He sips some beer.
—Hatter, look up woman in that dictionary, tell me if that’s some other way of saying girl.
Lydia folds her arms and looks at the ground. —Girl?
The midget purses his lips and covers his mouth with a finger.
—Oopsy. Did I say a no-no? Did I let slip with a term that doesn’t fit with your lifestyle choices? Honey.
A little snicker runs around the tent. Only the Strongman doesn’t laugh.
A thin stream of air slides between Lydia’s lips. She looks at the midget.
—What did you say your name was?
The midget points at one of the faded blue tattoos on his neck.
—Like it says right here. Stretch. Name’s Stretch.
She squints at the tattoo.
—Yeah. Stretch. OK, clearly I’m not going to be able to make my point with you the way I’d like to. Let me put it another way.
She pauses, looks at the top of the tent’s center-pole, where smoke from the torches and the brazier slips out through a large hole, and looks back at him.
—You are fucked.
He raises his eyebrows.
—Fucked?
She nods.
—Raw. You had a chance not to be, but you are now officially fucked raw.
He blows out his lips, reaches back and rubs a buttock.
—Hell, fucked raw and I didn’t even get a reach-around.
The snicker goes around the tent again, but not as far.
Lydia nods again.
—Yeah, no reach-around. See, here you are, you and your Clan, and you need something. You need something so bad, you have to go outside of your inbred little comfort zone and look for help.
—Help? Ain’t no one asking for help around here. We’re the ones making offers.
She gives him a look up and another back down.
—Like. Hell.
He stands, grimaces as skin around his wound stretches.
—You want to start watching your lip, woman.
Lydia looks at me.
—Finally, he calls me what I am, and he thinks it’s an insult.
She looks at Vendetta and Harm.
—How can the two of you put up with being exploited by this piece of crap?
Vendetta grabs her crotch.
—Exploit this, cunt.
Lydia waves a hand.
—You’re not my type.
Stretch puts himself in front of Lydia.
—You leave them girls out of this.
Lydia squats slowly, puts herself on eye level with him.
—Gladly.
His lips peel from his gleaming teeth, a bit of pink gristle caught between two of them.
—You best start treading softly.
Lydia purses her lips and covers them with a finger.
—Oh, did I say something out of line? Pardon me, let me be clear so I can make that up to you.
She shows her own teeth.
—You are on the ass end of the world. You are all alone out here and someone has your back against it. And you are so fucking terrified you call us for help to get out. Joe’s right, isn’t he? This is it, just a half dozen of you? The way you pathetic, self-destructive dysfunctions live out here, you couldn’t sustain more than six members. And now, now you get a chance, a shot at getting off this sandbar and joining with a real Clan, having some stability, being a part of something real, and all you can do is swing your dick around and try to act like you don’t need the help you’re screaming for.
She shakes her head.
—Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She straightens.
—You’re right, Joe, they’re assholes. Let’s go.
She starts for the exit.
Stretch takes a step after her.
—Hey! Hey, now! Now wait a second.
Lydia stops and turns.
—What?
Stretch licks his lips.
—You got a mouth on you, lady. Some mouth. Come on a man’s turf and talk that way. Some mouth. Takes, know what that takes, takes balls. You got some balls on you. I like that. That’s OK by me. You come back in here and let’s have a beer and we’ll do the swap and get rolling. We’re all introduced now, so let’s do some business.
Lydia creases her forehead.
—Asshole, you missed the point. We don’t want you. You people are a mess. You’re going to have to stay out here where you belong. Until you get kicked into the ocean.
She turns again.
Stretch snaps his fingers.
The Strongman’s eyes narrow behind the headman’s hood. Harm sets the mason jar aside and rests her hand on her sledgehammer. Vendetta’s fingers tighten on the iron poker. Hatter opens his dictionary wide and a derringer drops from the hollowed pages into his hand. Glasseater licks his lips.
Stretch folds his arms over his little barrel chest.
—Tell me, you uptight Manhattan snobs think you can talk to me like that and walk out of here in one piece?
I pull the hogleg from my belt and put it against his forehead.
—Tell me, do you think you clowns can stop me if I decide to blow your stomach open, rip your guts back out, stretch them across the boardwalk, and run my van over them a few times?
Lydia raises both her hands, opens her mouth to chill the situation, and something slaps the stiff canvas of the tent, whispers through the air and imbeds itself in her neck.
I blink.
—Jesus fuck, is that an arrow?
A heavy rain hits the tent, sharp reports followed by chorused sighs.
Fletched steel shafts sprout in the sand. Pepper the table and the corpse. Bristle from the Strongman’s back as he scoops Vendetta and Harm together and bends his body over theirs. Glasseater gnashes his broken teeth on the one that springs out of his mouth, and finds it inedible. They chase Stretch as he crawls under the stage. Hatter pulls one from his foot, turns and runs into a flock of them that pelt his chest and face.
I drop to the ground. One passes through my right biceps and into my side, pinning my arm to my torso.
The storm stops.
Something black flutters at the entrance of the tent. I see the Wraith in my memory, stop breathing, roll onto my left side, fire both barrels of the hogleg, the recoil jerking my arm back, the shaft of the arrow tearing flesh, the barbed tip twisting between two ribs.
The black shape in the entrance sprays a cloud of blood and explodes back into the night.
A man, a man in a cape. Only a man.
I breathe. Smell the Vyrus thick in the fresh blood.
Not a Wraith, but not a man. More are out there.
I get up. Lydia has the arrow in her neck, more in her legs and abdomen. I grab her and drag her toward the rear of the tent, kicking the brazier from its stand as I pass it, spilling flaming coals over the grease-stained carpets and under the dry boards of the stage and the bleachers.
Fire wastes no time, begins to eat the tent and its contents.
I reach the back of the tent, drop Lydia, grab the canvas at its base and heave it up, tearing long iron stakes from the sand. I look back, see more black shapes beating at the entrance, leaping across the flames, the trailing wings of one catching fire.
The Strongman rises, porcupined in steel, and takes his broadsword from the edge of the stage as Vendetta and Harm worm beneath the platform, over the coals scattered there. Two of the caped silhouettes jump, the broadsword arcs, dividing one of the shapes into two bleeding halves and imbedding in the other before it slams into him and drives him onto his back. The heads of the arrows burst from his chest and stomach and he grabs the wounded attacker and pulls him close and fire is reflected everywhere in blood.
I wrap my fingers in Lydia’s hair and duck under the edge of the burning tent, hauling her through the sand, jerking to a stop as something grabs her and she’s torn from me; dropping the fistful of her hair, snagging her wrist and digging my heel into the sand as she’s pulle
d back into the tent.
—Pitt.
Lydia, rasping over the arrow in her throat, reaching to me with her other hand.
—Gun. Gun.
I drop the hogleg, force my right hand across my body, ripping the hole in my biceps wider, twisting the barbs deeper. I tug the Docks Boss’ gun from my jacket pocket and toss it into the sand as the things holding her legs heave and we’re both pulled toward the flaming canvas.
She scoops up the huge revolver.
—Let me go. Go.
Three arrows pierce the tent and fly into the darkness behind me.
Lydia twists her arm to free herself.
—Go. Just fucking come back.
I let her go and she’s dragged screaming into the tent and I snag the hogleg and I run into the darkness below the boardwalk, trailing blood, the sound of the revolver crashing behind me.
Lydia, filling the blazing night with lead.
Burrowed deep in sand where it piles up high under the boardwalk, I break the hogleg, drop the spent shells and replace them. I face back on my trail and wait for something that I can blow in half.
Nothing comes.
I watch the tent burn. I watch the fluttering silhouettes hack the lines, tumbling it down so that it burns faster. I watch them gather bodies and parts of bodies. Three of them carry the Strongman and the smaller corpse pinned to him.
I listen.
—Don’t leave anything.
—I’m not leaving anything, Axler.
—We need it all.
—I never buried anyone? I never sat Shiva? I don’t know we need it all?
—Just don’t leave any of Chaim on the ground.
—It’s too late. He was sprayed all over the tent. And half of Fletcher burned before we could get to him.
—Burned. Fuck. Will the Chevra Kadisha be able to do anything?
—Ask your papa.
—Shit.
One of the silhouettes stands at the edge of the firelight, peering under the boardwalk.
—Selig, come away, we have to go.
—Some got away.
—Too late. We have to go. The fire.
—They got away. The one that shot Chaim got away. The midget got away. One of his whores got away.
A siren whines, coming closer.
—We have to go.
—They killed Chaim. They killed Fletcher. They killed Elias. We have to find them. We have to kill them.
More sirens join the first.
—We have to go, Selig.
—Chaim. They killed my brother. Chaim. I have to kill them.
He starts to scramble under the boardwalk.
I train both barrels on his shadow.
He stops, scents, his head turns toward my hiding place. Two of the others come after him and grab him.
—Selig. Ha-Makom yenahem ethem b’tokh sha’ar aveilei Tzion v’Yerushalayim, Selig. We have to go.
They pull him from under the boardwalk, dragging him away from the flames, away from my gun that killed his brother.
Lucky fucker.
I pinch the hollow shaft just below the plastic fletching and flatten it between my fingers. Sitting on the floor of the van, arm tight to my side and braced against the paneled interior wall, I grip the arrow just above the pinched alloy and begin to bend it back and forth, stressing the metal. The tip wiggles between my ribs.
When the metal bends with ease, I wrap my fist around it, take a few shallow breaths, feeling the point dig at the side of my lung, and give a single sharp yank that tears the tail of the arrow away and hurts like a motherfucker. I drop the scrap on the floor and lift my right arm and pull it free, fresh blood running from the hole that had sealed itself around the shaft that juts from my side.
I press my fingers into the hole in my side, feeling for the sharp-edged barbs, finding them. I’m lucky that they haven’t slipped in past the ribs. I won’t have to break my own bones to dig the fucker out. That would have sucked.
I take my switchblade from my boot top and it snaps open. I have to use my left hand to cut short twin seams through the skin and muscle on either side of the shaft, then drop the knife, twist the shaft so that the broad surface of the arrowhead is parallel to the ribs and jerk it and find out that it has two shorter barbs right at the tip that snag on the bone and only come free when I curse and twist my right arm around and get a two-handed grip and pull the fucking thing out along with a hunk of meat and cartilage and muscle and slivers of bone.
I pick up one of the strips I’ve already torn my undershirt into and start wrapping it around my torso. The Vyrus will seal the wounds soon, but the more blood I can keep inside, the better this will go for me. I’ve already dribbled a fair amount. And I’m likely to lose more by the time I’ve killed all the people I want to see dead right now.
Someone puts a hand on the outer handle of the rear door and tests to see if it’s locked. It is.
Out the windshield I can see the whirling lights on the cop cars and fire engines and ambulances reflected on the apartment fronts at the intersection of Mermaid and 37th. No cops have poked around over here yet, just one cruiser that drifted down the street playing its searchlight over the garbage cans and row houses. That doesn’t mean they won’t be going car to car soon.
They tug a little harder on the handle. Someone says something. Someone answers. I try to smell something other than my own blood. Catch the scent.
I edge to the door, picking up the pointy end of the broken arrow, ease the lock button up and the door swings suddenly open and I grab the midget and haul him in and throw him down and push the arrow into his ear farther than it should go and point at Vendetta still crouched outside the van.
—Get the fuck in here and sit in the corner and don’t move.
She climbs into the van and pulls the door closed.
Stretch starts to open his mouth and I twist the arrow and blood runs freely from his ear.
—Close your mouth.
He closes his mouth.
—Show me those teeth again and I’ll clean both your ears at the same time.
Vendetta shifts.
—The cops.
I keep my eyes on Stretch.
—I know.
She moves.
I give Stretch a little more of the arrow.
—He’s already gonna be deaf in this ear, honey, move again and I’ll take the short route to making him deaf in the other.
She stays where she is.
—The cops. They’re looking in cars. Coming down Thirty-seventh.
I look out front. Bobbing flashlight beams are working toward the intersection.
Fuck.
I can shove the arrow through Stretch’s ear and jump the girl and probably break her neck before she screams, and start the van and roll with the lights off and circle around Seagate.
I lick my lips, shift, my left hand tenses on the arrow.
Stretch is looking in my eyes.
—She’s alive.
I poke the arrow deeper.
—Told you to keep those teeth hid.
He winces.
—They got her. But she’s alive. Get us out. I’ll tell you where.
The flashlights are coming closer. Once the cops are at the intersection I’m fucked. They see the van rolling, they’ll be after me. High-speed pursuit in a crap van. Busted. Dead.
I put my knee on his chest, pull the arrow out of his ear, shove it in his mouth, push the barbs into his inner cheek, fishhook him and pull.
He strains his neck, trying to keep his face in one piece.
I tug.
—Where?
He gurgles.
—Fuggckgyooog.
The lights are bright at the end of the street.
I drop the arrow and pick up the hogleg and rise and kick him in the crotch three times with my steel toes and whip the barrels of the gun across Vendetta’s forehead and give her the boot.
—Don’t fuck with me or I’ll kill you bad.
I get in the front seat and start the engine and pull out, lights dark.
—Where?
He turns his head.
—Sorry? That was my bad ear.
—Where, fucking where?
His smile shines bloody as he works the arrow out of his mouth.
—Gravesend.
He’s a talker.
—Pisses me off is that it’s Friday night. Supposed to be safe night. Why it’s the only night we do the act.
He picks at the dry blood crusted around his right ear.
—Don’t suppose you know if eardrums grow back?
I ignore him. Trying to think. Trying to figure how far I can take this. The cost of returning without Lydia.
He points at my own mutilated right ear.
—Just askin’ cuz it looks like you have some recent experience with this kind of thing.
Trying to figure if I can just dump him and Vendetta and haul ass back to Manhattan and tell Terry I did everything I could, but Lydia is gone.
—’Course, yours look to be more of the external variety.
He snaps his fingers next to his bad ear.
—Damn. Fucker’s dead as dead. Pisser. Years of mutilatin’ myself, never did a stitch of permanent damage. Mind you, there was a period of trial and error where it was more from luck than anything else that I didn’t ever bite off nothing that couldn’t grow back.
I think about the solid Lydia once did for me. How I never paid it off. How it was too fucking big to be paid off in one installment. Till now.
Vendetta looks at him from her spot on the floor between our seats.
—Don’t forget the toe.
He holds up his hands.
—Well sure, the toe. Just the pinkie toe, mind. But that was pure experimentation. Tell you, got no regrets about that toe. I hadn’t tested it out first, I might have bit off a finger or something like that. As it is, I’ve sliced and diced and gnawed my flesh just about every which way you can and kept myself in one piece all the while. Traveled my act far and wide. ’Course that was when this was an open city. That’s when the borough of Brooklyn on Long Island was a free place, where a man could go where he pleased and do as he pleased.
He waves his arms at the avenues reeling past us as we roll down Stillwell.
—Toured from Greenpoint to Brighton to Cobble Hill to Canarsie to Bay Ridge. Wintering in Coney, of course. No turf in Brooklyn then. That’s a Manhattan thing. Here, you just pay a mind to where you are, be respectful to whoever the big dog happens to be on the block. Nothing formal. Just a matter of using your head and slipping a dollar or a pint in the right hand. I’m out Red Hook, pitching my tent, taking a bum or two off the streets, I know I gotta throw something to the Docks.