Читать книгу The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ® - C.J. Henderson - Страница 9

BREAD AHEAD

A Jack Hagee Story

I’d gone down to Caesar’s Bay to get away from everything. It’d been a foul, grey, humid day—one of disappointments—one I didn’t want to remember. I’d solved another sad little case, brought another sniveling, cheating husband to ground like the big bad hero I am. I’d made the monthly office rent by ruining a familiy with pictures of daddy grunting in the back seat of their station wagon with a woman who didn’t look anything like mommy at all. As a daily occupation, it was getting to me.

My name’s Jack Hagee. I make my living, put food on my table, buy my toothpaste and subway tokens, by rooting through people’s lives and their garbage, by turning over rocks for lawyers and crying spouses and tired shopkeepers and more lawyers. I’m a private detective and that day I was hating my job as much as anyone else. That’s why, when midnight had passed and I still couldn’t get to sleep, tossing in my bed, dying in the clogging humidity steaming in off the ocean, that I’d gotten dressed and driven down to Caesar’s.

Caesar’s is a shopping mall at the end of Bay Parkway, the main drag through the neighborhood I live in. Most people stay away from it after closing—with good reason.

After dark, Caesar’s parking lot and the park adjacent become one large dark criminal carnival land. Dopers sell their wares, Johns pick up their ladies, kids strip cars, smoke dope, shoot craps and sometimes each other. And the worst thing about it all is, it isn’t in some terribly seedy neighborhood. Not a home between my apartment building and the river would sell for under a hundred and fifty thousand. It’s not a ghetto—just simply the same as the rest of New York City, bursting at the seams from too many people, all with painfully clear visions of the nowhere they are headed.

For those who haven’t tasted the city, haven’t felt the cold, leaden knuckle it digs into the backs of those who flock to it, let me just say that it is a hell—a black, indifferent hell, one which beckons to all types, the stupid and the arrogant, the talented, the cunning, the naive the hopeful and the self-destructive, to come from around the country to lick at the festering black syrup leaking from its million and counting wounds, begging them to call it honey.

Those who had begun to catch on to what the city had in store for them, however, sat in their cars, staring, or prowled the darkness of Caesar’s. I parked my Skylark at the rail meant to keep people from driving into the ocean and got out to prowl. Lighting a cigarette, I walked down along the massive stone sea wall, looking out into the storms front crawling in toward me over the black, oily water. The Verranzano bridge was lost in the fog, as was the parachute tower at Coney Island, both usually easily visible to my spot. Not then. That night the clouds were hanging thick—waiting.

Ignoring the clouds and whatever they were waiting for, I threw myself up and over the steel railing in front of me, settling down on the foot and half of ledge on the sea side of the barrier. My legs dangling over the dashing waves below, I stared out at the ocean, my eyes not focusing on anything, my brain relaxing for the first time in weeks. I was tired. Tired and alone, dying of despairing old age while still in my thirites.

Leaning back against the rail, I pulled a cigarette and managed to light it in the wet of the surrounding mist. I sucked the smoke in deep, holding it down as long as I could, maybe hoping to choke myself. No such luck. The nicotine did start to relax me, however, which at the moment was good enough.

I’d left my apartment in a foul mood. I don’t own an umbrella—ridiculous, effeminate props—but in my anger I’d slammed my way out leaving hat and coat behind. The thickening mist was soaking into my hair and clothes, drenching me. By the time I was ready for a second ’moke the sky had started drizzling to the point where I could barely get it lit.

I downed its fumes one breath at a time, watching the lightning splash along both the far shores before me. The coasts of Brooklyn and Staten Island were illuminated over and over, the random split seconds of light revealing the increasing press of the waves below and the rain above.

The truth of the image depressed me. Even nature worked for the city. It squeezed people, crushing them, forcing them to huddle and shiver, always prepared to wash them away forever for the slightest mistake. Part of me railed at the image but a larger part spoke in calmer tones, implying that perhaps hopelessness was the only sensible feeling one could have living in New York.

I leaned back with eyes closed, the rain lashing, surf below pounding hard enough to almost reach my shoes. I thought of all the reasons people come to New York and wondered what mine had been. As a friend once said, “People don’t pull up in covered wagons to the center of Times Square and say, ‘here it is, honey—a good land, a strong land, a decent land where our children can grow strong and free.’” They didn’t say it when people actually rode around in covered wagons, and they sure as hell don’t say it now. New York is not a good land or a strong land, and it certainly is not a place to bring children. Not by a long shot.

New York is an aching scum hole, a never-closing maw always willing to let anyone—no matter how corrupt, or illiterate, or evil—call it home and hang up their shingle. It is a giant con, a government owned-and-operated money drain, constantly sucking the life and joy and wealth out of its inhabitants the way a dying man sucks oxygen—greedily, as if each breath were the last. It grabs everything in sight, using guilt and law and lies and finally thuggery, if nothing lesser will suffice, to strip those who can’t fight it every single minute of every day, week in, decade out, of everything they have—their money their needs their dreams and wretched, desperate hopes—until finally it either gets the last juice left within them, piling their useless bones with the rest, or drives them away in pitiful defeat, frustrated and humiliated and wondering how anyone as tough as them could have lost—everything—so easily, to an enemy so impartial.

And, I thought, still they come. Every day by the hundreds—by the hundreds, they arrive by plane and bus, in rented trucks, old cars, on bicycles, motorcycles, or they walk and hitch if they have to—all of them desperate to follow some simple-minded plan they’ve mapped out for themselves that is just foolproof. One that shows how easy it will be to make it on Broadway, or in television, or as a painter, a broker, writer, dancer, restauranteur, publisher, actor, reporter, agent, or whathaveyou, willing to work hard now for their bread ahead, not realizing how many waiters and convenience store attendants and busboys, cab drivers, keyboarders, bartenders, store clerks, menials, drug dealers, hookers, homeless starvlings, and corpses the city requires for every you-have-made-it golden meal tick it passes out.

As the rain slacked of, I tried to get another ’moke going, ruefully asking myself what my excuse for being in New York was, knowing all along that I hadn’t come to the city to find anything. I’d come to lose myself, to hide a person I didn’t think anyone should see. I was tired when I did it, tired of corruption, tired of hate—of jealousy, pettiness, violence and anger. I was tired of these things in myself and others.

So naturally, I came to New York, where all the above vices and sins were long ago renamed art forms, encouraged to grow with wild abandon like kudzu, or social welfare. It was the move of a desperate man—trying to hide in a sweltering sea of desperation—hoping the heightened insanity of those around him would make his own reflection look normal. It hadn’t worked.

Not knowing what to do about any of it, though, I let the big problems rest and concentrated on lighting my cigarette. I had just gotten my first lungful when the city gave me something new to think about.

So skillfully I almost didn’t notice, a pickpocket had reached through the railing my back was against, going for the wallet in my front pants pocket. His hand out with it prize, I managed to snag his wrist a split second before it could snake back behind the railing.

“Oh, no you don’t!” I growled.

The pickpocket pulled hard, pushing with his feet against the rail, tearing my fingers at the knuckles as he scraped them against the steel rails. I pulled back, determined to keep my wallet, fighting for balance on the foot and a half of slick rock which made up my side of the fence.

“Let go, damnit! Let go o’me!”

Sticking his free arm through the rails, the pickpocket slammed me in the side, knocking me over the sea wall. I held his wrist in a death grip, feeling his shoulder slam agasint the rails as my weight pulled him tight. He cursed non-stop, his free hand tearing at my fingers around his wrist. I punched him away as best I could, hitting him sometimes, sometimes myself, sometimes the rails. My mind raced over my options, not finding much.

I could release my grip and hope to be able to catch a rail or the sea wall’s edge, but the rain made my chances slim at best. It was possible I might survive the fall to the water, but it was only a fifty/fifty possibility. The rocks hidden beneath the violently pounding waves slamming against my legs and the sea wall were jagged and slimy with sea growth. Walking along the wall back to shore was impossible. So was swimming. The tide was too low for that, but quite ample to mash a man to death. I had no choice—I hung on.

“Com’on, man—let go o’me! I mean it—I mean it!!”

He shook at me, pulling back and forth, jerking my armpit painfully across the edge of the rock wall. I bit at the rain, growling in agony, but didn’t let go.

“Le’go,le’go,le’go—you bastard—le’go,le’go!!”

“Just pull me up—fer Christ’s sake!” I told him. “let me grab the rail so I don’t have to die over five goddamned bucks!”

“No—shut up!! Let go o’me—le’go,le’go! Shit. I makes you le’go. I makes you!”

The pickpocket reached inside his coat. Bracing myself, I thought, okay, you want it—you got it, and then dug my heels into the wall. The pickpocket’s hand emerged with a straightrazor. My left foot slipped back into the water. The pickpocket’s free hand came through the rails at me. My foot almost caught, but slipped again. The razor took my distance, cutting open my sleeve and flaying a fine layer of hair and skin away. My foot caught. I hovered into balance, finding my center of gravity. The razor waved above my line of sight.

“Now. You let go.”

“Not yet.”

I threw my weight back, my legs pushing me out from the wall. The extra leverage vroke the pickpocket’s hold, bringing him slamming into the rails face first. The razor flipped out of his hand, arcing past my right ear. Blood splashed from his face, catching me in the eyes and mouth. Not slowing up, I leaned forward and punched, nailing the part of his face the steel to either side of my fist had missed. Blood arced again, running over his shoulder, down his arm to mine. The blow caused me to slip but, I managed to get half my body back up on the ledge. Releasing the pickpocket, I caught rails in both hands, dragging myself into a secure position as fast as I could.

Once on the ledge I turned to face the pickpocket in case he was going to be anymore trouble. He wasn’t. He was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care which. Then I spotted it—my wallet was still in his hand. Catching my breath, I reached over and pried it free. He didn’t stir. I slid back over to the landward side of the railing. I sat down in relief a few feet from the pickpocket, exhausted from my ninety seconds of past-event re-runs, glad for life and breath and safety. After a few minutes or being overjoyed with having remained alive, though, I noticed it was starting to rain harder. Tired of abuse for one night, I pushed myself to my feet and walked over to the pickpocket. Patting him on the back, I told him “Nice try.”

Then I walked back to my car and drove home. When I got there, I had no trouble sleeping.