Every Last Drop

Ripe for the taking.

That’s all I can think as I watch them.

The crowd pouring out of the Stadium, tens of thousands cramming out onto River and the Concourse, flooding the street under the 4-train tracks as the trains screech in and out overhead, more people packing the cars sardine tight, tripping up the steps, cascading down into the tunnels, mashing into Stan the Man’s, northbound traffic making for the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Triborough stalled out from all the people wandering the street. Drunk and half drunk, ecstatic from a win or enraged from a loss, a blue-and-white pinstriped mass of thousands.

All of them full up.

Each of them enough to keep some sad son of a bitch on his feet for weeks. For months if he has some self-control and knows how to go about his business. Most of them strangers to the South Bronx, never seen more of it than this one subway station or the parking lot and the Stadium itself. Each one full to their pumping heart with quarts of blood.

Any wonder every fucking game brings trouble?

Sure, no big secret. That's why the cops are out there. Cops keep the traffic moving in fits and starts. Cops keep the Bleacher Creatures from chewing the ears off any Sox fans stupid enough to stay through the ninth inning on a night their team came to town and won. Cops keep an eye out for pickpockets and for drunks falling under the buses and for snatch-and-grab artists.

If I gave a shit about any of that stuff I'd give them a hearty pat on the back and maybe buy a boy in blue a beer sometime.

But I don't care.

What I do care about are poachers. What I care about are starvelings. I care about the greedy and the weak, the foundering and the lost and the plain stone stupid. I care about them so much that I try to show my face around here after every night game. Just to make it plain and clear.

Clear that they should get off this turf before I come up behind them in an alley one night and put two in the back of their fucking skull before they even know I'm there.

The halt and the lame. They got no place. Not as long as I'm stuck up here.

Up here.

Stand up top long after a game, well before sunrise. Stand on the 4 platform

and look south and you can see it. You can see the City right there. One stop over the river.

Fucking China to me.

Coming down to the street, iron bars walling stairs and turnstiles and platforms, arching overhead, meeting the steel undercarriage of the tracks, like walking circles in a cage.

My cage.

No one shits in my cage.

So after a game I make the scene. Truth to tell, figure I'd make it even if I didn't have practical concerns. Figure I'd be out there on River just to take advantage of pretty much the only time I can stick my face out of doors in the neighborhood and not pique someone's curiosity.

A white face in the South Bronx after dark, it draws a little attention. During the day, around the courthouses on One Sixty-one, you see plenty of them. Cops and lawyers and the occasional plaintiff. But they all go home come night. Closest any of them live to One Sixty-one and the Concourse might be Riverdale. More likely Jersey or Queens.

Still, during the day I could blend in real easy eating a Cuban from Havanna Sandwich Queen on one of the benches next to a statue of Moses bringing the

Ten Commandments down the hill. Look at my build, my face, my black boots and black Dickies on a summer day, with my leather jacket draped over the warm stone bench, and someone might naturally think undercover. Think I'm some cop up here to testify.

But that would require I was out during the day.

Which isn't on my agenda. Ever.

Not until I develop a serious taste for dying from instantaneous eruptions of bloody pustules on my eyes.

So if I desire to take the air, my promenades must come be-times at night. And, man, there just ain't no other fucking white people in these parts after the sun goes down. And drawing eyes is not something I have much desire to do.

Who that guy?

Seen him around?

Gotta be Five-0.

Naw, see him for months. Never make a move on no one.

He ain't livin' up here.

Don't know, could be he is.

What block? What building?

Next thing you know, go down a block on a hot night: Old guys got their card table and their wives' favorite kitchen chairs out on the sidewalk to play dominoes; young guys standing around someone s leased Escalade, bass beats rippling their baggy shorts, shooting texts to the shorties looking down from a fire escape across the street; windows open, rice and beans and stewed chicken smells coming out, mothers and grandmothers and pregnant girls inside laughing and sipping sangria made from jug red and 7Up; someone catches sight of me and the party just shuts down. Hear nothing but my boots on the pavement, see nothing but sideways eyes scoping me out all the way to the end of the street until I turn the corner and they all look at one another.

Who the fuckin' white guy?

Figure a question like that can drive some people crazy. Figure some people got to know. Figure sooner or later someone gets in my face. Figure that doesn't end well.

Figure that isn't the real fucking problem anyway.

The real fucking problem is when that question circulates too far, rumors start, people tell stories, stories spread.

The river, I can't cross it, but any of these people can. And they can take questions and rumors and stories with them. And once that kind of shit is over there on the Island, no telling where it ends up. Ends up in the wrong place,

maybe someone hears it. Someone hears it, maybe someone decides to look into it. Someone looks into it, maybe someone sees me. Someone finds me. And once I'm found by someone from the Island, figure my game is played out. Figure me dead.

Well, that's on the agenda, but I'm trying to see if I can't attend to that matter at a later date. More pressing business at the moment.

Places to go. People to see.

And kill.

Goals. Ambitions. They keep a man going.

Any case, all the restrictions my new neighborhood puts on me, figure I'd stroll over after the games just to mix with the crowd. Just to be out. Anonymous. Free is a word you could use if you like. If you like a good laugh, that is.

And while I'm there stretching my legs, I take a look around, take a sniff of the air, see if I maybe smell something I don't like. I smell something I don't like, I can make a point of finding who it is. Maybe find an intimate moment when the crowd eddies around us, lean close and make myself clear.

I had such an opportunity tonight.

Waiting on the last couple outs of the ninth inning inside Billys, nursing a

plastic cup of tap beer, mentally adding the last of the singles and change in my pocket to see if I could make it come out to enough for a real drink before I wrapped up. I smelled something waft in from the street. I knocked the bottom of my cup against the bar and watched the foam rise, watched it boil down, drank the last of it lukewarm and headed out to the street where the crowd from a not very close loss was already pouring surly out of the Stadium.

Want to smell rank? Smell a few thousand baseball fans on a hell-humid night after a bad loss. Sweat-soaked jerseys, urine-soaked sneakers, dribbled pump-cheese, a cloud of exhaled peanut breath and hot dog farts.

Unpleasant.

And still, I can smell it.

Scent like slightly diluted acid, cutting my nasal passages. Hard sharp poison. Venom.

Vyrus.

I start cutting the crowd, working my way back and forth across the street on sharp diagonals, looking for the scent. And finding it. Finding it over and over.

The dildo somewhere up ahead of me must be following a similar path, but cutting for signs of different prey. Looking for a mark. Someone who will cull

themselves drunk from the herd and wander down the wrong long street, into an absence of light where any old bad shit can take place.

I can be patient. Wait till he starts moving in a straight line. That will be the sign, when he stops blundering back and forth leaving trail after trail, that'll be the sign he's found what he wants. The idiot, out here making a spectacle of himself, hunting in the open like a bag-snatcher.

Or.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, who's the idiot now?

Right. Me.

It’s not a single trail zigzagging the crowd.

It's trails.

A pack. A fucking pack in the crowd. A fucking pack of young-bloods working the crowd after a game. Cocky in numbers, ignorant of fear, dumber than dirt.

Christ, does that ring a bell.

Like my own bell tolling away before I learned a thing or two.

I can't tell how many. Their lines are all stirred together in the dead air by the shuffling herd. But the scent is strong. So make it three. Maybe make it

four. No more than that. Four together is pushing any kind of balance. Four can't last together for long. Tear each other apart.

No more than four. More likely three. Two?

That's wishful thinking.

But Christ, let it be no more than three.

More than three and I just won't have enough bullets. Three bullets being all I have at the moment. Three bullets, a likewise amount of dollars, and maybe that many days I can get through healthy before I need to get my hands on some more blood of my own.

Well, not blood of my own. More like blood of someone who can maybe spare a couple pints. Those people, they tend to be a rare commodity. Most people need all they got. And some of us, some of us need all we can get our damn hands on.

Every last drop.

— Now! Now! Clear the fuck off now! — Fuck you! — Yeah, fuck you! — Not your fuckin' street!

— Gonna meet the street in a second. Gonna be assumin the position gangsta style, face in the gutter in a second.

— Man, fuck you!

I swing round and watch some cops dealing with four kids whipping through the crowd on bright little pocket bikes, knees jutting high from the two-foot-tall cycles, engines rising and falling as they give little pulses of gas to keep themselves in motion.

The cop on point adjusts his gun belt.

— Say that word to me again! Say it again! Taser your ass right off that bike. Know what happens I hit you with a Taser? Make you shit your pants, kid. Lie there crying mami, mami and your pants full of shit just like when you were a baby.

One of the kids guns his bike, the tails of his do-rag flapping behind him. -Man, Taser you mama. -What? Say what?

The kids cut back and forth between cars and pedestrians, never losing balance, staying just far enough from the cops that if the officers get serious the kids know they can get away. -Say you mama need a Taser for her stinky pussy.

The cops are half smiling as they walk slowly, herding the kids away from the heart of the Stadium outflow. Enjoying the distraction. But clearly not

above busting a little skull if they can get their hands on the fuckers.

The point cop fingers the handle of his baton and tilts his chin at his partner. -Kid's clearly never met your mama, Olivera, otherwise he'd know how sweet her pussy smells.

Olivera hoists a middle finger at him. -Not as sweet as your mama says my dick is.

Do-rag rises on his pegs.

— Cops be all in each other mama's pussies. I wait till you at it and fuck you daughters.

The point cops fingers curl on his baton. -That ain't fuckin' funny, you little shit.

Olivera adjusts his hat. -I ain't even got a daughter and I don't think it's funny.

Do-rag shrugs, weaves around a clot of baseball fans watching the scene play. -No problems, man. I fuck you wifey instead.

And the two cops run at the kids and the two other cops that had been working their way over from the north end of the street where the new Stadium

is going up run at the kids and the kids hit the gas, the tiny 49cc engines whining and the crowd scatters and the cops scream and when the dust settles the backs of the kids flick out of sight around the corner, one of them waving the cap he snatched from the head of one of the cops.

The crowd rustles back into its former rhythm and shape, everyone avoiding eye contact with the cursing cops. The cops stand in a circle and ask one another if they've ever seen those kids before, what block they maybe live on, what building they maybe live in, discussing how much ass they're gonna kick when they catch up to them.

I wander across the street, crossing the path the kids took as they rode off, knowing the cops will be lucky if they never see that particular group of little shits ever again.

Poison in the air.

Poison left hanging by that pack.

Kids no older than thirteen. Could they be older? Sure they could. If they were heavy feeders they could be old men on the inside. But they're not. Old men wouldn't make a spectacle like that. Old men wouldn't bait cops. No, they're new.

New to the life.

Jesus, thirteen, they're new to everything there is. And destined to never get old to it. Not the signs they're flashing. Big signs, neon and bright: KILL ME NOW!

I cross to Gerrard, the crowd thinner, the traffic for the CBE and the Triborough heavy, past the long low bunker of the parking garage.

Thinking.

Yeah, I'm thinking about the kids. But I got other things on my mind as well. Like I'm thinking about who made them that way. Who bled into them. And how many must have died ugly on the way to infecting those four.

And I'm thinking how life isn't an easy thing. Nasty, brutish and short, so they say. And how you got to take your pleasures where and when you find them. Because they may not come again.

And I'm thinking just how much pleasure I'm gonna take from scalping the guy who infected those kids. How much fun it's going to be to peel his skull and shove the rag of skin and hair down his throat to muffle the screams while I figure ways to make him live as long as possible as I yank his ribs out.

Any wonder I'm so distracted I don t register the stink of them as I pass the gated mouth of an alley until I'm twenty feet past it?

I pull up and walk back. The alley is right next to Cassisi and Cassisi

Accident Cases. Se habla espanol. Like any of the ambulance chasers in these parts don't habla espanol.

I look between the red-painted bars of the gate, down the narrow space between buildings where old stone walls topped by curls of razor wire separate good neighbors. There's a concrete staircase climbing to the backs of buildings that face on Walton. A splash of red much brighter than the paint on the gate at the foot of those stairs.

I push the gate open, the chain that's meant to keep it closed dangles, links snapped clean. At the end of the alley, a sound. Reminds me of a cat I saw once, had its hindquarters run over by a bus. Cats forelegs kept reaching out, claws rasping the asphalt, trying to get purchase, pull itself away from the pain. People stood on the sidewalk, stared at the mutilated cat. I stepped on its neck and it stopped moving. Way people reacted, you d have thought I did the wrong thing.

She's where they left her, on the pavement, blood bubbling from her lips, red fake fingernails raking the ground. Her eyes roll as my shadow falls across her. Looks at me, wheezes, says something. -Ee iunt aigh ee.

It takes a second, but I get it.

She's right. They didn't rape her. A hard thing for her to fathom about a gang

of rabid kids who just bit her tongue out.

Her eyes roll again, up into her head this time, and she's out.

I look around. Lights in the back windows of the tenements. A collection of overfull garbage cans with a chain running through their handles. The kind of alley where people steal fucking garbage cans. Up the stairs it's darker, a little alcove huddled at the bottom of one of the buildings, a door leading into a basement.

I pick her up and put her over my shoulder and go up the stairs and down into the alcove. The door is steel, the lock is cheap. It pops the second time I put my shoulder into it. I take her inside and dump her in a corner.

She's stopped bleeding. She's stopped bleeding for the same reason I'm not drinking her blood right now. The kids infected her. Could have been on purpose. Could have been an accident. Biting off someone's tongue, figure there's a good chance you might get your own lips bit. However it went down, she got some of the kids blood in her.

And she liked it.

Or something in her liked it.

Or however it works.

If it hadn't worked, if she wasn't the kind can take the Vyrus, shed be dead

in a puddle of white spew already. As it is, the wound in her mouth and the various scratches and scrapes she got in the tussle are closed up. Vyrus going to work. So I settle in.

I could kill her.

I should kill her.

I don't and shell either end up drawing attention to her new condition and making things harder for everyone else. Or she'll take to it and be another mouth that needs to feed. More competition for everyone. Not that I care about everyone. Still, fact that she's likely got no future that doesn't involve making my life harder in one way or another is enough that I should kill her now.

But I don't.

Someone had a chance to make that call on me way back and he passed on the option. I don't talk to that guy anymore. Not since I stuck a nail in his femoral artery, but he did right by me once.

Least I can do is try the same.

Give her the score.

Let her decide.

So I smoke. And wait. Wait for the Vyrus to finish working her over. Then

we can have a talk.

Christ I hope she doesn't scream too much when I try to explain it to her.

— Here's how the rest of your life works. You're fucked. Your family, you don't get to see them ever again. Same with your friends. Your job is over. Wherever you live, you don't live there anymore. You see someone on the street that you used to know, you go the other way. You see those people, you get tempted to talk to them. Try to explain. What you try to explain is that you're sick. You try to explain its not what they think. Its a virus. A thing living inside you. It makes you sicker than they can imagine. And there's only one way to treat it. To treat the symptoms. That's to feed it. And there's only one thing to feed it. That's blood. People blood. Know what happens when you tell them that? They get the same look on their face that you got on yours right now. Know the difference? They're not infected. They didn't just get jumped and beaten and have their tongue bitten out by a pack of wilders who proceeded to suck on their mouth like it was a water fountain. And because that didn't happen to them, they cant feel what you're feeling. That burn inside, the heat and tingle around your wounds. They can't look at the cuts on their bare arms and see they're already closed up, turning pink to white. They cant feel the scab grow over their stub of a tongue, feel it flaking away, feel how smooth and perfect it is now. Feel that it almost seems to be growing back.

Unlike you, they hear a story like that, they got no reason to think you re anything but out of your fucking head, and get you locked up. And that's the happy ending. The unhappy ending is if they should believe you. If someone should somehow find out you're telling the truth. Because they sure as shit wont think you're sick, they'll think you're a goddamn monster. And wont it be fun to see that look on their faces. So, no more life. Its over. Other things are over too. You'll never see the sun again. Not unless you re about to die a horrible death. The virus in you goes crazy if it's hit with shortwave UVs from the sun. Your whole body becomes cancerous. Fast. Good news, none of the other crap is a problem. Crosses, holy water, garlic. That shit, it's shit. You're infected, not damned. Or maybe you are. I don't know. A stake through the heart will kill you, just like any asshole. But when it's fed, the Vyrus will crank up your system. Stronger, faster. Heightened senses. And tough. But keeping it fed is the thing. A pint a week. Blood. Human. More if possible. Think about drinking blood. Not a happy thought. Now think about getting it. The kids that attacked you, they're not the norm. Well, up here they may be a little more normal, but still pretty fucking baroque. The City, Manhattan, it's organized. Clans got it carved up. Coalition, Hood, Society, others. Each ones got an agenda. A Clan takes you in, they'll help you get settled. Adjusted. Not a joiner, you can go Rogue, stay the fuck off Clan turf. That means staying off the Island. Means getting blood on your own. Means hurting people, mostly.

Means sometimes someone gets killed. But better if they don't. Better if you develop a system. Find a junkie on the nod you can tap him for a pint. Vyrus doesn't care about the junk. Doesn't care about any kind of illness or poison. Keep it healthy, it keeps you healthy. And maybe I'm wrong about your people. Maybe you're special close to someone. Could be your boyfriend. Could be your sister. Someone that's got a taste for being used. You know the type. Maybe they got it in them to let you cut into a vein every few weeks. That makes things a lot easier. Still need to make some moves, but you have someone like that, a Lucy like that, and things get easier. Not that easy is a word gets thrown around much in this life. What else? People know about us. Not a lot, but a few. Well, some know about us, others just hope we're real. Some, they want in on the game, want to make the scene. Fucking Renfields. Others, they got an axe to grind. Some of them got real axes. Van Helsings. A real one is bad news. Someone who can go around in the day, poke into things, has a credit rating to buy guns and bullets and stuff, and who also knows the real score on us, that's a serious danger. And? What? And there's some infecteds think the Vyrus isn't a virus. Like maybe it's something, I don't know, something supernatural. Enclave. They're crazy. And there's a bacteria. Kinda like the Vyrus, cept it turns people into brain eaters. Zombies. But that's pretty rare. So. I don't know what else. I don't usually talk this much. I blow some smoke at the ceiling.

— I feel like I'm forgetting something. Vyrus. Clans. Zombies. Stay out of the sun. Don't get shot. Abandon your life. Drink blood to survive.

I shake my head. -No. Guess that pretty much covers it.

I flick my cigarette butt away.

— So, question is, can you take it? I lay it out like that, do you think you're the kind who can take it?

She wipes at the drying tear tracks in the grit on her cheeks. She sticks a finger in her mouth and touches her healing tongue, takes her fingers out of her mouth and looks at me.

Says nothing.

I nod, point up at the barred window at ground level, the night sky above. -Look up there.

She looks.

I pull out my gun and use my last three bullets.

Walking down the street, heading north, my ears ring loud from the shots fired in the basement.

I'm a good shot. But shooting from the hip, I didn't want to worry about the first bullet missing the middle of her brain and her having a couple seconds to think about it. To feel it. Better to put all three in her face as fast as possible. Leave nothing to chance.

She wasn't stupid, shed never have been able to make that play herself.

Someone who knew me might say I was trying to make up for some kind of mistake I made in my past. Trying to do something like compensate for the mess I left behind on the Island. Trying to make right for a time when I moved too slow and let someone slip away from me.

But no one knows me here.

Any other reason to be in the Bronx, I don't know what it could be.

At the north end of Joyce Kilmer Park, a rust, primer and white station wagon that looks like it was recently firebombed cruises up next to me and a match flares inside. -Tell me, Joe.

I put a hand on my gun, wishing I'd maybe used just two bullets instead of three.

The match flame touches the end of a cigarette between two red lips.

— Was doing that as unpleasant as it looked?

— You see who hit her?

— Yeah.

— Want to share?

— Know anything about tweens on pocket rockets, wilding for blood?

She looks at me, puts a tilt on her head, looks away. -Yeah. I know that picture.

She leans her arm out the open window of the decaying station wagon, looking at the towering glass facade of the Bronx County Hall of Justice across One Sixty-one from the Concourse Plaza shopping center where she's parked us. -Was it them?

I do my own head-tilt.

— Did the four spastics buzzing the Stadium crowd chew the chicks tongue out? Tell ya, Esperanza, I didn't witness the act, but I'm assuming they did the deed.

She flicks a spent cigarette butt out the window.

I blow rings at the windshield, watch them explode against the glass.

Not to be outdone, she lights a fresh Pall Mall and blows a ring of her own. -That girl without the tongue. You made a lot of noise. Cops are already over there.

— I guess even around here someone is bound to call in shots fired in their basement.

— Well, were not savages up here. -Didn't say otherwise.

Smoke jets from her nostrils.

— Girl with her face shot off, gonna create some interest. -Maybe. As much interest as another gun killing gets these days. -Could get more than usual attention if anyone saw you. White guy in the Bronx murdering a Rican girl. Never know with a story like that. Turns out she was a college student, maybe supporting her grandma and her little sister, a story like that could end up with legs. Social outrage. White men coming to the Bronx to hunt our Latina sisters. End up with Reverend Sharpton doing interviews at the scene of the murder.

I peel a strip of fabric from the shredded headliner.

— Better give the Post a call. Give your exclusive before its too late.

She blots some sweat from her temple with the back of her hand, a cross tattooed in the flesh where her thumb joins her hand glistens. -I'm not arguing whether it was the thing to do, I'm just saying you could have been a little quieter.

— Sure. I could have left a nice quiet corpse of a woman with a broken neck. And they could have autopsied the body and found nothing else wrong, except that she had only half a tongue. Nice and pink and healed and looking like shed been born that way. And wouldn't that have provoked some interest when her family found out about it. Half a tongue? What are you talking about? Oh, and I imagine the M.E. might also have been intrigued by the way she was missing about half her blood with no fresh wounds through which it could have come out.

She pinches the butt of her cigarette between thumb and forefinger. -And when you showed the fuck up here on my turf I could have cut a deal with the Mungiki and had you escorted into the fucking river. But you said you d be cool. So if I want to talk to you about shit that doesn't play cool by me, you can listen and not talk hardcase. Yeah?

I flick some ash.

— Didn't know you had pull with the Mungiki.

She lights a fresh Pall Mall.

— Yeah, well, you don't mix enough to know shit up here, do you? — Nope.

— No one has pull with the Mungiki. But since they moved to Queens they sometimes need a favor here. -How you get that gig?

She sighs.

— I used to date one of them. -Dated a Mungiki? Filed teeth and all?

She gives me that look again. -Don't believe all the shit you hear, man. They don't file their teeth.

She watches as a handful of couples file out of the Multiplex from the last show.

— Not all of them, anyway. And he wasn't Mungiki when we were hooking up. Just a guy.

— Huh, well, fascinating stuff, but if we're done threatening each other, I thought I might get on. Maybe look into those kids.

She blows ash from the tip of her cigarette. -Don't fuck with the kids.

I eye her. -There a reason I shouldn't?

She eyes me back. -Yeah. I just told you not to.

We do a stare-down while I chew it.

Lady looks twenty-one. Maybe younger. She older? Yeah, a few years, but not by much. You don't feed heavy in the Bronx, not heavy enough to keep the years at bay. Look at me, couple years back I looked maybe late twenties. Now Id be pressed to pass for thirty-five. At this rate I'm gonna catch up with forty-eight in a hurry.

But she's got youth on her side. Real youth, not the borrowed kind.

Long in the legs. Khaki cargo pants, white retro Jordans, a black tank tucked at the waist, tight over a black sports bra. Tattooed shoulders, hands, neck, designs dark against brown skin. Black hair, short and greased back. Sinews running down long arms. Loping muscles built playing point guard with the boys at Rucker Park over the river.

Esperanza Lucretia Benjamin.

Closest thing the Concourse has to a boss. Only one up here seems to care if the lid ever blows off. Only one can talk to the Mungiki and come away with her head unsevered. One tough chick.

Warden.

Two ways you go to prison.

First way is keep your eyes down and suck up against the wall when the big dogs pass by, hope no one notices how harmless you are, how badly you just want to do your time and get back to your life on the outside. Spend your days counting the minutes till someone maybe decides you got a mighty pretty mouth.

Second way is go in and take a look around and find the chair in the day room with the best view of the TV, go up to the skinhead sitting in it, spit in his face, and shank him in the ear with the sharpened end of your toothbrush. Let everyone know you're not going anywhere. You're not a guest, you're fucking home. Do it that way, and when you get out of solitary you'll find that chair waiting for you to plop down in it and watch General Hospital.

Guess which was my approach.

Found a patch of Franz Sigel Park, a patch near the corner of Walton

Avenue and Mabel Wayne Place where they got that cute red, white and blue sign. The Bronx. All-American City. A patch of trees and weeds and rock that reeked of some fucker doing his thing there for years.

Then I staked it out, waited till he dragged someone back into his favorite spot, came up on him as he was getting ready to put on the feedbag and I broke his spine in three places and let him lie there paralyzed and watch me while I dined out on his handiwork.

I peed all over his yard.

Then I killed him.

Soon enough, Esperanza called. Made it clear she was what passed for law around here. Made it clear what she was looking for in a neighbor. Made it clear that One Sixty-one and the Concourse being about as close to civilization as you get up here, she wanted to see it remain that way. Made it clear that the only kind of profile that would do in these parts was a low one. And I made it clear I couldn't agree with her more. Proved the point by showing her the corpse I'd made out of the guy who'd been living in Franz Sigel. A guy it turned out had been the source of Monster in the Park stories amongst the citizens. The kind of stories that attract undue attention.

She was pleased.

And I was home in the Bronx.

Again.

Not that I've strayed over to Hunt's Point to walk down memory lane and see the house I grew up in or anything. Do that and I might get inspired to burn it down. And I kind of doubt that my folks are still living there, so what would be the point?

Any case, not an easy woman to get on the right side of. And, once there, you don't want to circle round to the wrong side.

Not on her turf.

Our cigarettes go out and, in the interest of lighting new ones, we end our staring.

I inhale smoke, blow it out. -OK. III stay away from the kids.

She looks me over, nods. -That out of the way.

The tip of her finger touches the corner of her mouth. -You got plans the rest of the night?

I wave my cigarette. -Smoke this. Steal some money so I can get more cigarettes. Go hide from

everybody.

— Very nice.

— Yeah, and I got a good book and a lovely bottle of chardonnay to curl up

with later.

— Feel like company?

I look at her. I try to do it from the corner of my eye, but why bother? She knows I'm looking.

This one, pure hell on wheels, asking me if I want some company.

Do I.

I take a drag, chew on it, let it loose, and climb out of the car. -I want company, III find a dog.

She keys the ignition and the wagon grinds to life. -If that's what floats your boat, Joe, you have a good time.

She puts the car in gear, rolls to the drive, exhaust pouring from her tailpipe.

I stand there and watch till her lights are lost in traffic.

It ain't the first time she's asked. Not that I'm bragging. I'm just saying she's the kind of woman knows how to complicate a mans thinking.

A place like the South Bronx has a way of narrowing a persons focus. So you'd think my thinking would be pretty uncomplicated all the way around these days. That would be smart.

People having a conversation about me, that word, smart, it doesn't come up often. And I'm just smart enough to know there's a reason why.

But not smart enough to do anything about it.

What can I say? This old dog, he's still too busy chasing his own tail to bother learning any new tricks.

Across the river I had a life. Or a thing that I'd shaped into a semblance of a life. Had a face in the straight community. Folks downtown, citizens without know-how of this other life of ours, they knew me as a local fixer and rough hand. A guy could take some shifts when your bouncer got picked up by the cops for armed robbery and you needed a quick replacement. Guy you could come to when that deadbeat boyfriend still hadn't gotten out of your apartment four months after you dumped him. Guy you could slip a few bucks to escort said boyfriend to the curb. Trace a skip. Kick the vig loose from a welcher. No office, mind you, but a guy around that if you knew the right person I might get pointed out as the type could solve your problem.

Not what you d call steady work, but I made my own hours. Kind of a key

point, all things considered.

And some gigs for the Clans. Do some deeds in the cracks, unofficial and off the books. And toward the end, a real job with the Society. But that didn't go so well. Low job satisfaction. Engagement terminated by agreement between both parties. No references forthcoming from previous employer.

Guess it was that nail in the artery thing. That and maybe that I didn't give two weeks' notice. Not really sure which it was that queered the deal.

Any case, on the Island I was a face, and a face can make some money. Make moves. Get his hands on the necessities of life.

Food. Shelter. Clothing.

Blood. Bullets. Money.

Those kinds of things.

Blood is tricky. But blood is always tricky. Money can help you lay hands on blood but its always tricky. No doubt it's trickier up here, you expect that. No local organization means no hustlers, no infrastructure to support a dealer who might be able to buy pints off the local junkies or something, act as a clearinghouse. Means no friendly faces at Bronx-Lebanon or St. Barnabas who you might slip some cash to and come away with a bag.

No, it's all pretty much smash and grab up here.

An uncomplicated life in the Bronx. By which a man means a predators life. No job. No prospects. No permanent place of residence. No prospects. Prized possessions are best carried on ones person, as running may be required at any moment. And needs of the moment are the tasks of the moment.

So, after having Esperanza cloud my thinking, I work my way south. Toward a certain dead-end block of Carroll Place, just behind the Bronx Museum, where I recently clocked a rotating cast of young men receiving calls on their cells, soon after followed by slow-cruising cars that swept into the cul-de-sac, paused to pass handshakes out the window, and rolled back out the way they came in.

Blood. Money. Bullets.

I feel in my bones that the guy hanging on the stoop with his cell will have all three.

How fortunate, that vacant lot at Carroll and One Sixty-six. It invites privacy. Limits distractions. While I tend to business.

I should have broken into a couple cars on the way, scrounged a few bucks for a pack of smokes. That would have passed the time. Better, I should have done something to scratch Bullets off my to-do list before running this particular errand.

Who'd have thought the modern crack dealer went unarmed these days? Not that I expected his bullets to fit my gun. Id assumed he'd be carrying the standard 9mm that's been all the rage for decades now. My own sidearm is a fusty.38. But, not being too attached to these things, I'd have happily tossed mine in favor of his. Seeing as I used mine to commit a homicide earlier this evening, I'd planned on leaving it on this guy after I knocked him out, took his cash and tapped him for a couple pints. With a bit of luck he might have kept it, at least that mugger left me with a gun, and gotten busted while it was in his possession. A long-odds bet, but worth putting some chips on.

But no gun.

Pity.

A gun would come in very handy when the hornet buzz of furious engines bounces from the sides of the buildings lining Carroll and I find myself pinned in four crossing headlight beams.

The engines drop to idles. -What up with white guy? — Yo, what up, white guy? — He a funky-lookin' white guy. -Like that jacket.

— You like that jacket, niggah? — Like that jacket. -Gonna bite off white guys style? — Just I like that jacket.

I shake my head. -Kid, this jacket won't fit you.

The one who snagged the cop's cap outside the Stadium pulls the bill of that cap to the side. -White guy talks.

The one with eyes for my jacket runs a finger over the thin shadow of a moustache that rims his upper lip. -Don't worry, white guy, I grow into it.

The smallest one guns a bike forward into the light from the streetlamp, and I see she's a girl

She snaps her bubble gum. -Don't know why you want that funky-lookin jacket. Look stinky.

The last one, the one with the Dominican flag do-rag, drags on a Newport.

— Too hot for a jacket. He don't need no jacket.

Moustache holds out his hand. -Gimme the fuckin' jacket, white guy.

The unconscious drug dealer in the dirt at my feet groans. I was just getting ready to slip the business end of an I.V. needle in his arm when the kids rode by and one of them caught a whiff of me and they veered onto the sidewalk and into the shadows behind the abandoned shed at the back of the vacant lot. With just me to worry about, the dealer would have been in pretty good shape. I'd have taken his bankroll, sure, that and whatever rock he's carrying, to make it look like a straight robbery. Other than his arm being a little sore and his head being a bit woozy, he might never have known about the blood I would have siphoned off.

But now it looks like he's gonna have a few more mouths to feed.

I look down at him as his eyes flutter open. -Trust me, buddy, you don't want to see any of this.

I kick him in the head and he goes back to sleep. -Said, Gimme the fuckin'jacket, white guy. Didn't say kick niggah in the head.

I look at him.

— Told you it's too big for you.

He rolls his shoulders. -Told you I grow into it.

I stuff my hands in my jacket pockets. Gun, switchblade, blood works, lock picks, Zippo, last few dollar bills and some change fill those pockets. Those things I'm most reluctant to leave behind when the running starts.

Prized possessions?

Not really.

But the jacket itself.

That was a gift.

I take my hands out of my pockets; one holds the switchblade, the other the empty gun. -Touch my jacket, you won't grow any more at all.

Gum Snapper pulls a gun as big as her head from the waistband of her skintight low riders and shoots me in the stomach. The clear advantage of having actual bullets being that you get to shoot people instead of just empty-threat them.

I fall on top of the dealer and bleed on him and point my gun at the four kids

as they duck-walk their bikes over and look down at me. Moustache reaches for the gun and I pull the trigger a few times, hoping my math is off and that maybe there's a bullet in there I forgot about. But there isn't.

He takes the gun and looks at it. -This a nappy fuckin' gun.

He chucks it over the fence behind the lot, down into the bushes at the back of the Museum.

Do-rag flicks ash from his Newport. -You gonna rock his jacket, or what? — Jacket got blood all over it now.

Gum Snapper climbs off her bike, tucks the massive piece back in her pants and comes over to me. I wave the switchblade at her and she kicks it from my hand.

— Bitch, don't even think bout cuttin1 my ass. I stick that thing in you fuckin dick.

She grabs the shoulders of my jacket and pulls me off the dealer.

I could make it harder for her. The pain is pretty bad, but I could definitely make it harder for her. Except that gun she shot me with, it was really, really fucking big. And just now I need to focus on holding the guts that want to spill

out of my belly in their proper place. Right now I need to focus on not moving too much so the Vyrus can use all its energy to close up this goddamn hole and put my intestines back together. Whatever attention I can spare from that task, I can maybe use hoping the bullet didn't fragment inside me and rip up my liver and kidneys and spleen and such. Cause that much damage, I don't know if I can get better from that.

So I'm gonna lie here quiet in the dirt and try to bleed as little as possible while Gum Snapper breaks out a set of homemade works that consist of the sharpened needle from a bicycle pump, a length of junkie's rubber hose, and a few heavy-duty Ziploc freezer bags. She goes to work on the dealer, and Police Cap comes and looks at me. -Think this him?

Do-rag takes a wire cutter from the pocket of the jeans that sag down past the top of his boxers. -It him.

He climbs the fence and starts clipping lengths of barbwire, handing them to Moustache. When they have four long ones he climbs down and comes over. -Got it all?

Gum Snapper pulls the needle from the dealer's neck and licks it.

— I got it.

Moustache kneels at my feet and starts wrapping barbwire around my ankles while Do-rag runs the ends to the bikes, twisting one strand each around the bikes' rear forks.

Police Cap helps Gum Snapper with the blood bags and they all saddle up.

Moustache looks over his shoulder at me. -Fuck I want you shitty jacket anyway, white guy? Fuck you jacket.

Gum Snapper rises up on her pegs. -Roll. Get this white guy to lament.

And they gun hard, rear tires roostertailing dirt all over me until they grab traction and burn out of the vacant lot and onto the street. Dragging me behind them, trailing blood and wondering why they think they need to take me to lament someplace special.

I can lament just fine here.

— Miserable. Pathetic. Meager. Low.

The four kids stop what they're doing and look at the man.

He bends a twisted finger at the bags of blood set on the rusted TV tray

beside him. -What is this?

The girl snaps her gum. -S'blood.

He leans forward and peers at her. -What is that in your mouth, Meager?

She shuffles her feet, looks elsewhere. -Nothin'.

Something like a tongue snakes out from his mouth and leaves a slimy trace over dry lips. -Is it? Is it nothing?

His arm snaps out and long spider fingers clutch her round cheeks and squeeze. -Then you shall not mind opening wide for me to see.

Her throat works, trying to swallow, and he squeezes harder. -Now, now, dear. Open wide.

He wrenches and her mouth opens and he thrusts the fingers of his other hand inside and comes out with the gnawed wad of gum.

— Nothing.

He grips her by the jaw, three fingers inside her mouth, his thumb digging under the chin, and pulls her close, holding the gum in front of her eyes. -This is nothing, is it?

She makes a grunting noise.

He clacks his teeth twice.

— Chewing chewing chewing. Grotesque. Perhaps I will change your name. Grotesque. Would you like that? It would suit you.

Her throat hitches again, tears are coming out of her eyes.

The hand holding the gum is shaking.

— No? You would not like to be Grotesque? Well, to keep your name there will be a price. This, this is nothing? Then the price will be easily paid.

He shoves the gum into her left nostril, yanking her head down as she tries to pull back. -This is nothing, child, nothing at all. Be still.

A long whine comes from her throat as he forces the gum farther inside, his index finger pushed in past the second knuckle, blood trickling out. -Don't fret so, child, but a little farther and it will be back in your mouth.

She coughs and gags and he shoves her onto the floor. -Nothing,

He holds out his saliva and mucous covered hands. -Pathetic.

The boy with the police cap steps forward with a box of tissues, and the man plucks several and wipes his fingers.

— The ends I went to, the sacrifices I made, the labors endured to bring you here for your betterment. And yet here you are, even now, defying my most basic edicts and commands.

The girl hacks loud three times and the gum coughs out of her mouth, elongated and glossy.

He mashes the tissues and throws them at her. -Wipe your spittle, child.

She takes the tissues, still hacking, picks up the gum and wipes her phlegm and spit and tears, creating wet trails in the grime on the filthy linoleum.

He lifts his chin high, looks down his nose. -Disgusting. Foul. Those names, too, would be apt. -You know, next time he sticks his fingers in your mouth, you should really

bite them off.

The girl and the man and the three boys look at me in my dark corner of the room where I lie in my own blood, bound in the twisted lengths of barbwire. -Seriously. You snap off a couple of those digits, I guarantee he'll be thinking twice before he goes mining for your gum again. Those things don't grow back too well. Makes a real impression when you bite one off. -Low!

Moustache pushes the mans wheelchair forward, into the overhead light. -Closer, boy, closer.

He rolls until his feet are inches from my face, the long gnarled nails almost poking me, reeking of toe jam and rot. -A biter, are you? Like something to chew on, would you?

His foot lashes and the nail of his big toe cuts into my lips and he forces it inside. -There. Tasty? How you most like it, is it?

I bare my teeth, the toe between them.

And he pulls a cap-and-ball.44 from the greasy bathrobe draped over his shoulders and puts it against my head.

— Yes, now bite. It will please me if you do.

So I bite.

But I don't think it pleases him much at all.

He doesn't shoot me. He just watches as I rip his toe off and spit it onto the floor. And he laughs as he has the three boys work together to keep me from thrashing too much while they take one of my boots off and the girl lifts my foot to the man and he shares with me just what it feels like to have a toe bitten off.

Me, if I had the gun, I'd definitely shoot him. A lot.

— You see, yes, you see how they task me, yes? This, this is what they bring me. This paltry offering. This soupcon. And out of this I am to feed us all? How, I ask you, how?

He takes one of the bags of blood from the TV tray and unzips the top a little, places his mouth over the opening and tilts his head back and sucks and swallows and the blood runs too fast and wells over his cheeks and down his chin and onto the collar of the robe and the pleated front of his wilted tuxedo shirt.

He finishes and tosses the bag aside and lifts his chin. -Miserable.

Do-rag takes a crusted square of linen from the TV tray and wipes the man's mouth and chin and neck, careful not to pull on any of the long strands of oily reddish hair that hang to the mans shoulders. -Yes, good, enough.

The boy steps back.

The man lifts the second swollen bag of blood.

— And this to last for how long? How long until they can find some other feeble and crippled runt that they might manage to bring down? Barely worth keeping. Pathetic.

Police Cap takes the bag from him, to a fridge wheezing in the corner, and slips it inside onto shelves loaded with bags of pig trotters and chicken feet.

The man picks up the last and smallest of the bags, the dregs of the dealer the girl drained in the vacant lot.

— Since you still resist the concept of industry, this will have to serve for all of you.

He holds the bag out at arms length and the girl reaches for it. -Not you, Meager.

He points at the empty bag on the floor.

— Scraps will serve for you.

He offers the bag to Moustache, a grin cracking around the teeth that still trap a bit of my toe between them. -For you, Low, to share with Miserable and Pathetic.

The boy reaches for the bag and the man pulls it back. -And you say what?

Low touches his moustache. -Thanks, Mr. Lament.

Lament smiles again. -Such a good boy.

He gives him the bag. -And all of you?

The kids chorus. -Thanks, Mr. Lament.

He nods. -Yes, manners. When prompted, I know, but some manners, nonetheless.

He flicks his fingers at them.

— Away now. Go feed your disgusting faces away from me.

They scramble for the door, the boys clustered with their half-full bag, the girl trailing, looking at the red residue inside hers.

The door closes.

Laments kinked neck bends toward me.

— Children. One can do little with them short of stuffing them in a sack and tossing them into the river like kittens.

I bleed, eyeing his scalp.

— It was a misstep on my part. I will admit to that much. But the blame is not entirely my own. If I had been listened to, left unmolested in my methodology, I might have avoided the conflict utterly. As it was I had no choice but to confront the rabble.

He wheels himself to the fridge and takes out one of the bags of trotters. -I had operated in admirable discretion.

A gnarled finger pokes into the bag and comes out with a trotter. He holds it before milky eyes and studies it. -Until they manifested.

He digs a bit of meat from between the pig toes and sucks it from his yellow nails. -Mungiki savages.

He rotates the trotter, finds more sinew, tears it loose with his teeth. -It would be almost comical. Their pretensions. That is to say, not only are they not from Kenya, but most of them are not even negroid.

He licks the trotter, sucks a last twist of gristle from it, and tosses it aside, plucking another from the bag. -Skag Baron Menace.

He spits on the floor. -Filthy child. He read about the Mungiki in a magazine article.

He waves the fresh trotter at the moldy magazines and newspapers heaped along the walls, barricading the windows. -An article from my library, no less. Yes, this is ironic.

He pops the whole trotter in his mouth, rolls it about, the sound of cracking cartilage loud, then opens his mouth, dribbling the stripped foot onto his hand then dropping it to the floor. -Kenyan gangs that thrive on kidnappings and protection rackets. Political

party enforcers that cultivate legends of their own brutality. They keep oil drums of blood. And drink it. So the stories go in backwater Kenya. If it is not redundant to use the words backwater and Kenya together in a sentence.

He holds the bag up, shakes it, doesn't find what he wants and puts it back inside the fridge.

— Menace thought it was clever, naming his little litter of hyenas after the blood-drinking gangsters. Clever? As if cleverness is a thing that ever happened inside Menace's feeble head.

He rolls to a small shelf of books, pulls down a moisture-swollen Webster's and flaps it open in his lap.

— Not even his own name is his. Menace. Something that threatens to cause evil, harm, injury, etc. I gave him that name. I had hoped it might instill some sense of pride in him, some modicum of self-respect. Something for him to aspire to. Better if I had done as I originally planned and named him Insipid.

He slaps the dictionary closed.

— Perhaps it did inspire him. Sent him off to new territories. Queens. Indeed. As if that was my fault. They act as if it was my fault. His adventurism of my making. But it was meddling in my methods that caused the problems. They have bred their own complications, not I. Little hairy monkey with dreams of his own empire. Skag Baron. The pretension of it. That little scrap of half-nigger

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

and his delusions of nobility.

He places the book back on the shelf.

— Skag is a word I know not the meaning of. Nor do I deign to seek it out. So sure am I that it is some foul slang for vagina or penis.

His chair creaks close and he butts me with the wheels. -And you, were you in my charge at an early age, what should I have named you?

His lips purse, dry flakes of blood, and grease from the trotters, mingle in the whiskers on his chin.

— Shiftless. Yes, Shiftless. Lazy and contemptible. Placing yourself outside the structure of things. Imagining yourself better than your place. Adding nothing to the common good and weal.

He reaches behind the chair and comes up with a short cat-o-nine-tails and prods me with the wood handle.

— You are a burden on us all. We strivers, we reachers and dreamers, without us, without our mighty efforts at forward progress, you and your slovenly kind would perish in your own filth.

He dangles the knotted leather cords of the whip in front of my face; I can see the dry blood clotted thick.

— Parasites. Sucker fish. Tapeworms. Reveling in the bowels of the citizenry. Living off our wastes. Upsetting the smooth functions of the body politic that we nourish with hard labors.

He raises the whip and lashes it across my face. -Shiftless. Useless. Leech.

I flinch, draw up my shoulders and duck my face into my chest.

He prods me again with the handle.

— Yes, huddle and hide from the light and truth, Shiftless. Is that shame? No, I think not. Fear. Simple fear of pain. Well, fear is a good forge. We can work many a useful tool with fear at hand. I have done so for years. In good service.

He shoves the end of the handle under my chin and forces my face up. -Sharp tools I made. Even if they have never been appreciated. Good tools and able. Suited to their task. And I would have made more and better. But for interference.

He pulls the handle away and bangs it against the floor.

— Had I been left to my own methods, Menace would never have shunned his conditioning and reverted to his nature. Under my own auspices and left unmolested here, the Mungiki would never have manifested.

He throws the cat-o-nine-tails, upsetting a pile of newspapers that sloughs to the floor.

— Skag Baron Menace! With no Mungiki he was nothing. I told them, Leave off and let me attend, yes? But they would not listen. Insisted in meddling. All but created the Mungiki with their own hands. Intrusions. Invasions.

He takes his hair in fistfuls.

— And who must then negotiate with the savages? Who must settle them in their place? And at what price?

He puts his hands on the arms of the wheelchair and pushes himself up on twisted legs; frozen at the waist, he stands cocked at nearly ninety degrees, waving arms as warped as his legs, all the bones of him corkscrewed. -Mere seconds in the sun, yes? Cancers in my bones, yes? Mad growths, yes? All because I went out to negotiate, to compensate for failures and oversights that were none of my own.

He drops back into the chair, sending it rolling a few feet across the moldering room. -Mr. Lament.

— A misstep, did I say? On my own part, yes? Surely it was a misstep. The misstep was loyalty. Listening to the simple caw and cries, yes? I should have

followed truer stars. My own heart and mind I should have followed! — Mr. Lament.

He heaves air in and out, wipes spittle from his mouth, fingering the blisters that pebble his cheeks.

— A life in service. For me, who should have been a prince in my own right. This is the price of sacrifice. This is the price of loyalty, Shiftless. The wages paid by an ignorant sovereign. -Mr. Lament.

He turns to Low, the boy standing in the open door.

— You have something to say, idiot boy? Something that cant wait till your better concludes his business? Come here, thing.

Low doesn't move.

Lament crooks a finger. -Come here now, Low. Or risk my displeasure.

Low comes slowly into the room, his tongue probing the ends of his moustache. -Sure, Mr. Lament.

Laments hand ducks into the pocket of his robe and comes out with a

honed carpet knife. It flashes once as he uses it to hook the underside of

Lows upper lip.

— Something to say? Something pressing, yes? Say it, boy! Say it while you

still have lips to make human sounds! Say it before I cast you into your proper

station as a maker of animals mewling!

— Honestly, Alistair, the boy is simply doing as I asked. You might try an ounce

of civility just now and again. We are none of us above the use of good

manners and simple kindness.

Lament and I look at the door where the old woman stands between an efficient-looking young man and woman in matching black suits, holding matching machine pistols that look every bit as efficient as they do. -We are not savages, after all.

She takes a step into the room, into the light, luster on the single strand of pearls she wears at the neck of a white cardigan with buttons that match the necklace, a faint greasy sheen on the warty gray orb that's half grown from the scarred pit that used to be her right eye socket. -Put the knife down, Alistair. Try to effect the gravity of your years.

Lament removes the blade from Low's mouth. -This is my domain, Maureen. How I conduct affairs is my business.

She places a hand on Low's head and looks at his face. -How you conduct your business has proven ineffectual. At best.

She shakes her head. -A dismal failure is a far more accurate assessment of your affairs.

She pushes Low toward the door. -Go out there with your friends.

Low looks at Lament.

Lament bares his teeth, snaps his fingers, and Low goes out the door.

He looks up at the old woman. -A dismal failure? I think not.

She inclines her head at the two young people and they come farther into the room.

— Fear as a control is limited, Alistair. Your instrument is dulled by it. Incapable of independent actions. They will never serve as anything but your lackeys. Sad prison wards. A pathetic, if necessary, fate for them. Truly, it's as much as mongrel races can or should aspire to, but the added indignity of being lorded by yourself seems all but cruel.

He grunts, opens his mouth.

She shakes her head. -No. No further comment is required.

She lifts a hand and the young man takes the handles of the wheelchair and pushes it to the door. -Go join your proteges.

He twists about in the chair, looking back at her as he is wheeled out. -This is my place, Maureen! This conclave is my doing and I should be present.

The old woman looks about for a place to sit. -Yes, Alistair. Yes, yes.

His further comments cut off as the young man closes the door behind them.

The young woman finds a folding steel chair with a cracked plastic seat cushion, wipes dust off it with a few tissues from Lament's box, and places it for the old woman.

She takes a seat, runs her hands over the legs of her light wool slacks, then folds them in her lap and looks at me. -And tell me, Mr. Pitt, how have you enjoyed Alistair Laments hospitality?

I shrug as best I can.

— He's not quite up to your style, Mrs. Vandewater.

I glance at the door and then back at her. -I mean, he only let me bite his toe off. You let me take a whole eye.

— He was, hard to imagine, a quite remarkable student. Attentive, frighteningly able, insightful in a manner quite unique. An eye for weakness. A sense, if you like, for frailty. Vulnerability. Not a virtue, I admit, in the normal course of things, but essential to certain ends.

She looks at the floor, raises the glasses that hang by a chain from her neck, and brings the discarded pigs feet into focus. -Over the years, obviously, he has rather deteriorated.

She lets the glasses hang free. -His eye is no less keen, but he himself is blunted. Become vulgar.

She looks about the filthy backroom.

— The isolation. He seemed to have inward reservoirs. No lack of self-confidence, I'm sure you have noticed, but more than that. Or so I believed. A mind and spirit suited to independent action. Bold initiative. Yet still responsive to authority.

She allows a small sigh.

— Wrong on many counts it seems.

She rises, looks behind herself and brushes at the seat of her slacks. -More willful than independent. When I dispatched him here to see if he might find suitable subjects for infection, I never dreamed how far he'd stray from my prescriptions. Recruiting, identifying those who might take most naturally to the Vyrus, has always required an acceptance of the fact that those most isolated from typical social supports are most likely to embrace an utter change in their circumstances. Offer the unwillingly solitary the opportunity to elevate themselves, to become a part of something larger than themselves, and they will find reserves of emotional and mental resilience they never knew existed. Resilience that can make them capable of the most basic of our compulsions.

She bends and picks up the cat-o'-nine-tails from where Lament had discarded it.

— After all, if a prospective recruit cannot come to terms with the implications of the Vyrus thirst, what use can we possibly make of them?

She weighs the lash in her hand, shakes her head, places it on the TV tray. -Crude.

She pulls a tissue from the box and wipes her hands. -So like Alistair.

She looks at me, wound in barbwire, my clothes scabbed with my own dry blood, the marks of the whip on my face barely closed, a crust of tangled meat grown over the stump where my toe was.

— At this moment, you could serve as the perfect visual referent for Alistair s methods and mindset. Vulgar and base. And, truly, a fair indication of just how far he has strayed.

She places a hand at the high collar of her gray blouse.

— Set to find loners and outsiders, he went too far afield. These delinquents and hoodlums. What use can they come to? He enticed them with blunt offers of power and money. Suggested they were involving themselves in criminal enterprise.

She sniffs. -Narcotics, no less. A context, so he claims, they could understand.

She opens the door of the fridge, the corners of her mouth pulling down. -And he implied a dark rite of initiation. Evoked voodoo. Santerla. Again, a context he thought they could embrace.

She pushes the door closed.

— And then he infected them. Or had one of his current miscreants infect them. And, if they survived that process, he began a program of abuse.

Preprogramming. His word, not mine. But apt, I will admit. Whatever slight self-regard they might have, he removed it. Amputated it whole and cauterized the stump. The names he gives them. You've heard them? Failure. Distress. Encumbrance.

Her good eye blinks slowly, as if erasing something from the surface of its lens.

— My own fault. What I'd failed to account for was how he would respond to isolation himself. Id forgotten that he'd been a foundling in his own right. Lost and adrift until I brought him to harbor and gave him a purpose. I esteemed the training I'd given him too greatly. And once here, once in this lonely outpost amongst the savages, he became very much a product of his environment.

A finger traces the edge of the mass of scar on her face. -Not the last time, sadly, I was the victim of overconfidence and pride.

She looks at me. -Was it, Mr. Pitt?

Something rustles in my gut. The skin has sealed over the wound, but the Vyrus is struggling inside to reknit my organs. I grunt, exhale, try not to move too much. -If that's what you call pissing me off, then yeah, you were a little full of

yourself that time.

A flutter, a twist, a sensation like sharp nails picking at a knot in my intestines. I grunt again.

She lifts her glasses, looks at me through the narrow lenses. -Some discomfort, Mr. Pitt?

I nod. -Yeah, yeah.

She nods. -Something I could do for you?

I think for a second. Something the Coalition Clans chief recruiter and trainer of their enforcers could do for me?

Sure there is.

— Yeah, lady, you could maybe just shoot me now instead of talking me to death.

She looks over her shoulder at the young woman with her efficient machine pistol. -Shoot you?

She looks back at me.

— No, Mr. Pitt, I think not.

Slowly, she lowers herself into a graceful squat that someone who looks as old as her should have more trouble executing. -Being shot is not in your immediate future.

She reaches out and places the tip of her index finger on my cheekbone. -Other things are in your future, but not that.

She presses the finger gently into my cheek, drawing the skin down from the bottom of my eye.

— By the way, Mr. Pitt, you mentioned that Id let you take my eye when we last met. In point of fact, and while I don't wish to be thought ungenerous, I never actually considered it a gift.

She lifts her finger. -And I've always rather believed you owed me something in return.

She opens her mouth wide and goes to work, evening accounts between

There comes a time when you think there are no new territories of pain. After a certain number of stabbings, shootings, clubbings, whippings, beatings, thrashings, cuttings, slashings and eviscerations, you begin to assume you've

had the worst of it and nothing of that nature can really surprise you very much.

And then someone comes along to show you that you re wrong.

And you can do little but scream your thanks and appreciation for the lesson.

So I scream. My eye being gnawed out by a crazed old woman, I scream like I rarely have. Because some things, some things are truly horrifying.

But maybe you have to have them happen to you to get that.

— Because it was due me.

— I am not arguing whether you had grounds, Mrs. Vandewater. I am stating as

fact that you were charged to bring him unmolested.

— Yes, so I was. And I abused that charge. And you have asked me why I

abused that charge. And I have answered. Because it was due me. This seems

to leave little enough to discuss. The only question seems to be, how will you

discipline me for my failure to do as you charged?

I open my eyes.

Correction.

I open my eye.

Seeing as its caked with the blood that spilled out of what used to be my other eye, it doesn't help much. Clotted darkness with a distant blur of light punctuated by two smaller clots of darkness that don't seem to be getting along all that well just now. I close my eye and let my ears do the work, still having two of those for the moment.

— Yes, how will I discipline you. Yet again we come around to the same topic. I am bemused, Mrs. Vandewater, as to how a person so wholly devoted to the concept of discipline can be entirely lacking in it herself. -That is due entirely to your own lack of awareness. -Indeed. Well. Illuminate me. If you are inclined.

Her footsteps sound down the long echoing room as she begins to pace. -Illuminate. I have spent my life in that very effort. And no little part of it in a specific effort to illuminate you. Bright child. Such a bright child. With an utterly dim outlook. You still see no further than your dogma. Maintenance of status quo. This, despite all evidence of the erosion taking place under your feet. Illuminate!

The hard slap of a flat palm on a desktop.

— You fail to make sense of my actions, and you interpret them as disobedient and undisciplined, because you measure them against your own authority. You

refuse again and again to see that I am in the service of a larger order of things. While your eyes continue to be on the path just before your feet, I am looking well ahead to where the path becomes lost and tangled in the woods.

Silence. The impression of contemplation. Then the mans voice. -And yet I am still unclear as to what that has to do with biting his eye out.

Silence again. The impression of a stare-down. The woman's voice. -I took his eye because I have no respect for your authority. Because I do not believe you are long for your position. Because in some few months time I expect not to be forced to answer to you any longer.

A chair creaks as she sits. -Does that clarify the matter?

Leather-soled shoes take a few steps. Another chair creaks. -Yes. Yes it does.

— And so, after an unnecessary digression to illuminate you regarding the obvious, we can return to the matter at hand? I have disobeyed your charge. What cost must I pay? What is due to Caesar? What can you afford to extract with your power crumbling about you?

Papers being turned.

— You are still well regarded by some members of the council. This hinders me somewhat. Limits the scope of what correction I might impose. Yes.

A folder being snapped shut.

— But you force my hand, and I must do something. If you can tolerate another question, let me ask, in similar circumstances, when I was in your care, what would you have done to me had I shown the same lack of regard for your commands?

Whisper of fabric.

— What a coward you are. Unable even to devise your own chastisement. Id have killed you. There is no room for any lack of-

The sound of something sharp cutting the air, a clatter of furniture, breath whistling from a hole nature made no allowance for.

— No need to say anything further, Mrs. Vandewater. When you are right, you are right. And I can complete the thought for you. There is, indeed, no room for any lack of discipline in this life of ours.

The floorboards vibrate as a body thrashes against them. Thick fluid leaks onto wood.

— And you are, as ever, correct in most things. You were correct in thinking that you would soon be released from any obligation of answering to my

authority.

Metal scraping on bone, sawing.

— But giving myself some credit, you were off by several months in your estimation of how soon your release might come.

And a sound not often heard in the natural course of things, but one I've had opportunities to hear on more than one occasion: the soft but solid thump of a human head being dropped to the floor.

— My only regret being that I cannot ask you how the view of the path appears from where you are now.

Footsteps striding down the room toward me, stopping.

I open my eye and look up as a lean, dark shadow leans over me. It kneels, whisking a handkerchief from its breast pocket and using it to ream the caul of blood from my eye. -Open your eye, Pitt, I have a job for you.

I blink as he comes into focus: smooth-faced, a fall of glossy brown hair across his forehead, a painfully flawless bespoke suit splashed generously with blood. -Hey, Mr. Predo.

I rest my head on the floor and sight down the room at the beheaded corpse

lying in a spreading red pool. -If it's her old job, I think III pass.

He's not going to kill me.

It's not that fact of him telling me he's not going to kill me that assures me I've got some time to breathe. Predo could look me in the eye and tell me whiskeys good and cigarettes are better and I'd still need a drink and a Lucky to believe he's not lying. The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.

Stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons, Dexter Predo will be in no danger of revealing the truth. Living so far beyond its borders. -I'm not going to kill you.

Said as we watch two of his own burly enforcers, black rubber aprons, galoshes and gloves protecting their suits, while they bag Mrs. Vandewaters remains and mop her blood from the floor of the rotting ballroom around us.

I finish the big bag of blood Mrs. Vandewater had taken from Laments

fridge, and that Predo has given to me to speed the Vyrus through my wounds. -I can't make the same promise, Mr. Predo.

I toss the empty bag into the bucket containing Mrs. Vandewaters head.

He finishes wiping the last of the blood from his hands and neck and drops the towel in a bag held open by one of his men.

— No, Pitt, nor would I expect you to. But seeing as you spent this evening being waylaid by teenage delinquents, and having your anatomy masticated by the crippled and the aged, you will understand my lack of alarm as regards your threat.

I feel my pockets for a smoke. -Yeah, fuck you too.

He looks down at his blood-ruined suit. -Would you excuse me for a moment, Pitt.

He starts for the door, the question not actually being a question.

I settle in my chair, feeling the drug dealers blood slide deeper into my wounded guts, burning cold as the Vyrus colonizes it and recoups strength. -Take your time.

I raise a hand.

— Hey, don't suppose you've started smoking since the last time I saw you?

The door closes, leaving me with the two button-lipped enforcers, the squeak of their rubber boots and the swish of their rags in the bloody mess.

Naw, he's not gonna kill me. He was gonna kill me, he wouldn't have given me the blood to put me right and get me on my feet. Not that he and his boys couldn't still gang me and take me down, but blooded up like this I'd be sure to make it hurt. Not like Predo to make a job harder than it has to be. He was gonna kill me, he would have done it while I was wrapped in barbwire and leaking all over the fucking place. Or at least he would have left me that way till it got to be daylight so they could pitch me easily out of doors and watch me blight in the sun.

The last of old Mrs. Vandewater goes into the bags and bucket and the enforcers take a look around for anything they might have missed before hauling the remains away.

Of course, figured another way, it would be just like Predo to fill me with blood and get me back to something like health and wellness. Figure he might play it that way if he wanted to keep me kicking while these cleaning laddies found what few bits I have left to hack off. But figure he'd only bother with that kind of production if he had questions to ask me.

The door opens and Predo comes back in, a suit, all but identical to the one

he was wearing before, cinched into place on his narrow frame. Really, it is identical, just without an old lady's blood all over it.

He waits at the open door as the enforcers exit, closes it behind them, comes to the circle of light cast by the bright floor lamp set next to the desk and two chairs here in the middle of the ballroom, and settles into the chair on the boss side of the desk. -So, Pitt.

He makes a slight adjustment to his silver tie bar. -Let me ask you a few questions.

I wait for the arms to encircle me from behind, for the garrote to drop around my throat, the gun to be placed at my temple.

And when none of the above occurs, I let the knife Predo used to kill Vandewater slide from the sleeve where I'd tucked it after the enforcers clipped me from the barbwire and dragged me across the floor past where it had been dropped, and I throw it sharp and hard and straight and it wings past Predo by a good two feet and thunks into the wall outside the light.

He raises an eyebrow, turns, looks off at the gleam of the blade in darkness, and turns back to me. -You'll find it, I believe, Pitt, somewhat of an adjustment now that your vision

is no longer triangulated.

I scratch the side of my neck.

— Well, if you'll just sit there while I go fetch the blade, Mr. Predo, I'm pretty sure I can do better the second time around.

Just because he's not going to kill me right now doesn't mean he doesn't want me dead.

He wants me dead.

I'm not saying my name is at the top of his list, but it is in the upper ten percent. Yeah, he's the kind of guy who keeps a list. That comes with running the Coalition's security arm. An organization like that, they just love lists.

List of friends. List of enemies. List of subversives. List of agents. List of counteragents. List of those at the top. List of those at the bottom. List of people they can kill with impunity. List of people they need to take a little care with before they kill. List of those on the inside. List of those on the outside.

Being inside the coalition means buying the line. The line is secrecy. The line is we don't exist. The line is the people out there who don't know about the Vyrus, they should never know about the Vyrus because if they know about the Vyrus they'll build camps and open labs and start rewriting all kinds of laws and redefining what it means to be created equal.

Frankly, I think they got it pretty much right.

It's not the line I disagree with so much. Its that they got no room for anyone who does disagree with the line. Disagree with the line and you're on that outside list. That list, its pretty much identical to the People to Kill as Soon as Possible List.

So while its an interesting turn of events to be in Predos presence without someone nearby stirring a pot of molten lead to be poured in my nostrils, I know the ultimate outcome to a scenario like this likely allows him to scratch my name off that list when all is said and done.

He opens a drawer and takes out a slim automatic with polished wood grips. One of those guns that looks designed by the same kind of people who dream up the hardwood and leather interiors of luxury sedans with obscure Italian names.

He sets it on the desk. -In hopes I might make you a bit more attentive, Pitt.

I look at the floor around my chair.

Predo edges up a bit to peek over the front of his desk. -Lose something?

I look up.

— No. Just checking to see if your flunkies left any other lethal weapons lying around. Seems I'm out of luck.

I fold my arms. -Guess I may as well listen to you.

He flips open one of the folders on his desk.

— Gracious as ever. But just so we can be certain you don't grow bored with what I have to say, why don't I make it more interesting for you by including some visual aids?

He draws a photograph from the folder and slides it to the edge of the desk. -Like a picture book. So that you may follow along more easily. -I prefer a pop-up book.

He rotates the photo so that it faces me. -I'm certain this will grab your attention.

Light gleams off the glossy finish, hiding the image from me. I scoot my chair forward, the feet grinding on the floor. I take the photo from the desk. I look at it.

I look at Predo.

He nods. -We can dispense with wit now and speak of things concrete?

I look again at the photo.

A very young woman. Younger than you'd imagine a person has a right to be. And beautiful. The photo is tinted in a manner that hides the color of her hair, but it looks like she's not dyeing it anymore. The natural color would be a complex shade of blond, much like her mothers was. She is exiting one of those cars suggested by Predo's gun, the door held for her by another woman, older, black, muscled in a way that promises the clean and abrupt snapping of a neck. The tint is greenish. The photo taken through a night filter. The only thing missing is a crosshairs painted across the young woman's face.

I set the photo down. -Yeah, tell me something concrete.

— She has gone quite out of control.

— Interesting. I never knew she was ever under control. Last I checked that

was how I got involved in the first place.

Predo taps the end of a pen against a thumbnail. -I am not talking about the delinquencies, teenage drinking and underage sex

her parents fretted about. Her actions are on a new order of magnitude.

The hole where my eye was is throbbing. I knuckle it.

— Guess the new scale of troublemaking goes hand in hand with becoming filthy fucking rich at a young age.

He drops the pen.

— Do not pretend nonchalance, Pitt. If I was not certain you cared, we would not be having this conversation. Whether you would feel some responsibility for the girl had you not killed her parents, I cannot say. But you did. And I trust your year here among the uncivilized masses has not changed your nature so much that you can shrug off such things. However sentimental.

I look at my bare foot, rub the stump that used to be my big toe, flaking away scab. -I only killed her mom.

He squints. -So you've claimed before.

He leans back, his chair giving a little squeak. -A persistent little lie, that. -I only killed her mom.

— A lie I have some trouble penetrating. Why you should be reluctant to take

credit for her fathers death. Repugnant man.

— What can I say, I take credit where its due. I only killed her mom.

I look out of the light, into the darkness, back into the light. -The other thing got her dad.

He picks his pen back up.

— Other thing. Gullible as you are in so many things, I am still somehow disappointed that you embrace that particular bit of superstition.

Nothing else to say. Seeing as I'm not superstitious.

He puts the end of the pen to his chin. -Another time then.

I peel an especially long and stringy bit of dead skin loose from my foot, look at it and drop it on the floor. -The girl is out of control?

He grips the pen in both hands, flexes the shaft. -Yes.

He bends it just to the breaking point, holds it there, relaxes, looks at it as it springs back into shape, and sets it aside.

— Yes. She is out of control. -In what way?

He aligns the pen with the right-hand edge of the desk. -She has declared a new Clan.

He shifts the angle of the gun, bringing the length of the barrel true with the top edge of the desk.

— Using her wealth to disseminate word through the community. Bribing otherwise loyal members of the Clans to help spread word of this new “Clan.” She has made it clear that any and all are welcome in her…

He looks through the gloom to the ceiling. -Her new organization.

He looks back at the desk, tapping the stack of folders flush with one another.

— Uninfected herself, she is enlisting other uninfecteds to carry word off the Island. Daylight travelers. Renfields and Lucys.

He brushes some unseen fleck of matter from the corner of the desk. -She is, in all these dealings, loud and highly visible. We do not exist within a vacuum. The uninfected world is the medium in which we are forced to live.

Vibrations cannot reach us without first traveling through that medium. Yes, those vibrations must be decoded, but that does not mean that others cannot learn the code. She is putting us all at risk. This is not solely a matter of Coalition doctrine being controverted, this is a case in which the concerns of all the Clans are being drawn under fire by the willful hand of a child who is not even of our ilk.

I stop fiddling with my toe and give him a look. -Of our ilk? Christ, Predo, is that a little racism I hear?

His fist shatters the desktop, pen and papers flying, gun dropping to the floor. -She is trying to find a cure!

His foot lashes and the desk skitters down the ballroom trailing splinters and kindling. -A cure!

His fists ball, knuckles whiten.

I point. -Your ties a bit askew there, Mr. Predo.

He closes his eyes and his mouth twists slightly.

His eyes open. -Word will spread.

I nod. -Yeah, I know.

He lets a breath drop in, lets it out.

— Infecteds that know no better will flock to her. There will be desertions from the Clans. Refugees from off the Island. -I know.

He opens his fists, flexing his fingers back, relaxing them. -Our careful balance will be undone. -I know.

He shrugs the collar of his jacket back into place. -And when she fails, there will be chaos and discord.

He runs fingers through his hair, brushing his bangs back into place. -And finally.

He touches the knot of his tie, pulls it straight. -We will have war.

He tugs at the French cuffs of his shirt. -And we will all die.

The throbbing where my eye was comes from the nerves regenerating. Id be better off if the Vyrus left them dead. Not like they're gonna have anything to plug in to. Without that eye, they'll just be raw and disjoined. Something that can cause pain while serving no real purpose.

I look at him. -You say that like It's a bad thing.

He waits.

I look at the floor, see the picture. Amanda Horde. Changeling child living somehow in the infected world. Genius. Mad. Not as in angry, but as a hatter. I look at the designer gun that's come to rest next to the photo. Wonder how many shots I could get off if I got to it before him. Wonder if I could get any of the bullets into his head with my one eye. Figure he did Mrs. Vandewater easy. Figure I've felt what its like when his fist hits my jaw. Figure he can take me anytime and anyplace. But I look at the gun for a bit longer anyway.

Then I look at him. -I won't kill her for you, Predo.

He smiles.

— I don't want you to kill her, Pitt.

He bends, picks up the photo, looks at it, looks at me. -I want you to join up.

The Andrew Freedman Home was finished in 1924. Endowed by an eponymous millionaire with ties to Tammany Hall and subway financing. And if that doesn't suggest something about the nature of his fortune and how dirty his dollars likely were, nothing else will. But pretty much everything you need to know about this guy you can tell by the house. A massive limestone palazzo on the corner of One Sixty-six and the Concourse, he left pretty much all of his fortune in trust for the thing to be built as a home for the elderly.

Exclusively for the elderly who had at one time been rich, but who had lost their fortunes.

Luxurious in the manner of a Gilded Age private club for rail barons, the Home kept the busted rich in a manner to which they had become accustomed.

Good old Andrew Freedman, looking out for the little people.

Whatever, it was his money. Man should spend it how he wants. Especially after he's dead. Besides, whatever Andy's wishes may have been at one time, the place ended up a broken-down community center for run-of-the-mill poor

old folks.

Proving again that time gives fuck all about who you are or what you want.

I manage to glean this knowledge from a plaque as Predo leads me from the subsiding ballroom on the third floor through several corridors artfully decorated with sagging plaster and rat droppings. -Dregs.

He points ahead and one of the enforcers flanking us moves to a door and opens it. -That's what she's collecting.

We pass through the door into an echoing stairwell, climbing. -Rogues. Off-1 slanders. The dross clinging to the fringes of the Clans. All those who lack the wherewithal and fortitude to understand that the Vyrus has made us different.

He pauses on a landing, waits as I negotiate around some broken glass with my bare, mangled foot. -That there is no going back.

He starts up the next half flight. -Traditionally, that kind of offal weeds itself from the community. Viewed as

an engine of evolution, the Vyrus is a most powerful instrument for defining the fittest of the species. One can argue at length as to whether we are human any longer. Coalition precepts hold that we are. Regardless, the Vyrus insists on extreme levels of fitness, resilience, adaptability. Without those qualities, the runts die out quite rapidly. Our primary concern is not how best to steel them to this life, to aid in their adaptation, but how to make their deaths as rapid and as invisible as possible.

He stops at the top of the stairs, waiting while one of the enforcers opens the door and sweeps the area beyond with the barrel of his weapon.

I point at him. -He making sure no sleeping pigeons are waiting to get the drop on us?

Predo waits for a nod from the enforcer and goes through the door ahead of me.

— Our intelligence on the Bronx is far from extensive. But we have heard about the Mungiki.

I step out onto the roof, a river breeze in the tops of the high trees that grow from the grounds below, a few hazy stars above. -Mungiki are in Queens.

He stops next to one of the half-dozen TV aerials that sprout from the roof.

— We heard some were still left.

— I hear they're all out. Whole crazy pack of them in Queens.

— Is that what the drums tell you, Pitt?

— No, that's what being exiled up here for a year tells me.

He studies a spray-painted tag on the back of a cement urn decorating the edge of the roof. -A year.

He looks at me. -A year in the Bronx.

He looks me up and down. -And, until the last few hours, very little worse for wear.

He resumes his walk, skirting a sag in the tar paper where rainwater has pooled in the shade of one of the trees, greened with scum. -But you have always shown the resilience I was speaking of. I doubted it for some time, thought your sentimentality would get the best of you. Labeled you overly reckless. But I was wrong. Your natural ruthlessness serves you well. A particularly useful adaptation for this neighborhood, I imagine.

I think about what I learned growing up in the Bronx, who taught me the

nature of ruthlessness. I wonder if Predo knows this is home turf for me. Wonder if it matters what he knows.

He looks back at me. -No comment?

He's right, no comment.

He shrugs, stops at the southwest corner of the building where the tops of the trees part, the sky opens up and the view carries straight to the lights and towers across the river. -Perhaps you have some comment regarding that.

I look at the City, but I still have nothing to say.

He lays a hand on the snapped base of another of those urns. -We do not want her killed, Pitt.

He looks at me.

— The wreckage that now floats around her would become un-moored, drift into the open. She has established herself, in her hubris, in the midst of our turf. An entire apartment building in the near center of Coalition territory. She's housing them, providing for their needs. A welfare state. Were she to die, that flotsam would bob into our streets. We could not contain them all. A strike of any scale on the building would draw far too much attention. Our influence spreads to

certain circles in the uninfected community, but not so broadly that we can conceal a paramilitary raid in the heart of the Upper East Side. No.

His hand wraps the jagged stump of cement.

— As appealing as assassination may be, it is out of the question. We must rather proceed with greatest discretion. We know her ultimate goal.

He looks upward. -A cure.

Shaking his head.

— But we need to know by what organizing principles she will proceed. If she is pledged to secrecy, working on her own under the auspices of her fathers biotech labs and with no outside research partners, we have some amount of time and leeway in our plans. If she intends to make this a public effort, marshaling evidence that the Vyrus is some form of illness, and then launching a public-health campaign via a grandstanding news conference or similar stunt, we shall have to act posthaste.

I grunt.

He looks at me. -Yes?

I'm still looking at the City, the Empire State Buildings spire lit up in red,

white and blue.

— Nothing. I just like to make a mental note when people use words I've only

read in books before. Posthaste.

— Well, in an effort to broaden your vocabulary, allow me to use another word:

genocide.

— Yeah, I heard that one before.

— Good. Then I do not need to define it for you. You can picture it on your

own. How it will proceed if she tries to launch an effort to cure the Vyrus as if it

were African famine relief or a similar faddish cause for dissipated fashion

models and rock stars to champion.

I step closer to the balustrade, eyes on the lights. -Maybe wed get our own concert.

— The best we might hope for, Pitt, would be an orchestra of our own imprisoned kind to serenade us as we filed into the showers. -Yeah, well I'm not arguing the point.

— No. Nor would I expect you to. Occasional lapses into romanticism aside, you have always been clear on what fate waits us if we are revealed.

I give him a look.

— Wonder.

— Yes?

— What's Bird think of all this? The Society? Rest of the Clans?

He folds his arms.

— Tensions, unsurprisingly, are high. Your former employer, Bird, still feels that our long-term best interests can only be served when we all unite and present ourselves en masse to the public eye. He does, however, allow that the moment is not yet ripe. That the girls efforts are destabilizing. The Hood, while still maintaining a war stance on our northern border, have taken a similar position. D.J. Grave Digga will not pursue hostilities while this matter is unresolved.

I measure my heartbeat, let five slow beats count off before I go further, knowing Predo will fish out my interest if it is not guarded. -I'd think the idea of a cure would send Enclave over the edge.

He pulls his arms tighter around himself.

— Daniel would have had some opinion on the matter. Insane as he was, he would have had a measured response. The idea of a cure for the Vyrus might well have been a heresy to him, but Daniel would never have considered that it was an actual possibility. I expect he would have bided, as he did in most all

Clan matters. But.

I count more heartbeats. -But?

He unfolds his arms.

— But Daniel is dead. And there is a new head of Enclave. And he has declared that Enclave no longer communicate with heretics.

He looks back at the city.

— Daniel was as fanatical as the rest of them in their childish superstitions, but he was, at least, vaguely grounded in the Clans. I could make some judgments regarding how close they might be to launching their eventual crusade. Now they have sealed themselves off, we have no idea of their intentions.

He shakes his head.

— I don't know whether to be relieved or terrified. But, they are, in any case, not at issue just now.

He turns to me.

— At issue is simply the need for information. And so, you will join her Clan. You will gather all the intelligence you can, and you will deliver it to me.

I consider.

— Fuck you.

He nods.

— Yes, of course, the prospect of doing the smartest thing, of taking the action that will best ensure your own security along with everyone else's, does not appeal without some promise of remuneration. I did not expect it to. I will forgo threatening your life. That, I trust, is implicit in any offer I may ever make to you. But something more.

He points at the City. -Manhattan. Civilization.

He trails his arm, offering.

— You are unwelcome there. So vicious and unreliable in your nature that you even went so far as to bite the hand that fed you. So far that even Bird could no longer tolerate you.

— Technically speaking, I didn't bite him. I shoved a couple nails in him. -So I heard.

He allows the corner of a smile.

— As much as I might like to do the same, it does not change your circumstance. He will not have you back. And you were never embraced by

the Coalition. You lack the pigment for the Hood. Daniels fondness for you is as dead as he. Perhaps you might find a home hiding at the foot of the Island, among the other cast-aways, but that would require that you traverse all of our territories. And sooner or later you would be sniffed out. And now, well, here am I, standing in front of you, in the Bronx. So tell me, Pitt.

He allows rather more of a smile.

— Where would you scurry to next? To what hinterland? Where to be certain that I could not find you again?

He holds up a hand.

— More simple for you to erase that question. Replace it with this one, What would you do with open passage on the Island?

I watch the black waters between the Bronx and Manhattan, as Predo spins words at me.

— Go to the Horde girl. Join her. Find her intentions. Strengths. Weaknesses. Report them. This will serve all the Clans. Once done, I will secure you a Coalition visa. And ensure rapprochement of some kind with Bird.

He's to my left, in my new blind spot, invisible. I turn so I can see him. -How many of your people did you already put inside?

He lowers his arm.

— Five.

— How many has Sela sniffed out and killed?

He slips a hand inside his jacket and takes out the folded photo and looks at the young girls Amazon minder.

— Four. She's somewhat more efficient than I suspected. -And none got close enough to the girl to find shit. -No.

He looks up from the photo.

— But you have a history with her. She is fond of you. And Sela trusts you. -Lets not get carried away.

I look back at the City, letting him slide into darkness, outside my vision. -Once I'm back, once I do this, I won't pledge Coalition. -Don't be silly, we wouldn't have you. We will simply facilitate your return and offer securities against your life.

— You'll tell everyone to leave me the fuck alone or you'll have them killed. -Yes, just so.

So many goddamn lights. A whole world on a chunk of rock in the middle of

dark waters.

— I want the name of the one you still have inside.

— Why?

— So I can fucking pretend to find him on my own and hand him over to Sela

for execution. That way she'll know I'm on the up and up.

I hear a pen uncapped, smooth roll of expensive ink on stiff paper.

He offers me the photo, a name written on the back.

I take the photo, stuff it in my pocket, and look at him. -When do we go?

He smiles, shakes his head. -We do not go, Pitt. /go. You find your own way. After all.

He shrugs.

— It wouldn't look at all right if someone were to see me dropping you off at Eightieth and Lexington, would it? In addition, as unified as Clan intentions may be on this matter, trust is more than usually at issue. Ms. Horde has sympathizers at all levels. -Got spooks of her own? — Not as such. But certainly there are individuals within the Coalition, Society

and Hood who are quite willing to volunteer information to her in hopes it can help her to her ultimate goal. And more pragmatic others willing to offer similar information at a price. Thus, while Digga might be willing to allow you passage across Hood turf to the Coalition, I have chosen not to inform him of the operation. A truism of intelligence is that the more people who know about an operation, the more it is at risk. And we cannot risk Horde or Sela knowing that you and I are associated. Hood surveillance is not up to Coalition standards, naturally. I expect you'll have little or no trouble circumventing it. Much better for the sake of verisimilitude if you worm across the river yourself and pick your way with great caution to the girl. -There had to be a hitch in the deal somewhere.

I look down at my bloody clothes, my one remaining boot. -Do you think verisimilitude could suffer to the extent of a couple bucks so I can find some clothes that won't have people pointing at me and screaming for a cop?

He waves one of the enforcers over from the eastern corner of the roof. -Petty cash.

The enforcer takes an envelope from his side jacket pocket and drops it in one of the scummy puddles.

I look at Predo. -You rehearse that move in advance?

He shrugs. -Actually, not. This one has initiative.

I bend and pick up the envelope. -Charming quality, that.

He starts across the roof. -Don't take too long with your tailor, Pitt. Ill want a report soonest.

I flick stinking water from the envelope. -Yeah, get right on it. Chop, chop, and all that.

He pauses at the access door to the stairs.

— Do that. The line of those waiting to dismember you should you fail has grown rather long.

I take the money from the envelope. -Well it was never short.

He considers. -Yes, always a popular man.

I count the bills. -Speaking of popularity.

He waits.

I look up from the envelope.

— That Dickens fan you have working up here, the one with the Fagin fetish. Lament? — Yes.

I flip through the bills, making sure its not Monopoly money. -I'm gonna have to kill him.

He looks at his shoes, looks up.

— Complete the assignment, Pitt. After that, how you spend your political capital is your own concern. However, killing a Coalition resource could well nullify any other aspect of our deal.

I stuff the cash in my hip pocket.

— Well, seeing as I always assume you'll fuck me over in the end, that doesn't really change my approach.

He nods. -Not unwise, I will admit.

He turns. Stops.

— One thing, as long as killing has come up, I think I must renege on my earlier statement. -What was that?

— When I said I'd forgo threatening your life. At the risk of becoming redundant, let me assure you that this is by far the most pressing issue on which I have ever employed you. And let me further assure you that if you should betray me in any way, I will kill you when we next meet. With my own hands. For the sheer pleasure of it.

He raises an eyebrow.

— Need I add that failure in this case will be deemed a betrayal? No. I think not.

And the door swings shut behind him.

I turn to the City.

It's there. Right where I left it.

Is she? Is she where I left her? In the harbor of Enclave. Is she as I left her? With a new thirst she never asked for?

Is she alive?

Evie.

I look away from the city, the ghosts of the lights still in my eye.

I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die any minute now. Any second. I'm gonna up and die right here if I don't get a fucking cigarette in my mouth in about one second.

I hobble down the fire escape from the roof of the Freedman Home, along a weed-choked path to the street and look down McClellan at the glowing storefront of a twenty-four-hour bodega. I'm not overly concerned about going in there with one bare foot and a considerable amount of dry blood on my clothing, this is the Bronx after all, but best to minimize the visual impact I might make.

I cut over to Walton and head north. There's a little A.M. action on One Sixty-seven around the tight cluster of stores. They re all dark except for another bodega, but its the same grouping of shops and signage you see on every merchant block up here.

Send Money, Cash Checks, Income Tax, Abogado, Peliculas, Cell Phone, Discount Fashions, Unisex Salon, Long Distance Pre-Pald, Travel.

At the corner some kids hang around the subway entrance passing a blunt and a couple bagged forties. Two gypsy cabdrivers stand outside the bodega

drinking cafe con leche.

I cross the street far down from them, my eyes scanning the tops of streetlamp posts, tree branches and the telephone and cable TV wires that cross between the big apartment blocks that line Walton.

At Marcy I spot what I'm looking for and shimmy up a lamppost and untangle the pair of sneakers that some kid has tossed up there to dangle in testament to some shit that I have never figured out as long as I have lived in this city.

I sit on the curb and stuff my feet inside, leaving the laces undone. They're too small, but the right one fits a little better than the left. Not having a big toe is already paying off.

Farther up the street I jump and grab the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder, pull myself up and climb two stories to the landing where someone has left their laundry out to dry overnight. I take a green Le Tigre and a pair of khakis, drop them to the sidewalk and climb down. In an alley between buildings I strip out of my bloody shirt and pants and pull on the clothes.

No, not exactly what I'd buy for myself, but they were the first things I saw that looked big enough to fit.

I ball my old clothes and stuff them deep in a garbage can. All except my jacket. I roll that into a bundle inside a few sheets of discarded newspaper and put it under my arm.

At One Seventy there's another strip of shops. No one lingers outside the bodega here. I limp up the street and inside and the proprietor looks out from behind his Plexiglas kill-shield and his eyes just about bug.

Seems I could have spared the bother of getting rid of my other outfit. One-eyed white guys in full preppy mode make an impact all their own. But, bottom line, I'm too freakish just now to be anything other than a junkie. And this guy knows what to do with a junkie. -The fuck out.

I don't get the fuck out.

He takes his hand from under the counter, shows me the can of pepper spray its holding and points at the door. -Don't make me come out there and spray you, bianco.

I point at my one eye.

— Better have some sharpshooter fucking aim you want that shit to do any good.

He thinks about that.

While he's thinking, I drop a twenty in the tray that cuts under the shield. -Just give me a couple packs of Luckys and some matches.

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

Cash changes everything, even in the hands of a guy clearly wearing someone else's polo shirt.

He drops two packs in the tray.

I look at them. -No, no, not that shit. Give me the real ones, the filterless.

He looks at the display of smokes behind him. -I got the filters or I got the filter lights. Don't got filterless.

I toss another twenty on the tray and point. -Give me that pair of scissors hanging there.

He rings up the scissors while I open both packs of smokes. I knock the bottom of one pack until just the filters stick out, open the scissors, and slice them off. I repeat with the second pack and leave the trash in the tray with the change from my purchases.

The guy points at the mess as I make for the door. -Not your garbageman, motherfucker.

I hold up one of my modified smokes. -Buddy, you're lucky I didn't burn this fucking place to the ground.

So much for keeping a low profile in the Bronx.

Then again, so much for the Bronx.

Rounding onto Rockwood I run my hand along the bars of the fence that separates the little playground on the corner from the rest of the world. My fingers snag one by one on the bars. Kids play here during the day. I know because I can hear them when I use my bolt-hole next door. This time of year they mostly run in and out of the spray from a little fountain, returning again and again to push the silver button on a red post, triggering the water when it times out.

Not a bad sound, those kids.

Sentimental. Romantic.

Predo knows shit. Just likes to throw words like that at me. Figures they'll get my goat. Figures I got some problem with being who I am. What I am. Figures he can worm under my skin and make me jumpy.

I ever bothered time on who I am, I might get worked up about it. But why fret on something you cant change.

I come even with tonights cave, one of a half dozen or so that I like to

rotate between. A crumbling garage surrounded by ruined cars at the back of a mechanics asphalt lot. The business itself is a block over on One Seventy-two. This place here the guy uses as dead storage.

I scale the chain-link, drop inside and edge between a wall and an old red van. Back of the van are a couple steps down to a door held shut by rusty hinges. A stone rams head worn smooth by rain is wedged into a notch over the door. The walls are crumbling stone and brick. A limestone foundation visible at the foot of the wall.

Its fucking old.

I push the door and it grinds open about eighteen inches before jamming on an engine block just inside. I work myself through the gap. Inside, I push the door closed. I could have gotten a lock for the door, but it was open when I found it. Figure the sudden appearance of a lock might attract someone s interest. Some places are so forlorn, figure they're safer if they look like anyone could come in and lie down to die anytime they please.

I reach inside one of the empty cylinder chambers on the big V-8 block and find my flashlight and flick it on. If the windows weren't all boarded, enough light would filter in for my eye to work with, but that's not the case. Pitch isn't so black.

The light shows me the piled heaps of twisted rust and grease. It looks like

someone bought the scrapped wreckage of a hundred demolition derbies and dumped it all in here until it could be made use of.

How lucky for me to find such cozy lodgings.

I skirt the piles, working my way to my burrow at the base of the north wall under the buckled hood of a 49 Ford. Behind the mix-and-match seats I've wedged together for a cot, I find a filthy nylon laundry bag.

Worldly goods.

A couple plain black Ts mean I can scrap the pastel thing I'm wearing. Rarely felt better about getting rid of an article of clothing. Spare boots means I can get my feet unpinched and out of the sneakers. No backup pants just now so I'm stuck with the khakis, but they're getting nice and greasy now, so that's not so bad. Spare works. I open the kit and make sure its all there: hose, needles, blood bags.

No spare gun or switchblade or Zippo.

But lots of paperbacks. Moving from place to place these days, a DVD player is a bit of an encumbrance. And an expense. I find the copy of Shogun that I couldn't get through, unsnap the rubber band that holds it closed, open it, and take the brass knuckles and straight razor from the hollowed pages inside.

A faucet scabbed with peeling lead paint juts from a wall at the back. I take

my jacket, the Le Tigre shirt, and a small box of detergent from a Laundromat vending machine, and go squat by it. I get the shirt damp and sprinkle some soap powder on it and start to work at the blood on the jacket. Not the first time I've done this.

Back outside, I pull the door closed and look at the City of Light Christian Center across the street. Is it ironic, me crashing across from a church? No, it is not fucking ironic. What it is is fucking business as usual in the Bronx. Churches are like hair salons up here. Cant go two blocks without passing at least one.

Pentecostal Church of Jerusalem II. Cherubim and Seraphim Church. Congregation of Hope Israel. Healing of the Heart Worship Center. Concillio de Iglesia Pentecostal Vision Para Hoy Inc.

Danger isn't that you'll burst into flames should you accidentally rub against one, danger is that all those fucking places are breeding grounds for superstition. Not just the usual shit about the virgin giving birth and her son growing up to get crucified and come back to life. These people, they believe in all kinds of crap.

Not least of all, some of them believe in vampires.

The fact they believe in the kind that can be chased off with garlic and by

invoking the name of the Lord is beside the point. Simple fact is, they believe.

I hit the corner of Rockwood and the Concourse at the big apartment building that looks like Charles Addams was a big inspiration in its design, and cross the Boulevard.

Believers are a problem.

Believers keep me moving from shithole to shithole up here. Mean, you slap a reputation for nocturnal habits on top of the white skin, and some of these churchy types get even more nosy than usual.

But the Bronx isn't the only place where believers make trouble.

That scene cooking over the river. That isn't about believers facing off for a dustup, I don't know what it is. Everyone putting their back in a corner, going into a big stare-down, waiting for someone to twitch and turn their eyes away. That happens, someone blinks, and the rest will be on their throat. Whittle themselves down till there's two left, circle, sniff and hit the floor with their teeth buried deep in each other's flesh.

Smells like a lot of dying getting ready to happen.

I think about Predo's little presentation on the Horde girl and everyone's reaction to her plans. Trying to pry the truth from the cracks between all his lies isn't worth the time. I've tried, and never come away with more than

bloody fingertips.

Only way to get to the heart of what Predo s up to is to pick up a knife and start digging under the skin till you hit a gusher.

One could ask, Why bother?

Why jump when the little prick comes calling with a setup that could be straight and narrow, but that just as clearly won't leave room to squeeze out at the end? Things so bad up here? So miserable just eking it out? Life lack some kind of meaning when it's lived this close to the bone? Willing to put your neck on the block just for a chance to live back in Manhattan? Mean to say, Joe, it's a great city and all, but the rents are out of fucking control!

And I could answer back, Mind your own fucking business.

Man have to have a reason to do something stupid?

Man got to be more than just bored and sick and tired of what he's got right now to decide to risk a pile of worthless crap on a crooked wheel?

So.

Figure I got a reason. Figure I got a couple reasons. Figure there's some people over there important to me. Figure there's two of them.

Figure one of them I got to kill.

The other. Well, figure that's a little more complicated. Figure the other is a

girl. That's always more complicated.

Figure a chance to get across the river with a little time to work with is all I've been breathing for. Get picky about who comes offering everything you've been dreaming about for over a year, and it'll slip away, never to be seen.

So it's a crooked deal. So I'm angling to get myself real fucking dead. So what?

I play this right, I may get to see my girl again. Fact that if she's alive, it could mean she's just waiting for a chance to kill me doesn't enter into the situation.

I like her anyway.

Besides, you got something better to die for?

Past the Morris Hair Salon and Spa, the svelte figure of a yellow neon woman standing in for the / in Morris, Bonner dead-ends in a cul-de-sac of weeded gardens. One yellow-brick tenement, a three-story town house of rotted wood shingle, a gray aluminum-sided row house with a rooster weathervane bolted above the porch, and another fucking Pentecostal church.

Juan 3:16 on a green sign.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever

believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Funny thing. Live in this life, do the things we do to stay alive. Know that if you do it enough you could go on living for a very long time, sometimes you think funny things.

Like that line about drinking His blood and eating His body.

Guy like me hears that and he could get ideas about what was really going on at the last supper. Not that I'm saying anything. Just that I like to give myself a good laugh every now and then.

Back of the church, behind chain-link, is a yard of high green weeds and low-hanging branches that screen the rear of a dingy white row house seated off the cul-de-sac. I go over the fence, through the brush and scratch at the red backdoor of the place.

Nothing happens. I scratch again. More nothing. So I knock. Same result. I pull my hand back to give the door a good banging and smell the gun oil on the barrel of the shotgun before it tickles my neck. -You wake my neighbors and I'm gonna be mad as hell.

I raise my hands.

— You use that thing and they'll wake the hell up all right. -They will. But they II be too scared to look out their windows.

— Good point.

She takes the gun away. -The hell you doing here, Joe?

I turn and show Esperanza my new scar. -Hoped you'd have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow.

— Thought you had a quiet night planned.

I settle into the ladder-back chair in the corner of her basement room. -So did I. Ran into a guy named Lament had other ideas.

She puts the.20 gauge on the floor next to her old army cot. -Lament. -Got in a tangle with some of his kids.

She pulls a drawer open on an old bureau. -You hurt any of them?

I point at my face.

— I look like I hurt any of them? Want to see where that crazy fucker bit my toe off?

She digs in the drawer. -No, I do not.

— Didn't think so. Between that, losing an eye, and my bad knee, I'm gonna be roadkill any night now.

She looks up from her search. -Kind of doubt that.

I light a smoke and drop the spent match in one of those ashtrays with a plaid beanbag base.

— Doubt all you like, but I'd have to contract dire leprosy to start losing parts any faster.

She takes a green and gold sweatband from the drawer and stretches it between her fingers. -Howd you get away? — Cut a deal.

She drops the sweatband back in the drawer and looks over. -Cutting deals Isn't Laments style. -What can I tell you, I cut a deal.

She scratches her upper thigh just under the hem of the flannel boxer shorts

she wore outside to threaten me. I'm assuming she was wearing them already and didn't put them on special for the occasion. -Guess its not unheard of.

She's washed her usually slicked hair and it hangs black and glossy to her jawline. -I cut a deal with him once.

There's an old Ewing poster above the cot, corners ripped by thumbtacks.

I stretch my leg, feel the gravel in my knee grind.

— Don't say. Didn't know you know the guy. Truth is, before tonight, I didn't know he existed.

She twists a hank of hair.

— Like I said before, you don't look to get involved in the neighborhood, you can't expect to know what goes on. -True. True. So you one of his kids?

She tucks the hair behind her ear. -Yeah. I started over there.

She cocks a hip, rests a hand on it and leans against the bureau, flashes some attitude.

— But I didn't like the way he ran things. -So you cut a deal.

She works a cigarette from her pack on the bureau top and puts it between her lips. -I cut a deal.

I watch her look for a match, and take mine out of my pocket. -Having seen his operation, that sounds like it was a wise move.

I flip her the matchbook. -What kind of deal did you cut?

She lights a match and puts the flame to her smoke.

— I cut the kind of deal where I dragged him out of the sun when the Mungiki would have let him burn.

She crosses and drops the match in the ashtray.

— Deal was, he was too fucked up at that point to do anything but whine while I kicked him in the face before I left.

She drives her bare heel into the floor a couple times. -I was smarter, I would have left him in the sun.

— What stopped you?

The tip of her tongue appears between her lips, slips back inside. -I was afraid. Stupid. Afraid he'd be able to do something if I killed him.

She knocks some ash. -He has a talent for that.

She takes a drag and smoke rides her words. -A real gift for making kids afraid.

The tips of our cigarettes flare a few times.

I stub mine out. -Never too late to make up for past mistakes.

She nods.

— Yeah, I've thought about it. Every time I hear another kid went missing up here, I think about going over and finishing that deal. -Something holding you back?

She walks back to the bureau. -Yeah.

She rests her smoke on the edge of the bureau and starts digging again.

— I'm still afraid of him. How funny is that?

I think about my parents, about urine running down my leg as they came at me.

I watch her, and try to read the dark tattoos on her dark skin in the dark room. -Nothing funny about that at all.

She takes a pair of big geriatric sunglasses and a compact from the drawer, crosses to me and slides them on my face.

She tilts her head and gives me a once-over. -Just like you just went to the eye doctor.

She palms the compact open and holds it in front of my face.

I take a look at myself in the huge black goggles. -Oh yeah, very inconspicuous.

She clicks the compact closed. -Better than walking around with that hamburger showing.

She takes the glasses. -It gonna grow back?

— No. But it'll heal some. Part of the eyelid might grow back. Probably skin will just seal it up.

She sets the sunglasses and the compact on the top of her boom box next to the ashtray.

— Gonna be light in a few hours. -Yeah. -Just saying, you may as well stay here.

I shift in the chair. -No, I gotta-

She holds up a hand.

— Don't tell me what you gotta, Pitt. I didn't ask. I don't need to hear your excuse. And, for the record, I didn't mean anything by the invitation.

She goes to the bureau for her smoke.

— You've made it plenty clear you re not interested. I've made it plenty clear I am, and that there's no strings attached. I don't need to be turned down twice in one night. When I say, You may as well stay, I'm picturing me in my cot and you on the floor. Not that I'd suddenly play hard to get if you climbed under my blanket, but you've let me know that's not the way it's gonna be.

She crosses her arms over her cutoff WNBA tank. -So you staying or going? Cuz I'm ready to get some sleep.

I look around her little bunker room. Knicks posters, the scratched bureau, boom box and a stack of hip-hop and reggaeton CDs, small collection of basketball shoes, microwave, few groceries stacked on milk crates, chem-toilet in the corner, pile of books in both English and Spanish, that little cot.

The chambers of the Queen of the South Bronx.

The idea of climbing off that floor and into her cot, well, a man would have to be flat-out dumb as mud to pass on a chance like that.

But two people would break that cot. -I cant stay.

She heads for the cot. -No problems. Door is right there. -I need to go.

She lies down. -Don't tell me your plans, Pitt, just get going.

I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees.

— I need to go across the river.

She looks at me.

I look back. -And I need help.

I rub my chin. -Tonight.

She laughs.

I nod. -Yeah, funny, right?

She laughs some more, stops, looks at me. -No. Not funny. Just I get it now.

She puts her hands behind her head. -Man I was freaking out on it. -What's that?

She laughs again.

— Why you kept saying no. I mean, I've been turned down, shit happens to any girl. And I don't usually offer twice. You, I've put it out there a bunch of times. I

mean, a girl thinks, What's wrong with me? I didn't know if it was the whole jock thing, like you like your chicks more feminine, or maybe you don't like Latinas. I could not figure that shit out. I mean, Pitt, there ain't that much up here to choose from if we want to stay in our own kind. You don't look so bad, you can talk when you get the urge, and you're not some freak running round gnawing on anything with blood in it. And I know I got something that works. I could not figure this shit out. Why the fuck we never hooked up.

She rolls on her side and points at me. -You got yourself a girl over there.

She laughs.

Women. You tell me they're not all witches, and III tell you you haven't been paying attention.

— It's not that easy. -You do it all the time.

She raises a finger and wags it at me.

— OK, first, I do not do it all the time. I do it every chance I get, but that is far from all the time. Second, what I do on my own, and what you need, those are two very different things.

I look at the clock.

— Its the same damn river, Esperanza.

— It may be the same damn river, Pitt, but we are two very different people. -Which means?

She points at her skin then points at mine. -That need to be spelled out any clearer?

It doesn't. -I still need to get over.

She taps a bare toe on the shotgun lying next to her cot. -I hear that. But they don't want you over there. I mean.

She raises her hands over her head. -You came up here, you had to know that was like a one-way ticket.

I walk to the bureau and look at the high school basketball trophies lined on the top. -I need to get over.

She jabs a finger at me. -They. Don't. Want. You. I cross over, it's one thing. Mean, I been hitting

Rucker since I was a kid. Before Lament ever got his hands on me, I was a face over the river. Once I got infected and then got clear of Lament, I started going back. Didn't take long before one of Diggas rhinos saw me play. He sniffed there was something extra in my game. But they're cool with me. Digga called a sit-down, spelled out the rules: As long as I tithe over a percentage of what I take from the boys I school playing one-on-one at Rucker, I can come and go.

She gets up and comes over and takes one of the trophies from my hands. -Don't fuck with those.

She puts it back in place.

— You can't just go back, man. That ain't the way this works. You got sense, you know this. Shit, you're from over there. You know damn well they don't want any of us outer-borough trash coming over. I wanted to pledge Hood, Digga might have me, but that's as much because I'm an earner as it is I'm brown. They don't want no more mouths to feed over there.

She rubs her thumbs on the chipped leg of a gilded ball player. -Why I stay here. We want anything, we got to make it better over here. Fuck their Island. Shit cant be sustained. How you going to keep the population down? Think on that. It's a goddamn virus, no way to keep it from spreading. Mean, I barely stayed in school enough to play ball, but even I can read

enough to get that straight. Island cant last. Future is over here. Where there's room to spread.

She lifts her chin.

— Wait and see. Years go by, it's gonna be the other way around. Gonna be their asses trying to cross over. Get to this side.

I take one of my custom-cut smokes from the pack. -No argument. But it don't change things.

I light up. -I need to get over.

She throws her hands up and walks away. -Like you're not even listening.

I study the scratches on the cement floor. -I'm listening. I'm just not hearing anything that helps me.

She turns. -If that's what you're waiting for, you should get moving.

I look up from the floor and study her young face.

— I'm not asking you to hold my hand. I'm not asking you to carry me across. Way I figure, chances are no one will even see me. How many subway

platforms can they cover? How many trains can they ride looking for refugees? Coalition cant keep everybody from crossing their turf, someone always slips through the cracks. Coalition has cracks, the Hood has to have holes you can walk through. All I'm asking is, Where are the holes? I get snatched, I get taken to Digga, I got a history with the man. Maybe he cuts me loose. Doesn't matter. Time is an issue. Sides, I don't want anyone to know I'm over there. I don't want anyone to know I'm back.

She touches her earlobe. -What's that about?

I smile. -I'm hoping to surprise a couple people.

I hold out my pack and she comes over and takes a smoke.

She leans in to the lit match and looks at me. -That's a nasty smile you got, Pitt.

The smile stays where it is.

She blows out the match. -I like it.

She takes a deep drag and exhales.

— That girl you got over there. Turns out she don't know what she has in you, you bring that smile back over to this side of the river. We could get some things done here.

I put the smile away.

She lifts her shoulders. -And there it goes.

She reaches past me and pulls open a drawer and takes out a pair of knee-length cutoff jeans. -They move around.

She puts the smoke between her lips and pulls the cutoffs on. -Only got so many people to watch their border, so they move them around. Got apartments they move in and out of with views of the bridges. Shift others from station to station and line to line, sniffing for refugees. Buses and trains. Got some guys work the graveyard in the toll booths. Hows that for security? Others got MTA jobs, down in the tunnels. Conductors. Motormen. Maintenance. Only the Hood can do that. What's the last time you saw someone white working the subways? First of never, that's when. Coalition tried to put one of theirs in a job underground, everyoned be like, What the fuck?

She points at a Starks jersey on the back of the chair. -Toss me that.

I toss it to her and she peels off her WNBA top. -Don't be staring at my tits. You had your chance.

I take a drag and look away as she pulls on the jersey.

She's right, I had my chance.

And I passed on the best the Bronx has to offer.

So.

Back to the fire.

I stand at the foot of the Macombs Dam Bridge, leaning against one of the Tudor abutments, smoking, looking down the length of the swing bridge at the Island, a little over two thousand feet away.

Esperanza watches the approach. -Should be a gypsy around anytime. -They don't like to stop for me. -Why not? — Why do you think? I'm white. They think I'm a transit cop or something.

Looking to bust them for hacking without a medallion. -I can flag one for you.

I flick my butt over the rail of the bridge. The wind off the Harlem grabs it and spins it away. -III walk.

I take the cash Predo gave me out of my pocket. -How much?

She shrugs. -Guy I called, he'll need a couple bills.

I peel off two hundred. -And you?

She points over the river at the FDR. -That stretch of road, just that couple blocks, know what it's called?

I look at it. -Nope.

— Three Hundred Sixty-ninth Harlem Hellfighter's Drive. Black regiment. First fought in World War I. Spent one hundred and ninety-one days under fire. Suffered over fifteen hundred casualties. Guy named Private Henry Lincoln

Johnson, and his buddy Private Needham Roberts, they fought off twenty-four Germans. Just the two of them. When Roberts was shot, Johnson used his bolo knife and rifle butt to hold off the krauts.

She turns, looks over the Bronx. -Johnson won the Croix de Guerre. First American ever.

She looks at me. -Good to have someone to put your back against when the close work starts.

She spits over the rail.

— So how about you owe me on this one. Sometime I need someone to have my back, maybe I give you a call.

I fold the bills over.

— Can't say It's a safe bet III be around long enough to pay off. -Ill take that chance.

I put the money in my pocket. -If that's how you want it. -That's how I want it.

She starts to walk backward, away down the bridge approach. -Guy said the bridge was clear. No watchers. Grab yourself a ride on the

other side. Said steer clear of Marcus Garvey Park. Said Malcom X is clear all the way to One Ten. Once you cross to Coalition turf, who knows what the hell you find. But in a car, I don't know how they go about spotting you.

I raise a hand. -Stay alive.

She raises a hand. -That's the plan.

She turns away, takes a couple steps, turns back. -Joe. -Yeah. -Little advice. -What's that?

She points at my trousers. -Lose the khakis. They do nothing for you.

She turns again and breaks into a trot, jogging smooth and easy till she boosts herself over the rail, dropping into Macombs Park, lost from view.

I find a cigarette to put in my mouth and start over the bridge.

Summer wind is blowing, taking the smoke downriver. A couple cars roll

past, vibrating the bridge plates. I slap one of the beige-painted trusses and it tolls like a low bell. I cross the midpoint, feel my feet start to hurry, make them pace slow.

Is my breath short?

It is.

Past the little stone hutch where the operator sits when the bridge swings open, I hit the western approach. Look down, see the river disappear behind me, land under the bridge.

Crossing Hellfighters, coming onto the Island, fingering the straight blade in my pocket.

At Adam Clayton Powell Junior and One Fifty-three I raise my hand in the air then step in front of the gypsy that tries to drive past me. The driver looks at the color of my skin and his door locks snap down. I show him the color of my money and the locks pop up.

He watches me in the rearview as I slide into the back.

I point. -South.

He starts rolling. -How far?

I lean into the leather, light a smoke. -Not too far. But take Malcolm, will you.

He takes the left onto One Forty-five. -Right. The scenic route.

I roll the window down and smell the summer stink of Manhattan. -Sure. The scenic route. Why not.

How you know you're being watched is, you have clandestine arrangements with someone you don't trust under any circumstances that don't involve that individual being tied up and held at gunpoint. It also helps if the individual involved shares a similar attitude toward you.

The rest is easy.

See, once you've established a level of trust like that, the only question you have to ask yourself is, Assuming I don't want to be followed, where do I go?

The obvious answer being, / go where they expect me to go.

And then I go somewhere else.

The gypsy drops me at the corner of Second Avenue and Seventy-third. For a

moment I sit there with one foot out on the sidewalk, thinking about pulling my leg back in, closing the door and telling him to roll farther south.

It passes, and I get out and close the door and he drives off.

No. That's a lie.

I get out and he drives away, alright, but it doesn't pass. The gravity pulling from below Fourteenth doesn't go away. Back on the Island, it just pulls harder than ever.

How you ignore a thing like that is, you move. Create momentum. Build velocity to carry your mass outside the influence of the body pulling at yours.

I walk east on Seventy-third, aligning myself with a new trajectory, knowing that what happens beyond the event horizon cannot be described until you are caught in its tide.

The building is mid-block between First and Second, only four stories, but stretching the width of three tenements. Big ground-floor windows covered in sheets of dark paper in a manner to suggest some kind of renovation within. A half-full construction Dumpster at the curb. Upper-story windows heavily draped.

A double stoop leads up to a portico entrance.

The sky's holding the day back yet.

Time enough to make a courtesy call and be on my way. I go up the steps and push the buzzer.

It's a mess.

Like there was ever any doubt, right?

Something like this, the only way you think its going to be anything but a mess is if you re one of those people they call an idealist. Those people, I generally prefer the word asshole when I describe them. Not that I fault a person for doing their own thing, but assholes of the Idealist strain have a habit of fucking things up for everyone else.

Nothing like a person with a dream and a vision for getting a load of people all fucked up.

But Jesus its a mess.

It reeks. Rank with overcrowding.

Fear. Desperation. Misery.

All these most pleasant human emotions have a smell. None of them enjoyable. The air in here is heavy with all of them. A man could gag. -Urn, mind your step there. Just. Yes. Just kind of, urn, step over them and. Obviously these are less than ideal conditions. You're certainly not seeing us

at our best. But I, urn, assure you that this state is only temporary. Once the renovation is complete we'll have these people housed, urn, properly.

I follow his advice and just kind of step over the people sleeping in the hallway. Not that they're actually sleeping. What they're actually doing is watching us pass, tracking us through slitted lids. I hear one or two sniff at me as I weave through their jumbled limbs and bodies. -Hey, hey, man.

I look down at the hairy face looking up at me from his spot, reclined along the wainscoting.

He scratches his fat belly through his Superman T-shirt, pointing a rolled-up copy of Green Lantern at me. -You got anything?

I step past him. -No. I ain't got anything.

He sits up, waves his comic book at me as I follow my guide. -Bullshit, man! That's bullshit! I can smell it on ya! I can smell it, man! We can all smell it!

Bodies rouse, the more lively ones tilt their faces up and inhale.

My guide tugs at the shirttails that hang ever so stylishly from the bottom of his argyle sweater. -Urn, just a little, urn, more briskly here. Just up here.

He picks up the pace, doesn't pay enough attention, steps on someone s fingers. -Hey, fuck! — Sorry, urn, so sorry. -Watch where the fuck, Gladstone. -Yes, urn, sorry.

The comic book geek is on his feet.

— Can't get away with this shit, Gladstone. Come through here, stomp on people, bring some asshole that's holding and won't share out.

More sniffing from the bodies.

Voices.

— Who's holding? — Fuckin Gladstone. -Holdin?

— I smell it. I smell it.

Gladstone stops at the door at the end of the hall, sorts keys. -Yes, urn, so sorry, yes, my mistake, didn't mean to. Yes, urn, just in here if you will.

He slips a key in the lock.

— Just, urn, in here and. Urn. Yes, if you'll all please just be patient, I'm sure we'll have something for you all just as soon as, urn. Yes. Urn.

I pass through, glancing back, seeing the comic book geek flipping us off. -Fuck you, Gladstone!

The others in the hallway settling back into torpor and misery. These being easier and more comfortable than action and rage.

The door closes and Gladstone locks it tight.

— Urn, Sorry, urn. Normally wed have taken the elevator to the office level. Not walked through the, urn, residences, but, urn, the elevator is out and, well, there are some difficulties involved with getting it serviced. So, urn. Up here and, yes.

He pulls at his lower lip. -By the, urn, way, are you holding any?

I walk past him, up the fire stairs. -No. Just I couldn't get all the blood out of my jacket when I cleaned it last.

He comes after me. -Oh, yes, that would, urn, explain it.

— It's a fucking mess.

— I know.

— And it's getting worse.

— I know.

— And it's going to happen again.

— I know, Sela.

— Urn, yes, excuse me.

I watch Gladstone's back as he sticks his head a little farther into the room beyond the door he cracked open only after knocking politely about ten times and finally deciding the people fighting beyond it had not heard him.

The folks inside take note of his presence. -What? What? — Urn, I. So sorry, Miss, but I, I did, urn, knock, and.

— What, Gladstone?

— Nothing. I mean, urn, someone, a, urn, new, urn.

His arm is waving at me, indicating my presence, despite the fact that it is invisible to the people he's speaking with.

— A new, urn, applicant. And I, urn, know you like to greet each one, urn, personally, so I.

— An intercom, Gladstone. We have a perfectly good one. Or has that broken now too?

— No, I, urn, I. I buzzed and. Would you like to, urn? — Wait. Gladstone.

The other voice has taken over, the one that shares my opinion about things around here being a mess. -Urn, yes?

— Is there someone out there? — Urn, I.

He pulls his head back, looks at me to make sure I'm still there, then sticks his head back into the room. -Yes, urn. There. Yes.

— Motherfucker! See! See! A mess! These people. No regard for security. No

understanding of protocol. Is it any wonder things like this shit come up?

— They're not these people. They're our people. You, of all people, should get

that.

— Don't, not now. This is no joke. And it's no time for remedial lessons in

compassion and understanding. You!

Gladstone s back stiffens. -Urn, yes?

— You bring someone up here again without clearing it through me, you'll be back in the dorms.

— I, urn, yes, I. It's just, I did buzz and, urn. -Shut the fuck up. -Urn.

I grab the edge of the door and pull it open, move Gladstone out of the way and step into the room.

Sela goes for the piece strapped into the shoulder holster she's wearing over her tank top.

Her hand freezes on the butt.

— Oh Jesus.

I raise a hand. -Yeah, good to see you too.

Her hand stays on the gun. -Did I say it was good to see you, Joe?

— No, but I always try to read between the lines. Figured you going for your gun was how you express affection these days. -That not how she expresses affection at all, Joe.

The girl comes out from behind her desk, puts a hand on Sela's arm, rubs her thumb across a vein that swells down the muscle. -Chill out, Sela.

Sela takes her hand from the gun, but I'd be hard-pressed to describe her as chilled out. -Don't get too close to him.

The girl comes toward me. -Don't be silly, it's Joe. What's he gonna do, kill me?

She comes closer.

— He'd never do that. He'd never hurt me at all.

She smiles. -Well, except for maybe that time he slapped me.

She squishes her face. -But I was being pretty bratty. Giving him a bad time about things.

She stops in front of me. -Well, come on, Joe. What do you think?

She gives a little spin, displaying her slacks, French-cuffed shirt, suit vest and expensively shorn hair. -Have I grown up right?

I take off my huge sunglasses and show her the fresh scar tissue. -I don't know, maybe I need a better look.

She claps, wraps her arms around me, turns her face into my chest and inhales. -Oh, Joe, you always know just what to say to make me feel safe.

I stand there with her arms around me, my own arms at my sides, looking at Sela.

She shakes her head. -She her own thing, our girl, isn't she, Joe?

— The logistics of it are just devastating. I mean, it was one thing to say we were going to establish a Clan, take in anyone who wanted to join, supply them with blood, and then make the cure available to them once I find it.

She points at the twin flat-screen computer monitors on her desk, the piles of paper. -But it is so another thing to actually be doing it.

She flops back in her leather office chair and kicks her heel against the floor, spinning slow and lazy.

— Don't misunderstand, I do not have any regrets. I'm young, I have the energy, God knows I'm smart enough to handle it all, but III totally fess that it's way harder than I expected it to be.

She stops spinning, launches herself from the chair and begins circling the desk, plucking papers at random.

— I completely miscalculated demand. I mean, the numbers are way out of whack. There's only a few thousand infected on Manhattan, right? The ones aligned with Clans, why would they take a risk, move over to us? We assumed

mostly wed get Rogues. How many could that be? With a food source strictly limited by the land available, its just common sense that predators not operating with a pack are going to get squeezed out. So we assumed a couple dozen Rogues, at most, a like amount of crossovers from the Clans, people willing to take that chance because they were committed to the idea of a cure, and some refugees who got the word and managed to make it over to the Island.

She shakes one of the papers.

— At this point, in our first year, we were assuming a max membership of eighty. We prepped for one hundred. Just to be safe.

She crumples the paper and throws it on the Persian rug underfoot. -Two-hundred and sixty-one.

She shakes her head.

— I mean. Holy shit. The renovations. The initial renovations were hard enough. But you buy a building, grease the right palms, bribe the tight asses on the neighborhood committee and get to work. Once the materials start moving in and out, the people on the street have no idea what you're actually doing inside. The rooms were so nice. We really went the extra mile. No Pottery Barn or IKEA crap, really nice beds, furnishings. Tried to give each room a character. Like a boutique hotel. That's what the builders thought we were

doing.

She goes to the door, opens it and points at her outer office. -Now? Did you see it? In the halls. On the stairs. How do we bring a crew in here to tear out the walls and turn the second and third floors into the barracks we need? How do I take delivery on a hundred bunk beds? Like no one is going to notice and ask what the hell is going on. Little things. The elevator. I cant get a repair service in because I don't have room to hide all these people. A building this size, things are constantly breaking, wearing out. Were taxing the plumbing like you wouldn't believe. The longer these things go without maintenance, the worse everything gets.

She throws the papers in the air, stands there as they snow around her. -And food, just regular food, were sneaking it in. So the neighbors don't know how many are here. I mean, the FreshDirect truck cant be rolling up every day and unloading enough groceries for a cafeteria, can it? I mean. My God. Jesus. Shit.

She sighs, looks at me, smiles.

— Listen to me. I mean, could I sound a little more like my dad? He d come home from work, it d be just like this. The lab or the office or both, something was always blowing up. All he wanted to do was be up to his eyes in research, but it was always patent this or government oversight that or board of directors

are cock-suckers.

She rubs her forehead.

— And that's what really kills. Not being in the lab. I mean, I know I have responsibilities here, and I took all this on and I have to deal, but it's not even what I want to be doing. I mean.

She drops her head back and opens her mouth wide. -Gaaahhh.

She rolls her eyes.

— This stuff is so boring. And I mean, the whole point is a cure, right? I mean, that's why these people are packing in here, right? I mean, why name the Clan Clan Cure if I never get to work on it?

She leans against the desk, opens a cigarette box and takes out a clove. -And that place. It's a whole different headache. Cause the Vyrus, It's testy as hell. It's really, what's so sad, it's really a pussy. I mean, there are other viruses that are way more robust. Think about it.

She comes over and puts her cigarette in her mouth and leans in. -Light?

I snap a match and she touches her cigarette to it.

— Thanks.

She moves away, blows a cloud.

— Think about it. The Vyrus, it can only live inside the human body. It can only survive in a human body. It can only spread itself blood to blood. And it's so hyper, it colonizes host cells so quickly and burns them out, that it needs to have its environment constant/y refreshed. And it kills its host and rarely gets a chance to reproduce. I mean, is that inefficient or what? Seriously, it is one crap piece of engineering. One of those evolutionary steps that's so random and poorly designed that it actually proves evolution. I mean, why would God bother with a thing like that? Intelligent design? Not.

She crosses to the window. Lifts the hook that holds the shutters closed behind the curtains.

— Something fussy like that, just getting a look at it is a pain. Creating a stable environment for it outside a host? Talk about tedious. And then, a thing like this, finding a cure for a virus, you don't do that alone. Not even when you're smarter than everyone else.

She opens the shutter a crack, puts her hand through and parts the curtain. -There's just way too much busy work. I mean. Cultures, batches of this and that, computer modeling, archiving. Its like working on a code. Like how when

they try to break a code they sometimes give just a piece of it to each team. So they don't really know what they're working on. Keep them isolated from one another. I have to do that. I mean, the lab I assembled for this at Horde Bio Tech, it's not staffed with assholes. Well, some of them are assholes, but they're really fucking smart assholes. Show these people the whole Vyrus, let them get a good look at it and see its behavior? You will see some serious freaking out. But.

She turns, light from a streetlamp drops through the curtain and crosses her face, makes her perfect skin glow. -It is amazing.

She lifts her hand to the light, stares at it reflected there. -That's one of the things that's amazing. Light. Like we've been doing things with light. These guys at ASU, they've been blasting viruses in blood samples with a laser. Like fifty megawatts per square centimeter. Which isn't half as nasty as it sounds. And so, like, we've known for a long time you can kill viruses with UV radiation, but that causes mutation. And mutation leads to adaptation over time. So, these guys, they've been using visible light pulses. And it works. It.

She holds up her cigarette, wiggles it, creating a jagged stream of smoke. -It vibrates a virus, physically disrupts the virus shell, this thing called the

capsid. It cripples the virus it affects. Virus cant function, and dies. So.

Her eyes are big, staring a million miles.

— The Vyrus, your Vyrus, goes haywire when exposed to solar UVA, it mutates. But not adaptive mutations. Or not that we can see because it happens way too fast. But, but, maybe we can find a wave of radiation, a visible wavelength to shatter the Vyrus1 capsid? It's so, it's way outside the box, but the Vyrus isn't in the box, so this is the kind of stuff we have to. I mean.

She stares farther, going away from the room, deep inside some other place. -It is so fucking cool.

She takes a big drag.

— It's like, like being a pioneer. Like none of the rules apply and you can try anything. Anything. Nothing is out of bounds. And. Oh, and I said about computer models. The good thing about having too many people here, it gives us a really good pool to draw samples from. And, because the Vyrus, it does mutate. Radically. From person to person. I mean, we've got a couple people here who infected other people here. And even then, the same strain passing from host to host, it mutates. But within a range. I think. So we can draw samples. And like I said, the Vyrus is a total puss, and if you mishandle a specimen it croaks like that, but if you do it right we have time to log the

mutation. So we're creating a database of mutations. Like, we can look and see its favorite tricks. How it hides. How it defends itself. Maybe get an idea why some infecteds get a lot stronger, and some not so much. Or healing. Like some strains seem to mutate in a fashion that really enhances new cell growth. But not all of them. And.

Her eyes slide sideways, unfocus, and someone cuts her strings and she's hitting the floor.

Sela gets to her before I do, feels her pulse, takes the burning cigarette from between her fingers and stubs it in an ashtray on the edge of the desk.

I look at her as she brushes loose strands of perfect hair from Amanda's forehead. -She OK?

Sela doesn't look at me, just lifts the girls head into her lap. -She's exhausted. -Yeah, well I guess being crazy will do that to you.

She looks at me now. -She's not crazy. She's a visionary.

She looks back at her lover's face.

— She's special, Joe.

I fish a smoke from my pack. -Specially fucked up, Sela.

I drop a match in the ashtray, see Amanda's clove still smoldering and crush it.

— She had mind-fuck parents and they mind-fucked her. She's got too much money and she's too smart for her own good and she's seen too much and she knows things that are too weird. And that's all fucked her up. She's not normal. She's bent as hell. She's crazy.

Sela rests her hand on the girls forehead. -You calling yourself normal these days, Joe?

I smoke some more.

Sela looks at me. -Yeah, I didn't think so.

She slides out from under the girl.

— She works harder than any of us. She never stops. She's here in this office or she's at the lab. I can barely get her to sleep two hours out of every thirty. She never stops. She never gives up. Everyone who shows up on that

doorstep, she says yes to. She takes them all in. -Like I said, crazy.

She steps to me, every flawlessly cut muscle on her is rigid. -She never stops working, Joe. For us. She's not infected, but she never stops trying to help us. She works harder to help us than we work to help ourselves.

She raises a finger and shows me the short, sharp, red nail at its end. -So be careful how you talk about her.

She angles the finger at my face. -You only got one eye left to poke out if I lose my temper.

Its true Sela wouldn't even know the girl if I hadn't been around. It's true I've known Sela since she was a punk-attitude pre-op tranny down with the Society, as opposed to a fashion-plate, lipstick pre-op up here with Amanda. It's even true she saved my life once.

But none of that will save my eye if she decides she's got a hankering to see it on the end of her finger.

Diplomacy is required. -Sure thing, Sela. I get it. Mean, the fact she's investing her energies in

trying to save a bunch of people who look at her like food, fact that she's filled a building with them, all of em close enough to smell her all the time, that doesn't indicate anything about her sanity. Stable as a rock, your girl there.

She pulls the finger in, joins it up with four or five others, and I get a second to wonder how far my head will fly if she decides to knock it off my neck, then she lowers her fist. -Yeah, you re right about that part. That part's a problem.

She steps back. -Those people downstairs, that's a problem.

She folds her arms.

— Think it's tough getting enough burgers in here to feed all them, imagine what it's like getting enough blood. We've got the money. We just got no place to buy from. They're starting to starve. Couple already have. Burned out. Went berserk. Want to know how good it was for morale when I had to bring those ones down? Not good at all. And last night. That thing we were getting into when you showed up. One of our members went hunting last night. Just a block away. On our doorstep. -Sloppy. -Desperate.

— Witnesses?

She rubs the back of her neck.

— Witnesses. No. Not to the act. But he left one majorly fucked-up corpse. I expect to see coverage on that the second I take a look at New York One. -Where's the guy?

— He's here. He's locked in the basement for now. We're trying to sort out what to do about him.

I take the last drag off my smoke and stub it. -Kill him.

She shakes her head.

— No. That's not what were doing here. Were making something different. -Fine. Make something different. But the smart play is you kill him. You know that. He went off the reservation. So now you kill him. And make sure everyone in the place knows you killed him. -That's what I've been telling her.

We look down at Amanda, her eyes open, fiddling her hair back into place. -I mean, I want there to be room for compassion around here, but we're on the brink. Order has to be maintained at some point.

She holds out a hand and Sela pulls her to her feet. -Easy, baby.

— I'm fine. Its just a little sugar crash. -It's severe exhaustion and borderline malnutrition is what it is.

Amanda twists her hand free. -I said I'm fine. I just need a smoothie or something. -You need a proper meal and sleep.

— Sela, back off. I love you, honey, but give me just a little space here before I positively freak out.

She turns to me.

— I mean, you don't see Joe going all flattery on me just because I got a little dizzy.

She brushes the back of her hand across her forehead, fusses her hair some more.

— That's like one of Joe's great assets. He doesn't get flattery, do you, Joe? He just sees what needs to be done and deals with it. After that, It's all just like a question of whether you do it and accept the consequences, or don't do it and accept some different consequences. Like with this problem today. Joe

gets it. I mean, you get it too, Sela, but Joe gets it in a different way. Joe sees the consequences of not handing out some kind of punishment here. Don't you, Joe?

I shrug. -If you say so.

She bunches both fists, tucks them beneath her chin and smiles wide. -Oh, Joe! I'm so happy you re here. I mean, I always knew you d come sooner or later, but its just perfect that you came when we really really need you. Having you join us, that's going to make all the difference for so many reasons. -Yeah, well, thing is.

I take a drag. -I'm not here to join you.

I take another drag. -I'm just here to spy on you for Dexter Predo. Now that I've done that.

I point at the liquor cabinet. -III be looking for a drink. After.

I point at the door.

— Ill be looking for the rear entrance.

— No.

— Can I finish?

— No.

— I mean, so, what, just out of hand, you wont even listen?

— No.

— Joe, really, all I'm asking is for you to listen for a minute. Just a couple

minutes while I explain just what it would mean to us. I mean, this is really

really important.

I toss down my drink. -And all I'm telling you is no.

She sips on the smoothie Gladstone brought her.

— What is that about? I mean, I know you dont like to be indebted to anyone, but I'm not even talking about a favor. I'm talking about a business transaction. And you just want to sit there and be all.

She makes a stone-face, drops her voice an octave. -Wo. Wo. Wo. My name is Joe Pitt and I don't do nuthin' I don't want to do and I

won't even listen because I don't know a good thing when I have it and I'd rather be all fucked up and tragic and sad and go hurt people.

She points at me. -And you're doing it right now, you're thinking about hurting me.

She shakes her head. -You are so thin-skinned.

She leans forward and puts her elbows on the desk.

— But OK, you don't want to join us. You don't want to do business with us. But you're here. I mean, there has to be a reason why you're here. Besides spying for Predo, I mean. I mean, I'm not saying that's not what you re doing, but there's a reason. Because.

She folds her hands on the desk and lowers her face and rests her chin on them.

— I know you, Joe. I know you like people to think you just run around from job to job looking to stay ahead. But I know you have things that get you worked up.

She winces.

— Like when you slapped me? When I was talking about your girlfriend that time.

She looks at Sela. -Sela heard what happened.

I run a finger around the rim of my glass. Crystal, it sings a pure note.

Amanda bites her lower lip. -You tried to infect her. That's what she heard. And it didn't work.

Jeo Pitt 4 — Every Last Drop

It's quiet, just the glass repeating its song.

— I know I never met her. But she must have been something, Joe. I know that. I mean, she must have been something else.

She lifts her chin from her hands.

— So now, I mean, I guess that means you re alone. Like, not just alone like you like people to think you are, but really, seriously, alone. Sooo. So, I'm guessing that's why you're here. Because I don't know where you've been, or what kind of deal you made with Predo, but, and please don't get all pissy with me about this, but I think that the reason you took his job is because you were tired of being alone.

She stands.

— But being, like, you, you couldn't just come here and say, Hey, guys, mind if I hang out?

She comes around the desk.

— So here you are, too stubborn to just jump in and join the family. OK. But, I mean, you came up the stairs, you saw those people. Those people, Joe, they're starving. I mean, its getting bad. The guy were talking about that went hunting, that's, like, that's the tip of the iceberg. Pretty soon, there's gonna be more of that. And more. And we're not going to be able to contain it.

She sits on the edge of the desk. -It is going to get so ugly. So fast. And so soon.

She rubs her face. -We've just.

She looks me in the eye.

— We've got to have more blood. Now, we think we know where we can get it. But its going to be a serious pain in the ass.

She reaches out and rests her fingers on my knee. -And we need your help. -You shouldn't be asking him.

She looks at Sela. -Why not?

Sela points at me. -He's spying for Predo.

Amanda looks around the room like she's missed something. -So? I mean, he told us that. He's obviously not all Coalition all of a sudden.

Sela watches me as I pick up the bottle from the desk.

— It doesn't mean anything. Predo may have told him to tell you. This could be their game.

Amanda grabs the sides of her head. -Well if you're going to get all twisty-turny about it well never get anywhere.

She holds out her arms.

— I mean, what's he going to tell Predo? What are we hiding? Were like all of twelve blocks from his office. He can come take a look if he wants. Shit, far as I'm concerned, he can come join if he wants. We're here, we're taking all comers, and were finding a cure. What's the big secret?

Sela puts her hands on her hips.

— I don't know! But he wants something. And he sent Pitt here to find it. And letting him stay is fucking dangerous no matter what your feelings about him are. It's stupid. And you're not stupid.

Amanda rolls her eye. -Baby, you know what, fuck you.

Sela cocks her head. -Excuse me?

Amanda cocks her head to the same angle. -Oh don't whip out that sistah attitude and throw it around in my office.

Sela raises an eyebrow.

— Uh-huh. Alright, I wont bring the sistah attitude in here. Ill leave it at the door. Ill leave all that shit outside as soon as you stop acting all Mata Hari. Like you know how this is played. Because, little lady, you do not. You may be the smartest one in the room, but there is shit you do not know. This guy, your precious Joe, sure he comes across sometimes. Sure he's turned up in the right place at the right time once or twice, but mostly what he does is he gets people killed. And a lot of them, they get killed because he has a history of playing off both sides. You want to get all sentimental about him because he saved your life, I get it, but he has been in Predos pocket for years. Fuck, he's been in everyone's pocket one time or another. He comes out and tells us he's here for Predo, that means shit. All that means is whatever he's after, whatever Predo's after, it has nothing to do with him being here spying.

She looks at me.

Amanda looks at me.

I set my empty glass on the desk. -Well, I had my drink.

I stand. -Now can you show me that back way out?

Amanda watches as Sela enters the code and unlocks the door that leads to

the alley.

— You're wasting so much time, Joe.

I lean against the wall.

— I don't know about that. I had a nice drink, got caught up with old acquaintances. Worse ways to spend an hour.

She gives the eyeroll she's been perfecting since she was nine. -Not what I mean. And you know it.

She reaches over and grabs the sleeve of my jacket.

— This is the place for you. This is the last place for you. What we're doing here, its real. You can huff and makes faces and act like you think I'm crazy,

but you know I'm doing the right thing. And you know I can get this done. Anything you do between when you walk out that door and when you come back and tell us you're with us, all that will be such a waste of time.

I look at her. -Sweetheart.

I come away from the wall. -I don't think you re crazy.

I gently twist my arm free. -I know it like I know life ain't fair.

I make for the door, stopping to give Sela a look. -Try to keep her alive.

She opens the door. -It's what I'm here for. -Yeah.

I point down toward the basement.

— It'll make your job easier if you do like she says and kill that guy who made the mess.

I start down the rusted steel steps that lead into the alley.

Sela stands there watching. -Were not all like you, Joe. Some of us don't take to killing so easy.

I walk toward the gate that leads out onto Second. -Not my fault.

On the street I find a yellow. The driver asks me where I want to go.

I can't go there yet.

So I tell him to take me to the Bowery.

The nice thing about a place like the Whitehouse is they don't feel compelled to announce you if you drop by at an unusual hour to visit a guest. The bad things about a place like the Whitehouse, listed alphabetically, start somewhere around armed robbery, run past cockroaches and dirty needles, hit their stride with mass murder, start to tail off at rape, and end with a classic: zoophilia.

Add in the smattering of semi-functional resident bums, midwestern teenage runaways, and gagging-drunk European tourists on a budget, and you've got a holocaust of vomit and shit smells that draw up the stairwell like smoke pouring up a chimney.

I can almost see the reek as I climb through it.

Coming onto the top-floor landing, I have to turn sideways to fit down the narrow yellow hallway punctuated with close-set white doors. I hear snoring, early morning fornication, someone listening to Kraftwerk so loud on their iPod that they might as well hook it up to some speakers, a toilet flushing and clogging in the communal bathroom, and the distinct sound of someone moaning through a gag while a belt is applied to bare skin.

I long for matches and gasoline.

End of the hall, front of the building, I stop at the final door.

There's silence behind the door. Not even the grinding of teeth I would have expected. The lock is the worst piece of shit I've ever seen in my life. I flip my straight razor open, slip it in the half-inch gap between the door and frame, and start to edge the bolt out of its socket, pulling hard on the doorknob to create friction so the bolt doesn't snap back into place.

The door to the bathroom opens and a girl with the hem of her short skirt tucked into her panties, a ring of hickeys around her neck, and a shiny pink wig askew on her head, staggers down the hall to the room where I heard the fucking sounds.

She tries the knob and it doesn't open.

She bangs the door.

— You fuckers! Stop fucking and let me in!

The panting and groaning behind the door gets louder, faster.

She bangs again. -Fucking open up! I'm not waiting out here till you guys cum.

The fucking goes on.

She puts her forehead against the door and slouches and turns and looks at me, my razor working the lock. -Hey.

I watch the pulse that makes one of the hickeys on her neck flutter. -Hey.

She licks dry lips. -Thought that guy lives there.

I look at the door I'm working. -This guy?

She closes one eye, trying to think over the rising volume of her friends' fucking. -Yeah. Said he lives there.

— When'd he say that?

She looks down, sees her skirt, tries to pull it free of her waistband. -Shit. Uh, when'd he? Other day.

She pulls her panties down, gets her skirt straight, leaves her panties at her knees for the moment. -He, urn.

She covers her mouth.

— When I was blowing him. Said he lives there when I was blowing him. Said anytime I wanted to score I could come over for the same deal.

She drops her hand, points at the door.

— He wasn't lying to me, was he? I was fucking counting on getting some X off him for a party tonight.

I shake my head. -He wasn't lying.

She smiles, reaches down and pulls her panties back up, catching her skirt in them again. -Cool, that's cool.

There's a definite crescendo from behind the door, a shriek, a yelp, glass

shattering.

She blinks a few times.

— Hey, if you, like, got something on you, I could really use it. Not for free, but like the same deal I made with your friend.

I shake my head. -No, I'm not holding.

She sighs. -Shit.

The door bumps her ass and she lurches upright as it swings open into the hall. -Fucking about time.

She walks into the room. -You're such a whore, I told you not to fuck him without me.

The door closes.

I pop the lock, go inside, shut the door.

The room is shin-deep in empty take-out containers, plastic baggies, dirty clothes and toenail clippings, the walls covered in photos of barely clad starlets and models torn from men's lifestyle magazines. Through the grimy

barred window I can see an edge of sunlight is touching the roof of a building across the street. I pull it open to get some air in, then grab a dingy blanket from the bed to drape over the curtain rod. Its summer in New York City and the air coming in the window doesn't smell any better than the air already in the room. I light a cigarette and sit on the board-narrow bed and smoke and wait for the scum bucket that lives in the shithole.

Finally.

Back where I belong.

The cockroaches in the room, they move to avoid the blade of sunlight that cuts through the crack at the windows edge and slices across the floor. Roaches not liking daylight, its no great shock that I don't have to wait long for my particular roach to come home.

I know him by the sharp report of nails worn through the heels of his ankle boots striking the hallway floor. Even over the stuttering pipes, creaking joints and bitter howls of the waking building and its occupants, I recognize his nervous step.

Outside the door he jitters the keys in his hand, simultaneously keeping rapid time with clacking teeth. The key jams into the lock and the door jerks open and I smell his greasy pomade.

He steps in, closes the door, freezes with his hand on the knob and looks at the blanket blocking out the day. -Oh.

It's a small room, a very small room, a room with more in common with a closet than with other rooms. It takes his eyes less than a heartbeat to look it over and see the dark silhouette on his bed.

He holds his key to his face, looking at the fob that dangles off it. -My bad. Wrong room. Ill just. Don't get up. Ill just.

Not the brightest bulb, but not the dimmest, he knows that people who wait in your room with the window blacked out are bad news.

He just doesn't know how bad the news is yet.

He starts to open the door.

— Ill just. Go to my own room, yeah? Right. Sorry about this. My bad. Totally my bad. This place, so cheap, right? Have like ten different locks in the whole joint. Open someone else's room by accident. Happens all the time. My bad. Really, don't get up.

I don't get up. -No, you got the right room.

He stops vibrating. -Oh shit.

I watch a roach skitter across the shaft of daylight. -Close the door, Phil.

He closes the door.

I stomp on the roach. -Got some things I want to talk to you about.

If it wasn't daylight I could take him by the ankle and dangle him out the window and cut to the chase.

Instead I have to be subtle. -I'm going to cut your nose off, Phil.

He holds his hands up.

— Whoa! Whooooaaaahhh! Who said? Cut me? How did we get to? Hey, man, I'm sayin', How did we just skip aii the way across you're gonna beat the shit out of me, kick my teeth in, put a cigarette out on my forehead, and get aii the way to cutting my fucking nose off?

He drops his jaw.

— Like, what happened to conversation? What happened to getting all caught up?

He crosses his arms over the front of his dirty silk Hawaiian print shirt and moves his head to one side. -Hey, great to see you, Joe. Long time. How ya been? Fine? You been fine?

He puts his hands on his hips, moves his head to the other side.

— Sure, Phil, I been fine. How you been? What you been up to?

Back to position one.

— Me, oh, I been OK, the usual. This and that. And, you know. Mostly what I been up to is.

He throws his hands in the air.

— Mostly I been spending my days and nights making sure no one cuts my nose off.

He covers his nose. -I'm saying, Seriously fuck, Joe! Cut my nose off? My nose?

He walks in little circles, kicking the trash out of his way. -Why not an ear? My lips? Fingers? Jeezus!

He stops, holds a hand up.

— Not, mind you, that I'm making suggestions, expressing a preference, mind, just that, you know, fuck. You know?

He stands and pants.

I show him the razor again. -You want to let me finish?

He pulls his head back.

— Oh, there's more? There's more after you're gonna cut my nose off? You got more that comes after that? Here, let me pull up a chair, let me get comfortable for this, I can't fucking wait to see how it ends.

There's no chair in the room, so he takes a seat at the end of the bed, crosses one leg over the other, rests his hands on his knees and cocks an ear my way. -By all means, man, proceed.

I balance the razor on my finger, watch it jump slightly with every beat of my heart. -What I was gonna say, Phil, was, I'm gonna cut your nose off.

He nods. -Yep, yep, got that part, got it. Gooo ooon.

I flip the razor, catch it so it rests easy in my palm.

— I'm gonna cut your nose off, I was saying. I'm gonna cut your nose off if you waste a single fucking second of my time, is what I was saying.

I look from the blade to his face.

— If that makes any difference in your reaction, Philip, that is what I was saying.

His jaw tightens, clicks twice, he nods. -Yeah, yeah. Sure. That makes a difference. Urn.

He points at his nose. -Too late.

I fold the razor. -No, man.

I slip the razor into my pocket. -It's not too late.

He queases a smile.

— Great, Joe, that's great. You know I want nothin' but to help an old buddy like you. Never want to waste a second of your time. Time being, you know.

He rubs fingers against thumb, hopefully. -Time being money. You know what I mean. -Yeah, I know, Phil.

I take my hand out of my pocket. -I just thought wed do this one the old-fashioned way.

He sees the brass knuckles on my fist. -Aw, Joe, we coulda worked it out like gentlemen.

I give him a closer look at the knuckles.

Much closer.

He slams into the wall and drops in a jumble on the floor.

I stand over him, using one of his old dirty wife beaters to wipe the blood from brass. -Shut up, Phil.

I point at the crushed mass that used to be his nose. -Just feel lucky you still got that fucking thing.

— I need to know how it stands.

— Right, right.

— There a bounty?

— A? A what? A bounty? Jeezus, man, what do you? A bounty?

I knock the brass knuckles on the side of the sink where he's washing the blood from his face. -Stay focused, Phil.

He flinches. -Yeah, focused.

He looks in the mirror, sees the bib of blood spread over his shirt. -Oh for fuck! Maaan. That sucks.

I clink the knuckles again.

He snaps to.

— Yeah, focused. Yeah, bounty. Yeah. Like I was sayin? Fuck do you think, Joe? Stab Terry and all. You think there's a bounty? Fuck yeah, there is. -How much?

He pulls a baggie from his pocket, starts sorting through the pills inside. -Man, this II teach me to focus exclusively on the ups. I mean, fuck, I don't

got a single painkiller in here.

He fingers a couple chalky white pills from the bag and pops them in his mouth. -Still, any port in a storm.

I slap the back of his head and he coughs and the pills fly out of his mouth, bounce off the mirror and drop to the floor.

He stares at the pills, one resting at the edge of the pube-clogged scum-grate in the middle of the room, the other rolled to the base of a toilet inside one of the doorless stalls. -Oh, that, that was utterly unnecessary. That was totally fucking flagrant.

I put a finger beneath his chin, raise his eyes to mine. -Phil, perhaps I'm not communicating my urgency here.

I fit my hand around his jaw.

— Its early in the morning and you re burned out, distracted. I know. It's hard for you to focus. But.

I exert pressure, squeezing the hinges of his jaw.

— If you pay attention, you'll notice that I'm talking more than I usually do, giving you more chances than I usually have in the past to tell me what the

fuck I want to know before I give you some new scars.

His jaw creaks. Phil whimpers. -That might give you some idea of just how thin your ice is.

I stiff-arm him into the wall, careful not to shatter his jaw. I don't want to shatter it yet, not until he's talked. -And just how bad things are going to get if you don't focus immediately.

I relax my hand and take it from his jaw. -How much, Phil, how much has Terry put on my head?

He works his jaw up and down, listens to it click, rubs it. -Twelve pints.

I look at him. -Again? — Twelve pints. -A blood bounty?

He wipes some of his own blood from his face. -What I said.

The door swings open and Phils next-door neighbor comes in wearing a

stained bed sheet like a poorly wrapped toga. She walks past us, eyes all but closed, goes into a stall, hikes her sheet, sits and places her elbows on her knees with a yawn.

I grab Phils shoulder and aim him at the door. -Come on.

He looks back at his lost pills, straining against me. -Just a sec, man, just a sec, really, man, I can't afford to let that shit go.

I shove him at the door. -Yes, you can.

He bangs out into the hallway and I follow him. -Twelve pints.

He walks backward, trying to get a peek through the swinging bathroom door.

— Man, that fucking chick is gonna snag my shit. -Anyone scooping that stuff off the floor is hard up enough to deserve it.

He raises a hand. -Well there you go, man, you just described me.

I give him another shove and he bounces off the door to his room.

— Twelve pints is an interesting number, Phil.

He gets the key from his blood-stippled high-waisted trousers. -Fascinating, I'm sure. But, like, you don't understand what I got going here.

He points at the bathroom.

— That chick there gives it up for anything. Mean, I could probably lay off some NoDoz on her and come away with a hand job. Thing is, I'm not saying / wouldn't eat the shit on the floor back in there myself, but with this deal I don't have to. I can just give them to her and still get a hummer out of it.

He sticks up both thumbs. -It's win-win, man.

He lowers his thumbs.

— But if she sees them on the floor she'll eat them just out of fucking curiosity. Man, I'll be out the pills and the hummer.

He points both thumbs down. -Lose-lose. -Hey, asshole.

The girl stands in the open bathroom doorway.

Phil points at himself.

She nods. -Yeah, you. That stuff you gave me, that was like total bullshit, wasn't it?

He shakes his head. -What, huh? No, no, that was good stuff, I wouldn't, you know.

She puts her hands on her hips and the sheet falls off one shoulder, exposing a tit topped by a scabbing Betty Boop tattoo. -Yeah, like you said you wouldn't cum in my mouth either.

He shakes his head.

— That was like I told you, like an accident, like I lost focus for a second at the point of impact and next thing I knew, BANG.

She narrows her eyes. -Yeah, bang, my ass.

Phil puts a leer on. -Hey, if that's what you're into.

She makes a fist and starts down the hall.

— Don't even, you dick. Cumming in my mouth is one thing, but that shit you gave me was almost all baby laxative.

Phil backs into his door. -Hey, no way.

— Bullshit. I've had the runs all morning. -Look, this is the big city, you got to expect shit to be cut a little.

The girls door opens and a guy with too many gym muscles sticks his head out. -What the fuck, that the guy ripped you off?

Phil raises a righteous finger.

— Ripped off? I. Man, I never in my life. This shit is like a calling for me. I. Out of the kindness of my, I, I, like I barely have any shit for myself and I cut a deal with this girl, throw her a little help when she's in need and now. I.

He folds his arms. -I'm fucking insulted.

Too Many Muscles comes fully out of the room, bare-assed, showing the rest of his muscles. -Fucking rip-off artist.

Phil opens his mouth and I dig a thumb under his arm and turn him to his own door.

— Open it.

He looks at me.

— Sure, sure, just no one likes being called a rip-off artist. -Open it.

He opens the door.

Too Many Muscles is trying to catch my eye so he can flex and make it clear that I shouldn't fuck with him. The girl is shaking her fist in Phils face, her voice rising, telling him she better get some good X off him if he expects another blow job. The corridor is filled with smells of shit and smoke and sweat and fungus and incense and fast food and spilled cheap wine and puke and the residue of the last corpse that rotted unnoticed in its room for a week before it was found.

It's distracting.

So distracting I don't register for a beat that Phil never put his key in the knob I locked before we went to the bathroom to clean his nose. So distracting I don't hear what I should hear, don't smell what I should smell. So distracting that after I shove Phil into the room I stand frozen for a moment when the side of beef disguised as an arm comes out of the dark room and fists a gloved collection of bratwurst into the collar of my jacket.

And then I am pulled inside by a force not unlike being roped to the back of an MTA bus as it pulls from Penn Station, and the door is slammed shut behind me on the suddenly retreating couple in the hall.

— He's still giving me that look, tell him again it wasn't me.

— I know it might be a little hard to believe, the situation being what it is, but

he's actually telling the truth, Joe.

— See, it wasn't me, man. I mean, just basic logic at work, man, I mean, do the

math. Like, two and two does not make five, and for it to have been me, well,

you d like have to go back and make that apple not hit Galileo's head and

make two plus two equal like eleven. If you get me.

— Newton.

— No thanks. I'm not hungry. Like, the way he's looking at me, I'm never likely

to eat again the way it makes my stomach jump.

Terry shakes his head. -No, the name you were, you know, searching for, it's Newton.

Phil scratches his head, careful not to disrupt his pompadour. -Name? What name? I don't know any names, man, I don't know a thing. I'm like barely involved in this shit. Innocent bystander.

Terry taps my razor against my brass knuckles.

— The man who got hit in the head with the apple, who invented, although discovered is a more accurate word, gravity, his name was Newton. Sir Isaac Newton.

Phil holds up both hands in denial.

— I'm telling you, Bird, I never heard of the guy. Like with Joe here, he just showed up. I'd known he was coming I woulda called you. I was gonna call you.

He looks at me.

— No offense, Joe, and not like there's anything in it for me, but if I want to stick around these parts I got to do what's smart.

He raises a finger. -But I did not, in fact, make that call. Cuz why would I? For what? And when?

He shows the raised finger to Terry.

— And this Newton character? Never heard of him. He's around, I'd never know it.

Terry looks at the mass of shadow behind Phil. It comes away from the wall and taps him on the chest and Phil goes down hard into the corner of the

room.

The mass looms over him. -Siddown an' shutit, Philip.

Phil cowers. -Yeah, sure thing, Hurley. Its shut.

He covers his mouth with his hands.

Hurley turns to Terry, rolls his neck. -Dat good enow, Terry?

Terry sets my weapons on Phils narrow dresser.

— Yeah, that's fine, that's fine. Just we all need to relax a little. Get a little less chatter in here, clear the air of static and confusion.

He adjusts the set of his Lennon glasses on the bridge of his nose. -Like, for instance, Joe, while yeah, Phil is a nasty cockroach of a Renfield and would sell his, I don't know, his soul, mother, anything like that, for a few bucks or a handful of black beauties, he didn't have anything to do with this.

He combs his soul patch with the nail of his index finger. -Truth is, you weren't the victim of any kind of, I don't know, betrayal or setup, you were really, when you get into it, the victim of your own nature.

He places a hand on the inner thigh of his often-mended hemp jeans. -What I'm getting at here is that you, over the many years of our association and, if I'm opening up, which I am, over the many years of our friendship, you were given a lot of slack. Yards and yards. Part of that was in tribute to the bond between us.

He points at the window where the gap of daylight has grown brighter. -You know they closed it? CBGB, they closed it. Outbreak of sudden hostilities between the guy who owned the place and his landlords. A homeless charity, of all things. Couldn't be negotiated. They, there's some some irony in this, the homeless charity people, they gave him the boot.

He looks lost for a moment.

— The Bowery without CBGB. What's that? Like, and it's not an overstatement at all, you know, like the end of an era.

He looks at me.

— Big landmark in our relationship, yeah? The Ramones. That gig. Man that was a great gig. One of their best. I was having an amazing night. Right till I went in the can and found you all opened up and bleeding on the floor. Tell you, till very recently, I don't know, I always hoped Id find the guy who did that and, don't get me wrong, but thank him.

He spreads the fingers of both hands across his chest and bows his head. -I know how that sounds. Believe me.

He raises his head.

— But the point isn't to thank the guy for causing you pain, for infecting you, for sending you into this life and all the, you know, complications that come with it.

He lowers his hands from the front of his East Village Organic Foods Co-op shirt.

— The point would have been to thank him for dropping you in my way. For facilitating whatever, I don't know, whatever energy it was that knew I needed someone like you at that time. I mean, man, over the years, we got some things done. Not always seamless, III be first to cop to that, but we got some things done. So.

He points at the window again.

— For a long time I always had this vague kind of feeling that guy deserved some thanks from me.

He touches that spot on his thigh again.

— You know, until you got Hurley there shot to pieces and did your best to kill me.

I light the smoke I've been paying attention to while he's been talking. -Terry, lets face it, when all that went down, I wasn't at my best.

I wave my hand, leaving a rising trail of smoke. -I'd been at my best, you d be dead right now.

A sharp light comes to the corner of his eye. -Well, that's a point that could be debated. Isn't it?

I nod.

— Sure. Feel like you maybe want to have Hurley step into the hall and we can debate it now?

He runs a hand over his head and down the length of his ponytail. -No, Joe, that's not going to be the way this happens.

He comes and sits next to me on Phils sagging bed.

— What I was getting at before, about how, I don't know, Phil there didn't have anything to do with us being here, about how that was your own fault, that wasn't a minor point. See, the fact that you were, for all intents and purposes, sitting on death row when you made your break, that's not exactly an extenuating circumstance. More like that's further grounds speaking against you.

I find a blue and white cardboard coffee cup on the floor and knock some ash into it. Not that I'm too worried about making a mess, just that I'd like to avoid burning the place down. Till I'm certain that's my best option, anyway. -Yeah, I follow, Terry. Thing is, you were planning to put me in the sun. So I'm hard-pressed to see what you can do at this point that's any worse.

He takes his glasses off.

— Worse, yeah, worse. Well, that's part of the whole picture thing here. Like how the reason we know you re here, that's because you're here. Which, I know sounds deliberately circular, but It's really not.

He taps my knee with one of the arms of his glasses.