I get my rocks, take them back over to the bench and start filling up the squatter's pockets. He paws at my head and tries to take a bite. I push his hands away and shove him back against the bench, kind of like trying to get a restless child dressed for school. Soon enough I have his pockets stuffed with stones. I get him up and over to the handrailing between the river and the path. We stand there like we're enjoying the view of Queens and the Domino Sugar sign. I wait for a break in the jogging path traffic. Then I wrap my arm around his waist, lean forward and flip him up and over the railing with a little hip toss. He splashes into the water. Maybe he makes a noise before the stones drag him under, but I couldn't say for sure.
Did he feel anything? Did he panic as the water filled his lungs? Probably. It's not like I'm out here doing mercy killings. This was a sponge job. Wipe up the spill and get rid of it. So I waited to see that he didn't bob up then I trotted over the pedestrian bridge across the FDR and caught a cab. Back in Tompkins I tracked the squatter's scent to a public garden on 12th where it got mixed up with the flowers and plants and children and families and I lost it.
Anyway, that's how I got into this current mess, being prudent.
After I get back from uptown and take my bath, I stretch out on the bed to catch up on the sleep I lost this morning, but my sunburn and memories of the scolding I took off Predo keep me awake. That prick is just like any one of my foster parents, or the youth authority counselors, or the cop of your choice. He likes putting people in their place, gets a charge out of it. And me? Every time one of his kind of prick tells me to shut up or sit down or get up against the wall it just makes my stomach bunch up and boil over and I start saying things that get me into trouble.
Thinking about Predo reminds me that he knew about the carrier, knew soon enough to get a crew down here to rig the scene. And that makes me think about Philip. I slipped up and told Philip about the carrier this morning when I was still half asleep. And that gets me pretty fucking pissed at Philip. And why was Philip calling me first thing in the morning? It was like he already knew the mess was mine. Like maybe he had been following me around and maybe caught at least part of last night's action.
Philip is a turd. He's a toady weasel, likes to hang around and try to get close to the Clans or some of the Rogues. Makes him feel like he's connected, inside the velvet rope. Thirty years ago he would've been sucking up to the Studio 54 crowd. Of course he has no official status, no affiliations. He'd like to be infected, has a hard-on for the Vyrus, but the big Clans don't go in for that kind of thing, and he's too chickenshit to approach any of the small ones. Those small outfits are a little too unpredictable. Some Renfield like Philip shows up looking to be infected, they say sure, and the chump ends up tapped out and floating in the river.
But the Coalition has given him an unofficial sanction. He's just servile enough for them. They hand him some shitty errands that even I wouldn't take and they slip him some cash. He's not a total Renfield, mind you, not a full-blown bug eater. But that's just because a bug would look a little too much like food to this pill-popping, emaciated speed freak.
Anyway, it's Philip's connection to the Coalition that's gonna keep me from wringing his head off when I get my hands on him.
And it's not like the Coalition is all I have to worry about. I haven't even heard from the Society yet. When Terry Bird and that crew find out I was involved in this, there's gonna be hell to pay. And they will find out. Anything busts below 14th and Bird knows.
After the sun goes down I cover my burns in aloe and put on a clean pair of jeans and a loose black shirt. While I'm getting ready I flick on the TV to look at the news, and there he is, the kid from last night, the one didn't get his brain eaten.
Cops are leading him up the courthouse steps downtown. He's surrounded by a press mob. The announcer is telling me his name is Ali Singh and that he's a twenty-one-year-old marketing major at NYU. Ali is being charged with a couple of last night's grisly murders. The authorities suspect the others were committed by his victims. They're looking at the whole mess as some kind of ritual-cannibal-murder-suicide pact. A murder weapon with Ali's prints was found in his room along with Satanic materials and trophies from one of the victims.
Ali looks drugged; slack-faced and dead-eyed. Cameras are crammed in his face and flashes explode at point-blank range.
It'll only take a week or two for him to be convinced that he did it. Another couple weeks of evaluation and the case gets pleaded to insanity and Ali spends the rest of his life in a facility for the criminally insane. Could have been worse. Could have been me.
I turn off the news and walk over to Niagara at the corner of 7th and A. It's about nine and the place is dead, the hipsters won't start crowding in till eleven.
The bartender is a guy named Billy. He's floated around the East Village working the bars for the last nine, ten years. Far as he knows, I'm a kind of local tough guy does work for people who need it; some arm bending and maybe some PI type stuff. While back I bounced for a couple months at a place called the Road-house, Billy was working there at the time and we got to know each other a bit.
He comes cruising down the bar. Good-looking guy, thirtyish, wearing pleated gabardine pants, two-tone loafers, and a silk Hawaiian print shirt. Got his hair slicked back and tattoos of dice and eight balls and bathing beauties on his forearms. And as greasy a greaser as Billy is, he is far from the greasiest that'll be cramming into this greaseball haven come midnight.
– Yo, Joe, whaddaya know?
He stops; his face freezes.
– Jesus fuck! Whad happen ta yer fuckin' face?
– Tanning bed, those things are dangerous.
He blinks, slowly, a grin starting to tug the corner of his mouth.
– Yeah?
– Yeah, industry doesn't want you to know, but there are almost as many tanning-bed-related deaths a year as highway deaths.
– No shit?
– I barely got out, man.
He takes another look at the severe scorch on my face and nods his head.
– Bull.
– Sunlamp?
He squints his eyes. I hold up my right hand in pledge. He shakes his head.
– Hey, man, ya done wanna tell me, ya done gotta, but hey, done fuck wit' me.
I've been working on Billy's accent since I met him, and still don't know where the hell he's from. He claims to be Queens born and bred, but he sounds more like a French Canadian educated in Boston.
I shrug my shoulders in surrender.
– Kitchen accident. No shit, I fell asleep with my head in the microwave.
He laughs and wipes at the bar with the rag he keeps tucked in his belt.
– Yeah, baked ya fuckin' brains too, bub. Whad ya drinkin?
Blood.
– 'Bout a bourbon? Whatever's on the rail is fine.
– Heaven Hill comin' up.
He grabs a rocks glass and fills it with whiskey while I look the place over. The Niagara is skinny around the bar then opens up into a big back room, but that area is kept roped off until the crowd builds up later and the cocktail waitress comes on. No sign of Philip. Billy plops the drink down in front of me.
– There ya go, Mr. Marlowe, one cheap bourbon onna house.
– Thanks. Seen Philip around?
– Naw, not yet. He'll be in later.
– You see him first, don't tell him I'm looking.
Billy nods his head.
– Sure thing. He owe ya money, something?
– Something.
– Well look, guy owes me money, two hundred fiddy and change. Get my coin outta him while yer shakin' 'im down, an I'll wipe yer tab.
– I ain't got a tab here, I pay for my drinks.