on time. It was like that old joke of ordering fifty pizzas to somebody’s house, only you paid for them yourself with your credit card.
He folded the report and tucked it back into his pocket. He should leave it be. No good would come out of any of this. What John should do is exactly what his parole officer said: Concentrate on rebuilding your life. Get a steady job. Show people you’ve changed.
It bothered him, though. Like a splinter that wouldn’t come out, he had picked at it all night, trying to see the angle. There had to be an angle. Why else would someone do this? Maybe somebody with a past was using John’s vitals as a cover. Could be some escaped ax murderer or blue-collar guy was on the lam and John Shelley seemed like a good cover.
He laughed at this idea, taking a bite of his peanut butter and banana sandwich. You had to be pretty desperate to assume the identity of a convicted murderer and registered sex offender.
The peanut butter caught in his throat and he coughed a couple of times before getting up and going to the coiled hose on the ground. John turned on the spigot and took a drink, watching Ray-Ray talking to some woman over by the vacuums. John could tell the other man was doing his usual jive, trying to work his magic on the woman. Judging by the way she was dressed, Ray-Ray could have saved some time and just given her some money. Most of the guys around the Gorilla availed themselves of the local talent. Straight up Cheshire Bridge Road, you ran into the Colonial Restaurant, a meat-and-potatoes kind of joint with hookers a plenty trolling the apartments behind them. John had often heard the guys arguing Monday mornings about which was best: get them early when they were fresh and pay more, or go later when they were sloppy and pay less.
Street economics.
“Fuck off, asshole!” the hooker screamed, slamming her hands into Ray-Ray’s chest.
Ray-Ray growled something and pushed her back until she fell on her ass.
John’s first impulse was to stay exactly where he was. You didn’t get involved in other people’s shit. That was how you got yourself killed. This was a woman, but she worked the streets. She knew how to take care of herself. At least it seemed that way until Ray-Ray hauled off and punched her square in the face.
“Damn,” Chico muttered, ringside at a championship wrestling bout. “Didn’t even give her time to stand up.”
John looked down at his shoes, which were soaking wet. The hose was still on. He could get into trouble for that. He went back to the spigot, turned it off, forgetting for a minute that it was righty-tighty and turning it lefty- loosey. He coiled the hose back in place. When he looked back up, Ray-Ray’s foot was in the air, sailing down toward the hooker’s face.
“Hey!” John said, then, “Hey!” again when Ray-Ray’s foot made contact.
John must have run over to them. He must have said something else along the way, something loud that called even more attention to the situation. By the time his brain caught up with his actions, John’s fist hurt like a hornet had stung him and Ray-Ray was splayed out on the ground.
“What
They both looked down. One of Ray-Ray’s teeth was on the sidewalk swimming in a puddle of blood. The guy looked dead, but no one was dropping to check his pulse.
The cop stood in the doorway. Slowly, John let his eyes trace up the man’s thick black shoes, following the sharp crease in his pants, skipping past his gunbelt where a large hand was resting on the butt of his gun and forced himself to look the guy in the face. The screw was staring straight back at John as he turned his radio down, the calls from the dispatcher turning to a whisper. “What’s going on here?”
It took everything John had in him not to just assume the position right then and there. “I hit him.”
“Well, no shit, asshole!” Art barked. “You are so fucking fired.” He prodded Ray-Ray with his foot. “Jesus Christ, Shelley. What’d you hit him with, a fucking hammer?”
John’s head dropped, and he looked at the ground. Oh, Jesus. He couldn’t go back to prison now. Not after all of this. Not after everything he’d been through.
“I’m sorry,” John said. “It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t,” Art snapped. “Christ.” He looked at the cop. “This is the thanks I get for giving these guys a second chance.”
“I apologize,” John offered again.
“Hey!” the hooker yelled. “Somebody wanna give me a hand?”
All of the men looked down, shocked, like they had forgotten her existence. The whore had a hard face, the kind that told her life story in the millions of lines wrinkling her skin. Blood poured from her nose and mouth where Ray-Ray’s foot had done its damage. She was propped up on her elbows, a filthy white feather boa wrapped around her scrawny neck, a purple plastic-looking miniskirt and a black tank top that showed the bottom of her sagging breasts barely covering her wasted body.
Nobody wanted to touch her.
“Hey, Knight in Shining Armor All,” she said, shaking her hand toward John. “Come on, stallion. Help me the fuck up.”
John hesitated, but then he reached down and pulled her up. She smelled of cigarettes and bourbon, and had a hard time standing on the spike heels of her shoes. Her hand dug into his shoulder as she steadied herself. He tried not to shudder in revulsion, thinking about where that hand had been. In the sunlight, her skin was sallow, and he guessed her liver was desperate enough to shit itself out of her navel if it was ever given the opportunity. She could have been thirty, she could have been eighty.
The cop took charge. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”
“He wouldn’t pay me,” she said, tilting her chin, indicating the prone Ray-Ray. Her voice was like loose rock rolling in a cup of phlegm. What words she didn’t slur were probably not worth hearing.
“You gave him one on credit?” the cop asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity. The man had a point. John wouldn’t sell Ray-Ray a petrified turd on credit.
“We was in there,” she said, meaning the Port-a-John behind the building. “He tried to sweet-talk me, the lousy fucker. Said he was get-tin‘ paid tomorrow.”
The cop’s eyebrow shot up. “You gotta be shittin me.”
“He followed me out here, trying to make a deal,” she continued, clutching John’s arm again as she swayed. “Like it’s double coupon day at the fucking Kmart. Stupid cocksucker.” She lifted a patent-leather heel and kicked Ray-Ray in the arm.
“Hey, hey, now,” Ray-Ray said, groaning as he rolled over onto his back. John figured the asshole had been playing possum and wanted to beat him again for causing all of this.
The cop prodded Ray-Ray with his shoe. “You try to get a freebie, you stupid mope?”
Ray-Ray put his hand over his eyes, shielding the sun so he could look up at the cop without being blinded. “No, no, man. That ain’t the thing..Ain’t the thing at all.”
“Get up, you fucking idiot,” the cop ordered. “You.” He pointed at the whore. “Where’s your drag?”
She was busy wiping the concrete off her elbows. “Up by the liquor store.”
There was a crash of static from the cop’s radio, then,
The cop clicked the mic, said, “Check,” then pointed to John, talking over the information the dispatcher gave but obviously still listening. “You. Prince Charming. Make sure she gets back home safe. You,” he pointed to Ray- Ray. “Don’t make me tell you one more fucking time to get the fuck up or I will run your ass in so quick your P.O. won’t even have time to call you a cab back to the pen.” Ray-Ray jumped up and the cop clicked on the radio and said, “Roger, I’m there in ten minutes.” As an afterthought, he asked Art, “You okay with all this?”
Art frowned, his forehead sloping into a V. “Yeah, whatever,” he finally agreed. “Shelley, take the day off. Come back with your head in the right place tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” John said, so relieved he could have cried. “Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”
The respect brought him some back. “You want me to get rid of this stuttering freak?” Art asked John as he jabbed his thumb at Ray-Ray.
John thought about it for a good second, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for this asshole. “We’re fine,” he said. “Right, Ray?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ray-Ray said. “We cool. We cool.”
