I watched the rain fall. I watched, and
waited while the gutters filled to overflowing, and watched as the water spread
into the street. I watched as the rain splashed in the growing pools, splashed
off the concrete; pelting cars, soaking through the awnings of the store fronts
that lined the street the busy street.
The cops were working their beat;
despite the rain, but they were not working for the good people of the city. They
were cops on the take, moonlighting for the pimps and hustlers. Their wet rain
slickers shimmered under the street lamps, rain drops reflecting the light. The
refracted sparkling drops of water shone like tiny stars jumping off their
backs and shoulders. Cops on the beat with guns loaded, cops wrapped in
plastic, walking past barrels of trash; they giggled at the working girls on
the street, girls who, like them, came from bad places, and like them, girls
who were not allowed to take a night off.
Rain drummed against the roof of the
newsstand where I watched the action on the street, and waited for a story.
Rain beat against the cars leaking oil, parked against the curb; oil dripping
from their engines into the rivers of water flowing down the gutters; flowing
with the rainbow film of a petroleum slick flowing into the street. The dirty water came up over the curb, pooling
on the sidewalk. The newsstand man had
had enough of it, and with my feet now soaked; so had I.
I felt the hard rain falling like a
curse.
I struggled with my trench coat as the
newsstand closed down, taking away my shelter, and I ran into the drugstore for
a bottle of whiskey.
I used the fact that I had made a
purchase to justify my lingering. The drugstore had a no loitering policy
posted in the entryway; a means of deterring the vagrants, which on most days
could easily mean me, but today I had the money for a flask, and buying it gave
me the time I needed to wait, and watch the street life a little longer.
The cops kept busy with the working
girls; blowing whistles, stirring them out of their hiding places, out of the
alcoves, out from under the awnings where they were hoping to catch a break
from the rain. This pleased the pimps to no end; having the boys on the beat do
their jobs, while they sat snug in their cars. That is what they paid them for.
The cash the cops took was not just hush money, those weekly payments were not
bribes. The cops were on the payroll.
Rain could never stop the business on
the street; no matter how long, no matter how hard it fell.
Nice, new, clean cars lined up in front
of the hustlers, driven by not-so-nice people purchasing flesh, or buying
drugs; hustler handing off wrapped parcels, brown bags, and baggies, through
cracked car windows in the rain. The
cops on the beat were not policemen. They were traffic control for a market
that never slept.
There was some commotion in one of the
taverns across the street. A big man was pushed out of doors of the corner bar;
shoved onto the street by a group of men that I could not make out. I could not
see them clearly through the falling water. They lingered in the doorway; blocking
it from the fat man, if should try to get back in. Or maybe the fellows were just
scared. Maybe they had already spent their courage. And were now just huddling
together for protection.
I watched their arms and hands shooting
out from the darkened doorway; flashing into the world…fists pumped at the air,
fingers pointing, bodies pressed close to each other, for safety, out of fear.
The big man smiled wickedly; smiling
with that diamond flash that makes you think of a villain in a movie. He rocked
back on his feet. He seemed a little unsteady. He stumbled back toward the curb
of the street; fell against a cream-colored coupe was parked in front of the
bar.
I felt sorry for the bastard, with his
fat face smashed into the side panel, his moustache hard-scraped by a piece of
jagged metal peeling off the door. I could see that it shaved more than a few
hairs off his cheek as a sharp line of blood began dripping down his chin, but
then disappeared as suddenly as it came. I thought it was just the rain washing
the blood off his face. Though it seemed to wash the wound away as well.
He was hatless, balding, drunk, but he
was not defeated. The crowd of men in the doorway began to thin out. The fat
man pushed himself up off the ground and pulled his leather raincoat around his
huge frame. He looked in my direction, with the rain splashing off his face. I
thought for a moment that he was staring right at me, staring through me, but
then I saw the headlights of an oncoming car flash off his glass eye. I knew
then that hollow stare which I felt sucking me in, sucking like a vacuum; that
it truly was hollow, emanating from the lifeless stone in his socket.
A tall kid in a rubber jerkin came
walking out of a bar, his glistening black hair plastered to his face by the
rain. He had two things in his hand, the man’s hat; which I could see was an
expensive boulder, and his tab, which was unpaid when he was tossed from the
bar.
The beat cops were headed their way.
The fat man looked around. He took the
measure of the street, and his mouth twisted into a grin. The dark night became
even darker, as if the rain-clouded canopy above the city lights swelled and
thickened impossibly past the point of bursting; before releasing the deep
stores of water that they were carrying.
The rain that was hammering the city
doubled its flow. Lightening flashed, and thunder cracked. Alarm bells peeled,
and sirens wailed over the roof tops, jangled and sputtering in their
rain-muffled voices.
I watched as the story I was looking
for unfolded in front of me. Everybody on the street stopped in their tracks;
the working girls, the cops, as another lightning bolt hammered into the tall
boy, cutting him down like a slender tree, filling the whole street with hot-white
light, licking the fallen boy with tongues of fire, as if he was being kissed
by the Holy-Spirit. The thunder cracked louder than dynamite, shaking
everything not nailed down, rattling the windows of every store on the block.
The fat man was laughing when the boy
hit the pavement. He and he alone was un-cowed by the storm. He reached down swept
his boulder from the hands of the fallen boy, with a grace move that belied his
size; placing it on his bare head. His great frame shook. He made a gesture to
the body of the boy laying in the pooling water on the sidewalk. His lips were
moving as if in prayer, or more like he was telling the kid the secret words
that would get him past the guardians at the gates of paradise. Then he turned
on the balls of his feet and dashed away. He moved faster than any right minded
person would imagine his bulk would allow.
I started after him, with the cops behind
me.
I ran down the slick pavement of the
boulevard. The gargantuan I was chasing moved like a motorman, heedless of the streaming
waters.
My lungs were on fire. My heart was
pounding like a drum. I had that taste of blood in my mouth that comes when I push
myself too hard. The cops were falling behind, but I stayed in the fat man’s
wake, even though he continued to put distance between us.
He put on a burst of speed like Kent
Herbeck rounding third base and heading for home plate.
I stayed behind him like I was
following the North Star.
He turned hard into an alley that was
as black as a canyon on a starless night.
I saw him bust through the back door of
a tailor’s shop. The dim illumination coming through the transom was the only
point of light anywhere in that deep dark place.
He left me standing there; feeling as
limp as a ribbon on the wet concrete.
The alley was narrow. I ducked into an alcove and waited while I watched
the cops run past me. I had no idea what I was doing here, why I was chasing
this man, other than the fact that I felt something momentous was taking shape.
I kept my eye on the back door to the
tailor’s shop as I caught my breath, and the only thing I was thinking about
was getting back to the shack I was renting, so I could begin to type this
story.
Suddenly, a pair of headlights, turned
into the alley.
The car sped up as it passed me, and
then it turned into the loading ramp of the building next door to the tailor’s
shop. It stopped in front of the garage doors at the top of the ramp. A light
came on, and I ducked deeper into the shadows.
The car lights were tilted up toward
the garage, and a small square box sitting on the dock next to the back door. The
fat man, with his baleful eye came out of tailor’s shop. I watched him go down
the alley, up the loading ramp toward the car; arms stretched out in a gesture
of greeting, of welcome, and quite possibly of menace.
It suddenly occurred to me that I had
seen that car before; downtown, by the park where I was staying. I remember
seeing that car, by the dandelion fountain while I sat at my window drinking
and smoking, and waiting for what seemed like hours for it to go away, so I
could watch the college girls while I got sauced. I watched the car that day
because everyone with a hundred yards of it seemed to instinctively avoid it,
and if I was not crazy, it also seemed like the brids and the squirrels of the
park avoided it too. Those minutes dragged from afternoon to evening, and I
think now that it might have been that same man; the fat man with his glass
eye, who finally came out of an apartment building, got into the car and drove
away.
Maybe that is why I chased him when I
saw him running from the bar; because I had recognized him. Even though it was
only now, as I watched and waited again, that I put the pieces together in my
mind.
Two squad cars came into the alley from
opposite ends. I was lingering, still; hiding deep in the shadows with the
garbage. It was clear to me that these cops knew what they were doing. These
guys were not the paddies chasing us blindly down the street. They approached
the loading dock with caution. There were no sirens. The squad cars were quiet,
but the cherries were flashing, and the searchlights blaring all down the alley,
and out into the street. It was like they were sending a message to anyone who
might wander down the corridor…“KEEP OUT!”
The lights drove me back. To keep my
cover; I ducked, and bobbed, and wove my way further into my hole, deeper into
shadows, out of the driving rain. It was pitch black where I stood, but I still
had my eyes on the car, and the fat man.
The squad cars turned off their
searchlights. The glowing filaments were like eyes staring at me, bright with that
halogen heat, steam rising off the glass as they slowly drove past.
Then, as if the presence of the cops
did not matter, or maybe because they were expected; a door opened, and a slim
woman wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and a fitted-transparent rain coat, stepped
outside. She did not have much of anything else on beneath her sheer slicker,
and she had those large brown cow eyes, with which she appeared to drink in her
surroundings. She walked right past the fat man; who was looking at her with
amazement on her face.
She stood by the driver’s door. The
window cracked open, and it was clear she was saying something to the man at
the wheel. The fat man was glaring at her with a look of hunger on his face. It
seemed that a light sparkled in his stone-eye. As if on cue the rain let loose
in another extra heavy burst. With that, the lady looked up, she turned toward
the man and together they went into the building by the side door of the
loading dock.
There was a silence. Everything was
quiet except for the pounding rain, the blood rushing in my ears, and my heart
thumping in my chest. I pulled another hit of whiskey from my flask. My hyper
active nerves settled into a simmering mania. Enough whisky, and all moods were
convertible into a lesser state of the same quality. I needed that conversion
if I was going to take another step down this path.
Two cops; one from each squad got out
of their cars, stepped into the soaking wet alley, water running in an ever
broadening stream, rain dripping like a shower head from the rims of their
plastic wrapped hats.
I thought I heard the fat man laughing
from inside the building, and then a flash of lightning burned my eyes. The
whiskey flask fell from hands, its contents poured out and mixed with the water
pooling at my feet.
The thunder roared for what felt like
minutes. It shook the street beneath my feet; knocking out the power for
blocks. Now there were no lights at all, just the lightening scored into my eyes.
I tried to blink it away, but when I closed my lids the hot flash remained;
imprinted, fixed.
A thin scream pierced the rolling
thunder. It echoed off the tall buildings lining the alley’s narrow corridor,
and then it was gone, followed once more by the echoes of laughter, the mad
bellow of the fat man.
The lightning and the thunder did a
number on my senses. I felt like I was in shock, it felt like my days in the
wars. It was not drunkenness, I had not drank enough whisky for that.
More than the thunder, the laughter was
ringing in my ears; a repellant, nasty noise. An institutionalized sound; it
belonged to a place where the men in white kept order, barred windows, locked
the inmates in, strapped them down while sleeping in their narrow beds, just to
keep them from hurting themselves. That laughter was insane.
I slipped out of my hideaway as silent
as I could be, and I dodged the gaze of the cops in the alley, the driver of
the car still parked on the ramp. I made my way up the loading dock.
I was not looking for a knocker on the
door. I just reached for the knob, took a hold of it, and went through. Just as
I entered I heard gun shots cracking, flashing in a weak imitation of the
thunder and lightning of the storm. Then I heard a long harsh sigh, a soft
thump, the rapid footsteps of someone coming my way; heading for the exit.
I stood by the side of the door on a
narrow run between a steel railing and a brick wall. This track led to the only
way in or out of the room. I saw shadowy figures moving deep inside the
building. I thought I saw them hovering, on a catwalk that stretched like a
footbridge over the empty space of a gully. There were more people here than I
had assumed, and I do not know why I had made any assumptions at all.
I was scared. My knees got week. It was
as if there were no solid ground beneath my feet. I moved away from the back entrance
toward a flight of wooden steps leading up to a mezzanine. I heard footsteps
coming my way. I heard the engine starting from the car outside. I was wishing
that I was back in my apartment, watching the street life in the park.
I wanted to flee, and yet I needed to
stay. There was a story here, and a good one. I straddled the fence between my
fears and my desires. I leaned over the railing of the mezzanine. I could hear
the rain pounding on the windows. I looked out on the scene unfolding in the
garage. The drama I was witnessing
continued, and became more clear, as if someone had drawn the drapes to let the
light in.
The pieces came together.
There was lamplight. I stepped back
into the shadows. Someone gave a shout
for help. I could not tell who, but I thought it was the fat man; his voice
booming like a cannon. Two man came through the door. I could see the cops
heading their way.
“She is hurt,” the man said.
It was him; the man with the glass eye.
“She shot me in my shoulder.” I could see the tear in his trench coat, but he
did not appear to be wounded.
They went into the back of the
warehouse. I climbed the railing to the catwalk, and kicked myself for
following them, but this was my window. I was in. I suppressed my fears, and
pulled myself into the next room. I was out of my mind; thinking only about two
things, the story in front of me, and the long pour of whiskey that was to come
soon after.
I reached the room where the three men
were standing. The beautiful woman in her
clear-plastic rain coat was lying on the floor; bleeding. I could hear the
footsteps of the cops coming in behind me. They came into the room, as one of them
drew his gun.
The fat man smiled, and could I swear that
I saw a bolt of lightning flash in that black marble of his eye.
“Easy,” he said to the cops. “No need
for you to get involved here.” The cops looked at him, and hesitated. “I have
immunity. You know what that means, and it comes straight from the top. You two
bolt back to your squads.”
The cops did not say a word. They just
turned around and left, escorted by the other two men.
What was the catch? What gave him the power? What kind of power
did he have? What did he mean; immunity, straight
from the top.
I climbed back along the catwalk to the
mezzanine. I pulled myself back over the railing, and planned my exit. I wanted
to pull the curtain on this horror show.
There were two people remaining in the building
besides me. That is what I thought, two people, but I was not sure. I felt in
my gut that there was some other presence in there with us, presence or
presences. When I first came through the loading dock, I thought I saw those shadows
moving about, but I was not sure.
One of those people was now dead, or
dying; a beautiful woman, and the other, well, I was not even sure that he was
human.
