Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [40]
There was a cry of "Bajando!" from a rooftop. The bucket was pulled up and disappeared inside the apartment. The lines of junkies broke apart into ragged little groups making wide circles on the sidewalk, trying to look casual while they waited for the police to pass. The Dominican with the bat was saying, "Keep moving, keep moving," and waving people away from his stoop. A police cruiser turned the corner and rolled by, a sleepy blond policeman in the passenger seat looking over the chef without interest. When it turned the corner at the end of the block, the junkies instantly regrouped.
Just before Avenue D, an old man with a handful of stolen belts approached the chef and offered syringes. "Works, a dollar. Brand-new Blue-Tip works." From across the street, other voices: A woman called out from a doorway, someone cried, "Laredo's open," another voice offered "Try-It-Again," another, "Red Tape." The chef ignored them. Next to an abandoned public school, he approached the alcove of a five-story apartment building. A pudgy, Indian-looking woman with a black eye peered at him through the smudged glass of the dented front door. She opened the door a crack and said, "Show me some ID."
The chef rolled up his left sleeve and showed her the bruise on his left arm.
"Don't look like nothin'," she said.
"I been here a million times," whined the chef.
"Wait a minute," said the woman. "Marcial!" she cried.
A thick-chested man wearing a Toltec face mask stepped into the alcove and opened the outer door.
"You know this guy?" asked the woman.
"What do you want?" the man asked the chef.
"Manteca," said the chef. "I want some D."
"You know him?" the woman asked again.
The man looked the chef over carefully. "I seen him before." He let the chef inside the alcove and opened the inner door, using a key from a crowded key chain on his hip. He led the chef down a hallway and up two flights of stairs littered with crack bottles, used syringes, and discarded condoms.
"Got it good today, B," said the man. "You want express? Five dollars. There's a line up there."
The chef shook his head, "No thanks."
On the second floor, they turned left. The man used another key on a steel-reinforced door with an enlarged peephole. Inside was an unfurnished apartment. They passed through a living area strewn with more crack bottles, bottle caps, candy wrappers, and condoms. There was a filthy kitchenette piled with food-encrusted dishes and empty take-out containers. A small religious icon stood on top of a nonworking refrigerator. At the rear of the kitchenette, a man-size hole had been bashed through the raw brick wall into the abandoned public school next door. The man took a flashlight out of the refrigerator and played the light around in the dark beyond the hole. "You know how to get up there?" he asked. The chef nodded and clambered quickly through the hole.
It was pitch black inside. It was cooler, and it smelled of piss and burning candles. It was damp, rain had come through the roof, and the chef had to step carefully in the dark, feeling with his toes for the lengths of plywood laid across the crossbeams in the ankle-deep black water, afraid the floor would give way and he'd fall through. A line of flickering votive candles placed every few yards lit the path. The chef picked his way through the dark, stepping on spongy bits of water-logged cardboard, the plywood pathway frequently sinking below the water. He turned a corner and heard people speaking Spanish. He had to climb through another hole, which was cut through sheetrock, and into another hall. A man loomed up in front of him, pushed a flashlight in his face. He held a Tec-9 pistol in the other hand and waved with it, directing the chef into a bombed-out classroom.
There was light in this room. It streamed through two shattered and paneless windows that looked down over an empty lot. The ceiling was water-damaged and sagged dangerously, wires hanging