Family emergency, I explained.
In fifteen minutes I was traveling up Third Avenue. The car slithered, it squeezed, it maneuvered its way excruciatingly through an obstacle course of stationary refrigeration trucks, FedEx vehicles, moving vans, commuter buses, taxis, and gypsy cabs.
But maybe we weren’t moving as slowly as I thought — maybe I was simply picturing what Vasquez was going to do to Lucinda and thinking that I couldn’t let it happen again, not twice in one lifetime. It seemed that I’d look up at a street sign — 64th Street, for instance — and five minutes later I’d still be looking at the same sign.
Halfway through the ride, I realized the hand that was holding my briefcase had gone numb. I was gripping the handle so tightly, my knuckles had taken on the color of burnt wood — ash white. And I remembered a game Anna used to play with me, a kind of parlor trick — asking me to hold her forefinger in my fist and squeeze for five minutes, not a second less, and then release, always giggling as I tried to open my now paralyzed fingers. That was the way I felt now — not just my hands, but all of me: paralyzed. The way I’d felt back in that chair in the Fairfax Hotel. The woman I’d fallen in love with being raped not five feet from me, and I like a victim of sleeping sickness, able to perform all the functions of life save one. To act.
Eventually, the tonier sections of the East Side fell away. Boutiques, handbag stores, and food emporiums turned into thrift shops and bodegas as more and more Spanish words began showing up on passing storefronts.
The apartment building was on 121st Street between First and Second Avenues.
It was surrounded by a check-cashing place, a hairdresser, a corner bodega, and two burned-out buildings. A man selling roasted chestnuts and what looked like unpeeled ears of corn had set up shop in the middle of the block. Another man who looked suspiciously like a drug dealer was checking his beeper and talking into a fancy-looking cellular phone in front of the building.
I asked the car to wait for me. The driver didn’t seem very happy with the idea, but he had the kind of job where you couldn’t exactly say no.
“I may have to circle,” he said.
I didn’t answer him — I was staring at the building and wondering if I could make it through the door. There were three men loitering in the entranceway, and none of the three looked like anyone you’d ask for directions. They looked like three-fifths of a police lineup, men you don’t put your hand out to unless it contains your wallet.
And I was carrying more than my wallet today; I was carrying my wallet plus one hundred thousand dollars.
As soon as I eased myself out of the car, I heard the click of the door locks. You're on your own, they said. And I was; and on 121st Street between First and Second Avenues, I was pretty much the center of attention, too. I imagined that Lincoln Town Cars made very few stops here, as did well-dressed white men carrying expensive leather briefcases. The chestnut seller, the drug dealer, the three men guarding the entranceway of building number 435, all were looking at me like a hostile audience demanding something entertaining.
I didn’t know whether to run up the steps like a man in a hurry or walk up the steps like a man on a stroll, and I ended up somewhere in between — a man who’s not quite sure where he’s going but is still anxious to get there. When I reached the landing where the cracked asphalt was liberally scribbled with chalk and spray paint (“Sandi es mi Mami; Toni y Mali . . .”), I ended up acknowledging the three doormen the way most New Yorkers acknowledge anyone: I didn’t. I kept my eyes averted — on the doorstep, an island of worn tire tread separating brown cement from curled yellow linoleum.
“Hey . . .”
One of the men had said something to me. I was hoping the man had been addressing one of his friends, but I was pretty sure he’d been talking to me. A man wearing oversize yellow basketball sneakers and dress pants — all that I could actually see of him, since I had my eyes trained down by my feet.
I looked up into a middle-aged Spanish face that might have been okay behind the counter at McDonald’s, but not in the middle of Spanish Harlem with one hundred thousand dollars sitting in my briefcase. Besides, the face looked upset with me, as if I’d just complained about the Happy Meal having no French fries in it, and where exactly was the pickle on my burger?
I kept moving, continued to make like a halfback in the opposing secondary as I kept those legs pumping. Just about through the door, too — since the door was permanently half-ajar and offered no resistance.
“Whereyou going?”
The same man as before, speaking in heavily accented English, with the emphasis on you, the intonation important here, since I might’ve thought the man was being helpful otherwise: Tell me where you’re going and maybe I can help direct you there . No — the man was questioning my very validity for being there.
“Vasquez,” I said. The first thing that entered my head, besides Help . If you gave a name, it sounded aboveboard. Maybe they knew that name, and maybe they wouldn’t want to fuck with it. And maybe even if they didn’t know that name — Vasquez, who’s that? — they’d still be leery of poaching in someone else’s territory. A man alone was fair game, but when he wasn’t alone, who knew?
Anyway, it worked.
I kept walking through the doorway, and they didn’t stop me. There was no elevator, of course; I took the steps two at a time. Lucinda was waiting for me — He’s going to hurt me, Charles. Maybe the end was waiting for me, too.
The stairway smelled of bodily fluids: piss and semen and blood. I slipped on a banana peel that turned out to be a used condom and nearly fell down the stairs. I could hear ghostly laughter coming from somewhere I couldn’t see, the kind of laughter that might be funny or might not be. It was impossible to tell.
When I knocked on the door, Vasquez opened it. I got one word out before I was dragged in and slammed up against the wall. He slapped me across the face. I tasted blood. I dropped the briefcase onto the floor and tried to cover up. He slapped me again. And again. I said, “Stop it — I have it, there. . . there.” He kept slapping me, open-handed wallops that sneaked in between my upraised arms.
And then, suddenly, he stopped.
He dropped his arm, uncurled his fist, took a deep breath and then another. He shook his head; he exhaled. And when he finally spoke, he sounded almost normal. As if he’d just needed to vent his anger a little bit before coming back to himself.
“Shit,” he said, as if he were saying glad that’s over with. “Shit.” Then:
“You got the money?”
I was breathing too fast, like an asthmatic searching for air. My face stung where Vasquez had slapped it. But I managed to point to the floor. To the briefcase. The apartment had at least two rooms, I thought — I could hear someone from the room next door. A soft sniffling.
“Where is she?” I said, but my lip was swollen and I sounded like someone else.
Vasquez ignored me. He was opening the briefcase and turning it upside down, watching as stacks of hundred-dollar bills slithered across the floor.
“Good boy,” Vasquez said, the way you might to a dog.
I could hear her clearly now from the next room. The apartment — what I could see of it — had almost no furniture. The walls were streaked with dirt and scarred with cigarette burns. They were painted the color of yolk.
I said: “I want to see her.”
“Go ahead,” Vasquez said.
I walked through the half-open door, which led to the rest of the apartment. The room was dark, the window shades pulled down. Still, I could make out a chair against the back wall. I could see who was sitting on that chair.