AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 67

Larry Boyd, a.k.a. the Deacon, was about 240 pounds of dangerous.  Dangerous fearlessness, dangerous LSD-flashback-mind, dangerous weapon-trained body.  6’4” of dangerous, that demoted Liz to the backseat.

Reed and the new guy didn’t say much, at first.  Liz watched during a moment when the car was jammed up by parking-lot traffic, just after the ramp into the Bronx.  (Up ahead, an accident had completely stalled everything; two policemen on foot were moving around.)  A sunset Liz could not see was turning everything a dingy puke-orange gray.  Reed solemnly rolled up his right sleeve and held his arm out.  Liz watched.  The new guy was doing the same thing with his left arm, except he was smiling wide, with big stained and crooked teeth.  Liz leaned forward, and watched them put their arms together; she looked and saw that they had matching scars on their arms, ugly pink smears about half an inch wide and four inches long that interrupted the hairgrowth along their forearms just below their elbows.

Larry Boyd grimaced.  “I can still smell the burning meat.”

They both looked down where their arms touched, where their scars touched, where burning cigarette after burning cigarette had smoldered for eight long hours and fourteen forever minutes.  Who would give into the pain first?  Because they each had to press to hold their arms together or the cigarette would fall.  And the fallen cigarette would signal defeat to the one who had moved.  Who would give in?  As the pain continued, hour after hour, with nothing but Jack Daniel’s to sustain them.  And then not even Jack Daniel’s, as Reed scorned it, swore off it, taunted Boyd with his resolution, saying that he didn’t need the booze, that he could go on without it.  A little showmanship to break the other man down.  As the second-degree burns worsened into third-degree burns.  So after five hours of groggy pain, they both sobered up to prove their manhood.  Cigarette after cigarette, as the blackened skin pealed away, as the dull ache turned into a sharp, throbbing agony, the smell of burning human flesh nauseating the stomach into a curdled pool of acid bile, and the arm muscles were an excruciation of exhaustion, and the hour-after-hour ticked by slow like decades.

Liz did not understand the strange intensity to the way the two men were behaving.

Reed remembered what he had said fifteen years ago, and said it: “Krane, go get us a couple more cartons, will ya?”

Larry Boyd groaned, and displayed the tartar-plated ugly twisted teeth.  “You motherfucking bastard,” he said.

That had been the moment, right there.  It had been the beginning of the end.  Reed had seen the other man’s look of genuine horror, as he realized that Reed was willing to go on forever in this.  Boyd had tried to talk Reed into a draw; it had taken him fifteen minutes . . . no, fourteen minutes, but Reed had allowed himself to be convinced.

To Reed it was a macho test.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  But over the hours, the significance of the silly self-destructive idiot behavior had grown and magnified into awesome proportions.  Reed realized that if he defeated Boyd that the two of them could never be friends anymore.  It would shatter something.  So, to maintain the friendship, Reed had agreed to a draw, and Leslie Ann, Boyd’s girl, had pulled the final cigarette from between their arms.  Draw.

As the traffic freed-up, the male-bond mood did also.  The sleeves rolled down again.  And Reed drove into some serious city to get the other two men.  The day darkened into dusk.  The dirty, dusty butt-end of sundown dumped the bronze BMW yuppiemobile into a junkyard with roads: the rust-ass end of the Bronx.  Were these beat-up automotive ruins actually locomoting under their own?  The street-scum were of the but I wouldn’t want my sister to variety.

“Well, I’ll tell you this, Byron,” Larry Boyd said, “going up against Des Barres ain’t going to be cake on a cakewalk . . .”

Reed smiled.  Boyd was using his first name to bug him.

“. . . The guy used to import heroin and cocaine.  Sort of as a hobby.  I don’t think he ever brought in over five tons.  In fact, he was sort of above it all; mostly just used his money to finance it; he had his guys in the field directly controlling the mules.  But he had a whole operation going for awhile.  A syndicate, call it what you want.  He’s out of it now . . . mostly.  But the people, most of them, are still around him.  They’re a little out of practice, they’re a little rusty, but they can be very bad news to anyone Des Barres wants to come down on.  I think that’s why he still pays ’em to hang around.  You know.  Gives him a sense of power.  Shit, why not?”

“Did you get the programmer?” Reed asked.

“Yeah, and I double-checked.  The elevators are run by a Mitsubishi brain, and I got a programmer right here.”  He tapped the suitcase between his legs.  “You’ll have to use it, though.  It’s way over my head.”

“You got a manual for it?” Reed asked.

“Yeah, no sweat.”

They drove in silence for awhile.  24 years ago, residents were lamenting, There Goes The Neighborhood; what they were driving through now was definitely way gone.

Liz ached for a hit of crack, but she didn’t dare.  Her throat was a raw dry discomfort.  She was STARVING!  She was sleepy.  But more than anything, she wanted another hit of crack.

Boyd said, “Are you sure you want to move in on him on his home turf?  Tonight?  I mean, it’ud be a lot easier——”

“Tonight.  Right there.”

“All right.  You’re paying for it.  The Des Barres building is cinchy.  It’s the two top floors that suck.  It’s against building codes, but the stairs completely bypass.  Completely locked out.  You might as well break into a bank.  So the only way in is by the elevator.  You could drop down on the top of the building by helicopter, but I ain’t into the kamikaze scene.  Turn here.  It’s up a few more blocks.  Pilatsky and Gilbert will be waiting outside the cycle shop.”

“Just how good are these guys?”

Larry Boyd smiled his crooked stained smile.  “They both survived Special Forces in Nam.  And for enough money, they’ll both do whatever I tell ’em.  Higher qualifications, you could not ask for.  Who’s the chick in the back seat?”

Reed looked half-way around.  “Who is the chick in the back seat?” he asked her.

“I’m Liz!  I’m gonna get you in to see Eric!  He’s one o’ my tricks!”

Larry Boyd looked at Reed: gimme a break!  “Maybe.  One thing . . . what we’re gonna find on the other side of the elevator door is anyone’s guess.  I couldn’t find out anything.  If I had more time, I could buy a solid mouth; but I couldn’t get anything solid on short notice.”  He tilted his head half-way back.  “So what are we going to find, Liz?  When we open the elevator door?  You ever been up there?”

“Lotsa times!” she shot back.

“Does he keep bodyguards hanging around, or does he just rely on the electronic security?”

Liz’s mind was a screaming blank.  She tried to fake into the way they were talking.  “It depends.”

Silence.

Boyd gave Reed another gimme-a-break look.  “Upon what does it depend?” he asked her.

“Fuck, I dunno!  Sometimes all kinds o’ guys are hanging around.  Other times they’re ain’t nobody in the whole place ’cept us!”

“Describe his apartment,” Boyd said.

Pause.  “Fuckin’ big!” Liz said.

“What’s right on the other side of the elevator?”

“Wha’da’ya mean?”

“Come on, what’s on the other side of the elevator door?  On his floor.  And does it go all the way to the 88th?  Or does it stop on the 87th?”

Pause.  “I dunno what floor it is!  It’s his floor!”

“Great.  What do you see when the elevator door first opens?”

Pause.  “Well, it’s a hallway, an’ up ahead is his front door.”

“The elevator doesn’t open directly into his apartment?  He owns the whole floor.”

Pause.  Firmly: “No, it doesn’t.”

“Any guards or servants by the elevator?”

“Yes!” Liz said firmly.

“How many?”

“Depends.  1 or 2 usually.”  Liz started to almost feel good.  Guys.  They’ll fuckin’ believe anything!

A car behind them honked three times.  Reed looked back and saw a magnetic red flasher light stuck on the sedan’s hood over the driver.  New sedan.  A Ford Probe.

Boyd said, “OK, see the liquor store way up on the left?  Stop across from it, and——”

“Fuck!” Reed shouted.  “There’s a goddamn cop on my ass!”

Larry Boyd laughed easily.  “Well, you know, Byron, red means stop.  I hate to break it to you, but it’s true.  You really should stop for the red ones.  Better pull over right here, though.  If Gilbert sees the police, we’ll never see that boy.”

Reed was not happy about it.  “It’s not a regular cop car.  Looks like a fucking detective’s car!”

Reed pulled over.  They were in a very rough section of the Bronx.  Next to the liquor store, half a long block up, was a cycle shop with five or six bikers & bikes hanging cool on the side of the street.  The Boulevard was wide, once a main drag, now a main drag.  The black Probe behind them pulled and stopped right behind their BMW.  Bumpers almost touching, except the rear car was way the hell out at a slight angle, half-blocking the slow lane.

Liz was a lot more than not happy about it.  COPS!  Afraid to look back, she used her compact mirror.  The flashing red light precision-bombed into her eyes.

Her mind was roaring like the Dresden firestorm!

COURTNEY, Chapter 68
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47