A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [168]
Doesn’t mean you can’t try.
Do what you gotta do, but there ain’t nobody that can quit the shit.
Tell me where she is.
His stare narrows and it takes on an edge of potential violence. I wait and I stare back.
You bust me, or get me busted, or fuck with me in any way, and I’ll kill you.
That’s fine.
I’ll fucking kill you.
That’s fine.
She was in here a couple of hours ago with some old white man. He didn’t look like he smoked, but she was all shaking and shit and had them greedy eyes that Baseheads got. The old man bought two fifties and I think they went to that empty Building down the Street. There’s a busted-down door in the back and a buncha Baseheads do their cooking up on the third floor. If she ain’t there, I can’t help you.
I nod.
Thank you.
He stares.
Don’t come back here.
I won’t.
I turn and I walk out the door, across the Station and toward the entrance. Hank is waiting for me.
I think I found her.
Where?
Down the Street. In that boarded Building.
How do you know that?
A Dealer told me.
We walk outside to the Van, which is waiting at the Curb. He gets in the Driver’s seat and I get in the back. Lincoln sits staring out the window. Hank starts the Van and whips it around and we roar down the Street toward the Building. It looks as if it was once an Apartment Building. It is five floors high with windows regularly spaced along each of its sides. All of the windows are now covered with boards. A rubbled Stoop leads to a Main Entrance, which has also been boarded up. There is scrawled graffiti everywhere, most of it illegible, and there are piles of garbage on what used to be the Lawn.
Again, I am out of the Van before we stop. I run around the Building, looking for a back door, a loose board on a window, something, anything. I see a set of stairs leading downward, a door at the bottom. There is a board covering the door, but it looks loose, looks like it will move. I walk down the stairs, step around and over broken glass dirty cans empty bottles pieces of loose foil covered with burn marks lost syringes used matches and shattered lighters. I reach for the board and I push it aside. I step into the Building.
The Building is a wreck, a wretched fucking wreck. There is trash everywhere, there are soiled mattresses lying in the Halls and in Rooms. Polluted pipes are dripping some foul liquid. I hear rats in the walls and I see their shit piles in the corners, a smell that resembles rotten eggs and death permeates the air and makes me wince, cringe, want to hold my breath. I move quickly, driven by the stench and the shit, through a Hall and up the first set of stairs that I find.
It is pitch black in the stairwell, so I walk carefully. I step on a can and it collapses beneath my foot. I hear rats scurry away I hear them chatter and squeak. I put my hand on a Rail, but the Rail is covered with something thick and wet and cold, so I move it. At the top of the first flight there is an empty garbage can that has been lit on fire. I can see outlines of soot and shades of ash. I step around it. I keep going up.
It gets cleaner as I go higher, though it is still disgusting. At the top of the second flight, I start to hear sounds of human activity. Footsteps, muffled voices, deep inhalations, deep exhalations. The hiss of a butane torch. There is laughter, but it is not happy laughter. It is a high, scratchy cackle, like the laugh of a Witch. It echoes, echoes, echoes.
I get to the third floor. I step into a Hall that leads to my left and to my right. To my left, a strong male voice screams who the fuck’s there, Motherfucker, who the fuck’s there. I start walking toward it. It screams again you best tell me who the fuck’s there. I don’t say a word. I walk, tense up, prepare to fight. It screams I’ll fuck you up, Bitch, fuck you up. I walk closer, prepare.
It becomes quiet, but for the butane hiss. I know the voice came from a Room two doors down. My fists are clenched, my jaw tight, my muscles twitching.
I step around a corner and into the Room. Against the far wall is a gaunt old man