My head is still aching from the mickey Horde slipped me. I open the closet door and look at the padlocked minifridge next to the gun safe. Last pint I had was Saturday. Usually I would have had a drink on Monday, but Evie was with me, and then I had to run out to see Horde and then someone stole my stash.
Maybe I missed something in the fridge.
I could open the fridge and look inside, but I know it's empty. It's just that the Vyrus is talking to me, reminding me how I'm gonna start feeling in the next twenty-four when it starts eating me.
I turn around and go up the stairs.
It's early and it's a Tuesday; St. Marks isn't in full freakshow mode, but it's summertime so you still get an eyeful. Squatters sucking on forties bought with the change they panhandled this afternoon, aged hippies who live in the same rent-controlled apartments they had in the sixties, Jersey kids clogging the sidewalk booths to buy cheap sunglasses and get shitty tattoos. More than anything else it's depressing. This street used to be dangerous, now it's a mall.
Sounds is on St. Marks between Second and Third Avenues on the first floor of an old brownstone. It's one big room filled with bins of CDs, and vinyl for the classicists. Just inside the door a guy is standing in front of a bunch of cubbyholes where they keep customer's bags. He's a white kid wearing unlaced Nikes, baggy jeans, a Kobe jersey, and a Lakers cap turned sideways on his head. He's standing on a milk crate so he can keep an eye on the dozen or so customers browsing the stock. I go up to him and stand there while he checks out a chick in a camo micro-skirt who's digging through the trance bin.
– Excuse me.
His eyes flick to me and then back to the chick's legs.
– Yo?
– Manager around?
He shakes his head.
– Know when he might be around?
He shrugs.
– Anyone around I could talk to?
He shakes his head.
– Not hirin'.
– Uh-huh. You worked here long?
The chick walks up to the counter with a CD and the guy uses his position on the high ground to try and get a look down her top while the college student at the register rings her up.
– I asked if you worked here long.
The chick turns from the register and hands the guy a beat-up playing card. He turns to the cubbyholes and finds a Tibetan-style handbag with a matching card clothespinned to it. He hands her the bag, openly leering at the tops of her tits sticking out of her middy tank top.
– Whadcha buy?
She takes her bag, sticks her CD in and heads for the door.
– Music, asshole.
He watches her as she goes out.
– Yeah, fuck you, too, bee-atch.
He looks at me.
– Whaddaya want?
– Like I was saying, you work here long?
– Fuck do you care?
– I don't, I just thought you might know Whitney Vale.
He grins.
– Oh shit, man.
He turns to the kid behind the counter.
– G, fool wants ta know about Whitney.
The college kid doesn't look up from the Skinny Puppy liner notes he's reading.
– Tell him to get in line.
The box guy looks down at me, still grinning.
– Hear that, fool? Get in line.
– Yeah, I heard. You ever get to take a break in this place?
– Yeah, whatsit to ya?
– Nothing, just wanted to make sure they aren't abusing their workers.
I turn to leave.
– Yeah, fuck off, freak. Go hang with the rest of the ghouls been coming around.
I walk out.
The nice thing about St. Marks, it's easy to loiter. You can just hang out and drift up and down the same couple yards of pavement and nobody will pay you any mind. I cross the street to the deli and buy a couple packs of Luckys in case this takes awhile. Then I stand on the corner and smoke and wait.
He comes out a couple times to stand on the steps and have a cigarette himself, but it's over two hours before he takes his break. He crosses the street and heads toward my corner. I turn around and get fascinated by the beats the guy there sells out of his little stall. The box guy walks past me. He slaps hands with the doorman outside the Continental, then goes into the McDonald's next door. I walk past and watch him through the window as he gets his order to go. He comes out and turns to head back to the store and I come up behind him and take him by the arm.
– Hey, man!
– What?
I turn him around and start leading him toward 9th. I grin.
– Damn, G, it's great to see you! What you been up to?
– Wha the fuck?
He tries to pull his arm free. I squeeze it tight and put my mouth close to his ear.
– Fuck with me and I'll take you back to the store, stuff you in a cubbyhole and flush the card so no one can claim your ass.
He comes with me. I steer him around the corner and halfway down the block before I let him go. He's gone scared and babbly on me now.
– Hey, hey, man, I didn't mean anything back there, you don't gotta be a dick about it. I mean, you're not a dick.
– I could give a fuck what you said.
– So whadaya want, G? I gotta get back to the store an' shit.
I stare at him. He starts nodding.
– Right, G, right, you wanna know about Whitney.
– When was the last time you saw her?
– Got me, G. Like, maybe two, three weeks back we worked together.
– She quit?
– Naw, G, ya don't quit that job, ya jus stop goin' in.
– She have any boyfriends, anyone hanging around her?
He smiles.
– G. That chick wasn't straight enough for no boyfriends. She a mad freak. Super freakin'.
– You ever see her with a guy, fifties, a guy with money?
– Hell no. Chick never had no money, always be bummin'.
– You seen the pictures in the paper, of the guys she was with?
– Shit yeah, who ain't?
– You ever see her hanging out with them?
– Got me. Anything else, G? My McNuggets be gettin' cold.
– Yeah, that's it.
I take a twenty out of my pocket.
– Here, dinner's on me.
– Sweet.
He grabs the bill. I think of something and hold onto it.
– You know anything about a guy selling nude pics of her on the Net?
– Shiiit, I don't know 'bout that, but like I say, chick a freak. Know she most definitely picked up some change on the side doin' some freaky shit for a guy.
– What guy?
He tugs on the twenty. I let it go.
– Guy name Chubby Freeze. An'you can't find Chubby, you don' deserve to be comin' on all detective-like.
I stand there thinking as he walks away. At the corner, a good twenty yards away, he turns and points at me.
– That's right, bitch! An' done let me see your ass in the shop again or I'll buss a cap init.
He throws me the bird and turns the corner to go tell his pal outside the Continental how I tried to lean on him and how he hardcased me. I walk the other way, toward Chubby Freeze's place. Because he's right, I don't deserve to be all detective-like if I don't know where to find Chubby Freeze.
– Hey, Chubbs.
– Joe! What brings you?
Chubby Freeze isn't chubby. He may have been chubby once for a few minutes right after he was born, but now he's corpulent. A very short, very fat black man who is literally almost as wide as he is tall. He sits behind a grand but beaten mahogany desk, he and his fat sprawled on a threadbare red velvet love seat in lieu of an office chair that he would doubtlessly crush.
I point at the pretty boy perched on the arm of the love seat.
– Think he could take a walk?
Chubby smiles.
– Of course, Joe. Walking is one of the things Dallas does best. Isn't that right, Dallas?
The boy shrugs and shoots me a couple eye daggers.
– Show him, Dallas. Show the nice man how you walk.
Dallas sighs, pushes himself up and sashays past me to the door. The Chelsea gym-boy looks and booth tan don't fool me. If Chubby keeps him in his office, he's not just in here to move the desk out of the way when Chubby wants to get up; the boy is dangerous. I watch him till he's out of the room. Chubby watches, too.