Joe Pitt 5 - My Dead Body (4 page)

--Was not.

He studies the length of the cigar, inspecting it for tears.

--He was not.

Satisfied with the quality of the cigar, he offers the business end to Dallas, who bares his perfect teeth and nips away a tapered quarter inch.

Chubby grunts, thumbs a bit of leaf from the end of the cigar.

--The boy was not…typical.

He offers me the humidor.

--I don’t suppose?

I shake my head and roll another cigarette.

--Not my thing.

He nods, caps the humidor and puts it back inside his jacket, his hand coming out with a silver lighter roughly the size and shape of a .12 gauge shell.

--You’re missing out on a fine smoke.

I light my own.

--You were telling me the boy was infected.

He ignites the lighter, holds the end of the intense blue flame just below the end of the cigar and gives a few puffs, rotating the cigar to bring it evenly to life.

--Yes. That was the point I was driving at.

--And she found out.

He releases the button on the side of the lighter with a snap, the flame dies, and he wraps it in a fist.

--Yes, she did.

--And she dug it.

He takes the cigar from between his lips and lets loose a cloud.

--Against all better judgment, yes she did.

I stand up, brushing dirt from my backside, not that it makes me look any cleaner.

--A girl would have to be pretty adaptable to take something like that at point-blank and roll with it. I mean, tell a girl you’re a Vampyre, out of the blue, that’s generally an invitation to be considered a nut job. Most girls, they exit laughing or screaming. Depending on the type.

He doesn’t say anything.

I do.

--Unless she had some idea that things like that are real. She have some idea that things like that are real, Chubby?

He’s studying the cigar again.

--It is possible, that in an effort to entertain and impress her, that I may have told her one story too many. With too great a level of credibility.

He looks up from the cigar.

--Fathers, whether they admit it or not, do so want to be thought cool by their children. And vampires have quite the pop culture caché. Forbidden fruit of every shape and hue. I was able to suggest, without telling her more than the basics, that there might be more to the myth than capes and fangs or dewy teenage boys.

I start poking in some corners of the shanty, looking for odds and ends I’ve tucked here and there.

--Out of curiosity, you happen to know what kind of site they met on?

He makes a gesture with the cigar, sketching a vague notion in smoke.

--Something to do with damned or insatiable thirst or eternal languor or something. Dot com.

I find one of the things I’m looking for. Two small steel rings attached to each other by twenty-eight inches of braided steel wire. This I got from a tunnel camper. Urban explorer type. What he expected to use a wire saw for down here I can’t say. Maybe it was part of his normal camping kit. Maybe he thought he’d use it to saw his own leg off if it got pinned under something. Anyway, he made out OK. Never knew what knocked him on the head. Most likely never missed the pint I took from his veins. He was too well equipped and carried too much ID for me to empty him. Probably had a whole crew who knew he was going spelunking in the tunnels. Missing a day too long, search parties would have started. But the saw looked useful, so I pocketed it. Figured he be happy he woke up without having fallen and broken his neck. Wouldn’t notice one item gone.

I haven’t had occasion to use it yet, but the strangest things come in handy in my line.

I put the wire saw in my pocket.

--Damnedinsatiablethirsteternallanguor. Dot com. So fair to say she was looking for something specific.

He looks at the floor.

--Fair to say, yes, fair to say.

--And the boy. One of those infecteds likes to cruise Goth and vampire sites looking for a Lucy? He out trolling for someone he could tap for easy pints?

Chubby looks up.

--No. No. I don’t think so at all. I think, forgive me the sentimentality, I think the boy was looking for someone to talk to. He struck me as, if anything, annoyingly earnest. I think, perish the thought, that he was lonely. With, perhaps, some tendency to overplay the roll of doomed and undead, he was certainly feeling genuinely isolated. Confused. Desperate, I would say, for something resembling normalcy. I am not at all unacquainted with the type. My business draws them like flies. Young men and women, out of their depths, looking for something they can cling to. It has long been one of the hallmarks of my professionalism that I aggressively vet my applicants and accept only those who I trust to be most willing, able, and adaptive to the rigors of a life in porno.

It’s not actually bullshit. Everyone knows Chubby is a cut above pornmeister. No junkies. No self-mutilators. No bipolars. No chicken. He runs a clean shop. Hi-tone freaks who like to fuck on camera, and coldhearted pros. And he takes care of his people. Full-time staff and freelancers. Chubby doesn’t leave anyone to swing in the cold if a bust comes down. Or any kind of stalker trouble. I ran security on his studio more than once. I won’t lie and say it was a happy place, but I never found anyone shooting up to get loose for an anal gang bang, or being slapped around because they didn’t want to do a face fuck.

All in all, Chubby’s a gentleman scumbag.

I find the other item I was looking for. A one-foot length of bicycle inner tube packed tight with sand, stitched shut at both ends with heavy thread. Lighter than you expect when you heft it, it’ll drop just about anyone when you lay it across the back of their skull. It goes in the pocket opposite the wire saw.

--Sure then, you know a lost soul when you see one. The boy was a helpless kitten looking for acceptance in a cold world. So why’d he take your daughter somewhere you can’t find?

He shakes his head.

--It’s not me they ran from, Joe. The boy.

He brings the cigar to his lips, realizes it’s gone out and lowers it.

--The boy was pledged to the Coalition.

I’m looking at the gun I took from Dallas, checking to see if it’s anything I can rely on. I look up from it.

--Shit.

Chubby nods.

--He crossed onto Society turf to meet my daughter. And stayed.

--Shit.

He takes a step my way.

--Things up there. Joe. In the past, if I wanted to know anything about what was happening, it took an effort. Subtlety. One had to mind one’s Ps and one’s Qs. Simple awareness of the Vyrus was a threat. Now. It’s … hectic. Word of bizarre goings-on reach my ears unbidden. There are rumors. Not among the straight citizens, not yet. But at the borders and fringes. Things are being said. In barrooms, massage parlors, shooting galleries, after-hours clubs, street corners, and, I’d dare say, in police precinct rack rooms when the bottle is being passed about. Things are being seen. Disbelieved most often, but they are seen. And reported on. Blogs. The tabloids even. Serial killings unlike anything since Jack the Ripper. That is the tone. There is a palpable tension on the street. Anyone who lives close to the edge of things feels as if something is coming. The straights itch. A second shoe is expected. An ill wind. Metaphors of every kind. In an atmosphere such as that, it takes very little for tempers to flare.

The gun is OK. It’s an automatic. It’s black. The barrel has a hole at the end big enough for something serious to come out of it. The clip is loaded. And I can’t find Made in China stamped on it anywhere. It’ll do what it’s supposed to.

I stick it in my belt at the small of my back and pull the jacket down over it.

--What happened, Chubby? Straight.

--What happened.

He snaps the cigar in two pieces and lets them drop from his fingers.

--Terry Bird accepted the boy into the Society. He cannot compete with the Coalition in terms of troops and arms, but he is an effective propagandist. Young man crosses battle lines for love, to the only place where such love will be accepted. Society turf. Infected and uninfected.

I grunt.

I can hear Terry pitching it in my head. It’s, you know, Joe, it’s exactly what we’ve been talking about. A story of acceptance. This is the kind of thing, this is a uniting kind of thing. Or some shit like that. Playing with his John Lennon specs and his ponytail, selling his version of the revolution. Years of old blood dripping from his hands the whole time. A show I’ve seen before.

Chubby places the toe of one of his formerly well-shined shoes on half the broken cigar and grinds it into the dirt.

--It raised Dexter Predo’s ire, having one of his own raised up as a Society poster child. And then things became rather more complicated.

He places his hands on either side of his belly.

--She started to show. Needless to say, the idea of this baby has generated passionate debate. Bird seems to think it could be the thin edge that would allow him to take the Vyrus public. Predo sees the opposite. Interrace breeding has always been a taboo that takes many blows to shatter. A certain air of imminent danger crept into the debate. It appeared they might become targets for kidnapping or assassination.

He drops his hands from his belly.

--And they disappeared.

--And you called Percy.

--Someone I care deeply about is missing in the midst of Vampyre warfare. There is only one person I want looking for her. And that person has dropped from sight. So, yes, I called Percy. He knows people. And he is an old friend. I was born and raised in Harlem. When I was a small boy, before they went underground, the Hood were our Black Panthers.

--And he told you about Evie.

--He suggested there was a young woman, Enclave, who might have a line on you.

I shake my head.

--You went to the warehouse?

He takes a step back.

--Oh no. I am trying to find my daughter. Being eviscerated would not advance the cause. Percy spoke to the lady. And she came to see me.

Does my heart skip a beat? I can’t say. I don’t count all of them. But it seems so.

--You saw her?

He nods.

I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to ask.

But I do.

--How’d she look?

He casts his eyes to the ceiling.

--She looked, Joe, both perilous and beautiful.

He brings his eyes to mine.

--As I imagine death must look.

Evie knows me. If anybody does. Possible she’d rather she didn’t, but there it is. Some things, by the time we know they’re bad for us, we’re already hooked.

She gave Chubby the bead on where he might find me. Hard to say how she knew for sure where that was, but figure she started with the idea that I’d be underfoot and went from there. However she sussed it, Chubby took the lead and poked. All the former street kids he has passing through his doors, he was able to put some feelers out. He knows what kind of setup a guy like me would need down here. And there’s only so many places like Freedom Tunnel. Asked some questions of some of the inhabitants who travel up top, got a description of some of the newer faces on the scene, and hit on mine.

Big guy, limp, attitude, eyepatch.

I keep to myself, but it’s not like I’m invisible.

And here we are.

The gun butt is poking me a little so I shift it.

--She say anything?

Chubby is holding a hand out to Dallas, letting the young man pull himself unsteadily to his feet.

--She said you would take an interest.

--Not what I mean.

He lays his palm alongside Dallas’s cheek.

--I’m sorry, my dear, I should not have involved you in this.

Dallas gives me a look and touches the bandage on his forehead.

Chubby winks.

--Don’t be concerned about that. A small scar, a slight blemish on your great beauty, it will only highlight perfection. And it wouldn’t hurt to add a little of the rough stuff to your resume, would it?

Dallas juts his chin, frowns at me, turns and walks out the door.

Chubby shrugs.

--Temperamental. Like all talent.

--What else did she say?

He shoots his French cuffs, fiddles with the links a bit.

--She said I should tell you she wants you to help find them.

The gun still isn’t right. I move it again.

--She thinks they’re important? The baby and all that?

He licks his lips, pushes out the lower, sucks it back into his mouth, and bites it.

--She said they’re kids and they need help.

I stop messing with the gun.

--I want to see her.

He looks at the floor.

--She says no.

I watch him.

--There something you’re neglecting to tell me, Chubby?

He shakes his head.

I step close.

--Is she in trouble?

He shakes his head.

I step closer.

--Only if there’s something you’re leaving out, and I dig to it later, I might be upset if it turns out to be important.

He looks up from the floor.

--She said to tell you to crawl out of your fucking cave and do something, you son of a bitch. She says find them. She says maybe then she’ll see you.

I nod, adjust the gun one last time.

--What do you got for me?

He sticks his hand inside his jacket and comes out with an envelope.

--Money. Their names.

I take the envelope and look at the scrap of paper inside.

Ben Forest.

Delilah Cooper.

--Your real last name Cooper?

He adjusts the knot in his tie.

--My name is Freeze. As everyone knows.

I look at Mr. Chubby Freeze.

--Any idea where they’d run to with the heat on?

--Having failed to find safety in the Society, it would be natural for the children to seek it within a racially familiar community. The Hood.

I slap the envelope into my palm.

--There a reason Percy isn’t dealing with it himself?

--He is occupied with Hood politics. And since telling me how I might track you down, he has stopped answering calls.

--So the kids might already be on Hood turf?

He shrugs.

I shake my head.

--Not where I’m most welcome.

--From what I gather, Joe, you no longer have any turf at all. In any case, if that’s where they are, you’ll not have far to go.

I stick the envelope in the pocket with the cosh full of sand.

--Walking under Harlem is one thing. Walking on top of Harlem is another. Grave Digga may still have issues with me.

Chubby makes for the door.

--Who does not, Joe? Who does not.

Can’t argue that, so I follow him out.

Find the kids and maybe she’ll see me.

First thing I’ve had worth dying for in a long time.

I don’t have any goodbyes to say. Nothing to keep me from following Chubby and Dallas up the tracks toward the north entrance to Freedom Tunnel. The locals give me the same wide berth they always have. I took care of some trouble once or twice down here, but they won’t be sad to see me go. Couple days after I’m out, they’ll figure Q-line’s shack is vacant again and someone will move in and start renovating. Bring in a new color dirt or something.

Neither Chubby or his boy are doing too well with the rail ties and rocks in the darkness. Chubs isn’t built for it, and Dallas is still a little sloppy on his feet after the concrete to the head. Still, I’m not in a hurry. I dawdle behind, letting the flashlights they brought show the way. Now we’re on the tracks, I can see it’s night up top. The vent shafts are blue-black, moonlight washed out by what the city is shining up there itself. Come late morning, bright columns will cut the dust. You can see the edges of them, sharp and clear. See the line exactly where you’d cross into that light and start to fester.

One of the flashlight beams picks out some letters on the wall: OBSOLETE MACHINE. Further, the American Way mural. A Dick Tracy figure pushing an armed man out of frame, shouting, Drop the gun, mole! The cover from Dark Side of the Moon, captioned: You shout and no one seems to hear. A Unibomber portrait. Always one of my favorites.

I smoke and kick some rocks. I’d say I was thinking about Evie, but that would be redundant. She’s my white noise. Always there, crackling static in my brain. Inescapable. Mostly you tune it out. The second you focus on it, it drowns out everything else. This occasion, it drowns out the one guy down here I should maybe say goodbye to. Swallows up the thought of him right until Chubby pauses to loosen his tie.

--Is it getting hotter down here, Joe?

I feel it then. Should have felt it before the fat man, but I feel it.

Heat and carbon dioxide reveal life, and the thing panting in the darkness beyond the reach of the flashlight beams is screaming in this silent language that it is fucking well alive.

Or about to die.

Close at the edge of both.

I freeze.

--Chubs, you and your boy go on ahead.

He turns to look at me, the beam of his light rippling over rocks.

--Speed, Joe, is of the essence.

I’m looking at the darkness, wondering if it will explode.

--Pace you two are making, I should be able to catch you up.

--I’d not like to lose track of you after just finding you.

I take a step into the heat and the darkness.

--Chubby, go fuck off up the tunnel. Now.

No one ever accused Chubby Freeze of being a stupid man. He catches my drift, spares further comment, takes Dallas’s hand and fucks off up the tunnel at a much better clip than they’d been making before.

I keep my hand away from the gun. I don’t have any weapons to deal with this. Besides, I don’t think he means to kill me. A pretty big assumption when dealing with the mad, but all I can go on here is past experience. He’s never killed me yet.

There’s a flutter in the air, it gets hotter, a white blur, and he’s in front of me.

--Buddy, hey, buddy, leaving somewhere, buddy?

He’s dispensed with clothes since the last time I saw him. Can’t say why that is. Could be he finally realized that wearing whites down here was a losing proposition. Could be he finally got so skinny there just wasn’t anything he could put on that wouldn’t slip right off. That last time, all he had on was a loincloth and some dirty white rags wrapped around his limbs like bandages. Could also be that he’s white enough now in his own skin not to need to wear any kind of uniform.

Subway tile white. Glossy porcelain with a thin layer of soot.

Emaciated doesn’t do him justice anymore. I can see the fibers of his muscle under his skin. His circulatory system so vivid, it looks like a long branching tattoo laced over his entire body.

He’s at the limit.

What the Enclave are after as they starve themselves, he’s at the frontier.

I saw the guy who went furthest. I scooped him off the street when he walked into the daylight believing he had been absorbed by the Vyrus, believing that would make him something the sun didn’t want to kill. He was wrong. But even he, even Daniel hadn’t gone this far.

The man in front of me shimmers. Like when I was a kid and I’d lie down on the blacktop in summer and watch the air wiggle above it at the end of the playground. He shimmers like that.

Part it’s the Vyrus, fighting itself and him. Fighting to tear him apart from hunger for blood, and to keep him together so it won’t die with him. Driving him to kill someone and drink their damn blood. And part it’s the heat of that fight.

He’s what’s behind the missing poster that describes how an MTA worker disappeared in the tunnels. He’s that ghost you see flicker outside the scratched Plexi windows as you rocket down the A express, the one you don’t see clear at all, but still it crawls into your nightmares. He’s what eats the alligators in the sewers. This fucker, he’s the boogeyman.

He scratches himself and hitches a shoulder at me.

--Roll me one of them, will ya, buddy.

I roll him a smoke.

--Keeping an eye on me are you?

He laughs. Sounds like a cat coughing up a hair ball.

--An eye on you. Buddy, no, no buddy. Just I heard you were leaving is all, buddy, an I thought I’d come send ya off is what.

I hand him the cigarette, half-expecting the paper to ignite when he takes it, but it doesn’t.

--Must have gotten advance word. Just found out myself.

I snap a match and he flinches at the light before dipping his face into it to puff the cigarette alive.

--Don’t need advance word. Got ears, don’t I. Hear it all down here. Want to or not, I hear it all. Hey.

He cocks an ear, bit of gnarled skin on the side of his head that looks kind of like an ear anyway, hand cupped to it.

--Hear that, buddy? Course you don’t. I do. I hear down at West Fourth, I hear a platform announcement that the uptown F is running on the downtown track. I hear over at One Eighty-one, I hear a couple rats fighting over a pork rind someone dropped on the track. Hey, and, buddy, hey, Canal Street, I hear a guy, he’s got his hand in a woman’s back, about to push her in front of a train.

He takes a drag and the cigarette is consumed in one long crackle.

--I hear everything down here, buddy.

I start rolling him another smoke.

--You hear anything up top?

He spits dry, no moisture left to him.

--I hear up top, buddy. I hear an asshole parade marching in the alleys is what I hear. Buddy, I hear wolves what were meant to be, dressing in sheep’s clothes, baa-baa-baa.

He takes the new cigarette. He doesn’t have lips anymore, just a hole slashed in the hide sucked back onto his skull.

--Buddy, I told you once, I told you a hundred, I told you we don’t belong up there. Walking their walk, talking their lingo, living their rules.

He cat-coughs again.

--Know what’s funniest in it, buddy?

I spark another match and he lights up.

--No. Tell me what’s funniest. I could use a laugh.

A tremor rattles through his bones, his body blurs for a moment, then he resolves again.

--What’s funniest is now they’re fighting a war for the right. That’s what’s got me up late slapping my knee, buddy. Idea of all them, them and their values, killing each other over which color sheep they’re gonna dress as. What kind of prey they want to pretend to be for the privilege of living in the flock.

He takes a drag, only sucks down half of it this time.

--Should be ripping their skins off, howling, running pack mad, buddy. Just for fun.

I light my own smoke.

--Old man, got to tell you, you’re getting a little weird being down deep all by yourself.

That laugh.

--Buddy, I’m the real thing. Or close to it. I’m just about the end of the road.

He’s been squatting, knees up by his ear, elbows out, looks like a spider someone sprayed with the wrong chemicals. Now he rises, spider morphing into a skeleton, assembling itself from its own jumbled bones.

--Want to see the future, buddy, look into my eyes.

I’m game. But there’s nothing to see. They’ve gone black. Blacker than the deepest tunnels below our feet. Light sucks into his eyes. Black like I’ve seen only once before. I look in there, and something rises toward the surface.

A cold lance cuts through the heat of him.

I step back, cigarette dropping from my fingers as my hand goes to the gun.

--Right, buddy, pull the piece. That’ll help ya.

He smokes the second half of his butt and exhales.

--We all got it inside, buddy. Waiting to come out. Just it needs to be nurtured some.

I take another step back.

--It’s dark. I didn’t see anything. You’re crazy.

He raises the notched bone of his finger.

--Two of those three is true, buddy. Pretty good average, two out of three. But the one that’s a lie, it’s a doozy.

My hand is still on the gun. Just because it likes being there.