Short Ride to Nowhere (7 page)
“There was an incident.”
Of course there had been.
“What kind of incident?”
“An altercation.”
“You mean Hale got into a fight?”
“Yes.”
“You must have fights here practically every night.
You would’ve had a bad one last night if the bald son of a bitch who’d tried to mug me hadn’t run for it at the last second.
So why do you remember Hale?”
The thing that had awakened and started to crawl across her features, shifting into an expression of interest or emotion, seemed to shudder in the light.
Jenks wanted to reach out and take her face in his hands and draw her to him so he could get a better look.
Angle here this way and that hoping it would catch in the light.
It was hard to see but it was recognizable.
Her gaze met his and he knew.
“You fell in love with him.”
Angela said and did nothing.
Like Jenks, Hale wasn’t a handsome man.
He’d been soft most of his life, and then he’d been lean and smelled like ulcers and anxiety, and then like sweat and ocean, and then he’d gone a little too far over the edge.
But somehow it had happened.
Why not?
You couldn’t choose who you fell in love with.
It went beyond your scope of understanding or reason. You couldn’t deny it. You had no way to force it or to stop it. You held on as best you could.
“He was here three days and you somehow fell in love with him.”
She shifted her gaze to the empty wall, then back to take in Jenks, trying in order to see if he was mocking her.
But a man who lived out of his car didn’t mock anybody.
She looked away again.
“What was the fight over?” he asked.
She took a breath.
“A Danish.”
“Excuse me?”
“A stale cheese Danish.”
A laugh edged up his throat but never escaped.
What the hell, a stale cheese Danish; that made as much sense as anything.
Two guys reaching for it at the same time, both wanting this thing, this little piece of, what, cake, right here.
They couldn’t have anything else in life, couldn’t even keep a roof over their heads, couldn’t keep a woman, couldn’t feed the dog, couldn’t pay for their own funerals, but by Christ, they could have a stale cheese Danish.
They were still men.
They still had pride.
They were still hungry.
But then some other motherfucker had to get in your way and try to take even that from you.
Jenks couldn’t see Hale wanting to fight, but imagined the other guy going berserk.
The brawl would have been merciless, a fight to the goddamn death.
“Did the man he had the altercation with have a daughter?”
“It was a woman.
And I don’t know if she had a child.”
“What was her name?”
Angela almost hiccoughed the name.
“Trina Beck.
She became enraged and began screaming.
Hale didn’t want to argue but she was relentless.
She started hurling food and hot coffee at him.
She chased him out the door.
We tried to stop her and we couldn’t.
I never saw him again.”
Jenks still wanted to laugh, but if he started he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop.
A strange kind of pity welled in him for this woman, who had lost her great love after only three days, thanks to a disagreement over a Danish.
It sounded so ridiculous, it made you want to shake your head in disbelief.
But then, so much did nowadays.
“Has she been back to the shelter recently?”
“No.”
“Give me her last known residence.”
“That’s not allowed.”
“Who cares?”
“I care.”
“Break the rules.”
“I won’t.
I can’t.”
“Do it for him.”
“No.”
Jenks studied her a moment and nodded.
“Then I’m sorry.”
He moved in on her quickly, swung with his right fist, held back and tapped her neatly on the chin.
She let out a bleat, her eyes rolled up in her head, and she collapsed to the floor.
He checked her as if he knew what he was doing.
Mostly he wanted to be sure he hadn’t broken her neck. He made her as comfortable as possible and then sat at the computer.
There was nothing on there that got him into the shelter system, only private files.
He clicked on a few at random and didn’t see anything of interest.
He’d botched the job.
He was going to have to go back to the front desk and try to get Trina Beck’s address that way.
What the hell.
He left Angela lying on the floor of her office and shut the door behind him.
He moved quickly up the corridors to the front counter. There was some activity back in the office area, but Jenks ignored it as he leaned against the counter, lifted his legs, swung around, and jumped down.
He got on the nearest computer and found a database.
He typed in Trina Beck.
Nothing came up.
He tried T. Beck and still nothing.
He typed in Katrina Beck and there was an address on 210
th
Street.
Jenks had never been that far north in the city.
He glanced up and Angela was standing there looking at him from the opposite side of the counter, a thread of blood leaking down her bottom lip.
Christ, she was strong.
A shot like that should have knocked her out for a half hour, minimum.
The bruise on her chin would easily be covered by pancake if she cared that much, and he knew she didn’t.
He was curious to see if she would yell.
She didn’t.
He got out from behind the desk and made it to the front door.
He felt her watching him, thinking about him, wondering if he could actually find out who had tried to kill Hale.
He had nothing so far, but he was starting to get used to having nothing.
He faltered before he hit the street and looked back at her, but she was gone.
In a moment, so was he.
He took the West Side Highway up into Harlem and then cut over and threaded his way through the upper region of Manhattan, in no hurry at all.
He enjoyed the way the neighborhoods shifted so completely.
You could feel the difference in the air as you turned a corner, noting areas that had been gentrified, the ones that were populated by Columbia students, the ones that were gang territory, the bodegas packed tight with Hispanics, the salsa beat playing on and on.
The smell of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers came on stronger and stronger as the winds brushed down out of the south Bronx and floated over Manhattan.
Police cars and ambulances swarmed out of the ghettos.
There was so much yelling everywhere.
You didn’t know which way to look.
He let out a yowl of laughter.
It had been waiting inside him for the chance to break free.
There was something about it that invigorated him, just being here.
He knew what it meant.
Once he would’ve been terrified to drive these streets, to let himself be seen in the open, but now he met everyone’s gaze.
No one could say shit to him.
They knew.
They knew that no matter what they had they had more than he did.
No one would bother him.
He wanted to race over to the east side and find his ex and her new beau and show them that he was no longer afraid.
Jenks parked on 210
th
in front of a freshly painted building with a buckling brick stoop.
He stepped carefully up the broken steps and found the buzzer to the correct apartment.
There was no name on the label.
He pressed the button and waited.
There was no buzz or response.
He tried the old gag of buzzing all the apartments at once on the hope that someone would open the outer and inner locked doors.
Again there was no response.
He waited for someone to leave the building.
He kept checking his watch.
After an hour of no one entering or exiting, Jenks caught wise and tried the outer door.
It was unlocked.
So was the inner one.
He proceeded up the sagging stairwell.
Televisions and stereos were on inside the apartments.
The buzzers downstairs must all be shorted.
Either that or these people just didn’t give a shit who came knocking.
Both possibilities seemed perfectly acceptable.
At the sixth floor he started checking apartments.
He found 6F, Katrina Beck’s former residence, and knocked.
The door swung open before Jenks even pulled his hand away.
The guy had just been waiting there on the other side, hoping for something to happen.
He stood 6'2, went maybe two-forty of mostly muscle.
Wearing a stained wife-beater, greasy hair falling in his eyes, nine days of stubble.
His breath smelled like an overflowing toilet in the far corner of hell.
He filled the doorway and put on a dead-eye look, staring down at Jenks and yet somehow looking through him.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Jenks.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Trina Beck.
Does she still live here?
Does she ever stop in?”
“She rip you off?”
Might as well go with it.
“Yes.”
“I got nothing to do with that.”
“I understand.
I’d just like to talk to her.”
“You can’t.”
“It’s just a misunderstanding.”
“She never misunderstood anybody or anything in her life.
You want to kick her to shit and rob her.”
“I really don’t.”
Jenks couldn’t tell which side the guy was on.
Was he trying to protect Trina or was he waiting to hurt her himself?
Jenks had lost the thread already.
He had to take control.
“Does she have a daughter?”
“What?”
“A daughter, around seven years old or so?
Does she?
Did she?”
“Did she?”
“Yes, did she?
Does she?”
“What the hell do you want here?”
“I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me shit.”
“Who are you?” Jenks asked.