BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
MAP
BEGIN READING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY CHARLIE HUSTON
DON’T MISS THE FIRST JOE PITT THRILLER ALREADY DEAD
CHECK OUT THE HENRY THOMPSON SERIES FROM CHARLIE HUSTON
COPYRIGHT
To Bob Wilkins
and the Friday night
Creature Features.
Thanks for keeping me up late
and scaring the crap out of me.
THE GLASS IS BREAKING.
That’s not the surprising thing; the surprising thing is that it didn’t shatter when he threw me against it. Shouldn’t come as a shock. This place, they went through a few front windows the first year they were open and decided it was more cost-effective to lay out the extra cash for the safety glass. Save them from having to replace it every time there’s a brawl in here. Which is pretty regular I’d imagine. Any case, I’m not bitching. Wasn’t for the guy who had the bright idea, I’d be on the sidewalk right now, my good leather jacket cut to ribbons and my face sliced up in all kinds of new and interesting ways. But now it’s breaking, it is most definitely breaking. I’m sure about that because my face is jammed up against it. The big question for me is whether this is the kind of safety glass that bursts into thousands of tiny pebbles when it breaks or the kind that turns into shards. Pebbles would be fine. Shards, not so much. The window creaks. Tiny fissures appear in front of my eyes.
OK, time to stop worrying about the glass, time to start worrying about getting this guy off of me. I can’t expect any help from the bartenders or the crowd, not after they watched him pound on the bouncer with that pool cue. And I don’t see any helpful officers of the law rolling up outside at this point. Not that I have any intention of being here when the cops show up. So, I guess it’s just me and him. That’s OK, I can go this one alone. Not like it’s new to me or anything. I just wish he really was on PCP; if it was just PCP he’d be pretty easy to deal with. But this? This is gonna take grace and style, maybe even a little tact.
He shoves my face harder into the big front window. People out on the sidewalk flinch as they see my features squashed yet flatter against the glass. The glass creaks again. The fissures grow another millimeter. He’s still screaming, babbling insanity at the top of his lungs, howling so loud I can barely hear Boxcar Willie on the jukebox:
You load sixteen tons and what do you get?
Another day older, and deeper in debt.
Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.
He’s enraged that my face won’t just explode through the damn glass the way he wants it to. He rears back, and before he can slam my face forward, I’ve slipped to my right, spun, twisted my arm free of his grasp, winced as a clump of hair is torn from the back of my scalp, planted my right foot in the hollow behind his right knee, hammered my elbow into the back of his neck and sent him face first through the window in my place. The sidewalk audience scatters as he hits the pavement. I step through the dagger-edged hole he left behind. Shards it is.
He was spazzing the second he came out of the bathroom.
Before that, I hadn’t even noticed him. Why should I? Not like I’m working; not like there’s any reason I should be doing anything but paying attention to the booze in my glass, the cigarette in my mouth, the pool game in front of me and the girl by my side. Especially the girl. Girl like this, most everyone in the place is paying attention to her. Want to be invisible? Hang out with a girl like Evie. All that red hair, the body that not only won’t quit but works weekends and holidays, too. That smile. She’s the kind of girl guys like to look at, but most aren’t sure how to go about approaching her. Too bad for them. They miss out on the best part, they miss out on how cool she is, how funny, how sharp, how down-to-earth. Anyway, a girl like Evie on your arm and you turn into a shadow, just the lucky fuck taking up space next to the best view in the place.
So a night like this, when it’s so cold out Evie is wearing her leather pants and that tight old thermal top with the Jack Daniel’s label silk-screened across the front, a night like this where she’s glued to my hip and every guy in the place wishes he was me, is it any surprise I didn’t smell him the moment he came through the door?
Most nights I would have picked up his scent right off. Couldn’t miss it. After all, he smells just like me, only different. But what with the Early Times I’m pouring down my throat and the Luckys I’m sucking on and Evie rubbing up against me, I just can’t be bothered. Still, he couldn’t have been in here all that long. Sooner or later I would have smelled him no matter how distracted I was. It wouldn’t have meant trouble necessarily; we would have eyeballed each other a bit, sniffed each other’s asses like a couple of big dogs, but there wouldn’t have been any trouble, not in here, not where everyone can see us. That shit just doesn’t happen. As it was, I was lining up a neat little combo that was gonna let me run out the rest of the table and he came out of the john and started spazzing out.
This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill junkie-who-just-shot-up-in-the-can stumbling around. He came out of there like the Tasmanian Devil: spinning, arms flailing, kicking anything that came in range, sending tables and people flying; a full on spaz. A space quickly opened up around him while he whirled and gibbered and foamed at the mouth. The bouncer, a nice enough guy goes by Gears, came over and tried a little sweet talk.
—OK, man, settle down, settle down. Take it easy. Got yourself a dose of some bad shit, but we’re gonna take care of you. Got some 911 on the way, gonna get you to an emergency room and get that shit out your system. Just take it easy.
Moved in slowly, arms spread wide, talking soft. Might as well been trying to soothe a rabid dog. The guy stopped spinning long enough to jump at Gears and swing his arm like a club. Guy was freaky fast. Gears got lucky when he fell on his ass out of the way. Guy’s arm hit the backside of a bench made out of two-by-fours and a couple of them cracked. Then he went back to spinning. By this time folks are starting to clear out, and I’m starting to pay attention. Gears gets back on his feet, muttering something about fucking PCP, grabs himself one of the cracked and twisted house cues from the rack and goes after the guy. But I’ve taken a good whiff by this point and I know the guy ain’t on PCP. Gears would be lucky if that’s all it was. I mean, I don’t know what he’s on, but I know he doesn’t need it; he’s dangerous as hell to start with.
Gears waits ’til the guy has spun his back to him, and brings the cue down on top of his head. It makes a nice noise, but before Gears can get too proud of himself or maybe think about bringing the cue back up for another swing, the guy has turned around, snatched the cue away, kicked Gears’s legs out from under him and gotten busy finding out how hard it is to break a pool cue by pounding it on someone’s face. That’s when I figured I should do something. Not that Gears is so big a friend. I barely know him except to call him by name when I come in the place, but The Spaz is out of control, causing the kind of scene that’s bad for business. If I don’t deal with him, the cops will. That will get very ugly very fast. Nothing causes a scene like when cops start putting bullets in a guy and the guy refuses to go down. Sure, Gears and the law and the press may just chalk it up to a PCP freakout, but there are other people who will hear about it. And some of those people will want to check it out. And I don’t want those people around. Not down here. Not in my neighborhood. So I jump on the guy’s back. Figure I’ll get him to the floor, put a sleeper hold on him and drag him out of here. Make up some story for the crowd about how I know him and I’ll take care of it. Get him out before the cops come; get him someplace private and get rid of him before he can make another scene like this one. That’s the t
hing to do. Except he shrugs me right off his back, picks me up off the floor and throws me at the window. And when I bounce off the glass instead of going through it the way he wanted me to, he grabs me by the hair and tries to shove my face through the glass. Lucky for me, strong and fast as he is right now, he’s a lousy fighter.
Once he’s on the sidewalk I handle it pretty much like I wanted to inside. Knees in the middle of his back, pin him to the scummy pavement, arm around his windpipe and cut off the O2 until he goes asleep. He does a fair amount of thrashing around, and I have to hold on good and tight to keep from getting bucked clear, but once I’m locked on to him I’m not going anywhere. When he’s nice and sleepy I toss him over my shoulder and point at one of the bartenders who’s come out to watch how the story ends.
—Get me a cab, will ya?
—Ambulance is on its way.
—Let ’em deal with Gears. This guy, I know him. I’m gonna take him back to his halfway house. See if I can keep him out of the shit.
—What about the cops? What about the window?
—Hey, come on. I got the guy out of the place. Give me a fucking break.
—Yeah, sure.
She flags a cab.
The cabbie’s none too happy about me piling in with blood-drippy guy, but he sees I’m in no mood for debate and just gives me a dirty rag to put over The Spaz’s face. Before we pull away, Evie runs up and passes my pack of smokes and my Zippo through the window.
—Want me to come?
—Nah, I got it covered.
—Meet you back at your place?
—Yeah. Maybe a half hour at the most. You gonna be OK?
—Don’t start.
—Right. Sorry ’bout this.
—’S OK. Nobody can say you don’t know how to show a girl a good time, Joe.
The Spaz tries to come to in the cab. I pinch his esophagus and he goes back under before he can cause me any more trouble. I have the cabbie take me down to the Baruch housing project just below Houston. It’s a couple blocks outside what I’d usually call safe turf, but no one really has a claim on it, so it seems like a good place for an impromptu dump. I manhandle The Spaz up the steps to the pedestrian bridge that spans the FDR to the East River Park. It’s nearly two in the morning on a Tuesday. Cars whiz by below, but the lights on the park playing fields were shut off hours ago. My eyes penetrate that darkness just fine. Too cold for any homeless people to be camping out. I do see what looks like a couple junkies sitting on a bench at the far end of the park, but they’re facing the river. I pause at the top of the concrete stairs that lead down to the park.
The Spaz is still alive, alive and reeking of blood. I think about that blood; how I’d like to tap a couple pints of it and stick them in my fridge at home to replenish my rapidly shrinking supply. But his blood won’t do me any good, won’t do anything but make me hellishly sick and kill me. I know that because of what I smelled back at Doc Holiday’s; the smell of the Vyrus, the same smell I carry with me. Nonetheless, I’m just hard up enough to give him another good sniff. Hell, maybe I was wrong, maybe it was some other Vampyre’s scent I picked up in there, maybe this guy really is just whacked on PCP. I inhale. No, no such luck. He’s another sad fuck like me. But there is something about him, something about his scent that’s a little off. Must be whatever he was taking in the bathroom. No surprise I guess. Whatever he’s on would have to be some mean shit not to be neutralized by the Vyrus the moment it entered his bloodstream. Sure would like to know what it was. Be nice to try something like that sometime, something for a distraction. Christ, I drank over a fifth of bourbon tonight and it barely gave me a buzz. The Spaz stirs in my arms. Time to deal with the problem at hand.
I snap The Spaz’s neck and shove him hard down the steps and watch him tumble to the bottom. The broken neck won’t kill him outright, not like it would a normal person. A normal person, you break their neck, the medulla oblongata stops communicating with the body and all those autonomic functions like your lungs inflating and your heart pumping just stop. But the Vyrus reprograms your body, hyperoxygenates your blood and does a bunch of other stuff I can’t really follow. The Spaz won’t be getting up or anything, but there’s enough O2 in his brain to keep him lucid for the next several minutes. Probably a good thing for him that he’s high.
I pop a smoke in my mouth, light it and head back across the bridge. I have to walk all the way to Avenue B before I can find a cab, but I still make it back to my place just a few minutes later than I wanted.
We don’t get to sleep in.
Evie’s a bartender. She’s used to crawling into bed around dawn. Even on a night off she has a hard time falling asleep before the sun hits the horizon. Me, I got my own reasons for being a night owl. But we’re up early the next day. Early for us, anyway, say just after noon. Evie’s got an appointment.
I reach for a smoke as she crawls out from under the covers.
—What’s the deal today?
—Viral load results.
—Right.
I sit on the edge of the bed, smoking and watching Evie through the open bathroom door. She rinses her mouth and spits toothpaste into the sink, then walks back into the bedroom.
—You been feeling any different?
—Nope. Nausea, vomiting. The usual.
—Yeah.
She squats next to her big black leather bag on the floor. Her back is to me. She’s wearing panties and one of my old wifebeaters. I look at her ass while she digs in the bag.
—How much did you drink last night?
She keeps looking through the bag.
—A lot less than you.
—It’s different.
—I know.
She finds a pill bottle in the bag and fishes out a capsule. Then she goes back in the bag until she finds another bottle and takes two capsules from that one. She tosses all three pills in her mouth and holds her hand out to me. I pick up the water glass from the bedside table, hand it to her, and she washes the pills down.
—Aren’t you supposed to take the Kaletra with food?
She’s squeezing herself back into last night’s leather pants.
—I’m not hungry.
—Not hungry how?
She peels off the wifebeater. I stare at her pale, freckled tits until she covers them with the Jack Daniel’s shirt.
—Just not hungry.
—Not hungry like you’re not hungry, or not hungry like a side effect?
She stands in front of the mirror on the back of the closet door and starts raking a brush through her hair.
—Not hungry like I don’t want to fucking eat anything, OK?
—Sure. OK.
I get up, go into the bathroom and close the door. I look at myself in the mirror. It’s a bad view. I splash some water on my face. I flush the toilet needlessly. I open the door, go back to the bed and get another smoke from the pack on the table. Evie has her hair pulled into a ponytail. She shrugs her way into her big, black biker jacket; all zippers and snaps. I light my smoke.
—You gonna be warm enough in that?
She holds up a hand.
—Enough.
—Just asking.
—And I’m just saying, enough. I know you’re concerned. I know you care. That’s great, I really appreciate it. I know it’s not the normal thing for you. But you have to get out of my ass.
She steps closer to me, bends over and gives me a kiss. Then she picks up her bag and starts up the stairs that lead to the ground floor rooms.
—It’s just I want you to take care of yourself, baby.
That does it. She stops on the steps, drops her head, exhales loudly and turns to face me.
—I am taking care of myself, Joe. I’m taking care of myself the way I want to. That means if I want to have a couple drinks and risk raising my blood sugar, I’m gonna do it. That means if I’m not hungry when I’m taking my meds, I’m not gonna force myself to eat. OK? That OK with you? Because if it’s not, you know what you
can do. No strings attached, Joe. That’s your motto, right? You weren’t there when I got the disease, and I don’t expect you to be there when it kills me. In the middle, you want to be more involved in my life, you want to have a say? All you gotta do is involve me in yours, that’s all it takes. Until then, stop with the fucking nagging. I get enough of that shit from my mom. I don’t need it from my goddamn boyfriend.
And she pounds up the stairs, slamming the front door good and loud on her way out.
I flop back on the bed and take a big drag off my cigarette. I blow the smoke at the ceiling and smile. I can’t help it, I just love it when she calls me her boyfriend. And she only does that when she’s mad.
I know, pretty fucked up, provoking your HIV-positive girl until she’s pissed enough to forget that you’re not really supposed to be a couple and calls you her boyfriend. But then again, our whole relationship is pretty fucked up. Start with the fact we don’t have sex. She beats herself up about that pretty good. Carries around this big ball of guilt about me being stuck on her even though we don’t fuck. I get it. It’s not like it’s rocket science or anything. She’s terrified of giving me her disease. Condoms, dental dams, there’s no amount of protection that’ll make her feel safe enough to get more intimate than necking, dry-humping and hand-jobbing each other on occasion. It’s too bad that I can’t tell her that there is no way on God’s green earth that she could ever get me sick. Nobody could. There isn’t a bug on this rock that could put a dent in me. It’s too late for that, I’m already as sick as a man can get. Pretty much. Once the Vyrus set up shop in my bloodstream, it made me uninhabitable for anything else. Any regular viruses or bacteria or germs come calling, they’re gonna get their asses kicked but good.
So I don’t mind the not-having-sex thing. That’s not true. I mind the not-having-sex thing a hell of a lot. Just watching her get dressed this morning was enough to drive me half crazy. But I can deal. I can deal because I have to. Not because of what she’s sick on, but because of what I’m sick on. I don’t know if the Vyrus can be sexually transmitted, but I’m not taking any chances. I’m not taking any chances of infecting Evie with an organism that will colonize her blood and strip mine it for whatever components keep it happy. A bug that is always hungry for more. A bug that, when your blood is tapped out, will send you hunting. And you’ll hunt, man, you will hunt. Because the alternative, the pain that will rack you and twist your body and eventually boil your insides? It’ll make anything Evie may have to go through in the next couple years look like child’s play. That’s just a fact.