Chance (20 page)

They went out by way of the alley where the night smelled of garbage and there was a slight chill on the noxious air, winter waiting in the wings. D wore the old Army Rangers jacket over jeans and a black T-shirt. One of his heavy black combat boots was patched with duct tape. Chance was still dressed in the clothes he’d put on that morning, dark slacks, a pale yellow sweater, and brown loafers. Only thing needed to make the oddness of their pairing complete, he concluded, was the white doctor’s coat with his name on it that hung more or less as a prop from his office door, that he sometimes wore in front of those patients for whom he thought such outward signs of competency might help in allaying their fears.

For the most part they walked in silence. D set a good enough pace that Chance actually had to work to keep up. They went east on Market and then north. It was neither the hour nor direction Chance would have chosen. “Not the best part of town,” was how he voiced his concern. D grunted and kept walking.

Lights failed briefly nearing the Tenderloin, though here and there some bit of neon hung frosted in the dank air. Figures half realized rustled among the shadows as might insects disturbed by their passing. In time they came to a street where the tawdry neon was more prevalent. There were hookers on corners now and dimly lit bars, men with bottles on the stoops of flophouses, their liquor in brown paper bags. There was also the occasional flare of a butane lighter beneath the bowl of a glass pipe and small bands of prowling youth.

Chance found that he’d broken a sweat. It beaded up on his hairline in the chill of the improbable night, made ever more improbable with each step, whereupon something new, equally improbable, and
profoundly disturbing began to occur. Big D began to limp. He began to do something else as well. He began to hold his right arm up, bent at the elbow, his left hand bunched at his side in the manner of a stroke victim so that his entire body might be seen to participate in the ruse, if ruse it was. Chance’s first instinct was to indulge in the luxury of doubting his observation. It was after all the night on the heels of the day in the wake of the previous night. He was short on sleep, nerves wrung to the breaking point. Unhappily D continued to limp, possibly even to refine his limp, till Chance could doubt it no more. “Are you all right?” he asked. He was a little afraid of the answer but D only nodded and turned forthwith into a brightly lit liquor store at the heart of the broad way, still dragging a leg and favoring an arm.

The store was as shabby and inherently threatening as any Chance had been in for some time. A large, surly man with the well-muscled, heavily tattooed arms of an aging gangbanger noted their entrance from behind the safety of what Chance could only interpret as bulletproof glass, the latter heavily pitted and scratched, as was the wooden counter beneath. The glass had a hole cut from it by which the tattooed man might exchange pleasantries with his customers, of whom there were several milling about in the aisles, locals one and all, or so it appeared. Chance was aware of their eyes on him. The next thing he was aware of was Big D turning to face him. “Got a money card?” D asked.

Chance was not immediately certain as to what was meant. “Excuse me?” he said.

D looked toward an ATM machine squeezed between a rack of pornographic magazines and a sweating cooler jammed with beer. The money machine was anchored to the floor by way of a chain one might only have described as maritime.

By the harsh light of the store Chance was able to regard his companion anew then wished at once that he hadn’t. Exercise and the
night air had served to further redden D’s face. Sweat beaded up on his naked, tattooed dome. The military jacket was threadbare and tattered, and for the first time Chance noticed what appeared to be a nearly empty half-pint bottle of Jim Beam Kentucky bourbon protruding from the side pocket of the ragged coat. And then there was the boot patched in tape, the same that the big man had taken to dragging along the pavement behind him. Was it Chance’s imagination or had he also, in asking about the card, begun to slur his words?

“Excuse me?” Chance said again. It was apparently the best he could do.

“ATM card,” D repeated, only slightly testy. He was, Chance thought, definitely slurring his words. “Are we buying something?” he asked.

“That’d be one way of putting it.”

Chance looked to the sorry machine. “You know . . . if you need something in here . . . I’ve got cash.” He was trying to keep his voice down, still aware of being watched.

“Just use the machine, brother.”

My God, Chance thought, they were through the looking glass. A pair of mutually exclusive propositions seemed possible. D was consciously establishing them as targets or he had brought Chance here to rob him, the former only slightly less disturbing than the latter. As to the factualness of either, he absolutely could not say. The thing was opaque.

They might, he supposed, have continued to stand there, discussing at such lengths the use of Chance’s card and whether or not he was being held up till they had come to resemble the characters of a Beckett play with no shortage of spectators. A small, or perhaps not so small, group had collected at the end of an aisle near the tattooed man and his bulletproof glass.

Faced with the situation’s mounting complexities, Chance remained as he was, rather like a rabbit in the headlights, as D
gimped off in the direction of the machine. As for what the locals might be making of Chance, or of the two of them together, he could only guess: father and prodigal, huckster and mark, or maybe something a bit more on the kinky side. He supposed they were in a part of town where everything went, where from behind the shelter of his worried glass their tattooed host had, as the saying went, seen it all.

Aside from his being caught away in the clouds or beamed directly back to the mother ship, Chance was where he was. It was not likely he would attempt escape. Good luck finding a cab. In the end, he opted for the course of least resistance. “Any particular amount?” he asked, having followed D to the machine. The question seemed to emanate from his throat as little more than a croak.

“Go big or go home,” D told him.

Chance pulled out three hundred dollars in crisp new twenties.

“My man,” D said. He took the bills from Chance’s hand and counted them back to him, an absurd and attenuated exercise given D’s recently acquired physical limitations. “Machines’ll shortchange you now and then,” he added. “But you’re okay.” He kept twenty for himself and made his way to the bulletproof glass. He bought a pack of smokes and a short dog of Silver Satin. He managed all of this with his left hand, the occasional assist of a right elbow. Exiting, however, in some apparent attempt to replace the bourbon with the short dog, he succeeded only in dropping the former. It broke upon impact, the scent of cheap bourbon filling the night. The man behind the glass shouted, his words indistinct. Chance was not about to seek clarification. They went on another half block before it occurred to him that a lanky black kid of indeterminate age but certainly no older than thirty had come with them from the store and was now trailing them along the sidewalk.

“There’s a guy back there,” Chance said when they’d gone another block and the guy was still with them. D nodded, attempting to open a
pack of smokes with his teeth, leading them ever deeper into the heart of the slum, another block and a half, at which point the young man ducked into a strip joint and was gone.

Chance’s relief was immense. He’d given up trying to diagnose the man at his side. He would leave him to his Jim Beam and his Silver Satin. Not since moving into the new apartment had his quarters seemed so thoroughly inviting as they did just now. His euphoria lasted for perhaps one more block whereupon he was made aware not only of the lanky man’s return, but of the fact that he had done so in the company of reinforcements, three men of roughly his own size, age, and bearing, two black and one white. Three of the men wore jeans and work boots and loose flannel shirts in the manner of gang members. One wore a blue bandanna around his head. The man from the liquor store wore a leather jacket, his hands thrust deep into the pockets. All four looked mean and thuggish, intent on their prey.