Lowland Rider (22 page)

Montcalm rode the trains to 103rd Street and walked over to Gina's building. He pushed the button several times, but got no answer, so he took out his key and unlocked the outer door. As he trudged up the steps he heard rapid footfalls from above, and when he stepped onto the third floor landing he saw a thin white man with long hair and a wispy beard coming down the stairs. The man had a Morris the Cat backpack slung over one shoulder, and was moving fast, too fast for
Montcalm's
peace of mind. He moved to the middle of the landing so that the bearded man could not get by him without pushing him, and when he did, Montcalm grabbed him by an arm and pressed him back against the railing.

"In a hurry?"

The man looked angrily at Montcalm. "What the fuck business is it of yours, man?"

Montcalm flashed his badge with his free hand. "You live here? 'Cause if you don't, I got more questions."

"Yeah… yeah, I live here."

"Where here?"

"Uh, eighth floor."

"Building only has seven floors, asshole. You live on the roof?" It was a lie. The building had ten floors, but Montcalm figured the guy probably never looked up when he came into a building.

The man's face softened to the look of a school kid caught in a lie, but then hardened again. "Okay, I don't live here. So what? I mean, you got a warrant for me or something?"

"Who were you visiting?"

"None of your
goddam
business
, man!"

"I decide that."

"Hey, I don't care who the fuck you are, you got no right to hassle me like this, you don't know me—”

“What's in the bag?"

"It's
my
bag!"

"I don't doubt that. I just want to know what's in it."

The man tried to break away, but Montcalm held him, grabbed his other arm, and twisted him around so that his head and shoulders hung past the railing over the stairs ten feet below. Pressing the man's chest onto the railing, Montcalm wrenched the bag off his shoulder and pulled the snaps apart. "You can't do this!" the man grunted. "Illegal search! You can't make this stick!"

The Baggies and glass tubes inside told Montcalm everything he needed to know. "No, but I can make
you
stick."

"
Wh
. . . what?"

"I can make you stick to the stairs when I throw you over."

"Hey, wait a min —"

"Where were you just now? Where were you coming from?"

"No, man, no! This is coercion, you can't make me—" Montcalm, furious, pushed the man further so that his belly now pressed on the railing. "
Where?
”

“Bob . . . Bobby?"

Montcalm looked up and saw Gina, dressed in shorts and a halter top, standing at the end of the landing. "Let him go. Please."

Montcalm shook the man like a rat. "What did you
sell
her?"

"He didn't sell me anything, Bob. Honest to God, we were just talking, just a visit, that's all."

"Did you
touch
her?" Montcalm raged, pushing the man further until his weight alone would have taken him over had Montcalm suddenly let go.

The man seemed to know now that this was more than just a suspicious cop. This was a jealous and righteously pissed off husband who was only too willing to tip him over the edge. "No, man, not at all . . . just
talkin
',
y'know
? No drugs, no
nothin
', really, I
swear
, man!"

Gina took a few more steps toward the men. "Really, Bob, he's telling the truth. Please let him go."

Montcalm eyed her closely. She looked pale, but not stoned. Sweat shone on her body, but he believed it was from the heat rather than from drugs or lovemaking. He knew how she felt about lovemaking.

"Please, man . . ." Montcalm looked down at the shivering man and knew he could not throw him over the side. A moment ago, gripped by his fury, he might have. But not now. Not with Gina standing there, looking at him with her dead-alive eyes that were still so beautiful.

He pulled the man back and shoved the backpack into his arms. "Get out of here," Montcalm told him. "And don't let me find you in here again."

"Right, man," the dealer said, bowing obsequiously as he backed away, then hitting the stairs and running down them three at a time.

When Montcalm could no longer hear his footsteps, he turned back to Gina. "I'm getting you out of here," he said.

She shook her head, not understanding. "Out. . . now?"

"Soon. I'm getting you out of here and getting you clean."

They went back to the apartment and he gave her the money and the heroin he had bought. "It's not like the other stuff," he said. "It may not be as good, I don't know, so be careful."

Willie had gotten it for him, and Montcalm had paid dearly for it. Rodriguez was cut off as a source of supply until Montcalm could get rid of Gordon, but he didn't tell Gina that, just as he had never told her about working with Rodriguez, about any of the things he had done because he loved her so much.

He stayed with her for a half hour. They sat on the couch and watched a game show, and Gina didn't shoot up while he was there. When he left, he kissed her and told her again, "Soon, I promise," and she kissed him back and told him that she would not see Matt, the bearded man with the drugs, again, not even to talk to.

On his way back to the subway, Montcalm checked his wallet, and found that he had only fifteen dollars left. The bank was closed this late in the afternoon, so he decided to go down to Penn Station and take some cash out of his locker. There would be enough to replenish it when he found out where Gordon hid his money. Enough to replenish it and to give him and Gina a chance at a whole new life.

He rode the sixty-nine blocks with a smile on his face, thinking of that new life, thinking of Gina in the country, with sunlight on her hair and the stench of the city a dimly forgotten memory. He didn't play his usual game of watching the other people on the car, marking them for what they were—good, bad, or indifferent. In spite of the run-in with Matt, in spite of the work that lay ahead to root out Gordon and his money, Bob Montcalm felt good, as if things were going to finally go well for him.

He got off the train at Penn Station with a light, boyish step, and threaded his way through the tunnels until he arrived at the alcove with the locker where he kept his money. He moved it frequently from locker to locker, just in, case they were ever inspected, a threat for which he had never seen any evidence. And if inspectors ever did open it, what would they find but a locked briefcase on which they would lock the door again?

He read the number on the key —9273—and put it into the corresponding lock, then opened the locker, unlocked his briefcase, and took two hundred dollars in twenties from it, He locked it again, dropped fifty cents into the slot, closed the door, and took the key. Smiling, he walked out of the alcove into the commotion of the station and headed up toward the street, thinking that he deserved a good dinner.

When he was gone, Jesse Gordon stepped from around the corner, walked up to the lockers, and shook the handle of locker number 9273. Then he opened the door of the locker numbered 9277, fed two quarters into the slot, closed the door, and took the key, which he dropped into his pocket, where its rough edge pressed against his thigh, an irritant impossible to ignore.

He left the alcove, and took a stairway down.

Jesse Gordon found Rags scrounging through a garbage can in the 59th Street station. When Jesse called his name, Rags came up holding a half-eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken breast. His face broke into a picket-fence smile, and he walked toward Jesse, chuckling and nodding. He was glad to see Jesse well, and glad to see him alive at all.

"Where the hell you been at, Jesse? I ain't, seen you now for what, a couple weeks?"

"Not that long, Rags."

"You
stayin
'
outa
trouble?"

"I'm afraid not."

Rags nodded. "I know. I been
hearin
' about you, about what you been
doin
'. You're
doin
' some good, Jesse, but I think you gonna pay for it
sooner'r
later. You, uh, want some chicken?" He held out the breast. Its color was good. It had not been thrown away too long before.

"No thanks, Rags."

"
Gettin
' picky?"

"Just not hungry."

"You look like you could use some
fattenin
' up. You
feelin
' okay?"

"I'm fine, Rags. But I need your help for something."

Sweet God, what now? Rags thought, remembering the last time he had helped Jesse, helped him by killing a boy. That had stayed with Rags. He had never done anything like it before, and he woke up from his sleeps sweating beyond the heat, beyond the rags swathed around his body. The dream never varied—he would be sitting on some unidentified platform, he would hear a cry and look up, and there would be Jesse, bent back over the edge by someone whose face he could not see, and Rags would stand up, move through dream-mush toward the man harming Jesse, pick him up (he was light as air) and throw him onto the tracks, and as the man flew through the air he turned so that Rags could see his face, and instead of the boy, it was Enoch, and he was smiling, his face glowing with light, even as the oncoming express struck him in midair, turning him into a cloud of white flame.

One time Rags woke up screaming, just as a transit cop was passing through the car on which he rode. The cop had questioned him, but seemed satisfied that Rags was neither drunk nor stoned, and only told him to get off at the next station. A tougher one might have arrested him, but probably not. Still, he had paid a price for the first time he'd helped Jesse Gordon.

"I don't know, Jesse…"

"You don't have to actually
do
anything, Rags. Just be a lookout for me."

"A lookout," Rags said flatly. "Lookin' out for what, Jesse?"

"For cops, for Montcalm."

"
Montcalm?
"

"I've found out where he keeps his money, Rags. The money he gets from Rodriguez. His drug money."

Rags shook his head. "You over your head, Jesse. You way over your head. You mess with them once, you maybe get away with it. But you keep
doin
' it, they not gonna turn their backs. They gonna kill you, that's all. I ain't ready to die yet."

"When will you be, Rags?" At first Rags didn't think he heard Jesse correctly, and cocked his head and gave a puzzled look. "When
will
you be ready to die?"

"What you mean?"

"I mean I'm ready now. So I'm not afraid. Oh, a little, maybe, of the pain. And of the mystery. But not enough to stop me. That's what I've learned. Not to be afraid. I haven't done both yet, but I don't believe that dying can be as bad as living."

Rags nodded slowly. "You right." More loudly he added, "I
know
you right, Jesse. You come down here because you do somethin' bad, least you think you do. But you don't do
nothin
'. No sir, you don't do
nothin
' like I do." Tears filled his eyes. "You
wanta
know why I come down here? You want me to tell you? I tell you, then you see if you still want me to help you, look out for you. But not here. Can't tell you here, not with all these people, no sir . . ."

They boarded a downtown train, found a car with only a few passengers in it, and sat in the unoccupied end.

"I told you I was a preacher, and I was. Congregational Baptist, down in North Carolina, little town near Asheville. Never had no seminary learning. My daddy was a preacher and so I took it up. I was a good one too. Until what happened
happened
. I was married, but my wife and I had no kids for a long time. Then, when I was forty or so and she was 'bout thirty-five, she got pregnant. She was pretty well along when one of the families in the congregation, their house caught fire. The mother and father were caught in a upstairs bedroom and they burned to death, but the firemen got out their little girl, girl eight years old. My wife and I, we took her in, it was our responsibility as the preacher and his wife. The first night she stayed with us, my wife got sick and started
bleedin
' from down there, and I took her to the hospital in Asheville. Wasn't
nothin
' I could do, the doctors said, and they thought she'd be all right and not lose the baby, so I went back home, where I'd left the little girl. When I got back . . ."

Rags took a deep, shuddering breath, and hugged himself hard to keep from shaking.

"When I got back she was
sittin
' there in my wife's rocker, lookin' so sweet and pretty and scared, and I was scared too, scared that somethin' would happen to my wife and I'd be all alone. And I wanted to comfort that little girl who'd just lost her mommy and daddy, and I wanted comfort too. So I held her and cuddled her and sang hymns to her, and while I was
doin
' that I started to think about other things, bad things, and I knew they were wrong, and I sang more hymns and I prayed inside to God to keep me from
doin
' what I wanted to do. But it wasn't any use. I… I done things with her. I didn't hurt her, I
wouldn'ta
hurt her. But I done things I shouldn't, things that I can't even speak of." A sob racked
Rags's
body. "Oh God, she was so little, and she trusted me so much, and believed the things I told her . . ."