He shakes his head.
—Turns out, people hate nothing like they hate a fallen folk hero. So when someone caught sight of you down here on the Bowery, they didn’t think twice before making the call. And granted.
He holds a hand flat, wiggles it side to side.
—That’s a chancy call to receive. People are so, I don’t know, eager to lay you to rest, they see a big guy with dark hair and a leather car coat and they’re placing the call. We’ve followed up on more than our share of bad numbers.
He steadies the hand.
—But someone seeing a guy fitting your description coming here, to Philip Sax’s flophouse? That needed immediate executive attention.
He gestures at the window.
—As it was, we just made it over before things got dicey with the dawn.
He sits, looking at the garbage between his feet, lips pursed.
I flick some more ash, look down myself. I can’t see the half of the room on my left. The other half of the room is pretty much filled with Hurley, leaving a scrap of space on the floor for Phil to occupy. Hurley’d barely need to move to grab me if I started something. Grab me and hoist me up so my head either flattens against the ceiling or pokes through it into the room above. Or he could just pull one of the two .45s he’s always got on him and blow a few chunks out of my brain. My other option, jumping out the window, seems similarly unwise.
The whole burn the place to the ground with everyone in it idea is picking up serious traction. I scan the floor for any tinder that looks especially flammable.
Terry unpurses his lips and looks up from the garbage.
—Anyway, the tone of things being what they are, your unpopularity with the masses being what it is, this isn’t so much a matter of trying to find the most miserable way to send you to your death. I wanted to do that I could just call a general assembly of the Society and toss you in the middle of the room and watch the madness of crowds take over. No, Joe.
He stands.
—This is simply a case of expediency.
I watch as he moves to the farthest corner possible in the tiny room.
—Phil, you may want to cover your eyes.
Phil covers up.
Terry looks at me.
—He can be smart when he needs to be.
He gives a slight, sad wave.
—Hurley.
Hurley grunts.
Terry nods.
—Kill Joe.
The bratwurst hands come out of the gunny-sack pockets of Hurley’s overcoat and go around my throat. I am levitated from the floor, trying not to thrash, knowing the torque might snap my neck.
I wheeze through the pinhole Hurley’s grasp has reduced my larynx to.
—Huuuneee.
Terry squints at me.
Phil peeks from between his fingers.
—Jeez, oh jeez, oh shit.
He covers his eyes back up.
I force the last bit of air in my lungs up past the crushing fingers.
—Uuhhhnneee.
Phil peeks again.
—Man, that’s so fucked up. Is he calling you honey? Is that normal for this kind of shit?
Terry raises a finger.
Hurley relaxes his thumbs just enough to let some more air slip down and out of my throat.
—Muhhnneey. Muhhney, Thhheery. Muhhneee.
Terry nods, Hurley squeezes, Phil re-covers his eyes.
My legs thrash, I can’t stop them, my body twists, I have my hands on Hurley’s fingers, trying to pry them loose, but I may as well be trying to bend the barrel of one of his guns. I try aiming a kick at him, and graze his thigh and he holds me at arm’s length, putting me out of range.
Terry watches me dying, tucks his toe under a mashed pizza box, flips it, watches roaches scurry for cover.
He looks up.
—Take Phil out, will you, Hurley. You can let him go.
Hurley’s hands open and I drop.
—Sure ting, Terry, whativer ya say.
He collars Phil and hauls him up.
—C’mon, ya wretched piece oh shite, it’s some fresh air yer wantin’.
Phil writhes.
—Aw, man, it’s my fucking room, man. How come I’m the one that’s gotta take a stroll? I mean, so OK, obviously you guys can’t take a walk right now, but how come I gotta? Not like I’m any friend of the daytime either.
Hurley shakes him once.
—Yer takin’ a walk cuz the alternative is ya take a dive offa da roof.
Phil pumps his legs.
—Hey, a nice refreshing stroll, a perambulation, yeah? Sounds good. Do me good.
They go out.
Terry comes and stands over me.
—Tell me exactly why I should care about the money you mentioned.
I inhale, smoke rasping over the raw inside of my throat and down into my still-parched lungs. I exhale, cough long and hard, and draw a trembling one and a two in the air with my cigarette.
—Twelve pints.
I look at Terry.
Terry watches the numbers drift.
—Yes?
I exhale again, blowing the numbers to scraps.
—Twelve pints. Contents of a human body. As close to exact as possible. What you were offering for my head.
I rub the bright red finger marks on my neck.
—Out of character for you, Terry, offering a blood reward. Out of character for the Society. Especially a number like that. Suggests someone’s gonna die for you to pay off on that bounty. Kind of contrary to your whole thing about coexisting with the uninfected community. Places a certain kind of value on me. Also sends a different kind of message to the troops than you like to. Me.
I put a finger in my own chest.
—I figured you’d offer money. Don’t want the members thinking about blood as a commodity, after all. Then I remembered.
I snap my fingers.
—Money’s a little tight for you these days, isn’t it?
Terry nods, combs his soul patch again.
—Yes, losing the Count’s income has been a blow to our liquidity.
I turn my head side to side, listen to hear if anything grinds that shouldn’t.
—Sure, hard to keep fighting the good fight without some greenbacks in your pocket.
He stuffs his hands in his pockets, shrugs.
—So, OK, Joe, you have my attention. Hurley is at bay for the moment. Here’s your big reprieve. Yes, we, sad as it is to say, we in the Society need money as much as anyone else. Would it was not so. Yes, the resources we had on hand before we lost the Count had allowed us to expand the kind of support we offer to our members, better housing, improved medical care. We were, if you can believe it, we were able to put one of our members who had been a grief counselor before she was infected, we were able to pay her a salary, keep her from having to take a night job, make her available full-time to counsel the newly infected and help them to make the adjustment. It was a real boon, putting the Count’s family’s petrodollars to good, healing work. So, OK, so we’ve gotten by on far less than we have now, but it’s a hard time to be cash strapped. So, yes, there’s something to talk about here, but it’s going to be a very brief dialogue if you don’t have something substantial to offer in the next, I don’t know, the next half a minute. And I’m sorry if that sounds unreasonable.
I nod, use some of my thirty seconds taking a drag, use a few more blowing out the smoke, and offer something substantial.
—The Horde girl.
Terry takes his hands from his pockets, looks at them.
—Yes, that’s substantial.
—It’s not so much that I don’t trust you, it’s more that I’m not sure that money, even a great deal of it, will be of more value to the Society in the long run than your death.
I shift on Phil’s mattress, moving myself from one collection of broken springs poking me in the ass to a different collection of broken springs poking me in the ass.
—No argument out o
f me, Terry, it’s a conundrum.
Terry, on the floor, his back against the dresser, shifts his legs away from the line of daylight that continues to track across the room.
—Yeah, that’s it, Joe, a conundrum. Well put. Certainly, I don’t doubt Miss Horde’s affection for you. I think the chance she took abetting your escape last year speaks volumes about her, I don’t know, feelings. And her resources are well known. I am as certain as a person has a right to be certain of anything in this life that I could send her word that you’re in our custody again, and that she’d be more than happy to open several large offshore accounts accessible by the Society’s not-for-profit corporation.
—But then you can’t kill me.
He juggles his hands.
—Well, yeah, sure we could still kill you. It might cause some problems, but let’s not split hairs. Let’s just say it’s the, forgive me this, it’s the money or your life.
I grimace.
—Jesus, Terry.
He holds up a hand.
—Pun unintended. I swear. Cheap humor when talking about a person’s life has never been my style. You know that.
I look at the collection of water stains on the ceiling. No, joking about killing has never been Terry’s style. His style has always been more about making declarations regarding the greater good, and then telling me who needed to die for it this time.
Interesting, the shoe being on the other foot, my death being the one supposed to promote the greater good. Who knew I had it in me?
I open my flip-top and look at the butt ends of my last couple smokes.
—Doesn’t matter anyway, you can’t make a deal with her nohow.
He raises his eyebrows.
—I can’t? That’s an odd point to make. Doesn’t really seem to speak in your favor.
I put a smoke in my mouth, light it.
—Bargaining a ransom. Kind of a serious business proposition. So tell me.
I light up.
—You start cutting deals with Cure, how’s that gonna sit with the rest of the Clans? I mean.
I pick a flake of tobacco from my tongue.
—The minute you enter into that kind of negotiation, it gives them legitimacy, yeah? Can’t imagine that’d go over with anyone. Least of all the Coalition. Seems unwise. Things being as unstable as you say they are.
He smiles.
—I’m anything but close-minded, Joe. Tell me what you’re suggesting.
—Let me go, I’ll make the arrangements. You’ll get your money.
He pushes out his lower lip.
—Like I say, I’m not what you’d call close-minded. Always looking to see the bigger picture in life, my whole forest-and-trees thing, but this is a tough one for me to wrap my head around, man. So, just for fun, because I like a good theoretical discussion, tell me how it is I can trust you in this scenario you’re spinning.
I grin.
—Fuck, Terry, who said shit about trust?
He extends an index finger like a saber.
—Touché.
I drop my grin.
—But you’re missing a big piece of things, man. For a guy who likes the big picture, you’re missing a big fucking piece of things.
—Please, I love nothing more than to be educated.
I point at the door.
—Terry, what the fuck am I doing here?
He cocks his head.
I point at him.
—Strange, yeah? Why, of all places, come down here? Am I that stupid? I want to die that bad?
He temples his fingers, put the tips at his lips.
—OK, yeah, I follow. Go on.
—Terry, there is one reason, and one reason only for me to be here.
I point north.
—The Bronx sucks. There’s no infrastructure for us. Hell, there’s no structure at all. It’s a bunch of free agents, with life spans preset to a couple months, running around trying to get all they can lay their hands on before they burn out. It’s a place for dying fast. And so maybe I’ve always looked to have as much leeway as I could get away with, but turns out I maybe didn’t know what that meant. Turns out maybe I didn’t know just how much the Clans do to make life possible for a guy like me. Maybe I didn’t know how good I had it.
I rise.
—I want back. I want back in the world. I want civilifuckingzation, man. And you want to know why I’d get the girl to shovel some serious cash your way and come back down here and be at your fucking mercy? Well that’s why, man. I am tired of living with the savages. OK, so maybe it’s gonna be hard to rehabilitate my reputation, but it’s got to be better than what I was doing up there.
I plant myself in the middle of the room.
—I want to come home, man. I’m not saying it will be like it was, I know that can’t work, but I want to be back downtown. Find me a corner, somewhere out of sight, just get me back down here, man. That’s all. That’s all.
I let all my air out, deflate.
—That’s all. I just want to come home.
Terry considers me from the floor, touches the tip of his nose.
—Well, I won’t deny it, Joe, I’m a sucker for a good redemption story.
He pulls his legs in, rises easy, stands in front of me.
—But I’m not a sucker.
I look him in the eye.
—I know that.
—Sure you do. Well. Cards, then.
He fans an imaginary poker hand.
—We need the money. Negotiating with the girl would be bad for business. You can get the money. And.
He drops the cards.
—I believe you need to be down here.
He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear.
—I don’t believe your sob story about wanting to come home, but I do believe that you want to be down here.
He inspects my face.
—Why is that, Joe, huh? What’s down here, besides familiar ground, that you have to be so close to it? You leave a score unsettled? It that old story?
I hold his gaze.
—Just what I told you, Ter, just that I need to get out of the jungle.
—OK, OK, that’s cool. I can play it like that. Just, if it is a revenge thing, be careful about who you take a bead on. Your slack is played down here. You go up, get the money, come back, and yeah, I can figure something. We can find a corner for you. But it’ll be a quiet corner, man, and you’ll have to keep it that way.
—All I’m asking for is a second chance.
He gets tired all of a sudden.
—Yeah, you find one of those, you tell me how I can get one for myself.
I smile.
—Yeah. I find where they keep them second chances, I’ll share them around.
I get rid of my smile.
—Speaking of second chances, or second bananas I guess, can’t help but notice you’re making policy decisions without Lydia around.
The tiredness that came over him a moment before stakes a claim on more of his face.
—Well, man, I’ll tell you, that’s true, she’s not here for this. Which, if you put a little, I don’t know, a little thought into it, it might become clear why that is. I put some thought into it, Joe. I’m not claiming to be cerebral by nature, instinctive moves are more my style. I like to think that energy, personal energies, are a medium I have a small talent for reading. But that’s maybe not the point. The point is, once you think about it, her feelings of animosity toward you aside, you can’t help but notice that when you’ve had your back against the wall with the Society and managed to find your way to, forgive the pun, to daylight, that Lydia always seems to be in the know in a certain kind of way that suggests, I don’t know what, involvement of some kind. So maybe it’s an intuitive leap on my part, or maybe it’s just obvious as hell, but I thought, seeing as I was coming over here to have Hurley kill you, that it would be best to leave her out of the loop this time.
He tugs his soul patch.
—Lydia has always operat
ed her Lesbian, Gay and Other Gendered Alliance with a fair amount of independence within the Society. Always swung that bloc of votes to wherever she felt, I don’t know, justice was best served. These days, she’s, and this is her right, she’s started going it alone more than in the past. She’s, this is, this is a real strength of hers, the narrowness of vision thing, so she’s really pushing for more direct action. For the Society to move more aggressively toward making the Vyrus and the infecteds public. She’s talking timetables and benchmarks and action agendas for taking the final step and putting ourselves out there and seeing if people are ready to accept us. Me, I’m still trying to keep mouths fed, trying to keep us all together and on message so we can have unity before we make that push. Needless to say, there’s some distance between us right now. And I admire her moral and ethical solidity, the strength of that structure of values she’s built her life on, but that woman, she can be a real pain in the ass when it’s time to get our hands dirty.
—She’s a ball breaker.
—Not how I would put it myself.
He blows out his cheeks.
—But I wouldn’t argue too much over it.
I wave a hand.
—Yeah, Lydia, always a stickler for procedure and due course and all that crap. Woman like that, she just has a way of screwing up a good old-fashioned political assassination.
The tiredness leaves his face, replaced by something a bit sharper and less inclined to take my shit.
—True is true, Joe, and we’ve made a deal here and all that, but this is a bit of a sensitive subject. So you might want to put a sock in it.
—Sure, man. Just sorry to hear the two of you aren’t getting along.
He touches his thigh, where I drove the nail into his flesh.
—I’m not a fool. You know that. And I know Lydia was involved. And it hurt, Joe. In more ways than one.
—I know you’re not a fool, Ter. And it wasn’t supposed to tickle.
He taps the edge of the left lens of his glasses.
—What happened to the eye?
I shake my head.
—Peeped one too many keyholes.
—Well, bound to happen the way you get around. Speaking of which.
He goes to the door to let Hurley back in.
—While you’re working on getting some money out of the girl, you might, I don’t know, take a look around her operation. I hear they’re having some tough times over there. Dealing with some crisis management issues.