The Make

impatience and anxiety now.

Another shrug.

‘You understand what I’m sayin’ to you?’

The driver shrugged again. ‘You want get in?’ he asked, thinking that this was a fare, a normal fare, Mona would always remember that.

‘No, you listen boy, I don’t want to get in. I want you to think hard. You see a big man, dark hair, and a boy, a slim blond boy? You think, you understand me?’

‘He doesn’t understand what you’re saying,’ said Mona.

‘Yeah he does.’

‘No he don’t.’

‘I’m tellin’ you he does.’ Lefty’s grin was vast and manic now with determination. He turned again to the driver.

Mona caught his arm.

His head whipped round.

Mona almost fell back. He looked demented.

She swallowed hard. ‘Look, Lefty, this is no good,’ she said, trying to sound reasonable, when what she felt was just plain desperate. She couldn’t go on with this. Neither could he, why couldn’t he see that? ‘Give it up, for God’s sake.’

Lefty grabbed her restraining hand. ‘Fuck off, girly,’ he snapped, and now he was trembling, jittering around on the pavement.

The driver started revving the engine, getting ready to go. He didn’t need trouble, and Lefty was starting to look very much like it.

‘Boy,’ said Lefty to him, ‘what you doin’ . . .?’

The cab started to roll slowly forward.

Lefty grabbed at it, swearing.

And then there was a knife in his hand and he was leaning in, furious, lunging at the cab driver’s throat with it.

‘You understand this, you motherfucker? Do you?’

Mona staggered back, found herself up against the wall of a building. Her eyes opened wide with horror.

The cab driver started screaming as Lefty lunged and lunged and lunged at him.

Blood spurted.

Mona couldn’t believe what was happening. She could see blood pouring out down the side of the cab, blood that looked black in the hard glare of the streetlights. The cab driver went on screaming, shouting, and it seemed to Mona that it went on forever, that it would never stop . . . and then suddenly, shockingly, it did.

Oh shit.

She cowered back against the building, wanting to run away, wishing she could move, but she couldn’t. All her strength had gone. If not for the wall of the building behind her, she would have collapsed on to the pavement.

Lefty was just standing there now, panting; he’d stopped plunging the knife into the man’s throat, but Mona couldn’t look away. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. Lefty was standing there with the knife dripping blood on to the ground, the driver silent behind the wheel, his head thrown back, his neck a mess of gaping wounds.

Suddenly Mona leaned over and was sick. She heaved her guts up while Lefty looked back at her dispassionately. Then he opened the driver’s door, stopped the engine, yanked on the handbrake, slammed the door shut. He came back to where she was and said, quite calmly: ‘We gotta clean this up.’

Clean it up? What was he talking about, washing the fucking dishes?

A wild surge of hysteria welled up in Mona. He’d hacked a man to death, and now he was standing there calmly saying they had to clean this up? He was crazy. He really was.

Mona shivered and retched again. Nothing came up but bile. Oh shit, how had she got into this? She was walking the streets with a crazy man and now she had witnessed a murder.

‘Come on, Mona. You gotta help me out with this here. We got to clear this mess away.’

Like the dead man – Mona was sure he was dead – was nothing at all; a piece of rubbish to be disposed of.

Now Lefty was opening the driver’s door again.

‘What the hell you doing?’ Mona demanded, gasping, half sobbing with shock.

The light was on inside the cab now and, oh fuck, it was horrible in there. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from it.

Lefty didn’t answer. He was pushing the body over, out of his way. Then he straightened and looked at her. There was the black, slick sheen of blood on his hands. He paused, took a long pull on the butane, and Mona thought she was about to be sick again, just looking at him. She hated him, but now she was mortally afraid of him too. She had never seen anyone lose it as suddenly as that.

‘Come on, get in the back. We gotta clear this away.’

Mona pushed herself away from the wall. ‘No. I don’t, I can’t . . .’ she said shakily.

‘You get the fuck in here!’ hissed Lefty.

Mona actually jumped. She staggered across to the cab and with a groan of despair she got into the back. There was blood everywhere in the front of the cab, she couldn’t look. She shuddered and whimpered and crouched there, hugging herself, trying not even to glance at the dark, slumped form of the dead man.

Lefty started the engine, and drove.

He drove to the river; an abandoned cement works or something. There was no one about down there and it was dark and damned scary. Mona wished she was somewhere, anywhere else. This was any sane person’s worst nightmare. She’d been party to a murder. Didn’t that make her an accessory? She’d had one or two brushes with the law before, just a little soliciting, a little recreational drug use – but nothing like this. This was heavy shit. The worst.

Lefty parked up near the edge of the dock and got out of the car. Terrified at the thought of being left alone in here with a corpse, Mona flung open the door and scrambled out too. She stood there, looking at Lefty, with no idea what he was going to do. She’d seen him kill this poor bastard; maybe he was now going to do her too? There was no way she could stop him, that was for sure. But he was leaning back into the car, taking off the handbrake. Then he cranked the window open a notch and slammed the door shut.

‘Come on, push,’ he said.

Mona stood there, frozen with fear.

Lefty came right up to her so that Mona was confronted by his grey-black face, sheened with sweat, that big, stapled wound across his forehead. He looked like a monster. He was a monster.

‘Come on,’ he shouted in her face.

Mona followed him round to the back of the car on legs that felt like rubber. Lefty put his shoulder to the back of the car, and Mona leaned into it and gave a shove too. The car started to roll forward, crunching over gravel. They pushed. The car rolled, gaining speed . . . and then suddenly it dropped away from them, fell over the edge of the dock and into the inky waters below with a huge splash.

Mona looked around, but there was no one to hear, no one to see.

Lefty stared over the edge of the dock and watched the car bob there for long minutes, slowly filling with water. It turned lazily, like a turtle bathing in the surf, and tipped sideways. Then slowly, inch by inch, it sank. Great bubbles came up and exploded on to the surface as it went down. A mini-whirlpool sucked the bubbles down, and then suddenly the waters were still, closing over the car as if it had never existed.

Lefty turned to Mona. She could see his teeth flash in a grin.

She shuddered.

‘Job done,’ he said, and took another pull on the can.