even have the great Elisha Baltimore dancing for me.”

“Dream on,” said Elisha. “I’ve got plans. That lawsuit thing you were talking about, J.D., am I going to get a piece?”

“I expect so,” said Scrbacek. “You all should, though I can’t say when anyone would see the money.”

“Well, maybe when I get my share, I can sort of try this thing I’ve been wanting to try. A dance school.”

“Exotic?” said Aboud.

“No, silly. Ballet. For kids. I took ballet as a girl and loved the twirling. I’d like to pass something on.”

“There was a dance school in my model,” said Donnie. “Right next to the West Side Community Center.”

“That’s what got me to thinking about it.”

“I put it in just for you,” said Donnie.

“Donnie,” said Elisha, beaming, “that is so sweet.”

“It’s going to be good, Mr. Scrbacek,” said Donnie, a wide smile. “The whole thing. I know it is.”

“I believe it,” said Scrbacek. “I actually do. Hey, Blixen?”

“Yes, sir,” said the old woman, raising her poor old bones into some semblance of attention.

“What about you? Are you going to hang around?”

“I’m sticking by the sea,” said the old woman. “With my daughter.”

“I’m glad. When I get back, I expect I’ll start lawyering again. Maybe represent kids in trouble, start making up for past mistakes. I’ll need someone to work in the office, keep track of files and motions. You looking for a job?”

“What do you think, I’m crazy? Wear a dress? Go to work? Shave? What do you think, I’m insane?”

“Well, maybe then you’ll just hang around the office and play chess.”

“You can’t keep up with me.”

“I beat you once already.”

“I let you.”

“I know.”

“I told them you were our knight.”

“I’m not. I never was.”

“You’ve got the nipples for it, though, don’t you? Our home is your home now. Just stay away from the piers. Don’t swim near the piers. The pylons are murder.”

“I won’t, Blixen. I promise.” Scrbacek looked around. “Where’s the Nightingale?”

Blixen pointed into the air. Through the rain, Scrbacek could just make out a shadow standing tall on a rooftop, hip cocked, gun in hand. Scrbacek waved, and the shadow waved back.

“This is touching as two humping hummingbirds,” said Regina, “but we’re getting soaked just standing here.”

“Caleb Breest wasn’t part of it,” said Scrbacek.

“He tell you that?”

“Not in so many words, but it’s true. It was all Torresdale.”

“It don’t matter. Breest killed Malloy, didn’t he?”

“Whatever he did, it was because of Torresdale.”

“What are you, still his lawyer?”

“I’m just telling you the truth.”

“The truth is, Stifferdeck, it’s time for you to clear out and for us to do our damage.”

“There’s another way.”

“Maybe,” said Regina. “But this is our way.” She revved her engine and shouted to the passing crowd: “Let’s kick some ass and make it happen.”

There was a huge cheer as she rumbled forward into the guts of the moving mob. Torches were raised high, the flames burning wildly, sizzling in the rain. Guns were held aloft, blades waved, invectives shouted. The whole scene grew ever more medieval as the grand army of the Crapstown Furies moved west, through the rain, marching toward the stronghold of the enemy. Scrbacek held his ground as his friends rejoined the march and the remainder of this ragtag people’s militia surged past.

He had told their Inner Circle, deep in the cavern, that there would be a lawsuit, that the killing would stop, that if they had the strength of purpose to hold their ground, they could do it without the war, do it within the system, and everyone would be better off. But Regina, converted to action, had led the battle cry and the others had followed. The word had been spread, this army had been raised, there was no turning back. They wouldn’t wait for the system to take the boot off their necks, they wouldn’t wait for a deliverer, they would do it themselves, now, and Scrbacek couldn’t blame them. He couldn’t join them, because it was not his way, but he couldn’t blame them. Hit first—that was part of what he had learned in his four nights in Crapstown. Jump on them before they jump on you. And so they would.

At the tail of the mob, he could hear the creak of wheels and a bumping, rolling noise. It was a metal cart, like a room service cart, its top and sides covered by a white oilcloth, except that room service carts don’t have a big red cross painted on the cloth and a black medicine bag sitting in the center. The cart was being pushed by a small man, his head down, straining to keep up with the crowd.

“What do you have there, Squirrel?” said Scrbacek.

Squirrel stopped suddenly and lifted his head. Rain poured down his face as he squinted behind his big round glasses. “Oh, Scrbacek. It’s only you. Just a little first-aid station. We each must do our part.”

“I bet.” Scrbacek leaned toward the cart and lifted the oilcloth. The stink of formaldehyde washed over him. Rows of large glass bottles sat on the two wide shelves beneath the cloth, all but one empty except for a clear fluid sloshing back and forth. All but one. This last held some large obscure mass, and the fluid in the jar was dark, and all that gave away what once the mass had been was the great clot of red hair that floated about it.

“Everyone needs a hobby,” said Squirrel as he jerked the cloth out of Scrbacek’s hand and let it fall to cover the spectacle.

“So you’ve said.”

“He won’t miss it, I promise you.”

“No,” said Scrbacek, “I suppose he won’t. You got a bandage for my cut?”

The little man examined Scrbacek’s split cheek before rummaging in his bag. “You need stitches,” he said as he pulled out gauze, tape, a gleaming pair of scissors, “but I don’t have time for niceties.”

When Squirrel was finished, the wound closed with tape, covered with gauze and more tape, he put everything back in his bag, bent low, and without a word began again to push his cart forward, the creak of the wheels following like a warning.

Later, much later, after the lawsuit was settled for an astonishing amount of money and after Ed was elected mayor, astounding the pundits, and after the first of the new community centers was erected, its stainless steel surfaces echoing the hammered sheen of Donnie’s model city, Scrbacek would handle a delicate legal matter for one Octavio Shlemnick. In gratitude, Shlemnick would invite Scrbacek into his private den on Garfield Street, lead him through the secret doorway, and then down the long dark steps to the basement, where rows and rows of large glass jars were each brilliantly illuminated. Inside the jars floated Octavio Shlemnick’s grand collection. Hands, eyes, livers, the twisted lines of aborted Siamese twins. A foot, with its toenails needing trimming. A bottle of spleens. A penis that, by God, must have been Dillinger’s. The long loops of a gastrointestinal tract. Remi Bozant’s smiling face.

Scrbacek would gasp when he saw it all, and then feel the fascination rise within him. Rubbing his chronically sore arm, itself once destined for the jars, he would walk among the samples, examining each. And he would stop in front of one bottle, larger than the others, and stare for a long time. Even after examining the rest, he would return to this selfsame bottle. Inside, so big that the oversize bottle could barely contain it, would be a huge pink thing, flabby and soft, the consistency of a rotting sponge, with clogged white things swooping up and out on either side. There would be no labels, but no labels would be needed, for Scrbacek would know exactly what it was inside that gaol of glass.

And whenever the old stories again were raised, the litany of horrors, whenever the legend of Caleb Breest was told and told again, Scrbacek would tamp down the talk and tell one and all, with complete conviction, “Say what you will about Caleb Breest, but I represented him, I understood him better than anyone alive, and I can tell you, unequivocally, that he had the biggest heart of any man I’ve ever known.”

When Squirrel had caught up to the mob, Scrbacek turned away and began again walking east. He could see now, behind the sallow glow of Casinoland, the brightness of something rising above it, promising to turn the neon insignificant. He kept walking, soaked through and not caring the least, until he found the thing that he had asked for.

“You the guy I’m supposed to wait for?” said the man sitting in the driver’s seat of a beat-up blue-and-white excuse for a cab. “Are you—what is it? Scribble-something?”

“Scrbacek.”

“Scrbacek, yeah, that’s it. What the hell kind of name is Scrbacek?”

“It’s an old Apache name. It means ‘lost no more.’”

“Funny, you don’t look Indian.” The taxicab driver gestured to Scrbacek’s damaged face. “I hope the other guy, he looks worse.”

“Does he ever,” said Scrbacek as he opened the door.

When Scrbacek dropped into the seat, a wave of weariness flooded through him. He couldn’t believe he could be this grievously sore, this tired, this relieved to be still alive. He leaned forward and checked that the face on the taxi license matched the face of the driver. It did. Jake Tomato. Nice name. He leaned back.

“Where to?” said Tomato.

Scrbacek reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a soaking wad of bills, all that was left of his glorious win at blackjack four nights before. He tossed the whole wet mass through the window in the Plexiglas partition. “Is this enough to get me to Philadelphia?”

The driver carefully extricated the bills one from another and smoothed them out on the seat beside him. “Yeah, it’s enough. It’s more than enough.”

“Good,” said Scrbacek. “Then let’s do it.”

Tomato started the engine. The cab, its shocks spent, jostled off and turned hard to the left. Scrbacek’s head bounced to one side, bounced to the other. He had so much to think about, to digest, there was so much of his past he had still to pay for, but just then he didn’t have the strength to review it all. He barely had the strength to close his eyes.