Concourse, p.25
Concourse, page 25
part #2 of Bill Smith & Lydia Chin Series
“Where’s Skeletor?” I turned my eyes back to Snake.
“Got business. He be along later.”
“All right,” I said. “You got me here, you smacked me around a little—was that it? That’s what you sent Speedo for?”
“Naw,” Snake said. “I want to talk to you, white meat. Just first, I had to pay back what I owe. Now sit down.”
One of the impassive faces picked up a hard-backed armchair, clonked it onto the floor near me.
“No, thanks. I’d rather stand.”
“Ain’t no fucking invitation! Sit down.”
Broad-nose put a hand on my arm. I shook him off, looked at Snake. In his eyes I saw what I’d seen the first time we’d met, when I’d had to pull a gun to keep him from killing me with his fists.
I sat. “Can I smoke?”
Snake’s eyebrows rose; he was a man considering a reasonable request. “Yo, my brother. I got no problem with that. Anybody got a problem with that?” he asked the room.
There were some snickers, some headshakes. The guy who’d helped Broad-nose hold me said, “I wanna smoke too, Snake. Only I ain’t got no butts.”
“Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing,” Snake said. “Our white brother gonna share his with us.”
I took out my Kents, pulled one for myself, handed the pack to Snake. Still looking at me, he passed it to the other guy. It went around the room; it never came back to me.
“Now.” Snake perched on the arm of a chair. “We got a problem.”
“Oh?” I held smoke in my lungs, let it go. I could feel my lip beginning to swell. “What’s that?”
“Fact is, we got a lot of problems.”
I didn’t answer.
“And it seem to me,” he said, “that mostly, we got them ’cause there a private dee-tective ’round here, don’t know who he working for.”
“I’m here to find out who killed men you say you didn’t kill. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“That because you ain’t looked to see what the problem is. You ain’t asked yourself, ‘Do Snake got a problem? And if he do, what I’m gonna do about it?’ ”
“You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“Well, you gonna start. And I’m gonna help you out.” He counted on his fingers. “One problem: my man Rev got his ass in jail.”
“Why is that a problem for you?”
“ ’Cause he my homey! He be talkin’ about, Snake, I don’t hang with you no more, but that bullshit. He don’t want Snake to fix him up, he wanna bust his ass for chump change up to the Home of the Living Dead up there, that his choice. But Cobras don’t sit in no jail, white meat. Not if Snake can do something for them.”
“Ex-Cobras.”
He grinned, pushed up his right sweatshirt sleeve. On the inside of his forearm was a tattooed cobra, coiled to strike. He flexed his tendon, made it move.
“See that? It don’t never go away. Once you got that, you always got it.”
He rolled his sleeve down again, still grinning.
“Okay,” I said. “So what are you going to do for him?”
“First thing, I’m gonna find out why some ass-wipe private dee-tective say he my man’s friend, then he be down at the cop house for a hour, come out suckin’ on Lindfors’s dick.”
“I was there an hour and a half,” I said. “How do you know about that?”
“I got people tell me things.”
“Have you had someone following me? First in a Dodge, then a green Chevy?”
“What? Man, you trippin’. I don’t need no one following you. I got homies all over, tell me where you be. So,” he said, “what you been doin’? You sellin’ my man, collectin’ a re-ward? What?”
“I got your man a lawyer,” I said. “Someone set him up. I thought maybe it was you.” I hadn’t thought that, and it was a stupid thing to say. Snake’s eyes flashed. He jumped to his feet. I tensed, forced myself to stay seated. The room crackled; from the corner of my eye I saw Speedo, half off the couch, grinning a grin he was probably unaware of.
Then Snake relaxed. The electricity in the room eased, as though the juice had been turned down, but not off.
“You one wise-ass motherfucker.” Snake settled onto the arm of the chair again. “Don’t seem to me you got much respect.”
“He dissin’ you, Snake,” called the kid on the windowsill.
“Word.” Snake nodded. “And I got a idea, what to do about that. But first, white meat, I’m gonna tell you the rest of my problems.”
Snake lifted his fingers again. “One, we got my man Rev in jail. Two, we got that faggot Lindfors all over my ass, because some motherfucker be killing white boys, make it look like Cobras is doing it. This a problem because you got a cop on your ass, it hard to do business. How-ever—” Snake folded his arms across his chest—“how-ever, right now it hard to do business anyway. You know why, white meat?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I ain’t got no …” Snake hesitated. “Einstein!” He half-turned his head to the guy on the couch next to Speedo. “What is it I ain’t got?”
“Liaison,” the round-faced guy answered over the beer can. “You ain’t got no liaison.”
Snake beamed, turned back to me. “Liaison,” he repeated.
“What are you talking about?” My cigarette was almost gone. I was sorry about that. I took a last drag, crushed the butt under my foot. “What do you mean, liaison?”
“Your liaison,” Snake explained patiently, “he the guy do your business for you.”
“A bagman. I’ve been wondering who your bagman was.”
“Liaison,” Snake corrected. “See, some places me and my homies take care of, we just go on in, ’cause we know we be welcome. Other places, nigger don’t just walk in the front door. Right, homies?”
Murmurs of “Word” and “You so right, brother” from around the room.
“Anybody be coming like that,” Snake went on, “I ain’t give a shit, just send ’em my honky liaison. Then I be sending my main man Skeletor, go meet my liaison. Course, that way, it cost the customers more,” he added, grinning. The grin faded. “But now my liaison be dead. Now what I do?”
“Honky?” I said. “Dead?” The headlights of a car stared into the room momentarily as it turned the corner outside. In here, nobody moved. I thought of a motionless body in the eye of a storm. “Oh, Jesus,” I said, half to myself. “Henry Howe.”
“Yo!” Snake high-fived Broad-nose, who was standing near him. “Maybe you ain’t so stupid, white meat.”
I wasn’t sure that was true.
“If you ain’t,” he continued, “that a good thing, ’cause look what we got.” The fingers, again. “We got the Rev in jail. We got Lindfors on my ass. And we got no liaison. No liaison mean we losing money every day, ’cause ain’t no one collecting. We losing money, and I got expenses.” He gestured broadly at the group behind him. Their eyes were all on us, their faces blank; this was live television, without commercials.
“Plus,” Snake expanded, “we ain’t collecting, people be talking. That Snake, he got his homey in jail, he got a cop on his ass, plus he ain’t collecting. Maybe he ain’t so big as we thought.” He stuck his hands on his hips. “See, I got a reputation I got to protect. What I sell, people don’t think they need it, they ain’t gonna buy it. They be talking about, Snake getting old. Skeletor, he fat—” grins and snorts from the Cobras—“and that motherfucking Einstein spend so much time on his butt thinking, he don’t know how to get down no more.”
Einstein rose, lifted his beer, took a bow.
“See,” Snake went on, “long as the brothers and sisters think we cool, we cool. But long as I got my problems, maybe they thinking we ain’t cool.” He shook his head.
“Sounds bad,” I said.
“Fucking right it bad! Now, you probably sitting there thinking, what can I do, help Snake out?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s just what I’m thinking.”
“Good.” He smiled. “ ’Cause you gonna fix it all, my brother, now that you working for me.”
“Wrong. I’m not working for you.”
“No.” Snake stood. From my low angle, his head and shoulders eclipsed the ceiling’s bare bulb. I squinted against the glare surrounding him, but his features disappeared in it. “My brother, you is so wrong. You working for the Cobras now. You working for Snake.”
He folded his arms. The room was silent. “You gonna find who fronting these fake Cobra jobs, so pencil-dick Lindfors get off my butt. You gonna get my man Rev out the can, any way you got to. Then things gonna settle down. Then I get me a new liaison,” he said, savoring the word, “and the Cobras be back in business. And it all be thanks to my own private eye!”
He laid a finger on his cheek, pulled his lower eyelid down, leaned his face very close to mine. I smelled his sweat, saw thin veins of blood in the white of his eye.
I said again, “I’m not working for you.”
He straightened up, nodded to Broad-nose. That looked bad to me. I started to stand. Broad-nose grabbed me from behind, slammed me back onto the chair. One of the guys with the guns circled closer. The gun was a 9-mm SIG Sauer automatic; I suddenly, irrelevantly wondered if the kid holding it had ever fired anything that big before. It has a kick, I thought. It’ll hurt your shoulder, if you fire it one-handed, like that.
“Snake—” I started.
“Shut up.”
The barrel of the SIG Sauer nuzzled my chin.
Broad-nose reached into his pocket, came out with a roll of adhesive tape. He snapped off the cover, pocketed it. An organized guy. Maybe he kept the Cobras’ books. He pulled the end of it. It made the ripping sound tape makes, coming off a roll. There might have been other sounds in the room; I only heard that.
“What—”
The gun pushed against my jaw. I shut up.
With a quick smooth motion Broad-nose taped my left wrist to the arm of the chair. Then he stepped between me and Snake and did the right; but this one he turned over, so my palm was up.
My hands, I thought. Oh, Jesus. I felt a line of sweat trickle down my ribs. “Snake—” I started again.
“I told you, shut up!” Snake’s voice was ice on a griddle.
No one’s interested in your hands, Smith, I tried to tell myself. No one except you gives a shit about your hands.
“Want me to do his mouth, Snake?” offered Broad-nose.
“We gonna need that?” Snake asked me.
I shook my head. I didn’t know what was coming, but I was fighting to control my breathing already, to make my breathing control the crashing of my heart.
And the ability to yell might be useful, though the chances of this neighborhood responding to sounds from this apartment, I thought, were small.
Snake stuck his hand out. Someone put a switchblade in it. Snake sprang it open, stuck the tip under my right jacket cuff. With a jerk he sliced the sleeve open to the bend of my elbow. He did the shirt too, peeled them both away.
Then he stepped back, smiled. He reached under his sweatshirt, lifted the golden cobra from around his neck. Its chain made a slithering sound as he slipped it from the loop, dropped it on the kitchen counter.
He rooted around in a drawer, came up with a pair of tongs. I realized everyone in the room was moving, slowly, dreamily, positioning themselves to see. The guys with the guns both stood next to me now, one on each side; but I wasn’t watching them. I couldn’t take my eyes off Snake.
At the stove he twisted a knob. Blue flame sprang up. Snake held the cobra over the flame with the tongs, until he was ready; then he walked back, stood above me.
“Now, my brother,” he whispered, “you working for me.”
I heard the hiss before I felt anything. What I felt when it came was pain that seared down into my fingertips, up to my shoulder; and then, unable to escape, it ricocheted back and forth, building up, becoming unbearable, centered in my forearm but now, finally, everywhere.
I smelled burning flesh, my own flesh, and gagged on the smell.
It was over fast. Ten seconds maybe, maybe not even. It wasn’t until Snake pulled the cobra off my arm that I heard myself start to cry out, a strangled sound. I choked it back. Breathe, dammit, I told myself, breathe, it’s only pain, and I tried, pulling air in through my half-closed throat as I watched my right hand beyond the tape clench, open, clench again, rhythmically, uncontrollably, alone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
My memories after that are sketchy. I’ve been told that’s because of what happened later. Maybe; but the images in my mind are confused and disjointed enough to make me think that the next few minutes would never have been mine in any case.
I remember Snake, and the knife. The blade glinted; so did Snake’s gold tooth. “So.” He hovered above me. “Who you work for, white meat?”
I didn’t answer until he touched the glistening snake on my arm with the knife point. I drew air sharply, forced the words through my teeth. “You, Snake.”
I remember the stink of garbage, and the guy in the hooded sweatshirt on the stoop. He hadn’t moved, I marveled. All that, and this guy never moved.
Then I was alone on the sidewalk. It was cold, I remember that, much colder than before. I wanted to zip my jacket but my right hand wouldn’t cooperate. Foolish, I told it, you’ll feel better; but it wasn’t interested. My sleeve dangled. My left arm held my right in a grip like a vise. I forced my hand not to touch the burn, because I knew that was right, though I couldn’t think why.
Later, after everything was over, through all the other bruises and the mess I was, I could see the marks I’d made myself, gripping my arm.
I started up the hill, because that was right too. Back to the lot, to my car, home; I could put something on this, ice, I didn’t know, something, but I knew it would hurt less, out of the Bronx.
I didn’t make it out of the Bronx that night, of course, and my last clear memory is of the parking-lot gate, my own hand reaching for the bell. Then, sounds behind me, moving shadows. A thick arm coiling around my neck. I remember the first blows, though those memories are hazy, and I don’t remember fighting back, though I’ve been told I did.
Just before the blackness, though, I do remember something: running footsteps approaching, and loud cries for help. Through the pounding pain and the darkness I felt myself curiously reassured by the shouting voice. It was, I thought, a voice I could trust. It seemed important that I see the owner of the voice, know who it was. I tried to see, reached out to find him, but it was like struggling through thick black water, and it was too hard. I gave up, slid back, and everything was muted as the sea closed over me.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Cold, and darkness, and noise and pain: pain like a sea, flowing over and around me. I hurt everywhere; I struggled for breath.
Warmer. Quiet. But still the darkness, and the pain.
Something new: a hand in my hand, warm and soft. A mooring. I clung to it, to keep from disappearing in the pain sea.
Later: a woman’s voice, and a man’s. His impatient, hers soft but unyielding. “Do what you have to do,” she said. “It’s not my problem. He’s supposed to be kept quiet and I won’t let you wake him.”
I didn’t understand, but I knew the voice: it was Lydia. I wanted to see her, to talk to her, but the darkness wouldn’t lift.
The darkness wouldn’t lift.
Panic ignited in my chest and sizzled through me. The jolt of it clenched my hand on the hand I was holding. I forced out a word, in a voice I could barely use: “Lydia.”
It was a whisper, too soft to be heard, but she answered me. “Bill? Bill, are you awake?”
Through the fear clanging in my chest I told her, “I can’t see.”
“I know,” she said, “I know. It’s okay. It’s just swelling. It’ll be all right in a day or two.”
Her words worked on my panic like cool water on a burn. It’ll be all right. I let them ring inside my head. Be all right. All right.
“Bill?” Lydia said, bringing me back. “Are you strong enough to talk? Detective Lindfors is here. Just for a minute?”
“Smith?” Lindfors’s voice, gravelly, close, urgent. “Just tell me who it was. It was Snake, those fucking Cobras, wasn’t it? Just say it.”
Snake. Impassive faces; glinting gold; searing pain I could feel now.
“Smith? C’mon.”
Snake.
“No.”
“No? No what? I have him in the fucking can, Smith, but I can’t keep him without your I.D. Just finger him. Just say it.”
“No.”
A pause.
“What the hell is this? What’s he doing?” Lindfors’s voice was farther away now; Lydia answered, something I couldn’t make out. Then he came back. “Is she right? You’re telling me you didn’t see? That’s bullshit. There’s a fucking cobra on your arm. You saw that.”
“Before,” I said. My mouth was dry as felt; words were difficult.
“Okay, before.” Lindfors’s voice was impatient. “And then they beat the shit out of you after. Right? The Cobra crew. Snake and the Cobras.”
“No.” I felt the room moving, swaying on the tide; it was hard to think. I knew what he wanted, and I knew he was wrong, but I couldn’t put two words together to tell him why.
“Dammit!” Lindfors exploded. There was a thud, a fist hitting a wall. “Fucking cowboy! You don’t need the fucking cops, is that it, Smith? You’re gonna wait, you’re gonna get him yourself, in a year or two, when you’re walking again? Motherfucker!” I could feel his rage boiling through the room. Lydia’s hand tightened on mine.
“If you died I could take ’em up for murder!” Lindfors snarled. “You gonna live, you gotta help me. Come on, Smith!”
His voice was hard to hear; it came from many directions, it echoed. I did what I could, working hard.
“Not them,” I finally managed. Then, as I floated away on the sea, I laughed, silently, just for myself.
