Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston [90]
—Got it.
—Be cool, Hank. In an hour, you’re gonna be on your way to a new an’ better life.
He ducks back into the car with Bud. The door slams shut, the Caddie rolls off. They gave me an old ball cap with an eight ball inexplicably embroidered on the front. I pull the cap down tighter on my head and walk around the block to my post.
I sit in the window at Starbucks, the one on Astor Place as opposed to the one a block away on Third Avenue. New Yorkers like to complain about the proliferation of Starbucks and Barnes & Noble shops in their great city. They bitch about the “malling” of Manhattan. But me? I’m all in favor of anyplace in this city that has a public bathroom.
The rain is keeping people at home. A few of the tables in here are occupied by NYU students or street people with enough change for a cup of joe. Based on appearances, I could belong to either group. Outside, the streets are wet and empty. Rainy Sunday night, plus folks are probably waiting at home for play to restart out at Shea. I look up at the sky. There’s a good wind blowing and the clouds are moving along pretty damn fast. They should get it in.
The pain from my wound is growing, spreading. I could take a pill. Shit, I could take a dozen pills. I need to stay sharp. The pain will help me to stay sharp.
I sip my decaf herbal tea and look out the window at the cube. Astor Place, St. Mark’s, Fourth Avenue, Bowery and Lafayette all collide in an impossible knot of an intersection out there, and in the middle is a sliver of a traffic island. And in the middle of the island is the cube. Black steel, maybe eight feet to a side, it sits there balanced on one of its corners. It’s mounted on some kind of pivot so that if you give it just a little shove, it rotates. It is a prime example of ugly fucking municipal art.
The tea doesn’t really taste like tea and it tastes nothing at all like beer, but it has no caffeine or alcohol, so it’s good for my surviving kidney. I also got a croissant, but I don’t have an appetite just now because it’s a few minutes to ten and I really want to see Roman and Bolo walk out onto that traffic island and stand there in the rain. Then I will get up and go to the pay phone by the bathroom (which I already checked to be sure it works) and I will call Ed and Paris and they will drive over from where they are parked nearby and, while I watch, they will shoot down Roman and Bolo in the street. After that, I will step outside, Ed and Paris will pick me up and we will speed away. I don’t see much point in trying to imagine what might happen after that.
Out in the rain, Roman and Bolo cross over to the traffic island from the direction of St. Mark’s.
They’re both carrying the kind of cheap umbrellas that vendors hawk for five bucks a pop when the rain starts up. Roman is wearing a long raincoat over his suit. Bolo is out there in just his leather pants and motorcycle jacket. He has his left hand pressed down on his head, trying to keep the wind from blowing his long hair around. I watch them getting wet for a moment.
A gust of wind comes along and blows the cheap umbrellas inside out. Roman turns his to face the wind and it flops back into shape. Bolo takes his hand from his head to fix his own and all that black hair flies off in the wind and lands in the gutter a few feet away.
I turn to run for the phone and bounce off the real Bolo, who is standing right behind me with a Band-Aid on his thumb where Bud clawed him. He points out the window.
—Fucking Russians got nothing but shit for brains.
—I can understand you thinking I might be stupid. I mean, I’m big and strong and I have dark skin, so people see me and figure I must be the dumb one in the group. But Roman? What? You think he suddenly grew a brain tumor or something?
We’re sitting at my table. Bolo picks at my croissant, keeps one eye on me and another out the window on the decoys.
—Asshole. You had Ed’s fucking card on you when the cops picked you up. We knew you