Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (16 page)

At Hicks, the driver swings off the expressway and pulls to a corner and one of the boys
gets out and holds the door for me as I climb out. It's the head scratcher. He avoids my
eyes, but I'm not looking at him. I'm looking at the ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, the
walkway that spans its length, the dark sky above it, starless.

He gets back in the car.

I rap a knuckle on the door before he can close it.

--Got any idea what time it is?

He looks at me, looks away.

--Just go around to the other side of the ramp. Some stairs are there. You have plenty of
time to walk back.

--Sure, but do you know what time it is?

He closes the door and they drive away, the right front tire grinding against the crumpled
fender when they turn at the corner.

The ice air off the river burrows into the wound in my ribs and the holes in my leg and
arm. I pull my coat closer around me and walk a block to Cadman Plaza West and limp across
it in front of some traffic and follow a path around a little park and hit the sidewalk on
the other side and walk down it and find the staircase cut into the stone footing of the
bridge and I go up and stand on the wood planks of the walk and look at downtown Manhattan
about twenty minutes away. At the other end of the bridge somewhere is a yellow cab
waiting for a fare, waiting to take me the fuck home.

I turn around and go back down the stairs.

Jesus loves me and I find a 24-hour deli on Henry Street.

A crackhead skips from foot to foot in front of the door. He skips a little farther to
make room for me.

--Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?

I walk inside.

--Catch me on my way out.

He skips and smiles toothless.

The beer cooler is locked. I look for the clerk, see that no one is in the store. I think
about breaking the glass, remember the precinct house we passed as we came off the
expressway just down the street. I smell something and walk to the counter and lean over
it and see the guy on his knees, curled over, his forehead touching the prayer mat that
covers the floor. I wait a minute while he chants.

He stands, rolling the mat and putting it and a copy of the Q'uran on a shelf above the
condoms and hangover cures.

--Sorry. These hours. I have to sneak it in when I can. My imam would shit.

He looks up and sees my scab-crusted face and the blood-soaked shirt stuck to my chest and
his eyes drift down and he sees the hole in my pants and the bloody denim.

--Uh.

--The cooler's locked.

He looks up.

--Uh.

--It's not mine. The blood.

--Uh.

--In an accident. Driver got messed up bad. Most of it's his.

--Uh.

--I could use a beer.

He nods.

--Right.

He comes from around the counter.

--Sorry. Have to lock it while I'm at prayer.

He unlocks the cooler.

--Chester out there would come in and try to clear out every forty in the place if I
didn't.

I reach in the cooler and grab a six of Bud and a 40 of Old English 800.

At the counter he bags the beer and tosses in the two packs of Luckys I ask for.

--That it?

There are some odds and ends hanging on wire hooks above the candy racks. Scotch tape,
blunted scissors, notepads, sewing kits, playing cards, a spatula, toilet plunger,
screwdriver. I take down a sewing kit and a serrated kitchen knife shrink-wrapped to a
piece of cardboard and he rings it up.

--Thirty-seven, eighty-nine.

I dig the crumpled bills from my pocket and give him two twenties and he gives me the
change.

--You OK?

I pick up the bag.

--I'm gonna be.

--You live around here?

--I live around.

--You need a ride, there's a car service up the street.

--Thanks.

I go out.

--Pennynickledimequarterdollarmilliondollars?

I pull the 40 out of the bag and show it to Chester and tilt my head up the street and he
follows me away from the storefront. I hand him the 40 and watch while he unscrews the
cap, gives the mouth of the bottle a wipe with the greasy XXL sweatshirt that hangs off
his skin and bones, puts it to his mouth and watercoolers half of it.

I put one of my beers down my throat.

Chester swirls the beer at the bottom of his bottle.

--Lookin' fera rock?

I nod.

He tilts his head back, goes at the bottle, his Adam's apple bobbing, drops the empty on a
littered patch of dirt at the foot of a sick tree and skips toward the corner.

--C'mon.

I follow him onto Orange Street and in the middle of the block I punch him in the back of
the neck just at the base of the skull and his head snaps forward and he takes another
step and then his feet stop moving and I fist a wad of his sweatshirt before he can
face-plant on the pavement and drag him to an iron fence and hoist him up and throw him
over into the small churchyard it encloses.

I drop the plastic bag between the bars and climb over and jump to the ground, the holes
in my body bitching at me. I grab Chester and my bag and drag them into the darkness at
the foot of a statue of someone who was probably really important once, but now he's just
dead.

I crack a beer and take a sip and set it aside and get the kitchen knife from the bag and
tear it from the plastic and cardboard and thumb the serrated edge. It's dull. Sharp
enough for bread, but little else. I pull up the sleeve of Chester's shirt and spill a
little beer on his wrist and mop it away with the paper napkins the clerk tossed in the
bag. I open the sewing kit and thread a needle and set it close by.

And I pick up the knife and put it to his skin and cut quick and deep, the blade sharp
enough for this.

My mouth is over the wound, and Chester's diseased and ravaged blood is pumping into me
and the Vyrus goes into it and feeds on it and I don't feel the cold anymore and I don't
feel my wounds and the hairs on my stomach and chest stand up and my eyes roll up in my
head and I almost laugh at myself for buying the sewing kit.

He's not empty when I'm done. Not for lack of trying. But after I start gagging up blood
for the third time I drop his arm and find more of the napkins and wipe my mouth and rinse
my face with beer.

I look at Chester. There's still blood in there, but none of it's coming out, his heart
having stopped pumping after the first three or four pints ran down my gullet.

I pick up the knife and hack his arm with it a couple times, creating something that might
look enough like stress cuts to make the cops shrug and say
junkie suicide
and not give a fuck. I wipe the knife handle and wrap his fingers around it.

I squat there and drink another beer and smoke and try and remember if there was a video
camera in the deli. If there was, I should go back and make the clerk show me where the
recorder is and take the tapes and kill him. But I don't think there was.

I collect my empties and butts and the sewing kit and stand and look at Chester again and
put my foot on his chest and pump it a few times to force more blood from his wound so
there will be some pooled on the grass when he's found.

It looks like shit. Looks like a shit kill by an asshole who doesn't know what he's doing.

Fuck do I care? I'm a new fucking man.

The holes in my body are sealed tight and they flush warm and tingle as they heal. I can
smell the crisp night in every detail. I can see the stars that were invisible before. I
can hear the tics and fleas that infest Chester's clothes start to suck at the blood I've
left for them. I can feel the vibrations of the cars climbing the ramp to the bridge
blocks away.

I leap to the top of the fence and perch there.

I'm a monster in the city at night. And I can do what I fucking please.

It's Brooklyn. Burn it to the ground and see if anyone pisses on the fire.

Two drivers and the dispatcher at the car service sit behind a Plexiglas partition playing
dominoes on a card table with a crooked leg, filling the office with smoke.

The dispatcher looks at me and the mess I am and shakes his head.

--No cars.

I go in my pocket and come out with more of the Society's cash and put four twenties on
the counter and slide them under the partition.

He shakes his head again.

One of the drivers calls domino and slaps down and they total their points and the other
driver curses and looks at my money.

--Where?

I tell him and he takes the eighty bucks and gives sixty to the guy who just skunked him
and pulls on a parka and the dispatcher buzzes him out of the booth and we walk into the
cold and he unlocks his Lincoln.

I start to get in and he holds up a hand and gets a blanket from the trunk, spreads it
across the backseat so I don't get blood on his cracked and faded leather.

I get in and pull a beer from the bag and put a fresh smoke in my mouth.

He turns in his seat and looks at me.

--No smoking. No drinking.

I hand him my last twenty and a beer and he pockets the money and opens the beer and
drives.

He drops me off next to the Field and I walk across it drinking my last beer and toss the
empty can at the bottom of the fence and jump it and hit to the ground on the other side
and weave through the headstones.

I find the freshly dug graves of Chaim and Selig and Fletcher and Elias and whatever parts
of the Strongman that made it into the ground here. I have to dig with my hands, but the
dirt is loose and I'm strong and it doesn't take long. I get to the corpse I want and I
take his long knife and his little axe. I brush dirt from them and test their edges and
find them honed.

Cypress Ave. cuts through the cemetery. I walk along it and settle into some bushes at the
base of a tree where I can see the end of 57th Street and the lighted upper windows at the
rear of the house with the small temple in its backyard, and the young man in a long black
coat and a wide-brimmed hat walking back and forth next to the fence that separates it
from the cemetery.

I think about Lydia and what a pain in my ass she is.

I think about Predo and Terry and the way it feels when they jerk my strings and my arms
and legs jump and I dance dance dance to their tune.

I think about Daniel and things he's said to me over the years about what Enclave is and
what they want and how I'm one of them.

I think about Rebbe Moishe and what he had to say about love.

I think about love and what you sacrifice for it and what you do to keep it in your life.

I think about Evie.

I think about the only way you can stay with the person you love forever. How you have to
die to do that. I think about how close Evie is to death. And what it will be like when
she's gone.

I think about what's expected of me. How little.

I think about seven hundred left-handed warriors.

And I walk out of the bushes and use the long knife and the axe to kill one.

He fights quiet.

Mostly he fights quiet because I come at him from behind and he smells me too late and
when he turns the axe cuts through his windpipe. After that his screams don't do much
except whistle and spray blood. He reaches for something riding on his hip and I stab the
long knife through the back of his hand and into his gut. His right hand comes at my
throat, but I'm bringing the axe back around and I imbed it in his shoulder and I know I
cut something important because his fingers won't squeeze when he gets them on me. I push
him up against the fence and he gurgles and leaks all over the place. He jerks his left
hand free of the knife, losing his thumb as he does it, and goes for my eyes. I pull the
axe and the knife from his body and looks like I was the only thing holding him up because
he slides down the fence and onto his back and his limbs pedal at the air like a dying
bug.

I leave him where he is, close to all the other dead people in the cemetery, and go over
the fence and the guy on the other side is waiting for me and I find out what the Rebbe
was talking about when he said they can
sling stones at a hair breadth, and not miss.

The half-inch steel bearing this guy whips from his sling hits me in the left kneecap and
the bone turns to a fistful of gravel and I swing the leg out in front of me and step on
it and it makes me want to scream but I won't do that and I walk on the fucking thing and
it makes me pay for it, and it looks to me like the problem with a sling is that after you
fire your first shot you have to get another stone or whatever cradled in that little
pocket and spin the thing up to speed and if the asshole you just nailed keeps coming at
you and chops your arm off before you can do all that, you're fucked.

So that's what I do.

This one makes some noise, until I put him on the ground and stomp on his head a couple
times.

My knee hurts like something my dad did to me once when I was too young to know that pain
stops. But I'm older now. And one way or another I won't have to worry about the knee much
longer.

Two more boys come out of the house.

One has a spear. The other one is in his underwear and his yarmulke and doesn't have shit.

I worry about the one with the spear.

He rushes me and plants his feet and thrusts just like someone has trained him to do and I
drop the long knife and grab the spear shaft behind the point and it slips through my
fingers and about three inches of steel slips into my stomach and I bring the axe down and
the shaft splinters and the guy who had a spear now has a stick and I have the axe and the
business end of a spear and I pull it out of my belly and flip it in the air and catch it
and hold it out and the guy in his underwear has already leapt into the air and is coming
down at me and can't do shit about it and the shock of the impact tears the spear from my
hand and he hits the ground and starts trying to pull it out of his chest but it's in deep
and lodged tight in his breastbone and he rolls around and dies and the guy with the stick
turns to go back in the house and trips over the arm of the boy who had the sling and I
limp over and swing the axe once and swing it a second time and the second time does the
trick and I go inside the house with the axe in one hand and a head in the other.

The door leads into the kitchen. The boy in the kitchen is the head scratcher.

And he has a bow.

His hands shake as he tries to knock an arrow into the bowstring.

I hold up the head.

--Hey.

He flinches and the arrow slips loose and the string twangs into his forearm.

--Uh.

I point the axe at the head.

--Where's the girl?

He points at the floor.

--Uh.

--Basement?

He nods.

I lower the head.

--You can run if you want.

He drops the bow and turns and runs through the doorway into the livingroom and I throw
the head at his legs and he goes down and I walk over with the axe and put my foot in his
back and raise the axe to get my second head.

--A message is meant to be heeded, yes?

The Rebbe stands halfway down the stairway in his trousers and slippers and untucked
shirt, a prayer shawl draped over his shoulders, a Colt Defender in his hand. I notice a
black cloth draped half over a mirror on the wall next to him. A basin of water at the end
of the hall near the front door.

The Rebbe tugs the cloth over the mirror, but it falls away again.

--For my son.

He looks at the head scratcher.

--Coward.

He shoots the head scratcher and I throw myself up the stairs and swing the axe in a high
arc and I crash into the stairs and the blade rakes his leg and hooks in the meat of his
thigh and I heave and the leg folds under him and he's falling backward, two rounds
punching through the ceiling, and I pull the axe from his leg and put it in his stomach
and pull him down the stairs toward me and the gun comes at my face and the barrel smashes
my cheekbone and it goes off and the muzzle flash sears my eye and the bullet splinters
the banister and I pull the axe free and put it in his chest and pull him closer and I'm
on top of him now and his face is in front of me and I know what I love and what I'll
sacrifice for it and I don't care when he fires again and the bullet tears my neck open
and I pull the axe free and I bring it down and I bring it down and I bring it down.

--Moishe.

His wife stands at the top of the stairs.

Covered in her husband's blood, I pick up his gun and shoot her dead.

I pull off the Rebbe's shawl and wrap it around my neck. The wound is growing hot as the
Vyrus clots the blood. My left eye is blind and blistered. I sit on the stair and smoke,
my head listing to the side where the bullet ripped a hole in the thick muscle that
connects it to my body.

When the cigarette is finished I go to work, dividing the Rebbe together with his bones
into twelve pieces.

I don't bother to send the pieces into any place. I'm pretty sure his people will get the
fucking message.

--Where is that fucker?

Lydia takes the long knife from me and cuts the bindings from her feet and sits up on the
cot in her basement cell.

--Where's the fucker that thought he was gonna turn me into a rape slave?

I pick some dead skin from my blind eye.

--I got him.

She stands, totters, puts out a hand to brace herself and grabs my shoulder.

--I want to see.

I flick the skin from my fingers.

--No, you don't.

She looks me over, standing crooked on my one good leg, dressed in one of Axler's
too-tight black suits and my sticky leather jacket, the rest of my clothes up in the
house, soaked in half the blood of Brooklyn.

She grits her teeth.

--He deserved it.

I cough up some blood. I don't know whose.

--No doubt.

She looks at the hand on my shoulder, pulls it away.

--You OK?

--No.

She nods.

--OK. Let's get going.

I push off the wall and we both limp out the door and she stops and looks at the other
cell across the basement.

She steps that way.

I don't.

--Lydia, I need to get out of here.

She looks me over.

--You'll hold up a little longer.

She walks, holding her belly.

--Fucking arrows. Who uses arrows, Joe? Savages, that's who. I mean, no disrespect to any
native peoples intended, but arrows are for savages. These people are savages. They have
the same superstitions as savages. And they treat women like savages. And I'm not leaving
these women here to be baby incubators for savages.

--Open that door and untie them and they're just gonna try and kill you.

I come up behind her.

--You killed their father, Lydia.

She looks at the lock.

--All the more reason that I won't leave them here, Joe. If that means we carry them out of
here hog-tied, then that's what we'll do.

She looks at me.

--Do you have anything to get the lock off?

I hand her the axe.

--Try this.

She brings it down on the lock and it tears loose and she pushes the door open and light
hits Vendetta and Harm, hanging from the water pipe that runs across the ceiling, nooses
tied from their head-scarves knotted around their swollen necks.

Lydia stares at them.

I make for the stairs, glad that something was easy for a change.

--I don't know how they did it.

I steer Axler's mom's Caddy up onto the bridge.

She rubs her forehead.

--They must have hung there forever.

I push the dash lighter in and put a cigarette in my mouth.

--They were tough little tarts. And they knew what they wanted. Want it bad enough and
you'll do anything.

She watches me take the lighter from the dash and use it.

--Fuck you, Joe.

I push the lighter back in its socket and drive.

--Yeah, fuck me.

Over on the horizon, something a little like dawn shows upriver.

I pull to the curb, back on Society turf.

--Where's this?

--I got things to do. You can keep the car.

Lydia looks out the window.

--No. Absolutely not.

I open my door.

She grabs my arm.

--I thought we talked about this. I thought I was clear about where I stand with this kind
of thing.

I pull loose and step out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition.

She comes around from her side and stands in front of me.

--This is not OK. You are not thinking straight. And it's not even remotely the time to
have a debate on the subject. We have to go to Terry and tell him what happened.
Regardless of who was to blame, what happened out there was a fiasco and there will be
consequences, and we have to begin to prepare for them right now.

I jam the Rebbe's Defender into her stomach.

--Lydia, get out of my fucking way.

She looks down at the gun.

--Don't be ridiculous, Joe.

I shoot her.

She goes down on the sidewalk and I scoop her up and stumble into the emergency entrance
screaming and we're mobbed and they pull her from me and I cling to her and someone tells
someone to get rid of me and I let them drag me to a little room down the hall past the
security desk and a guy tells me I have to be calm and I punch him and he goes down and I
limp out of the little room and to the elevators and go up and the night nurse is behind
the desk with her wrist in a brace and she looks at me and I look at her and she looks
back down at her computer and I walk into the room and there's my girl.

She comes out of the drugs a little when I'm detaching all the wires and hoses, and looks
at me and touches my face.

I put a finger over the end of her trache tube and she smiles and her voice scratches its
way out of her throat.

--Hello, handsome.

--Hello.

--You don't look good.

--Yeah.

--You should go to a hospital.

--I should.

I pull the blankets and sheets away and she winces as I pull out her catheter and air
whistles from the trache.

I help her to sit up.

--Sorry.

She covers the end of the tube.

--I'm gonna make a mess now.

--That's OK.

I go to the closet and find her big leather jacket and tuck her into it.

--We going somewhere?

--Yeah.

She points at the bed table.

--My present, my present. I want to wear it.

I pick up the candy necklace and rip the package open with my teeth and stretch it and put
it over her head and around her skinny neck.