Wet Work: The Definitive Edition (13 page)

He decided to try Tomkins Square Park. Maybe Elvis was around. If anyone had a notion where The Man was, El was the dude.

A strange buzz floated on the streets today. Maybe it was his tense state of mind; he wasn’t certain of anything anymore, just the next fix, the next dose of sweet, opiate dreams. But people seemed jumpy, like there was a smell of fear in the air, a sense of approaching trouble like the electricity in a bar before someone started a rumble. Yeah, it wasn’t his imagination, there was a vibe. Even regular folk had a look on their faces as they walked up Third Avenue.

He saw a woman stumble on the opposite corner of Second as he waited at the light. She looked around as if she no longer had her bearings then gently crumpled, falling off the curb in front of a cab. The driver slammed on his brakes and hit the horn. He was Hispanic, and as the horn blast stopped, he shouted out a stream of Spanish profanity. In typical New York fashion, several people walked past her as if she were nothing more than a piece of garbage. The driver laid into the horn again despite it being obvious she wasn’t going to get up.

“
Prick,” Denny muttered. Then a couple of metal babes who were hanging outside a bar came over to look at the woman.

The light changed. He started across. Two N.Y.U. dudes joined the girls. The driver shouted again, punctuating his rant with a loud blare of his horn, and one of the girls screamed at him to go jump in the East River. Denny’s legs began to tremble as cramps jabbed his thighs.
Oh shit, don’t lose it.
He saw himself dropping in sympathy with the woman.
Hold it together, got to hold it together.

(need a fix)

He was nearly across and his right leg felt like someone had struck it with a stiletto.

(fix me up)

The headache that had throbbed behind his eyes since waking flared in concert with the cramps, and he began to feel like he’d stuck his head in a microwave. The night heat and noise threatened to overwhelm him. The pain receded, flared, receded.
Shit.
He heard one of the girls say something about calling for the E.M.S. He had to stop. The park was close, but it could have been a thousand miles away. Sweat rolled from his forehead. The sound of a siren sliced through the growl of the traffic, and he turned in its direction. Leaning against the wall of the apartment building next to the bar, he saw a police car weave a route up First, switching lanes at high speed. One of the N.Y.U. dudes stepped out in front of the cab, waving to the car, but the blue-and-white didn’t stop as it reached the intersection. It just headed on downtown. Denny covered his ears, but the sound punctured his head like a spike. He grimaced.

“
Son of a bitch,” the N.Y.U. dude muttered.

Denny said a word of thanks as the cop chopped the siren in mid-wail. The pain in his head receded again. He slid down the wall to rest his legs and closed his eyes.

Take it slow. Breathe deeply. Count to fifty. He inhaled and started to one…two…three…four.

“
Wasup, man?” someone said nearby, breaking his concentration. Opening his eyes he saw a long hair with Day-Glo cut-offs and a skateboard leaning over one of the metal babes. He exhaled.

Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—exhale—eleven, twelve…

“
Someone do something.”

“
He’s calling them now,” the girl said.

…
sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…

The cramps began to lessen. Denny looked up. Several people now stood around the woman. She hadn’t moved. The N.Y.U. dude reappeared from the bar.

“
I can’t get through,” he said.

“
What?” the taller girl looked at him.

“
The line’s busy.”

“
Nine-one-one’s never busy.”

“
It’s busy! Don’t blame me!”

“
Screw you,” said the girl. “I’ll try it.”

Denny stood up. He couldn’t care less about the woman. He had to get something, anything. The cramps had faded to a dull ache now, his head a beer-too-many throb, but if he didn’t score soon he was going to nose dive into Hell for hours.

He moved off towards the park, one slow step at a time.

Tomkins Square Park was home away from the roach-infested apartments most of Alphabet City’s inhabitants called home. For a lot of street people it was home even during the winter freeze when the wind blew in off the East River like a scalpel cutting to your marrow. During the summer months, however, the small square, flanked by Avenues A and B to the west and east and East 7th and 10th to the south and north, took on the appearance of a twenty-four-hour stone-in. Punks, bikers, hippies, winos and junkies rubbed shoulders with the predominately Puerto Rican residents. Salsa music clashed with rap and reggae as beat-boxes sprouted like technological mushrooms. There were usually a few cops around, but that didn’t deter anyone from smoking, drinking or snorting. But today there were no cops and a lot less people than there should be, Denny saw as he reached the light at 7th and Avenue A. Considering the bitchin’ heat, the Park was real empty. Too fuckin’ weird.

He crossed at an angle, making for the entrance. Two kids on roller skates shot past him, all muscle and motion, heading down towards 6th. He took no notice; there, seated on a bench under a tree, was Elvis, his battered acoustic guitar lying next to him.

Elvis was a park fixture during the summer, conspicuous in his dirt-smeared outfit a la the King in his Vegas days. The Elvis of Tomkins Square Park couldn’t sing to save anyone else’s life let alone his own. El was a joke. Still, his earnest obsession proved enough to provide him with some kind of living in addition to the disability check, he said, the Navy sent him each month.

“
Hey, Elvis.”

The King didn’t acknowledge Denny.

“
Hey, Elvis!”

Nada.
Okay, if he’d didn’t want to play ball, Denny knew one way to get him to respond.

“
Hey, Raymond! Hey, you with the dumb suit.”

One thing Elvis hated was being called by his real name. Another was having his outfit insulted. “You insult the suit, you piss on the King,” he’d said one day in the park after some skate punks had made fun of his rendition of Heartbreak Hotel. “And the King don’t like that.”

Elvis stirred on the bench, turning towards Denny, who noticed the King’s sunglasses were crooked. Denny waved as he limped over, cramps stabbing his leg again.

“
Man, you gotta help me,” he said as he sat on the bench. “You seen Fly Boy around? I need a fix and he’s nowhere, man.”

Denny wrinkled his nose as he looked at Elvis. Goddamn, the King smelled like a turd in a bum’s pants. He knew he didn’t smell too good either, but the smell hanging around Elvis was righteously gross.

“
No,” the King drawled.

“
Well, you know where I can get some stuff? I’m starting to hurt real bad, man.”

Elvis turned away from him and for a moment Denny thought he’d pushed his luck by calling out the King’s name.

The singer was silent. Denny noticed a suppurating boil hiding behind the arm of Elvis’s glasses, a bead of pus trickling down his temple. Man, El not only smelled like shit he looked it too. As Denny’s eyes adjusted to the darkness under the tree he saw the King’s face was banged up. Looked like someone had worked him over real good.

“
Yeah, I know…somewhere,” Elvis said slowly, his speech slightly slurred. Whoever had banged him up had done a real number on the King’s head, and Denny wondered if he had a concussion.

“
There’re some people…who’ll…help you out,” he continued.

“
Nearby? I can’t walk far, man, cramps’re fucking with my leg.”

“
No, not…far.”

Elvis pushed himself to his feet, picking up his battered guitar, heading not for the park’s exit but into the darkness beyond the benches. Denny followed. Great. Fucking cops didn’t care what went on in the park, so he didn’t give a shit about scoring out in the open. Besides, his body was about to do the funky tango if he didn’t get some smack in his veins real fast.

Elvis shuffled past the basketball court. Several homeless were hunkered down by the fence, their bags of worldly possessions resting against their worn bodies. Denny followed Elvis behind a row of bushes.

“
Hey, El, where we go—”

Denny tripped over a branch, falling hard on his face. Stars burst behind his eyes and he moaned in pain. He reached out for the offending branch.

Only it wasn’t a branch that’d tripped him, it was someone’s leg.

“
Mutherfucker,” he mumbled putting a finger to his split lower lip.

Rough hands grabbed him.

“
What th—”

The sentence stuck in his throat as grime-encrusted fingers clamped over his mouth. He squealed, struggling. A foot hit him in the guts, folding him up in agony. A rock descended on his head and the stars behind his eyes exploded again, going supernova this time. Police sirens screamed loudly nearby.

It was the last sound Denny heard as a knife blade punctured his throat.

ALEXANDRIA.

10:47 P.M.

Puppies.

Two Labrador puppies.

Big ones.

God, I’m gonna go blind…

Nick blinked, swallowed and did a double take, gripping onto his bottle of Bud as if his life depended on it.

The girl was a peroxide blonde who said her name was Bambi, but there were no young deer in sight, just two big, happy Labrador pups straining at the leash to get his attention. She eased closer, laying a slender hand on his bicep, her long, red nails talons that recalled the Wicked Witch of Whatever.

“
Would you like to buy me a drink?” she asked, her voice pure Deep South—slow and low like thick molasses.

The question took a while to register. AC/DC were pumping out “Highway to Hell” on the Juke, the relentless 4-4 beat thumping in tandem with Nick’s pulse. His eyes were glued to her plunging cleavage, the smell of her perfume—

(what was it?)

—
was teasing his nose.

She had a fine pair of 44 D-cup’s, and
so help me God, they looked just like a couple of frisky pups
, was all that rolled through his mind, the light pink nipples two eager tongues pushing against the white lace of her bustier, struggling to lick his face.

“…
drink?”

He looked up, blinking again as he gazed into her pretty face.

She had a button nose like Lyn Hernandez’s, but her eyes were framed by a coat of mascara so heavy it was a definite turn-off.

Bambi increased the pressure on his arm, and he shook his head,
no.

Coming to Billy’s had been a mistake. He should have dropped by the Dauphine Steak House for a couple of beers. The girls danced topless there, not buck-naked like the brunette babe on stage right now, laid out on her back, spreading her legs. He looked up and away from the bounty sat beside him.

“
No,” he said finally, facing her. “Sorry, sweetheart. Not tonight.”

The girl’s smile dropped. She removed her hand, her expression cold and businesslike.

She moved off towards the bar behind him, her eyes scanning the night’s customers for another mark.

He’d been here enough to know the hustle. Ten bucks for a glass of seltzer, fifteen for a beer, thirty for a glass of something called Champagne. He needed company, but not that badly. Besides, he only had twelve bucks left in his wallet. She was cute, but he was a married man, he reminded himself as he watched her firm buns roll across the room towards a sad-looking guy wearing a black cotton suit jacket, jeans and a Skinny Puppy T-shirt.

Nick sighed.

Part of him reverted to horny teen again, and it was good. Then images of dead black women floated, waking nightmares before his eyes.

Get out of my head! Go away.

But it was no good. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the old woman and—

(ketchup bottle)

He sipped his drink, concentrating on the dancing girl to drive the image away. Man, he was getting buzzed,
and you know what? I don’t give a fuck.

He laughed cynically under his breath, muttering “Sandy” on the tail of beer fumes.

Billy’s was a beaver joint that tried to be up-to-date but failed miserably. A large pink neon lightening bolt loomed over the mirrors behind a bar on which neon cacti stood in plastic pots. The bar itself was made of old wood that had seen better days, regardless of the new Formica top which the owner had installed last year. Obviously, he’d dropped most of his money on the glitzy runway on which the dancers performed, an aluminum-shiny reflective strip fringed by rows of garish lights.

The girl on stage lowered herself into a split.

He didn’t’ need this right now. A semi-erection pulsed in his pants, a familiar tightness growing at the base of his abdomen. Nick toyed with the beer bottle as a new dancer took the stage. She was a short redhead with a thick, flaming pubic bush and heavy thighs. Enough was enough.

He stood and headed for the door as Van Halen broke into “Pretty Woman” on the sound system, Sandy on his mind and an empty feeling in his guts.

He closed the door as David Lee Roth started singing, and the night swallowed him up, dead people still trailing in his wake.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

11:32 P.M.

Corvino slept fitfully.

And dreamed.

The orphanage attic was dusty, shadows piled deep in the corners of the gabled roof.

“
Look,” Billy Katz said, gesturing him closer.

Steve Richardson sniggered and Dominic covered his genitals, embarrassed by his nakedness.

“
Look at the tits on this bitch,” Billy exclaimed, pointing at the black-and-white photo of the buxom woman bound and gagged to a bed. The magazine was old and dog-eared, a dried cum stain a scab
on the left-hand page.