8:47 p.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street.
He flexes and unflexes his hands, trying to give them warmth. He feels something ebbing away in him, like a tide going out on a seashore. He gathers himself. Soon all the shithead rich guys will come out. Then…
Across the street, off on the right, a short dark woman eases out of a side door next to some kind of clothing store. Head down. Hat. Walking fast on short legs. And he knows who she is. The Mexican woman who got the guys to carry him into that church. Goo-add-a-luppy. Where it was warm. Her God was a warm God. Not like some of the others. The goddamned Christians back home that want everybody to suffer, except themselves.
For a moment, he thinks about going after her. To that church.
But tells himself: Stay here. This is where it’s at. Where the payback comes.
Over on the left of the front door, there’s an open shed, with people smoking and bullshitting while the snow falls. Christ: There’s even an old lady there, tall and skinny and smoking. Beside her, talking on a cell phone, he sees one young woman who looks like Wendy before she got fat. Could she be his lost wife? Nah. Never. Maybe I should track Wendy down. He wonders where she is and whether little Flora is with her and whether it’s snowing there too. He loved her once. Now he has trouble remembering her face. That fat broad smoking over there? Maybe she’s Wendy.
Nah, he thinks. She couldn’t find her way to New York with a tour guide. She’s somewhere in the sun. Thinking about the guy she’s meeting later. The guy whose joint she’ll cop before the night’s over.
He removes a glove and caresses the MAC-10. Cold. Very cold.
Go, he whispers. To the warmth.
Go.
He doesn’t move.
8:48 p.m. Helen Loomis. Outside Aladdin’s Lamp.
She hasn’t been this cold in years. Where was it? In Gstaad that time, with Willie? He was skiing. She stayed in the bar. The Rolling Stones were on TV. Black-and-white. Some big European music contest. They sang “Satisfaction.” That long ago. And where is Sam? The snow must have the streets screwed up. Can’t feel my feet. I’m still here, Sam. Watching the corner, like you said. Looking at the High Line, which I’ve never visited. The young guys from the paper all inside. Why’d I listen to them? Why’d I come here? An old bag like me?
Across the street, she sees homeless guys. Faceless. Bulky. Carved from black ice. Like the figures in the painting at the top of the stairs inside. Nobody can tell them to go home. What home? Some shelter that smells like piss? She thinks: At least I got whiskey in me. Too much. One more, I’m legless.
Where’s Sam? He always keeps his word. Why’d I call him? To say a proper good-bye, I guess. He’ll be gone in a day or two. Somewhere. Yeah. Wind coming hard now. From New Jersey. Of course. Or Siberia. Blowing snow off the High Line.
She takes out her cigarette pack. Pops one loose. Two left. Lights it with the one she’s smoking. Thinks she hears sirens. Fire engines, maybe. Christ, I’m cold.
8:49 p.m. Bobby Fonseca. Aladdin’s Lamp.
His back is to the bar. He sips a beer. Thinking: Still here. Woozy. The guys coming on to different women, using their dangling blue press cards as conversation pieces. Helen out for a smoke or something. Or maybe gone, the way Barney Weiss split after fifteen minutes in the snow. My brain mushed from the music, the deejay dressed like Ali Baba, waving his hands from the balcony. Where’s his scimitar? No scimitars in Brownsville. The deejay’s to the left of the VIP party. Some are leaving now, in coats, hats, and scarves. Their limos must have a foot of snow on the rooftops. Shit: here’s that small broad again. Too much lipstick. Chewing gum.
— Sure you don’t wanna dance, big boy?
— Not tonight. I’m in mourning, babe.
— In this joint?
She laughs and moves into the thick crowd. Tall women made taller by high spiked heels. Women with impossible breasts. Women giggling, bursting into tequila laughter. The guys all in heat. Some of them sweating. Others talking into female ears. Fonseca thinks: I can almost reach out and grab the lies out of the air. He hopes he can see Victoria Collins before the night is over. Flashes on her thighs. Her wet hair. The feel of her skin.
And across the room, beyond the dancers, he sees Freddie Wheeler again.
Makes Wheeler from some story he read months ago in Wired. His ferrety face. Coat under his arm. Wheeler has seen Fonseca too. He starts pushing through the crowd. Heading to the left door.
Fonseca sets down his beer bottle and goes after Wheeler.
— Hey, you! he shouts in the din. Wheeler!
Wheeler stops as Fonseca reaches him. The two of them moving out the left door to the platform. The snow heavy. Wheeler looking at the photographers and beyond.
— What’s your problem, man? Wheeler says, turning to face Fonseca. Making a sliver of his mouth.
— You, Fonseca says. And the evil crap you print each day, all of it wrong.
— I’m a reporter.
He lifts Fonseca’s blue press card with thumb and forefinger. Tugs it. Face full of contempt.
— And this? This tells the world you are a fucking loser, kid. You and Briscoe and all the other—
Then Fonseca clocks him. Wheeler goes down on his back, his eyes blinking, his jaw moving.
— Get up, you asshole!
Fonseca’s over him.
And then the black bouncer is there.
— Hey, hey, none of that shit now, he yells.
He shoves Fonseca toward the smoking deck. Flashes from cameras. Shouts. And here comes the upstairs bouncer. The fat white guy. He lifts Wheeler, swings him in a half circle, and hurls him into the crowd of camera people. Hitting bodies and heads. Umbrellas go airborne. Shouts of protest and shock. The black bouncer tries to intervene, but the white bouncer moves around him, shoves Fonseca, then grabs him by collar and ass and heaves him toward the smoking shed. Fonseca slams into Helen Loomis and she falls. The ashtray goes over too, spilling butts and sand across the deck. The snow is almost horizontal.
8:51 p.m. Malik Shahid. Fourteenth Street.
Now. He runs, slipping on the cobblestones, but not falling. A wave of photographers surges left to photograph the white dude in the crowd in the street. Still down. Trying to get up through the mass of legs. Off on the side of the platform another white guy, younger, stunned and rubbery.
Nobody pays attention to Malik.
End run, he thinks. Go.
He is up the steps, feeling stronger now than he has ever been before. He rips away the velvet rope, toppling the minaret poles, and he reaches the doors. The right door is ajar about a foot. Leading to the dark sinful rooms. From the snowy distance, the muffled sound of a siren.
Then Malik is into the devil’s workshop, into the whoring crowd, stopping, drawing the pistol from his trouser belt. Turns behind him. Kicks the door shut.
— Stop! Every fuckin’ one of you! he shouts.
Malik’s right arm is straight out. He rotates the.38 with a circular wrist movement, left, to the dance floor, right to the bar, then up the stairs. People at the top. Fancy clothes. Wide eyes. Turns behind him again. Seven or eight people at the doors. None of them move. All eyes on the gun. The room suddenly resembles a still photograph.
— You move, I shoot you!
He starts up the stairs. Three steps. Four. Then he opens his jacket.