Even before the subway came to a full stop at the Willets Point station, the chants of “Let’s Go Mets!” could be heard. When the doors opened, everyone in the car poured out onto the elevated platform and made their way to one of the metal stairways, freshly painted a puke-green color. I was right behind Jack as we left the car. As distant and formal as when I first addressed him, he turned and said, “Nice speaking with you. Enjoy the game.” He headed off toward the stairs and began to blend into the crowd, anxious to meet his friend.
I yelled at him over the head of a father holding the hand of his young son: “Jack, wait up! Let me give you my card and I definitely want to get yours.”
He reluctantly stopped, letting people pass him to get to the staircase. We stood by a large green garbage can so we would be out of the way. He pulled a thin gold case out of his pocket to take out a crème-colored business card. I fumbled with a frayed leather case that dropped between my feet. I squatted down to pick it up, watching Jack stare at the diminishing crowd on the platform and impatiently tapping the business card against his thigh. I also removed the ice pick that was taped to the inside of my right calf and concealed it under my sleeve. The platform was now empty except for the stragglers at the top of the staircases. A quick glance across the tracks at the Manhattan-bound platform found only a teenaged couple too busy making out to notice a pair of middle-aged guys exchanging business cards.
Jack again said goodbye and turned to walk away. But he stopped beside one of the black wooden benches on the platform when he saw that the name of his boss, the name of his friend’s father, was printed on the business card I had given him.
I could imagine the confused look on his face as the handle of the ice pick slipped down into my hand. I focused on my target. There is a small indentation at the base of the skull, just below the Velcro strap of a baseball cap and aligned, in this case, with a cartoon pair of red socks. A blade thrust into this depression will sever the spinal cord from the brain. Your muscles go limp so you cannot run away. You cannot breathe so you cannot cry for help. You go into shock as your blood pressure drops to nothing. You become unconscious with barely another thought. Death is almost immediate if an expert wields the ice pick. I am an expert.
I caught him as he began to fall like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I placed him on the black bench, arranging the body so that the Mets fans exiting the next trains would think that he was just waiting to board. I took his wallet, card case, and BlackBerry so that the cops would have the always popular and distracting motive of robbery to think about. I put the Post from my back pocket in his lap so that Jack appeared to be reading the sports page with Pedro on the cover. I left the ice pick there with no prints and no trail back to me. I was halfway down the stairs before the next train pulled in.
When I came up on the Manhattan side of the platform, the young couple were still at it hot and heavy and wouldn’t have noticed me if I had shot Jack with a.45. Standing in the evening breeze, I could see the body on the bench. The latest trainload of fans was hurrying down the puke-green stairs to get to the game. No one was giving him a second look. The starting lineups were about to be announced.
Jack’s mistake was thinking with the head between his legs, not the one on his shoulders. People with assets worth in excess of eight figures don’t care who or what you fuck so long as you are discreet. When the details of your sex life appear on the disapproving lips of some dried-up matron whose name is in the Social Register, or in a blind item in a sordid tabloid gossip page, those people might take their assets to another investment boutique. But that’s just money. There is always more money to be made somewhere.
It becomes trouble when whispers and innuendos reach the ears of your boss. It becomes real trouble when, after a little snooping and a little window peeping, he learns you are screwing his college freshman son. It becomes big trouble when you tell your boss that you are the only thing that keeps his firm from being a comical relic on The Street and that, if he continues to interfere in your personal life, you will take his business and his son. Blood and money are very personal. That’s when, through a middleman or a cutout or a guy who knows a guy, I get a call.
But who knows? Maybe it wasn’t a mistake to fall for the kid. If they had baseball in common, that would have been plenty for Jack. His error was not how he used his mouth with the kid, but opening his mouth to the father. It was the blow-up, not the blowjobs. My mother often said: Be careful because a big mouth will always get you in trouble.
A Manhattan-bound local pulled in and I got on. Below me, a young man waited outside of Shea Stadium with two tickets for tonight’s game that wouldn’t be used. Probably wearing a brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.
Jenny put a Guinness in front of me while NY1 played on the plasma screen over the wooden bar at my local Woodside pub. I could see some reporter standing with Shea in the background, but with the sound low and the jukebox blaring Bono, I couldn’t hear anything. Because it was the top of the hour, I figured he was not reporting on the outcome of the game.
“Can you believe it?” Jenny said. “They had this story on before. Some poor guy is going to a ballgame and gets stabbed to death. You can’t ride the subway anymore without some wacko trying to kill you with a knife. First that kid from Texas gets stabbed in the chest. And I get the creeps just thinking about that poor guy and the handsaw. I’m taking buses everywhere from now on.”
“More importantly, love, did the Mets win?”
She slapped my hand playfully. “You’re bad.” She walked to the other end of the bar where a couple was signaling for a refill.
Yes, tonight I think I am.
Baggage claim
by Patricia King
JFK Airport
Read. Just keep reading. She had to try to lose herself in the story. Let it block out the shaking and shuttering. She gripped the book with sweating hands. She rubbed her knee. There was no way in this cramped space to ease the throbbing.
The man in the seat next to her was sleeping. He had changed places with a Hasid who had refused to sit next to a woman. When this new guy first sat down, he had scared her. He looked like an Arab. His pockmarked skin gave him a sinister appearance, and she had tried not to think of him in such a prejudiced way. He had a nice smile. But hijackers could smile.
“Are you going home or do you live in the UK?” She had worked up her courage to question him while she waited behind him in line for the loo. She kept saying “loo” now, after a week with the people in the London office.
“Home,” he had said. That smile again. It did look kind of threatening. “I’m from the Bronx, and I can’t wait to get back.”
The accent was unmistakable. Bronx, for sure. He was probably Puerto Rican. “Me too. Riverdale.” She tried to smile back at him. The last word came out sounding apologetic. People from the real Bronx hated Riverdale; she was sure of that. It shamed her to have suspected him. He seemed so benign now. He could be a victim, not a terrorist.
The plane touched down with a jolt that woke him.
She wiped her palms on the rough fabric of the seat. Rivulets of rain ran over the window glass.
“Welcome to JFK,” an intimate and humorous voice began over the loudspeaker. “If I hadn’t just spent nearly eight hours cavorting with all of you on this plane, I would think we were still in London, given this gloomy weather.”