Screwed

CHAPTER 7

IN EVERY NOIR BOOK I EVER READ THERE’S A BIT ABOUT THE guy, the gumshoe, coming to after a beating. I never liked those passages because some of those scribes put their shit together pretty good, and it all gets a little close to the bone for a guy like me, who’s been clipped enough times to move down a bracket on the IQ scale. I’d swear I was a gifted kid, now I’m barely average thanks to Tasers, rubber bullets, spiked drinks, steel-toe-capped boots and now a goddamn dildo. There was also a time with high heels and a spiral staircase but I don’t know anyone well enough to tell them that story. And I will never go to a hypnotist’s show just in case I might let it slip.

You come out of it different each time. Fast or slow. Easy or so damn hard you want to be dead. Sometimes the pain is so massive, so everything that you feel it can no more come to an end than the universe itself. This is gonna be one of those times, I just know it. Drugs with a side of dildo? There is no way this is gonna be anything but a nightmare.

I feel myself surfacing and part of me is glad not to be dead but most of me wants to stay down here in the cool dark and have no network for a while, but my subconscious is running the show at the moment and picks up on some red flags that need my immediate attention, and so sends me surging toward consciousness like an oxygen-starved swimmer pulling for the surface.

I hear a screeching noise that could be a large bird, something from the Amazon maybe, and my body is being vigorously shaken. Am I riding some huge Amazonian bird? Could that be it? How has my life arrived at this point? I stop worrying about the bird when I realize that I can’t breathe. Imagine the panic our friend the oxygen-starved swimmer would feel if he broke the surface only to find no breathable air in the atmosphere. That is how I feel. Panic and pain are my motivators. How could I not have realized how happy I was back then, in the past, when I could breathe freely and there was no constant pain?

My eyelids open themselves, allowing my eyeballs to swell and bug out. No photos please. I am in the back of a car, which is skidding sideways toward a cowboy cushion on the freeway. The screeching is the protests of four melting tires that were not designed for lateral hops. There are two familiar-looking heads in the front and they are howling in panic, slapping at each other like kindergarten girls in a yard fight as if that can help. The side windows are filled with the elevated grille of the Hummer that has rammed us. I don’t even know who’s trying to kill me now. Probably everybody in both vehicles.

I do not give two shits about any of this. All I want to do is breathe. This is beyond a joke. Why can I not breathe?

I paw at my throat with handcuffed hands to find a seat belt cinched tight across my Adam’s apple.

It’s probably the belt across your windpipe that is stopping you breathing, genius.

And why am I handcuffed? Did Buttons handcuff me?

The belt is tight across my chest like a Band-Aid and I can’t get a finger under it, so now I have a dilemma: leave the belt on and suffocate, or take it off and be killed on impact. Is this Murphy’s Law or a Hobson’s choice or a Catch-22? I can never distinguish between those three. Murphy’s Law has something to do with potatoes, I’m pretty sure about that. If this run of bad luck continues, they might have to coin a phrase in my honor, posthumously of course.

Daniel’s Dilemma.

Catchy.

Got a ring to it.

Screw it. I have to breathe. My fingers crab down toward the safety buckle but the choice is taken from my hands when the car crashes into the impact barrel, smashing the barrel flatter than an unassembled coffee table, sending water seething through the cracks with enough force to fracture the side windows. The safety belt holds, but cuts through my clothing to the skin below. My shirt pocket bursts into flame and I cannot understand why until I remember the book of matches I keep in there to light the tipped cigars Zeb and I smoke to celebrate staying alive for another week. Is the matches’ flaring symbolic somehow? I am showered with glass and water, which is painful but at least the fire goes out. Every cloud as they say.

I am held in place by the belt but I still cannot bloody breathe. For feck sake. Gimme a bloody break. God, Buddha, Gandhi, Aslan. Whoever. I remember that I have hands when the body of the car settles on its buckled chassis and stops moving. I unsnap the buckle, slide across the seat and draw a greedy breath that feels like I’m swallowing glass, but I don’t care. My brain was seconds away from starvation and I do not have spare brain cells to lose. I breathe again, deeper, and feel my panic subsiding. Confusion quickly fills the vacuum.

What is happening?

What part of my life is this?

Am I in Ireland or the Lebanon or Jersey?

I do not know exactly who the guys in the front are but I imagine they were planning on doing me harm so I am glad to see that they are not moving, their heads enveloped by the mushroom sprawl of air bags. Maybe they didn’t survive. I think I am safe enough, conscience-wise, to hope that they didn’t.

So this is a rescue? Could that be it? My friends have grouped together, pooled their resources and come to save me.

Doubtful. Do I have friends? No one springs to mind. Something about Madonna and the Bee Gees.

Two dead now. Tragic, what a band.

There is a horrendous creaking of twisting metal as the Hummer backs up a few feet, taking the side door with it.

I hope this is a rental, I think unkindly. So those two bent cops will be hit with the bill.

Cops? They’re cops. I remember that now. Krieger and Fortz.

A shadow falls across me and I am relieved to see a human framed by a doorway that until recently had a door in it. I am relieved because the figure is human and not simian, though it is wearing an Obama mask.

Simian? Buttons. That couldn’t be real.

The figure moves quickly leaning in and grabbing fistfuls of my lapels.

My savior, I try to say but there is something hard in my mouth so I let it dribble onto my lap.

A tooth. One of my molars. All those years flossing, wasted. And I hate flossing too.

The guy is familiar.

“Thanks for rescuing me,” I say. Well you don’t want to be rude.

“This ain’t no fuckin’ rescue, retard,” says a familiar voice.

Freckles. I remember.

Friend or foe?

Foe. Most definitely.

I spit out a lump of bloody gum. “Freckles. I was rooting for you, dude.”

He drags me out of the car, gets up real close.

“Don’t call me Freckles,” he says. “My boss calls me Freckles and guess what? I am the boss now.”

It’s a reasonable request. “No problem. What do I call you?”

Freckles hustles me to the blacked-out Hummer. The freeway is quiet so it must be very late or very early. Regardless, it won’t take the blues more than a minute or two to get here and a bashed-up Hummer won’t be so hard to spot. I can see the Silvercup sign near the off-ramp. There can be only one.

“You can call me Mr. Toole.”

He has got to be joshing. “Your name is tool?”

Freckles hoists me so we’re nose to nose. “That’s right. Ben Toole.”

Sometimes you gotta laugh even though it could get you killed. “Bent Tool? Get the feck out. What is wrong with parents?”

Ben blushes with rage and his freckles disappear. “Ben . . . Toole. With an E.”

I am still not altogether together, if you know what I mean. My face feels like it’s been flayed, my body is for shit, but I think it’s important to keep the conversation going.

“Everyone knows there’s an E in Ben, Freckles. I’m not a fecking tool . . . No offense.”

Freckles jabs me in the solar plexus, which is probably doing some damage, but my pain levels are so off the scale that the blow doesn’t even register.

“The E is in Toole. At the end.”

I get it. “Oh, like O’Toole, without the O.”

This apparently is a vowel too far for Freckles because he howls with that particular anguish brought on by decades of taunting and bundles me into the back of the Hummer. I get an upside-down glimpse of the driver and it’s the kid: Shea.

I am confused.

Freckles climbs in behind me and slams the door.

“Did you see that, Ben?” asks the kid. “I nailed those fucking cops. I fucking crushed them. Who’s a college boy now? Who’s got soft hands now?”

And then, I cannot believe this, they actually high-five each other. These guys are tight. It’s like they watched Sesame Street and learned all about tolerance and seeing the other person’s point of view.

Shea jerks a thumb toward me. “Tell me we’re going to torture this motherfucker, old school.”

Bent Tool pulls off his mask and knuckles me in the temple. “You know it, kid. Old school.”

Old school? I remember when Run-D.M.C. were old school, now it’s torturing the Irish guy.

Fecking old-school, hummus-eating, catch-Murphy’s-22 bullshit.

Shea follows Freckles’s directions and pulls the Hummer into a chop shop two blocks back from Javits. I always wondered who had the brilliant notion to drop the city’s biggest convention center in this neighborhood. Every year dozens of accountants and IT guys get themselves in hot water because they take the wrong cross street on the way back to their midtown Holiday Inn. The lucky ones get a couple of taps and their wallets lifted, the unlucky ones end up hooked on smack. I heard a rumor of a pimp who runs a specialty stable of ex-librarians that he picked off from the pack and turned out. Probably an urban myth.

I take advantage of the drive to pull myself together a little, and by the time Freckles hauls me out of the vehicle I am pretty certain that I was not handcuffed by a gorilla. On the negative side, whatever Edit gave me is wearing off and I realize that I am just about the most messed up I have ever been. My bruises have got bruises and those bruises have got welts, and don’t even get me started on the lacerations. I reckon my left ear is cauliflowered for good and one of my eyes has a weird shelf above it that doesn’t feel like any swelling I’ve ever had.

What I am is past caring.

If it was up to me, I would throw in the towel right now and spare myself the rest of this shitty day.

Freckles jostles me across the factory floor, which is occupied by luxury sedans mainly, but with a couple of cannibalized mopeds lying around like busted Terminators. There’s a grease monkey in Texaco overalls poking around in the guts of a yellow cab but he doesn’t even take his head out from under the hood. I guess whatever goes down in here, he doesn’t want to witness it.

With rough encouragement from the barrel of Freckles’s pistol I stumble through an oil puddle to an office area that has been blocked off by a rank of filing cabinets on one side and a dirty partition on the other. Freckles sits me down in a plastic chair that squeaks with fright under the sudden trauma of bearing my weight. He never takes his gun off me for a second.

Shea follows and takes a moment to study a wall-mounted Miss July 1972 who is holding a wrench and biting her bottom lip like holding wrenches is pretty stressful.

“What the hell did you do to those cops, McEvoy?” asks Shea, when he is done with ogling. “Whatever it was, they took it real personal.”

“I did a number on them with a dildo,” I say, which is about the strangest statement I’m ever likely to make. I don’t elaborate because I can’t. I only got enough energy for breathing. I try to speak anymore and I could asphyxiate.

This suits Edward Shea just fine, because even though the whole dildo thing is an incredible conversation starter, he wants to get back to his favorite subject: himself.

“I bet you weren’t expecting to see me again, huh, McEvoy?” he says perching on the corner of the desk. And he’s right, I would have bet big money on long odds that this particular fly was out of my ointment.

“Yeah, I bet you thought that the Shea kid was sleeping with the fishes.”

I nod and it hurts my brain but it’s easier than talking.

Did he really just say “sleeping with the fishes”?

“You wanna know what went down after you set us up to kill each other?”

I don’t want to know. Why doesn’t this kid just go play with himself or go wait in line somewhere to buy Call of Duty?

Wait! I do want to know.

I can’t nod anymore, so I blink. Once for yes.

Shea starts talking without even registering my blink signal. Why would you ask a person if he wants to know something if you’re just going to go ahead and tell them regardless? Between that and the hummus I am running out of things to like about this kid.

“You did us a real favor, McEvoy,” says Shea. “We’ve been bitching and sniping between ourselves since Dad died. Ain’t that right, Benny T?”

Benny T? Who the hell is Benny T?

“That’s right, Shea-ster,” says Freckles, flushed with pride at hearing his new Mafia-type handle.

I don’t believe it, these dicks are celebrating their new partnership with buddy names.

Shea-ster and Benny T?

Just fecking kill me now.

“But now we been through shit together. That shit bonded us, McEvoy. You left us with two guns on the table, remember?”

I blink once.

“So the elevator closes and we all dive in scrabbling, but not Benny T, because he’s got a weapon on his ankle.”

Crap. I was so busy congratulating myself on setting up the big bloodbath that I forgot to check for concealed weapons.

“So Benny bends over and comes up loaded.”

“And I don’t know who to shoot,” says Ben Toole, laughing, a little rueful like he just discovered he was wearing odd socks.

“Yeah. He don’t know who to shoot. Cracks me up.”

“And I sure underestimated this guy,” says Benny T, punching Shea’s shoulder. “The guy you leg shot was hobbling to the door so it was just the movement really. I saw him go and shot him.”

“Right in the heart,” says Shea. “And from behind with a moving target, that’s a hell of a shot.”

I want to point out that the hell of a shot was like three and a half feet, and a chimp with one eye could’ve made it, but I don’t say any of this because it would cost too much and the comment ain’t funny enough to warrant more suffering.

“So then the other guy, Frank? Yeah, Frank. He goes for the table and I wing him. I’m just fucking shooting at this point. Ain’t got a strategy as such.”

Shea takes up the thread. “So he goes down, screaming so fucking much he’s gonna wake up the building. Freckles . . . I mean Benny T, goes around the table to finish him off.”

“I’m not even factoring in the kid,” says Ben. “Fuck the kid, is what I’m thinking. I got time to spare now. But he showed me. You got some stones on you, Shea-ster.”

Maybe making these two hold hands was a mistake.

“I go for a gun,” says Shea. “And when Benny gets around the far side of the desk, then he finds to his surprise that I’m covering him and he’s covering me.”

“This guy. This guy right here. Steady as a rock. He’s facing down Benny T, who ain’t got such a shabby rep, and not a fucking shake to be seen. You gotta respect that.”

Yeah, like I gotta respect musical theater.

Actually that’s not fair. I enjoyed the shit out of Rock of Ages.

“So we stay like that for a coupla minutes,” continues Shea. “And it occurs to me that I haven’t a fucking clue how to run the practical side of Dad’s company.”

Benny laughs his fond laugh again. “And it goes without saying that I ain’t no books person.”

I think using the phrase no books person pretty much guarantees that you aren’t one.

“So the kid walks around the desk and calm as you like puts two into the guy I clipped, finishes him off. Now we got stuff on each another, see?”

I figure Shea’s dad must have been an ungodly asshole and Ben never had any kids. It’s like they have a second chance at life. I bet they got autumn-hued plans for kite flying and shit.

“We got a bond now,” says Shea. “A blood bond. We are two sides of the same coin.”

“This asshole is probably wondering how we found him,” says Freckles.

To be honest, the asshole is past caring. They found me and knowing how they did it won’t make me any less found. Actually if they hadn’t found me, I’d be dead by now.

“My car has GPS, moron,” says Freckles, knuckling my head like I’m stupid. “I called the monitoring company and they told me where it was parked. We was staking out the hotel garage when the two cops came out and rolled you into the back of their cruiser. I oughta thank them really. Taking bodies out of hotels is a bitch.” He winks at Shea. “As we know only too well, right Shea-ster?”

“You got it. Benny T. I’m gonna feel it in my quads tomorrow.”

“These fucking kids,” says Bent Tool. “Fucking quads and shit. I gotta whole new lingo to learn.”

“That’s so wack,” I grunt, giving him his first lesson.

Shea pats himself down until he finds an energy bar and I think, No, don’t start eating.

But he does, right up in my face. Making a gooey paste of the bar, smacking his beard-rimmed fleshy lips, which from this angle, God forgive me for even thinking it, look a bit like a pussy.

I think about head-butting Shea, but then I might get some of his crud on my face, so I hang my head low and wait for this to be over. He’s still chewing, I can hear it.

“I went through your pockets, McEvoy,” says Freckles. “Took back what was mine. Checked your calls. Seems the only text you sent to Mike was a confirmation that the kid was dead. Is that all Mikey knows?

“Everyone knows,” I manage to splutter. “I got a friend in the cops.”

“Nah,” says Freckles. “Bullshit. You were trying to buy a little time. If I know Mike, he’s out in—what the fuck is it? Cloisters? Celebrating. Tying one on. For the next coupla days Irish Mike Madden, the double-crossing asshole, is wide open. And let me tell you, I’m gonna drive a spike straight up that open asshole.”

Normally I would not be too broken up at the idea of someone lethal paying Mike a visit, but then it occurs to me that I will be extremely dead before that happens and plus Zeb could be at Mike’s too. Though if Zeb suffered a flesh wound or lost half a testicle I wouldn’t be all that upset.

“I swear,” I say. “I put the word out. You guys are fugitives.”

Shea buys it. “We’re fugitives, Benny.”

Freckles, the pro, ain’t in the market for bullshit. “My guy tells me there’s nothing on the scanners, or Web site. Not a dickie. But just to be sure, we hang on to this guy for a few hours in case we need a hostage. I reckon if we ain’t heard anything by morning, then we’re in the clear.”

“So all we gotta do is wait until the cab is ready and have a few of the boys to take you for a little drive.”

Freckles is an old hand at the body disposal racket. He won’t shoot me here ’cause of me being a hefty sonuva bitch and it would take six of them to carry the dead weight. So they got a tricked-out death cab. I’ve seen these hearses in the Lebanon. I remember we seized a standard-looking Renault one time to find the trunk all wired up with a freezer box for body parts. Freckles’s boys will transport me in the taxi then, make me climb down into a dug grave and shoot me on-site. Makes sense. That’s what I’d do to if I was a cold-blooded killer, maybe roll Krieger and Fortz in there for good measure and a couple of animal parts just to screw with the crime lab. And if I had a spare minute I’d scrawl a few verses of Klingon poetry on Shea’s forehead with a Sharpie. I could tie up Homeland for months.

“Come on, Benny T,” says Shea then and I swear his voice doesn’t sound like it’s broken yet, maybe it’s the excitement. “Let’s do it. Me and you.”

This is a step too far.

Oh, wait. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.

“Let’s finish the job, T. We can kill this fucking mook. Me and you.”

Thank Christ. The kid just wants to kill me personally.

“I don’t know,” says Freckles. “This guy is a handful and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Come on, Benny,” the kid is pleading now, like he wants to break Santa’s rules and open a present on Christmas Eve. “Tomorrow I’m back to the corporate life, but tonight I wanna be a gangster, like you.”

Shea makes a good argument. Presents it well. He totally sealed the deal with the like you there at the end. I bet he was on the debating team at Harvard.

“How can I turn down that face? Look at this guy, McEvoy. We’re gonna run this town.”

I got the strength for nothing, but my body jerks spasmodically of its own accord and Bent Tool takes it as acknowledgement.

“You’re gonna be Edward Shea’s first execution, not counting the guy who was already winged. That’s a great honor.”

Fab. T’riffic. Can’t hardly wait.

Thank you, Fuckapalooza. It’s been a trip.

I must be in shock, or maybe whatever sedative Edit snuck into the whiskey is still my bloodstream because I’m taking all this impending-death stuff very placidly. I’m vaguely aware that I don’t want to die tonight but I can’t seem to muster much enthusiasm for the idea. I know this kind of torpor, this leaden lethargy, is a common symptom of PTSD but I ain’t PTS yet, I am smack bang in the middle of TS right bloody now. I reckon maybe the S from the last PTS is just kicking in. So what I’m feeling now is a result of the torture video. I really hope that Krieger and Fortz get gut shot making a break for Mexico. Ain’t it funny that I feel stronger about them dying than me living?

Just in case there are a few folks who are unaware what the letters PTSD stand for I can tell you that it ain’t, as my buddy Zeb once suggested, Prison Twinks Suck Dick, though I gotta say I did laugh at that, which wasn’t very enlightened of me. Zeb made the whole thing into a running joke. After I dragged him to Broadway with me to see that Rock of Ages show he claimed to be suffering from post-dramatic stress disorder. I thought that was a bit forced.

They leave me alone for a few hours, popping in every now and then to make sure I am still tethered to the radiator with a chain they had handy that looks like it came north on the underground railroad a couple of centuries ago. I feel guilty for not attempting to escape but I simply ain’t got the resources. I been knocked out twice, beaten with a frankly embarrassing blackjack and rammed with a Hummer. That’s gotta be some kind of record.

So I sleep on the floor and even the fact that I’ll be taking a one-way trip when I wake up cannot keep me from passing out. I read an article in Simon Moriarty’s waiting room once that said your subconscious already holds the key. Whatever the question is, you already have the answer inside you. So maybe my inner self is gonna pipe up with the key to this dilemma. I’ll tell myself something I don’t know. That would be really nice, ’cause generally all my subconscious does is give me phobias and behavioral tics. The trick is to wake up and shout the first word that comes to mind. It’s called auto manifestation or, to quote Zebulon, a crock of psycho bobbemyseh. I don’t know what bobbemyseh means exactly, but I imagine it ain’t complimentary. Good things rarely come in crocks.

I dream a little in those few fitful hours but that doesn’t enlighten me any, unless good old Dad wrapping my head in duct tape, saying, Good soldier, good soldier, is the answer to the world’s prayers.

Daddy dreams are a staple in my repertoire of nightmares, but this one is even creepier than usual and kicks my arse straight back to consciousness. I sleep jerk myself awake to find the Shea-ster and Benny T gazing down at me, cracking up like I’m Louie CK on his best night ever.

“What did you say, McEvoy? Did you say what I think you said?”

Oh shit. What did I say?

“Motherfucker said fluffer,” says Freckles. “Fucking fluffer.”

Shea draws breath. “I gotta hand it to you, McEvoy. Ten minutes from grisly death and still thinking with your dick. Maybe you are as stupid as you pretended to be.”

Fluffer? I don’t get it.

“Fluffer?” I say, relieved to be able to speak. “Definitely fluffer? Not suffer, or even mother?”

Freckles shakes his big pumpkin head. “Nah, it was fluffer, McEvoy. I heard that term often enough to know.”

Fluffer? Why does my subconscious have to be so vague?

Overalls guy is wiping down the taxi’s trunk with a rag when I am escorted into the bay, flanked by Shea-ster and Benny T, or as I like to think of them, Pussy Lips and Blood Spatter.

“We good?” asks Shea.

The guy nods and tosses him the keys. “All good, Mr. Shea. Just to remind you, we need her back later for the Albanians.”

Freckles closes his eyes, frowning. “Fuck, I forgot about those assholes. Where are we putting them?”

“With the Russian guys, I think.”

“Oh, the Connecticut farm?”

“Nah, the recent Russians.”

Freckles types a reminder into his phone. “Okay, the industrial park. I got it. You get backed up, you know?”

Shea is sympathetic and I think these two have a real chance of making their relationship work.

“Tough at the top, partner,” says the kid.

“Hey, at least we can share the burden.”

Freckles and Shea are being so sunny and optimistic that surely fate will drop the hammer on them soon.

Maybe I am the hammer. Why not, I was the stone earlier.

That’s a nice thought.

Overalls skedaddles and Freckles pops the trunk. “Okay, McEvoy. In you hop.”

I haven’t decided whether I will meekly lie down or make them shoot me for spite. As it happens the choice is taken away from me.

“Ain’t no way I’m fitting in there,” I say. “I think someone forgot to take care of business.”

The trunk has been converted to a large freezer and is packed to the rim with body parts wrapped in bags. I recognize KFC’s face with its second skin of white plastic.

“Bloody hell fuckballs,” says Freckles. “These were supposed to be taken care of.”

Fuckballs. Nice.

Shea pokes the ice, looking for space. “No way this Chewbacca-looking motherfucker is going in there. It’s so hard to find good help these days.”

I think it only fair to point out: “You had good help, Shea-ster. And you shot them.”

Shea is embarrassed that his criminal empire is coming across a little half-assed.

“Shut up, McEvoy. What’s going on, Benny T? Who takes care of dumping the bodies?

Freckles points at KFC’s head. “This guy. Usually.”

“I think I see what happened here,” I say, half expecting a pop from Freckles, but he is busy placating Shea.

“Don’t worry, partner. Maybe can do the whole lot in one run. It’s a bit risky having McEvoy in back, but we could drive to the park, dump the frozen meat and we’re back here in an hour. And after that, I am gonna treat you to the best breakfast in New York.”

“You talking about Norma’s?” I ask.

“You know it,” says Freckles. “You ever have the pancakes there?”

“I love those things.” I nod at Shea. “Listen to this guy, forget the hummus for one day. Live a little.”

“Shit,” says Shea. “Now, I’m excited. Let’s get this show on the road so I can order me a mountain of pancakes.”

And in this sneaky fashion, I have Pussy and Spatter visualizing breakfast so clearly that they lower their guard a little and load me into the backseat when what they should have done was made two runs.

I got a chance now.

Freckles hooks the chain of my handcuffs over a custom carabiner set into the metal-framed back of the front seats and screws it tight.

It occurs to me that I should have kept my mouth shut. I had a much better chance of escaping if I was left here under guard while Freckles did the run with the first load of bodies instead of being shackled in the backseat.

Balls.

Thanks for the help, subconscious.

Fluffer.

Fluffer.

I turn the word over in my head hoping for the lightbulb moment.

What does a fluffer do? She fluffs before a shoot.

So they’re gonna shoot me, should I fluff something?

Freckles is driving the cab along the river. The gray tsunami of the USS Intrepid looms over us and I can see Union City across the water, its night lights like one of Spielberg’s mother ships. I never thought I would pine for Jersey but right now those lights are like the promise of safety. At least over there I would have a decent chance of surviving the day, but we’ve passed the tunnel now, so I guess the day’s gruesome business will be conducted on this side of the Hudson.

I call out to my captors. “Hey, guys. Can you hear me?”

There’s a sheet of reinforced glass between us with a tiny sealed hatch in the center. I can see the guys talking but I can’t hear a word, but obviously they can hear me, ’cause Freckles presses a button on the dash and his voice crackles over the speaker system.

“What is it, McEvoy? You wanna go potty? Why don’t you save it for when the kid plugs you. Your bowels are gonna empty anyhow.”

Shea is intrigued. “He’s gonna crap himself?”

“Sure. There’s a good chance. Guys often let go. I’ve seen the strangest shit with corpses. Coupla guys got boners.”

“What? The guys doing the shooting?”

“No. The guys who got shot. Dead as fucking doornails, sporting a bugle.”

“That is some gross shit, Benny T. Boners, oh my God.”

Seeing as they’re already talking about boners I decide to make my fluffer pitch.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m open to offers at this point. Sincerely. You saw what I can do back in the Masterpiece. I could be a real addition to your organization.”

Shea claps his hands delighted. “This is unbelievable. I am genuinely incredulous.”

Of course you’re incredulous, arsehole, that’s because it’s unbelievable.

I do not voice this aloud as now is not a good time to further antagonize Shea.

When he finishes laughing Freckles explains my motivation; he forgets to switch off the speaker so I hear the whole thing.

“Y’see this is typical death’s door behavior. This guy is desperate now. He’s even offering to work for the guys he humiliated yesterday. Anything to get him off that hook.”

“This happens all the time?”

“Oh sure. I had an Italian guy once offered me his daughter if I’d cut him loose.”

“Did you take the deal?”

“Nah. Cut his throat like a pig. Then I visited the daughter anyway.”

“Those Italians are badasses, right?”

Freckles shrugs. “Once upon a time, maybe, but they spent too long at the top. Gone a little doughy, you know what I mean?”

“Sure. Doughy. Dad never told me none of this stuff. So which guys are the toughest?”

Listen to this kid. Like anyone’s tougher than a bullet. Still, Freckles considers the question, doing this weird sucky squeaky thing between his lips that would be enough to get him punched in the face under different circumstances.

“As an individual, one person per sé,” says Freckles when he’s completed his squeaky thought process. “I am the toughest individual in this city. You cross Benny T and I will hunt you down like a fucking dog. But as a group. Collectively per sé. I’d have to say the Russians are the toughest bastards around. Those guys come outta some real hardship. Fuckin’ Siberia. I seen pictures. They ain’t scared of nuthin’. Micks and Spics. They shit ’em. And I say that as a fifty-fifty Mick ’n’ Spic. I got Latin blood though it don’t show.”

That’s a lotta per sé’s for one statement.

“You a Latin scholar, Benny?” I can’t help asking.

“I told you already: I got Latin blood. Here’s another phrase for you regarding me humping your momma. Vidi vici veni. I saw, I conquered, I came. You can take that to the grave. Fuckin’ fluffer, you sad sack of shit. Hey, maybe your mom was a fluffer.”

While they are cracking themselves up, I get it. It comes back to me.

Fluffer. Holy shit.

It’s pretty quiet on Twelfth Avenue this early in the morning. It’s that moral twilight between the hours of thievery and joggery. Freckles has got maybe thirty minutes to do his business before the ferries start chugging in, dumping their cargo of white-collar office civilians onto the island. There ain’t a ray of sunlight yet, but the night is holding its breath, waiting for daytime to paint the high-rises red. While Freckles is entertaining young Edward Shea with gruesome war stories, I have an exchange with my subconscious.

Where did you see a fluffer recently?

The porn house.

And what did she give you besides advice on penis-enlargement pills?

A key for cop cuffs.

And what are you wearing now?

Cop cuffs.

What happened to that key?

I tucked it into the thong, because you never know, right?

So go fish in your thong for the key already, moron.

When are you going to stop being such a tool?

One second after you stop being such an idiot.

Gombeen.

Shitehawk.

I got a key in my thong, and as soon as I remember that I feel the metal digging into my stomach. It’s a step in the right direction having a key and so forth, but there’s still a long way to go. Even if I slip these cuffs I gotta get out of the cab and deal with Spatter and Pussy up front.

First things first. Get outta these shackles.

I knock on the glass with my forehead. “Hey, kid. Do me a favor. Scratch my balls.”

Ain’t a man alive who can ignore a request like this, rife as it is with such potential for hilarity.

The kid’s jaw literally drops. “Scratch your . . . Are you serious?”

“Come on, Shea. I’m trussed up here like the baby Jesus in his swaddling clothes.”

Freckles frowns, upset by my choice of words. “Aw, come on, McEvoy. Why you gotta bring Jesus into it?”

“I’m tryin’ to convey how itchy my balls are.”

“You should know better than to invoke Jesus, man. Our countrymen been killing each other for seven hundred years over shit like that.”

Now Freckles has developed some kind of political conscience. I guess it’s all right to plug your fellow man so long as baby Jesus ain’t invoked anywhere in the process.

“Also, maybe you got ball rot or something,” adds Shea. “You think anyone is gonna touch your sack?”

Freckles nods wisely. “I know what this is. When did your symptoms manifest, McEvoy?”

Never, I think, but I answer: “I dunno. Last thirty minutes, maybe.”

“I thought so,” says Freckles, smacking the wheel. “That itching is all in your head.”

I say the obvious: “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s in my balls.”

“Nah, it’s psychosomatic. A death’s-door ailment. I seen this shit before. A guy realizes he’s about to get his ticket punched and his body reacts by throwing up weird symptoms, takes his mind off it, see?”

Shea is nodding along, intrigued. If he had some paper, he’d be taking notes.

“Hey, Benny T. These are my balls and they feel like some malicious fecking goblin scuffed them lightly so they’d scab over, then dipped them in pepper. So, until we’re talking about your balls, keep your shrinkifying to yourself.”

“Shrinkifying?” says Shea. “Is that a word?”

“No. But it should be.”

“Bottom line,” says Freckles. “We ain’t scratching your balls. Maybe, if you ask real nice, the Shea-ster can shoot you in the crotch, which might alleviate it some.”

Shea slaps his knee, enjoying the hell out of his day. “Consider it done,” he says.

“Please, guys,” I beg, tugging on my cuffs. “I can’t reach and don’t wanna go out with jock itch.”

Freckles laughs. “That is indeed a pathetic way to go.”

And he shuts off the speaker.

Now I got license to root around in my own underwear.

I played those fools. Played myself right into the back of a death cab on the way to my own hole in the ground. Ain’t I the genius?

Actually, with KFC and that other guy in the trunk I might not even merit my own hole.

And that is depressing.

I think my balls actually are itching.

I grind myself right up on the glass partition, trying to get a hand down my pants. Through the crook of my arm I notice we are off Twelfth and down by the river. I see that weird-looking melted pier, an altar to scores of busted planks and rotting tires heaped at its base. I always used to wonder about that pier when I drove past, what its story was and so forth. Now I probably won’t ever know.

Tragic, right? A man goes to his grave without comprehensive pier knowledge.

So anyways, I’m basically humping the partition trying to get at the key and Freckles turns the speaker back on so’s I can hear them laughing. It’s not like they need to worry, right? Freckles frisked me pretty good, even gave my privates a decent squeeze. So, they’re cocksure I ain’t armed. But I got a key and my hand is only a coupla inches away.

Ha. Wait. That pier collapsed from pier pressure.

Zing.

In your face, Zebulon. That is a genuine joke. I could send it in to Ferguson.

Always the cautious optimist, I bank that joke for later if there is a later.

My index finger brushes the key. So close.

“Oh,” I say, which sets Freckles off laughing again.

“Listen to this asshole,” he says in between chortles. “We should take a drive to Connecticut for laughs. This guy is better than Howard Stern.”

So then they’re off on a DJ debate. Apparently this Harvard girl that Shea once banged in a bathroom stall voiced the opinion that Howard Stern was a misogynist asshole, and Shea happened to agree with that position. Freckles, on the other hand, was loudly opposed to this argument despite the fact that it quickly became obvious that he didn’t understand the term misogynist.

I have to stop myself joining in, because I got stuff to do, staying alive and so forth.

I reach the key, pull it out between two fingers and slump gratefully on the seat. Usually when I sit down, I don’t attach an emotion to it, but this time gratefully works okay.

Stage One complete.

I look down at my hands, the palms worn shiny like the hands of a fisherman, the fingers curved like a gorilla’s, and they are shaking like I got a charge running through me, but I manage to hold on to the key and after a minute of trying to thread that toy-sized key into a hole the size of a match head I manage to free myself.

Correction: free my hands.

There’s a long way to go before I can consider my entire self to be free. Ideally, I could simply jump out of the car the next time Freckles slows to take a corner. But the central locking button is up front and there are no controls for the windows back here. I will have to trick Shea into giving me a shot at grabbing his gun, then I’ll be in the driver’s seat.

Metaphorically.

I butt the partition with my forehead and because of my entertainment value so far on this trip, my captors are inclined to listen.

“Wassup, ballsack?” says Shea. “You need some exfoliator for your asshole this time?”

That’s not bad, but I don’t have time. I need to provoke the kid with some outrageous remarks. It’s not denial this time or a coping mechanism, it’s part of a general strategy that is too loosely thrown together to qualify as a plan.

“Listen, kid. I’m done screwing around. Do yourself a favor and turn me loose. Then you and Freckles can round up your big scary posse and get your gangster on with Mike.”

Shea is eating again, a big blueberry muffin that he had stuffed in some pocket and sat on, looks like. The muffin is flat as a cookie and he is picking off the edges like a fecking squirrel. I hate this kid.

“Turn you loose? You had more chance of me scratching your balls. I’m gonna shoot you, McEvoy. Deal with it. Visualize your next incarnation or some shit, I could give a fuck.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot me, kid. Not you. The old man maybe, but you? Nah. I got a date with a bullet okay, but you ain’t the one pulling the trigger.”

Shea twists in his seat to look back at me and I can see the first rays of sunrise behind his head, making him look like one of those pale Scandinavian Jesuses movie people were so fond of in the fifties.

“You ain’t even my first, McEvoy. And I liked that other guy. He was my favorite.”

“Maybe, but he was wounded, immobile, most like. Me, you gotta get all the way from the car to the hole, and I ain’t going easy. Also bigger guys than you shot me just before I killed them. I got more holes in me than 50 Cent.”

I said 50 Cent all wrong. Should be “Fiddy” or some such.

Respect for “In Da Club” though—classic. Jason and me used to play Celebrity Beatdown on the door: 50 Cent was the only guy who we put through to the next round without argument. Fucker’s huge, plus he’s got that smart/crazy glint in his eye.

Shea is getting a little angry, but tries to laugh it off. “Listen to this dope,” he says to Freckles. “Handcuffed on the way to his own execution, and he’s still playing the big man.”

Freckles has his eyes on the road, lotta potholes down here. Homeless guys too. It’s like Thunderdome by the river.

“He’s just yanking your chain, kid. Pay no attention. You can shoot him right in his stupid mouth in about five minutes.”

“That gives you about five minutes to live,” I say.

Shea pulls out his gun and lays it on the partition. “You want to shut the hell up? Maybe I’ll shoot you right here.”

I laugh with a savage glee. Spraying the glass.

“Shoot me in a moving vehicle? You goddamn amateur. You wanna tell him, Benny T?”

“Tell me what?” Shea demands.

Freckles sighs. “Shea-ster. It’s your first day on this side of the fence. You ain’t expected to know everything.”

“So why can’t I shoot this prick now?”

I break the news. “Because you’re in a reinforced vehicle on uneven terrain. Firstly you’d most likely miss, then that bullet is gonna ricochet off all the metal ’round here and most likely kill the wrong person. And even if it don’t, then the noise alone is gonna blow out a couple of eardrums and we’d all end up in the Hudson.”

Shea has a counterargument. “Yeah? But you’re in a sealed compartment, McEvoy, with bulletproof glass all around. All I gotta do is poke my pistol through this hatch and it’s a million to one that a ricochet could come back. Plus the noise is gonna bounce off the glass.”

I try to look stumped by this line of reasoning. The place I go to for this expression is every single conversation I ever had with Sofia.

“Yeah . . . I guess.”

Shea is delighted that his youthful logic has trumped my veteran’s wisdom.

“That’s right, McEvoy. I can shoot you anytime I feel like it. And guess what? I’m feeling like it right now.”

Come on, you little turd. Come on.

Shea slips the catch off the small door in the middle of the glass where real customers would pay their fare. The door opens with the soft hiss/pop of a seal being broken.

“Smile, motherfucker,” says Shea, poking the barrel of his gun through the hole.

Freckles spots this out of the corner of his eye.

“No,” he blurts. “Don’t.”

Freckles may have been about to deliver more specific instructions along the lines of: Don’t give the ex-soldier access to your weapon as he doubtless knows a dozen ways to disarm you.

But it’s too late. As soon as the hatch opens my hands are coming up. Shea ain’t got much of a grip on the handle and so more or less delivers the gun into my waiting fingers.

I spin it around, flick off the safety, which the Shea-ster neglected to do, then stick my hand through the hatch.

Shea is stunned for a moment, then a petulance born of entitlement settles on his face like a crinkled mask.

“No,” he says. “That’s my gun. Give it back.”

Freckles needs a few seconds to come up with a plan so he says, “He’s right, McEvoy. It is his gun.”

I cannot believe these two.

“Get out of the car,” I tell Shea. I need to separate them or they might try to out-bravado each other.

Shea’s bottom lip juts. “I am not going anywhere. Now you turn that gun over, right now, mister.”

I do something that anyone who has ever met Shea, except Freckles, has been praying for. I shoot him. Just in the arm but the scar should draw admiring coo’s at his legendary pot parties. The noise is loud and flat like the snap of a dry branch but most of it stays in the cab so I don’t get disorientated, which is more than I can say for Freckles. Shea is disorientated too, but that’s mainly from shock and pain. The blood drains from his face through the hole in his upper arm. It was harsh, I admit it, shooting the kid and so forth, but some people never learn unless the lesson is public and humiliating.

“Get out,” I tell him again.

Shea’s lip is wobbling and his body is wracked with tension and I don’t blame him; getting shot is about the most painful thing that can happen to a body besides childbirth. The one thing a person learns once they’ve been shot is how little they want to get shot again. Shea nods. “Okay. I’m getting out. Can you slow down a little, Benny?”

Freckles nods more times than are necessary. “Yep,” he says. “Yep, yep. Uhuh.”

I think he’s answering questions in his own head.

“Slow down, Freckles,” I tell him. “Just to thirty or so.”

Freckles does this, fingers drumming a fierce rhythm on the wheel. He probably doesn’t intend it, but I swear he’s tapping out the beat to George Michael’s “Faith.” Normally I would sing along or at least whistle depending on the company, but at the moment I am trying to impress my determined professionalism on these two, so I ignore the rhythm, which is difficult and distracting.

The cab slows and I can see scrub and cracked asphalt in the high beams. The city is on our right, and on the left a series of working piers stretches into the blackness of the Hudson. I bet there are more bodies buried down here than in the average cemetery. Hopefully I won’t become one of them anytime soon.

“Go,” I say to Shea. “I’m gonna count to ten.”

Shea is crying and I don’t blame him.

“Ten?” he says. “Come on, man. Let me work up to it.”

“Three,” I say.

“You’re skipping numbers,” he squeaks.

“Nine,” I say.

Shea hits the central locking button, pops the passenger door and is sucked out; he whips past like a tumbleweed and is lost in our wake, and the wind closes the door behind him.

He’s probably dead, but technically I didn’t kill him. Constructive suicide at worst.

No, no, no, I am not so bad.

Freckles steps on the accelerator as soon as the kid is gone and we both know why. He doesn’t know about my aversion to killing people, so is convinced that I can’t let him live. If Shea survives, he is done in this world of shadows, but Freckles would never stop coming. He’s Irish, like me, and we know all about holding grudges. When it comes to vendettas, the Irish make the Sicilians look Canadian. Freckles would not be happy until both my knees were blown out and he’s feeding me my eyeballs.

Eyeballs if I’m lucky.

Could be ball balls is what I’m trying to say.

I know, I should’ve left it.

So, the recently re-monikered Benny T reckons his number’s up and floors the accelerator, and the only thing preventing me from tumbling backward is my arm hooked through the hatch.

“Freckles, slow down,” I shout. “We can work something out.”

“Fuck you, McEvoy, you fucking prick,” he says. “Fuck all you fucking Dublin bastards.”

According to the doorman rules of swearing, we are now officially in the red zone.

I push my arm further through the hole and screw the barrel into Freckles’s temple.

“Maybe I’m gonna let you off with a warning. You ever think of that?”

Freckles doesn’t even answer; instead his face comes over all grim and he swings the car ninety degrees counterclockwise.

“This is a bad idea,” I say, maybe aloud, maybe to myself.

“You like this one, McEvoy? You think you’re the only one with balls?”

I smack Freckles on the side of the head with the gun but there’s no power in it and I’m at full stretch already. I see the speedometer needle jiggling around ninety.

I could jump, but at this speed I would snap like a dry twig. I should have bailed with the kid. Freckles knows I can’t risk shooting him while his foot in on the gas.

The cab is headed for one of the less sturdy-looking piers, which is protected by a tin sign that says No Access. What kind of preventative is that? A fecking kid with roller skates could circumvent that security.

“I’m ready to go, McEvoy!” shrills Freckles, and I can see in his face that he ain’t backing down.

I gotta shoot him. With him dead, things can’t get worse.

I got no option but to plug this bug-eyed, ginger shit-for-brains right this instant. Actually there should be a comma after ginger, otherwise it might read like Freckles has ginger shit, which would be a weird thing for me to be privy to.

“You ain’t doing it, McEvoy,” shouts the ginger, shit for brains triumphantly. “You ain’t got the nerve.”

If we could freeze this for a moment, I would point out that Freckles is preparing to kill himself in order to avoid being killed by me and surely there is a better way to resolve our issues.

But we can’t freeze this moment, so I gotta pull the trigger or take a bath.

Shoot.

You’ve shot people before. Remember that time you were in the army? The hard bit comes afterward.

Shoot.

“Freckles,” I shout over the rattle of tires on gravel and the blood rushing in my ears. “Don’t make me do this. You’re Irish, surely we can work this out.”

Sure, if we had seven hundred years.

Too late. We’re on the pier now. A drum roll of planks rattles underneath, my jaw rattles and then we are flying.

Freckles let’s go of the wheel like he has time to roll out in midair or some other frankly impossible move unless he’s got bullet time on his cell phone and last time I checked the raciest thing Freckles had on there was Sofia the Dominatrix. He’s got his legs out the door when we touch down and a giant fist of water slams the door on his torso more or less cutting him in half.

We hit hard, the catastrophic deceleration jamming me against the partition, knocking the breath from my body. The windshield bulges inward and then pops out whole, allowing black water to surge forward, claiming the front area and Freckles’s body. The only air pocket is the backseat area, so we go down fast.

I have serious hours logged in life-threatening situations but they are of zero use to me now. All I can do is ride out the crash and hope.

I try to breathe but my lungs won’t oblige and I am seconds away from total panic. I don’t wanna be not found. I don’t want to be forever listed as missing if anyone even bothers to add me to the list. There is something terrifying about the notion that you can be disappeared by circumstance, swallowed by the earth, and by the time the water gives up your corpse, nothing will remain but algae-coated bones.

The car settles on the riverbed and the bump gets my lungs pumping again. And now that my brain has a little oxygen going to it, I start to take stock of my situation.

This whole thing is ridiculous.

Come on. In a death cab on the riverbed looking at a corpse floating in the doors ajar light. Silt floats through the window and a couple of fish that resemble nothing more than be-finned turds swim inside to investigate.

My hand is cold. Why is my hand cold?

Because it’s jammed in the fare hatch, dummy, otherwise you would have drowned by now. I am like that Dutch kid who stuck his arm in a dike, except for it’s a tricked-out cab, not a dike. I ain’t Dutch and it’s been a long time since anybody called me kid.

Freckles’s crimped corpse floats up so we are face-to-face through the glass. He has held onto his expression of manic triumph, which makes me feel like a loser even though he is the dead one.

Something glows in Freckles’s pocket and I am amazed to realize that my phone is still working and I have a call coming through. Luckily Freckles’s pocket is within my grasp, so I drop the gun and wiggle my fingers into his pocket and snag my Hello Kitty handset. Now for the tricky part: I gotta whip my hand through, hoping the water shuts the hatch, and if it doesn’t I gotta get out the side door pretty sharp and pull for the surface.

I tug on my arm until it’s ready to pop loose, then I take a couple of deep breaths, working up to a real lungful. My phone is still warbling in the flooded cab. Someone must really want to get ahold of me.

Okay. Stop wasting time.

I pull my hand through and the water forces the half closed hatch the rest of the way, forming a reasonably tight seal. The water is still coming in, but at a drastically reduced rate.

Finally things are going my way.

Right. Stuck in a subaquatic coffin. My lucky day. I should rush out and do the lottery.

But I ain’t rushing out anywhere. I won’t even be able to open the door until the pressure equalizes. And even if I could open the door the rush of incoming Hudson would pin me to the backseat. So I gotta sit here and take deep breaths until the rear compartment is flooded, which means I will have to pop the little hatch myself, which goes against all my survival instincts.

I answer the phone. Might as well.

“Yep.”

“Where the hell are you?” asks Ronelle Deacon, my cop friend who used to work out of the four-room station in Cloisters (and two of the rooms were restrooms) but recently moved on and up as a lieutenant in the Special Investigations section of the New Jersey State Police.

“Where am I? You wouldn’t believe it, Trooper.”

“You ain’t by any chance wearing a pink thong and beating on some cops?”

“I wish,” I say sincerely. “And it was a red thong, okay?”

“It’s not looking good for you, Dan. My brethren are majorly pissed off.”

“Yeah, well I got the real story if you’re interested.”

“I’m always interested in the truth, McEvoy. I am the last champion of the truth. Can we meet?”

“Maybe we can. I hope so.”

“Where the hell are you, Danny? The reception is crap.”

It is a testament to my phone plan that I still got bars underwater.

“I’m in a bit of a bind here, Ronnie. I’ll met you in Pom Pom’s, down in the Kitchen. You remember it?”

“Sure, we did that thing there with the guy from Cheers.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t Cheers. It was Home Improvement.”

“White guys, bad jokes. Who cares? When?”

“Soon as you can, I’ll be there before you.”

“And if you’re not?”

“If I’m not, dredge the river.”

“Dredge the river? What river? What’s going on, Dan?”

“I can’t explain now, Ronnie, but we’re friends, right? You’d say we were friends, wouldn’t you? You’d stand up and vouch for me at a service or something?”

“Yeah, we’re friends,” says Ronnie, but her tone is wary, like she’s talking a guy off a roof, so I hang up.

She said we were friends and that’s enough for me.

The water is at my ankles now, feels more like sludge than water. No one ever jumped in the Hudson around here to get refreshed, but I can’t go yet, I need to wait.

My phone reminds me that I have an unwatched video message.

Tommy’s video.

I’d rather watch that than Freckles’s floating corpse, so I select it and press play, and what follows might be enough to tip the balance re the Mike Madden situation if I make it out of this underwater coffin alive. The video clip is almost riveting enough to make me forget my predicament, but then the small hatch pops its hinges, and bitter-smelling river water pours through. In seconds my knees are submerged in the icy water and there’s a turd fish swimming Mobius strips around my feet.

I wait until I gotta tilt my head back to breathe, then I gulp down a lungful of oxygen and put my shoulder to the door. Luckily Freckles did not hit central locking after Shea bailed, so the door swings easily. I slide into the dark block of river and am swallowed like a speck, like nothing. If the Hudson takes me now there will be little more than a ripple to show I was here.

When did I get so morbid? And why am I even thinking about mortality? I’ve been in training pools deeper than this wearing full gear.

I am in dark water, but above me shafts of red sunlight cut through the murk. I release the air slowly like I’ve been taught and kick for the surface, and it occurs to me that the sunrise is pretty special from this perspective.

Considering the twenty-four hours I’ve had, any fecking sunrise is most unexpected and appreciated.

I pull for the surface, feeling muscles that I haven’t used for years protest and stretch. I ain’t exactly dressed for subaquatic speed, but I am loathe to part with my boots that have been with me since the army, and my leather jacket I bought from a guy called Anghel, who was a Romanian mercenary working for the Christian militia in Tibnin. Whenever I bought something from Anghel, he would promise not to shoot at me later that evening. So far as I know, he kept that promise. Unfortunately I couldn’t return the favor and toward the end of my second tour I put a round in his leg when my patrol came across him and two of his buddies breaking into our compound. I didn’t mean to kill him but legs have a lotta veins and one thing led to another. Next thing you know I’ve cut down a guy I’ve known for two years over a couple crates of condensed milk.

Love the jacket though. Soft as butter.

The water runs shallow real quick and my feet touch bottom before I break the surface. I relax then and defer the moment just to kid myself I have a little control over my life.

But I can’t control the shakes that envelop me from head to toe when I break the surface and stagger ashore amid the harbor detritus. Styrofoam and foil wrappers, syringes and soda cans, planks warped and split by years in the water, dark strips of weed with fingertip touches, cereal boxes, bones that I hope are animal and most bizarrely a horse’s head poking through its caul of plastic trash bag.

A horse’s head sleeping with the fishes.

That’s double points in Mafia Monopoly.

I rest my hands on my knees and hawk as much of the river as I can from my lungs. I don’t see how any could have gotten in there, but a pint or so comes out all the same. My limbs seemed poisoned and weak, and my tongue feels chemically dry and scaled.

An old homeless guy is sitting on top of his shopping-cart kingdom smoking an impossibly thin cigarette. He seems pretty jaunty, probably because for once he can compare his situation to someone else’s and not feel too shit on by life.

“Morning, son,” he says. He’s got a voice that sounds like a bear went to elocution classes in Texas.

“Morning,” I return, after all, none of this crap is his fault.

He nods toward the river. “New York cabbies, huh.”

That gets a smile outta me, which I wouldn’t have thought possible, so I give him twenty sopping bucks.

As I stumble up the embankment toward the brightening day, I glance behind me, toward the spot that has become Freckles’s tomb, and I swear I see the glow of a taxi sign shining piss yellow from the depths.

I catch up with Shea pretty quickly, though in actual fact he was disorientated and stumbling toward me. We meet on the shoulder of the highway, two individuals who are not in full control of their emotions, so maybe a reasonable conversation was never in the cards. He looks a fright, doused in his own blood from the bullet wound and a hundred grazes he must have incurred when he face-planted on the asphalt. Stupid dick doesn’t even know how to tuck and roll. In fairness, I probably don’t look much better: dildo whipped and dipped in sludge.

When Shea catches sight of me, he squeaks like that square cartoon guy with the pants, and makes a run for the road. I am too goddamn weary to go after him so I let the kid run. Sadly for him, he slips on the shoulder and rolls practically to my feet.

I feel encouraged by this little favor from lady luck and feel my energy levels rising. I lean down, grab his lapels and hoist him to his tippy-toes. I have no idea what’s gonna come out of my mouth but I start talking anyway.

“You see that pier down there?” I say.

And Shea looks, there are several piers. “Which pier?” he asks, terrified that he doesn’t get to ask questions.

“Which fucking pier. The melted one. The collapsed one.”

“Yeah. I see it. All twisted and shit.”

“Yeah, twisted and shit. That’s the one, Shea-ster. You know what made that pier collapse?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Do you fucking know what made that pier collapse?”

Shea is crying now, he breaks down easily.

“No. I’m sorry, I don’t know. I swear.”

I wait a beat, then: “Pier pressure.”

He looks at me dumbly as he has every right to.

“I . . . I don’t get it.”

“Pier pressure,” I repeat then. “Ha ha ha haaaa.”

I don’t know if I am actually laughing maniacally or just saying ha ha ha haaaa. Either way it scares the bejaysus out of Shea, which is all he had left in him to scare as I already scared the crap out of him back in the taxi.

I hoist the kid a little higher. “Shit, sorry, that joke was for a friend of mine; what I meant to say was: if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you. If anyone takes a shot at me, I’m gonna blame you and come looking. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good, ’cause Freckles was my favorite. You can’t even eat with your mouth closed.”

“I’ll fix that,” promises Shea, and I know he won’t cause me any more trouble for a few months at least. It’s in his eyes. I toss him down the embankment, where a cement bollard breaks his fall and he curls himself around it like it’s his wet nurse and I can hear him sobbing as I walk away. He should get that wound seen to or it might get infected.

I don’t care. I’m gonna have to get this jacket dry-cleaned and it’s his fault.