Laurie Lee sobbed, “Albert would like that. I just know he would want to rest here. Why just this afternoon he remarked how peaceful it was.”
“You just come on home with me for a few days. I’ll have Cousin Billy Bob go to the city tomorrow and take care of all that legal mess.” Putting his arm around Laurie Lee, he said, “After all what’s a family for, but to help out in a time of need like this.”
Needle Street
by J. Kenneth O’Street
He’d been away for three years. Now he was back on the street and nothing had changed. Nothing and no one... except Carol.
I paused, my back to the lighted subway exit, and glanced around the small park. The gathering dusk hid the dirt and the litter — the squalor I knew was there and had always been there.
Home, sweet home. The phrase popped into my mind unbidden, and I grimaced.
I might have been away three days instead of the three years which had passed for me like three centuries. Nothing had changed.
A couple of winos, imagining that they were hidden in the shadows beneath the large, guano-frosted statue of a long dead and forgotten mayor of New York, sat passing a bottle of white port. In small, scattered groups and singly drunks, bums and hopheads stood or walked aimlessly, waiting — for nothing. A junkie sat alone on a bench by the scum-streaked water fountain staring fixedly up the graveled walk. I walked toward him.
It’s easy to spot a junkie, if you know what to look for. And I do. This one was waiting for his pusher. Any narcotics agent would have spotted him at a glance. Or any long-time junkie.
And I’m not a cop.
As I sat down on the other end of his bench the junkie jerked his head around and started to get up.
“Cool it, baby,” I said quietly, shaking my head, “I’m just trying to locate an old friend. Get it?” A beautiful girl. Her name is Carol, Carol, Carol and I am going to kill, kill—
I forced my mind to break the familiar, tight little circle before it could get started, and watched the junkie. He was young and thin, hollow-cheeked and dirty. The pupils of his eyes were widely dilated.
“So?” he said flatly, not relaxing.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out two crumpled bills — a five and a single — my last. I rubbed them slowly one against the other between thumb and curled forefinger, letting him see the denominations. Six bucks. Not much to most people. Not much unless you’ve got a twenty dollar a day habit that demands satisfaction.
“Who?” asked the kid. He eyed the two bills.
“Gig Madison! Willie the Creep. A kid called Doodle. Bo Wheeler.” I paused, surprised at the limited number of names I could dredge up from the old days. “Any of those,” I finished lamely.
The kid frowned, licking his lips. “That last guy — Bo something. He a tall skinny cat, big nose?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly, “know where he is?” I held out the bills, drawing my hand back fast as he reached for them.
“You first,” I said, and waited.
He stared at the money for a moment, his hand outstretched, then spoke. “The Dalton. He’s got a room there, second floor. O.K.?”
I stood and slipped the bills back into my pocket. “Thanks,” I said as I turned to go.
“Hey! Wait a minute. What about the dough?”
“Bill me for it, punk,” I tossed over my shoulder and grinned to myself.
Bo Wheeler. He’ll know. And if he doesn’t someone will. She won’t be far away and she won’t be hard to find.
I left the park and entered the narrow canyon beyond called Needle Street by the junkies, pushers and cops who walked its dingy length each day; past dark pawnshops namless flophouses; past the dirty store with its bottledlined shelves, a sign in the window advertising VINTAGE WINES — 35¢ PINT, where the neighborhood cops sometimes stood hidden in the rear watching the winos come in, waiting for one to flash more money than was good for him to keep; past the human derelicts with their blank eyes and the inevitable heavily made-up hooker, her wares displayed with the aid of a supposedly sexy off-the-shoulder peasant blouse.
Just before reaching the end of that first block of Needle Street I passed a pair of New York’s finest, their badges dully reflecting colored light cast by cheap neon. One nudged the other and I ignored the knowing glance they exchanged as they made me for a brand-new ex-con, which is another easy trick if you know what to look for. I crossed the street feeling their eyes on my back, not caring.
I stopped on the corner and stared at the faded sign hanging over a dimly lighted doorway. “HOTEL” it stated tiredly — nothing more. A stylized red neon martini glass with swizzle stick hung suspended in a plate glass window by an open door through which poured the blare of a juke along with the odor of stale beer and stale bodies. There was no name but I knew that the bar was called “Harry’s” by everyone who knew it, although the original possessor of the name had sold out and moved away so long ago that no one here remembered him, or cared.
And the hotel was called the Dalton.
I hesitated beneath the hanging sign then pushed open the glass door of the cheap hotel and stepped inside.
At the top of the single long flight of stairs a bare bulb dangled at the end of its cord, casting a few faint rays of illumination down to struggle fitfully with the pool of darkness gathered at the foot of the stairwell. I climbed the stairs slowly, listening to their creaking protest against my 180 pounds. As my head came above floor level the night clerk looked up from the comic book he had been reading in the small cubicle which served as an office.
“Yeah?” he said, not rising.
“A room. Second floor if you’ve got one,” I said;
He stood, holding a can of beer down out of sight, a quick, appraising glance taking in my brand-new, cheap suit and fresh, short haircut. I could almost see the wheels turning behind his dull eyes as he rubbed a two-day growth of beard.
“Well, let me think.” He turned and pretended to study an unpainted plywood board nailed to the wall behind him, tagged room keys hanging against black silhouettes of themselves from a triple row of pegs. “I got one three-dollar room left on two—” he shot a look at my unresponding face and added, “oh, yeah, here’s a two-buck room.” He reached for a key. “Two-oh-five.”
I dropped the single on the bare counter and smiled, “It’s only a buck tonight, friend. Right?” The landlord collected one dollar per signature in the register each morning in these dumps and didn’t care what the night clerk squeezed out of each room; but if the owner ever learned that anyone had been turned away simply because he wouldn’t come across with a buck for the boy, then the boy would be looking for a new job.
Not that the buck mattered to me as such. But it might take a couple of days to find Carol, and a dollar might make a difference. And when I find her I will kill her and she will know that she is dying and why. And when she is dead they will come for me and eventually they will kill me, not knowing that I am already dead.
The grubby clerk shoved the open register across the counter, resentment apparent in his voice as he said shortly, “Sign the book,” and resumed his seat, jamming the bill into his shirt pocket.
I ran my eye quickly over the registrations for the last three days — some illegible, others sprawled across the page, ninety percent phoney. There was no “Bo Wheeler” listed — nor had I expected there would be.