Rough Justice

  I drank and looked into the mirror again. What would Lansing say if she saw me here? It hurt my ears even to wonder. But I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. There were no more leads to check out, no angles to figure. Thad’s wife had loved him, his fellow workers had. He hadn’t needed money or been in a jam. No motive for theft, none for murder. Maybe he’d taken drugs for a while. Maybe his wife hadn’t liked his employer. Maybe his father was an overbearing drunk. But all that was nothing, just a life. There had to be some link between his life and mine or else …

  A man is dead. You killed him. Someone …

  Oh, shut up, I thought.

  I lifted the Scotch to my lips. I gazed into the mirror. Past my own reflection out at the gray avenue, the gray rain. Somewhere out there, Watts was working. Working hard, it sounded like. He’d already talked to Celia Cooper and Kathy Reich. Probably had a strong line on other friends, other angles. I smiled. He was probably doing more police work now than he had during all the rest of his career put together. Who could blame him? He had a real shot at me here. The D.A.’s office had let me go because the evidence supported my story. But if Watts could construct another story around the same evidence—or if he could construct new evidence—there’d be nothing to stop an indictment. That could mean jail right off, Rikers Island. Only the rich get bail for murder two, and if the paper suspended me, abandoned me, it could be a long mean time before I saw the light of day again. Months maybe. Maybe more than a year, maybe even …

  When I set my drink on the bar this time, the sound of it made the kids at the tables turn. The Scotch washed over the glass’s rim, spilled onto my hand, ran down. I wiped my dry lips with my palm. Stuffed my cigarette between them and drew on it hard, trying to steady myself.

  “Another round?” the barkeep said.

  “Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “Yeah.”

  What difference does it make, Lancer? I thought. There’s nowhere else to go.

  The barkeep laid a fresh shot in front of me. I lifted it eagerly. I stared across it into the mirror.

  And the man in the battered hat stared back.

  He was standing on the far side of the avenue. Standing in the thin rain, staring at the bar, at me. It was the same guy I’d seen back at Cooper House. The one who’d shot that angry look at Mark Herd. And it was the same guy—in the jolt of seeing him I remembered—it was the same guy who’d been asleep on the subway I’d taken downtown.

  I lowered my drink again. He was following me.

  I spun around on my chair. The moment I did, he shoved his hands in his pockets, bent his head, and started walking away.

  I slapped some money on the bar. I grabbed my overcoat. I went out after him.

  He was gone by the time I came out onto the sidewalk. I looked for him up and down the avenue. Bodegas, drugstores, newsstands. The zigzag of fire escapes on the face of brownstones. The dark of the rain. I clenched my teeth, my fists.

  And there he was. A block away, moving fast. His head was still bent down under his hat, his hands were still shoved in the pockets of his worn suede coat. He glanced back at me once, then turned the corner into Ninth.

  I stepped into the gutter, tried to cross Second. A sudden rush of cars slashed down on me along the wet street. I backed up onto the sidewalk, ran up toward the corner. I was breathless now, my lungs stinging.

  Now, the traffic broke up a little. I tried again to dodge through. A cab hissed at me, its horn screamed. I saw its fender bear down, the rain spitting out from both front tires.

  Then the cab was behind me and I was jumping up onto the far curb. I couldn’t run anymore. It felt like dragging a truckload of cigarettes by a rope. I jogged the rest of the way up to Ninth and made the turn.

  He was gone again. Nowhere in sight this time. I stood on the corner, scanning the street, the cool rain wetting my face, plastering my hair to me. I felt the hope draining away.

  Come on, I thought. Come on.

  But there was nothing. On one side of the street, to my left, a wall of old brownstones faded from me, their stoops receding side by side into the mist. To my right, there was some kind of church, with an asphalt yard on one side of it and a burned-out brownstone on the other. The man in the battered hat could have gone in anywhere.

  But my guess was the abandoned building. I headed along the sidewalk toward it.

  In the rain, against the darkening gray, the brown-stone loomed blackly. A great skull, it looked like, the broken windows staring like empty eyes. The stoop was half-shattered. The door at the top of it opened into darkness. I started climbing the steps and met the sour smell of urine, the thick smell of rot, drifting down to me.

  I stepped inside carefully. I was in the ruins of a foyer. A snake’s nest of tangled wiring twisted out of the busted ceiling. The chipped walls were covered with unreadable graffiti. On the floor, in the rubble where the floor had been stripped away, there lay a kind of garden of glass vials. Some green, some red, some clear, most blackened somewhere by smoke. Large, dark roaches moved in and out of them. One vial tinkled as a water bug the size of my palm bumped into it.

  A stairway of rich, heavy wood led up from me into nothing, into shadow. I stepped to it, vials rolling away from my feet, others crunching underneath them. I stepped onto the first rise. The whole structure wobbled. I stood still.

  I peered up, into the dark. The stairway ended in the empty air. The top steps had fallen down. The last stair reached for the landing across a broad distance. I stepped back onto the floor.

  There was a shuffling noise. I spun to it quickly. A rat was snouting the rubble at the side of the stairway. I gave a soft gag when I saw it. It was about the size of a football. When I turned to it, it paused. Looked back at me with faint interest. Its gelatinous belly shivered as it breathed. Its long tail lashed back and forth behind it.

  It was standing guard before another doorway. The door into what had once been the ground apartment. Now it was just an opening into an empty room. I could see the space beyond. The vials there winked and sparked out of the white debris, catching the dull light from broken windows. I caught the whiff of decay again, stronger now. Slowly, I moved toward it.

  The rat wheeled and faced me, crouched as I came.

  I stopped. I stomped my foot on the floor, crushing a vial. The rat stared at me with red eyes.

  “Go on,” I said softly. “You’re disgusting. Get out of here.”

  “Well, if you feel like that,” he seemed to say. He turned away from me, started snuffing the base of the stairway again. Then, pressing close to it, he started moving toward the foyer. I pressed against the opposite wall, moved in the opposite direction, toward the apartment door. We passed each other, with mutual respect and consideration.

  I went to the doorway. My hand on the jamb, I stepped through, into the room.

  At first, in the pale light, I thought the place was empty. The air was undisturbed and thick with dust. Glass vials and glass from the broken windows gave off a lifeless glitter from the floor. Here and there, among the shards, I could make out the shapes of rats wobbling and sniffing at the bases of the walls. On the walls’ surfaces, black spots crawled calmly, more roaches, more water bugs. Other than that, nothing seemed to stir. It was a long moment before I saw the people.

  They were sitting right there in the open. Against the walls, most of them. Some squatting further out toward the center of the room. Their faces were dark, but in the gray light they almost seemed to fade into the chipping walls, the rubble-covered floor. They were so still. Only now and then did one of them shift. And then there would be a little peak of pale fire from the hand. The quick hiss of in-taken breath. Eyes closing. And the long exhalation.

  I let the jamb go, came into the room a few more steps. I scanned the faces, looking for the man in the slouch hat.

  There was a sudden movement from the window. I turned. A woman climbed in easily from the back lot outside. Another man got up and moved to the window to leave. I stood w
atching them.

  And a blow from behind drove me to my knees.

  14

  Glass vials shattered under my knees as I dropped to the floor. I let out a scream of pain and was hit again. I went all the way down, rolling to the side. My arms thrashed wildly to fend off another blow.

  But it didn’t come. Instead, I rolled over, came up on one leg. Saw the man in the battered hat running out of the room.

  “Hey,” I heard someone say quietly. “Shit.”

  I got up, tried to sprint after him. My knee buckled beneath me. I tumbled forward, grabbed hold of the jamb.

  The man in the battered hat was racing across the foyer. Making for the rectangle of light that led to the street. He’d have gotten away easily if he’d made it out.

  But he didn’t. He slipped on a vial, tumbled to one side. Before he went down, he caught hold of a rotting banister newel. He began to drag himself upright.

  I leapt at him. Pushing off the jamb, I practically fell forward, reaching out to grab him. My hands slid down the back of his jacket. I crashed to the floor. He started running. But I got him, caught hold of his ankle.

  The man pitched forward with a shout, his hat rolling off him. He slapped facedown onto the floor. I heard the glass crunch under him.

  He twisted, kicked. His boot crashed into my collarbone. I lost my grip on him, rolled away.

  I pushed to my feet. My right knee stung, burned. I fell back against the wall. I leaned there, panting. I watched the black man. He was reaching up, grabbing at the side of the stairs. I wanted to stop him. I couldn’t. I was finished. A curse rasped out of me.

  The black man got to his feet, but he didn’t run. He leaned against the stair, breathing hard, pawing his face. He was hurt. The glass had cut him. Right where his scar had been, there was freshly torn skin, dark blood running. He wiped at it, looked at his hand. There were glass shards on the palm.

  “Shhhhit,” he said.

  He looked up at me angrily, the wide fighter’s nose flaring. I was bent over now, my hands on my knees, my eyes turned up to watch him as I tried to catch my breath.

  With his other hand, he took a switchblade out of his pocket. Still staring at me, he snapped it open.

  I waved my hand back and forth at him.

  “Don’t. Don’t. I can’t … I’m too … Don’t.”

  He glanced at the blood and glass on his palm again. “Shit,” he said. “You really hurt me. Fuck.” He shook his head, disgusted. With a quick, angry motion, he wiped his hand on his filthy green pants. He folded up the knife and put it away. Leaning back against the stairs, he coughed a few times. He shook his head. “Shit,” he said for the third time. “Shoulda thought about that mirror behind the bar.”

  “Who … who are you?”

  “Shit, look at you. You way out of shape. Look at you breathe, Jack.”

  I was trying to straighten up. My breath was whistling in my throat.

  “You must smoke cigarettes.”

  I managed to nod.

  “Good. Gimme one.”

  I tried to laugh, but coughed instead. Hacking hard, I reached into my pocket, brought out my pack, offered it.

  The black man laughed as I handed him the matches. “Look at you! Shit. You’d die at hoops. You’d be dead.”

  He handed the pack back. I took a smoke for myself, wheezing. I shook my head. “I’d turn off the TV before that happened.”

  He laughed again. “You gonna smoke that? Shit. I thought I was bad.”

  I spit some phlegm on the floor and lit up.

  “Shit,” he said.

  It was a while before I could stop coughing. When I did, I said, “So? Who are you?”

  He leaned back against the stairs, smoking, his hand over his mouth, his thumb nudging the cut on his cheek. He stretched his feet out and vials tinkled as he kicked them away. He was a younger man than I’d thought at first. When he switched off the evil glare, he didn’t look more than thirty.

  “I’m called Sam Scar,” he said.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “I wanna find out whose side you on.”

  “Mine. Ask me a tough one.”

  “I gotta be sure. ’Cause I tried talking to that cop. He told me to shut up. Said I’d get in trouble.”

  “Watts?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. Watts. Told me to keep my black mouth to myself. Grabbed my arm. Shit. I’m on probation, man. I don’t need no trouble with no cops.”

  “Well, then we’re all right,” I said. “Whatever side Watts is on, I’m on the other.”

  “Yeah, I was beginning to catch on to that.”

  I heard sounds from the nearby room. A loud exhalation. A vial dropping.

  I coughed again. Straightened some more, braced against the wall. “Could we get out of here?”

  But the black man chuckled. He didn’t move. “Hell, no, man. I like it here. It’s safe. The cops don’t come in here, otherwise they might have to arrest somebody. Anyway, there’s nothing dangerous about it. Just a way station case you can’t make it to Third Street. Like what Celia call a drop-in center. Just drop in the window.” He laughed.

  “This your kind of place?”

  “Me? Shit. Not me. Not anymore. Not this week anyway. Celia Cooper done showed me the way, brother.”

  “You work at Cooper House.”

  “That’s right. Least I did.”

  “Herd replaced you?”

  “Who said that?” His glance had gone dark again.

  “I saw you looking at him when Miss Cooper asked him to do a job. Looking at him kind of the way you’re looking at me now. She said the jobs were coveted …” I shrugged.

  The black man relaxed. He flashed a broad grin, stuck the cigarette in it. He laughed. “That’s smart. Shit. I like that. Wo, watch out.”

  He pointed to the wall I was leaning on and I turned to see a roach feeling for my shoulder. I came away from it.

  He said: “So you so smart, how come you iced Thad Reich?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  His smile vanished. He stepped toward me. Glass ground under his feet. He cocked his eyebrow at me, pointed at my chest. “Well, Mark Herd ain’t replaced me yet, but something’s going on, I know that. It’s been strange at Cooper House ever since Mikki Snow left.”

  “Mikki Snow.”

  “She’s the bookkeeper. Used to be. One of us. From North Carolina, I think, I don’t remember. Came here to go to school, got homeless. Celia took her in, she got to be the bookkeeper ’cause she’s so smart.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know. A year. She was there when I came.”

  “Now she’s gone.”

  “Four or five days ago. Didn’t even say a word. Celia says she just took off on her. She was kind of put out about it, too. Not like Mikki Snow to do that, she said. It wasn’t, either.”

  He dropped his cigarette. It glowed among the glass, then went out. He bent over and scooped his hat off the floor. He held it in one hand, swiped the dust off it with the other.

  “What’s that got to do with me?” I asked him.

  He stopped swiping. Glanced at me coolly. “Has to do with me, Jack. See, before Mikki left, I was, like, what you call the handyman around Cooper House. I fix things. The stove, the boiler. Compactor. I did all that shit. I’m good at it. Now, I’m heading downstairs to take a look at the boiler and I hear Celia say, ‘Never mind that, Sam. Mark take care of that.’ Shit. Mark know about as much about a boiler as he does about pussy. Which is none. He used to work in the kitchen with the cook.” He put his hat on his head again, flicked a finger over the drying blood on his cheek. “Now, she still let me do the job on the ovens I was doing, but that’s not gonna take more than another day or so no matter how it stretches. When that done … I don’t know. I don’t want to lose this job, Jack. I lose this job, I’m back on the street again. Which is exactly where I don’t want to be at. See?”

  “No.” I d
ropped the last of my cigarette. A rat—that same huge rat—turned to eye it curiously from the corner near the front door. “I still don’t see what this has to do with Thad Reich.”

  He lifted a hand. “Maybe nothing. All I’m saying: it’s a lot of shit at once, that’s all. See, Celia Cooper—don’t get me wrong—she a nice lady, but … she’s white. She’s white and rich, see? Now, it’s not that she’s racial or anything like that. Okay? But she just be … trusting her own kind a little bit more when it comes to it. You follow what I say here?”

  “Yeah, I follow.”

  “Her and Thad and Mark, they be like …” He held up three fingers close together. “Thick, you know? The others, me and Mikki, Laurie, all the others, you know—don’t get me wrong, we’re treated fine, we just … the folks, see? The other folks. Trouble comes, they close ranks together, we have to wait, find out what’s going down. See? Now, all of a sudden, Mikki’s gone, Mark’s doing my job, and Thad Reich—who got about as much fight in him as, like, a flower—he turns up dead in your apartment and when I tell this to the cop he tells me to shut my black mouth or I get in shit. Now, I’m gonna be out on my ass in a minute, so I got to tell someone. And you looking at doing time, Jack, so you gotta listen to someone. I just wanna make sure this doesn’t get back to Watts or Celia before I come ahead and tell you. See?”

  The rat by the door was snuffing at the wall again, waddling in my direction. The smell of the place—the piss, the death—it seemed to be crowding in around me, clogging my nostrils and lungs. The little flicks of the torches from within, the desperate sucking of air, the ecstatic release of breath—it haunted the dark like phantoms, floating and curling through the shadows at the top of the stairs.

  For all that, though, I began to feel a slight shifting inside me, a weight rolling over. A few minutes ago, I’d been up against a dead end. Now I had something. Not much, but a direction, a way to go. I offered Sam Scar another cigarette. He took it gratefully. For a few seconds, we smoked together, without speaking.