Part 32 - Wolfe: The Winding Path

A pair of black and whites whip by, splashing water up on the sidewalk in front of me. I don’t even look up. My gaze lingers on the sea of gray as I slosh through the fresh puddle. Red and blue flares flicker in the windows of the shuttered shops, the accompanying sirens twisting away in the night.

Somewhere behind me an inferno consumes a building, flames licking the sky where they’ll find four bodies rendered into little more than ash and bone. A proper funeral and more than they deserved.

Six blocks away, an old man slumps over his steering wheel still clutching a small caliber revolver he’d never known he had until he was dead. Most of his face is splattered across the shatter-proof glass of the driver’s side door. A simple smash-and-grab, they’ll say. Expensive suit, armored SUV, shoes that were worth more than a few men’s lives. Why is he parked behind a shelter for battered women? Who got the drop on him? Someone he knew. That beast is impregnable. Not even a giant could force its way in. He knew the killer, and he never had a chance.

I’d dropped my brass in the sewer on 59th and Third. Wiped my prints off the snub .38 before I’d let it go. It’ll be traced to a small-time pill pusher in SoBo. He’ll be in for questioning before the sun goes down tomorrow, spilling flimsy alibis through rotting teeth.

A ladder truck whoops by waking the dead, and then the turmoil of the night fades away. Nothing but quiet streets and the steady patter of rain on steel shutters, my soaked jacket. Block after block drifts by. I wipe my face with a wet palm and inhale through a broken nose. The city always smells fresh and new after a long rain, after the stink of the street is washed away, after the constant clamor of eight million people fades. A rain storm in the pre-dawn hours is the only time to find peace, so I hoof it. No rush. My reward is waiting.

An old man huddles under an awning, his entire world in a big black plastic trash bag clutched in his arms. I look his way and reach into my coat, toss him a bound stack of hundreds and keep going.

There’s more where that came from, and why I’d grabbed that wad and tucked it away was something I can’t explain. The box was brimming with bills banded and packed neatly to fill the space. I’d passed it to Goldi and pushed her into a cab. “Go home and pack. One bag only. Empty the box into another, then meet me at my place.”

She looked up at me with those big doe eyes, her hair plastered to her face, her cheeks streaming with the tears of heaven. No answer. She just nodded, and I couldn’t blame her. Chick like that, gazing up at the stars one minute, then her world burning down around her the next. I wouldn’t blame her if she wasn’t there when I got home. I wouldn’t blame her if she took the money and ran, never showing her face again. What does she have to look forward to here? A shitty job. A lecherous boss. A dead girlfriend.

A pretty girl lying face down in an alley. I swallow and push the thought away.

All she has left is a new lover who’s just killed five people, burned down a building and stolen an easy half mil from a crime boss. Not a lot of reason for her not to be at Union Station right now, ticket in hand, eyes on the big clock as the minutes tick away. A sack of money, a voice that can take her places, a body that’ll open doors. The world could belong to a girl like that if she had the guts to own it.

If she’s there when I get home, she’ll own me, too. She’s not Red. She’s a much different animal.

A yellow cab slows when it spies me. I watch it go by, tail lights in the distance, and fish a crumpled pack from my jacket pocket. I pull out a cigarette and stare at it for a moment. Neon signs blink from across the street. A bar still open, one of those basement bars. You risk your neck going down the steps in the dark. You risk it more coming up with a head full of whiskey. I toss the pack into the gutter, watch it whip away down the drain. I follow. Down, down, down. A heavy black door with a single diamond-shaped window. Al’s in small silver letters over the cheap plastic window.

You can smell a shithole bar before it ever registers with your eyes. Before you see the guy in the stained wife beater, the balding chump chomping on a cigar. The carpet tastes like beer. The beer tastes like old carpet. A line of bottles all in a row, like a shooting gallery, behind an aging fat man who’s unmistakably an “Al”. I note the tattoo on his neck as he sets the glass in front of me, rich amber sloshing from side to side. I slide a crisp hundred across the bar at him, and he hesitates.

“Keep it,” I say, and a moment later, he deposits a bowl of peanuts on the bar. The perks of being rich.

“Looks like you got in a dust-up.” Al’s voice rattles out like a penny in a tin can. Fat man leans back on the bar behind him, arms crossed and resting on his gut.

“Not my blood.” I don’t look up. All I can see is the bourbon swirling in my grip.

“You should see the other guy, right?”

“What’s left of him.” I take a sip, wince at the bite, feel the burn go down slow. Every cut in my mouth, on my lips, is on fire, and I look out over the scene as a building is consumed. It burns like the sun in the middle of the city. A thousand yards away, two uniforms call in a man with half a face. It was easier to walk away from that once. Sleep like a baby. Now I can’t stop seeing Gretel’s burned face as I raise my Glock. There was nothing else I could do. She knew what she was getting into dealing with the devil.

“Story of your life, eh, tough guy?”

I don’t see him lean in as much as feel it, flames still dancing against a honey-brown backdrop as I sip. His fingers drum down on the bar, and suddenly, my focus is on here and now. Tattoos on his fingers. A single letter on each plump digit. B-E-A-T-D-O-W-N. His voice is a low rasp now. “Lotta sirens. Whose house did you blow down tonight, detective?”

I inhale deeply through my nose, feel the ache.

He pushes back, scooping my empty up, and splashes a little more of the burn into my glass. “This one’s on the house,” he says, his voice more of a growl now, belting out his charity across the sullen, black space. “Right here, boys, we got ourselves a celebrity.” He pauses, sets the glass in front of me, his meaty digits giving it a little spin. “The Wolf of the West Side.”

“Beat Down” — a memory flickers, like a forgotten dream. I blink and lift the glass.

“Mikey,” says Al, “Joe, this here’s the man I told you about. Back in the day, before this swanky bitch of a bar landed in my lap, he shows up unannounced, blows my door down. The pigs rush in to clean up the mess. Keep it kosher for the judge. I seen it. Up close and personal. Ain’t that right, Big Bad?”

The memory hits, a bright flash of yellow, a splatter of deep crimson, boxes of shit in the closet, a small apartment under a bagel shop. Soft door, two hardasses counting their money. Fifteen grand. Pills. Weed. Guns. Two mooks and one of them not named Al. “You walked. Inadmissible search.”

“I walked, but my partner didn’t. He went out on a stretcher. We buried him in Hoboken with his sister.”

I didn’t read him his rights. Didn’t have a warrant. Didn’t care. We walked with our cut, left the rest for Pie and his brothers to bag and tag. Hit Smiley’s that night, the two of us. Booze and greenbacks flying. A line in the back room. Fucked Red in the alley. Neither of us could wait. High and hopped up, horny and hot. Her cunt like a river and my steel driving home like those two rounds I put through Al’s buddy. Never pull your gun. It puts me in a mood.

“Where’d you bury yours?”

I look up for the first time, see a flash of glee in his eyes.

“A month later, wasn’t it? Two? Big guy, built like a bear.”

I swallow the last drop, savor the burn. A sudden calm. I can’t even feel the ache in my ribs anymore, the swelling around my eye.

“Bled out on the sidewalk right outside his house. Right in front of you. Knife, I hear. Ever catch the guy?” He sticks a fat finger up his nose, gives it a good scratch and reaches for the bottle again. “Long night that night.” He pours another splash into my glass, leaves the bottle. “What was it? Somebody with brass ones not gonna take your shit?”

“You tell me.” I down the whole glass at once, grit my teeth, squeeze the glass so hard it might shatter. If it does, I’ll feed it to him.

Al’s laugh crackles in the dark, his face just a shadow when he leans back in front of the naked bulb on the back wall. “Another smash-and-grab. And another. And another. That’s how this mook operates, fellas. You don’t do no time. They take everything you got and leave you with nothing. Then you work for them maybe. Maybe you make some scratch. Maybe you end up in the river.”

“And you got all this.” I nod at the row of bottles behind him, the cracked plastic surface of the bar dotted with sweat circles, cigarette burns, memories of nights long past. Smiley’s. Laughs. Whores in the back room. “You walked. You turned that frown upside down.”

“And what did you get out of it? A dead partner. Did you think everyone’ll just lie down and take it? Word gets around. The Wolf and the Bear are coming. Jaws and claws coming for your shit. Not to jail you, to set you to right. But to take it all for themselves.”

I poured another finger of the bourbon, ignoring the looks I was getting from the mooks at the other end of the bar. I could hear the leather shift under their fat asses, the grind of the cigar into the ashtray. It was all sweaty palms and heartbeats now as Al’s rumbles reverberated around the room. I let him talk, have his moment, feel his dick swell. With that gut, he hasn’t seen his dick in years.

“Joe here had a couple girls down on 12th. Mikey ran twenty-fives in Chinatown. But you set ’em straight, didn’t you, Wolfe?”

“Straight and narrow. I seen the light,” says the mook nearest me, his thin hair slicked back over a bald spot, crooked nose from too many dust-ups. “All cuz a you, Mr. Wolfe, sir.”

“We’s first class citizens now, thanks to you, Mr. Wolfe,” says the other one as he stands. “A righteous living down at the docks in Queens, me and Joe here. We seen the light, says Joe, and we got you for to thank.”

Glass shatters and I’m off my seat. The broken bottle flashes across my eyes and I taste the bourbon as it splashes across my face. A low grunt when my fist crushes what’s left of his nose. I follow with a boot to the mook’s chest, and he falls into his friend.

The telltale growl of pump-action Mossberg slices through the clatter, and I duck as it clears its throat. I don’t look for that fat fuck Al; he hasn’t moved an inch since he reached for his cannon. I fire up through the bar, taking his balls and cock with three successive shots, and I’m rewarded with silence.

The other fucks are a tangle of limbs and bar stools, beer guts and broken dreams, frozen in time, their eyes wide and waiting as I stand.

Sirens keen as I pull my collar against the rain. No choice now. I loved this city once, but there’s nothing left here. Nothing except bodies piling up. I flip the sign on Al’s door to closed and climb the naked steps. Maybe I’ll slip and break my neck. Fitting. Call it karma.

There’s nowhere safe here now — for me or for Goldi. If she’s there. If she didn’t run.

The money is real, I tell myself. She’s real. It’s all real. The people I’ve murdered, tortured. The lives I’ve ruined. Three mooks lay like islands in a sea of their own blood. Blocks to go, and I don’t know if she’ll be there. And suddenly, I feel that old ache, that nervous energy. Something I haven’t felt since the last time I talked to Red. I shake my head, trying to tamp it down, but it lingers. I can feel it in my fingertips, and I shove my hands in my pockets.

The sidewalk blurs, neon reflections promising another life.

I need Goldi to make this all real, to pull closed this bloody chapter with one last bit of beauty. I cling to that slender reed of hope as I trudge through the rain, a ghost passing unnoticed under a thousand leering eyes. The house nears with each step, promising nothing, denying all — even the solace of past brotherhoods now just embers scattered on an indifferent wind. If Goldi’s there, we both may live. If not…only survival matters now.