“What kind of a job?” she asked brightly.
“Sales work.”
Something rang false to the girl. “What kind of sales work?” she wanted to know. And at the same time she did not want to know, because she already felt she knew the answer. And it was the wrong answer.
But Joe told her.
“Selling what Shank sells,” he said.
And, when she turned white, not even realizing he was saying, cryptically, he would be selling not pot but heroin, Joe tried to explain.
“Just for a little while,” he said. “Just until we get our heads above water. It’s safe, baby, it’s safe and it’s easy and it’s good bread. We can get a nice pad in a good neighborhood and live decent. And as soon as we get a little bit ahead I’ll look for a good job, an honest one, and we’ll be moving. I mean it, Anita.”
Half of her mind realized he was lying. He would keep the easy money, the easy life. But the other half of her mind said she herself would turn his lie into truth, and he would change because of her. And then he would get that good job, that honest job, and it would all have been worth it. Their life would be good.
“I’ll start tomorrow,” he said. “And tomorrow you go and look for an apartment. A decent one. Go as high as two hundred a month if you want. And unfurnished if you want. We’ll buy furniture. A little at a time, not too expensive, but decent furniture. We’ll fix the place up nice and we’ll live in it.”
A good apartment, Anita listened to her racing thoughts. That would be nice. A good apartment with good furniture in a good neighborhood. More than she had expected. And for two hundred dollars a month they could afford a nice place.
“Then we’ll start to roll,” he said, getting carried away now, half believing it himself. “We’ll get money ahead and I’ll get a good job. Maybe with a publishing house or an advertising agency. Something a little creative so I don’t go out of my mind. And we’ll live good, honey. Really live good. We don’t have to be rich. Just so we aren’t starving and we don’t live like pigs.”
His words intoxicated her and her head began to swim. The vision was perfect, so she put her arms around him, ashamed of herself for having walked out on him before, ashamed for having yelled at him and ashamed for having come so close to hating him. She kissed him.
Shank abruptly left without being asked. And then Joe stripped the girl while her skin tingled in anticipation. And then he touched her, curve for curve, swell for swell, till they tumbled to the bed and their bodies hounded each other.
It was very good.
The sun and the moon and the stars. The earth trembling,rocking, jolting.
They moved frantically until they trapped each other in a sweaty fever-lock.
Good.
Very good.
And, when the world exploded, Anita knew—with earth-shaking certainty—that at last everything was going to be all right.
But she was wrong.
The next day developed according to plan. Shank arose early to go to his bank on Fifth Avenue where he deposited money in his savings account. Then he returned to the apartment and woke Joe.
In the course of the day Shank took Joe to three of the former’s customers. “This is Joe,” he told each one. “He’s my man. From now on you cop from him.” And the customers digested this information and filed it away in junkie minds.
Anita spent the day hunting a suitable apartment. She bought the New York Times and checked out the ads. Two apartments she examined were suitable. One, located in the Village, a two-room, second-floor apartment on Bank Street, rented for a hundred and sixty. The other rented for one-forty, a two-room, first-floor place on East 19th Street near Gramercy Park. The building was immaculate, the apartment rent-controlled, and Anita preferred it.
But she did not rent either apartment. Instead, she decided to discuss the matter with Joe. Maybe he would prefer one location to another, or one apartment to another. After all, he had a right to participate in the decision since they were renting the apartment together.
She trotted back to Saint Marks Place and started dinner. Shank and Joe appeared a few minutes before dinner was ready. They talked about what they had done that afternoon and Anita thought hysterically of this insane domestic scene. Her man had a new job. He sold marijuana. And now she was cooking for him and his—his boss, for the love of God.
Dinner was veal chops. Veal chops and mashed potatoes and green peas. She served them all and they sat down to eat. Dinner for the boss. A strange tableau. She described the two apartments to Joe, told him about both places. “I think I liked the one in Gramercy a little better,” she said. “It’s smaller but there’s only the two of us. And it’s a nice place.”
“Sounds good,” Joe said.
“The Bank Street place is nice, too. But I’m a little sick of the Village. And I didn’t like the building there as much. The rent is higher and you don’t get as much for your money.”
“Whatever you want,” he said. “It’s up to you. Just so we get a nice pad.”
The veal chops were good, the potatoes smooth, the peas young and sweet. They finished and she carried the plates to the sink and ran water on them.
The water was still running when the door was kicked open.
The man who kicked it open was Detective First Grade Peter J. Samuelson, Narcotics Bureau.
He had a gun in his hand.
Chapter 10
The detective said: “You never learn. You have to push your luck. You have to lean until you fall. Now you fall.”
The running water in the sink was very loud. Anita took tentative steps toward Joe, but an unmistakable motion from Samuelson halted her.
“A long fall,” the detective said. “A long, long fall. Possession with intent. Rather obvious intent. You had a chance last time and you blew it, you damned fool.”
What happened next occurred in slow motion. Shank unwound like a cobra. He stood up and grabbed Anita in one fluid movement. Then Anita was being propelled swiftly at Detective Samuelson. His gun was pointed between her breasts but he did not fire it.
And Shank moved behind her. He moved with the grace of a dancer. His legs thrust him forward while his hand dipped in his pocket and brought out his knife.
The knife danced in his hand and the blade leaped out, alert.
Anita’s softness bounced into the detective. She fell away, limp, and Shank’s knife bit, cobralike, into the man with the gun. Slow motion. The knife sneaking between ribs, ripping upward. The gun, still unfired, dropping from limp fingers and clattering inanely on the bare floor.
The detective’s hard body losing its hardness. A hand clutching at the hole the knife had made, the man trying to hold life in place. The knife withdrawn, and flowers of ruby blood blossoming from a hole in a chest.
A body falling slowly, crumpling, folding to the floor.
A suppressed scream from Anita, a gasp from Joe.
Then quietude, except for the running water slap-ping at the dirty dishes in the sink.
A tragicomedy in one act, a quick act. A gun on the floor, unfired. The knife dripping the detective’s blood.
The detective on the floor.
Dead.
The water in the sink was still running.
Anita spoke first. Her voice was a loud whisper. “You killed him. Oh, God, God in heaven, you killed him. He’s dead and you killed him.”
“I had to.”
“Had to? A year and a day for possession of pot. That’s what you would have gotten. Now you’ll get the electric chair. Murder. Murder in the first degree. The electric chair. Holy mother of God!”
Shank’s brain was swimming. This was what it felt like, he thought. This is how killing felt. A strange feeling of power combined with the damnedest emptiness. A funny sort of a feeling.