Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [65]
4.
Sometime after ten, the van bumped across a railroad (another railroad, this city seemed shot through with them like varicose veins) and left the road, rocking over uneven ground, gravel and bigger rocks, then rolled to a stop a few feet away from what looked to Niki like it might once have been a loading ramp for the empty factories and warehouses. Her ass ached, and the small of her back, too, the place she imagined her kidneys to be, and she had to piss.
The platform was dark, too far from the streetlights, nothing but a dull red glow from a barrel and that surrounded by shivering men in ragged clothes, freezing scarecrows or tramps.
“That goddamn son of a bitch,” Daria said, relief and furious anger, and she slammed her fist hard against the sun-cracked vinyl dashboard, then jumped out of the van, and Niki could hear her Docs crunching toward the platform.
No one bothered letting Niki out this time; Mort swore and killed the engine, got out and followed Daria. So Niki was left alone to wrestle with the stubborn handle of the sliding door. By the time she caught up with them, Daria had climbed up onto the platform, hands on her sturdy hips, leaning down to yell at someone sitting on the concrete edge. It had to be Keith, guitar across his lap like a disobedient child, not dressed for the weather, and she could tell he’d be a tall man when he stood. It was too dark to see his face, and he was looking down besides, past his dangling legs at the ground where broken-bottle glass glittered faintly.
Mort stood a few feet away from her, helpless watcher.
“Do you have any fucking idea where all we’ve been out looking for your ass tonight?” Daria hissed, and then she kicked an empty beer can; the can flew high, end over tumbling end like a football or grenade, and clattered to the ground somewhere out in the darkness.
The figure did not move, did not shift its wide shoulders or tilt its head toward its accuser.
“Why the hell d’you do that?” he asked. “I’ve been right here all evening. Mort knows to look for me here.”
“Christ!” the swear spit like cracker-dry crumbs, and Daria turned, paced to the other side of the platform and stood staring out across the tracks. The bums watched from the safety of their barrel fire.
“I got a phone call that you’d been in a fight,” she said. “That somebody had cut your guts out over a bad deal.”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“Who said a damn fool thing like that?” he murmured, so low his bear’s voice was almost lost in the wind.
“What the hell difference does that make?”
“Because some people will say anything, Dar. You gotta know who to believe and who’s just full of shit.”
Muffled laughter from the glowing ring of bums and junkies, and one of them said, “That’s some fine white-bitch ass, all right, Mr. Barry. Yessiree…”
“L.J., why don’t you just shut the hell up,” Keith said, but Daria had already turned on them, had taken a step toward the huddled circle of orange-brown faces and warming palms; Niki felt Mort tense in the dark beside her.
“Man,” Keith sighed. “You’re only gonna piss her off more than she already is.”
“I ain’t tryin’ to disrespect your lady,” said the man with arms like twigs and a face like a hungry weasel, all guilty innocence. “I’m just payin’ her some due, that’s all.”
“Shut up, L.J.,” another of the men growled.
“You just gotta be properly respectful of fine white pussy like that, that all I’m sayin’. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
Niki took a step closer to Mort, felt her hand on his arm before she knew she’d put it there.
A howl like metal past fatigue, the point where stress becomes shear, and Daria rushed the men, moved howling her steel gash howl across the platform, and most of them had time to jump out of the way before she reached the barrel. Except for the one they had called L.J., who stood like a shabby rabbit in blinding headlights.
Daria kicked high and her right boot connected with the rim of the barrel;