Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (26 page)

           
Rush sat there, unmoved and unmoving.
‘There’s gotta be a link,” he said thoughtfully, as though to himself. “He’s
usin you. He’s usin her. But what’s he up to? If you don’t know about each
other...”

           
“Rush? Who? Nobody usin me, Rush. I
just with
you
, man.”

           
Rush paid no attention. He was deep
in his own thoughts. “What if,” he said, and then just sat there, brooding,
rapping those fingertips on the table. He glanced at Pami as though he didn’t
recognize her, didn’t know what she was doing there, wasn’t even thinking about
her. Then he roused himself, sat up straighter, took a deep breath, and frowned
hard at her, as though he’d just had a thought and didn’t like it. “What if,”
he said, “you aren’t anythin at all? What if he finessed me with you, put me
all over you while he’s getting it together with
other people
?”

           
“Rush? I don’t know what you’re
talkin about.”

           
“And that’s good for you, too,” he
told her. “It means you can go on livin.”

           
“Rush?”

           
“A while, anyway. How’s the sores?”

           
“About the same,” she said,
truculent, and looked down at the table. She didn’t like it that he even
mentioned those sores; she tried not to think about them herself.

           
The sores had started in the last
few weeks, around her waist and in back under her shoulder blades; small but
wet. She put drugstore greases on them, to keep them from showing through her
clothes, but otherwise ignored them, or tried to. Hooking on
Eleventh Avenue
, she never had to take any clothes off
anyway, so the johns didn’t know.

           
“All right, baby,” Rush said,
sounding weary and, for him, almost kindly “Go on to bed.”

           
“Okay, Rush,” she said, hiding her
relief, keeping a cool surface. She got to her feet and went into the other
room, and pulled off her clothing, being very careful where the material stuck
to the sores.

           
Off this room was a small bathroom
without fixtures. The cold water still ran, and they had a basin and a Scotch
botde to catch it in. The hole where the toilet had been removed smelled so bad
they kept an old piece of Sheetrock over it, but they still used it, and Pami
did now, holding her breath when she moved the Sheetrock out of the way,
squatting over the hole, wiping herself with paper napkins from the Kentucky
Fried Chicken, sliding the Sheetrock back into place when she was finished, and
expelling the long-held breath with a
whoosh.
But the smell stayed in the air for ten or fifteen minutes; nothing to be done.

           
Pami was filling the Scotch bottle
with water and pouring it into the basin when Rush came into the room, made a
disgusted face, and said, “Shit. I got to steal some Clorox, pour it down in
there.”

           
“That’s a good idea, Rush.”

           
The basin full, Pami washed her face
first, then her underarms, then squatted over it. Rush frowned at her sores.
“You ain’t gonna be workin much longer, girl,” he said.

           
“I got time,” Pami told him, trying
not to know how scared she was. “I got plenty of time, Rush.”

           
He ignored that. “I’m goin out for a
while. Don’t leave that light on, I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

           
“Where you going, Rush?”

           
He gave her a look, as though to say
she was lucky she didn’t get a broken arm for a question like that, and left.

           
Pami heard the apartment door
squeak. It never closed one hundred percent, but why would anybody break in
here? Then a minute later she heard the door squeak again, so maybe Rush
changed his mind.

           
She always used to sleep naked, but
because of the sores, she now wore an outsize T-shirt, which she had to wash in
the basin every morning. It was still slightly damp now when she put it on, but
it would warm quickly against her body. She went out to the other room to turn
off the light and there was a man there, standing beside the table.

           
Cop. It stood out all over him. Big
and beefy and soreheaded, in a gray topcoat and dark suit and tie. He looked at
her with disgust and said, “You want to go back to
Africa
with that T-shirt on?”

           
She stared at him in horror. Go
back? It had never occurred to her—it had all been so
easy,
getting here, staying here. That a twenty-shilling whore in
Nairobi did about as well as a twenty- five-dollar whore in New York only meant
she wasn’t doing
worse
, and in some
ways life here was much easier. If she was arrested now, deported now, they’d
be sure to find the sores, examine her, find out the truth. Lock her away
somewhere, leave her to die. Trembling, afraid to speak because she would sound
like a foreigner—I’m American! Black skin American! —she touched her shaking
hands to the T-shirt, feeling her tight scared belly.

           
His look of disgust increased. “Go
get dressed,” he said. “And tell Rush to come out here.”

           
He knew everything, this cop. But
now she had to speak. Form the words with great care, she told herself, form
the words the way they do in this neighborhood. “Sir, he isn’t here.”

           
“Oh, don’t waste my time,” he said.
“He can’t get out the back way, there’s no place for him to go. Just send him
out and get dressed.”

           
“Sir—” Would an American even say
“sir”? Oh, I’m destroyed, she thought, despair cold against her throat. “Sir,
it’s true. He isn’t here.”

           
The cop frowned at her, frowned at
the doorway, lifted his head as though he was smelling for Rush. Like a dog. He
seemed a litde confused. He gestured for Pami to precede him, and they both
went through the doorway into the dark second room, where there was just enough
light-spill from the room they’d left behind to let Pami find her way around
the cartons and mattress. But Pami knew the place.

           
The cop pointed. “What’s that?”

           
“Kerosene lamp, sir”

           
“Light it.”

           
Pami’s fingers were awkward with
fear. She struggled with the lamp, squatting beside it, small face furrowed all
over with concentration. The light flared up at last, and she turned down the
wick and lowered the glass chimney. The messy room came to amber life.

           
“Pick it up,” the cop said, and Pami
did, the shadows all moving together, like an orchestra. Again the cop pointed.
‘That the john?”

           
“Yes, sir.”

           
There was no door to the bathroom,
of course. The cop gestured for Pami to bring the lamp over and carry it into
the little ruined room. He followed, standing in the doorway, wrinkling his
nose. “How do you live like this?”

           
“I don’t know, sir.”

           
“Come back outside.”

           
Still carrying the kerosene lamp,
Pami followed the cop to the outer room, where he sat at the table—in her
chair, not Rush’s—and sprawled there, legs wide, thumbs hooked in belt.
“Where’d
Brother
Rush go?”

           
“I truly don’t know, sir.” Pami had
given up trying to sound like an American; whatever was going to happen would
happen.

           
“You stupid little bitch,” the cop
said, but without any heat, just weariness. “Don’t you know I can help you, if
I want?”

           
Pami’s twisted jaw worked. He was
offering her salvation— short-term salvation, it’s true, but that’s all she
could hope for—he was showing her an open doorway, and she couldn’t step
through it. “I don’t know!” she wailed. “I don’t know where Rush is! I gotta go
back to
Africa
because
that
Rush don’t tell me—nobody ever told me nothing my whole life! Why anybody like
you be so stupid come ask
me
questions? I don’t know
nothing
!”

           
The cop was unimpressed. With a
jaundiced look, he said, “I bet you know what’s gonna happen if you raise your
voice to me again.”

           
She blinked. The glass chimney
rattled as she held the lamp. She kept quiet.

           
The cop nodded. “Put the lamp down
on this table,” he said. “Before you catch yourself on fire.”

           
“Yes, sir.” Putting the lamp down,
growing calmer because of the calm in his voice, she began to think at last,
and said, “Maybe... maybe he went to see that woman.”

           
The cop raised an eyebrow. “Woman?
You mean he got himself another whore?”

           
“No, sir. I don’t know, sir. Not a
name like that, sir.”

           
“Not a
name
like that?” The cop glared at her, angry because she was
confusing him. “What do you mean, not a name like that? What name?”

           
Panic leaped up in her again. She
couldn’t remember the name! Shaking both closed fists in front of herself, she
tried desperately to think. “Oh! It’s—it’s—oh, please, oh, wait, it’s—Susan!”

           
The cop’s thumbs leaped out of his
belt. He sat forward, meaty palms slapping on the table. “Susan? Susan what?”

           
“I don’t know! He just said it, and
then he went, and I don’t know these names here!”

           
“All right, all right,” the cop
said, with less agitation, and raised a hand to make her stop. He stared at her
very intendy. “The last name. Was it Carrigan?”

           
That was it! “Yes, sir!” she cried,
in great relief. “You know it, then! You know everything!”

           
“Do I?” The cop sat back. One hand
flopped down limply into his lap, the other lifted to rub his chin. He was
thinking it over. “Okay, Pami,” he said at last. “Go in and get dressed.”

        
   
She stared at him. “Why?”

           
“Because I’m taking you downtown,
what else you think?”

           
“I helped you!”

           
“Not a lot, Pami.” He shrugged.
“Don’t make it tough on yourself. Come on, get dressed.”

           
She knew what she was going to do
before she knew she was going to do it. She pointed at the lamp. “Can I take
that in with me?”

           
“Sure.”

           
He was sprawled again, across the
table from her. She stepped forward, picked up the kerosene lamp, flung it in
his face. His hands jolted up, but too late. Glass shattered, liquid fire
splashed across the front of him, and Pami ran to the door and out.

           
Leaping down the stairs, in her
mind’s eye she saw him sitting there, not even moving, the kerosene burning all
over his face and chest. Almost as though he knew she was going to do it. Knew
it when she did. Knew it and didn’t know it when she knew it and didn’t know
it.

           
Barefoot, dressed in the T-shirt,
without her clothes and her shoulder bag and her money and her spring knife,
Pami fled down
121st Street
, as the fire spread behind her.

           
Susan!

           
As the fire burns this body, this
table, this floor, I continue to sit here, trying to decide what this means.
I’ve been spending so much of my time near Susan, one of that creature’s fellow
demons must have found me and reported. And now he’s gone to see what he can
learn about my plans from Susan.

           
What will he do? He didn’t hurt
Pami, just stayed close to her, waiting for me to find her useful. Will he do
the same with Susan? Or will he decide it’s time to take action?

           
I must remind myself of the
situation here. Susan is nothing to do with the plan. Susan was the bait only,
to bring Grigor Basmyonov into play. If the bait is useful twice, how much
better, of course. Of course. If Susan will now draw that devil off, distract
him while I get on with my work, how much better. Of course.

           
I must remind myself of the
situation here. At the
best
of
circumstances, Susan Carrigan will survive no longer than one long inhalation
of my life; and these, for Susan, are not the best of circumstances. Her life
expectancy is now that of the planet: weeks, at most. What does it matter if
her life is even briefer than that? What does it matter, between brevities?

           
I must remind myself of the
situation here, as the fire burns through this floor and the living creatures
in this fiery shell flee for their fleeting lives and this body falls with this
chair and this table through the rotted smoldering boards through two levels of
smoky heated air and the fire department sirens are heard in the night.

           
I must remind myself of the
situation here.