The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (22 page)

Ryan Coulter took the Number One local train downtown to the Spring Street stop and wandered up the incline of Houston Street. As he passed a skinny Hispanic man with a mustache and bandanna leaning against a cyclone fence, he felt the man’s eyes on his leather.

“Where’s your motorcycle?” the man said in a sarcastic tone.

Ryan faced the smiling man. “Parked outside your crack house.” Neither Marc Gorman nor Byron would have been so bold. The man laughed, and Ryan continued up Houston until it intersected with Lafayette. He stopped outside a women’s fashion boutique with a French name he could not pronounce, and he studied the feminine mannequins in the window. Tattoos and graffiti stood out on their Day-Glo-colored limbs. Bells signaled his arrival as he opened the door.

How cute
, Ryan thought.

The door closed behind him and he looked around the small shop, which made the most of its limited space. No customers, just a chubby girl at the counter. He stepped around different mannequins to check out the racks of clothing, and they reached out to him with rigid fingers. An image of them pulling him down into an open grave flashed through his mind and he shook his head. Cupping one hand over a plastic breast, he laughed. The chubby girl, who had pink hair and wore a tie-dyed belly shirt, looked up at him with an annoyed expression.

“Can I help you?” Her tone had an irritating, judgmental quality to it.

“I doubt it,” Ryan said.
Fucking dyke
. He caressed the cheek of an orange mannequin, then kissed its lips and wagged his tongue at it.

The girl moved around the counter, dressed in baggy

camouflage pants with a tiny cell phone on a silver chain clipped to her belt. “Maybe you should go to a men’s store.”

“That makes two of us. Maybe you should suck my dick.”

The girl opened her mouth, but no sound came out, and Ryan saw a metal stud gleaming in her tongue.

“That’s a start. Now all you have to do is get down on your knees.”

Returning to her station, she picked up a phone. “Sheryl, I need you out here.”

Weaving between the mannequins, Ryan smiled. He crouched and lifted up the long, flowing skirt on a blue figure posed like a ballerina. The patch between its legs had not been painted and the flesh-colored plastic stood out. From the corner of one eye, he glimpsed a woman in a black pantsuit join the salesgirl. Her hair had been longer in the photograph the Widow had provided.

“Guy’s a real eighty-six,” the dyke said.

Sheryl made straight for him as he continued to stare between the mannequin’s legs.

“Go to Eighth Avenue if you want to get your jollies,” she said. “We’re not a peep show palace.”

Ryan lowered the mannequin’s skirt and rose to his feet. He looked into Sheryl’s eyes, but she showed no sign of fear, her jaw set. Flaring his nostrils, he sniffed the air. “Maybe you should be. I’d pay to peep at you.”

Sheryl offered him an icy smile. “Kelly, do you know what we have here?” Kelly did not respond. “We have a real bad boy. An honest-to-God Johnny Rotten. He’s so bad, he came into the shop just to intimidate us. Isn’t that right, badass? You think you’re scaring us?”

Ryan smiled. Kelly appeared to be frightened, but Sheryl seemed unimpressed. “I only want to scare you if that’s what turns you on. Maybe the three of us should get together in that back room.”

Sheryl held Ryan’s gaze as she spoke to Kelly. “Call nine-one-one.”

Ryan held out his hands. “Hey, that’s not necessary. Be cool, I’m going. I was just trying to be friendly.”

Sheryl’s smile thinned. “Call nine-one-one anyway.”

Kelly punched a number into the phone, and Ryan strutted to the door. “I’m outta here, ladies. But I’ll see you around—
Sheryl.”
He opened the door and stepped outside.

Hurrying around the corner, he smiled. She was going to be good. He felt it in his bones.

Soon
.

Jake sat smoking on a bench facing the East River, the FDR Drive behind him. Joggers, bicyclists, and dog walkers passed by him while Manhattan traffic snarled behind him. All he had to do was follow the asphalt path for ten blocks and he would reach Carl Schurz Park, not far from his apartment.

Sheryl’s apartment
.

Sheryl loved Carl Schurz Park. She liked to sunbathe there in the summer, read there in the fall, make snow angels there in the winter, and take long walks there in the spring. Standing on the viaduct overlooking the statue of Peter Pan, she enjoyed watching students in white Gi outfits train in Tae Kwon Do. She liked to circle Gracie Mansion and wonder aloud what the mayor was watching on television. And she liked to watch boats travel the river at night.

Sniffing the air, Jake smelled garbage.

There are dead people walking around this city. Talking. Pleading for their souls. Haunting the Tower
.

He flicked his cigarette at the ground.

Corporate life was hell.

Ryan Coulter walked from one end of the block to the other, observing the apartment building with a sideways glance. He crossed the street and ordered a slice of pizza at a pizzeria on the corner of the next block. Pepperoni and mushroom. He carried the slice outside on a paper plate. From the corner, he saw the building just fine. He had gotten off the train around 5 p.m. and had circled the neighborhood. Folding his slice in half, he held it at an angle so that the excess oil spattered the white plate like blood drops. He would have that bitch’s soul soon enough.

He enjoyed watching the life slip from his victims, enjoyed stealing their souls. It made him feel powerful and important, like God had created him for a reason.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and he raised the slice to his mouth.

Sheryl left
La Petit Mort
shortly after 6 p.m. The air had ripened with electricity and she gazed up at the evening sky, sensing the drought’s end. She hurried to Bleecker Street, where she caught the Uptown Number Six. Standing at a pole in the packed train, her body tensed up as an old man rubbed his hand against hers. She shot him an angry look and he backed off. As a cop’s wife, she knew better than to give an inch to these perverts. They always backed down if you showed them some backbone, like that creepy punk in the store earlier. She wished she could have taken a cab home, but her budget did not allow for that. She had a good deal on her apartment, but Manhattan rent had reached ridiculous heights, and without Jake’s income, she needed to watch her expenses. Of course, he would insist on chipping in, but she would refuse his offer. If only they had bought that house on Long Island— Nothing would have changed. Jake would still have gotten himself into trouble, and now she would be taking the Long Island Rail home to an empty house instead of the subway to an empty apartment, and she would have a mortgage hanging over her head. She got off at Eighty-sixth Street, and on the ten-minute walk home she wondered how Jake was faring at his new job.

Darkness fell as she reached her building, and the wind intensified, causing her to shiver. Grateful that she had managed to beat the rain, she took out her keys and entered the lobby. After checking the empty mailbox, she started up the four flights of stairs. She did not know her neighbors—there had been a heavy turnover of tenants the last few years—but she knew what sounds to expect as she passed each door: a cat meowing, a dog barking, a canary singing, someone playing a flute. She had lived there for six years, three of them alone and three with Jake.

Reaching her apartment, she unlocked the front door. She turned on the overhead light as she stepped inside, then locked the door behind her and hung her coat in the closet. She went into the living room and flicked the light switch on the wall. The bulb in the overhead light blew out and her heart jumped. She frowned at the ceiling fixture. She hadn’t needed to pull the stepladder out from beneath the bed since Jake had moved in with her. Her plants obscured the light coming from the windows of the building across the street, and she disliked the living room dark. Isolation crept over her. She missed Jake and had been uncomfortable living alone the past few days.

She pressed the
PLAY
button on the answering machine and entered the kitchen. At least the light worked in there. The messages played back as she crouched before the sink cabinet, punctuated by loud beeps. Opening the cabinet doors, she rummaged through cleaning chemicals and bug repellents for spare lightbulbs.

A click came over the speaker as she found the bulbs and removed one from a carton.

A second hang up followed as she closed the cabinet and stood up.

Then a third.

Staring at the machine, she rubbed the gooseflesh that had formed on her arms.
I wish Jake was here
.

And then, in the glass face of the microwave oven door, she saw color and movement, like a flag billowing in the wind. The silent reflection of a man sneaking up behind her. At first her mind refused to accept what her eyes witnessed. Then she heard a footstep on the linoleum and panic seized her. She spun around to face the intruder, the lightbulb slipping from her hand and exploding on the floor.

I
t’s just me,” Jake said, raising his hands. Holding one hand over her heart, Sheryl let the breath escape from her lungs. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“You almost scared me to death!”

“I’m sorry. I just got here a few minutes ago and I lay down in the bedroom. I must have dozed off for a minute and the answering machine woke me.”

“You stink like booze.” She made no effort to hide the disapproval in her voice.

He offered a lame shrug.

“And you look like hell.”

“You got that right.”

Her tone softened. “How did you get that cut on your forehead?”

He touched the wound. “I fell down a dark hole.”

She looked at the broken fragments of the lightbulb on the floor. “You’re never going to change, Jake.” She took a dustpan and a whisk broom from a tall cabinet and swept up the mess.

“I need help,” Jake said.

She looked at him with an unreadable expression on her face.