Run (19 page)

Hey, I tell him. Total paranoia—

But he finishes for me: Is total awareness. Bobby Seale said that.

Bullshit, I tell him. It was Charlie Manson.

Seale, he says.

Manson, I say right back.

Okay, okay, he says. Have it your way. Sounds white, anyway. White and wack. Crazy talk. People watchin you. Give it a rest.

No, no, no. What I’m saying is that something is wrong. Real wrong. Don’t you see it?

See what, man? I look round here, I don’t see nothin.

Exactly. You look round here, and you don’t see nothing. So where are the cops? The five-oh?

There are no cops. No city boys, no transit boys. Hell, I don’t even see a security guard. We’re standing outside a train station in a not-so-small city, and the closest thing we’ve got to a blue uniform is over there collecting cash for the parking lot.

Look here, I tell Jinx. The other problem, maybe the real problem, is that they’ve probably got security cameras in there. The car’s gonna be called in stolen at eight, and the first thing they’re gonna do is pull the tapes.

And that’s a problem? he says. Look at me, man. I’m your basic nigga perp. Got the ball cap, got the shades, got the moves. You stand watch
and let me do the dirty deed. Shit, how many guys round this city fit my description? They’ll be lookin for weeks. And how hard they gonna look, anyway? It’s a stolen car, man. Probly twenty of em a day round this burg.

I like the way this guy thinks. It’s the way I want him to think, to buy me the time I need. In the station. Alone.

So okay, I tell him. Do it. Meet me in, say, ten. At the entrance to the station. The front steps. By the cabs.

Then I seal the deal, by telling him I’m not going anywhere without him. I tell him: Just don’t forget my duffel bag.

And off he goes and here I stay and I wish I still smoked because I could light one up and make like I had some of my own business to mind. I try looking left, I try looking right, and there is something so wrong with this picture that you know it’s got to be right. So I turn around and walk into the station, check out the people waiting in line for tickets, check out the tired old-timer at the shoeshine stand, check out the guy sliding a broom, check out the television monitor and the trains, arriving and departing, and I wonder, for a weak minute, if this is the way to go, forget the car and choo-choo on down to Dirty City.

You get weak like that sometimes. You get impatient, you get distracted, you get dreamy, you let the wrong things make decisions for you. You guess wrong, and you’re grease.

Right about now, though, I think I’ve guessed right. It’s coming at me so strong that I know there isn’t even a guess to it. This is going to be one of those things like shit, it’s going to happen, and I’m here, I’m right here, and I’m the one who’s making it happen.

That’s when I look at the monitor again, look for the next train to D.C., and I look for the time and it’s right and I give them two minutes. Because if CK or somebody else from UniArms wants to see me, this is their last chance:
Go to the second place
, CK told me,
or go to Wilmington, the train station, maybe
.

I’m checking my watch and the second hand is going around the second time when it happens. And it’s shit, that’s for sure. It’s shit on heels: It’s Lukas. The guy who couldn’t notice guns being run out of a pizzeria.

So here comes Lukas, and the guy looks like he’s been folded out of an overnight bag: crisp white shirt, suit pressed as sharp as a K-bar, even his goddamn tie is straight. Some kind of cheap aftershave is wafting my way. He leans in so close you can smell the minty mouthwash.

How’s it going? Lukas says to me.

Same old sixes and sevens, I tell him.

The guy’s face is flushed, like it’s been scrubbed clean, just shaved.

Uh-huh, he says to me.

Uh-huh, I say right back.

Then I stand there in the middle of the station for about a goddamn minute and watch this guy nod his head, nod his head.

So? I tell him.

So, he says to me. So. You’re gonna love this one.

He screws his head around like somebody’s trying to listen in on what he has to say, and then he says it:

These three Jews walk into a bar, okay? And the first Jew—stop me if you’ve heard this one—the first Jew, he says to the bartender, he says, What a day, what a day, gimme some chicken soup and a shot of Absolut. So the bartender, he does what the guy asks, all right? He gets him the soup, he gets him the shot, and everything’s just fine. And then the second Jew, okay, the second one, he says to the bartender, What a day, what a day, gimme some chicken soup and a shot of Cuervo Gold. So the bartender, he does what this guy says, too. He gets him the soup, the shot, everything’s copacetic, and so now we got the third Jew, right? And the third Jew, he says … do you know what the third Jew says to the bartender?

No, Lukas, I tell him. What does the third Jew say to the bartender?

He says: Fuck the soup and fuck the shot, just give me the twenty bucks you owe me.

Lukas laughs out loud, and it’s a lousy laugh, it’s like the mewl of a sick kitten, and then he rubs his hands together and gives me way too much of a grin. I can smell the soap on his hands, that green gunk you get in public restrooms, smells way too clean.

Ha-ha, I tell him.

I look over his shoulder. Nobody there but civilians.

That’s real funny, I tell him.

I look back toward the entrance to the station. Nobody there, either. There’s nothing doing in here, nothing but me and Lukas. So:

Lukas, I tell him. You know something? You know what I would of said, like if I was the third Jew and all that?

No, he says. What would you a said?

I would of said, Who the fuck made me the third Jew?

Ha, he says.

Huh, he says.

Then he says: I don’t get it.

Yeah, I tell him. You don’t get it. What else is new? You got something else to tell me, Lukas? Or are we just gonna stand around in this miserable excuse for a train station and listen to you tell me jokes for the rest of the day?

Oh, yeah, Lukas says. I got something else to tell you. And it ain’t no joke, okay? It’s something good. CK, he says you oughta come in. There ain’t no kind of problem, CK says. Everything’s cool.

Really, I tell him.

Yeah, really, Lukas says. That’s what CK says. Just do what you got to do, that’s what CK told me to tell you. Do what you got to do.

And there’s CK’s voice in my ear, cutting through the static of the cell phone:
Kill the nigger
.

Then Lukas is talking again:

And CK told me to tell you something else, but I got no idea what this means, so it’s one of those things, you know? CK said to tell you: What you got in your pocket, it’s yours. The paper. It’s all yours, whatever that means. I figure you know what he means. Just do what you got to do, CK said to tell you, and it’s yours.

Really, I tell him again. And what about Renny Two Hand?

Lukas shakes his head. Yeah, well, I heard about that, you know. I liked the kid, it’s some kind of shame. But you whacked out Mackie, didn’t you? Lukas smiles at that one. Then he says:

CK said to tell you:
Now
we’re even.

Yeah, I tell him, and I take one last look around before finishing something that never really started. I say to Lukas:

Well, tell you what, you piece-of-shit errand boy, you go and you tell CK that we aren’t even, that we’re never even, not until he’s six feet deep. You tell him that for me, okay, you fucking retrovirus?

Lukas staggers back a step. I don’t even get to push him.

You know something, Lane? CK said you’d tell me no. He said you were just the kind of stupid fuck that would tell me no.

He looks at his fingernails. I can still smell that soap on his hands. How can shit smell so fucking clean?

So look, Lukas says. You don’t want to do the nigger, fine. The nigger’s taken care of. So forget CK. This is from Mr. Berenger now, okay? His lips to my ears. Come home, he says to tell you. Just come with me, back to D.C.

Lukas pats his jacket pocket, left breast. I got a ticket for you, club car, first class, there’s a Metroliner out of this dump in about five minutes. Mr. Berenger says to come home and get this crap straightened out and—

You aren’t listening to me, Lukas. That’s your problem, you know it? You never did look, and you never did listen. Well, you better look and you better listen now. Because you see that door over there? I’m walking out that door, and you better hope and you better pray I don’t ever see you again.

He shows me his teeth. I don’t know what got this guy balls but I’m out of there and I don’t look back and when I’m through the station doors and onto the stairs outside there’s Jinx maneuvering the Capri past a couple taxis and over to the curb. Just one of Hertz’s millions, rental red and spanking clean. Not perfection for the ride we’ve got to make, but about as good as it gets.

Jinx raises the duffel bag from the seat next to him.

Still got it, he tells me. But it’s goin in the trunk.

He ducks down and reaches across the front seat to the glove box. Then:

Shit, he says.

He turns off the ignition and rises up out of the driver’s side, duffel in hand, slamming the car door behind him.

Next time you order us up a rental, make it a Caddy or a Lex, he
says, jangling the keys in my face. Least somethin that’ll let you pop the trunk from the inside.

He fits the key into the tail lock and twists. The trunk lid wings up and open and the smell nearly doubles me over. I stare and I stare and I don’t see. It doesn’t make sense, not one bit of sense.

It’s blood.

Jinx drops the keys to the pavement and dances back from the car like he’s been burned.

Blood, and I’ve never seen so much blood in so little space.

Blood and blood and more blood and there, in the middle of the blood, two legs twisted out of a skirt, bent and broken like twigs.

It’s something, the shoes, the legs, the skirt, the blouse, the whole thing adds up into a fist that hits me and hits me:

It’s Lauren.

Fuck me, Jinx says.

No. It’s not Lauren. Not anymore.

Fuck all, he says. Where is her head, man?
Where is her head?

I’ve got an answer but the answer is to another question, and I don’t ask the question and I don’t say the answer because I’m running, running away, running away from the car, running away from Jinx, running up the steps and into the station. Past the shoeshine guy, who doesn’t even notice. Past the broom guy, who does notice but then decides I’m late.

Late. For the train.

I bulldoze through the people and past the ticket agent at the gate, tugging my wallet halfway out of my suit coat and telling him the only thing he wants to hear: Washington. Then I’m through the double door and out onto the empty platform and I’m late, I am too late, the train is pulling out and I run and the wheels are turning and I’m gaining on it but there’s nothing I can do but run as the wheels screech and spin harder and the speed picks up and I come nearly to the end of the last car and face to face with Lukas, he’s looking out from the rear window of the train like a politician on the stump, and Lukas looks out and he sees me, he sees me and he raises those squeaky clean hands and he smiles and he waves and he says something but I can’t read his lips.

I’m at the end of the platform and the train is rolling away from Wilmington, from me.

I push wind from my lungs and go loose.

That’s when I swipe the Glock from the holster beneath my suit coat and settle into a Weaver stance. I hear footsteps biting into the concrete behind me and I make them go away and I don’t look at anything, just take a deep breath and push the wind from my lungs again as Jinx hauls up next to me, he’s got my duffel bag in his hand and a scowl on his face, and he spits out the words between labored gasps:

No way.

I take a deep breath.

No fuckin way.

Loose. I don’t say the words, I feel them. Stay loose. Looking with both eyes down the sights of that Glock and into a window, a rectangle of glass that shines back at me, that shines back light, a sun, a fading sun, a faint hope against the night, it’s coming, the night is coming, and my father, it’s farmland, Illinois farmland, and I see the piece of cardboard with the red crayon circle and it’s nailed to the wooden fence and I’m thirteen years old and I look down the sight of my father’s Winchester and he says to me, he says:

Stay loose.

You’re shining me, Jinx says. You’re shining me.

Seventy feet.

Give it up, man, he says.

Eighty feet.

But I’m loose. Down the sights of the Glock I see the fading sun and that cardboard target and I see through that target and I see glass and I see through the glass and I see Lukas and I see death.

Ninety feet.

I blink and look again. I see the flow of distant cornstalks. The starless sky that’s grey and calm and grey and calm and grey and grey and grey then black, and I squeeze the trigger, one shot, and a hundred feet away the train window spiderwebs, and the web flares with red, and I have no doubt, not a doubt in the world, that Lukas is dead.

Then the train is gone.

Jesus, Jinx says.

He looks at my gun.

He looks at me.

He looks at my gun.

He looks at me.

Jesus Christ, he says.

No, I tell him: Glock 19.

I holster the pistol and start walking.

I walk the walk, it’s not a shuffle and it’s not a hustle and it’s not a run, it’s a walk, and it’s loose, I’m still loose. I’m this travel-weary taxpayer who missed the train or something, and when the police guy comes boiling out of the terminal with a hand in the air, like he forgot to wave goodbye, I ignore what he is and what he says and I keep walking. I walk past the police guy and I walk to the far end of the platform where there’s a door that says
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. I stop and I sigh and I turn around.

The police guy is wearing a funny uniform, maybe he’s a transit cop, and Jinx grabs the funny uniform by the lapels and he hauls the funny uniform out of its shoes and he slams the funny uniform into a post and he yells something into the face beneath the funny uniform’s hat and then he slams the funny uniform into the post again and he drops the funny uniform like a bad habit and now it’s his turn to walk.