“No, why. .”
“When you saw Alan, you. . passed out.”
I don’t respond.
“Then it touched a nerve,” Faith says. “You’ve lost someone.”
I think: Ain’t that the truth. My first true love, Annie Kindle, drowned five years ago in a lake in Nevada. My paternal grandmother, Lane, though still alive, suffers intensifying dementia. Polly, who was going to make it all better, left me. Things I love die or go away.
“I was disoriented.” I finally offer my explanation. “I’ve got a concussion.” So, yeah, I think, sick, in a way.
“It’s not my fault.”
“Why would my concussion be your fault, Faith?”
“I was just doing him a favor. That’s it.” She sounds just a tad defensive but maybe fairly so; a man is dead.
“Hold that thought.”
The man in the Mercedes steps out of the car. He’s tall and thin, more leg than torso. He looks in the direction of the cafe where I picked up Faith and cocks his head. He closes the car door and starts walking to the cafe: gangly, awkward strides, long arms, pink head, birdlike. He’s favoring his left leg, but at this distance in the dark I can’t settle on a diagnosis. Maybe lower back pain.
“He knows I’m gone,” says Faith.
The man disappears into the cafe. I can imagine he’s looking around, checking the bathroom, then asking the tattooed dude behind the counter whether he’s seen a brunette in a brown skirt. At some point, he’ll realize Faith disappeared through the alley or he’ll wonder if he lost focus and missed her wandering out the front.
“There he is,” Faith says.
“Turkey vulture.”
“What?”
“He moves like a bird.”
“Absolutely does. The way he cocks his head, a buzzard. You know your birds of prey.”
Back at his car, he finds a ratty-haired man in decrepit full-length coat looking through the back window and scratching his arms. Crack addict. The buzzard pulls out a wallet. He extracts a bill. He holds it up so that the druggie can see it. He drops the dollar onto the ground behind the car.
The addict shrugs and bends to pick up the money. As he starts to stand, the buzzard launches a soccer-style kick at the druggie’s head. Just before he’s about to make contact, the gangly attacker pulls back, sparing the druggie a terrific blow, causing him to fall to the street in a ball.
“Oh God,” Faith says.
“Mean buzzard.”
He climbs into the Mercedes. No sooner does exhaust start to come from his tailpipe than he is off. He peels into light traffic, cutting off a diminutive European smart car made for parking, not surviving crashes.
I pull out to follow. The Mercedes is separated from us by the smart car and an old-model sedan coughing exhaust.
“Take me to my car,” Faith says.
I don’t answer.
“You’re kidnapping me.”
“You think this guy is just playing around?”
“I. .”
“Help me find out what’s going on so that we can both feel safe.”
Faith crosses her arms across her chest, resignation. The Mercedes takes a left onto Bush Street, a thoroughfare that heads in the direction of downtown.
“At least tell me what we’re doing.”
“I’m following him to see where he goes and you’re going to continue telling me how you happened to observe my almost murder by subway.”
I take the left onto Bush. I’m now separated from the Mercedes by only the sedan, a Buick. But I doubt he would be able to see us in the darkness and drizzle. The light turns green. We continue toward downtown.
A few blocks later, the Mercedes takes an abrupt, illegal left turn onto Grant Street beneath an enormous green gate with an orange dragon on the top. Chinatown.
I hear a honk and realize I’ve stopped in the middle of the street. The Mercedes is half a block away now but moving slowly; not surprising given Chinatown’s narrow streets and the challenge of navigating a handful of jaywalkers, the very last of the night’s produce, and shoppers toting bags.
The Mercedes’s taillights disappear over a slight hill.
21
I hate this place. It’s always had a hold on me-not the mysticism of the hole-in-the-wall herbal dispensaries, the wrinkle-faced trinket sellers in their comically costumed conical hats, the bloodied chickens hung by their feet from the rafters of the Chinese butchers. That stuff I love.
It’s the parking. This is the place where parking Karma goes to die. Tiny spaces, seemingly never free, with what seem to me to be the most arcane rules in a city of arcane parking rules. Here, a sign might read: NO PARKING 8 TO 5 OTHER THAN FIRST TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS OF MONTH AND AS OTHERWISE NOTED. Why not add: PENALTY IS DEATH. Two spots away, a different rule.
I work through a small crowd and crest the hill in time to see the Mercedes slide into a spot. I can’t tell whether it’s legal, but it nevertheless puts us in a pickle. I can’t stop and double-park in these narrow streets.
“Duck,” I say.
“What?”
“Lower your head.”
She understands. We’re about to pass the buzzard. She bends to the left so she’s lying on the seat, out of sight. To stabilize herself, she reaches across the center of the car and her fingers brush my knee.
To avoid having him see me, I instinctively contract my neck, trying to pull my head inside my body. I also slow to keep from getting too far ahead of the Mercedes, but even at this pace, we’re a full block ahead of our prey. Faith sits up.
“He’s just sitting there.” I report. “Lights off.”
I hit a stop sign at an intersection that marks Chinatown’s innards, the place where tourists gawk but no longer buy. The shops here cater to Chinese restaurateurs and residents. At the corner, a thin Chinese man in a suit holds an umbrella, its outline framed by the neon sign in the window of the dessert shop behind him.
I flash back to the reason I hate Chinese food.
I’m sitting across from Polly at Golden Lucky Duck. It’s the night she got an empty fortune cookie. Cracked in her hand, it looks dry, like an egg without an embryo. She tells me she’s got something important to discuss. Uncharacteristically, she stutters. Polly, the polished entrepreneur with the Wharton street cred, can’t get her presentation out.
“Say something, Polly.”
The waiter returns with a replacement fortune cookie. Polly takes it and smiles sadly. “Let’s open it and find out our fate.”
Back in the present, I hear a voice: “Nathaniel?”
I look up at the neon dessert sign and it looks like it’s bending. I exhale through pursed lips.
The man with the umbrella crosses the street. After he passes, I pull over to the side, essentially parking in the crosswalk. I feel Faith’s gaze on me as I turn around to look at the Mercedes.
“Start talking. You said Alan asked you to come to the subway. You did him a favor.”
She sighs. “He asked me to make sure that you got his message. That’s it.”
“Message?”
