Brainquake (8 page)

Paul seized his gun, heard the flute drowning out more gunshots and men yelling. The brainquake hit. It lasted in pink for seven seconds. Paul saw a crazy man firing into a crowd of people and then the man was shot dead by a cop. In his rear-view mirror Paul saw two cops lifting the dead pirate out of the blue sedan. Paul waited twenty minutes for the traffic to start again, parked his van in the regular spot, made the delivery to the judge in the men’s room. From a corridor phone booth in the building, Paul phoned the Boss and reported what happened.

“Did you get a photo of the dead pirate?”

“He had no face, Boss.”

He gave her the license number of the blue sedan instead.

* * *

In his sixth year as a bagman he discovered a new emotion.

He was headed to a night drop only a short walk from his shack. Fireworks were exploding in the sky. Battery Park was jammed. People were celebrating the hundredth birthday of the Statue of Liberty. Paul used an alley packed with cars, headed toward his drop’s building. A big dog appeared, trotted beside him sniffing his bag.

There was a gunshot as people cheered the American flag bursting in red, white and blue lights. The dog yelped. Fell. Paul ducked behind the dead dog. Paul’s eyes were glued on the darkness, watching for the second burst. It came. Paul fired three times.

Paul ran toward the pirate in the darkness, lit sporadically by flares exploding in the sky. He frisked the body for ID, found none, took his camera from his pocket and grabbed a shot of the young dead face.

Then Paul went on toward the building. He dreaded to go in—to go up. He feared heights. Always did on this drop. He went in, pushed the button. The silent ascent of the elevator sucked the wind out of him.

He got off at the fortieth floor, wondering when the pirate had spotted him around Battery Park. Had he been waiting for Paul? How did he know this shortcut?

The elevator opened and he went down the long corridor to the back door of the drop, where a man in a tuxedo was waiting for him.

The man led Paul into a huge penthouse and up a flight of stairs to an office that had no lights on inside. Through a big window Paul saw that a party was on, on the building’s roof. The sky burst with more colors. He saw the illuminated Statue of Liberty and hundreds of boats. Waiters carried trays of champagne glasses. There were other men in tuxedos. Women in evening dresses. A hired band on the roof played the national anthem.

The guests were from different countries, many dressed in their national garb. White. Black. Oriental. Paul had no idea, then, that they were representatives of the international cartels of dope trafficking and money laundering.

Laser beams on the Statue of Liberty were blinding as the guests sang along with the
Star-Spangled Banner
while Paul transferred $15 million in cash from his bag into the open fat briefcase held by the drop on the desk.

The next morning the Boss was staring at the photo Paul had taken, and Paul was sick.

He had killed a boy. The new emotion made him queasy. He felt guilt for the first time in his life.

The Boss saw that emotion, not in his face but in the way he shook. She gave him a drink of water that he gulped down. It didn’t help.

“You shouldn’t feel bad about it, Paul. That thirteen-year-old bastard was an addict with a record. Two years ago he bashed his mother, busted her skull for a few bucks in her purse. They put him in a reformatory, but he broke out, and on the way out smashed in the head of a cop in a squad car with a brick. The gun he shot at you with? Was the cop’s gun. Only reason he missed hitting you was probably because he needed a fix, his hands were shaking so he hit the dog instead. The little bastard didn’t know what you were carrying, he was just looking for anyone he could get a few bucks off, and he would gladly have killed you for those few bucks. You’re guilty of nothing, Paul. You killed an animal, in self-defense.”

It took Paul years to overcome that guilt.

* * *

In ten years Paul had become a seasoned bagman. Sometimes the Boss would briefly invade his cocoon with talk. It was okay. He liked her. She was warm. She never tampered with his cocoon after working hours. They never talked about Barney.

For ten years Paul had read a book every four days, and he kept writing poems. For ten years he stood above the fray of the business that paid him. He was not a player. He was just a mailman. He never cared where the money came from or to whom he delivered it or if he carried five thousand or five million or fifty million in cash.

He’d never again felt guilt about the job.

U.S. mailmen carried dirty money and they slept well. Workers in munitions plants made war money and they slept well. Politicians, bankers, and businessmen made dirty money and they slept well. Judges, lawyers, cops, doctors, dentists made dirty money and they slept well.

Paul slept well every night in his Battery shack, despite the noise of rutting cats whining for relief in the decayed graveyard behind the shack.

But for the last two months Paul hadn’t been able to sleep because of Ivory Face.

The Boss was placing stacks in his bag. “I know what happened, Paul. You thought he’d open your brain with a buzz saw so you sat down in Central Park to work up your courage and got caught in that riot.” She glanced up at his bandaged bruises and torn clothes. “You’re very lucky. Thirty people were seriously injured, they’re not out of the hospital yet. You’re tougher than they are.” She put a gentle hand on his arm. “I alerted Johnson you’ll be late. Still feel you can make the drop?”

Paul nodded.

“I phoned Dr. Adson when you didn’t show up, made an appointment same time tomorrow.”

Paul nodded. She closed the bag. Paul picked it up.

“What did you drive to Johnson last week?”

“Motorcycle.”

“Use your taxi.” The Boss waited a moment. “Did you get a whiff of poppy in his darkroom last week?”

Paul shook his head.

“A pirate’s loose, Paul. A bagman’s dead.”

Paul left.

The moon was over Manhattan. Paul drove slowly, hoping that Ivory Face wouldn’t move to another place. He’d have trouble finding her. He didn’t think she’d go pushing the carriage in the park again for a long time—if ever.

He glanced at the gun on his seat. Then at the rear-view mirror. He turned on the radio, got the news.

“
…spokesperson reports the police are investigating partial fingerprints found on the baby carriage and the concealed gun…
”

Headlights were tailing him, keeping the same distance. Paul maintained the same speed, turned the next corner.

Paul saw the headlights behind him turning the corner, maintaining the same distance.

“
…In a statement, Lieutenant Zara indicated that Michelle Troy was being offered police protection….
”

Paul increased his speed. So did the car, maintaining the same distance.

Michelle Troy.

So Ivory Face now had a name.

Paul’s taxi whipped into a familiar alley barricaded with wooden sawhorses topped with red reflectors. He smashed through them. Didn’t bother weaving to avoid a bullet—Paul knew the pirate wouldn’t chance hitting the gas tank and losing the bag in flames. The pirate’s car kept the same distance.

“…
Dr. Todd McCarthy of the Medical Examiner’s Office said the baby suffered no internal injuries…
”

The taxi jackhammered over exposed sewer pipes. Paul battled to keep control. The pirate car stayed on him, closing the distance between them. The taxi erupted from the alley and almost crashed into the water truck moving slowly up the street. The pavement was wet. The taxi slid sideways, brushing gas pumps at a corner gas station.

Paul saw the pirate car skid into a pump.

The taxi shook as the explosion spewed shards of glass. Paul pulled into a side street, stopped as he heard the flute playing. The last of the newsman’s words were drowned out by the brainquake.

When the second pump exploded it was in pink. Paul saw Ivory Face running toward him, naked, and throwing the crying baby into his headlights.

His head resting on the steering wheel. Smoke drifted past Paul. The smoke was no longer pink. Through the pain in his head he heard sirens. Real sirens. Not a mirage.

It took Paul ten minutes to get to the drop, bypassing streets police and fire trucks were using. Paul finally approached Johnson’s shop. The window was dark except for a buzzing neon sign selling
PASSPORT PHOTOS
and two little spotlights aimed at a blowup of a baby and one of a wedding couple.

Parking in the alley behind the aging gray pickup that bore the words
JOHNSON’S PHOTO STUDIO
, Paul got out with his bag, glanced down the long, deserted area. Sirens still blaring, but in the distance. A cat sniffing trash cans behind the butcher shop next door to Johnson’s.

Through the barred back-door window, in a thin streak of light coming from the open door of the backroom’s small fridge, he saw Johnson sprawled on the floor. One hand was still in the fridge. His arm kept the door from closing.

Removing a loose brick from the wall, Paul took out the key, unlocked the door, went in, closed the door, pulled the blind down, checked the body. Johnson was still alive. Paul swiftly pulled out the tray of ice cubes, pulled down Johnson’s trousers and shorts, packed ice cubes on Johnson’s balls, pulled out a bottle of milk, poured it down Johnson’s throat. Johnson coughed, gagged.

Paul spotted the pipe on the floor, smashed it with his foot, flushed the ball of gummy opium down the toilet. Johnson opened his bleary eyes, watched Paul transfer the bundles of cash into a big cardboard box labeled
PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER
. Paul put the cover back on the box, phoned the Boss.

“Mail delivered. Pirate, but he crashed.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Pirate dead?”

“Yes.

“Get a photo of him?”

“Cremated.”

“His wheels, too?”

“Yes.”

“Is Johnson back on opium?”

“Drinking milk.”

“Don’t forget Dr. Adson in the morning. Get some sleep. Good night, Paul.”

Paul put the phone down, closed his bag.

“I owe you again, Paul,” Johnson mumbled.

Paul left. Johnson packed more ice cubes on his balls.

Paul’s headlights swept past a big cat caterwauling in the graveyard. His beams flooded the clapboard shed as he drove in, switched off the motor. He sat and thought about his attack.

His father’s dying words, “Red explosion,” came back to him, and an icicle slowly ran through him. In this last brainquake, the pink smoke did look a little red.

Paul never had the chance to ask his father how red that explosion was. It could’ve been light red or blood red.

“The race was fixed against us, Paul,” Barney once said when he learned of Paul’s pink brainquakes. “Nobody can climb into our brain and repair the damage.”

The caterwauling got louder. It hurt inside his head, but he knew it wasn’t the noise. It was that red in pink, screaming that his sickness was getting worse. He climbed out of the taxi with his empty bag and loaded gun and slowly headed toward the shack.

Paul walked past the four sentries that guarded the shack, remembered the way Barney had told him about them when he was small…

A pile of shattered stone. “
Meet Backfire, Paul. One of the guards. That rubble was under cannons that blew up their own gun crews in the American Revolution.
”

A pile of rotted beams over a deep pit.

“
Rathole is the second guard, Paul. In that pit the first gangs of New York used to hide.
”

Paul turned toward the half-collapsed warehouse beside the shack.

“
Hijack is the third guard, Paul. Your grandfather used to stock his hijacked bootlegged whiskey in that warehouse.
”

Paul’s eyes shifted to the remains of the graveyard.

“
Skullyard is the fourth guard, Paul. Used to be a very popular cemetery only people with dough could afford. It died when Thomas Jefferson got to be President.
”

Paul had learned to find his way home by those guards. He felt safe surrounded by them.

Safe from the thousands of window lights of skyscrapers where night workers were cleaning up thousands of offices and vacuuming thousands of carpets and waxing thousands of corridors in the tallest giants in the world. They weren’t tall enough to stop the moonlight from hitting the lawn chair on the little square of dirt behind the shack. He sat down by the small table. On it, a half-filled bottle of orange soda was attacked by flies and mosquitoes. Next to the bottle was Paul’s pad and pencil.

He remembered one day when he was nine his father sitting him down in the chair and telling him that although they owned the lot and shack, inherited from his grandpa, now some people were talking about buying it to put up another one of those giant buildings. His father knew nobody in City Hall to stop them from forcing him to sell. Their shack stood in the way of big business’ progress.

Paul remembered the sickness that filled him. His father knew the shack was Paul’s castaway hut, the lot his island, the weeds his trees, the skyscrapers his clouds. His mother was already sick by then. Where would they move?

In the end, the builders didn’t build. The seventies came, and the city’s brush with bankruptcy, and his mother died, and then his father, and here he was. Nobody had ever come to bother them again about buying the lot.

Paul carried his bag and gun into the shack, placed them on the table in the small living room, went into the bathroom, turned on the light. In the mirror, he stared at his bandaged face, his torn clothes, and wondered if he’d ever see Michelle Troy again. His fingers fumbled as he undressed. Exhausted, he was asleep in a minute.

“So you drive a cab, Paul? Jesus.” Dr. Adson held his cigar above the X-ray of a brain on his desk. “If I pushed a hack, I’d blow my stack in a week.”

Paul was waiting for the long ash to drop on the X-ray.

“You picked a good word for your sickness,” Dr. Adson went on. “Brainquake’s a pretty fair description for your attacks. Like an earthquake, only in there.” He tapped his own skull.