Short Ride to Nowhere (10 page)

Whores get their money first.
 
He paid for head and she climbed around to the passenger side.
 
She opened the door and asked if he was a cop.
 
He said no and she slid in beside him and pointed down the alley.
 
He drove off and she worked her hand into his groin and began to unzip his fly.
 

He stopped short and pulled to the curb.
 
She had his fly down now and was leaning forward.

There was no reason to jump the gun.
 
He’d paid for her.
 
He was lonely.
 
He hadn’t had sex in a year and a half.
 
He wanted her lips on him.
 
But the question was there and wouldn’t let him relax.
 
She saw he was tight and anxious and said, “It’s okay, honey, you lay back.”

”Are you Trina Beck?” he asked.

It was the worst thing he could’ve done.
 
Why the fuck did he ask?
 
He knew it was her.
 
Her eyes widened in alarm.
 
There were a lot of people watching them, all the men staring through their windshields ready to pull up, spot by spot, until it was their turn.
 
The dude with the cufflinks was around somewhere nearby in his SUV.
 

She had her cell phone in her hand already.
 
All she had to do was hit a speed dial button and the dude would come wheeling up.
 
With a knife?
 
A similar knife to the one he’d used to kill a child and nearly murder Hale?
 

“Who the fuck are you?” Trina Beck said.

“Look, I’m not–” he managed to get out before she got the phone to her ear and screamed, “Frank, in the alley!”

Terrific.
 

Jenks zipped himself up and said, “I’m not here to hassle you, I just want–”

But she already had the door open and was leaping from his car.
 
He didn’t follow.
 
He got out of his car and leaned against the driver’s door while Trina Beck did a little shuffle and backed off twenty feet.
 
He could hear the SUV’s growling engine come hurtling towards them.
 
Jenks did nothing.
 
The SUV’s brakes screeched and the dude hopped out looking for a fight.
 
Everyone always looking for a fight.
 
Jenks checked his hands expecting a blade to be there, but the dude held nothing but his phone.
 
He grabbed Trina and drew her to him and the two of them stood there staring while all the other guys in their cars continued waiting patiently behind their steering wheels, cars humming, lights burning, the night growing darker as dawn approached, the other ladies still shouting and spitting and cackling.

The dude shoved her behind him and then came rushing forward, his hand in his jacket pocket.
 
So this was how it was going to be.
 
Not like the guy was angry about his woman going down on fifty guys tonight, no.
 
He was angry because Jenks had been the only one who hadn’t had his dick in her mouth.
 
God damn.

Jenks already had his hand in his pants pocket, his fingers around the butterfly blade, snapping it open.
 
He lifted his chin and moved to the guy.
 
It threw the dude’s approach off.
 
He slowed up, tried to pull whatever he had in his jacket.

He released the blade, got his fists on the dude’s lapels, and pulled him forward.
 
It was almost an embrace.
 
The guy let out a cry.
 
He drew what he’d been reaching for.
 
It was a blackjack.
 
Jenks reached down and grabbed the guy’s wrist and tightened his hold.
 
Slowly the dude’s hand opened and the blackjack sank back into his pocket.
 
Then Jenks shoved the kid gently away.
 

Trina was there at his side.
 
Jenks didn’t know how to calm a pair like this.
 
What to do?
 
The other men in line were enjoying the show but now they were getting edgy, wondering if the police were going to show up and ruin the night.
 
The sun was about to come up.
 
They had to get home.
 
One of them beeped and waved his hands at Jenks, annoyed.
 
Jenks thought, Jesus Christ.

“You a cop?” the dude asked, touching the knot of his tie.

“No. I just want to ask Trina about a fight she had.”

“A fight?”

Katrina Beck said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“A fight you had in a homeless shelter with a man maybe five months ago.
 
Over a stale Danish.”

“You’re out of your mind, nutball,” the dude said.

“No,” she said.
 
“Wait.
 
I remember that.”

It stopped the dude, made him give a slow turn, take a step away, then back again.
 
“When the hell have you ever been in a homeless shelter?”

“Like he said, about five, six months ago.
 
I–I didn’t want to tell you.
 
It was while you were in Atlantic City that last time.”

“I won fourteen thousand that weekend!”

“Yeah, but while you were gone I...I went home to see Michael.”

You always went home again, even though you could never go home again.
 
Jenks said nothing, let these two tell him the story in their own fashion.
 
The dude halfway between angry and heartbroken, sympathetic and on the verge of being an asshole.
 
“Oh...oh babe, you know you shouldn’t...you know how you get.”

“Yes, but I wanted to see him.
 
And...”

“Right.
 
And he put the screws to you and made you feel guilty, just like he always does.
 
Just because you want a better life for yourself.
 
He’s twenty-seven years old, he should understand.”

“But he doesn’t.”

“And it got you down.
 
And when you’re down, you get high.”

Jenks interrupted the lovers’ tete a tete.
 
“So what happened?”

Trina Beck lit a cigarette, took a long drag.
 
“I bought some meth and got high and woke up on my feet on the streets without any money.
 
So I stopped into the shelter to get straight, have some coffee, and fill my belly.”

“And what about Hale?”

“Who’s Hale?”

“The guy you fought with over the Danish.”

“Oh him.
 
What of it?
 
Why are you asking?
 
What’s this all about?”
 
Her face screwed up in puzzlement again.
 
There was something about her confusion that made her look young and innocent and fresh.
 
Finally he started to get aroused.
 
What the hell would Freud have to say about that?
 
Probably nothing good.
  

“He’s dead,” Jenks said.
 
“I want to know what happened to him.”

“How the fuck should I know?”

It was a good question.

“I just wondered if you remembered anything...noteworthy about the incident.”

“Noteworthy?”

“Yes.”

“I was hungry.
 
I wanted the fucking Danish.
 
So I grabbed it.
 
He wanted it for his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“Little girl, maybe eight, nine years old.”

“He was with a little girl?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

Jenks nodded.
 
“Did he say it was his daughter?”

“Who the fuck else is going to be a homeless guy in a shelter at eight o’clock in the morning surrounded by bums and winos and meth-heads and whores?”

“What happened after the fight?”

“Stop calling it a fight.
 
It wasn’t a goddamn fight.
 
I grabbed the stupid Danish and I told him to fuck off and then I went and ate it.
 
How is that a fight?”

“You didn’t kill him, did you?”

She smiled like she couldn’t believe the question.
 
So did the dude.
 
His cufflinks flashed with the rising sun.
 

“Get the fuck out of here,” the dude said, the world growing brighter, the guys in the street having missed their chance, beginning to drive off.

Jenks got the fuck out of there.

Retreat, regroup, reevaluate.

Jenks did what he seemed to be doing a lot of since the bottom fell out.
 
He wandered for hours.
 
He drove without any idea or care about where he was going.
 
He circled Queens and then drove out along the North shore of the island and then circled back down Route 111 and picked up Southern State Parkway and headed back into Brooklyn.
 
He crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and threaded his way up Manhattan and wound up parking again in the same garage right off Times Square.
 
He stepped out onto the street with no idea of where to go next.
 

He’d made a bad mistake.
 
He’d gone off track somewhere, following these empty, vague leads.
 
The question was where.
 

He turned the corner and there was the Hyena, alive and smiling like he happiest insane person on the planet.
 
Holding up three knockoff purses in each hand as he swung about his table and called to all the ladies.

It wouldn’t have shocked Jenks any more to have seen Hale standing there with his warped and stained books.

Jenks rushed over, moved up on the Hyena as the man spun one more time and looked at Jenks like he might be a customer.
 
Ferdie didn’t recognize him at all.
 
“Prada bag?
 
Gucci?
 
What you need for you wife?
 
Your daughter?
 
Your sexy little girlfriend, she at home waiting for you right now?
 
Think how happy she be when you give her a nice new Prada bag, man like you get lucky with a lot of love.”

Jenks said, “There was a teenager here the other day.”

“Huh?
 
What’s this?”

“A kid.
 
Bobby.”

“He’s my partner.”

“He said you were dead.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

“The kid.
 
I asked him where you were and he said you were dead.
 
That you’d been stabbed.”

“Why should he tell you anything?
 
Who the fuck are you?”

Another good question.
 
Everybody had good questions except Jenks.
 
Who the fuck was he.
 
Why should anyone tell him anything?
 
He ran through the scene again, the way he’d come up on the teen, prodded him, eventually brawling with him.
 
Why the fuck would Bobby tell him anything.
 
Jenks had been too adamant, too eager.
 
He’d forced the conversation to go in the direction his imagination was pushing it.