She ran up the front stairs, hitting each one hard and fast like a little kid, bop bop bop bop, and walking in without pushing the buzzer.
Dane sat there thinking about his options again. Grandma Lucia had told him there was an opening at the bingo parlor, calling out the numbers on the Ping-Pong balls. It about tied with being a cop or a Monti goon.
The radio screeched. The dispatcher wanted to know where the hell Dane was. Pepe tried to buffer the boss, yelling at Dane in Spanish that was supposed to sound like Italian. Lightening up the moment with some of the other drivers pitching in, laughing and being wiseasses. Dane shut it off. Maybe he should go back in the army, argue with the shrinks some more.
After five minutes he realized why he'd been dumb enough to let her go inside alone. It was the petunias. They'd thrown him off. Even more than the fresh paint and the sign. Here they were in Bed-Stuy, poverty-stricken, segregated. Abandoned buildings right around the block, the whole place fallen to shit, and he'd just let her walk in.
Dane threw open the door and moved around the back end of the cab. He started for the building and then he saw Angie walk out onto the stoop. Sort of smiling like she was happy to see him, but stumbling down the steps.
Her face crumpled then as she tried to hold back tears and failed. A dapple of blood smeared her chin. He launched himself and caught her in his arms as she pitched forward.
“I screwed up,” she whimpered.
“I knew I should've gone with you,” he hissed. “Fucking hell. What is it?”
Eyelids fluttering, she coughed violently, bringing up black phlegm. Her breathing went ragged and her chest heaved violently. She grinned at him, and her teeth were red.
“Bad stuff.”
“Ah, goddamn it, Angie.” Those goddamn petunias. “What stuff? What did you take?”
He felt immensely stupid, trapped where he stood, uncertain whether he should head back inside the house and call an ambulance, or throw her in the cab. He wanted to kill someone.
Bed-Stuy, he didn't think an ambulance would even come out this way, no matter how many coffee shops you put up the road.
Hauling her to the cab, he was surprised at how light she was. All those muscles and curves, and she didn't break ninety. She really was only a kid.
Before putting her in the backseat he hugged her tightly. He slammed the door, jumped in, gunned it, and held his fist on the horn so the noise tore up the block. So everybody inside that building would know he was screaming through his machine and he'd be back. Someone would pay.
“Angelina, don't fall asleep. Sit up.” Weird that he could shriek through the cab horn, but his voice was almost lethargic. “Tell me what you took.”
“… fake…”
“What?” He turned his ear to her lips. “Angie, what was that?”
“Flake.”
All his life on the street but he'd never so much as smoked a joint. Just something he never got into. Here she's saying flake and all he can think of are breakfast cereals.
“The fuck's that? Why are you doing that kind of shit? Hold on.”
“Doesn't hurt. I'm swimming.” Letting out a giggle that made the back of his neck tingle worse than when her nails were brushing against him. “It's too… late.”
“Like hell.”
She slid down so he couldn't see her in the rearview anymore. “It's nice.”
“Talk to me, Angie.”
“You love me?”
That got him stomping the pedal even harder, swinging through traffic as it thickened around them. “Yeah, of course.”
“I mean… me.”
“You.”
“Not just 'cause I… look like Maria.”
“You, Angie.”
“She thinks you're… funny… but not tough enough-”
He grimaced and clenched his jaws until it felt like his fillings were about to buckle. “I knew I should've gone inside with you.”
Smiling, the foam smearing her face. “You love me.”
He'd been working the lights pretty good, catching them as they turned green, but Brooklyn always had to do what it could to make you go insane. As he wheeled to the top of a rise, an ocean of brake lights in front of him, all the signals as far as he could see all went red at once. The cars piled up while he tried to make it out of this shithole neighborhood, still unsure of where he was going.
He spotted a traffic cop getting up from a bus stop bench on the corner and stepping into the middle of the street, grimacing at drivers that passed too close to him. The light changed and he held his hand up, stopping everybody dead.
Dane let go with a grunt, wheeled around the Honda Civic in front of him, and drove out to look the cop in his eye.
The cop ignored Dane out there in the intersection, two inches away. Horns blared. He just put his hand out, blowing his whistle, and started gesturing for the cross traffic to proceed.
“I need a hospital,” Dane said, knowing he should wail to get the guy's attention. But he couldn't let it out.
“What? You got a pregnant lady in there with you?”
“A girl who's sick.”
“All you hacks, every one of you's got pregnant women in back during rush hour. Today alone there musta been twenty of 'em. I couldn't spit across the street without hitting a lady who was preggers.”
Dane reached out, took hold of the cop's tie. “You prick, point me to the hospital.”
“Hey, you want me to run you in? You accosting a police officer? You know what you could get for that?”
Like he was a cat burglar. Like this was a bank heist, instead of a guy trying to save a young girl's life. But this fucking
The cop was about thirty, with a sour face and the pale outline of a mustache he'd recently shaved off. Full of impatience and annoyance, not one of those guys you see dancing and singing the traffic along, blowing their whistles to some funny tune. This one must have been recently busted down for doing something serious. They put him out in the middle of the street so they could see where he was all the time.
“Back this up and get out of the intersection, buddy! Now!”
Yeah, he was new all right, and trying to change the course of the world because he was pissed off at his commanding officer. As if anybody ever backed up in New York, for any reason.
“Tell me,” Dane said. “Which way?”
“Three blocks up, two right. If you don't know Bedford-Stuyvesant, the hell are you doing driving through here? Are you from the Heights?” Stepping out in front of the cab, shaking his head. “You people from the Heights act like you own the whole goddamn city. Hold on a second.”
Dane gunned it. The cop actually pulled a face and stepped forward, sticking his hand out again. One of those types who think the badge somehow makes them invincible. He still looked cranky and in control up until the instant he was lying up on the hood of the cab, spread over the windshield.
Dane drove two blocks like that and the cop finally fell off at the entrance to the hospital parking lot. A couple of attendants came running down the sidewalk to help him.
Engine shrieking, Dane drove up to the emergency room and almost plowed into the electric doors, his fist on the horn.
He glanced back at Angie and saw she was blue, foam coursing down her chin, her throat three sizes larger than normal. Blood leaking out of her nose.
The cops nabbed him for vehicular assault. The traffic cop had a broken collarbone and a fractured pelvis. During the trial he still wore a sour expression of impatience, pointing at Dane with his shoulder in a cast, screaming in a high, girlish voice.
