Saints Of New York (2 page)

 
Three Vicodin, half a bottle of Pepto-Bismol,
early on a bitterly cold morning. Frank Parrish stands in the narrow bathroom
doorway of a derelict apartment, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his
earpiece switched off, and inside his shoes he has no socks. He cannot recall
where his socks are. He knows they are covered in someone else's puke.

There is a lot
of blood in the bath tub ahead of him, and amidst the blood are two people.
Thomas Franklin Scott, sitting there, legs outstretched, out of his mind on
something harsh, and his crazy bitch of a girlfriend, name of Heather, leaning
against him, her back to his chest. Parrish was told her surname, but he can't
now recall it. There's a wide gash in her thigh, cut with a straight razor. Her
blood has been flicked around the place like this is some kind of performance
art thing, and now Tommy Scott has gotten it into his head that they are going
to end it all here and now. Is everybody in? he asks. The ceremony is about to begin.
Acidheads and fuck-ups. just what's needed at eight o'clock on a Monday
morning.

Tommy, Frank
Parrish says. Tommy boy. For fuck's sake. This is bullshit.

Is it? Tommy
says. Bullshit you say? He laughs coarsely. B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

I can spell,
Tommy.

It's all a scam,
Frank.

Tommy laughs
again, forced and unnatural. He's scared, he's hotwired.

I know it's a
scam, Tommy, but you're young. How old
are
you, for Christ's sake?

Twenty-four last
count. He laughs again, and then he starts to gag like there's something stuck
in his windpipe.

Twenty-four?
Jesus, man, that's young as anything, you got time, Tommy. Look at me.
Forty-something years old and I'm in a fucked-up state most of the time. You
don't want to wind up like me—

I already did,
Frank. I already wound up no good. There ain't nothing happening here for
people like us. Right, Heather, sweetheart?

But Heather is
bleeding out. Her eyes are half-closed and her head is lolling back and forth
like a string puppet.
Nuuuggghhh,
she slurs, and Frank Parrish knows that she has maybe an hour, probably less.
She looks terrible. Pale, real fucked up, thin and weak, her body ravaged by whatever
the hell she's been chucking into it. Skag. H. Hardball. Sugarblock. All of it
cut with baby laxative, Drano, talcum powder. She isn't gonna last long. No
fight in her. Not anymore.

Tommy! For
Christ's sake! How long we known each other?

You put me in
juvy.

Frank smiles.
Hell, you're right, man. I forgot about that. Shee-it, that's gotta count for
something hasn't it? I put you in juvy. You lost your cherry with me. Fuck it,
Tommy. Get out the fucking tub, get yourself cleaned up and we'll take your
girl down the emergency room and go get some breakfast. You had any breakfast?

Nope.

So let's go get
some. Bacon, some home fries maybe? You want some steak an' eggs? My treat.

Fuck it, Tommy
says. He has the straight razor in his hand.

Nu-nu-nu-nuuuuggghhh,
Heather slurs.

Tommy, man, come
on.

Fuck it, Tommy
says.

Frank
can hear the earpiece crackling at the end of the wire.
Don't use
negatives,
they'll be
telling him.
Don't tell him what he can't have, what he can't do.
Tell him what he
can
have and do. Positive influence. Make him feel that the world wants him. Use
first names. Eye contact. Find his level.

Fuckers. What do
they know? Come live here for a week and tell me about positive influence, tell
me how the world wants you so bad it's got a hard-on.

Tommy. Seriously
now. Heather don't look so good, man. We gotta get her down to ER. They gotta
put some stitches in her leg.

As if in
response to Parrish's words Heather turns towards the wall and the scarlet
mouth of a wound that gapes in her thigh oozes another quart of blood into the
tub. Must have hit the femoral artery.

And Tommy is
having a hard time sitting upright now. He's skidding, can't get purchase.
He's got the straight razor in his hand and it's all going to hell in a hand
basket.

He starts crying.
Like a little kid. Like he bust a window with a football and he's been grounded
and he's sorry, and there's no allowance for a month. He didn't mean to do it.
Isn't there such a thing as an accident? It was an accident for God's sake, and
now all this shit is coming down on him, hot and heavy, all this
b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t. . .

Hey there, Frank
says, his voice calm, soothing, comforting, paternal almost. Frank has kids. He
says
kids,
but they're all
grown up now. Caitlin and Robert. He's twenty-two, she's two years younger.
They made it into college, they're doing good. At least when he last heard.
Their mother is a nightmare in high heels and lip gloss. No, he shouldn't say
that. He should be more tolerant. He should be more forgiving. Ah fuck it, she's
a bitch.

So he says hey
there, Tommy, his voice gentle and certain. Hey there, son. We can make it out
the other side. It's gonna be okay, I promise.

You can't
promise squat, Tommy says, and Frank notices how the razor catches the dull
light through the window. The day is dull. A gray faceless nothing of a day.
Not a good day to die.

You can't
promise me anything, Frank. Whatever you say here means nothing. You're just
gonna say whatever they've told you to say so I don't stick her, right?

Frank wishes he had
his gun. Left it back there at the door. There were terms and conditions for
getting this far. Leave the gun behind. Undo your shirt to the waist. Take that
piece-of-shit listening thing out of your goddam ear. I don't want you having
conversations with anyone but me. You get that, Frank? You get me on this one?

I get you, Frank
had said, and he left his gun at the door, unhooked his earpiece, removed his
jacket, unbuttoned his shirt. . . and out in the hallway there are maybe eight
or ten other guys, negotiators, bullshit-artists of all descriptions, and
they're all a hell of a lot more qualified to deal with this, and all of them
are straight-up sober, whereas Frank is slugging his way through the shadow of
three days of drinking. Enough Bushmills and he's sick like a baby. He doesn't
have enough Irish blood in him to stand up against the onslaught.

But Tommy Scott
has been arrested half a dozen times by Frank Parrish. Tommy knows Frank's
name. So when there's a call about some asshole with a straight razor cutting
up his girlfriend in a
bathtub, when a
uniform gets down here and calls it in, it's Tommy who lays Get me Parrish. Get
me Frank fucking Parrish or I'll stick her in the fucking throat right fucking
now!

So
here he is. Shoes without socks. Puke stains down the front
of his pants. No
gun. No earpiece. Early Monday morning after three days of Bushmills, and he
feels like the Devil raked him a new asshole and turned his guts inside out.

Okay, so we're
done playing games now, he says. He's beginning to fray at the edges. He wants
out. He wants to go home. He wants to take a shower, find some clean socks, get
a cup of coffee and a smoke. He's had enough of Tommy Scott and his dumb cooze
of a girlfriend, and he wishes they'd get the fucking thing over with one way
or the other.

And that's what Tommy does.

Fuck it baby one
more time, he sings, and he pulls that straight razor right up against the side
of her face, and then he jerks it round like he's pulling the whipcord on a
chainsaw.

Blood - what
little of it she has left - jettisons up the wall to Tommy's left, and sprays
back against the shower curtain.

NO-O-O!
Frank hears himself holler, but there's
something so magnetic about what he's seeing, something so horrifyingly
compelling, that he's rooted to the spot, right there in his puke-spattered
brogues, and it's all he can do to lunge forward when Tommy Scott takes that
straight razor and cuts his own throat.

Takes some
fucking balls to do that, Frank will say later. Takes some stainless steel
fucking balls to cut your own throat, and cut it deep like he did.

Tommy didn't
bleed out earlier. Tommy ain't no sapling. He's gotta be five eleven, maybe one
hundred and seventy-five pounds, and when he opens up his jugular it comes
rushing out of there like a street-corner fire hydrant in the height of summer.

Frank gets a
mouthful. It's in his eyes, his hair, all over his tee-shirt. Even as he's
struggling to get a grip of the kid, even as he's trying to pull him up out of
the bathtub and lay him on the floor so he can push some fingers into the wound
and stop the blood . . . Even as he's doing this he's wondering whether Tommy
Scott is HIV Positive, or if he's got AIDS or hepatitis or something.

Two minutes,
maybe three tops, and Heather something-or-other will be as dead as it gets.

Frank Parrish manages to haul
them out of the tub. Later he won't even remember how he did it. Where the
strength came from. It's all a mess of twisted arms and legs. Blood everywhere.
More blood than he's ever seen. He's kneeling over Tommy Scott, who's now on
the bathroom rug twitching and gibbering like he's got his fingers in a socket,
and the blood won't stop coming. Frank is holding the guy's neck hard enough to
choke the poor bastard, but there's some horsepower back of this thing, and it
keeps on coming, keeps on coming, keeps on coming . . .

Heather is gone.
She's deadweight. Not a prayer.

Fuck it, Frank,
is the last thing that Tommy Scott says. The words are choked through a
throatful of blood, but Frank hears him good and clear.

He dies with a
smile on his face, like he believes whatever is waiting for him is one hell of
a lot better than whatever he's leaving behind.

Frank sits back
against the side of the tub. He has blood all over him and it's starting to
dry. The negotiator comes back to the bathroom, wastes no time telling him how
he fucked it up, how he could have saved their lives.

Saved their
lives? Frank asks him. For what, exactly?

And the
negotiator looks right back at him with that expression they all do. Heard about
you, that expression says. Heard all about you, Frank Parrish.

And Frank says Fuck you.

Once upon a time
- he can't remember when - someone asked Frank Parrish why he chose the job.

Frank remembers
how he smiled. How he said, You ever get the feeling that maybe the job chose
me?

He pulls himself
to his feet and goes in search of a smoke.

Frank Parrish
makes a call from the corner of Nevins Street near Wyckoff Gardens.

'You in?' he
asks.

Sure,
sweetheart, I'm home.

'I
'm coming over.
Need a bath, a change of clothes.'

Where are you?

'On
Nevins
,
maybe half a dozen blocks or so.'

I'll see you
soon.

He pockets his
cell, heads for the Bergen Street subway station and Flatbush Avenue.