Finally there was a break in the action as the crowds thinned.
Jenks saw his chance and walked up to the kid.
Before he got a chance to say anything the teen snapped at him, “You’ve been eyeballing me for twenty minutes, man.
What you want?”
You had to give it to him, he was sharp; a lot sharper than Jenks was, thinking he was being slick.
“Where’s Ferdie?”
“Not here today.”
“Where is he?”
“What do you care?”
“It’s important.”
The kid eyed him, not liking the look of Jenks.
Couldn’t blame him for pulling a sneer.
“What do you want with him?”
“Just tell me where he is?”
“Man, I don’t gotta tell you nothing.”
“You’re right.”
Jenks figured he might as well try to lie.
“I had a side deal going with him moving some of the Prada bags out onto the Island.
I know someone who has a shop, we could move maybe fifty a month.
I need them by Wednesday.
I need to talk to Ferdie.”
“You can’t,” the teen said.
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
The kid raised his eyebrows, saying, how stupid are you anyway?
“I said he’s dead.
You want me to say it again?”
“My name’s Jenks.
Ferdie, he knew a friend of mine, a guy–”
“Look, man, I don’t want your life story.
Ferdie’s dead.
Now go on about your business, unless you need a Prada bag for your lady.”
“What’s your name?” Jenks asked.
“You don’t need to know my name.
I don’t want to know yours; you don’t want to know mine.
Go on now, like I said.
We don’t want trouble now.”
“You’re right, but this is important.
I just–”
The teen getting up into Jenks’ face now, but not wanting to, doing his best to keep from going too far as he looked around at the foot traffic, seeing the ladies walk by and knowing he was missing out on a chance to profit.
The frustration rose into his eyes.
He dumped the purses in his hands onto the table and reached out to swat Jenks across the temple.
It was the same kind of dismissive slap that Jenks’ father used to give him when the old man was miffed about something and just wanted to be left alone.
“Nothing you got to say is important,” the boy said.
“Not to me.
I already told you to move on.
Now you got to go!”
Jenks’s head rang with his own past, hardly feeling the little slap at all, but somehow it lit up the borders of his vision.
Jenks couldn’t take the way the kid was talking to him.
Banishing him the same way that the mortgage specialists had at the bank, the credit card folks, and his wife’s new boyfriend.
Everybody looking right through him, nobody wanting to hear him out, not even letting him finish a sentence.
He wondered how his life might have been different, how much tragedy might have been sidestepped, if only he’d been able to make himself heard.
If they had seen him for who he was, or believed he was, instead of just taking everything he had and hustling him off.
So, all right then, he thought, and the rage was suddenly on him.
It came up and moved through him like a scrabbling animal, scratching him up inside, tearing, its claws catching hold along his ribs and climbing higher and higher, all the way up into his heart and then ripping at that.
His pulse snapped painfully in his neck, pounded in his wrists so hard that it actually felt like his skin might break and he’d start spurting all over.
He felt himself grinning.
The kid knew something was up and tried to turn away, fear igniting his eyes as Jenks threw a left hook that landed solidly in the center of the teen’s chest.
All the air gushed out of the kid and into Jenks’ face.
He smelled everything the boy had eaten over the last three days: Pizza, fish tacos, a couple of Mexican beers,
Dos Equis,
mediciney mouthwash.
He threw another short jab into the teen’s gut and thought, Jesus, I’m beating up a boy in the middle of Times Square.
So what.
There were ten thousand people crowding the streets, the taxis ripping up down Seventh and Broadway and 42nd.
Four cops in sight and none of them looking this way across the foot traffic.
A few people checking the scene and immediately moving on.
Nobody gave a shit.
While the kid was doubled-over Jenks sneaked a hand into the boy’s pocket and pulled out his wallet.
It was stuffed with cash, Jesus.
Even at his most flush Jenks had never had that much green on him.
He checked the address on the license.
The kid’s name was Bobby Rodriguez and he lived in the West Village.
“Okay, Bobby,” Jenks said, still smiling, the anger still there, amping him, but starting to drain off and starting to leave him nice and mellow.
“Was Ferdie your brother?”
“No.
A partner.
Sometimes.”
“What happened to him?”
Bobby was almost kneeling on the sidewalk, glaring up at Jenks, breathing through his teeth.
Saying nothing.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Look, man–”
“Did you know Hale?”
“Who?”
“The guy who sold books at the table next to yours.”
“That guy never used to talk much, just sat there and read most of the time.”
“What happened to Ferdie?
Was he knifed?”
“Man–”
“What he?”
“Yeah, he had his throat cut.
You happy now?
That what you wanted me to say?
You get off on that?”
A squat middle-aged woman stopped at the table and started looking through the fake Prada purses, asked Bobby how much they were.
The was still having trouble breathing right but he was back on the clock, in form, smiling and working the lady, promised if she bought three he’d give her a big discount.
They haggled for a couple minutes while Jenks stood there thinking; what did Hale get into?
Something somehow attached to Ferdie, maybe to this spot.
What, the mob pushed in on them, wanted a cut of Hale’s stink book biz?
He glanced around and checked the storefronts again, all the billions of bucks worth of real estate, the action, the money, the lights, theater, tourists, dead bodies waiting to fall.
Hale sitting here reading moldy novels and somehow a girl dies.
And Ferdie, with his throat spewing.
The woman paid and left.
Jenks said, “Where’d it happen?”
“What do you mean?”
Jenks back-handed Bobby shook the kid by the collar until his teeth rattled.
“Where?”
“Shit, man, why the fuck are you hitting me?”
“I’m sorry,” Jenks said, and he meant it.
He didn’t want to hurt the boy.
He didn’t want to hurt anyone.
He remembered coming here with his wife, shopping and enjoying himself, walking up to the park and catching a horse and buggy ride.
His wife cozied up to him with a blanket over their laps, the driver calling out bits of trivia about the city, the afternoon cold and perfect.
And now–
Jesus–and now.
“He got killed in the park,” Bobby said.
“You know where?”
“No.”
“Near the fountain?”
“Maybe.”
“Why was he there?”
“How the fuck do I know?
And why do you care?”
Jenks let the boy go and waited for him to throw a punch or run away or start yelling or do some damn thing.
But Bobby just stood there, frowning.
Jenks frowned back.
He had one last question to ask.
“Hey, Bobby, where can I buy a nice knife around here?”
The bar was dark and overpriced.
A sign on the wall said that F. Scott and Zelda used to booze it up in here.
Jenks hadn’t had a drink in over a year.
At the end there, he’d been knocking back a lot of whiskey and beer before bed.
And before breakfast.
And at lunch.
It was the only thing that helped him to sweat out the day.
The anti-anxiety meds and anti-depression pills didn’t do shit.
He was so decimated by dealing with creditors and juggling accounts and trying to make his wife happy through it all that he’d fall across the mattress and be out instantly.
But a few minutes he’d pop back up, completely awake, panting and tasting salt with a moan or a sob ready to break through his chest.
He’d go in the backyard and smoke a cigarette on the patio, three or four o’clock in the morning, look across the fence and see Hale doing the same thing over there.
But afterwards, after it was all gone, there hadn’t been any reason to drink anymore.
The fight was over.
You’d lost.
You hadn’t given up but you may as well have.
You stared at your old man’s photos and felt the shame heat your belly until you tossed.
He’d been an ignorant mook but he’d taken care of his family.
You’d done your very best and still hadn’t come close.
The game was over.
No need to grind out the weekly paycheck or worry about the IRS or how much water and electricity you were wasting, or how you couldn’t afford kids, and how you were forced to try to explain to the wife, yet fucking again, not to go over the credit card limit, not to go over the debit card limit, not to write checks you couldn’t cover.
Compared to all that, there was no reason to get drunk anymore.
All that was left was filling the car’s gas tank and finding a park or beach to sleep in.
He sat in a bar and sipped his beer and tried to plan a next move but couldn’t find one.
He felt the same way as he had when he was sitting in his house holding the foreclosure papers in his hand.
This is it, the next step leads me to something completely new whether I’m ready for it or not.
After this, there’s no way back.
He drew out the butterfly blade and toyed with it.
It really was just like the one his old man used to have.
Bobby had told Jenks to fuck off, but it wasn’t hard finding a weapons shop down one of the side streets leading from 42
nd
Street.
Sure they’d cleaned up the area, but the seedier elements always had a way of seeping back in.
Nobody came to Times Square for Disney.
In the window there’d been a nice array of blades.
Two-inchers, three-inchers, six-inchers, curved, double-edged, serrated, carbonized.
Samurai swords, throwing stars, even a goddamn Ali Baba-Hassan Chop scimitar.
No butterfly blades or switchblades out in front, but after the clerk showed up and learned Jenks was interested, he brought them out from the back.