Joe Pitt 1 - Already Dead (8 page)

The scents are slightly faded, but essentially unchanged except for the additions of
Hurley's and Tom's. The absences I had been so focused on when I got coldcocked have been
lost as the other odors have drifted and diffused within the room. But the musk is still
there, that disturbing sweaty aroma with its hint of sex and desiccation. But I'm not here
for that. I'm here for the girl.

I leave the room and hunt around until I find a door leading down to the basement. It's
black down there. I close my eyes tight and feel my pupils expand in response to the lack
of light. I open my eyes and walk down the stairs into the complicated shadows below.

The smells are different here. Dust and damp concrete dominate with an undertone of
heating oil, and rank human sweat laced throughout. A thin stream of light trickles in
from the door above. Rough shapes emerge from the gloom. I skirt a pile of rotting
cardboard boxes stuffed with molding textbooks, turn a corner and pass the open door of
what was once the boiler room from which the oil smell creeps out. There are human smells
here in thick, stale profusion. Some may be recent, but the chaos of odor keeps me from
sorting them. The sweat stink I smelled on the stairs intensifies as I open a door into
what used to be the boys' locker room. Most of the lockers have been removed, but in a
corner I make out a dingy pile of what smells like cast-off jockstraps.

I would prefer not to announce myself to anyone lurking down here, but I'm going to have
to use some light or this will take all night. From my pocket I pull a tiny Maglite. I
close my eyes and switch the flashlight on, twisting the barrel until I know the light has
reached its softest focus, and then opening my eyes to little slits. The illumination is
sparse and gloomy at best, but to me it might as well be a flood lamp. I hold the light
out away from my body so that anyone who might want to take a shot at me will blow my hand
off instead of putting one in my belly.

With some visual cues to attach the smells to, it becomes easier to sort the old ones from
the new. The gym smells of the boys' locker room get parsed from newer odors. I follow
those fresher traces and find an abandoned shooting gallery in a storage room half-filled
with broken desks.

The floor is scattered with used needles, candy bar wrappers, empty crack vials and sheets
of flattened cardboard that have been used for mattresses. The scents here are fresher
than those in the locker room. Chemical tang of heroin and crack, piss and crap in a
corner, cheap tobacco from generic brand cigarettes, and dry blood. It's spattered on the
floor in a couple spots, but that's not too unusual in a shooting gallery. The cop smells
are here as well. They must have been down here when they searched the building. But
something else. Hell, it's in here, too. I trace it to one of the cardboard mattresses:
that rotting sex-musk from the goth shambler. Stronger here, as if some of the stains on
the cardboard might be sexual in origin. As if this was the place where the living fucked
the dead.

I catch a glimpse of something on the back of the door; I push it closed. It's a Cure
poster. I take a closer look at the walls, and in a couple places I find tacks with the
corners of torn-off posters still trapped beneath. I rummage in some crumpled paper
stuffed into a bag that someone had been using as a pillow, and come up with a couple more
tattered posters. The Dead. Morrissey. That tears it. Your average junkies and zombies
aren't too big on interior decorating. Figure this was the same room the Horde girl and
her friends were squatting in last year. After they got moved out, the junkies moved in.

I take another look at the blood. Couple days, maybe a week old. This could be where the
goth shambler infected the fashion junkies she was with. Hard to say. Maybe she came down
here, knew it as a hangout for squatters and campers and came here with some dull message
in her brain telling her she could get food here. Maybe the junkies found her here and
raped her and . . . No, it doesn't float, neither of them were carrying that smell. But
something happened here. Something worse than the usual. And in a place like this the
usual is pretty lucking bad.

Not that any of it gets me any closer to the carrier. Or the Horde girl.

Done with the school, I walk over to Tompkins and dig up Leprosy. He's hanging out in the
corridor of benches claimed by the squatters. It runs between the kiddy park and the chess
tables where most of the junkies hang out. He sees me and starts to bark at me almost
before his dog does.

Dogs are amazing creatures, they can sense things, smell things that people never will.
But they can't smell the Vyrus inside me, and Leprosy's dog can't smell shit. His nose is
all smashed up from getting it kicked in. No, Leprosy's dog barks at me because he's a
mean and vicious bastard that tries to tear the throat out of anyone who doesn't happen to
be Leprosy himself.

--Fuck off, fuck face.

--Good to see you too, Lep.

The other squatters check us out. Some of them give me a little nod and some others drift
away, hoping I won't notice them. As a rule I don't like squatters, but some I like a lot
less than others and they know it. Leprosy jerks his dog's choke chain a few times.

--Shut the fuck up, Gristle!

He hauls on the leash until Gristle is standing on his hind legs, straining to get at me,
his barks choked down to bloodthirsty growls. It's a pretty good trick on Lep's part
seeing as he's all of five two and weighs in around ninety pounds, while Gristle is the
product of some bizarre crossbreeding experiment that matched a rottweiler with a
wolverine.

--I said fuck off, you're pissing off my dog.

--I don't know about that, Lep, I think I may be turning him on. Look, he has a hard-on.

It's true. Desperate to eat me, Gristle is still choking himself on the leash, clawing at
the air with his front paws, his massive dog wood pointed straight at me.

--Down, Gristle! Put it away!

Some of the other squatters are laughing now and Leprosy is getting more pissed. He looks
over at them and lets out some slack on the leash. Gristle lunges again, but this time
it's at the squatters. They jump back and Lep gives a thin smile. Truth is they may be
more afraid of him than of the dog. He's a scrawny little fuck, but he's probably twice as
crazy and dangerous as the mutt.

--Stop fucking around, Lep. Tie the dog up and we'll take a quick walk and then the two of
you can be back together.

He looks at me and glares, but he drags Gristle over to the fence, ties the leash to the
iron bars and starts walking toward the kiddy park. I stroll alongside of him while the
dog barks and whines in the background.

--I told you not to come around here anymore, Pitt, my dog hates you. You keep showing up
and I'm gonna let him off that fucking leash one day.

--Your dog hates everyone, and if it ever gets off that leash and comes at me I'll kill it
dead and you'll be out your only friend. Now tell me about this chick.

I show him the picture of Amanda Horde. He takes a quick look and passes it back.

--She's OK. I'd do her.

--Yeah, if she'd ever let your nasty ass near her.

--Shiiit. Goth chicks are ill for Leprosy. Goth chicks gotta have what Leprosy's got.
Especially campers like that bitch. They gotta hit it with Leprosy. It lends
au-then-ti-city to the squatting experience. As it fucking were.

--So you know her.

--Seen her around, she was camping like last fucking summer.

--You hook up?

--Naw. Camper bitches may crave what Leprosy has, but he denies them his shit. I take their
money and drugs and might let one suck my dick, but Leprosy won't never luck one of them
bourgeois fucking cunts.

--So what about
this
summer, you seen her around?

He stops walking. We're by the kiddy park now. We stand next to the sign on the gate: NO
ADULTS ALLOWED! PARENTS AND GUARDIANS ONLY. This is meant to keep the pederasts outside
the fence so they can only watch the action within. It's too late for kids now, but any
number of the creeps drifting around the park might be child molesters. If only I could
smell that.

Leprosy is staring at the empty playground equipment.

--I used to come here when I was a kid.

Lep is about sixteen.

--Yeah?

--Yeah, before my folks moved us out to Long Island. I loved the park. That's why I came
here when my dad kicked me out.

Lep ran away a couple years back to get away from his dad. You guess why.

--Hey, Lep.

--What?

--I look like a piece of toast to you?

--No.

--So stop trying to butter me up. You want money, tell me you want money.

He smiles.

--I want money, fuck face.

I reach in my pocket, dig out a twenty and give it to him.

--So you seen her around or what?

He frowns at the twenty, but stuffs it in his pocket.

--Maybe.

--Don't fuck with me, that's all the cash you're getting tonight.

--I mean maybe I saw her, but I'm really not fucking sure, OK?

--Tell me.

He leans against the rails of the fence and scratches himself under a T-shirt that might
have said something once, but now is just the same washed-out gray-green of all squatter
clothes.

--So, like a week or two back we got a little beer bust going at a squat on C. You know,
bunch a us pooled our change for some forties, and Fat Stinky Pete had a sack of hay and
we were just getting all fucked up. So you know Yankee Dan, right?

--The skinny Cuban kid always has the Mets hat?

--Yeah, guy loves the Mets like life so we call him fucking Yankee. Pisses him off. Anyway,
Yankee is kind of a weasel and nobody can really stand the fucking shit bag and now here
he shows up un-in-fucking-vited and he's towing these fucking campers with him. I mean,
they got all the right shit on and their hair is five different colors and their lips are
pierced, but the clothes are from Urban Outfitters and their piercings are too clean and
the dye jobs are two-hundred-fucking-dollar-a-pop deals from some Upper East Side fag
salon. So we know what's up even if Yankee is a fucking retard. Like the standing policy
on this shit for any self-respecting punk is to stomp these pieces of shit, but we're
pretty fucked up and feeling all mellow and besides we're out of beer and campers all have
cash. So we give Yankee and these turds a bunch a shit, but we let 'em stay after they go
out and grab some more forties and another sack.

--The girl, Lep.

--Yeah, I'm fucking getting to her.

He feels at his pockets for cigarettes that we both know aren't there. I pull out my pack
of Luckys, pass him one and we both light up.

--So Lep is feeling good. And one of these camper chicks, she's digging his vibe and starts
rubbin' up against it and shit. Now, like I said, these sluts from Uptown are gluttons for
the real thing. They want to fuck in the dirt and get come on and shit so they can go back
to fucking prep school and tell their friends about all the freaky shit they got into.
Like they can all buy whatever the fuck they want, so having the latest Britney Spears CD
or this year's Porsche means shit. But fucking some scabby squatter in a basement with ten
people watching, that's a fucking social coup. So Lep, he's not gonna give this bitch the
satisfaction, but she's pretty hot and I ain't had it for a bit so I tell her she can suck
it, and down she goes.

--I can't tell you how charming this is. Now how about the girl, was it her?

He shakes his head.

--No, not that slut, but maybe her friend.

--Her friend?

--Yeah. See she finishes her job and Leprosy does his business and she's still into it, but
Leprosy is not, and I repeat, not going to stick it in this cunt. So she says, what if
it's her and her friend. Well, Leprosy has been around, but this piques his curiosity. So
I ask her what friend and she points to one of the other camper chicks in the room. Well I
check out that chick and she's OK, but Leprosy has his principles and I let this slut know
it and tell her if she wants to set up a three-way or pull a train there are other guys
around who don't have Leprosy's moral fiber. But at the time I think to myself that the
other chick, she looked familiar. And now you show me that picture, I'm thinking to myself
that that might be it, that chick might be the one in your picture.

--Might.

--Well, the hitch here is that the chick in the squat, she didn't have any makeup on. Now
the chick in the picture, I saw
her
last year no doubt, and she always had all that ghoul shit all over her. But this chick in
the squat? Not even nail polish. So it might have been her, but you see my fucking
problem.

I nod.

--If she's around and it's the girl from last year, there are people who would know, right?

--Sure.

--Find out, Lep.

He raises his eyebrows.

--How fucking much is it worth?

--It's worth a lot. It's worth saving me a lot of hassles. Which means it's worth keeping
me happy and keeping you from getting hurt. So find out for sure if it was her and then
call me at Evie's bar. Now go get your dog before it kills itself or eats someone.

I turn and walk away and Leprosy shouts after me.

--Sure thing, Pitt. Hey, me, I'm at your fucking beck and call, right, fuck face? Hey, I
got an idea, why don't you go check out Realm? I hear all the hot young goths hang out
there.

He laughs and I keep walking. Leprosy is a little fuck, but he'll do as I tell him. He'll
do it because he owes me. He remembers the time his father came cruising in here from Long
Island to get him. Comes rolling up in his stockbrokers' standard-issue Lincoln
Continental and storms into the park like he owns it. Leprosy spots him and tries to run,
but his dog gets off the leash and goes after the bastard. Dad doesn't even break stride,
that dog runs up and he smashes the
toe
of his wingtip right into its nose, which is how Gristle lost his sense of smell. The dog
drops, bleeding all over the concrete, and dad starts after Leprosy. Me, I'm sitting on a
bench smoking, like I do, and maybe this is none of my business, but I got involved
anyway. I beat the fuck out of the ass-raping son of a bitch, made his nose match the
dog's. I did that for free, but it doesn't mean Leprosy doesn't owe me.