Sitting strains his trousers at the waist. Unable to get a hand in his pocket, he pulls out the blue and white handkerchief.
– She’s gone, Joe.
I grind the cherry of my cigarette between my fingers.
– Who’s gone, Chubby?
He wipes snot from his upper lip where it’s turned the dirt to mud.
– My girl, Joe. My daughter, Joe. My little girl. I can’t find her.
Sitting there in the ruined suit he wore here for grubby work, wiping at the dirt that’s given him a tear-streaked Kabuki face.
Saying it over and over, about his daughter.
Like it should mean something to me.
I maybe owe Chubby.
Was a time he did me a solid when I found myself on the wrong turf. Vouched for me. Put his name behind mine. Backed me when DJ Grave Digga, president of the Hood, would just as soon cut my windpipe out and blow a tune on it while I bleed all over him.
I did him back for it, some errands that qualified as grubby. Could be we’re all square.
Then again, could be, you put a hard eye on those books and they show an outstanding balance still due.
I maybe owe the man.
Still, I wanted to, I could just rip that page right out from the book. I have the blade, I have the gun. Where I come from, either one closes all accounts.
Better yet, neither one of these guys is infected. Neither one carries the Vyrus. They know enough to do a little business with us, but they’re both clean. Truss them up, find some place cool to stash them, they could last weeks. Fit as Dallas is, fat as Chubby is, they’d last. I could be better fed than I’ve been the whole last year.
I think about it.
But it’s just the tunnels talking to me.
It’s not me. Not really.
That’s Chubby Freeze there in the dirt. Crying about his lost daughter. Looking at me like I can help.
And I know there’s no question of how things lie between us. I ain’t gonna kill the man.
I look up at the crumbling ceiling. Think about the thousands of tons of stone and concrete hanging overhead. The City above. I think about the war I started up there. What would be waiting for me if I went up top, started poking around, showed my face.
Chubby is watching me, waiting.
I look at the cigarette between my fingers.
– I can’t help you, Chubby.
He spits into the dirty handkerchief and rubs it across his forehead, leaving a smear.
– Yes. Well. To be expected.
I shrug.
– In your line, a missing girl, you know plenty of people for something like that.
He raises his eyebrows, exhales, long and tired.
– Surely. The pornography business is rife with young ladies disappearing or wishing to be disappeared.
– You’ve had to find them before.
– Yes.
– You know people.
– Yes.
– You know everyone, Chubby.
A slight smile, the first since he came in from the dark.
– Yes, I do. And yet. And yet.
He waves the handkerchief at the decaying interior of the shanty.
– Here I am.
He nods at Dallas, still inert other than deep breathing.
– With my favorite young man.
He touches the handkerchief to each corner of his mouth, first one, then the other.
– Bearding the wounded lion in his den.
He gives the handkerchief a shake and a little flip and tucks it back in his breast pocket, fanning it perfectly, filthy or not.
– Why, I wonder, would I do such a thing? Take such a risk. When I could simply hire the detective of my choice.
I think about life with a sky overhead. Governed by the sun. The way we perform up there, shadow-puppet lives. Hiding what we really are. Hiding it from the world, from ourselves. Down here I’m almost myself. Almost my nature. Almost the predator the Vyrus would have me be. It comes easy. What’s up there always came hard. Even before I was infected.
This man, what he’s lost. Trying to find the lure that will tease me to the surface. Into the air. Where I might drown.
I clear my throat, dry as dust.
– I get it, Chubby. But it doesn’t change things. She’s found some trouble on my side of the street, gone lost with the infected, I can’t help that. It’s bad news for her, but it’s got nothing to do with me. Hell, I didn’t even know you had a daughter.
He dips a hand inside his jacket, draws out a photograph pinched between his index and middle fingers.
– Would you like to see her?
I raise a hand.
– It won’t change anything.
He offers the photo.
– I have a father’s vanity.
I don’t take the bait.
He gives it a little shake, dancing the line in front of my face.
So I look, to get it over with, to say no one last time, to make him leave, to be alone again.
He raises his shoulders.
– I won’t say I was shocked, a man in my line, as you say. I certainly know all there is to know about the birds and the bees. Not exactly disappointed either. As little time as I’ve spent with the girl, I can’t afford to disapprove of her choices, not if I want to have any kind of relationship with her. But still, a father has feelings about these things. At first I thought she’d come to me for the obvious reason. If that had been the case, I could have solved her problem in any number of ways. But she didn’t consider it a problem at all. The young today are so very different than we were, eh, Joe?
I’m still looking at the picture. Young, very young and pretty girl, Chubby’s beautiful gold eyes, otherwise she must take after her mother. Slender limbs and face, but round in the middle. Say about seven months round.
Chubby nods.
– It makes a difference, Joe?
I don’t say anything.
He nods again.
– Evie said it would make all the difference to you.
Chubby knows everyone.
He knows a one-armed barber named Percy. Percy’s got a bad case of being a Vampyre. Runs with the Hood. One of Grave Digga’s people. How most people know him. But he runs sideways too, like most people deep in this life, runs connected in ways that can’t be seen.
Percy is Enclave.
He doesn’t hole up with the rest of them in that warehouse they keep downtown. Starving themselves, letting themselves be warped by the hunger of the Vyrus, striving for some kind of transmutation no one but them understands. Even so, he’s Enclave going way back. Way I gather, some years back when the Hood was coming together under the original man, Luther X, Percy got inspired. Felt the color of his skin more than the content of his blood. Left Enclave turf, split uptown. But like a man who left the church to fight a war on foreign soil for reasons that have nothing to do with his god, he can’t get the stink of religion off himself. Once Enclave, always Enclave. And he knows some things about what goes on with them, what goes down in their warehouse.
I know a little about what goes on in that place, myself.
I know a little about some of the people in that place.
Evie.
Girl with my jacket. Which is only right. She gave it to me.
Chubby’s tied both his handkerchiefs together so he can put them around Dallas’s head. Dallas himself is too fuzzy to get his fingers to tie the knot themselves. But not so fuzzy that he doesn’t remember who threw the concrete at him and put a gash in his forehead that is most definitely going to fiddle with his prettiness. He’s sitting on the ground, trying to throw me nasty looks, but his eyes keep going crossways, ruining the effect.
Chubby stands behind him, having gotten to his feet with just a little help, arranging the makeshift bandage so that it doesn’t pinch the boy’s ears.
– Her mother was a contract player from several years ago. When we still worked in VHS. The dark ages. Before instant gratification became imperative. To think porno was once a communal event. Stag parties. Adult theaters. Do you remember Times Square, Joe? Forty-second Street? The Deuce?
I remember the Deuce. The block of Forty-second between Seventh and Eighth. Wall-to-wall peeps, skin shops, XXX marquees. I remember being thirteen, things so loose back then I didn’t even have to pretend I was sneaking in, just put my money on the counter. Setting up shop in the back row. Hand jobs, five bucks a pop. Business overhead was a jar of Vaseline and a pack of Handi Wipes. Got myself through a whole summer of squatting that way. Somewhere in there was a bust, passed back to Child Services, another foster home. Back out the door after a few weeks. Now the Deuce is franchised end to end. I haven’t been there in years, it’s off my turf, but I’ve seen the pictures.