Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [56]
“I am with family,” Jennifer said.
“All I see is you,” Malcolm said.
“My brother,” Jennifer said, turning away to look past the car, down the distant streets. “I’m here with my brother. He had to use a bathroom. Told me to wait for him here.”
Jennifer was lying. She was lost and looked it. It was so stupid of her not to wait for Anthony outside the bathroom door as he had asked. But he had taken such a long time, like he always did at home, and she just couldn’t wait anymore. Not with all those people rushing past, some looking at her and smiling, others staring with empty eyes, dirty clothes held together by rope and cloth. Then there was the horrible smell, strong as a punch, of dried urine sprayed across walls and stuck to the floor. Jennifer clasped a gloved hand to her mouth and swallowed the urge to vomit.
She needed to get out. Just for a few minutes.
She rode an escalator up toward fresh air, which she welcomed with a deep breath. The ride was slow and creaky, and the guttural shouts of eager newsboys hawking morning papers filtered down toward her. She stepped carefully off the escalator, turned left, and was soon washed into a swarm of people moving with concerted speed to a variety of destinations. There was a smile on her face, and her curiosity overwhelmed, for the briefest moment, her fear of the unknown.
She was walking the streets of a city she had always heard about and seen perhaps ten times in her life. It was the city her brother talked about with a sense of wonder. The same city her father faced daily with dread and unease and her mother reserved for special occasions. She was in it alone, at pace with the people who called it home, in step with the hungry and the moneyed, the desperate and the dreamers.
She had crossed three streets before the warmth of adventure was replaced by cold awareness. She turned and tried to make her way back. It took a few moments, two wrong turns, and a quick run against a flashing light before she knew the truth.
The dream weekend she and her brother had planned had turned a dark corner.
And on that corner lurked Malcolm Juniper.
“Be better for you to wait in a dry place,” Malcolm said to her, reaching across to the passenger side door.
The light facing Jennifer turned from red to green, but she didn’t move. “He must have stopped to get something to eat,” she said.
“I can help you find him,” Malcolm told her.
Jennifer hesitated before stepping into the car, too frightened to recall her father’s constant litany of caution. She slammed the car door shut and disappeared into a world of darkness.
• • •
MALCOLM JUNIPER WALKED out of the deli entrance and spotted Boomer and Dead-Eye coming toward him from across the street. Even from a distance, the two men, one favoring his right leg, the other breathing through his mouth, smelled like cop. Malcolm gripped the large paper bag filled with a six-pack of Colt .45 malt and turned the corner, trying to hold on to his calm, knowing the two men would be fast on him. Even if they grabbed him, they didn’t have much. He wasn’t armed, had clocked in regular with his parole officer, and had applied for work at three fast-food outfits. The very model of a parolee and the last man any cop could finger for a street kidnapping.
But Malcolm Juniper was a career criminal who had spent the better part of his adult years behind the cold bars of a lockup. His ex-con’s survival instinct told him that the two men tracking him had no interest in probable cause or Miranda rights. These two looked serious, so they either wanted a snitch out, which would put Malcolm in street trouble, or they knew about the girl, which could land him behind bars until coffin time. Either way, Malcolm Juniper wasn’t going in. Not on this day.
He crossed against the light, moving up to Fortieth and Eighth. The street was filled with early morning stiffs heading out of the terminal and into work. Side streets were clogged with traffic, Jersey plates trying to squeeze