'What kind of rumors?'
Raquel shook his head again. 'Check out a place on the corner of Wright Street and Avenue D in the South Bronx. Heard he might be there.'
Raquel walked away then, steadier on the stiletto heels. A car drove up, stopped, and again I watched a human being disappear into the night.
9
Most neighborhoods, you'd hesitate about waking someone at one in the morning. This wasn't one of them. The windows were all boarded up. The door was a hunk of plywood. I'd tell you the paint was peeling, but it would probably be more apt to say it was shedding.
Squares knocked on the plywood door and immediately a woman shouted, 'What do you want?'
Squares did the talking. 'We're looking for Louis Castman.'
'Go away.'
'We need to speak with him.'
'You got a warrant?'
'We're not with the police.'
'Who are you?' the woman asked.
'We work for Covenant House.'
'No runaways here,' she shouted, nearly hysterical. 'Go away.'
'You have a choice,' Squares said. 'We talk to Castman ourselves right now, or we come back with a bunch of nosy cops.'
'I didn't do nothing.'
'I can always make something up,' Squares said. 'Open the door.'
The woman made a fast decision. We heard a bolt slide, then another, then a chain. The door opened a crack. I started toward it, but Squares blocked me with his arm. Wait until the door opened all the way.
'Hurry,' the woman said with a witch like cackle. 'Get inside. Don't want nobody seeing.'
Squares gave the door a shove. It opened all the way. We stepped through the frame, and the woman closed the door. Two things hit me at the same time. First, the dark. The only light was a low-watt lamp in the far right- hand corner. I saw a threadbare reading chair, a coffee table, and that was about it. Second, the smell. Take your most vivid remembrance of fresh air and the great outdoors and then imagine the polar opposite. The stuffiness made me afraid to inhale. Part hospital, part something I couldn't quite place. I wondered when the last time a window had been opened, and the room seemed to whisper, Never.
Squares turned to the woman. She'd shrunk back into a corner. We could see only a silhouette in the darkness. 'They call me Squares,' he said. 'I know who you are.' 'Have we met?' 'That's not important.' 'Where is he?' Squares asked.
'There's only one other room in here,' she said, raising her hand in a slow point. 'He might be asleep.'
Our eyes started to adjust. I stepped toward her. She didn't back away. I got closer. When she lifted her head, I almost gasped. I mumbled an apology and started backing away.
'No,' she said. 'I want you to see.' She crossed the room, stopped in front of the lamp, and faced us full. To our credit, neither Squares nor I flinched. But it wasn't easy. Whoever had disfigured her had done it with great care. She'd probably been a looker at one time, but it was as though she'd gone through some anti-plastic-surgery regimen. A perhaps once-well-shaped nose had been squelched like a beetle under a heavy boot. Once-smooth skin had been split and ripped. The corners of her mouth had been torn to the point where it was hard to tell where it ended. Dozens of raised angry purple scars crisscrossed her face, like the work of a three-year-old given free rein with a Crayola. Her left eye wandered off to the side, dead in its socket. The other stared at us unblinking.
Squares said, 'You used to be on the street.'
She nodded.
'What's your name?'
Moving her mouth seemed to take great effort. 'Tanya.'
'Who did that to you?'
'Who do you think?'
We did not bother replying.
'He's through that door,' she said. 'I take care of him. I never hurt him. You understand? I never raise a hand to him.'
We both nodded. I didn't know what to make of that. I don't think Squares did either. We moved to the door. Not a sound. Perhaps he was asleep. I didn't really care. He'd wake up. Squares put his hand on the knob and looked back at me. I let him know that I'd be fine. He opened the door.
Lights were on in there. Full blast, in fact. I had to shade my eyes. I heard a beeping noise and saw some sort of medical machine near the bed. But that wasn't what first drew my eye.
The walls.
That was what you noticed first. The walls were corked I could see a little of the brown but more than that, they were blanketed with photographs. Hundreds of photographs. Some blown up to poster size, some your classic three-by-fives, most somewhere in between all hung on the cork by clear pushpins.
And they were all pictures of Tanya.
At least, that was what I guessed. The pictures were all pre-disfiguration. And I had been right. Tanya had been beautiful once. The photos, mostly glamour shots from what appeared to be a model's portfolio, were inescapable. I looked up. More photographs, a ceiling fresco from hell.
'Help me. Please.'
The small voice came from the bed. Squares and I moved toward it. Tanya came in behind us and cleared her voice. We turned. In the harsh light, her scars seemed almost alive, squirming across her face like dozens of worms. The nose was not just flattened, but misshapen, clay like The old photographs seemed to glow, swarming her in a perverse before-and-after aura.
The man in the bed groaned.
We waited. Tanya turned the good eye first toward me, then toward Squares. The eye seemed to dare us to forget, to etch this image into our brains, to remember what she'd once been and what he'd done to her.
'A straight razor,' she said. 'A rusted one. It took him over an hour to do this. And he didn't just slice up my face.'
Without another word, Tanya moved out of the room. She closed the door behind her.
We stood in silence for a moment. Then Squares said, 'Are you Louis Castman?'
'You cops?'
'Are you Castman?'
'Yes. And I did it. Christ, whatever you want me to confess to, I did it. Just get me out of here. For the love of God.'
'We're not cops,' Squares said.
Castman lay flat on his back. There was some kind of tube connected to his chest. The machine kept beeping and something kept rising and falling accordion like He was a white guy, newly shaven, fresh-scrubbed. His hair was clean. His bed had rails and controls. I saw a bedpan in the corner and a sink. Other than that, the room was empty. No drawers, no dressers, no TV, no radio, no clock, no books, no newspapers, no magazines. The window shades were pulled down.
I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
'What's wrong with you?' I asked.
Castman's eyes and only his eyes turned toward me. 'I'm paralyzed,' he said. 'A fucking quadriplegic. Below the neck' he stopped, closed his eyes 'nothing.'
I was not sure how to begin. Neither, it seemed, was Squares.
'Please,' Castman said. 'You gotta get me out of here. Before…'
