Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (10 page)

It's about six stories tall, made mostly out of wood, and looks kind of like the
dilapidated skeleton of a very skinny pyramid. And wedged into every crack and hanging off
of every plank and board, nailed to and dangling from every square foot of its surface, is
a simply in-fucking-credible collection of crap. Old street signs, toilet seats, a jumbo
model of an airliner, toys of every shape and size, a kitchen sink, several effigies,
flags, and at least one huge stuffed giraffe. It sits there and looms over the entire
garden, dominating the landscape. The one thing it most definitely does not do is reach a
single inch outside the borders of its own tiny plot. You got to admire the pain in the
ass that built this thing. As for me, I'm just hoping he built it well, because I'm
already about ten feet up in the damn thing and if that dog jumps any higher I'm gonna
have to go twenty.

It took me just a couple minutes to get over to that garden. No Leprosy. I walked around
the fence for a minute, took the scent of the air and climbed on over. It's dark in there
and the air is clogged with the rich, growing odors of midsummer, all that loam and sweet
blossoms and bursting fruit and crap. Anyway, it wreaks havoc with my nose and as I try to
sort it out I hear a little whimpering sound. I edge around a tiny stand of corn into the
shadow of the creaking tower. Up against the wall of one of the tenements bordering the
garden I see a dog snuffling at something and whining. I step around the corn.

--Hey, Gristle, hey there, boy.

His head whips around at the sound of my voice.

--Easy there, Gristle.

A growl starts up in the back of his throat.

--Let's not have any trouble here, boy. Easy. Where's Leprosy, huh? Where is he, boy?

Why am I asking the dog where Leprosy is? Fuck do I know. Seems like the thing to do. At
the sound of Leprosy's name he starts to whine again and turns back to whatever it is he's
interested in, and I know things are all fucked up.

--What ya got there, boy?

I take a step closer to get a look. Gristle's head snaps back around and the rest of his
body follows. He doesn't growl or bark, just comes straight at me. I hold the bat out in
front of me with both hands and his jaws clamp down on it instead of my throat. I hear his
teeth crack the wood as he bites down, and his weight sends me flat on my back. He's on
top of me, his teeth planted in the bat, jerking it back and forth, trying to tear it from
me while he rips at my exposed stomach with his rear claws. I push out with the bat,
forcing his body up into the air. He's got the skinny part in his mouth and the fucker
might just chew right through it in another second or two. Up in the air, he's lost his
leverage and can't get purchase to claw me. Any time now he'll let go of the bat so he can
take another crack at my neck. I twist my body to the left and throw the bat, Gristle and
all, to my right. He skips and slides in the dirt for a few feet. I follow through with my
roll, scramble up to my feet, run three steps, the dog just behind me, and jump up into
the tower with Gristle hanging from my ankle. I manage to kick him off before he can sever
my Achilles.

And here I am, sitting up in the tower with that dog down below stalking back and forth,
taking the occasional jump at me and not making a fucking sound at all.

Me, I'm not what you'd call an animal person. Dogs, cats, wildebeests, it don't really
matter, I don't care for any of them. But I'll give animals this over people, they just do
what comes

natural. Eat when they're hungry, sleep when they're tired, fuck when they're horny,
protect their friends and kill their enemies. So I don't really want to hurt this dog,
which is why I didn't take batting practice on his head in the first place. But getting
down out of this thing without being chewed on is gonna be some kind of trick. I take out
a cigarette and give it a smoke.

Gristle hasn't forgotten about me by a long shot, but instead of pacing back and forth
just below me he's started covering the ground between the base of the tower and the thing
against the wall. I pitch the stub of my cigarette and squat on one of the
sturdier-looking pieces of lumber up here. Gristle looks up at me. The refracted light
from a streetlamp turns his eyes blazing red. It's a good look for him. He turns to walk
back over to the wall. I jump, land on top of him and wrap him up so that his legs are
pinned beneath our bodies. He twists and writhes and wrenches his head around and snaps at
the side of my face and misses and latches onto my left shoulder. He digs in. I get my
hand on his throat and squeeze. He jerks his head a couple times, his teeth tearing my
skin. I squeeze tighter and he starts to shudder and shake and finally pops his mouth off
my shoulder and keeps it open wide and tries to breathe. I don't let him. It takes a while
to knock him out, but he's still alive when I get up, and so am I. Pretty good deal for
both of us.

Bruises are starting to form around the holes he put in my shoulder, but the blood has
coagulated. I lift my arm over my head and stretch it out. It'll do. I pick up the bat and
walk over to the wall to see what Gristle was so interested in. It's an old T-shirt, used
to be kind of gray-green, but now it's mostly red. I give it a good smell, and you don't
have to be much smarter than dirt to know it's Leprosy's.

In the farthest, darkest corner of the garden, where the walls of the two buildings that
border it to the south and west meet, I can see an old steel basement trap. It's open. I
drop Leprosy's shirt.

I've been spending a little too much time in basements the last few nights, but hey, it
goes with the territory. I choke up on the bat and head down the stairs.

I'm hit with that generic oily-dirt smell that permeates City basements. There's garbage
down here and moldy cloth and waterlogged newsprint, and blood. Lots of blood, and it
smells just like Leprosy. I follow the blood.

These East Village tenements have been torn down and rebuilt so many times that the floor
plans of the original builders have become worthless abstracts. This basement has
penetrated far beyond the property lines of the building above. Many of these buildings
could have had a single owner in the past and for any of a number of reasons he might have
connected the basements into a single maze. Could have helped to hide a sweatshop, escape
routes from a drug lab or, in a more innocent time, a speakeasy. Anything. All it means to
me is that I'm getting lost down here. But the smell of Leprosy's blood is getting
stronger ahead of me.

Every so often I pass a loose-fitting door that leads into someone's laundry room or the
storage closet for a bodega and light from a feeble bulb leaks out. But I don't really
need that light to tell me when I get to the place where someone must have cut Leprosy
open because I just about slip and fall down in the puddle of his blood. He's up ahead of
me. In the darkness. Alone. I tuck the bat under my arm, take out the Maglite, twist it on
and shine it into the black room just ahead.

--Hey, fuck face.

He's sprawled on his ass, propped against a half-rotted wood post in the middle of the
room, his arms pulled back and tied to the post. His chest is covered with dozens of slash
marks and the blood oozes out and pools in his lap. My mouth begins to water. I take the
bat out from under my arm and stay there in the doorway.

--Hey, Lep. You look like shit.

--Yeah, well.

His voice is choked and tight.

--I think I'm coming down with a fucking cold, so maybe that's why.

--Uh-huh. There anybody in here with you, Lep?

He moves his head around weakly, then turns it toward me and gives a shaky little smile.

--Looks like it's just me.

I take a step into the room, shine the light into the corners and crannies. It's empty. I
walk over to Leprosy, drop the bat and kneel down next to him.

--Let's have a look at you.

The cuts on his chest are shallow, put there to inflict pain, not to kill. I take off my
shirt and start tearing it into long strips and wrapping them around his skinny torso to
bind the wounds.

--You might get lucky here, Lep.

--Yeah, lucky fucking me.

--They tell you what they wanted?

--They wanted you, fuck face. They wanted to know about you. Then they wanted me to make
that fucking call, and as soon as I did they fucked off. So you get all of them?

--Who?

--It was a fucking trap, right? They made me call you and fucking jumped you, right?

--The only thing that jumped me was your dog.

--Gristle? You best not have hurt my dog, fuck face.

--Your dog is fine, the only thing that got hurt was my shoulder.

--Heh. He got you, huh?

--Fuck off, Lep.

I finish wrapping his chest.

--They get you anywhere else? They break anything?

--One of 'em stuck me in the back of my neck or something.

I take him gently by the shoulders, lean him forward until he's resting against my body
and look at the back of his neck. There's a bite mark. The edges of it are a sickly
greenish white. The bite of the carrier, just like I found it on the neck of the shambler
chick. He's dead and rotting, and soon he'll be trying to eat me. I lean him back against
the post.

--Looks OK.

--Cool. So you think they'll be waiting for us when we go out? Or maybe they wanted to get
you out of the way so they could bust into your place?

I shrug.

--Whatever, we'll deal with it.

--You'll deal with it, fuck face. Not my problem.

I tear another strip from my now ruined shirt.

--Let me get another look at your neck. I want to keep your head from falling off.

--Ha fucking ha, fuck face.

I lean him against me again and use the strip of cloth to wipe the blood away from the
hole in the back of his neck.

--You get a look at them, Lep?

--Naw, there was a couple of the fuckers, but it was too dark for me to see shit.

--Which one did this to your neck?

--Fuck do I know? One had me facedown on the floor, and I was screaming and shit, and one
of them cut my neck with something.

--They ask you anything special?

--Couple questions. Wanted to know what you asked me. About that chick. What you wanted
from me.

--What'd you tell them?

--What the fuck you think I told them? They were cutting my chest open. I told them fucking
everything, which wasn't a fuck

of a lot. Leprosy is no fucking hero, man, not for twenty fucking dollars.

--Yeah.

--You done patching that thing up or what?

--Just about. Hey, Lep, if your dog was sick, real sick, what would you do with it?

--What the fuck does that mean? You hurt Gristle, you shit fuck?

He struggles against me weakly and I hold him still.

--Easy, you'll start bleeding again. Naw, the dog is fine, it's like a puzzle thing, like a
joke. If your dog was real sick, what would you do?

His body is leaning up against mine, his blood staining my undershirt. His head on my left
shoulder, the one his dog chewed, and I'm looking into a hole chewed in his neck.

--Shit, man, if Gristle was that sick, like in pain kind of sick? I'd kill him, man, I'd
just fucking kill him.

--That's what I figured.

--So what's the punch line, fuck face?

I take his head in my hands, one on the back, the other tucked under his chin. I lean him
back against the crumbling post and do it while I'm looking him in the eye. It's a bad
position, I'm on my knees with hardly any leverage, but I do it clean and his body slumps
to the floor, head dangling at the end of his broken neck. It takes me awhile to find my
way out of the basement.

Gristle is where I left him. A vicious animal that will try to kill anything that comes
near it once it wakes. I could take him to the park and see if one of Lep's friends wants
him, but they won't. I could take him to the pound where they'll keep him for a few days
until they see the killer inside him and then put him down. I could leave him on the
street to wake up and wreak havoc until he's shot by some cop. I could take him home. I
could take him home and care for him until he loves me like he loved Leprosy.

But he won't. He'll be a broken thing without his master. A wounded monster. I kneel in
the dirt. I kill him the same way I killed Leprosy, the same sharp twist of the neck. Then
I drag him down into the basement, through the warped passageways to the black room, and I
drop him next to his friend. Let them be found, and let whoever finds them make of it what
they will. I'm going home.

Zombies don't torture people. They don't torture and they don't interrogate and they don't
set traps. Someone is fucking with me. And my people.

Evie comes by. She sees the blood and I tell her it's not mine before she can freak out.
She makes me take a shower. I want a bath, but hadn't realized just how much of Leprosy's
blood I have on me. She takes my clothes and stuffs them in a plastic sack while I rinse
off, then she runs the tub and we sit in it naked, facing one another. I tell her Lep is
dead, that some guys that have a beef with me killed him. She doesn't ask questions, just
rubs soap on a washcloth and scrubs my feet.

The Cole is just the same, same oak, same mural, same high-priced clientele, but this time
there's someone new.

--What I'd like to make clear to you, the one most important piece of information that you
should walk away from this conversation with, is that I'd like you never to be seen with
my fucking wife ever again.

I nod. And Dale Edward Horde nods back.

He's older than his wife, early fifties, but just as groomed. I doubt that there are
designer tags on any of his clothes, but discrete, hand-sewn labels from a bespoke shop on
the Upper East Side. His haircut is flawless, a flop of graying black bangs sweeping
across his forehead. He's fit and ready for the cover of
Men's Health,
but his eyes are subtly ringed and his lean muscularity speaks more of stress and
intensity than of a gym.

He takes another sip of his Talisker, then leans back in his chair and taps his wedding
ring against the rim of the glass.

--As public places go, this one is less public than most. It's the prices, the prices make
it unlikely that you will find very many tourists popping in to gawp at the well-to-do.
But they're \not really the problem, tourists. The problem is the people with money,
people my wife and I associate with. The problem with those people is that so few of them
work, they have too much time on their hands and they like to keep up on what one another
are doing. Your coming in here with my wife raised more than a few eyebrows. Honestly, I
don't particularly care if they think the two of you are intimate. You wouldn't be the
first roughneck from downtown with whom she's taken up. But it is something for people to
talk about, and so talk they will. That talk is what concerns me. Talk circulates and
becomes gossip and rumor, and gossip and rumor have wings that carry them very far indeed.
No, my concern is not that I should be known as a cuckold, but rather that word of your
involvement with my wife might reach the wrong ears; ears, that is, which might know about
who
and
what
you are. Ears such as those would be greatly interested in knowing that my wife and I were
having dealings with you and your . . . what is the word? Brethren?

I look at my lap some more.

--Not brethren. Let's just say you and your kind. I know it smacks of racism, but there it
is.

He swallows the last of his Scotch and sets down the empty glass. A waiter sweeps it away.

--Suffice it to say that you are here now because I need the gossips to see us together,
speaking amiably. It will muffle any talk of my wife having an affair with you, and the
gossips will quickly find some other tidbit to dwell upon. And thus our association with
you will fade from common discourse. You understand my concern, yes?

I nod.

--Good. Now that we have that out of the way, you can join me in a drink.

The waiter returns with a fresh Talisker for Horde and he orders the same for me.

--Is that alright?

I nod. The drink comes and I hold it. Horde points at the glass in my hand.

--Take a drink, it will help with the facade of our knowing one another.

I lift the glass to my lips and take a sip.

--Good, yes?

I nod.

--Then business. My daughter.

I take another drink, a big one this time. It's a heavy Scotch. Wood-smoke and peat fill
my nostrils, and for a moment I can't smell the odor of Leprosy's blood that clings to my
hair.

--What do you want to know?

--Have you found her?

--No.

He waits for more. I don't give it to him. He tires of waiting.

--A more detailed report perhaps?

--In detail.

I gulp the rest of the whiskey in my glass.

--It looks like your daughter may be in a world of shit. It looks like she's been hanging
with her squatter pals in Alphabet City. It also looks like there's some sick shit going
on down there that could be very dangerous to anyone living on the street.

He grimaces and nods his head.

--As I understand it,
sick shit
is what my daughter goes down there seeking. I think it may be safe to assume that if it
is about she will find it.

--No, Mr. Horde, it'll find her.

He raises his eyebrows.

--Well, in that case, and seeing as your drink is empty, you'd best go find her.

He stands. I stand.

--My demeanor can be off-putting, Mr. Pitt. People consider me cold. You might perhaps
interpret this as an indication that I am less than fond of my daughter. That would be a
mistake. Be assured, I love my daughter and I want her back. Unharmed. Get her, and you
will be suitably rewarded. Fail, and you will be sorted out accordingly. Which brings me
to my final point. I want her delivered into my arms and my arms only. You are not to hand
over
Amanda to her mother. --Any special reason?

The waiter comes over with a bill, offers it to Horde, and Horde flicks a pen across it
without looking. The waiter walks away.

--Yes. For the reason that my wife is a philandering lush and is becoming a singularly
unhealthy influence on her daughter. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to shake your hand.
It will help to cement our deception for the audience.

I take his hand. It's just as soft as I expect it to be, but strong. He smiles broadly and
claps me on the shoulder.

--Unharmed and to my arms. Understood?

He's still holding my hand, his other hand resting on my shoulder, everything about his
body language and tone of voice telling the room that I am a trusted and valuable
employee. I pull my hand free of his.

--Yeah, sure.

I walk out of the Cole and into the St. James lobby and don't see the stairs in front of
me and trip down the first few and have to grab the banister to keep from falling. Sweat
breaks out on my face. I feel drunk; very suddenly very drunk. I wipe my hand across the
sweat on my face. I smell something, something on my hand, something I've smelled before.

I walk past the front entrance and only realize it when I find myself standing at the
elevators. I go back to the entrance and have to watch the revolving door swirl past twice
before I can step into it without being crushed.

One of the uniformed doormen helps me down the steps and asks me if I'd like a cab. I
shake my head and his face blurs in front of me. I lurch down the sidewalk to the corner
of Fifth and 55th and walk right into the moving traffic. Drivers blast their horns and
curse at me as I weave my way across the street.