Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (11 page)

She shakes her head.

--Honestly, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

She straightens.

--You're right, Joe, they're assholes. Let's go.

She starts for the exit.

Stretch takes a step after her.

--Hey! Hey, now! Now wait a second.

Lydia stops and turns.

--What?

Stretch licks his lips.

--You got a mouth on you, lady. Some mouth. Come on a man's turf and talk that way. Some
mouth. Takes, know what that takes, takes balls. You got some balls on you. I like that.
That's OK by me. You come back in here and let's have a beer and we'll do the swap and get
rolling. We're all introduced now, so let's do some business.

Lydia creases her forehead.

--Asshole, you missed the point. We don't want you. You people are a mess. You're going to
have to stay out here where you belong. Until you get kicked into the ocean.

She turns again.

Stretch snaps his fingers.

The Strongman's eyes narrow behind the headman's hood. Harm sets the mason jar aside and
rests her hand on her sledgehammer. Vendetta's fingers tighten on the iron poker. Hatter
opens his dictionary wide and a derringer drops from the hollowed pages into his hand.
Glasseater licks his lips.

Stretch folds his arms over his little barrel chest.

--Tell me, you uptight Manhattan snobs think you can talk to me like that and walk out of
here in one piece?

I pull the hogleg from my belt and put it against his forehead.

--Tell me, do you think you clowns can stop me if I decide to blow your stomach open, rip
your guts back out,
stretch
them across the boardwalk, and run my van over them a few times?

Lydia raises both her hands, opens her mouth to chill the situation, and something slaps
the stiff canvas of the tent, whispers through the air and imbeds itself in her neck.

I blink.

--Jesus fuck, is that an arrow?

A heavy rain hits the tent, sharp reports followed by chorused sighs.

Fletched steel shafts sprout in the sand. Pepper the table and the corpse. Bristle from
the Strongman's back as he scoops Vendetta and Harm together and bends his body over
theirs. Glasseater gnashes his broken teeth on the one that springs out of his mouth, and
finds it inedible. They chase Stretch as he crawls under the stage. Hatter pulls one from
his foot, turns and runs into a flock of them that pelt his chest and face.

I drop to the ground. One passes through my right biceps and into my side, pinning my arm
to my torso.

The storm stops.

Something black flutters at the entrance of the tent. I see the Wraith in my memory, stop
breathing, roll onto my left side, fire both barrels of the hogleg, the recoil jerking my
arm back, the shaft of the arrow tearing flesh, the barbed tip twisting between two ribs.

The black shape in the entrance sprays a cloud of blood and explodes back into the night.

A man, a man in a cape. Only a man.

I breathe. Smell the Vyrus thick in the fresh blood.

Not a Wraith, but not a man. More are out there.

I get up. Lydia has the arrow in her neck, more in her legs and abdomen. I grab her and
drag her toward the rear of the tent, kicking the brazier from its stand as I pass it,
spilling flaming coals over the grease-stained carpets and under the dry boards of the
stage and the bleachers.

Fire wastes no time, begins to eat the tent and its contents.

I reach the back of the tent, drop Lydia, grab the canvas at its base and heave it up,
tearing long iron stakes from the sand. I look back, see more black shapes beating at the
entrance, leaping across the flames, the trailing wings of one catching fire.

The Strongman rises, porcupined in steel, and takes his broadsword from the edge of the
stage as Vendetta and Harm worm beneath the platform, over the coals scattered there. Two
of the caped silhouettes jump, the broadsword arcs, dividing one of the shapes into two
bleeding halves and imbedding in the other before it slams into him and drives him onto
his back. The heads of the arrows burst from his chest and stomach and he grabs the
wounded attacker and pulls him close and fire is reflected everywhere in blood.

I wrap my fingers in Lydia's hair and duck under the edge of the burning tent, hauling her
through the sand, jerking to a stop as something grabs her and she's torn from me;
dropping the fistful of her hair, snagging her wrist and digging my heel into the sand as
she's pulled back into the tent.

--Pitt.

Lydia , rasping over the arrow in her throat, reaching to me with her other hand.

--Gun. Gun.

I drop the hogleg, force my right hand across my body, ripping the hole in my biceps
wider, twisting the barbs deeper. I tug the Docks Boss' gun from my jacket pocket and toss
it into the sand as the things holding her legs heave and we're both pulled toward the
flaming canvas.

She scoops up the huge revolver.

--Let me go. Go.

Three arrows pierce the tent and fly into the darkness behind me.

Lydia twists her arm to free herself.

--Go. Just fucking come back.

I let her go and she's dragged screaming into the tent and I snag the hogleg and I run
into the darkness below the boardwalk, trailing blood, the sound of the revolver crashing
behind me.

Lydia , filling the blazing night with lead.

Burrowed deep in sand where it piles up high under the boardwalk, I break the hogleg, drop
the spent shells and replace them. I face back on my trail and wait for something that I
can blow in half.

Nothing comes.

I watch the tent burn. I watch the fluttering silhouettes hack the lines, tumbling it down
so that it burns faster. I watch them gather bodies and parts of bodies. Three of them
carry the Strongman and the smaller corpse pinned to him.

I listen.

--Don't leave anything.

--I'm not leaving anything, Axler.

--We need it all.

--I never buried anyone? I never sat Shiva? I don't know we need it all?

--Just don't leave any of Chaim on the ground.

--It's too late. He was sprayed all over the tent. And half of Fletcher burned before we
could get to him.

--Burned. Fuck. Will the Chevra Kadisha be able to do anything?

--Ask your papa.

--Shit.

One of the silhouettes stands at the edge of the firelight, peering under the boardwalk.

--Selig, come away, we have to go.

--Some got away.

--Too late. We have to go. The fire.

--They got away. The one that shot Chaim got away. The midget got away. One of his whores
got away.

A siren whines, coming closer.

--We have to go.

--They killed Chaim. They killed Fletcher. They killed Elias. We have to find them. We have
to kill them.

More sirens join the first.

--We have to go, Selig.

--Chaim. They killed my brother. Chaim. I have to kill them.

He starts to scramble under the boardwalk.

I train both barrels on his shadow.

He stops, scents, his head turns toward my hiding place. Two of the others come after him
and grab him.

--Selig.
Ha-Makom yenahem ethem b'tokh sha'ar aveilei Tzion v'Yerushalayim, Selig.
We have to go.

They pull him from under the boardwalk, dragging him away from the flames, away from my
gun that killed his brother.

Lucky fucker.

I pinch the hollow shaft just below the plastic fletching and flatten it between my
fingers. Sitting on the floor of the van, arm tight to my side and braced against the
paneled interior wall, I grip the arrow just above the pinched alloy and begin to bend it
back and forth, stressing the metal. The tip wiggles between my ribs.

When the metal bends with ease, I wrap my fist around it, take a few shallow breaths,
feeling the point dig at the side of my lung, and give a single sharp yank that tears the
tail of the arrow away and hurts like a motherfucker. I drop the scrap on the floor and
lift my right arm and pull it free, fresh blood running from the hole that had sealed
itself around the shaft that juts from my side.

I press my fingers into the hole in my side, feeling for the sharp-edged barbs, finding
them. I'm lucky that they haven't slipped in past the ribs. I won't have to break my own
bones to dig the fucker out. That would have sucked.

I take my switchblade from my boot top and it snaps open. I have to use my left hand to
cut short twin seams through the skin and muscle on either side of the shaft, then drop
the knife, twist the shaft so that the broad surface of the arrowhead is parallel to the
ribs and jerk it and find out that it has two shorter barbs right at the tip that snag on
the bone and only come free when I curse and twist my right arm around and get a
two-handed grip and pull the fucking thing out along with a hunk of meat and cartilage and
muscle and slivers of bone.

I pick up one of the strips I've already torn my undershirt into and start wrapping it
around my torso. The Vyrus will seal the wounds soon, but the more blood I can keep
inside, the better this will go for me. I've already dribbled a fair amount. And I'm
likely to lose more by the time I've killed all the people I want to see dead right now.

Someone puts a hand on the outer handle of the rear door and tests to see if it's locked.
It is.

Out the windshield I can see the whirling lights on the cop cars and fire engines and
ambulances reflected on the apartment fronts at the intersection of Mermaid and 37th. No
cops have poked around over here yet, just one cruiser that drifted down the street
playing its searchlight over the garbage cans and row houses. That doesn't mean they won't
be going car to car soon.

They tug a little harder on the handle. Someone says something. Someone answers. I try to
smell something other than my own blood. Catch the scent.

I edge to the door, picking up the pointy end of the broken arrow, ease the lock button up
and the door swings suddenly open and I grab the midget and haul him in and throw him down
and push the arrow into his ear farther than it should go and point at Vendetta still
crouched outside the van.

--Get the fuck in here and sit in the corner and don't move.

She climbs into the van and pulls the door closed.

Stretch starts to open his mouth and I twist the arrow and blood runs freely from his ear.

--Close your mouth.

He closes his mouth.

--Show me those teeth again and I'll clean both your ears at the same time.

Vendetta shifts.

--The cops.

I keep my eyes on Stretch.

--I know.

She moves.

I give Stretch a little more of the arrow.

--He's already gonna be deaf in this ear, honey, move again and I'll take the short route
to making him deaf in the other.

She stays where she is.

--The cops. They're looking in cars. Coming down Thirty-seventh.

I look out front. Bobbing flashlight beams are working toward the intersection.

Fuck.

I can shove the arrow through Stretch's ear and jump the girl and probably break her neck
before she screams, and start the van and roll with the lights off and circle around
Seagate.

I lick my lips, shift, my left hand tenses on the arrow.

Stretch is looking in my eyes.

--She's alive.

I poke the arrow deeper.

--Told you to keep those teeth hid.

He winces.

--They got her. But she's alive. Get us out. I'll tell you where.

The flashlights are coming closer. Once the cops are at the intersection I'm fucked. They
see the van rolling, they'll be after me. High-speed pursuit in a crap van. Busted. Dead.

I put my knee on his chest, pull the arrow out of his ear, shove it in his mouth, push the
barbs into his inner cheek, fishhook him and pull.

He strains his neck, trying to keep his face in one piece.

I tug.

--Where?

He gurgles.

--Fuggckgyooog.

The lights are bright at the end of the street.

I drop the arrow and pick up the hogleg and rise and kick him in the crotch three times
with my steel toes and whip the barrels of the gun across Vendetta's forehead and give her
the boot.

--Don't fuck with me or I'll kill you bad.

I get in the front seat and start the engine and pull out, lights dark.

--Where?

He turns his head.

--Sorry? That was my bad ear.

--Where, fucking where?

His smile shines bloody as he works the arrow out of his mouth.

--Gravesend.

He's a talker.

--Pisses me off is that it's Friday night. Supposed to be safe night. Why it's the only
night we do the act.

He picks at the dry blood crusted around his right ear.

--Don't suppose you know if eardrums grow back?

I ignore him. Trying to think. Trying to figure how far I can take this. The cost of
returning without Lydia.

He points at my own mutilated right ear.

--Just askin' cuz it looks like you have some recent experience with this kind of thing.

Trying to figure if I can just dump him and Vendetta and haul ass back to Manhattan and
tell Terry I did everything I could, but Lydia is gone.

--'Course, yours look to be more of the external variety.

He snaps his fingers next to his bad ear.

--Damn. Fucker's dead as dead. Pisser. Years of mutilatin' myself, never did a stitch of
permanent damage. Mind you, there was a period of trial and error where it was more from
luck than anything else that I didn't ever bite off nothing that couldn't grow back.

I think about the solid Lydia once did for me. How I never paid it off. How it was too
fucking big to be paid off in one installment. Till now.

Vendetta looks at him from her spot on the floor between our seats.

--Don't forget the toe.

He holds up his hands.

--Well sure, the toe. Just the pinkie toe, mind. But that was pure experimentation. Tell
you, got no regrets about that toe. I hadn't tested it out first, I might have bit off a
finger or something like that. As it is, I've sliced and diced and gnawed my flesh just
about every which way you can and kept myself in one piece all the while. Traveled my act
far and wide. 'Course that was when this was an open city. That's when the borough of
Brooklyn on Long Island was a free place, where a man could go where he pleased and do as
he pleased.