Slowly, Rafe got to his feet.
7
West of the Holland Tunnel, the Turnpike Extension rides high over the Jersey flats, where garbage and construction debris and used Broadway sets and failed mobsters have been buried for a hundred years. Arthur drove, with Parker and Rafe behind him on the backseat. Rafe had nothing to say until Arthur took one of the steep twisty ramps down from the Extension into the industrial wasteland of the flats. Then, not looking at Parker, he said, 'I'd like to live through this.'
'Everybody would,' Parker told him.
The street they took south was flanked by warehouses and vast parking fields full of tractor trailers. There were no pedestrians in this part of the world, and almost no other traffic. Parker said, 'Arthur, how far?'
'Ten minutes.'
'Pull over at the next cross street.'
Rafe blinked, but wouldn't look at Parker.
As the Volvo slowed, Parker said to Rafe, 'Take off your shoes and socks.'
'I'm not trouble to anybody,' Rafe said, still looking straight ahead. Then, when Parker didn't answer, he stooped to take off the shoes and socks, saying, 'Just leave them on the floor?'
'Yes. Empty your pockets. Onto the floor.'
Rafe did so, wallet and keys and coins and a penknife dropping down by his shoes.
Arthur had stopped the Volvo. Parker got out, on the curbside, and said, 'Come out.'
Rafe slid over and climbed out of the car. He looked very scared, and kept his eyes fixed on a point somewhere to Parker's right.
Parker said, 'Walk somewhere.'
Surprised he was going to stay alive, Rafe looked quickly at Parker's face, then down at his own bare feet, then started walking, stepping carefully, frowning down at the scarred broken concrete of the sidewalk.
Parker got into the front beside Arthur. 'We'll be done before he calls anybody.'
'Good,' Arthur said. 'I was afraid you wouldn't have an easy way.' He put the car in gear and drove on south, Rafe picking his way slowly through the wasteland behind them.
It's called the Port of New York, but years ago most of the shipping businesses moved across the harbor to New Jersey, where the costs were lower and the regulations lighter. Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, and Bayonne are, along their waterfronts, a great sweeping tangle of piers, warehouses, gasoline storage towers, snaking rail lines, cranes, semi-tractor trailers, chain-link fences, guard shacks, and forklift trucks. Day and night, lights glare from the tops of tall poles and the corners of warehouses. Cargo ships ease up the channels and into the piers every hour of every day from every port in the world. The big trucks roll eastward from the Turnpike and the cargo planes lift from Newark International. The thousand thousand businesses here cover every need and every want known to man.
This was the home of Cosmopolitan Beverages, or at least the home of their legitimate business. On the roof of a broad three-story brick building a long time ago painted dull gray a sparkling red-and-gold neon sign read cosmopolitan in flowing script and, beneath that, beverages in smaller red block letters. The building stood alone, surrounded by frost-heaved concrete patched here and there with asphalt. Between the expanse of concrete and the equally choppy street stretched a chain-link fence across the front of the property, turning at right angles at both ends to stretch back toward the piers and Upper New York Bay. Gates in both front corners stood open, the one on the left leading to a mostly full parking area beside the building, the one on the right opening to a smaller and mostly empty space, with a sign on the fence near the gate reading visitor parking.
Arthur turned in at the visitors' gate, saying, 'Same as last time?'
'No. I'll be Hargetty.' Parker looked at Arthur's profile as the older man stopped the car near the front corner of the building. 'You have any guns in this car?'
Arthur shook his head. 'I've never owned a gun in my life,' he said. 'Fired rifles, a long time ago, in the army. Only at targets.'
'If it turns bad,' Parker told him, 'drop flat and roll into a corner.'
'And consign my soul to Jesus.'
'If you want.'
They got out of the car. 'Don't lock it,' Parker said, since Arthur was about to.
'Right,' Arthur said.
The old concrete surrounding the building was like broken ice on a lake after a thaw and refreeze, but slicing through it in a straight line from visitors' parking across the facade to the main front entrance was a four-foot-wide swatch of newer uncracked concrete. They took this walk, Parker going first, and inside the revolving door was a broad reception area, a wide low black desk on a shiny black floor, with no other furniture. The rear wall was curved, shiny silver, as though they were inside a platinum egg. On that wall were mounted, in a random pattern, bottles of the different liquors the company imported, each in its own clear plastic box; beside each was displayed that brand's Christmas gift box.
The receptionist was a black man, thin, thirtyish, with a thick brush of a moustache that made the face behind it seem slighter, less important. He wore jeans and a
dark green polo shirt under a maroon blazer with CB in ornate gold letters on the pocket. He watched Parker
