 
# 99 Easy Street

Louis Shalako

Copyright 2016 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-96-7

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

About Louis Shalako

Chapter One

"Okay, Mark. She's all yours." His new landlord Roy Olivetti stood in the centre of the room, the stub of an unlit cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth. "This is one of the biggest units in the building. You're lucky it's unoccupied, otherwise I would have had to give twenty-four hours notice before showing it."

Mark, trudging down Easy Street, had seen the sign in the grimy window of a vacant storefront on the ground floor.

Lucky to have picked up three dimes, two quarters and four nickels dropped by patients and staff members over the years and jealously hoarded in a small cavity under the sink, there was a phone booth just up the street. Even more fortuitously, Olivetti had been at the office. It wasn't too far away, although he had an answering service as well. Mark needed to piss badly, and hanging around by a phone booth, waiting for a return call was no joke in this neighbourhood. He also had eighteen pennies, two of which he'd picked up along the way. He had noted quite a few empty bottles lying around in alleys and in the gutter. Mark wasn't quite ready to burden himself just yet. He didn't have anything to put them in. He had the horn case and one small bag, stuffed with everything he owned.

Mark had been plotting his escape for years.

Sunlight slanting past the windows reflected off the building across the street, throwing odd shadows and putting oblong panels of light where they normally shouldn't be. It was only mid-April. The apartment was already hot and oppressive up front, and yet the windowless little bedroom in the rear was dank and cool. The front room had two big windows, and that was it. He had a kitchen on the left, a short hallway, a bathroom, a place to sleep and what else did a man need, anyways.

It was also all that Mark could afford. He would barely be able to pay the rent and eat at the same time. There were plenty of missions, soup kitchens and thrift stores in the neighbourhood. There would be mental health outreach programs and street-corner preachers all over the place.

"Thank you." He'd been sort of putting this moment off.

Pulling the start-up cheque from his side pocket, he unfolded it and handed it over, a bit reluctantly.

"It's just that I don't have a bank account. I was wondering, if you wouldn't mind? Give me like ten minutes." His hand stretched out tentatively. "Now that I have an address, it might be a little easier to open an account...right?"

Mark, bewildered by the real world, its loud noises, the strange clothes, the newness of certain things and the timeless decay of certain other things, was terribly unsure of himself. It wasn't too far from his old neighbourhood, and he had a pretty good idea of what it was like at times.

He wasn't scared, not exactly, but he had a lot riding on this.

Olivetti glanced at the cheque, squinting, holding it at arm's length in a beam of light well away from Mark's clutching hand.

"Government cheque, eh? Naw, that's okay. Just sign the back and I'll cash it myself." Unexpectedly handing the paper back to Mark, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ball-point pen. "I'm a busy man. I can't be waiting around all day."

"Uh...okay."

There was a small branch of the First National Bank of Manhattan across the street. Mark wasn't too eager to go back there and try it again, not after their earlier reaction. It wasn't that they wouldn't cash it, an extremely polite lady explained, it's just that there would be a seven-day hold, and that really wasn't what he was looking for, was it? Maybe she was right, although he would need an account sooner or later. She seemed friendly enough, directing him to a nearby pawnshop, where the rates advertised on the board were outrageous. He'd already sort of ruled that one out, hence his try at the bank. The odds were they weren't going to hand money out, not to someone like him, no matter what he said or did.

Roy handed the pen over and Mark looked around, still uncertain. The only horizontal surface was the kitchen countertop. He went in there, but as soon as he put the cheque down, he thought better of it.

Shit.

If Olivetti could handle grease-stains he didn't much care either way. The only real problem was that the cheque was for more than the actual monthly rent. They had already agreed. Mark would be paying month-by-month rather than signing a lease or paying first and last month's rent, the more usual way of doing things. Olivetti was letting him move in nine days early.

It counted for something.

Just until I get on my feet.

Sure, buddy, no problem...

The hall door was still open two inches. Voices in some foreign language and heavy foot-clomps announced the coming of three pairs of curious eyes in blotchy dark faces. They traipsed past the open door, right to left, suddenly quiet, curiosity aroused. There came the rattle of a key in a lock. That must be three-oh-two. It thudded closed and the voices went away.

"So, uh. Is this place quiet? I mean, real quiet?" After four years upstate, at the Bellevue Institute for the Criminally Insane, the one thing Mark wanted more than anything in the whole wide world, was peace and quiet.

"Aw, don't worry. This is a clean, quiet, professionally-managed building."

They stood there with Mark still wondering. Mr. Olivetti wore a suit and a lot of aftershave. He did have the cigar. There was a pretty nice car, a '66 Lincoln, illegally parked out front.

"Okay."

"Don't worry. I'll be right back with your change."

They shook hands and then, as Mark stood there open-mouthed, looking at his new acquisition, Roy turned and went out the door.

This was Mark's new home. The exterior wall had some paint peeling around the windows. The frames, trim and baseboards were thick with the cheapest brand of paint. The floor was bare boards, dark brown but with cracks showing grey with lint and dust unsuccessfully swept up, going down instead. There was an odd smell in there. It was pungent, oddly musky. With the windows open after not being occupied for weeks or months, with a bit of cleaning, that might go away. After four years of hospital-corridor smell, he was open to the universe, no matter what that might mean.

He could hear the guy going down the stairs behind some other people. The street door opened and slammed down below. Mark went over and gently closed the door.

His soft-sided case stood in the centre of the room along with his trumpet in the battered black faux-leather case. Mark wasn't quite ready to take off his grubby, white nylon parka, a gift from the Salvation Army. Their card was in his pocket. They'd helped out quite a bit, but then they all knew where he was going—out into the world. It was the minimal investment in a man they thought they'd see again all too soon. The social workers, the doctors and the nurses, the shrinks, and most of his fellow inmates. They were all thinking the same thing, and it was hard not to agree to some extent. They all had a stake in his outcome, at least to hear them tell it.

He was already missing poor old Bill, his one and only friend.

Crazy old Bill. That one was never getting out.

If Mark failed, he would kill himself. There was no way in hell he was ever going back there.

In that sense, death meant freedom.

No price is too high sometimes.

They were all rooting for him, or so they said. They might even have a little money riding on it, one way or another.

Some instinct told him to look out the windows. He yanked and yanked but couldn't get the first one to budge. The one on the other side went up with a bang, and then it didn't want to stay up. He stood there looking for a stick of some kind, but there was nothing there. The back of Mister Olivetti disappearing through the front doors of the bank across the street was some kind of revelation. If the guy had an account there already, it probably would save them a couple of minutes. It was better than a seven-day hold. It was better than keeping a cashbox in the car.

Keeping a lot of money on him would be suicidal around here.

That's why people wanted cheques after all.

Mark had all the time in the world. It was a new kind of time, a time all his own, and not time he owed to the state. That was the worst kind of time of all.

Moving into the back of the apartment, he flipped on the bedroom light, wan, yellow and fly-specked. Dry and dusty-smelling, this room was different, with a closet built out from the left corner, slatted folding doors across the front of it. The room was so narrow, it really only left the other side for the bed. The room was so short, there was no good reason to put the bed against the wall by the door. That would leave a foot and a half of useless space on the end. How he might actually get such a bed was another good question. He was planning ahead—that was the best way to look at it. Looking at the mossy green paint, he could see where a thousand nail-holes had been patched over the years. There were places where the paint had been pulled off when someone removed a poster or something taped up there. It was a kind of yellowy peach colour under the green.

It was all his now.

Turning the lights on almost made the kitchen worse. It really didn't help much, it just made things clearer. Moving to the bathroom, it occurred to him that he'd been taking an awful lot for granted at Bellevue—three square if bland and not-very-hot meals a day, not to mention a bed and running water. This room was brighter at least, painted a nice cheerful yellow, but the smell was also stronger. It was a fairly big room. Opening up the drawers, they were empty but not very clean inside. Way at the back of what would probably be the utility drawer—where all the miscellaneous items would end up, he found a single blue push-pin. So now he could at least pin something up.

He didn't even know what questions to ask, sometimes.

Next, the bathroom.

He flushed the toilet and it seemed to work all right. Turning the taps, he put his fingers under the flow, and after a while it began to warm up. He stood there a minute, wondering if that was going to be hot enough for a shower. He was already committed anyways. With no towels, he dried his fingers on the inner lining of his coat.

There were voices on the other side of the rear wall, and his heart sank. Of course it was quiet, recalling the televisions and radios behind pretty much every door on the long climb up through the building.

Sure it is. Somewhere off in the distance there was a dog barking. There was a thud from somewhere. People wanted to live in New York, they wanted to live in apartments, which was the only thing going anyways—and they wanted to have a dog, too. They would disrupt their own lives and the lives of all those around them, turning themselves inside out to accommodate a yapping, smelly pooch. It was a surrogate relationship, the dogs often taking the place of children and mates that weren't there and had never been there and were never going to be there.

People were nuts, when you got right down to it.

It might take a while to figure things out.

Another big thud from somewhere.

Mark turned to the old-fashioned claw-foot tub, where the cheap pink plastic shower curtain, the only vestige of furniture remaining, still hung across. Judging by the sink and the toilet, he was expecting rust stains, of a sort that were hard to remove.

Pulling it back, he twitched when he saw someone was in there.

Worse, it looked like the lady was dead, mouth open and cloudy, sightless blue eyes staring up at him as if accusing him of doing something awful to her.

The silk stockings tied tightly around her neck, the scratches from where her sharp, blood-red nails had scrabbled at her throat, told their own story. So did the cheap corselet, the high-heeled shoes and the garish bronze lipstick. Her hair was blonde with black streaks framing her face...there was hardened mascara running down her cheeks and into the discoloured water.

Her pale, blotchy legs had stubble on them. Relaxed in death, knees wide apart, her pose was an obscenity.

"Oh, Jesus, H. Christ."

He stood there, frozen in time.

"Oh, fuck. Oh, God. Why me?"

As if on cue, sirens started up somewhere nearby and his heart was racing.

Without a phone, Mark had no idea of what to do next.

He backed slowly out of the room, unable to believe what he was seeing.

All he could do was to go across the hall and knock on the door. No one responded. He had heard three of them going past, but. He thought he heard someone moving around in there.

Shit.

He pulled out one of his precious nickels and headed for a phone booth.

Chapter Two

"Oh...no." The last bit came out, thankfully, mostly under Mark's breath.

The officers responding shoved the door open and he stepped backwards. Guns drawn, one of the big black pistols was pointed right at the tip of his nose.

"Back up."

"Yes, sir."

"Hands up." The biggest one, looking everywhere but at Mark, allowed a feral grin.

"Sorry, Stan. Almost forgot that part." The gun didn't waver.

Mark raised his hands slowly and carefully, as the other officer, gun up but all too ready to shoot, checked out the rest of the apartment. He went from door to door, peering carefully around corners, not taking any chances. Mark prayed silently for Mister Olivetti's return.

Where in the hell did he get off to.

"I'm the one that called it in."

"Shut up."

"Okay." The voice came from the other room.

Mark recognized both officers, and an already sinking feeling was quickly dropping through the floor and the basement and heading for the centre of the Earth.

This one was Thomas Stubbs. The other one was Stanley Lang.

Lang came out of the bathroom with a cheerful look on his face.

"Yep. Looks like a dead hooker." Those cold grey eyes came around and fixated on Mark.

"I swear to God, officer—"

"Okay, turn around."

"Ah, for fuck's sakes."

"Don't give us no shit, son."

"No, sir."

The cuffs were snapped on and then they were going through his pockets.

"All right. What do we have here."

"I'm the person who called—"

"Shut up."

With a strong hand on his shoulder, Stubbs forced Mark to the floor in the shadows of the far corner of what was supposed to be his new living room. He sat, knees up, feet close together, hands behind his back, hunched over in a new kind of misery. His jaw worked back and forth, but there were times when there was just no point in talking—

Water welled up into his eyes, coming from somewhere not too deep within him.

Lang's eyes flicked up from the ID. His previous address was listed, long out of date now.

"Hey—" His brow lowered. "Say—if this is your place, how come you don't have a key?"

His eyes traveled across their little exhibits, lined up all in a row on the bare floorboards.

Stubbs was not to be outdone.

"Yeah—how come you don't have no key, buddy?"

***

"So you say you just rented the place? Apartment three-oh-one, number ninety-nine Easy Street?"

"Ah, yes, sir."

Detective O'Hara might have been just as jaded and just as cynical as any other New York cop.

He also had a job to do. He was being paid for so many hours a day and he might as well do something about it while he was there. It was better than being bored to death. They were in a scruffy little back room in the local precinct station. O'Hara had his fingers folded across an ample belly, chair tipped back, reminding Mark of his grandfather.

Perhaps it was the burn marks all over the floor and the tobacco-stained fingers.

Something about the silvering hair combed straight up and back. The glasses perched on the end of his nose.

Mark took a deep breath and explained again, as best he could. His hands were free and things were looking up.

"Okay. So Olivetti was going to come back and hopefully give you some money. The keys, and all of that. That makes sense, what with cops crawling all over his shit building. Yeah, he's probably just a busy man or something."

That's not precisely how Mark would have put it. All he could do was shrug. He knew nothing about Olivetti.

"And the lady has been dead for a couple of days, two or three anyway. I've been speaking with the folks up at Bellevue and that part of your story checks out. So. Sounds like you couldn't have killed her. Sorry about holding you overnight, but it is nice to be sure about such things. Are you all right, sir?"

Mark blinked back tears.

"Yes, sir. I'll be all right. Thank you."

O'Hara chewed his lip and studied him.

"Okay, Mr. Jones." He slid Mark's statement across the desk. "Sign here, and initial it there. Thank you."

It was all typed up for him. Mark rubbed the moisture from his eyes.

"Sorry about that." He picked up the pen.

"Yeah. So, did you know the lady?"

It was so clumsy that Mark half-laughed and even O'Hara had a funny little gleam in his eye as he took the form back and removed a carbon for Mark.

"Ah, no, sir."

"It's a good thing you have the release papers with you." He pulled out an envelope containing Mark's personal effects. "If you get picked up without them, well, I guess you know. Anyways, good luck to you, and I reckon you're going to need it. We won't hold you up any longer."

"And my pants, sir?"

"Yeah, yeah. Come with me." He was about to rise, taking his time about it, perking up considerably when someone else entered the room.

"Ah. Davis. Take this guy back down and get him his pants."

He nodded pleasantly, proffered the manila envelope in Mark's direction and that was that.

Besides which, the phone was ringing.

As it usually was.

***

Mark had kept an eye out on the way back from the cop-shop and had found a small piece of flat metal lying in the gutter. As he recalled from the short time he'd been there, the locks on the building weren't very good. The one in the lobby would always be busted and the interior ones were just cheap crap.

A couple of young men sitting on the steps of number ninety-nine studiously ignored him as he went up and in the front door. Three flights of creaky, hollow-sounding stairs and he was at his own door. He cursed on seeing it. The frame was solid, an overpainted oak antique. The wooden stops were fairly thick and he didn't think he could do it. There were too many corners in the way. He pulled off the police caution tape and let it fall for the moment. Mark was just fiddling with the strip of metal, trying to get it in between the door and the jamb, but there was just no way. He was never going to be able to do it. You couldn't really bend it in a Z and manipulate it back and forth at the same time.

Muttering to himself, he gave up on that idea. There was a window at the front end of the hallway, and he went to it and had a look out. Sure enough, the ubiquitous fire escapes ran right along below. Fire escapes were a blight or part of the charm of these old buildings, depending on who was talking.

If only he could get the window up. Predictably, it was frozen in place, although a couple of good whacks might get it going.

"Uh. Shit." He was just straightening up.

"Who the hell are you?"

Mark spun around, startled.

A long-haired, bearded young man stood there. Barefoot, he was wearing bell-bottom jeans and an outrageous paisley shirt with long sleeves and a big, pointy collar. With all the TVs and radios and dogs barking and horns honking, Mark hadn't heard him coming. He caught a whiff of a cheesy, yeasty aroma.

"Hi. I'm Mark. I live in three-oh-one. I don't have a key." He hesitated, not to sure where to go. "I was just going to call Mister Olivetti, I guess."

The guy cocked a thumb over his left shoulder.

"This your place?"

Mark nodded.

"Yeah."

His eyebrows rising, the fellow craned his neck and had look at the door a few steps behind him.

He must have seen the caution tape on the floor.

"Okay. Hold on a minute."

Turning, he walked back down the hallway, and Mark gave up on the window. Maybe the guy was going to make a call or something. Without a key, the place wasn't going to be much use to him—although his suitcase and horn were still in there.

Hopefully...

Unexpectedly, the guy had turned a corner and went up another flight of stairs. There was a moment of quiet. Mark heard the footsteps coming back this way up above and then stop. He thought the guy would be in four-oh-two, by the sounds of it. The guy came right back, the sounds repeating themselves in reverse order. He reappeared, jangling a ring of something that didn't look much like keys in his hand.

He slid one serrated, whippy little probe into the lock, gave it a few quick little clicks, tweaks and fiddles, and then the latch snapped and the door was open before Mark knew it.

"Holy."

"No problem. Let me know if you need anything else. I got some pretty good grass. Nickel and dime, right. I know where to get all kinds of things. Uppers and downers, reds, ludes, acid, anything you need. Heroin, hash, mescal and even opium once in a while. Capiche?"

"Uh, sure. Ah." What the hell are we talking about? "Have you seen Mister Olivetti around today?"

"No, but then I tend to avoid that sort of complication anyways." With a beatific smile, he slapped Mark on the upper arm, turning to go.

"So, ah, what's your name?"

He turned back, briefly.

"Duke. Nice to meet you." His eyes went off somewhere else and then he had it. "Welcome to the neighbourhood."

"Yeah. Thanks, man."

His eyes were very dark, the whites kind of pink. Mark wondered if he was diabetic or something. Maybe he was just tired, but it was the wrong shade of red. They shook hands, very briefly, and the guy was gone again.

Mark closed the door behind him. His suitcase and the horn were on the kitchen counter, where no doubt the cops had gone through it all with a fine-tooth comb.

He supposed he couldn't really blame them. They would have found it all very amusing. They were too dumb to lock it up as evidence, or maybe they'd believed him all along. His record was going to follow him around. All he had to do was to stay out of trouble.

That was all he had to do.

Mark also had to find Olivetti, and get that damned key and the rest of his money off of him.

He still had a handful of small change, and he could get a hamburger for fifteen cents up the street. Mark shuffled over and got a drink of water from the kitchen tap. Not even having a glass, he bent over, tasting it carefully, and finding that it was at least cold and not too hard. It didn't taste like plumbing or anything like that. It was pretty good water—it was his water, and that really meant something.

Duke might have a phone. He didn't quite know what to do, but Olivetti didn't live in the building and it was the weekend.

At that exact moment in time, it was very quiet in there.

***

It took a bit of nerve, but Mark came up with a plan. Pulling out his piece of metal, he lifted the right-hand window, and slid that under to keep it up. It was still unlatched from the other day.

Anyone who really wanted to, could have gotten in from the fire escape. When he was younger, they'd pulled the first floor ladders down against the springs by various means, the most impressive of which was the old yo-yo trick. A long stick with a short crook on the big end would also work if you could hook it onto the bottom rung. It might be a good time to relearn some of those boyish skills. Mark went back out into the hall. The apartment across from his was very quiet now, and he wondered if they worked or something. Hoping they weren't asleep, he used the butt of his right hand to pound away at the window, pushing strongly upwards with the left hand. Bending his knees, he put his back into it but it just wouldn't go. He was afraid to really go at it. He was totally new here. He had visions of popping off the top rail of the frame or cracking the glass or something.

Olivetti would hit him with fifty bucks in damages, (and probably never even fix it), and he hadn't even moved in yet.

Shit.

On some kind of inspiration, Mark went down the hall, someone's TV getting louder as he approached. He ducked into the stairwell and went up another flight, one set of noises fading while others got louder. There were four apartments up here too. Someone had done bacon and eggs that morning, and there were a couple of heavy smokers up here. They mostly all had TVs and radios going. There were cheerful voices behind one of the doors at the far end, and a mother scolding a child to his left. There was a breeze coming from somewhere, and he recalled seeing an open or missing window from the street. There was a quick left-right turn in the hallway where the floorplan butted up against something structural. There had to be a boiler down below and a chimney buried along in here somewhere.

The overhead hall lights were either burned out or maybe just turned off during the day. The glare at the end was almost blinding from inside the dim interior. There was a strip of thread-bare carpet, exposing yellow and peeling varnish on the maple floorboards along the edges. Finding the window fully open, propped up on a square maple stick of about three-quarters of an inch by sixteen or eighteen inches, he stuck his head out and had a look. If he knocked the stick out, he'd have some problems. The opening was only about two feet wide and maybe twenty inches tall.

The fire escape went on the level just below the window, a spidery network of slats and black-painted iron I-beams that theoretically kept ice and snow from building up. There were staircases both to right and left. Every apartment had their own way out, which was reassuring. Off to his right, he saw an open apartment window, white curtains billowing in and out. There were some potted plants on the platform. Technically it was an offence to obstruct a fire escape. A person was talking in there, and he had the impression they were on the phone. It was one half of a conversation.

He wasn't going to hold that against anyone. He hated the system anyways. That included the phone company...

Making his way on soft steps, he went back down and tried to think it through again.

The deadbolt could be retracted, and when he flipped the button down, it would stay that way.

The knob, on the other hand, had a snap-latch, although the tongue was cut on an angle and theoretically, at least, it should be a lot easier to pick...maybe. But the door wouldn't be locked anyways. The truth was, he wasn't used to thinking for himself. He didn't want to take a chance on an unlocked door...that was the real problem. It was a question of organizing his thoughts.

Mark had nothing to steal. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing was purely academic.

If only he had another thin piece of metal. In all those pulpy old thrillers, people used a palette knife or something. It seemed to work in books, but now that he'd had a good look at one, he had his doubts.

If it was strictly necessary, he could get back in through the fire escape. Sooner or later someone would remark upon that for sure. You could only get away with that one so many times. If Duke was home, he could pester him for another lock-picking job. That would quickly get old.

That hamburger was really preying on his mind, and at this point in time, there wasn't much to do around there. His real life would be out in the streets and he knew that much already.

Before leaving the apartment, he had to go to the bathroom.

It was either that or piss in an alley for the rest of his life.

After being locked in his room for ten or twelve hours a day, never even getting off the grounds for four long years, subject to endless piddling regulations, and some even more-piddling staff members, he was finding it surprisingly hard to leave.

If he was going to find Olivetti, it would be at the office, which theoretically, should be in the phone book. And it was a fucking Saturday, but you never knew.

This time, the bathtub was empty, for which he was glad. He stood looking at the bathtub as he peed.

They'd drained the water when they took the body out, leaving an ugly dark ring a good three inches tall around the perimeter.

He made a mental note to get some cleanser.

***

While the cops had fed him a stale cheese sandwich and a half-pint of milk, it was strictly as an afterthought and he thought he would just about die of hunger before they let him out. This wasn't getting him anywhere.

He finally took his courage in both hands and left the place for a while.

He could look in the phone book and see if Olivetti lived even halfway close. There was a burger joint just up the street and that took priority. His head pounded and the sounds in his inner ears went squish-squish-squish with every foot-fall.

There was the dull ache of nausea, a sign of hunger gone on too long.

After four years on institutional food, the smell coming out of there was enough to knock your socks off. It was almost quiet compared to outside.

It all looked very clean, colourful, and modern. It was a study in retail efficiency.

He was pretty self-conscious, like he had a kick-me sign taped to the back of his coat. No one paid him a second look, for which he was grateful. As three or four people ahead of him came to the cashier and gave their orders to a pimply-faced kid speaking into a microphone, he had a chance to study the menu on the back wall and listen.

By the time it was his turn, he had a better idea of what to expect. Mark ordered a hamburger, French fries and a small soda.

"I hope you don't mind." He paid with a quarter and a nickel and a few pennies.

Pennies were next to useless and yet you had to have them.

"Thank you very much, sir. Enjoy your meal." The kid slid him a tray lined with cheap paper, replete with specials and tear-off coupons.

He'd eat that in the store, at one of their cheap plastic and metal tables, bolted to the floor just like any other institution. He could walk home with the soda. By the feel of the disposable plastic cup, it would last him for a few days, possibly even weeks if he looked after it.

Noting a shiny metal dispenser, he took a half-inch thick stack of paper towels, which would also come in very handy. There was salt, and pepper, and condiments in slick plastic packets. Without any food at home, it was sort of pointless to grab more than he needed.

There was an empty table in the front corner by the window. If he was going to survive for any length of time, he'd better be a quick learner.

With a deep and heartfelt sigh of relief, he got rid of the coat, draping it over the next seat. The cheap, pale yellow cotton shirt was the best thing he owned, other than the suit.

He was as hungry as a bear and the smell was something that had to be experienced.

Mark had just taken his first bite when a young woman, who had been standing talking to someone at the other end of the row, turned and came towards him.

She was staring right into his eyes. His heart picked up in tempo. She was headed this way.

***

Swallowing quickly, he wiped his mouth to make sure there were no sesame seeds or mayonnaise stuck there. He looked up into a pair of impossibly-clear blue eyes, not quite believing it.

She really was speaking to him.

"I'm sorry?"

She dropped into the seat across from him, undeterred.

"I said, hi, I'm Amy. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions."

"Oh, uh. Sure. Ask me anything you like—"

Please, God, don't ask me where I was yesterday, or two days ago. Anything but that. For the love of God, please don't ask me who I am or what I'm doing here...

"What's this about, anyways?"

Her smile was something to see.

"Well, thank you." Putting her leather case on a clear spot, she unzipped it and pulled out a sheaf of papers stapled together at the top left corner. "This really won't take too long."

She looked down at the top of some kind of form and her pen hit the page.

"Okay. What's your name, address and phone number?"

"Uh—uh."

Ah, what the hell.

Chapter Three

Amy was an anthropologist and graduate of the New School, whatever the hell that meant.

She was conducting a study of life-long bachelors, which must have had its dangers.

Uncomfortably aware of a slight erection, he listened intently, trying not to give too much away to a perfect stranger. All he had to do was to get through the next three minutes.

Coming across as wooden or scared was understandable enough, but of course she had no idea of what she was asking.

"I mean, really, it won't take up too much of your time—"

Mark had taken exactly one bite of a hamburger, his first as a free man in over four years. He was salivating like Pavlov's dog, and then there was this girl.

She was sitting across the table and smiling at him. Something tore inside of him when he realized that in another time, another place, another man's life perhaps, he might have asked her out.

This was going to end badly. Hell, it already had.

"Sure. Ask away."

"Okay. There's a little more to it, as it's necessary to assess a subject's environment as well. As you can imagine, we need quite a lot of information in order to draw any proper conclusions."

Ah, the environment. That was a big word these days, what with Silent Spring.

Time and Newsweek were all over it. All those pesticides. All them dead birds and female alligators when there should have been a few males...forty-nine percent or whatever.

"Sure, whatever you want. Ah—" He was about to tell her he wasn't working.

Why not just wait until she asks.

"Please, your lunch is getting cold."

He made to speak and she held up a hand.

He grinned.

"You can have a couple of fries if you want." His stomach grumbled loudly at that exact instance.

If she heard it, she took no notice.

Mark took a little bite, studying her frankly as she flipped to a fresh sheet. Her handwriting was neat, tidy, and vertical—what that said about her he wasn't quite sure, but it was certainly nice.

"I have to admit, I was kind of dying of hunger."

He could almost read it upside down, as she carefully put the date, the time and the title right up top.

"Your name?"

"Mark Jones."

"Age?"

"I'm thirty-four."

Her lips pursed unconsciously as she put that down.

"And what's your occupation, Mark?" She was thoroughly professional, which was an interesting touch in someone so young.

Her crystalline blue eyes came up from the page.

"Uh. Huh. Well, I play the trumpet. At least, I try." He tried a disarming grin around the looming hamburger bun. "I had to hock my saxophone a few years ago and never got it back."

There was a strange moment when she thought he was joking. It was nothing he hadn't seen before, so he plunged on as she bit her lip and wrote that down too. The nice thing about the horn case was that he had squeezed in a couple of cheap mouth organs, a pretty good harmonica and a cheap flute, his first instrument in high school. He'd supported himself, at least, for quite a few years with his music.

He stopped for a bite to let her decide if he was joking, lying, or whether she had properly understood him.

It turned out she liked jazz, and she had understood him. He watched her write that down, upside down.

She'd even heard of the Vic Muscadello Quartet, but none of the other bands he'd been with. She looked a bit impressed when he told her he could also play one or two other instruments. Her smile was really something when he told her that none of the groups he was in had ever really gone anywhere.

"You know, when you advertise a sextuplet, you'd better deliver..."

She laughed out loud and he began to feel better about things.

The fact was that times had changed, and rock and roll was here to stay.

***

"Okay, so I know this is nuts." Standing on a platform of metal rods or bars, forty feet above the pavement was rather scary. "I really mean that."

She was interested in his home life. Having given an inch, she was taking a mile and he wondered a little about that.

He wasn't afraid of heights, exactly—not until now, that was, but he extended a hand into the hallway and she clambered out. This was so much worse, the two of them hanging in space. Her weight was substantial enough, even at a hundred and ten pounds or so that the platform swayed under their feet. She would never be able to do this in high heels—that was for sure.

It would not do to fall off from there, and he carefully led her across the narrow walkway. This was somehow worse as the steps down were placed close to the wall and the walkways had to go around them.

"Okay, hang on and be careful."

Mark picked his way down the stairs, even more rickety than the platform, down to his own level.

There was a moment of panic when the window wouldn't move at first try, and then it went up with a clunk. The surge of relief was immediate.

"You're such a silly." She had her hand on the back of his hip, and he turned.

"Okay, hold this up for me." Dropping to his knees, he scrabbled in across the sloped concrete window ledge, coming up on his knees on the dusty wooden floor.

Taking the window now, he jammed it further up and held onto her upper arm with the other hand as she clambered in, perhaps a little more gracefully than him. Her scent washed past and over and into him, and he marveled at his freedom as much as his luck. Her body was warm, firm and gently rounded under the sweater.

Thank you, universe.

Thank you.

***

"I told you."

"Yeah, you weren't kidding."

Spreading his parka on the floor, roughly where a couch would go, she sat on one end cross-legged. He went into the bedroom where his suitcase stood just inside the door. The sides weren't very smooth but it might be okay for her to write on. It would keep it up off the floor.

"Aw."

When he came out after putting his leftover fries in the refrigerator, (carried home in his pocket), she was petting a scrawny cat. White, black and tawny in places, it was barely more than a kitten and showing a lot of nerve.

"What's his name?"

"Oh, God, I don't know. That's not my cat."

"It just came in the window."

Mark grinned.

"Yeah, this is his turf and he just wants to know what's going on."

The thing had to be from somewhere in the building. There was no way down to the ground, except via the stairs and the lobby.

She was still petting it, and it was all right. It might even be helpful. He sat down on the hooded end of his coat, lumpy at best, but better than sitting on bare floorboards. Amy was young, cute as a button and so far she just seemed very friendly. She seemed very open and oddly fearless. It was attractive, certainly for a man ruled by fear for so long, and he was curious if everybody on the outside was like that or maybe it was just her.

The cat slid off her lap and put its paws on his leg.

He couldn't help himself, reaching for the thing and picking it up. Mark brought the thing up to his face, and it touched him on the nose with a paw. He hadn't touched a cat in years...

"Huh. Little bugger. Where did you come from, eh?" Most likely somewhere in the building.

It had a place to go, and would wander off when it had a mind to. He gave the thing a kiss on the top of the head, and it purred like crazy at all the attention.

Amy was ready to go with the pen and the paper.

"Okay. You just moved in and you don't have any furniture? Where's your stuff?" She looked around, as when Mark said his place was totally barren, she hadn't quite believed him.

She had been wondering what that meant, exactly.

Mark considered. Sooner or later she was going to ask. Also, the thought that this could ever lead anywhere was ludicrous in the extreme.

He might as well be honest with her.

Mark held the cat across his chest, then got it to simmer down in his lap, purring and kneading at his leg with tiny, sharp little claws, its eyes half closed and totally relaxed.

"Yeah. Well. It's kind of a long story..."

***

He was walking down the street, minding his own business when they picked him up. The tires squawked under braking, they slewed to a halt. They jumped out and grabbed him.

He was from New York, and they didn't much like big-city boys around there. The cops hated him right from the start. He had no idea of what their problem was.

Mark sure as hell wasn't doing anything wrong. He had a gig downtown and had gotten off the train, expecting to meet the rest of the boys at the hotel. It was only a few blocks or he might have taken a cab. Sometimes they traveled together, but this was a new gig for him. He would be playing with them for the first time, trying out to see if they liked his style. They needed a horn-man and that was all he really knew.

The Dave Dorset Five, but if they liked him, it would be the Six.

They had the same agent he did, and that was all it took sometimes. Someone got sick, or quit, or in that particular case, bedded the wrong woman. The phone rang and then you were working again.

When the cops started asking a lot of questions, he got a bit uptight. He hadn't done anything wrong, although they found his draft deferral suspicious in the extreme. He was a bit old for the army, and then there was the medical history. They were asking all the wrong questions. They refused to believe a single word he said, in which case, why ask the questions in the first place?

Telling them that might have been a mistake.

When they started asking questions about some missing girl, that was when he lost it and punched out a police sergeant.

Mark was such a pussycat, at least in their assessment. What with the horn and the flashy suit and the crazy black and white saddle-shoes, they didn't even have him in cuffs. They were going to railroad him straight into jail, clear the case on his back, and he had no idea of who they meant or what they were talking about. It was just him, slouched on a hard maple chair and these three big-bellied, good old boys thinking he would cave without much trouble. He was out of the chair and on the sergeant, catching them flat-footed.

"And so what happened then?"

"I was lucky." His face was hard and tight, just as always when he tried to talk about it. "My doctor testified that I was paranoid and delusional, dangerous and out of control when I wasn't taking my meds. Anyways, we copped a plea, and there wasn't much, ah, doubt that I did it, right? And then, they sent me off to the state hospital until such time as it was deemed fit for me to return to life. Which, coincidentally, more or less exactly corresponds to the sentence—I didn't even get time off for good behaviour."

Mark had done something he wouldn't have thought himself capable of.

"Did what?"

"I busted his nose." He grinned in spite of his better nature.

And yet it probably had been better—better than being cooped up with hardened criminals, rapists, killers and homosexuals. His mind needed a wrench to stop it from drifting too far along that road. Bellevue was for crazy people, and anyone else lucky enough to get in there.

Bellevue was for the dangerous, the desperate, and the delusional.

"What about the girl?"

"Huh?" Maybe he hadn't been paying attention.

"The one that disappeared?"

He shrugged.

"Oh, God. How the hell would I know? She might have turned up, for all I know. In which case why were they even talking to me? Looking back, I mean. They were happy enough to keep it all about assault on a peace officer." It was all water under the bridge at this point. "It's not like I get the papers from Schenectady. Bellevue's in Rochester, basically."

"So. Uh. Getting back to the point, you're thirty-four and you've never been married. Do you think you ever will, ah, meet the person of your dreams and you know, sort of settle down?"

The cat got up and walked over to the window but didn't go out. It turned and looked at them, sat and began fastidiously licking itself. Thoroughly.

"Oh, God. I don't know." He heaved a deep sigh. "Once I realized there was something different about me, and that I wasn't ever going to have any kind of a normal life..."

Licking his lips, eyes on the window as if there was anything other than the top stories of other anonymous buildings out there, he hesitated before going on. He turned and looked at her soberly.

"I mean, what do I have to offer? For any sort of respectable woman?" His rolled his eyes around, indicating the empty room. "I mean, shit. It wasn't always this bad—I've had jobs and stuff, and at one time my career seemed to be going somewhere."

"And?"

"There's more? Yeah, I guess there is. Well. Hmn. I guess I would say that I didn't want to inflict that—inflict myself, on anyone that I really cared about—"

That's when the tears began to flow.

"Aw."

Chapter Four

How in the hell they went from there to sex was a mystery, and yet there they were, naked on top of a thin layer of clothes, cuddling under the parka when someone knocked at the door. Mark had cried, and she had held him...and somehow that was enough.

"Oh!" That must be Olivetti.

Mark clambered to his feet. He just had time for pants and a shirt. Amy was mostly there so he went over and opened the door.

Duke brushed past him with a couple of tall brown bottles of something, held by the neck in one hand.

"Hey, man, I got some good ganja...oh, hey." Stopping dead in his tracks, eyebrows rising, he took in the empty room with the girl sitting on a coat in the middle of it. "Sativa. Real Hawaiian."

The cat got up smartly and went over to rub itself on Duke's ankle.

"Wow." With a nod at the lady, he gave Mark an appraising look. "Holy. Shit. You don't waste much time, do you?"

Plopping his arse down on the right-side window ledge, Duke put the two bottles down and cracked the caps. He held one up for Mark, and took a long gulp of his own.

"Ah, Duke—" Mark took the bottle.

"Maybe you and the lady could share, 'cause I only brought the two."

Mark hadn't had a drink of any sort in over four years.

He took a quick sip before anybody changed their mind.

We'll think about this later.

We can lay awake all night long and worry all about it.

"Ah, Duke, this is Amy. Amy, this is Duke."

He closed the door, standing there for a moment, rather enjoying the fact that he was acquiring friends and acquaintances at an alarming rate. That was the one thing he would never have predicted.

Remembering the McDonald's cup in the kitchen, Mark went in and quickly rinsed it out.

He took a little over half the bottle. Amy could drink the rest out of the cup, with drops of lukewarm water still on it.

He had a couple of paper towels, and a little clean water wouldn't hurt. He laid that out to dry and went back to the living room.

The damned cat, having followed him in, followed him right back out.

"I didn't know you had a cat."

There were a million things Duke didn't know about him.

"Oh, you mean it's not yours?"

Duke snorted, raising his bottle.

"Ah."

Mark gave Amy the glass of foamy beer, already warming up in their hands.

"Thank you." She took a tentative sip of Old Milwaukee.

Mark was in the midst of a good long pull.

"So. Has he told you about the dead hooker in the bathroom yet?" Boy, that Duke was such an innocent, going by the eyes and the expression.

Stinging foam poured out of Mark's nostrils as Amy's hand flew up to her mouth. Her laugh was infectious, but there was this questioning look on her face. Staring, she sought out some confirmation or explanation of what would normally be an unusual remark.

Something about his expression must have convinced her.

Still laughing, she took a quick sip and put the glass down as Duke pulled the makings out of his shirt pocket.

"Now there's story I want to hear."

Mark's face flamed beet red. Sooner or later, it would have to come up anyways—surely she must read the papers. It was only a matter of time before she put two and two together.

Could the world have forgotten him so quickly?

***

"Oh, my God."

Mark had settled down beside her again, the beer working well on a stomach that was not all that full to begin with.

Duke licked the glue strip and gave the joint an extra lick to slow down the burn.

His battered chrome Zippo snapped and flared and the distinctive aroma of the fuel permeated the room. Outside, clouds came over outside and took away the sun.

The shit smelled like burning leaves in autumn.

She put her hand on Mark's knee.

"Oh, you poor guy. You're just not having any luck at all."

"Oh, I don't know about that." They shared a quick smile.

Slowly, her hand retracted and she went for her own beer as Duke leaned forwards and Mark was confronted with decision-time.

"Uh—jeez." He took it anyways, taking a quick hit, noting an acrid, almost salty flavour.

"That's the best herb you're ever going to smoke, man."

"Yeah, like I'm ever going to know the difference." It came out just right and they both laughed.

"Has he mentioned that he's been locked up since 1966?"

Amy gasped, and Mark just shook his head, giving Duke a sickly grin.

"Honestly, it's really not as bad as all that—"

She wasn't so sure, apparently, as Duke snickered quietly in that coyote fashion of his.

Mark hastily passed it off to Amy, holding the smoke in the way Duke had. He monitored his body for any sudden sensations. This was one of the dangers of the outside world—and he had allowed himself to be sucked in all too easily. He let out the smoke, wondering when something would begin to happen. He'd been playing a role, acting, and holding it all in for far too long.

Life was like smoke. Sooner or later it would all have to come out.

There was a long silence as Amy puffed at it, short little inhalations. She had clearly done this before.

Duke leaned in and took it back. Those humorous black eyes centred up on Mark.

"Well?"

"Hmn."

Duke considered this response as Amy rubbed the cat's belly.

"You know what? You got to get some music in here, man."

"Shit! I got to get some keys for the place. Olivetti owes me the rest of my cheque. It would be nice to get some groceries in here. I could really use, uh, a bed. I don't even have a cup, a plate, or a knife and fork." Mark explained to Amy that the welfare people had given him half a cheque for April and all of May in advance.

He was paying seventy-five bucks a month, and Olivetti owed him quite a bit of money.

"Aw. What a dink, man." Duke scowled. "The fucking Establishment, eh."

Duke nodded thoughtfully.

"Yeah, we need to do something about that. Anyways, I know where you can get a bed cheap. They'll give credit to anybody these days."

"Oh, man, I don't know about that..." Shit, here came the damned joint again.

"No, seriously. They love guys like you—my buddy works there. We'll set you right up. What do you say?"

***

Amy had suddenly remembered an appointment. Their interview wasn't even half over and Mark knew it.

Suddenly shy with someone he'd just been very intimate with, they clung to each other in the doorway. Duke sat there on the window-ledge, nursing the last half-inch of his beer.

She was having trouble meeting his eyes.

"Give me your phone number."

She hesitated for some reason he didn't understand. Surely this wasn't over—surely she wasn't that easy, just a quick fling and she was gone.

Her mind was made up. It struck him that she was extremely bright. It was one thing to think about it, but this one was quick.

She tore a corner off of her writing pad and scribbled it for him. One more kiss and she was gone. He watched until she turned the corner to go down. So, that was it then.

Shit. What the hell just happened there?

Dead hookers in bathtubs, missing welfare cheques, apartments with no furniture...sleeping on some anonymous stranger's hand-me-down coat, as cats came in open windows and strange dope-dealers came strolling in and plopped their strange asses down on strange window-ledges.

I guess I can see your point, lady...

Still.

What a crying fucking shame.

"So, man. Want to go look at them beds?"

Mark sighed.

"Yeah, what the hell. Two miracles in one day, I don't know. It just seems like a lot to ask for." The other thing was the smell, which he'd sort of forgotten.

Pot, apparently, smelled like someone was burning wet autumn leaves and it tended to linger. It was going to take forever to clear out, and there was some paranoia regarding landlords showing up when least expected.

Right about now would be nice. It would also be disaster. He was already conflicted enough. The last thing he'd ever considered was having some really nice girlfriend. What was he supposed to do, tie her up and hypnotize the girl?

It was all academic at this point.

Lunch hadn't gone very far and he was hungry again. He didn't have any money, and he had no idea of when Olivetti would get back to him. So far, the man hadn't shown up at the door. Mark had been shitting razorblades for weeks, wondering if they were really going to let him out. He could do with a lot less stress in his life. He could use about a week's worth of sleep and then some sort of substantial win in the numbers game.

"Look. Olivetti's office is a few blocks over. If we can maybe stop by there, ah...sure, why not."

Mark must have been in a fairly good mood, drained as he was. He'd never smoked pot before, and there was some fear about going out in public.

"Sure, why the hell not? You got nothing to lose, my man."

"Duke, if you don't mind me asking, do you work somewhere? What do you do for a living?"

"Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Wheeling and dealing—you know."

Mark didn't know, and that was the problem. One of many.

"I have my ways."

So few people had ever shown him any real kindness. There was always more to it than that.

There were always strings attached.

The thoughts that Duke must want something were a bit troubling, and then there was Amy.

He'd read all about the sexual revolution of course, and then there was the whole hippie thing.

He'd seen a few of them on the street. It was kind of impressive to see people going around barefoot in the Big Apple. Mark could never do that. There were many uncertainties in life, this was not one of them. One look at the bottoms of their feet as they stood around on street corners, especially the girls, was enough to convince. They were not only unshaven, unkempt, dirty and smelly, but possibly mentally unbalanced.

Coming from someone like him, that might be a bit harsh.

Clearly the world had changed and he wasn't too sure how he felt about that. He was a stranger in an even stranger land these days.

Four years was a long time to spend on the inside. Time stood still in there, and yet it rolled on for the outside world. It had turned him into a fish in a barrel—he would be all too easily shot, when you thought about it.

Chapter Five

Being with Duke was frankly terrifying for someone out on his best behaviour. Four years in the institution, being declared no longer a danger was one thing. But his treatment there was ordered by a court—and as a responsible adult, theoretically cured, (or at least stable and competent), he was now technically responsible for his own actions. To screw up was to go back inside for three more years. It would be a jail instead of a cushy old insane asylum, which, while it had its drawbacks, was far preferable. He had to stay out of trouble, which wasn't all that much of a stretch. All he'd ever cared about was his music and where his next gig might come from. He'd never seriously worried about where his next meal was coming from. In that sense he'd had it pretty good. There had been one or two persons of interest of the female variety along the way...always temporary of course.

Competent.

What kind of a fucking word was that?

No one is more incompetent than me, not in this town and not at this exact moment in time. He'd be even worse off almost anywhere else in the world, though. At one time, he'd understood New York, in the same way he'd once understood the Corn Belt.

You'd have to be dead, to be much more incompetent than Mark Jones...a proven madman with violence on his rap sheet. All he wanted to know, was where was his next meal coming from and that would be sufficient unto the day.

There had to be a soup kitchen around there somewhere.

They would also be keeping some kind of regular, if restricted hours, and if you missed the bell, you were shit out of luck.

It had been a long time since Mark walked down a sidewalk with a buddy. A friend. What a puzzling thought that was.

Is Duke really my friend?

How in the hell did that happen?

Is this guy as desperate as I am?

Am I his next victim?

There was really only one way to find out.

So be it.

Time reveals all truths.

Someday he would write that song—again.

Three blocks away, Water-Beds Galore was a glitzy little storefront, with sharply-dressed salesmen ushering prospective customers out into a much larger storeroom behind. Like the showroom, there was bright overhead lighting way up high. The formerly grubby brick walls had been studiously sandblasted clean, showing a nice, ruddy salmon colour with white mortar at the joints.

There were stacks and stacks of unassembled beds in boxes, with a demonstrator set up in front of each side-aisle for the more popular products.

"This one's our top special this week." The bed in question was in a pale, stained knotty pine.

The bed was off the floor, up on a plywood pedestal.

"It's actually going for one-thirty-nine, but since you're a friend of Duke's I would let you have that one for ninety-nine-ninety-nine, and that includes everything. Tell you what, that comes with the comforter."

There would be sales tax on that. He'd be making payments, and there would be some kind of interest rate. They'd get their forty bucks back and then some, in Mark's opinion. The trouble was that he needed a bed.

"What about the lamp?"

Ed, their salesman, looked owlishly at Duke through pebble-thick granny glasses, love beads and amulets clanking around his neck substituting for a tie. It wasn't just the Jesus beard, it was the Jesus boots as well.

White socks in brown sandals.

Mark's personal style was somewhere else. These people were all aliens or something.

"Sure, why not, man."

"Groovy, baby."

Mark could have kicked Duke, but the sales guy nodded.

It's not like he cared either way. Waterbeds were hot and he could sell them all day long.

If these guys didn't buy one, the next person probably would.

It came with a heater, a headboard with some integral shelving, and a heavy cardboard liner to protect the actual water-bag as Mark perceived it.

"Take it."

"What?"

"Take it."

Mark could hem or haw, he could say yes or no or maybe, but whatever. He must make up his mind.

"Sure. Yeah, I'll take it."

"What about delivery?"

Ed nodded.

"Yeah. Ah...yeah, okay, sure."

They went back up to the front of the store to fill out the paperwork. Other patrons, unsure of themselves or looking for something a little more special, filed up and down the bare, polished concrete aisles.

"Mark's going to need a sheet, at least, and what about some kind of comforter?"

The salesman brightened up.

"Oh, yeah, dude. We got all that. I'll tell you what—"

***

"Okay. Wait here—and give a whistle if you see a cop."

"Huh?"

Duke was already jogging down the alley, the dark shadows and glaring bright zebra-stripes of light making him flicker in and out of existence as if perception were indeed reality. He had a purposeful air about him.

"Shit."

Mark was burdened down by a brown paper bag full of quart bottles. Stroh's this time, the carefully-folded receipt or contract or whatever in his pocket. He wondered what it was this time.

The bag had gotten wet and it wouldn't last much longer. Duke seemed to know his way around and as a bonus, just about everyone who was anyone (or nobody) within a ten-block radius.

They'd taken a couple of alleys and a zigzag course to get this far.

Wheeling and dealing. He was beginning to get a better idea of what that meant. Mark figured on playing dumb, plus the fact that he didn't have anything on him. That might just keep him out of serious trouble—Time Magazine had been all over the drug scene for quite a while now. When one considered how much reading he'd done, he was as well-informed as anyone. That wasn't much comfort right now. It was no substitute for experience. He wasn't so much locked-up as locked-in. They were just moseying along, taking their sweet time about it. Mark had always marveled to turn one corner and see another fifty blocks of high-rises, apartment blocks, and cars, cars, cars. The day was fairly warm and he was sweating again. St. Louis was big, but New York was vast. It was like you could never run out of city. Once it got into your blood, it was over. It was a metaphor for a lot of things.

So far, they'd cut through from one block to another via a long, narrow pool hall with doors on each end, picking up a pack of smokes for thirty-five cents from a vending machine in the lobby.

Duke knew half the guys in there. He was making a few dope sales on the way through, surely with the knowledge if not the connivance of a Greek proprietor. Mark knew that from the thick, bristling black mustache, sticking straight out for a good inch at first glance.

There was just something Greek about the guy. He wasn't stupid, he couldn't be, and yet he was looking every which way but here.

It was an interesting observation.

Mark was feeling pretty good. There was nowhere to run anyways, and freedom was a hell of a lot more fun than captivity.

Or maybe he could run.

At one time, he must have been capable of it.

***

Duke came back with a pillowcase over his shoulder. It was bulging with square shapes, hard corners and heavy objects.

"Here. Take this." He slung it across but Mark still had the paper sack.

He set that down for the moment.

"Oh." It was heavy too.

Duke took the beers and Mark spurted up into a walk again. They turned the last corner and stopped dead again as Duke ran into yet another person he knew.

"Hey."

"Hey."

The girl, a willowy blonde with a spacy look to the eyes, gave Mark a curious look.

"Hello."

"Hello."

She wasn't bad looking with the thick, wavy blonde hair, halfway to her ass and the little granny glasses.

If nothing else, she had some shoes on her feet and the jeans clung very nicely.

"I'll meet you up there." Duke, half a head taller, gave him a little shove with his elbow.

"Ah—I still don't have a key, Duke."

"Yeah, well, it's not that heavy."

In other words, beat it.

All Mark could do was to shrug, ignore anyone who took an interest, and half a block later, mount the stairs as if he owned the place. There were still two guys sitting on the steps. The same two guys, although this time they sort of acknowledged his existence, with a focused look, rather than beside or beyond or above, perhaps even half a nod from the leaner one.

They probably lived somewhere in the building but he wasn't in the mood to introduce himself just yet. He was already starting to recognize people and that was good. You needed to know who was who and who was what. You needed to understand your operating environment. At some level they would need to know him as well. He was a part of their environment, whether ally, resource, or hazard they wouldn't quite know yet.

Whatever was in the bag had some damned sharp corners. Mark was dreadfully out of shape after years in a hospital. It was easily forty pounds.

Once in the building, he went and put the bag by his door. There was no note on the door from Olivetti or anything like that. There didn't seem to be anyone around but that could change quickly. Nipping up the stairs, going out and around on the fire escape again, he crawled through the window and unlatched the door. Barely a minute had passed and no one had stolen the bag.

Mark sighed, pulling the sack inside. Duke would have been mad, of course.

But Mark figured he had some rights too.

He took a look, and then pulled it all out.

There was a pretty nice car stereo, wires hanging out the back, and a plug for the antenna as well.

There was an amplifier and a pair of small, very heavy and very expensive car speakers. Sort of triangular in shape, they were meant for the rear window deck. They would be lethal to passengers in a collision. No one ever cared about that. There were short bits of wire trailing from them as well. The ends weren't bared, they were snipped clean off.

"Ah, shit, Duke."

More small objects in the bottom revealed themselves. There was a set of needle-nose pliers with integral side-cutter, a couple of different screwdrivers, the knobs for the amp and stereo, and what had once been a coat hanger. Duke had cut it, putting shepherd's-crook hooks on the ends. This was nice, soft but relatively stiff wire, folded up in four short sections. All of this would easily fit into a pocket, including the pillowcase.

He didn't quite know whether to laugh or to cry. There were footsteps in the corridor, and Mark hastily grabbed the more incriminating items and stowed them in the bedroom. Closing the door, he was just in time to see Duke coming in without bothering to knock.

"Ah." Mark nodded at the closed bedroom door. "Your stuff's in there."

"Good. That one's a special order and hopefully the dude will be around to pick that up tonight."

"Ah—"

"Beer?"

"Sure."

Mark took the bag and stuck the other bottles in the fridge. When he came out, Duke was sitting on the window-ledge again.

"So, uh...you're going to take that with you when you go, right?"

Duke nodded, taking a swig.

"Duke." Mark's stomach was rumbling again, and in one of the temporary lulls in traffic that sometimes occurred after lunch but before closing time in this town.

He was surprised Duke couldn't hear it. Or at least guessed it.

Couldn't take a hint, maybe.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for everything, Duke. But, as you can see, I still don't have a few things."

Supposedly he would have a bed by four-thirty or five, but Mark had some doubts about that. It was getting too close to that time now. Why wouldn't they do a credit check? It just seemed a bit implausible.

"Anyways, thanks for helping with the waterbed."

He was still having a bit of trouble getting his head wrapped around that one—as a musician, on tour, out on the road with bands, groups, and Negroes among other things, he'd never even considered credit. They were going to ask what you did for a living, and laugh you out of the building shortly thereafter.

People knew you were moving on and it was strictly cash on the barrelhead. Musicians hung with all sorts of marginalized people.

But this was different.

It's that government cheque, he thought, eyes going cloudy for a moment. That makes all the difference in the world. Theoretically, a government cheque couldn't bounce, although they could be stolen.

Duke grinned as if reading his thoughts. He pulled out one of the fat cannons he'd rolled earlier, gave it a quick lick and sparked it with the trusty lighter.

"So what are you trying to tell me, dude?" Something snapped, sparks flew and Duke moved a leg to dodge a smoldering seed as it fell. "Fucking seeds."

"I don't know. Shit. I have to find Olivetti. I'm going to need a key to my own house. I could really use the rest of that cheque. I need to eat once in a while—and now I kind of have to wait around for the delivery people. Because I got this funny feeling they're not going to want to crawl around on fire escapes."

There was probably more, but he let it go.

Duke looked him carefully in the eye as he reached for the joint.

"Okay, so what you need is a plan, my young amigo. It might go something like this. I lend you ten bucks, and you go get a couple of things. I sit here until you come back...just in case your bed shows up."

Duke made a habitual glance at the end wall, but of course there was no clock there.

"Do you have a phone, Duke?"

"No."

Mark bit his lip. They still hadn't had a crack at Olivetti's office.

Yeah. That's what he needed—a plan. Otherwise it was just too easy to blow whole days away, moping about and feeling sorry for yourself. When you weren't locked up in the hoosegow. His own worst enemy would be his own fear, his own inertia. Sometimes you just had to put yourself out there.

He took a hit on the demon weed in speculative fashion.

People were so down on it, what with dire warnings, documentary films, hysterical news reports, important magazine articles, and all of that.

People were full of shit, when you got right down to it.

Duke, on the other hand, was probably right.

Chapter Six

Ten dollars sounded like a lot of money, but it didn't go far when a person needed virtually everything. Potatoes were cheap, but they needed a pot to be cooked in, a plate to be eaten off of, a potato masher, butter or margarine, a fork. Salt and pepper were cheap, (up to a point), and yet they still needed shakers. His plan was simple enough, but hard to recall in its exact details when confronted by long aisles bustling with people. The shelves were groaning under the weight of a million products, some of which were familiar enough and some of which he'd never even heard of.

Pop-Tarts for example.

Somehow he'd missed that one completely. Without a toaster, he had no plans of trying them anytime soon...

Rather than buy everything new in the way of utensils, usually four or eight at a time, he decided to just pick up a couple of actual food items and then head back. There was a second-hand store right on his block, and if he was quick about it, he might just make it before closing time. People like that, half of them volunteers, weren't likely to stay open late.

When he got to the apartment, he kicked the door and called out but nobody came.

Shit.

The dead-bolt was snapped. Mark was locked out again.

This was going to get tiresome after a while, and yet he really ought to be grateful. His list of demands was already increasing. It was a kind of personal revelation, or maybe it was just about life.

Inside, you were afraid to hope, outside, afraid to despair. Inside, you wanted everything, outside, you were afraid to ask...also afraid to admit that you were afraid to want anything at all, what with self-fulfilling prophecies and everything.

One of the problems with jazz was the song-writing sometimes.

There was always going to be that little voice in your head.

Maybe even more than one. He really ought to be grateful. Those voices had saved him in so many ways.

Sighing, he put the bags down and went upstairs, all too conscious of the smells of someone behind door number three, someone who was doing a darned good job of cooking a chicken. Again, Mark went up the stairs, out the window, down and across the fire escape. He opened the door to get the groceries and Duke was right there, startling him.

"Shit!"

He'd been so intent on his own business. Crawling in that damned window took all of your attention. Otherwise you'd lose a bit of skin every time on the bottom sills until you were downright skinless.

"Hey. Mark. You know you shouldn't leave groceries in the hall like that. Someone's sure to steal them." Duke was laughing at him.

Again.

It was becoming a bad habit.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Mark grabbed the bags and took them into the kitchen.

He busied himself with putting things away, wishing he'd thought to pick up some stronger light-bulbs. Hell, even just more light-bulbs. Half the sockets in the place were empty.

"So. No bed yet."

"Don't worry. They'll show."

"Yeah. Look, ah, Duke."

"Hmn?"

The man snapped the cap on the second quart bottle of beer. His eyes were like two piss-holes in the snow at this point.

"First of all, is there still stuff in the bedroom?"

"Nope. I took that up just now."

"Ah. Okay. Look, I want to nip down to the Sally Ann and buy some shit cookware. I guess Olivetti's probably not going to show up today, but I got to eat, right?"

As a kid, he might have tried to cook a can of beans in a campfire. That was a long time ago, in a place far, far away. Missouri in fact. Mark didn't even have pot-holders yet, and the gas stove had its own inexorable logic. He wasn't going to get away with that for too long. Not without pot-holders. No without a spoon, and a can-opener, and a cloth for washing-up.

"Yeah. I don't mind hanging out. But people are always looking for me, and I got to pop my head out once in a while."

Mark slapped the big guy on the elbow, and without even having unzipped a coat that was becoming a bit big and bulky for the season, he turned and bolted for the door again. That coat, always damp and always ugly, was becoming something of a mill-stone.

Lunch was hours ago and his stomach was beginning to ask questions again.

***

Low grey clouds came over, the tops of the farther buildings disappearing into the mist. Traffic snarled and hissed on a thin black slick of moisture that must have fallen while he was in the store. His shoulders ached from carrying things, and he hadn't walked this far in one day in years. That would play out in sore ankles, or feet, or something. He'd never realized walking could cause pain in the neck and shoulders. Tomorrow morning might be tough. All the time, he was thinking, thinking. It was just something that had to be borne, and he had a long list of things he could and must do.

Too much to think about, all of it happening too fast.

By the time he got back, there were lights on in his apartment, deep in the shadows of New York's modern canyon-lands as he had often thought of it. He'd often wondered what it would become, if the lights ever went out for good. It could be bad enough at the best of times. They were already a species of cliff-dwellers. Imagine heating all of this with wood, lighting it all with torches.

It was an apocalyptic vision, but appealing nevertheless. Shit, some neighbourhoods were half-way there, littered with vacant lots, burned-out cars, ruled by gangs day and night. It got dark and the nicer ones hid in their holes behind closed curtains and blaring TVs.

There were people moving around up there. He could hear their voices as he went up the steps two at a time. There was no one sitting there for a change. They had nothing to do by day, and probably prowled by night, looking for whatever they could find. It was ever the curse of youth, to be unskilled and unwanted.

The apartment door was open. It was almost exciting. Duke grinned to see him. There were people in his bedroom.

"I told them they were supposed to assemble it."

Mark snorted, taking the bag into the kitchen. Leaving it there, he went for a look. Sure enough, a couple of guys, one black and one white, were assembling his new bed. Their coveralls said Water-Beds Galore on the back, like a bloody football team. They had the four sides screwed together, up on its pedestal already. The smell of fresh vinyl flooded the air as the black guy opened up a package and began unfolding and laying out the mattress. The white guy went looking for the taps, fifty or so feet of plastic hose coiled in his hand.

The black guy screwed the loose end onto the filler-cap on the mattress as Mark watched. He tugged and pulled and laid it out as best he could.

"Hey, sir."

"Call me Mark."

"Okay, sir, this is going to take while to fill, and, ah, quite a while to heat up. The manual is right here—I'll leave it on the shelf here." Everything came in its own little plastic bag. "We'll soon drain the hot-water tank, even in a building like this."

Where there would normally be a headboard, there were three tiers of shelves, which was cool.

"Okay."

"What I'm sayin', is that we is done. Pretty much. Sir."

There were packages still unopened, and the white guy came in from the other room.

Mark heard running water. There were trickles spilling out in all directions inside, as the vinyl bag, still stiff and creased from storage, struggled against it.

"Okay, sir, here's the thermostat." They only had two electrical outlets to choose from and they had done their best with the power supply.

Mark had a look.

The white guy spoke.

"If you need to move that, now's the time to speak up."

Mark shook his head. The room was just too small.

"I think that will have to do."

"Sign here."

Duke caught his eye from the front room.

"It's better than doing the nasty-bump on the floor, buddy."

The service guys laughed and gave Duke and Mark admiring looks. Mark signed zee papers, they grabbed their few scattered tools. Then they were gone, even taking the garbage, cardboard and reinforced strapping tape, bits of paper and plastic along with them.

"Thanks, guys." Mark closed the door behind them.

"There's another beer in there."

Mark laughed when Duke pulled another gagger out and gave it his trademark lick.

Mark was having a pretty good day so far. For Duke, every day had been a good one so far, and hopefully that would continue on indefinitely.

***

Mark was just coming out with a very cold and very large lager beer when there was a knock at the door.

Duke just raised his eyebrows and it was Mark's place anyway.

Answering it, a lady stuck her head in the door, spying Duke.

"Oh. There you are."

Mark stepped back and she came in bearing a plate covered with a napkin. She was wearing oven mitts. Mark could only dream of cooking things in ovens.

"Oh. Thank you. Ah. Maude, meet Mark. Mark, this is Maude."

"Hi, Mark."

"Uh, pleased to meet you."

All her attention was on Duke. For whatever reason, not too interested apparently, Duke practically ignored her. Mark politely took the plate, which smelled heavenly, and it was still warm too.

"I'll just put that in the kitchen."

They ignored him. She had something to talk about, but Duke wasn't cooperating. She seemed intent on Duke, but also aware of Mark, an unknown quantity.

"So. Will I see you later?"

"Sure. Hey, Mark, we gonna smoke this or what?"

Apparently the lady wasn't a smoker herself.

"Ah, yeah."

Shit.

And why not? Lifting the napkin, he took a quick peek. The lady had made Duke—or somebody, a blueberry pie.

Not that that put any real perspective on Amy, but clearly there was much he didn't know about women these days.

Smoking the dope was the only way to get rid of them, and besides, the bed was only about two inches deep so far. The thermostat was turned up about as far as seemed safe.

More than anything, he couldn't walk away from it.

And he still didn't have a key.

He wouldn't starve to death in a day or two. In a world of counterculture, perhaps even counter-economics, it was a bit like conducting an anti-study.

Or something like that.

Four years was a lot of time to read all the wrong books and get all sorts of weird ideas in your head. How much relation it had to the outside world remained to be seen.

Fuck, he'd read the encyclopedia from front to back.

She was standing there, love in her eyes, just inside the door.

For crying out loud, man.

Give me a fucking break.

"Okay, we'll see you later."

Maude was gone, down the hall and far away.

"So, what's with her?"

Duke shrugged expressively. He gave Mark an odd look.

"Beats me, man."

Chapter Seven

If you couldn't sleep there was no place to go. Without money there was no point in going anywhere anyways.

Thumps, thuds, bangs and booms resonated all through the place. It went on all night long. By his reckoning, it really didn't get started until eleven o'clock. There was a peak around one-thirty or two a.m., and then it slowly petered off until shortly after dawn, when things finally got quiet.

This was right about when the morning rush outside was just reaching a crescendo.

Since he couldn't sleep, he had plenty of time to analyze. His life wasn't going anywhere at this rate. That was one voice.

Give it half a chance, some other little voice said plaintively...

One more night on the floor. The bed was mostly full by bedtime, and Mark had shut the taps off. The water in the hose was dead cold, and he wondered about that hot water tank. If people liked to shower before bed, he wasn't going to be too popular. Tired as he was, he couldn't stay up any later. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, so he went to bed, or the floor rather. You couldn't sleep on a cold waterbed. It would suck the heat, and the life, right out of you. Or so they said. Almost anything had to be better than using your shoes and rolled-up jeans for a pillow.

The bed still seemed awful cold. If only sleep would come.

After life in the state-run hospital, with its freezing temperatures in winter, huddling on the parka and whatever other clothes he could spare was almost a luxury. Freedom wasn't ever free, it came at a price. It was more than a cliché.

He'd never really known that before, but he sure knew it now.

Whatever it takes, I suppose—

We'll do it.

With his suitcase in the front closet—he didn't even have a coat-hanger, he'd brought his horn out into the living room as a kind of furniture. The oddly-shaped case was a kind of dark sculpture. He could lay on his left side and look at it, sitting there in a patch of cold moonlight.

The nights were still freezing. The windows were closed and hot water gurgled and ticked in the radiators. One minute he was cold, and the next minute hot. It was just one of them things.

That horn meant a lot to him.

The music meant everything to him.

He couldn't tear his thoughts away from Amy. Her body, lithe and small, pale and perfect in its proportions, with her surprisingly hard nipples and that smelly bush, was much like any other woman. He'd known a few, not many. She'd allowed herself to be kissed, and he had surprised himself by reading the signals correctly. It had been a long time. She'd stood up and peeled off the jeans and blouse, staring into his eyes as he marveled—simply marveled as she proceeded to pull off his socks and his trousers.

It was the farthest thing from his mind and yet it had happened.

At some point his eyes opened and that was it. There was nothing else for it, the floor was hard and unyielding. The building was very quiet and it was light outside. It was time to get up and make a stab at another day. His left hip was wearing a hole in itself and his neck wasn't too good without a pillow. His erection would go away, hopefully, for he had to piss something fierce.

Mark got up, stretched, went and looked out the front window. Without television or radio, he had no idea of what the weather was supposed to be. It was an odd thought, one for this century and no other. He actually smiled to see traffic, pedestrians, the good old city bus, puffing black smoke as it accelerated away from the stop across the street. Duke was right, he had to get some noise in there. Otherwise, he would always be at the mercy of others. When it came to making a racket, as the third person that morning clomped down the stairs from above, they weren't all that considerate. Working people, not unnaturally, hated those who didn't work or have a job. They didn't much care whether it was by choice, the necessity of sickness or disease, or even just old age and retirement. They also hated the rich, but not nearly so much. The rich were at least successful, possibly even industrious in most cases. They were at least inventive. The rich at least had money, which excused much in people's minds. The other thing was that people just didn't care.

As for crazy people, they were barely tolerated, being seen as a nuisance and nothing else. Amy, at least, had looked a little deeper.

Turning around, he found the cat sitting in the bedroom doorway, looking sleepy-eyed. It lifted a paw, and started licking its armpit or whatever cats called it when you were all covered in fur.

Putting hot water from the bathroom sink into his cheap aluminum Army-surplus mess tin, he set that on to boil. He had two coffee mugs, two plates and a bowl. It was a start. He could live without saucers. That's what he told himself. Two level spoons of sugar and a slightly-heaping spoon of instant coffee went into one.

Hey, everybody, look at me: I've got a spoon, all my very own.

He went in and had a look at the bed. They were taking the water from the kitchen, because there was a screw-on fitting on the faucet, unlike the taps in the bathroom sink.

As long as he didn't trip over the hose, he'd be all right. It was early yet, how early he had no idea. Laying on the floor the night before, he'd been aware of a thousand noises. It was deathly quiet now. Sooner or later, he'd have to buy an alarm clock. A watch would be nice, but also a luxury. That one could wait.

He sat quietly on the toilet, thinking.

He had one good suit, hanging in the bedroom closet. That was something, anyways.

Someone, even at this early hour, went down the stairs, coming down from the fifth floor up under the eaves. He strained his ears and caught a few other noises. Folks were up, all right.

Who were all these people? There had to be forty people in the building, and there were times when you really knew it.

At this exact moment in time, it wasn't so bad.

They were just people.

Back in the kitchen, he turned on the water, nicely warm, to keep filling the bed. Mark might want to have a shower before the place really got going. There was only going to be so much hot water. Let the party animals and the late sleepers and the real pigs suffer.

Not me.

No more.

Never again...

Not if I can help it.

"Okay, little buddy." If the cat kept coming around, he'd have to find a better name for it. "Son of a bitch."

He put a little milk in a saucer and set that on the floor. The cat was right on it. He could hear it purring ten feet away. It didn't spare him a second look, secure in its conquest of the human heart.

It was just Mark's luck. He'd been adopted or maybe he was just being tolerated. Cats being what they were.

Taking his coffee, wearing nothing but his jeans, Mark went and put it out of the way near the farthest corner. That would be the southwest, he thought. On a hunch, he went and unlatched the deadbolt and took the chain off the door. His feet were a little cold but the socks weren't too good either. They weren't going to last too long at this rate. He had exactly two more pairs of socks and two more pairs of underwear, courtesy of the Salvation Army.

Sitting cross-legged in the centre of the floor, facing the windows, the room was pleasantly warm. Although, there was a draft coming from somewhere, probably under the door and in around the window frames. Every frame in the building, probably.

Earth...wind, fire. Air, water and metal.

Clouds and sun, meat and potatoes, a man and a woman.

Black and white.

Being and not-being.

Gravity and time, and space.

Flying above the world.

Being in two places at once, nothingness.

Shape, and dimension, and duration, time above all else.

Centre.

Be gone with you.

For surely all is vanity, my young friend.

His arms floated up, and his hands were palm out to accept all the positive energy in the universe.

His eyes closed, he could smell the coffee from way over there. Footsteps came this way and he tried to visualize the layout, all five floors plus the basement.

That would be Duke, I presume...

Another bus pulled away from the stop, this time on his side of the street, going off to the right and there were children playing fifty or maybe even a hundred yards away. There were a lot of starlings about. He knew them by their many curious calls, whistles and other utterings. They flew like the very blazes, dropping vertically from the forest of antennas, straight down onto the rooftops where they would forage among the weeds, the insects and the vermin.

There was a knock at the door. The cat was there in the kitchen doorway, watching him with some interest.

Expecting Duke, hoping against hope that it might be Olivetti, he took a quick glance out the peep-hole.

The face was vaguely familiar. He opened the door.

"Yes?"

"Do you have a laundry basket?"

"Ah, no."

"Shit. I was going to pull your laundry out of the dryer and bring it up to you."

"What?"

"I said, I was just going to bring your laundry up to you."

The laundry room was in the basement. The guy obviously wanted to use the machine.

"Sorry, man. I'm not doing any laundry."

And who in the hell are you?

"What? Then whose laundry is that?"

Mark snorted.

"How in the hell would I know."

The guy stood there regarding him with suspicion. Tall and thin, he had a bald pate and a pencil-thin mustache along his upper lip. Errol Flynn he was not, in the yellowing undershirt and sky-blue Bermudas. His shoes were undone, not dressed for going out apparently.

The man's eyes slid back and forth as he sought answers.

"I wish I could help you, I really do." Mark was stiff and sore from lying on the floor. "Sorry."

His mouth was still dry, that early morning tackiness took a while to go away. He needed that cup of coffee real bad.

Slowly, not wanting to be rude, and not having a lot of patience with the brain-dead, he closed the door firmly in the guy's face.

Bending, he had a look out the peephole.

Slowly, the fellow turned and shuffled away. He went to the left, there was only one other unit there. Mark could hear him knocking on the door just up the hall. The doors were offset from each other, otherwise you wouldn't have any business of your own.

Still, Mark didn't even have to strain his ears.

"Hello?" It sounded like one of the black people, a mature woman by the sound of it.

The accent sounded like Nigeria or Uganda or something.

"Yeah, hi. Do you guys have a laundry basket?"

Weird. It struck Mark that he didn't much like the stupid. They were only marginally better than the crazy.

After or perhaps below that came the just plain ignorant.

He'd seen more than enough of the stupid in his time. Hell, he might even be one himself.

***

Mark was taking his time, sipping away at the coffee. He was stretching and doing some simple Tai Chi exercises when the familiar rap came at the door. Yeah, that was definitely Duke. It was interesting how self-conscious one could be with no curtains, and yet across the street it was all anonymous upper stories. It was all lofts with grimy windows and no curtains or blinds. The interiors were oddly blank, it was so dark in the rooms behind.

"Come in."

Duke entered as Mark did a few kicks and lunges, air-punches and swipes with the open hand.

"Hey, dude. Cool. Were you in the war?"

"Ah. No. What's up?"

Duke shrugged.

"Nothing." He shrugged again. "It's just that I hate the war. It's Sunday morning and the liquor store doesn't open till noon either. Bummer, eh."

Mark sighed as Duke's hand went to the pocket of his shirt, a Robin's-egg blue western one this time, with shiny pearl buttons. Duke at least had his socks on. He wasn't planning to go too far either, by the looks of it.

"What time is it?"

"Ah...maybe ten after eight."

Pulling out a banana-shaped joint, Duke gave it a lick and hit it with the lighter.

"How's the bed coming?"

"Shit."

Mark turned and nipped into the bedroom to have a look. It seemed about right so he went into the kitchen and turned the water off. Judging by the feel of it, it would be warmed-up and all set to go by tonight.

He would give it a try and adjust the water level and the temperature accordingly. The thing to do was coil up the hose and put it in the bathtub, or somewhere, for the moment. The filler-plug in the mattress was important. Plastic, if he over-tightened it, it might be a bastard to get off again.

"So why do you do that shit, anyways?" Duke meant the exercises.

"Hmn. I don't know. I guess it just helps me to clear my mind. I try and let a whole bunch of bad shit go, and take in as much good shit as I can. That's the chi, or spirit. Some say the chi is a dragon, long since dead." Mark had basically made that part up, a couple of years previously, just to amuse his own mind and to baffle others.

He was tempted to ask Duke the same question—why do you do that shit?

Why bother asking a pointless question?

Duke's eyebrows crept upwards.

"And, uh. How's it working so far?"

Mark grinned.

"Well, I don't know. It seems to be going okay."

So far, so good.

It was a kind of freedom. It was self-discipline, which made many things possible.

No one could imprison the mind—or so Mark had heard somewhere. Among other things, it killed a little time and got the blood going first thing in the morning.

A series of loud, pounding thuds rocked the building, and the floor moved under his feet.

Mark's mouth opened, but there was this sound...

"What in the hell is that?"

"Ah...that sounds like five-oh-three." Duke puffed furiously, his head practically disappearing in the cloud of acrid blue smoke as the sirens going by in the street out front temporarily, for all intents and purposes, drowned out the hellish racket from above. "Dude kind of has a bad day once in a while. She's nice, though."

"A bad day, eh?" Bummer.

That one seemed self-explanatory.

The sirens faded away, and the pounding went on...and on. They sure were going at it.

"Oh, my God. What the hell is that? Is he beating her up or something?" It was eight o'clock in the morning.

Duke shrugged, accepting the joint back from a dumbfounded Mark.

"Yeah. Probably." His eyes came up with that innocent look. "Why? What do you want me to do about it?"

Mark shook his head. There was just no winning with Duke. People were bouncing off the walls up there by the sounds of it.

Was the guy throwing his fucking wife around?

Jesus, H., Christ.

"So. What's your big plan for the day?"

"Honestly? I was thinking of going for a walk—a long walk." That wasn't such a bad idea, it might even help to shake Duke off.

Duke didn't impress as the athletic type. He had a life of his own, (presumably), and a business to run.

Mark could have lived without the fifteen joints a day. The threat of beer, always on the horizon, was another thing. Drinking early in the day was a good way to kill the day entirely. So far that had been more or less true. They didn't need to prove it again.

The other thing was a chair—if Mark was lucky, someone would be throwing out an old chair by the side of the street. If it wasn't too heavy, or too ratty, he'd grab it, turn around and come straight home. Hell, he might even take the bus. It was time to become a scrounger. He was way out of shape, but a little pain might be worth it. It struck him that being a bit stoned might actually be an advantage under certain circumstances.

If nothing else, it would kill an hour and maybe even two.

Chapter Eight

Monday must be garbage day in the neighbourhood. There were city ordinances to deter folks from putting stuff out too early. People preferred to put the trash out in broad daylight. They could scuttle back inside or take off to their day jobs. They wouldn't have to contend with the pimps, the pushers, the prostitutes, the winos and the bums and the criminally-insane. That bunch tended to stir from their dens later in the day. If only someone had thought to ask, and he might even be one of them.

Either that, or one with them. It was a surprisingly cheerful thought.

He'd found a home.

Life was what you make of it—crazy old Bill, back at Bellevue.

That one would never get out.

Mark found two maple chairs, a bit rickety, but a bottle of carpenter's glue would fix that. They were light and easy to carry. It was nice and close to home. He grabbed them and headed back off to the building, which was barely two blocks away. One or two other items caught his eye, but he wouldn't be coming back. To hell with it.

No one gave him a second look.

People tended to ignore you anyways. It was a fact you could rely on in an uncertain world. They just didn't want to know your story.

Once again he went through the whole rigmarole of the stairs and the fire escape. Setting the chairs down temporarily in his doorway, he went up, and out, around and down. Grabbing the chairs, he stacked them in the corner of the front room. Why, he couldn't really say. He'd think about them later.

Seeing his horn sitting there disconsolately, he thought why not?

Why not?

Taking the case, he went out and up and around and down again, out onto the street and headed for the park.

No guts, no glory.

***

There was a cold east wind blowing in off the Atlantic. He wondered what the weather held in store. It might change pretty quickly. The buds were just cracking in the park and the sunshine was uncharacteristically brilliant.

The strong winds had blown all the pollution away. The heavier stuff remained, in the gutters and in the alleys. Lighter bits of trash, chip bags and candy wrappers rambled along like tumbleweeds in the narrower streets where the wind was strongest. The worst thing about spring was the ever-present smell of dog-shit, coming from street-corners and trash bins and every possible place where a dog might crap, now that the season was warming up.

Washington Square Park wasn't too far to walk, just a few blocks. The neighbourhood gradually improved as he went along.

Gentrification was setting in, not that Mark Jones, a jazz-trumpeter badly in need of a shave, gave a damn one way or another. That one wasn't his problem.

Walking down the street with a horn case had always been an affirmation to him. This is who I am, this is what I do and I will not be ashamed of it.

Fuck you and God-damn you all to hell—it's better than carrying a couple of shitty old chairs.

At one time it might have even been cool.

Some frumpy old lady, not that bad really, just nice really, gave him an odd look. Normally avoiding eye-contact, New Yorkers smiled at each other but rarely, and yet there it was. He gave her a nod and kept going, his thin and lanky blond hair lifting in the breeze. He clamped his hand over his Yankees hat to keep it from blowing away. It was a typical day in the big city, and he was merely one of a million pedestrians. People looked a bit pale after a long winter. They'd been locked up too, just like him.

They'd been locked up for far too long. The streets, just as much a prison as their rat-hole apartments, were at least bigger. There was more going on. There was more to see and more to do.

He entered the park just opposite the lovely townhouses along Washington Square North and turned in towards the fountain in the centre. There were already spring flowers up, in clumps amidst larger areas of mulch.

There was an ache in the pit of his stomach.

After four years, it was like the first time all over again—like boning Amy on the floorboards, only this time he had an audience. Maybe that's what he needed. A little excitement.

Hadn't he had enough excitement lately...

One or two people looked at him incuriously as he set the case down on a bench and unsnapped it.

Someone actually groaned when he pulled out the horn and gave it a quick look. Mark had as much right to be there as anyone else. Inside the case, it wasn't actually dusty, but the keys might be a bit stiff...he had to start somewhere. He'd almost been afraid to touch it, the allure was so strong. You simply couldn't play the thing in an apartment, any apartment. He'd almost driven his parents mad, trying to learn the thing as a kid. The neighbours hadn't liked it much either, probably, although no one had ever made a complaint.

He had Mister Scully, the bandmaster at Lincoln Memorial High, to thank for all of this.

Scully wasn't such a bad guy, looking back.

None of them were, looking back. They'd seemed like heartless tyrants at the time. Every kid that had ever lived had hated school. Mark Jones was no exception.

He wasn't in school anymore.

His heart beat pleasantly in his chest and he was very aware of the sounds all around him, near and far. He'd always had an ear for it.

It was the sound, the throb, the lifeblood of the city. It never ended and it never would end.

People came and went. They lived and they died, but the city would endure.

The city would never die because it couldn't die. It was unthinkable, and so therefore the city had taken on a life of its own. It had become something greater than the sum of its parts. Every great city was like that, standing at the confluence of rivers and history...or something like that.

Mark stood there, staring off into space, horn at the ready, getting his pulse and his breathing down. It was best to start off slow and easy, calm, cool and in total control.

He wanted to be nice about it.

He did the scales and fiddled with the tuning. There were one or two tolerant looks. Nothing too sarcastic so far.

The throb, eh.

He smiled in spite of himself.

Now or never, buddy.

Music mirrors the soul.

Something breaks loose within you and you just have to let it go.

Licking his lips, he brought the horn up and started into Take the A Train.

No one paid him the slightest attention, the denizens of this village meeting place intent mostly on their own business. One thing he could say for sure, was that he needed the practice. Tourists and citizens milled around the fountain, old people fed squirrels and pigeons and young mothers walked past with their prams. People cut through, going from Point A to Point B.

This was more like work than he had realized. He was still kind of burned out. The music, or his rendition of it, was loose and flowing, and yet his timing seemed good. He seemed to be hitting the notes, although that could be deceptive if your hearing was out of whack—having a cold or something like that. Relaxing a bit, his body began to bend and sway and the thing, as usual, was starting to get away from him.

That's how you knew when it was right, when it started to get away from you and it started taking on a life of its own. Everyone had their own style, and this was uniquely his. No one was going to take that away from him.

There was such a thing as white privilege, but that meant nothing in jazz where the acknowledged best were all untrained Negro musicians. It was hard to say where he stacked up, probably somewhere down around near the bottom. It was all right. There were worse places to be.

A little training hadn't hurt though.

People were listening. They could hear him. He had no doubt of that. They could hardly ignore him.

They could hardly be unaware of his existence. Faces turned his way and they were listening.

He was privileged to be able to do something well.

A little girl, seemingly unaccompanied by any adult, came over and stood before him as he segued into Rhapsody in Blue, but only for a while. This little ploy had been the trademark of the Burt Anderson Group ten or more years before. He'd only been with them for five months before Danny, the drummer, had gotten married and that pretty much broke up the group. They weren't making any money on the road and hadn't been able to get a recording contract in spite of agent Solly Mathews' best efforts.

The thing was to play a few of the greats, songs anybody would recognize, and then later on, try a couple of your own compositions.

He worked his way through So What, and someone put a dime in his case. He almost lost it, unable to play with a grin stiffening his lips and pulling at his cheeks. There was also a bit of water in his eyes.

So he still had it then. He still had something.

For fuck's sakes.

Get on with it.

It was better than nothing. Stopping for a moment, he nodded at the little girl. She might have been about nine years old. Her eyes were wide at the thought that some guy with a horn could get people to give him money. Stars went off in her head and he tried not to pity her. But this was clearly why her mother was making her take music lessons...

Hopefully she would grow out of it.

Just for the sheer hellery of it, he swung effortlessly into the theme from Peter Gunn.

It had been one of his favourite television shows, growing up in a staid, middle-class bungalow in St. Louis, where his dad was a dentist and his mother active in the church and the bridge club among other things.

That had never been the life for him.

Their expectations were stifling, and he had soon rejected them.

For this.

For this.

The little girl, looking around in guilt or shame, dug deep into her pocket and found a nickel.

Shyly, looking into his eyes as he played, she dropped it into his case.

If that didn't bring a tear to your eye, nothing would.

Fuck the God-damned world, man.

***

One of the great technical challenges of a tune with a prominent trumpet part in the middle of a bunch of other parts meant for other instruments, other tones, was how to work up to it. He had one instrument and he was alone. He was trying to interpret an entire piece of music. People had to hear the beginning of the song. They had to know what you were playing, and like all instruments, the horn had its own unique strengths and its own unique weaknesses. It only had so much range.

The key was breath control. Any idiot could blow through the thing and make loud noises. Too many cats did just that. They had no finesse. To start off low, and slow, and muted, and still hit those notes—that was hard. To make sense of it all, on a mechanical device that only held so many octaves, well. That was skill. Maybe even just training. To make it sound good, that was art, or heart, or soul, or something. Or understanding, or interpretation. The truth was that music had to come out of your guts somewhere. Mark could read the music on the sheets and see what the composer meant. Any asshole could do that. You could interpret the squiggly marks, hit the notes, and come out with some kind of a tune. Some guys couldn't even do that, couldn't read a note, not one, and yet some of them made better music than him. At least in his own humble opinion. That ability to really wing it was something he had always admired, always seeking it within himself and hardly ever finding it. Today it was working. Today was a good day to be alive, but what were the alternatives as someone once said.

There was no good day to be dead. Maybe that's what they meant.

Dead men can't tell you anything. All they could do was to write the score, the operas, and the history books. Then they dropped dead and wouldn't answer your questions anymore.

You can only make sense of the living.

There was little doubt that this was a gift, and yet one he had worked very hard to acquire. He had sacrificed much, to play this simple device of deep-drawn brass. Faking the alto sax or the clarinet, the bassoon, with another instrument wasn't easy, and one had to adapt and simplify, guessing sometimes when it wasn't good or easy to do so.

He stopped and stood there breathing, conscious of a little sweat in the armpits. He shrugged off the shitty old coat, letting it fall beside the case. He nodded at the little girl.

"Thank you, young lady."

"Play some more."

He nodded.

"Anything for you, my dear."

Her smile lit up the world when he said that, and he looked away. He made himself go on. It was all you could do sometimes. He was thirty-four years old. He'd never been married. The way things were going, he'd never have a kid—didn't stand a chance, really. He focused on the music.

The thing had to be made somehow, and then it had to be played with a kind of confidence and authority he had always found astounding in himself—an acknowledged pussycat. It was the one thing Mark Jones did well.

You either could or you couldn't.

He lifted the horn and began to play again.

He didn't pretend to understand himself, he merely had to live with it.

The key thing was to know the song well, to stick to the main notes, and then when your solo came, to really let loose. After working slowly, lasciviously, through Chet Baker's Summertime. After that, he hit the small and accumulating crowd with Billie Holliday and Easy Living.

New York still loved its jazz, all this rock and roll notwithstanding. Someone appreciated him, and one or two more small coins landed in his case.

What Did I Do (to Be So Black and Blue), Louis Armstrong, met with a small murmur of appreciation. An older woman, probably a tourist, smiled and clapped, her husband looking a bit sheepish, possibly wondering whether it was okay to snap a picture of this bizarre phenomenon.

Mark nodded and grinned, playing along, and the camera was raised and a flashbulb popped.

So.

He still had it then.

He still had something. It was a lot better than having nothing at all.

It was a good thing to know.

Mark Jones still had soul.

Whatever the hell that meant.

Chapter Nine

One more trip up the stairs, and one more trip on the fire escape. Hopeful that it would be his last, Mark stowed the horn in its place of honour in the corner of the living room.

It was shocking to realize, upon close examination of his finances, that he'd earned two-seventy-five in a little over two hours. It wasn't often you got paid to practice. He still had a little money of his own.

It solved one immediate problem. There were fresh nickels in there for the phone. He was also thinking of a pen and some kind of pad. He'd written a few songs on the inside, but one day, in a fit of depression, he'd torn them all up and thrown it all away. Looking back, that might have been foolish. At the time, he had honestly thought he'd never get out. Review boards did some amazing things, or so he'd been told by other patients—or prisoners, which is what he certainly was. Six months later, they were cutting him loose. One or two of those tunes had stuck with him. The odds were he could come up with something, and maybe even do a better job of it when it was real—when he had a place to try it out.

The first practice in four years had done him some good, or so he thought as he locked the door behind him and went out and down. First things first. He was looking for a phone booth with the phone book still intact, one not stolen, shredded in place by people tearing the pages out or even just pissed on by kids out past their bedtimes and raising a little hell.

The trouble with phone booths was the exposure to the weather and every sort of person. The first one he tried, the book was there, but the pages were all curling from moisture. Pages were falling apart in his hands as he tried to look up Olivetti. He might want to wash the hands after this one.

"Argh." He gave up in disgust.

Three blocks further up the street, there was another booth. The phone book was in better shape. Mark found a couple of hundred Olivettis in the Greater New York area.

There were a good fifty R. Olivettis, a handful named Roy or Ray, which made him question his own ears and memory. But he was pretty sure the guy had said Roy. Half a dozen lived within a few blocks. A couple of the names were female. It was difficult to visualize Olivetti with a wife, and yet he probably had one. The home phone might just be in her name. He was definitely over-analyzing. Some of those buildings had secured entrances, possibly doormen on duty. It wasn't so much a dead end as a last resort. There were just too many of them. There must be a way. On a hunch, he looked up property management in the Yellow Pages. He could also look in the newspaper Want Ads under apartments.

The text in the typical phone book was unbelievably small, something he'd always hated. The New York phone book was one of the worst in terms of sheer, physical size and population, all those boroughs and suburbs and surrounding cities contributing to a book that weighed a good twenty pounds.

There it was: Olivetti Property Management Incorporated. Mark had had the impression that Mr. Olivetti owned the building on Easy Street. The fact that Olivetti had a separate office implied ownership of a few more buildings at least. He could also be managing it for a fee or a percentage for some old fucker living in Florida. He wasn't sure if anyone really did that, but it didn't seem too outlandish and it wasn't Mark's real problem anyway.

Mark tried the number but no one picked up. That didn't always mean anything. Some places had more than one line and they might have been busy. The receptionist might have stepped out for a moment. The answering service didn't kick in. The secretary might have just gone out for a coffee or something. Olivetti might be taking a leak...

Six blocks wasn't too far. On the way, he'd find a stationer's. If he could get into the place, he could always leave Olivetti a note. Mister Olivetti would be out showing prospects different units, he would be playing golf, he would drinking up his profits. It could be a million things.

It struck him, somewhere along the way, that Olivetti had his own version of a seven-day hold.

In which case, why not just say so?

Mark was just desperate enough. It wouldn't have been a deal-breaker, although it would have been a tough call to make.

I would almost have to flip a coin on that one.

Maybe Olivetti's way was better after all. It sort of hung on to all the power, a typical Establishment trick.

He'd been hearing all about the Establishment lately.

***

It was still early in the season, and the lobby security guard didn't give Mark a second look in his ratty white coat.

The pad in his hand might have helped. It made him look as if he was someone, a person with places to go and something to do when they got there. Maybe he looked like a job-seeker, quite the depressing thought. Mostly because he wasn't and didn't have a hope in hell anyways. Not with his record. Not any sort of job he would be interested in, although there was always the question of desperation. He could unload produce down at the food terminal, starting off on dollies and hand-carts and working his way up to forklift driver first-class. There was always work out there for the desperate. Much of it was even legal, although often done by illegal immigrants. Mark had trouble conceiving of any real need to take thirty newspaper routes, working from before dawn until well after dusk, living in a flop-house for the rest of your life, and yet people did. You just couldn't pick enough worms off golf courses and cemeteries at three cents per thousand to make a living.

And yet stranger things happened.

It happened to some of them.

Things happened to people and you couldn't do much about it sometimes.

An Art Deco building clad in concrete and multi-coloured brick, inside and out, it was beautifully maintained, unlike the building on Easy St. Roy Olivetti would have a beautiful wife, and he would neglect and ignore her. Unless he was drunk and in a bad mood, in which case he'd have plenty to say, maybe even slap her around a bit...an amusing thought.

Being rich was such a terrible burden to bear, when you really thought of it.

A quick glance at the signboard confirmed that Olivetti was on the eighth floor, and he headed for the elevator.

There were two other people in the elevator with him, a middle-aged man with balding head and extremely conservative pin-striped suit. The girl now, was a young secretary in an impossibly-short skirt, high-heels and bare legs that had been shaved just that morning by the look of the smooth, creamy skin.

He quite liked the dress after looking at tough and competent mental-health nurses in pastel uniforms for the last four years. Mark was tired of women in flat, sensible shoes, just trying to make a living, Buster. He thought of Amy and repressed an audible sigh.

Theoretically, she could make a pretty good living as an anthropologist.

The thing was to get in there and stick to it long enough to make a go of it. That was about all he knew.

The two of them got off on the fifth floor and the elevator hesitated before going on up again.

Judging by the studious way they had ignored each other, they worked for different companies.

It was a fairly busy place, and with only the one elevator, someone would always be pressing that button. He was locked inside a rattling steel cage. The doors always took forever to open.

Hitting the buttons never seemed to do much. They were mostly for show, he concluded.

The eighth floor, way up above the street, was an oasis of peace and quiet.

He really ought to rent a utility closet with taps and a sink or something. He could crap in a bag and take it out with him in the morning. Toss that in any alley and no one would ever know the difference. The walls were roughly-textured grey blocks, probably twelve inches thick.

It could only be to the left or to the right. Picking right, he was gratified to see the numbers going up in the proper order.

Olivetti's office was down at the end, back from the street. Mark raised a hand to knock, not knowing whether it was a suite or just a one-roomer. Slowly his hand fell.

It was dead quiet up there.

Somewhere down the hall, a phone rang. The ringing stopped. He thought he heard a voice, and that somehow made it better.

Olivetti Property Management Incorporated. While not completely unfamiliar with appearances and companies that existed largely on paper—he'd once had an agent after all, the building was big enough that there really ought to be four or five rooms behind that door.

Trying the knob, it turned. The lights were on and the first thing he saw were houseplants on the top of a long row of black filing cabinets. So that was all right, then.

"Hello. Hello?" He stepped into the opening.

Nothing.

Somewhere off in the distance, on the street down below, a dump truck going forty miles an hour hit a manhole cover. The slap of the heavy tailgate penetrated like no other sound. Even the rich couldn't escape that one.

There was an interior closer and the door was pulling itself insistently shut. The carpet was thick and lush.

There was no secretary, although there was a proper desk and a small waiting area replete with couch, and some institutional settees framed up in three-seated arrangements. All the red and yellow leather reminded him of Nero Wolfe. The smell of tobacco smoke and a coffee table with scattered magazine attested to human occupation. There were table lamps and chic Scandinavian end tables.

"Hello?"

There was nothing but silence, and yet the place was unlocked.

The door in the middle of the wall was clearly labeled, Roy Olivetti, President. You could get a sign like that made up in any hardware store.

Mark went over and knocked.

"Hello? Hello? Mister Olivetti?"

There was no response and he had visions of the guy being on the phone—either that or boning his secretary. It was just about lunch hour. He might have been the type to squeeze in a nap.

Anyways, he had a legitimate reason for being there, just in case anyone should ask.

Turning the knob, he opened the door and had a look.

***

Roy Olivetti had been shot once, right between the eyes. He was very dead.

His spacious corner office looked across the alley to an equally-anonymous office block, this one in a more serious and modern style. All the blinds were down over there and there wasn't a sign of life.

"Oh, fuck." Mark looked down at his hand on the door-knob. "Aw, for fuck's sakes."

The man was clearly dead, those heavy-lidded eyes staring directly into his. Olivetti's chair was pushed back, away from the desk, as if he'd tried to rise. He was sprawled all over the place, limp, halfway off the chair and yet not going anywhere anytime soon...you weren't going to get much sense out of a dead man, but Mark had one or two questions.

Mark didn't have a heart attack, but the shock was considerable. Slowly the truth sank in.

This was bad—the smell of shit in the air underlying this conclusion in fine counterpoint.

The man's brains were all over the wall behind him, and a thin brown line of dried blood had come down the sides of the neck and soaked his white shirt. There was another faint, acrid smell in the air. His arms hung straight down, like a puppet discarded. Theoretically, Mark should go over and check for a pulse, see if there was any chance of doing something for the guy.

"Fuck."

Aw, Jesus.

He'd never see his money now...shit.

There was just no way—no way. No way to look for a fucking key or his money or anything, although there was one wild second of temptation to go through Olivetti's pockets.

There's just no way I'm touching that.

Mark backed out into the other room.

He had no choice but to call the cops. He had touched things in here, he'd touched things on the way there. He'd touched doorknobs, the button in the elevator—and Mark Jones' prints were on file. He lived in the area and was out on parole. Someone would come knocking for sure.

People had seen him coming in.

They would also see him going out.

All the while, wearing that damned white parka, fringed in streaky faux fur on the hood, cuffs and hem, narrow in the shoulders and wide in the tails, making him a marked man pretty much everywhere he went.

There was a phone right there on the desk.

Shit.

Chapter Ten

"Well." Detective O'Hara had his subject in the usual position.

It was all very informal.

"Oh, God." Mark sat beside the desk with his head hanging.

"This is our lucky day, Mister Jones." O'Hara's voice had a humorous edge. "Some people remember you being at the park. And, as luck would have it, Mister Olivetti, according to the medical examiner, died right about the time you were playing the horn in Washington Square. One or two of the people we spoke with say you're not bad, incidentally. They identified you from the mugshot easily enough. That's almost pure luck. Some guys aren't so lucky, Mister Jones. More to the point. His neighbours in the building seem to recall something that might have been a gunshot. Olivetti raised his hand—an understandable if futile response to a gun being pointed at you. There's even glass fragments in the head wound. Ah, the bullet went through his wristwatch, if you can believe that. Anyways, Mark, he was killed at twelve-oh-six p.m., or on the lunch-hour, when the secretary was away."

According to the lady, there had been a middle-aged white gentlemen waiting to speak with Olivetti in the anteroom. Roy had been on the phone with another potential client when the call had been abruptly cut off in mid-stride.

Mark sat up.

"What are you trying to say? And why didn't she come back?" He'd shown up there some time after one, maybe even closer to two o'clock according to the dispatcher's records.

"She had a doctor's appointment. You're a lucky son of a bitch, Mister Jones. Two people identified you from the elevator—and they were returning after lunch. It's what we call evidence. Sometimes it doesn't mean much, and I could think of a few objections if I set my mind to it. I won't worry you with that right now. Here, let's go and get your pants. We're cutting you loose—again. At least for the meantime." He pressed a small stud and pulled the keychain off of his belt. "As for your welfare and stuff like that, you should probably go and inquire at social services."

"Does Olivetti have next of kin? An heir? Sooner or later someone's got to come around, right? You know, like looking to collect next month's rent, shit like that, right?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Mister Jones. Anyways, good luck to you." That whole last bit seemed a bit uncharacteristic for one such as O'Hara. "It sort of plays in your favour, that's what I think—a dead man can't give you your money back, and you sure as hell don't have any yourself."

He went on.

"You seem to be in pretty good control of yourself, and all of that sort of thing. You've been taking your meds and everything. Right?"

Marked nodded dumbly. It was a lie, of course.

"You don't own a gun, do you?"

"Ah, no."

"Well, there you go then."

Mark sagged in relief, not quite believing what he was hearing.

O'Hara might have been getting old or something. Looking at retirement and time to reflect.

Everyone had a conscience of some sort.

Standing, Mark turned around and O'Hara took the cuffs off of his wrists.

In other words, they had no evidence and they also knew, somehow, perhaps sheer intuition on their part, that he hadn't done it anyways. That wasn't to say they wouldn't keep him in mind, because they would. Otherwise they'd have had him down in the basement, working him over with rubber hoses, confession all typed-up and ready to go. Cops were nothing if not patient when it came to homicide.

"And my pants, sir?"

"Ah, yes, of course, young man."

***

"Hey, Mark."

"Oh, hey, Duke."

The big guy was just coming out of number ninety-nine and Mark was just going in, having successfully woven through the obstacle course represented by a half a dozen teens and younger kids sitting on the base of the stairs. He stopped, a bit wobbly in the head and legs.

"I must have missed you, man. You're a busy dude."

Duke slept in as late as possible most days. His customers weren't known as early risers for the most part. The last four years had turned Mark into a reluctant morning person after years of the night-owl sort of working life.

Duke really didn't even sell much dope around the building. He had explained a bit of it to Mark.

His little beat included supplying some other small-time dealers. They worked out of their own places and had their own customers. Unless they ran out or something, in which case they might send someone his way—but only if Duke already knew the person and they didn't owe money. Once you hit a certain point, you had to pay up before getting any more. On weekends he took in a few of the clubs, and in the afternoons and evenings, he took a stroll through one or two of the larger parks.

Duke liked to keep a low profile as he called it.

When in doubt, he'd run, ditch the stash and keep on going. Dope was only a small part of his business. There was a bit of white around his eyes that Mark couldn't account for, and he seemed in a hurry, which was unusual for Duke.

"So, anyways—" It was a question.

"Ah, shit." Mark exhaled, shrugged, rolling his eyes around in his head, something in his body language alerting Duke that he had a story to tell, but not in front of the children...please.

"Did you get a key? Where the hell you been, anyways."

"Ah, no—not exactly." Mark pulled him down the street a couple of yards. "I've been...occupied."

It was the wrong word, and he flushed a bit with the frustration, but there were people just yards away and it was none of their business.

Duke tipped his head, silently reading the body language. There was a lot of tension there.

"Tell you what. I'm just nipping down to the store for a quart of milk. Some smokes, too. I'm just dying for a friggin' smoke. But I'll be along, okay?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Duke."

Head down, the collar of his tattered jean jacket up, Duke headed off up the street.

Mark sidestepped an elderly lady just coming out. The old girl moved slowly, burdened by empty but bulky shopping bags and a cane. This one even had the fruit salad all over her hat, quite the anachronism these days. If she lived here with that grey skin and fuzzy chin of hers, she was dreadfully poor and he felt sorry for her.

Mark went up the stairs to the fourth floor feeling marginally better about things.

***

Someone had closed the window on the fourth floor. Mark wondered about that, and the stick was gone. Of course. It was bound to happen. They had no idea of who he was and they'd seen or heard him coming and going one too many times. He was going right past their front windows, for Christ's sakes. He might be a pervert or a peeping Tom. A killer or a burglar. The people on both sides of the hall were in, certainly the ones at the front of the building, and there were odd, muted noises from all over.

Shit. He could only stand there so long.

He could wait for Duke to come back and pick the lock, or he could try getting out of the window with nothing to prop it up. That would involve going out on his back. The latch on the door a few feet back and on his right snapped open, startling him just as he was about to lift the window, which seemed the only way. He wasn't too sure about that one. Life could be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

"Hey." The door was on the chain and one beady little eye glared at him through the crack.

There was a two-inch gap. It was a blue-haired, little old lady wearing Victorian lace-up boots, poking out from under a very long dress that looked like a big grey sack, shapeless and loose.

"Ah, yeah, hey. I'm sorry about all this." He tried to smile but his predicament was getting ridiculous.

"Scram. Beat it, punk."

Mark flushed, but took a deep breath.

"Look, I'm sorry about all of this. It's just that I live in three-oh-one and I don't have a key. The window on my floor is glued shut or something—"

"Any asshole can say that. Besides, three-oh-one is vacant."

"Not any more. I'm not an asshole, I'm Mark Jones. I'm your new neighbour." With a grunt of disgust, Mark gave his head a shake, preparing to head for the stairwell. "I play the horn and I'm looking for gigs. Other than that, I pay my bills, stay out of trouble and don't make problems for other people. Unless I have to. In fact, I'm a pretty good neighbour."

Sometimes a little humour did the trick, but not this time. He was having trouble keeping his cool.

"Fuck you, Mister." The door closed, leaving him few options.

That one would have shot him with no questions asked.

He had to shit something fierce. There was a tinge of anger lurking inside, and he went up one more level as quietly as possible. He was lucky enough to find that the hallway window was open on the fifth floor. These people at least had stick a for the window. It was the warm day with sunny skies.

It was really warm on this floor.

There was one more flight after that, God only knew where that one led. It might be the attic, it might be the roof. The stairs were wooden, and keeping them quiet was proving to be impossible. They were always going to squeak, but that booming was just nuts, a case of bad design or something. The people that designed some of these old places should have been shot and pissed-on.

Every floor up, the temperature seemed to go up by a few degrees. It would be sweltering up there in another month. As it was, it was merely warm, plus all that exercise on the stairs.

The view, straight down from that height, with nothing between your ass and the ground but a slender, wickerwork fabric of shitty old iron was something that had to be experienced. It wasn't even the height so much, but it all had to be fastened somehow to tired old bricks and mortar. It really made you think when a section came out from the wall a half-inch or so and then returned to its previous positon as he went along. That was not going to last forever.

From ground level, it really didn't look that high...not at all.

If he wasn't afraid of heights before, he sure was now. Or maybe it was the depths. Maybe it was the distance, or maybe it was that sudden stop at the end.

***

His window was propped up on his new stick, a turned maple spreader that had actually fallen out of the more decrepit of his two chairs. He could have sworn he'd closed it, but it made things a bit easier as he crawled in over the sill. There was a lot to remember when you were out on your own. He'd been hoping to work his way back into it slowly. Without a place for the cat to shit, perhaps leaving it open was for the best.

The animal didn't seem to be around. It usually came right out.

Hmn.

Standing up gratefully in his own home, his own living room, keeping things in perspective, he headed for the kitchen and a cup of coffee or something.

What he really needed was a sense of proportion.

As usual, his guts were grumbling and making quite the ruckus, stimulated no doubt by the lingering aroma of bacon and eggs from yesterday.

He'd rolled up the hose for the waterbed, but some odd watery sounds caught his attention, already a bit strained after yet another fucking night in a holding cell. That concrete bed in the holding facility was really something. People yelling and screaming and crying and beating their heads against the bars all night long. The smell of shit, piss and puke. Sweat and unwashed humanity.

The smell of fear.

That, was really something. With his heart up in his mouth, he strode into the bedroom. Feeling all around the base of the mattress, it seemed dry and there was no water on the floor. Mark had always been quiet, a model prisoner in so many ways.

Going out and around through the kitchen, he saw the bathroom light was on. He could have sworn he'd turned it off, but the electricity was included and it wasn't a big priority. The door was mostly closed and there were more watery sounds. If there was a damned leak, he was in a lot of trouble with Olivetti gone.

The wind must have blown the door shut...

"Jesus!"

A very naked and very surprised Amy turned, sighting him in the mirror and then she screamed as if her head was on fire.

Chapter Eleven

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God."

He had a naked girl in his arms, and she was crying. She'd thrown one punch and a good kick, which had come very close to emasculating him.

"Mark, Mark, you son of a bitch. You scared the hell out of me."

He laughed at that.

She was wet and warm as he held her. Splashing around in the tub, making waves as she stood to get out, her own noises had covered his approach. His entry, his preoccupation, had covered her noises. That part was easy enough. The real question was why she had ever come back.

She looked up, and he kissed her gently. He reached for his one and only towel. The room smelled of clean girl, stirring a few memories to go along with it. At least one of those memories was fairly recent.

"I'm sorry." He grinned down at her as she stepped back and began to dry herself.

He wanted to laugh, you sort of couldn't help it, but maybe that wasn't such a good idea. It's just that he was very happy for some reason...it's like he couldn't quite believe it for some reason.

Half the building must have heard that scream.

She was unabashed by his gaze. People often behaved differently when naked, preferring privacy or even complete darkness for the sexual act for example. She was very natural and unaffected. It was like they were five years old, she was his sister and their mother was giving them a bath.

He had nothing but curiosity at this point. Appreciation, maybe.

What in the hell did she see in the hapless loser otherwise known as Mark Jones?

There were certain questions that you really didn't want to ask.

Amy tossed her hair, looking for a brush but all he had was a black nylon comb.

Hopefully she wouldn't have too much trouble with tangles. His own hair was short and it usually didn't need much.

"Damn. I could use a shower myself."

"Go ahead. I saw some coffee out there earlier—"

Shit. Mark was torn. Duke was coming back, and yet he didn't quite know when, either.

With Duke, you never would know. He had a way of getting side-tracked. He would turn up when you saw the whites of his eyes and not much sooner.

They were pecking away at each other's lips. Everything was all smiles.

"Yeah, why not. Uh...that's the only towel."

Reluctantly, he let her go.

With a smirk, she took off the towel which she had wrapped around herself, tucking the last end in just above her left breast to hold it in place.

It made a short, shapeless and yet enchanting short dress in faded green terrycloth. It was all his now, still damp and smelling of her.

They stood there looking at each other for a minute.

Her purse and her shoes were there. Picking her jeans, blouse and underwear off of the coat-hook on the back of the door, she opened it again and headed off down the hall as a slightly-shy Mark undid his own jeans and kicked off his shoes.

Her scream came almost immediately. He almost tripped on his own pant-legs as he stumbled and bolted down the hall, yanking the jeans back up as he went.

***

Amy was in the end of the hallway, backing up.

"I'm terribly sorry about that, young lady."

Without a word, Amy turned. Ducking under Mark's half-raised arm, she headed back towards the bathroom with her clothes. A slightly-bemused Detective O'Hara stood there with a sardonic grin on his face.

"Jesus, H. Christ. You people sure don't waste a whole hell of a lot of time, do you?"

Mark almost lost it. His face flushed and the fists bunched up on their own.

What in the hell was he doing there?

"Sorry, Mister Jones. Two things. You know, you and the lady should maybe lock your door once in a while—"

Mark heaved a sigh. She—or he—must have forgotten to hit the latch-button.

"Okay. Shit." That was a good answer.

"The other thing. I was thinking about your problem—and you seem like a pretty good guy. Albeit one facing certain challenges."

"Yes, sir." Mark's face was set in stone, as it occurred to him that the ashtray might still have a roach or two in it.

The cops probably knew every God-damned thing about this neighbourhood, this building, and everyone in it.

Paranoia, to be sure...and yet it could also be true.

"So what I did, Mark, was to grab one of Olivetti's keys. They're in a rack in his office. Each one had a tag with the building name and address. The apartment number's on it. There were one or two or three of each key, as you might expect. He's got some vacant units and you don't always get the keys back, either. Anyways, Mark, I got the lab boys to make a copy for me. Apartment three-oh-one. I remembered that from your statement, right? I told them I needed it to check another address, blah-blah-blah. They don't ask too many questions, and if anyone asks, I'll just say I lost it or something and shrug it off. It was a dead-end lead. That's it. You'd be surprised by how well that works sometimes when people don't really care all that much to begin with..."

Mark stood there with his mouth hanging open.

O'Hara grinned.

"Your door was locked, actually—I lied about that part. But I didn't hear anything in here and I wanted to see if the bloody thing even worked."

"Thank you. I mean. Holy, shit."

The bathroom door opened and a calm and dignified young woman, ignoring a long look from the detective, passed between them and then took the better of their two shitty chairs. She looked young, fresh and inviting. Amy was barefoot, bellbottomed and bra-less under the thin cotton blouse in a bright and cheerful floral print. Opening her purse, she pulled out a lip-stick and began applying it with a small, round makeup mirror.

"Anyways, Mark, I want you to promise me something."

"Ah—I suppose."

"I want you to go to social services and tell them what's up, okay?" He gave Mark a slip of paper with the address of the nearest office on it. "You'd never guess it to look at me. But I'm a big fan of the trumpet."

His eyes were sad and tired, with a glint of intelligence in there as well.

"Hah?"

"Tell them about your cheque, Mark. Tell them your landlord's dead, he's got your cheque, and I'm thinking they might even issue a replacement. Tell them what's going on. Mention my name and say I thought it would be a good idea to go in. Don't be afraid to pour your little heart out, okay? The worst they can say is no, right?"

Mark nodded.

"Sure. Absolutely."

The detective stuck his hand out. Mark found himself shaking hands with a pig, if one could believe it, and even meaning it on some level. Cops were human too, apparently.

"I'm not a big believer in luck, Mister Jones. Thermodynamics, maybe. Physical chemistry, maybe. Things will work out. What's your name, young lady?"

"Amy."

"You're very beautiful, Amy. Never be ashamed of that." He gave Mark a quick and genuine grin. "So. Maybe things aren't so bad after all, eh?"

He nodded in a kind of benediction.

"Well, enjoy the rest of your day."

He turned and headed for the door before Mark even thought to say thank you.

By the time he did, it was too late anyways.

"Who was that, Mark?"

She still had the hint of a blush on her cheeks, and a rueful, humorous set to her mouth. A steely glitter was visible in her eyes and his own glance might best be directed elsewhere. He moved to the window, waiting to see the guy come out.

"That was Detective O'Hara. A friend—I guess."

Either that or it was some kind of a trap. He stared out the window, now realizing the significance of the tired blue sedan sitting at the curb. He'd been sheltered for a long time. His instincts weren't very good these days. O'Hara finally made it down the stairs and into the street.

The car fired up and drove away after a long pause.

This is not a trap—one very dark thought.

The fire escape outside of the front window began to heave and shake with someone coming down. The cat appeared, leapt in, and scurried for the bedroom. It had taken up habitual quarters on the shelves of his headboard, at least when Mark was sleeping. He'd broken down and picked up a couple of tins of cheap cat food and it was finally official, at least until someone told him differently. If the cat had an owner, he could always give them any leftover food and to hell with it. Mark had this crazy idea that that wasn't very likely to happen.

"Oh, God, what now?"

Amy was just sorting through the remains of a day-old newspaper Mark had found on the bus. It must be way out of date by now. There hadn't been much in it, a lot of killings, kitchen fires, traffic accidents with loss of life—but nothing that really pertained to him.

"Hey." Duke stuck his head in the window and had a quick look.

He slithered in, face-down and crawling in on his arms and hands.

He stood, dusting himself off.

"Holy shit, man. Did you guys know there are cops in the building?"

The last thing he expected was to be laughed at. Amy threw the sports section at him.

Worse, Mark still had the rest of the story to tell.

***

Mark was just getting to the good part—the scary part, when some fresh and hellish racket erupted in the hallway.

"Largo al factotum della città.  
Presto a bottega che l'alba è già.  
Ah, che bel vivere, che bel piacere  
per un barbiere di qualità! di qualità!"

Clunks, bumps and thuds underlined in fine counterpoint the roar and whine of a powerful industrical vacuum cleaner. The singing continued.

"Ah, bravo Figaro!  
Bravo, bravissimo!  
Fortunatissimo per verità!"

"Pronto a far tutto,  
la notte e il giorno  
sempre d'intorno in giro sta.  
Miglior cuccagna per un barbiere,  
vita più nobile, no, non si da."

"What in the hell is that?"

Duke looked amused.

"Why—that's Sylvio, the singing superintendent." His eyebrows rose, as if to say, don't you know nothing?

Amy, hand over her mouth, did her best. A small squeal of delight, disgust and amusement, all in equal parts, still escaped. She gave Mark a look.

"He's not half bad, actually."

They laughed when he said that, but it was true enough. There were a lot of talented, if slightly frustrated people in the world who might have done other things, possibly even better things, with their lives.

In that sense, he was one of the lucky ones. Mark Jones got to do what he wanted.

"Rasori e pettini  
lancette e forbici,  
al mio comando  
tutto qui sta.  
V'è la risorsa,  
poi, del mestiere  
colla donnetta... col cavaliere..."

"Oh, my. God, Mark."

"It's all right, Amy. Why, I have it on good authority that this is a clean, quiet, and professionally-managed building."

Duke snorted.

"Yeah. Well. Poor old Sylvio only rears his ugly head about once a week. For about an hour and a half if you're lucky, so if you want anything, now would be a very good time to ask."

They were just burning a big fattie and Mark looked askance. Blue smoke hung at mid-level in the room, heading in every direction except, unfortunately, the direction of the windows.

His voice was low.

"I don't know, Duke. I think I'll hold off on that one—" He couldn't think of anything in particular anyways.

Sylvio might not even know his boss was dead, or maybe he just didn't care—but Mark would prefer not to be the one to break the news.

"Well, shit, Mark." Amy was all set to give him a gentle swipe upside of the head. "So what happened."

"Yeah. Anyways, Olivetti's dead. Shot, dead centre, right square in the forehead." Even Duke was impressed, sitting up and looking around quickly for his beer. "I found the body. I went to his freaking office, looking for a key and the rest of my money."

"Olivetti's dead?" Duke eyebrows rose in disbelief. "Holy."

Mark sighed.

"Shit. I don't know when I'll see that now, Duke."

Duke nodded. Mark would have to owe him the ten bucks.

Mark could have used one of them beers himself, but Duke was clearly nursing it.

"Oh, my God." Amy stared at him and Duke nodded.

"That's no joke."

"No, it ain't. And of course the pigs grabbed me right on the spot. They put me through the third degree...again. Shit."

With Amy on his left, and Mark kind of standing and addressing them from in front of the bedroom door, he wanted to go over and put his arm around her.

"So that's why I haven't been around much lately. Steady on, girl. They know I didn't do it. He was killed around the same time I was playing, practicing really, in the square. At least that's what O'Hara said."

Her eyebrows rose.

"The cop that was here?"

Duke goggled at them.

"He came here?"

"You were in the square? What square, what the hell are you talking about?" This from Amy.

Mark nodded soberly.

"I was playing my horn in the park. Duke. The guy went to all the trouble of getting me a key—now that Olivetti's dead and everything's evidence. His estate will be in escrow. I'm not sure if that's the right word or whatever, but you guys know what I mean." He swallowed. "He gave me the address to social services and told me to drop his name at the door. Remember the other day when we'd just smoked a couple and I told you that I'd had enough?"

"Yeah."

"Remember that I told you that I smelled a shit-load of pot in the halls and you said I was just being paranoid?"

"Uh, yeah." Duke could sort of see where this was going but he might as well let the man say it. "I suppose so, Dude. But look, uh, you're hardly the only one stinking up the halls."

"I don't think I was being paranoid at all. I think I was just being practical, and the fact that cops can get keys—or kick doors in and come walking into people's homes, any time they want, sort of makes my point for me."

"And, buddy, old buddy, old pal? What are we getting at here."

"Now, Duke. Now, I'm paranoid."

Mark went over and stood by Amy, hip to her shoulder and dangling an arm over her back and around her shoulders as best he could. He leaned in and gave her a gentle kiss on the top of the head. He was trying to tell her something.

He was trying to tell Duke a little something too.

"Aw." She nailed it with that one. "What square, incidentally?"

"I went to the square. I played my horn."

"Ah." What?

Mark grinned.

"I played the horn in Washington Square."

"Okay."

She exchanged a glance with Duke.

Duke bit his lip. It had actually been a pretty good rap session so far and these two were clearly in love. He wondered how long it would take for them to figure all that shit out.

It made a weird kind of sense so far, although a lot was going unsaid.

Mark lightened up the mood with a quick grin.

"Say, does anybody have a watch around here?"

"Oh. Yes. I do." Amy peeled back the billowing sleeve of her gypsy blouse and checked the time. "It's ten to three."

"This boy's got an idea." The more insecure people were, the more likely they were to seize upon some external cause.

Mark didn't want to be like that.

Mark grinned at his new buddy, left hand on Any's shoulder.

"Yeah—I could sure use a beer, and I also earned a couple of bucks the other day—with my horn no less, and it's high time we did something about that whole cheeseburgers with the lady friend sort of a gig."

Duke nodded, considering the implications. Amy pulled her purse open, as this was just the sort of anecdotal data she was looking for when she finally went to write up her dissertation. It went towards the state of mind and certain environmental factors for the lifelong bachelor-male.

Poor Mark. Such a sweet guy. He was considerate, very intelligent, polite and thoughtful. He was struggling against the most adverse circumstances certainly she had ever heard of, although not unaware that some people faced challenges.

This was all so up-close and personal.

She was getting some pretty good material.

He wasn't bad in bed, either.

Chapter Twelve

It was full dark but the city was all lit up. A medium pizza of eight slices was going for two-eighty just up the street. Amy insisted on pitching in and Duke, breaking off on his own mission, said he'd pick up some beer. They found themselves back at Mark's pad as Duke insisted on calling it.

Mark rolled his eyes at that one, as he and Amy shared an intimate little dance in the kitchen.

Duke was perched on the window ledge, examining the worst of Mark's two chairs.

"Hmn." Every joint was loose and the one spindle kept falling out.

There didn't seem to be too much he could do about that and so he set it aside again.

Amy came out with a plate for him. She had her own plate, and Mark could eat out of the box.

"Three each for the boys and two for me."

Duke had found some cheap brew on sale and had bought a six-pack.

Mark came out with bottles and a nod for Duke.

"There's still that blueberry pie in there too."

"Ah, shit, yeah. I forgot about that."

"What's up with that Maude, anyways?"

Duke shrugged.

For the moment, everything was groovy.

***

Mark had volunteered. Being alone for a few minutes gave him time to think. Duke had proffered more beer money, hiding out from Maude as he put it. The store was a few blocks away and Amy and Duke were fast becoming friends of a sort. Duke was a lifelong bachelor, after all. Not being particularly smart, he'd walked right into it. When Mark left, they were just beginning the questionnaire.

He was just moseying along, not paying much attention.

"Hey, man. What's in the bag?"

"Huh?"

"Gimme all your money."

The bright blade flashed in front of his eyes.

"Hey. I know you. You're in five-oh-four."

The kid's mouth opened.

"Shit."

"Yep. Number five-oh-four, ninety-nine Easy Street. Yeah—I would say so. Shit."

Mark stood his ground and the knife went away.

"Sorry, man. Just forget about it, okay?" Apparently homicide was too much for him.

Not for five or ten bucks and a bag of unknown contents, a loaf of bread and a bunch of carrots as likely as anything.

"Sure. No problem."

The kid turned, wordlessly walking away down the cul-de-sac.

That one led nowhere, but there was always straight up. Mark sure as hell wasn't going after him.

Kids these days. What are you going to do about it.

Mark wondered whether he should get himself a knife, or if that was just an over-reaction. It was his mistake to cut through. Coming out onto a main street, it was thronged with people and he felt safe again.

There was a big difference between night and day. The pot made you too mellow—and that made you a little too careless. Throw in a couple of beers and you had yourself a pretty good buzz. The noise picked up and he had to momentarily jostle his way upstream.

People were carrying signs, all busy going someplace else. There must be a happening somewhere.

Stop the war.

He wondered about people's heads sometimes.

A few cardboard signs weren't going to stop anything.

***

The weather the next day was bright and warm. Mark was feeling good so he got right into action.

"Oh, boy."

Mark had transferred on the bus, waited with hundreds of other people at bus stops, and fought his way through crowds of pedestrians. When you were in a hurry, you noticed things, such as the number of people who turned ninety degrees and bolted across your bow for no particular reason. It was hard to believe fat people could move so quickly. With their instincts aroused, perhaps they had sensed pork chops on sale or something, but they were pretty darned quick.

There was no real accounting for certain types of human behaviour.

Finding the place was simple enough. He chalked it up as a small victory. Getting in the double doors and finding a crowd of three hundred, many of them with small children, half of them clearly destitute or retarded or homeless by the look of them, wasn't quite what he was expecting. But then, he'd had no idea of what to expect.

There were a dozen wickets but only three of them were open. That much was eminently predictable.

One public employee was going up and down the line-ups, asking people something. If only he could hear what they were saying.

As one might expect in such cases, they would never make it this far, not in a million years. He wouldn't mind asking a question or two. Sure enough, the lady glanced up at a wall-clock, turned and headed back behind the partition.

If only he had a clue.

The lady in front of him had swollen ankles, and knee-high stockings that didn't quite make it to the bottom of the dress, in her particular case, unfashionably above the knee. Burdened with bags, a purse, clothes, bottles and a bassinette for the smaller of two children, she was looking at a pretty long wait.

"What's this lineup for? Ma'am?"

"You got your number?" She held up a small tear-off ticket.

"Ah—no."

She nodded at the next line.

"You've got to get your number. They'll call you."

Someone was yelling even as she spoke.

"Number one-eighty-seven. One-eighty-seven..."

In the short time he'd been there, four more people had come in. Knowing more than him obviously, three of them had joined the back of the proper line. The fourth one was headed that way.

Shit.

Mark shuffled over and attached himself to the back of that queue, which to be fair seemed to be moving at least. The front doors opened and more humanity adrift dragged knapsacks, suitcases, children and drooling grandparents into the mix. Of course they couldn't just let you tear off our own number—too many cheats, apparently, and so they had to have a worker with nothing to do but tear off tickets and hand them to people. It struck Mark that people might tear off ten tickets at a time, holding spots in the line for people that weren't even there.

"One-eighty-eight. One-eighty-eight..."

"Thank you." He was already up beside her again.

The lady looked at him incuriously.

"Sure, no problem." Bending painfully, she lifted the bassinette, the kid sleeping peacefully inside, and dragged it two feet further ahead as her line shifted.

"Looks like we might be here a while."

Unexpectedly she turned and smiled.

"Yes. I think you might be right." There was just the hint of the islands in her accent.

Mark had worked, traveled, played and lived for weeks at a time with an ensemble group that included blacks. There were some pretty strong Caribbean and South American influences in jazz these days.

His easy nature had somehow conveyed itself to her, in a town that was as bigoted as anywhere else and cruel for no reason at all sometimes.

It was a big city and it took all kinds to make a world.

Maybe it was just indifferent.

He nodded as his own lineup lurched in the general direction of the grim, matronly worker behind her battered kiosk. That one would look right at home under a hairnet, gutting fish on a line somewhere. She would take grim satisfaction in such work.

Someone in the line to his right spoke, turning and giving him a quick look. He had expressive, dark eyes, with clear whites all around, an intelligent-looking man with a bad head twitch.

"It's not usually this bad. It's Friday, and if people don't get in, it's another two days of waiting." A short man with huge shoulders, big arms and spindly little legs, at least this one owned a watch. "We're looking at an hour, an hour and a half, anyways."

Mark snorted.

"It's not like I have any other appointments."

That one drew a laugh or two.

"Are you looking for work?" This guy was also in the next line.

Tall and cadaverous, he had a frizzy red afro and a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off and stuff drawn on the back of it in coloured ink. Mark couldn't quite make out what message was enshrined there. Some sort of skull with feathered wings going off and up to left and right. It was all Mark could tell without further study, which, ultimately, didn't seem all that worth it. One man's pride and joy was another's shitty coat with a badly-drawn design.

"Yeah—of course I am." There wasn't much point in going on, although the line lurched ahead once more.

Someone came out and yelled another number, and you wanted to pay attention—apparently someone had missed the call. Someone else had been called ahead of them, or thought they should have been. There was a labourious examination of tickets, with quite the cussing-match going on at the head of line one as they sorted it out in front of the bored attendant. Someone had to back down, usually the nicer one, and sure enough the louder lady got her way. Theoretically she might have been sent to the end of the line.

"So what do you do, sir?"

That was terribly polite. This guy had the big nose and the rheumy eyes of a wino.

What, is there something different about me?

Maybe they know each other.

"Ah—I play the trumpet."

More laughs, and admiring looks, as if he was really a comedian rather than a musician.

All one could do was to smile and bask in it.

Maybe they just recognized each other—not exactly the same thing as knowing each other. They were all in the same boat. It was written all over them if one cared to look.

He'd always had a streak of empathy, more as he grew older. But at times like this, a man suddenly realized just how lucky he was. Some of these people, and he was one of them now, but some of them didn't stand a chance in hell. Not a chance. You could tell just by looking at them.

Not with a schnozz like that, Buddy.

"So, what's your name, man? You know Benny Karpov's lookin' for a brass-man?"

"Huh?" Mark's mouth opened at this most unexpected of sallies. "I'm Mark Jones—"

The blind guy in the next line gave a start and those big black glasses swung to nail him right in the gizzard.

"Did you say Mark Jones?" That round, chin-up sort of a face, head cocked to listen, really listen, lit up. "You know, I got Hometown Doggie, but the thing's scratched and I hardly play it anymore. Damn shame, too, 'cause that is one good tune—and the horn is fan-fucking-tastic."

The guy tapped his white cane on the ground as if to emphasize each word and syllable. He'd been to the Nam, or at least looked the part. His army jacket was tattered and worn, sagging in the pockets from whatever heavy load he had in there.

"I mean that, I really do. I dance to it, you know—all of it, all the real good ones, anyways."

Mark was blushing, which somehow proved his claim.

"Well, uh, thank you." The line moved again, and they all went with it, a wave of humanity moving in pulses.

Mark tried not to smile, but it got away from him. The man was certainly entitled to an opinion...who the heck am I to argue.

"Hey, I remember that one." The guy with the afro was impressed.

"Was that you, Buddy?" The blind guy had this disbelieving grin. "I mean seriously? Motha-fawk..."

"Ah, yeah, uh. I did the horn on that one. And a few other songs." None of them had ever really made it big, a couple of weeks of airplay in the bigger cities and then their one big song just died, taking the B-side and another couple of singles with it. "I'm not working right now, though."

Jazz wasn't so cool anymore, and people were listening to other things these days. Rock was going nuts and country enjoying a resurgence, at least in the number of stations on the air. Bible music was a constant standby, if only a person could stand listening to it. Then there was the real hillbilly stuff, and then there was the saccharine sweetness of the more popular crooners. Which was harsh. Maybe they were just inoffensive. Mom and Pop could listen to Perry Como without getting uptight.

There were no strong emotions, nothing there except a sappy romanticism. It was safe to say that Mark had never seen the attraction. It did it for some folks and that was just the truth about music.

Mark stood there and endured their curiosity.

"Holy, shit, man. Wow."

One man, with naked stumps sticking out where his lower legs had once been, sat in a wheelchair nearer to the front of the line.

Blind people, deaf people, retarded people, crazy people, bag ladies, dope addicts, life-long criminals, or maybe just losers—they were all there—and so was Mark Jones, violent, paranoid, delusional, dangerous and out of control. Yes, he was a real mental case: a horn player, out of work and down on his luck. It was just one more sensation for this group. And yet he was good, too. That was what was so unbelievable. And if it could happen to him...a fucking dude like that, why, it could happen to anybody.

Just as it had happened to them.

It helped to get them through their day, something to marvel at.

You?

You, man?

What are you doing here?

Compared to some of these people, he was almost too well dressed. He was almost too intelligent-looking. He could honestly say that about himself. And yet it had all come down to this.

Some guy in the lineup plays the horn and they'd even heard that one song. They would forget just as quickly, and for him it was perhaps better that way. Nice thing about the hospital—no one had ever heard of him, or if so, they had forgottten it in the busy-ness of their own drama.

Please forget me as quickly as possible.

If only he wasn't so sane. It might be easier if you were really nuts, and just sort of accepted yourself. It might be better if you just accepted your lot in life and basically gave up any hope of ever having anything better, to just let go and let the current sweep you away. The real trouble was when you wanted or expected something better out of life.

That was the real problem.

Some of us just want too much—and it all cost money or something, and that was what made the world go around.

The price of a free lunch was your dignity, and maybe more besides. It cost you your independence and made you dependent on a system that ultimately, didn't much care what happened to you in the end.

They gave you a number and you became a statistic.

The fact was, if he had any choice at all, he never would have gone there—he never would have been able to bring himself to do it. It was just something that had to be accepted, at least in the short term. Hell, even the cops had told him to go there.

To some, begging must have seemed natural. Their lives were pre-ordained: this was fate at work and this was who they were destined to be.

What makes me so special?

What right do I have to contradict the word, or the will of God, for crying out loud?

And yet he always had, hadn't he?

All those churches, all those social services. Clearly they, at least, saw a need.

There were the food banks, the soup kitchens, the various hand-outs, socks and coats and drop-in centres and running to and fro—lining up here and there to get what was coming to you. A free turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas and twenty-pound blocks of cheese from the government.

A free coffee here, a warming centre or cooling centre there. A homeless shelter, a woman's shelter, shelters for runaway kids. A church basement in the middle of the night, cots lined up in rows and the smell of unwashed human bodies. People coughing, people talking in their sleep and people lying awake wondering what might happen to them and where they might turn next.

In that sense, it was a lot like ancient Rome. Bread and circuses, nothing left unaccounted-for.

The state had all the power. The state took responsibility for everything, and administered it badly.

"Number one-ninety-seven...one-ninety-seven."

If nothing else, it was going to be educational. He wondered just how much weight Detective O'Hara's name really carried in such a place, in such a situation.

We are all products of our environment. Mark Jones understood what that meant a little better now.

At least he knew what he was talking about now.

Maybe he didn't have a hope in hell either. And yet—and yet. Of all those people, he probably had the best chance of all.

At least he had lived another way, once upon a time.

Things really could be different.

Chapter Thirteen

To Mark's surprise, the thing went without a hitch, although O'Hara's name might have had something to do with it. This was especially true without a rent receipt from Olivetti. The other thing was that if they caught him in a lie, he'd be in a heap of shit. That's the one thing he was getting out of this. They gave you a cheque and that somehow gave them the right to judge every little move you made. The very least they would do was to dock him until any overpayment was caught up. The social liason worker at Bellevue had helped him get the first cheque, or he'd still be up there in Rochester—living on the streets, no doubt.

"Are you looking for work?"

"Yes, of course—"

Hell, it might even be true.

"And you say your landlord's dead?"

"Ah, yes, ma'am. It's in the papers—Roy Olivetti—"

The bored look on her face convinced him to stop there.

"Okay, sir, if your other cheque turns up, don't cash it please. Tear it up, or return it to your nearest welfare office..."

"Ah...sure. Okay."

It was like they could care less what the story was. They were covering their own asses, nothing more. He was out and about again in an hour and a quarter, which didn't seem so bad looking back.

Even the bus ride was different when you had a little money coming to you.

My second check in less than a week.

An acquired skill, and why not?

Why not?

A huge weight had been lifted, and why not? All around, you could see the street-walkers, the wandering children, loitering about at high noon on a weekday. He found himself looking for the more obvious homeless types, shuffling along, same clothes every day, going nowhere. The city had its share of the lost.

The time would drag heavy.

Bad as it was, he at least could sit on the floor in his own living room.

He broke down and cashed his cheque at the liquore store, at hardly any percentage at all. Duke might appreciate someone else buying once in a while, and the truth was that Mark owed him.

He owed Duke something more than just ten dollars and a few cold ones, and that bill would have to be paid at some point.

It would be the right thing to do, and the sooner the better.

He still needed a bank account—he could put five bucks in there, and there sure as hell wouldn't be a hold on that.

The pavements were hot and wet in the sun as he stepped out onto the street again. The traffic never abated except for a couple of hours before dawn. Even then it only became sparse, never going away entirely. Cops, ambulance workers, firemen, garbagemen and taxi-drivers took it in shifts. If a sewer-line broke, the city boys would be out there at three a.m. to fix it. He dashed across the street in the middle of a block during a break. It was amazing how bad his lungs had become—either in the last four years or the last four days. One or the other. It was kind of hard to say.

His present life couldn't be compared to his previous one—it was too radical a change.

There was no one around when he got home. There was a note from Amy. Amy had gone off to school for a while, where there were certain resources as she put it. Duke did not put in an appearance, and Mark considered going up there but rejected it. He'd had more joints in a week than he'd had in his entire previous lifetime and it was all too quickly becoming a habit. Maybe even an easy out, and maybe the so-called experts knew something about it after all. To depend too much upon any kind of dope was to enslave yourself, and maybe that was it. More than anything Mark wanted, needed, his freedom.

He wanted to wash himself clear of dependence. Any sort of bondage, really.

They might not be able to imprison the mind, but they could sure as hell imprison the body.

He was getting really good at second-guessing things.

Duke had given him a couple of old shirts. They hung a bit loose on him, but if he wasn't working, what difference did it make? The only problem was the shirts smelled an awful lot like Duke. Duke, who admittedly hadn't been showering much lately, in a rather forlorn attempt to deter Maude. Maude, as it turned out, was bound, bent and determined. It was surprising how much, and how quickly Duke had opened up to a perfect stranger...why, no one could really say.

That was the hell of it. Sooner or later you were going to talk to someone.

Amy had brought along a bag of pillow-cases, tea-towels that she said she and her room-mate, a girl named Sandy, didn't need anymore. For two bucks, he had curtains for the front window.

Upon closer examination at home, they seemed cheap and threadbare and the smell of tobacco was strong. That seemed a bit steep, actually. He might have ripped himself off at the Sally-Ann thrift shop. He'd picked up some old surplus dungaree pants, Navy-issue, not quite jeans but they would at least let him wash the ones he had on. It was either that or wander the building in his underwear or his suit, whichever he preferred. From what he'd seen in the building so far, the underpants would arouse less comment.

How much would a laundry basket cost? You had to follow that chain of logic, new versus used, (but could you even find a used laundry basket, and how much time would that take?) A new one was really only a dollar-forty-four at K-Mart. All you had to do was watch for the promotion.

This wasn't exactly new stuff. His mother had made a science of such things. She'd turned it into a full-time job. She didn't earn money, she saved it. That was almost as good. An important contribution to the family. That and cooking tasty, nutritious meals, and keeping a spotless house.

It was all about labour and time, versus keeping a little cash money in your pocket, for those unpredictable little emergencies.

Like needing a laundry basket. The thoughts went around and around sometimes. Theoretically he had all the time in the world. The problem with that was that it meant having all the time in the world to suffer. Or maybe just to think. Or maybe just to shop for bargains.

He had all the time in the world to think about how to save a fucking dime.

Maybe thinking was suffering, and maybe that explained why so many people couldn't bring themselves to do it. To think was to confront oneself and one's life.

The trip down through the building was another little slice of life.

He carried his laundry down in one of his new if slightly-fuzzy pillowcases. The smell, the humidity and the sound of humming machines met him at the top of the basement stairs.

"Hey, man." A bored man of about twenty-five, unshaven and wearing a white undershirt and gym shorts, looked up from a back-issue of Playboy that was falling apart at the seams.

Mark wondered about wandering the building in slippers, but more power to him.

"Hey." Mark had seen the guy with a wife and kid. "How's it going."

He'd seen the guy going out first thing in the morning and standing on the opposite sidewalk with a lunch bucket and work boots, the obligatory insulated vest and wearing an orange hard hat even at that early hour.

"Hey." That was some answer.

Imagine wearing something like that on the bus. Every day, for the rest of your life...lanky blond hair and the bloodshot eyes. There was a clear difference between uncombed and never combed.

Each to his own, eh.

There were three washing machines and six dryers, all lined up along against the crumbling side wall of the building. There was an unbalanced load going around and around in one washer. One of the dryers was going.

Pink and frilly things, bloomers perhaps, tumbled and fell past the glass-fronted door. A brassiere stuck to the glass for a moment, swirling majestically, weightless in reflective black space. As they watched, there was a click and a thunk and then the rotation slowed and stopped.

The bra went for one final tumble and then it plummeted back into anonymity.

A moment of anti-climax.

"Shit. That's the most action I seen in a long time, Mister."

Mark grinned, although he'd heard that one before.

The guy tossed aside the magazine. Mark wasn't quite sure if he was talking about the magazine or the load in the dryer.

"Ah. Married then?"

The guy laughed.

"Yeah. I guess you could say that."

Maybe they were just shacked up. Mark had read all about it, without having much of an opinion. Why should he care? But of course there were people who would, and care very deeply indeed.

The neighbours for example. The church-ladies of St. Louis would care very deeply indeed.

"So."

"Yeah. So. I'm Mark, three-oh-one."

The guy nodded.

"Okay." That was it.

It occurred to the guy that he ought to say something more.

"Fred. Two-oh-four." He cleared his throat.

Nothing more came out.

"Ah."

He'd been accepted, perhaps even validated.

The guy's eyes slid over and he gave Mark another look. It was a compliment.

"You're one of the quiet ones."

Mark nodded.

Yup.

The guy nodded.

Mark had just been approved-of.

The dryer came to a stop and the guy took an empty laundry basket over and began unloading it.

Mark found an empty machine and began loading it, in a process that would probably never end.

Somewhere in the world, someone was always doing laundry.

***

"Hey, man. I hate to bother you—" Mark had totally forgotten that you needed soap to do laundry. "I'll give you fifty cents for a little soap."

His hand was in his pocket, fishing around. Coins jingled suggestively.

Applied psychology...

"Aw, shit, don't worry about it, man." The guy handed over a box of Tide.

The guy let him sprinkle a generous amount of powder over his load, now all set to go.

It was probably a good thing, as Mark only had so much small change and the machines were coin-operated. That was an interesting observation, what with Olivetti dead. Sooner or later, someone, Sylvio maybe, had to show up to service the machines. He knew that from watching the concessionaires at the Institute, where there was a line-up of vending machines in the long main hallway, down in the basement service areas of the hospital. The really interesting thing about the vending machines, was that you could snag a pop or even a free sandwich if you really knew what you were doing and had the place to yourself for a moment. It took a long arm and some manual dexterity. There were metal boxes in there and they were only going to hold so much money. Those, you couldn't get to.

"Okay, man, see you around."

"I owe you a cup of soap."

With a tired smile, the guy shook his head, raised his eyebrows and headed for the door, laundry basket under his arm. Too many other things to contend with, a familiar attitude.

Mark nodded his thanks and the guy left him alone with his thoughts and the machines.

Without a watch, Mark had no idea of how long it took to do a wash. He would have to do the time. Otherwise, he might have wandered back upstairs, where there was nothing else to do in any case. In more prosperous days, he'd worn suits and ties, always having more than one change of costume when out on the road. They used Chinese laundries and dry cleaners when they had a longer gig or a layoff between gigs. The rest of the time, jeans and a leather jacket, a couple of half-decent shirts, would usually suffice. In more prosperous days, things were different. That was usually the way of things. He'd had it pretty good, looking back. He'd always had good shoes, for example. It was funny how the way you dressed affected the way you felt.

The ball cap wasn't exactly his style either, but it did help to blend in sometimes. He'd taken so many things for granted. All of that was gone now. Things were different now.

Over the years—a wonderful song title.

It was only now that he had learned to appreciate things. It was about time. If you could do it. It had taken something like twenty years. With the load slightly unbalanced, the roar of the washer drowned out all external noises. He had been learning a lot and looking forward to a pretty bright future when they grabbed him. They'd taken four years of his life away from him, and for what?

For what?

Nothing.

Nothing.

He was taking it one day at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time. His face was all stiff with negative thoughts.

This was no good.

Getting up and having a look, he determined that the washing machine was on spin-dry, getting close to the end of the cycle. People with kids and families must spend days in here, whole Saturdays doing nothing but laundry. He could only imagine trying to keep squalling kids under control and out of trouble. Keeping them occupied and out from underfoot.

So Amy was conducting a study of life-long bachelors. It was an interesting thought, that was for sure, but as to who the hell would actually care was a very good question. Life was a series of tough questions, flying in close formation. Most of the time, there were no easy answers, not any more. As a single man, he was always going to have a different perspective. He'd never have kids or grandkids, for one thing. That sort of thing seemed to tame a man.

There really was something different about him.

He wondered if anyone had ever said that before.

The deep, thumping rythm changed to something lighter and faster and it seemed as if they were onto the rinse cycle.

***

Once again, quiet reigned as Mark put money, one nickel at a time, into the massive dryer unit.

Olivetti must have had dreams of operating a laundromat. It looked like he had bought a few units at a bankruptcy auction, and he might have gotten a pretty good price, but the washers and dryers were all heavy-duty. It was straight commercial stuff, not like his mother's machine back home.

With three washers on the left, six dryers on the right, a concrete floor, overhead fluorescents, there wasn't much to look at. He was a bit bored with reading the cardboard signs taped to the back wall.

Unattended laundry may be removed.

Not responsible for theft or damage.

Do not put oily materials in the machines.

Report a violation at this number...

The wooden bench just inside the door was getting hard on the backside. Maybe next time he'd bring a book. There was a used bookstore just around the corner and they were going pretty cheap.

Not knowing how long a load would take to dry, he supposed it was possible to leave and come back, but when? A nickel bought ten minutes of drying time, and if he didn't have enough time on the clock, his laundry would be sitting there wet when it could have been drying. The trouble was, even with his replacement welfare money, those nickels and dimes were precious if not exactly priceless. He didn't want to put too many in the machine, either. If Amy or Duke or anyone showed up, they'd never think of looking for him down here. He felt curiously cut-off, like he had disappeared off the face of the Earth, however briefly. His ankles and his hips had some residual sensation, from all the unaccustomed walking he'd been doing. He just couldn't get comfortable.

Mark wandered around the room, wondering when he would see Amy again. He had her number, and if he didn't find the guts pretty soon, somebody else undoubtedly would.

You couldn't rely on on the unspoken. If only he knew what to say.

A blowsy woman of indeterminate age smashed the door open, using her laundry basket as a battering-ram of sorts. She stopped dead on seeing him. The shapeless sack of a dress, the immense bosom and tired, greying hair pretty much said it all. Five-foot five or so, she must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. She was also wearing slippers, shabby, shapeless ones that dictated an odd shuffle, otherwise they would simply fall off. That must have been dangerous on the stairs.

"Hello. I'm Mark. I'm in three-oh-one."

She bit her lip, nodding. She set her heavy basket down on the end of the central table and began pulling out heaps and heaps of what was obviously children's clothing.

Mark wandered down the aisle, noting the last dryer in line still had a load in it. The little red lights on the clock showed that there was still time on it but the dryer was stopped for some reason.

On some impulse, seeing what he thought was a red plaid work shirt and faded grey work pants amidst the pile in there, he hit the button and was sort of gratified when it started up. Sooner or later they would be back for it.

The lady at the other end, busy stuffing whites into the first washer, looked up in annoyance as a hell of a thump came from the machine and Mark, part way back down the other side of the room, turned to fix it or see what the problem was. It wasn't his load, and that was one heck of a racket.

Shit.

He shouldn't have gotten involved. He sighed, reaching for the latch.

Someone was going to walk in at that exact moment and accuse him of theft.

Laundry theft.

With his record, that was probably good for about five years in the federal penitentiary.

Pulling the door open, reaching in and grabbing onto something heavy and meaty, this time it was Mark's turn to scream. That dead face, those accusing eyes were attached to somebody.

That someone appeared to be very dead.

The lady took a few steps, as Mark stood there gasping, and then she was screaming too. By this time Mark was silent, sort of contemplating his luck.

Oh, boy.

Here we go again.

There was a dead guy in the dryer and that was just the truth.

Chapter Fourteen

There was a certain inevitability about going into the cells this time. He was practically getting on a first-name basis with the guys on the intake desk. He was quite the old hand now.

They seized all of his clothes, his wallet and ID, and made him take a shower. Putting on the prison garb was the usual thing. Having been worn by a thousand men before, the fabric felt surprising soft and clean. It might have been washed a thousand times as well. He wondered what fabric softener they were using.

Not being allowed socks and underwear, dressing didn't take very long. He'd always hated rubber flip-flops, which was probably why the prison system administrators had chosen them.

There was nothing quite like being chained to a dozen other felons and hustled down a long, dark corridor, echoing with voices in spite of not being allowed to talk that much. People were being shoved on some arbitrary whim into this cell or that. There was something inevitable about being arrested long after breakfast, arriving shortly after mealtime and spending half a day in a holding cell during the processing.

As soon as he got into a cell, the air rife with vomit, sweat and alcohol. O'Hara was there looking for him.

"Hi, Mark, how are you doing?"

"Very well, and thank you for asking, sir. And how are you this fine day?"

"Okay, maybe we deserve that. But you have to admit that you seem to discover an awful lot of dead bodies..."

"Oh, I don't know."

The guys in the cell behind him laughed at that one. The guard unlatched the door and brought him out. They took him off a short distance. The guard departed for his post and O'Hara whipped out his ID and some other papers. They stood a few yards from the guardroom, the front doors, and freedom.

"Mark. There is some obvious connection between all of these victims. The dead hooker—Mister Olivetti, and now our latest victim, Sylvio Rossi. It just seems like an awful lot of coincidences."

"Oh, is that who that was?"

There was something about the tone and O'Hara grimaced. He supposed it was understandable, and he had heard worse—plenty worse.

"So what did you know about him?"

"I've never actually met him, only heard him outside my door. He was vacuuming."

O'Hara signed for Mark in their bloody book. The guard departed for his post and parts unknown.

"Did you arrest the fat lady?"

"Ah, no, Mark. We didn't."

O'Hara took him out of the holding area.

"Because honestly, I found something just a little bit shifty about that one..."

O'Hara had dragged him, a tight grip on his upper arm but no cuffs, up to his office on the third floor.

"In my opinion, she done it for sure."

O'Hara smiled a tight little smile, patting his jacket pocket. They sat down like gentlemen.

"Aw, shit." O'Hara pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and snapped a lighter for him. "Sorry about that. Next time I'll try and have a cold beer waiting for you. Right, Mark?"

Mark sighed.

"I will be looking forward to that."

O'Hara gave a hard little chuckle, not taking his eyes off him. Medical examiners had been mistaken before, and killers came in all shapes and sizes.

Mark sucked the harsh smoke in, wondering if he was going to cough. He might want to get used to it. If things kept up like this, he might as well start anyways. It sure as hell couldn't do any harm.

Traffic rumbled past down in the street below. Pigeons clucked and cooed on the window ledge behind Mark's head. If O'Hara didn't mind, it was no concern of his.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. I can't say I know what it's like, Mark, because I don't. I've never been arrested, I've never been in a jail. I've often thought it might be good to have, ah, something like that as part of a police officer's training. Have 'em spend one night in the drunk tank, and you'll probably never look at your job quite the same way again."

"Ah, yes, sir."

"No doubt you're wondering where this is going."

Mark shrugged carelessly. As long as he's sweating, let him keep going. It would be nice to see O'Hara squirm.

"Want to know something funny? I've never shot anyone. I have never killed anyone, Mark."

"Argh." Mark ground his teeth.

"I'll get to the point, Mark."

O'Hara sighed, sat back, sucked at his own cigarette, and regarded Mark calmly for a minute.

"So what are you trying to tell me."

Mark's stomach was gnawing away at his backbone and it seemed as if O'Hara had carefully calculated as to how best Mark Jones might somehow be absent at meal-time...every God-damned time.

What was carefully implied but clearly unstated in his tone was simple.

You miserable son of a fucking bitch...

I'm going to get you if it's the last thing I ever do.

Sir.

As if reading his mind, O'Hara grinned. Tentatively, but an upwards lip-stretch it undoubtedly was.

"Okay, Mark. Sylvio died approximately twenty-four hour to thirty-six hours before you found him. What that means..."

Mark sat up.

"Ha!"

O'Hara nodded soberly.

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

O'Hara flushed slightly.

"Er, yes, Mark. You were in custody at the time of the killing. Which means, one would suspect, that you would probably be wondering where your pants are...right about now."

"Ha!"

"Anyways, I was wondering if you had gotten around to the welfare office? I suspect you did, as you had a bit of cash on you when you were brought in. Ah...a fair amount, actually." O'Hara shook his head. "There's no better alibi than the one provided by the cops themselves, when you think about it."

He grinned at that one.

"If it's any consolation."

"Can I go home now?"

"Sure, Mark. But there's just one thing I wanted to say—"

"Like, fuck you, pal." Mark's face was flushed with blood, and yet the cops were simply running true to form.

They had to go by the book, and he was the nearest thing to a suspect they had. He understood that much.

Sooner or later, they'd make something stick, and it was all so God-damned unfair.

"I'm sorry, Mark, I really am. But our uniformed officers are just doing their job." He bit his lip and then went on. "Honestly, if you had a good lawyer, you could probably get some money out of the city for this. The problem, for a guy like you, is that any half-ass attorney wants five hundred or so just to start a file. There are court fees, various expenses and they got you coming and going. The trouble is that your welfare cheque hardly even covers the rent, eh?"

Mark sat there fuming.

"Look, you're a convicted felon. And you keep finding bodies all over the place. You have to admit that."

"Sure. Yeah. Sometimes it's best just to forget it." Mark sighed, deeply. "Look. If you don't mind my asking—"

"Yes?"

"What killed him, anyways?" Mark hadn't seen any blood, no wounds or trauma in his quick look.

"Ah. Cause of death. His neck was broken. Obviously, we're treating it as suspicious. It's possible we're supposed to think he climbed in there himself, and somehow clsoed it from the inside, but there's just no way. The thing won't start up unless the door is closed. Probably homicide. It's hard to see it as an accident. There are one or two bumps on the head as well. Most likely incurred at the time of death. The way I see it, someone grabbed him from behind, gave his head a quick twist and then they stuffed him in the dryer...he was still warm and kicking and he probably banged his noggin on the way into the dryer. It would have been best to kill him in the basement. The killer might have heard someone coming down the stairs or whatever. Who knows, we might actually stand a chance on this one..."

The problem with the laundry room was that the basement had a utility room, usually locked, but Sylvio's keys were missing along with his wallet. There was also a back door at the end of the hallway with a panic-bar type of latch. While theoretically, people in the alley couldn't get in, not without a key, anyone that wanted to could get out. There were times when people propped the door open with a rock or even a comb or a pencil or something. The police were investigating. So far they had nothing.

"Ah. Okay."

There was a long silence as O'Hara studied the man in front of him. Mark stared right back, face long and hard, that bottom jaw forward as far as it would go.

"Anyways, I really am sorry. Hopefully that helps."

O'Hara got up, and extending a hand, indicated the door. Mark put his head down, kept his mouth firmly shut, and stood.

It was time to go looking for those all-important pants.

Chapter Fifteen

Duke was nowhere around when he got home.

He'd tried Amy's number from a phone booth not far from the cop-shop. Getting no response, he tried again after getting off the bus, at the booth down the street. This time her room-mate Sandy answered, but didn't know where she was or when she would be back. Taking a message, she was cool and a bit short with Mark. He had the impression that her and Amy weren't exactly the best of friends. They were merely splitting the rent. The apartment was rent-controlled, otherwise they never would have been able to afford it. They'd sublet it from someone going overseas but planning to return. The lady might have been busy or had someone with her, he conceded. She didn't owe him anything, that was clear.

Amy didn't owe him anything either.

The front room smelled a bit like dry rot or something, and he opened the windows to let some air in. He was lucky to find a couple of beers in the fridge and there was bacon and eggs. A nice, simple meal, he put four strips of bacon in his cast-iron frying pan and set the heat low. Adding chopped onion, he quickly sliced a small potato very thin and put that in the pan beside the bacon. He would have to watch it. Without a kitchen table he was just hanging about, beer in hand, checking out his rooms and wondering what the hell came next in his sorry little life.

He stood at the windows, watching the action on the street below.

Things were beginning to sizzle...

The cops would have spoken to everyone in the building, anyone who would open the door, essentially. They would have no way of knowing who Amy was. The thoughts of them giving her a rough time were not pleasant. Duke didn't know her last name as far as Mark knew, athough it might have came up in conversation when he was out. Duke, on the other hand, would be avoiding the cops like the plague. Mark had this terrible feeling, the feeling that he really ought to be doing something.

He'd always hated being pushed.

Pushing back, especially when it was cops, might not be a very good idea. In fact, it was a very bad idea.

It was a good question, as to whether beer would dampen that spark of anger or fan it higher.

There was only one way to find out. Tipping the bottle back, he had a good swig as the bacon began to hiss and then to crackle.

It was going to be a while yet.

***

Mark was just standing at the kitchen counter, forking the first bite of scrambled eggs into his gaping maw when there was a quick rap at the door and then Duke tried the handle and came in.

"Holy, shit, man. You are one hot property."

Mark gagged a bit, as he'd put a lot of ketchup and vinegar on his golden-brown home fries.

"What do you mean by that?" Mark had bigger problems right about now, including his stomach, and there was, unfortunately, only one beer left in the fridge.

"Huh."

Duke stood there in the kitchen doorway, watching Mark, methodically and in a determined fashion, desperately trying to get a meal into his gut before something else bad happened to him.

He was standing, eating off of a plate sitting on the counter beside the kitchen sink.

"Okay."

Mark rolled his eyes over and gave him a long look.

"I'll, uh, just wait in the living room. Oh." Duke pulled a bottle of what looking like glue out of the back pocket of his jeans. "You'll have to find another stick for the front window."

Turning, he left Mark to eat in peace.

After a minute, his voice came from the outer room.

"Mark."

"Yeah."

"A buddy of mine has an old TV. He's getting a new one, a big colour set. He says you can have it."

Mark snorted.

There had to be more to it than that. A kitchen table would have really been something, but he could live without it for a little while longer. A dresser for the bedroom, a couple of rugs or some carpeting would be nice. These were bad thoughts when you were already down. Everything just seemed so impossible.

A free TV.

Sure.

All you have to do is carry it five miles across the city and then lug it up the stairs. Plug it in and see if it works.

Any minute now, they'd trip over another body and then he'd just be in a whole heap of trouble.

"I've got your laundry, incidentally. It's upstairs."

Oh, yeah—the laundry.

Mark sagged a bit at the knees. He hadn't been eating well, he hadn't been sleeping well, and he'd been wound up for quite some time. Sooner or later a man had to crash and burn...three more bites and he was done.

"Thanks, Duke."

***

That was the funny thing about food. It took a while to kick in. The beer, on the other hand, seemed to work instantly.

Mark came out after washing up. He sat on the far window ledge, watching as Duke glued the joints of the second chair. Mark had decided on using a wooden spoon to hold up the window, and a warm breeze promised much for the season to come. What it might be like up here in mid-July was another question.

"So. As you can imagine, I've got one or two things on my plate."

Duke nodded, pleased with his handiwork. The chair he was on was a little more solid. He set the repaired chair down on a few spread-out newspapers, watching to see how much glue might ooze out of the joints. With a stool, he could have put it properly upside-down. Chairs with backs, they would be laying on an extreme angle.

So for, so good...

Duke looked up.

"Your number one priority is you and Amy."

Mark wondered about that. The week-old newspaper gave him an idea though.

"What was the name of that dead hooker?"

Duke shrugged.

"How the hell would I know?"

Mark nodded. It might not have even made the papers. While everyone in the building would have talked about it, no one would know anything at all—which never seemed to stop the gossip.

If it had been in the paper, the lady's name might have been withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Mark couldn't help but to think all of this was connected. Duke was right about one thing—Amy must have been wondering about him, and his part in all of this. His heart sank. Of course—she's avoiding me.

Dead hookers, dead landlords, dead building superintendents.

And it's all connected to me?

Really?

But how?

There was that spark of anger again.

Like fuck it is, you stupid bastards...

"There must be a news-stand that keeps older editions for a few days." He told Duke what he had in mind—information, any sort of information at all, might be helpful.

"Why don't you try the library?" Duke had the other, better chair up-ended, judiciously squeezing out glue and letting it suck itself into the loose joints.

Mark's mouth opened and then closed again.

Of course.

Why didn't I think of that?

They'd even had one at Bellevue, an oasis of relative quiet, possibly even sanity, in an otherwise barely-tolerable existence.

***

It struck Mark that he must be a very stupid man. Leaving the apartment and Duke (still hiding from Maude) to their own devices, he'd only gotten a few blocks before he realized that the dead lady in his apartment had to have came from somewhere.

The trouble with being in an institution, where every move was laid out for you and everyone worked according to some strict clockwork routine, was that you quickly became mentally lazy.

There were a limited number of decisions to be made in each and every day, and once that was done there wasn't all that much to think about. People deadened their minds as best they could, otherwise they simply couldn't handle the lack of...stimulus. That was the word.

He slowed down, taking a better look around, becoming more aware of his environment. He had to let the denial go and really look. Somehow or other this had become his problem. It wasn't like the cops were ever going to solve it. He doubted if they were looking very hard.

There was too much crime. Not enough in the budget and not enough time in the day. That was just the truth.

New Yorkers were surrounded by crime, that much was evident from the daily news.

There were one or two rather obvious hookers working a nearby streetcorner. They usually had their turf, their streetcorners and alleyways, where they habitually worked the world's oldest trade. The point being was that they usually didn't go too far. Not streetwalkers, anyways. Call girls, that might be something else. They had a place of their own or would make house calls.

The had higher prices and in order to sustain that price, they had to exhibit some modicum of class.

Or something like that.

The woman in his bathtub hadn't impressed him as having any class at all. One of the ladies caught his eye. She was fairly tall, with spiky black hair sticking straight up, a shiny red leather dress cut a quarter-inch below the business end. The shorter, younger girl was pretty, blonde and yet hard-looking around the mouth and eyes, which were still humorous though. The torn fish-net stockings and four-inch heels pretty much said it all. He wondered if there must be times when the girls actually enjoyed their jobs. It was said that they hated men, deep down inside. That was probably just, considering what Mark Jones knew about men, and all the things they said, and all the things they did. The girls would be seeing a lot of their customers at their worst, drunk, demanding and cheating on their lawfully-wedded wives. If nothing else, it would impart a certain cynicism over time.

Women didn't know their husbands as well as they thought they did.

Not that he knew much about hookers, it was just an impression.

What would he tell them? How to go about it was a good question, and then he had it, or had something anyways. All he could do was try, and see how it went, and act accordingly. There were always more prostitutes in the neighbourhood. It wasn't just these two.

Picking the older, more hard-bitten looking lady, Mark caught her attention.

"Hey."

"Hey, Mister, what can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for somebody."

"Aren't we all, Honey. What did you have in mind?"

He grinned in spite of himself.

"There's this lady and I kind of liked her." Mark did his best to describe his dead hooker, not so much the outfit, as the hair, the eyes, the style of makeup and the garish colours.

The younger one looked up at her friend.

"Hmn."

Her eyes turned to him.

The older one gave him the bad news.

"That sounds like Jackie."

"Jackie?"

"Yeah, maybe. Sure sounds like her. Where did you pick her up?"

"Oh, it was right around here somewhere. I was pretty drunk at the time." He tried a disarming smile. "Yeah, uh, she had these streaks in her hair, and just the way it framed her face..."

He lamely described some kinky black shoes and stockings with lines up the back without getting too specific.

The lady nodded sharply.

"Well, I'm sorry. We got bad news for you, Bud."

"Oh, really?"

"If that's her. If it's the one I'm thinking."

A cop car cruised slowly past, ignoring them as far as Mark could see, the car and his own image reflected in the windows behind the girls. It struck him that it was a place of business. A restaurant, it was open and that he was pretty public out there. Somewhere in his parole papers it said something about consorting with criminals, if not whores specifically.

"So, ah, what are you trying to say?"

"If it's Jackie you're looking for, try the morgue."

"Jackie? Yeah, that might have been her..." His shoulders slumped. "Something like that, anyways. So, she's dead then?"

The lady nodded in sympathy.

"Uh, hmn. Sorry, lover."

A car pulled in to the curb and the younger girl went over, to bend in, talk to the guys and have a quick look, a quick smell to gauge their alcohol consumption. They looked all right and they wanted the pair. They had money and they were in the mood to party. Mark couldn't help but overhear some of it and then came a quick whistle.

"I gotta go, Mister."

"So what happened? Do you know Jackie's last name?"

"No last name. Not too many of us do. She was found dead over on Easy Street, some shit-hole little apartment."

It was a like a quick punch in the guts.

Yeah, that's where I live all right.

Her heavy scent washed over Mark as she sashayed past him doing her best to be like Marilyn Monroe, and for a lady her age, the rear view wasn't bad at all. She bent over and worked her way into the rear seat with a couple of young Puerto Ricans, going by the look of it and the music on the car radio. The younger one was still cute, and that was a kind of tragedy that he couldn't do much about. Some of them made a specialty of looking vulnerable. They all must have started off that way.

Mark turned and kept going to the library. If nothing else, he could check the back issues and then maybe have a minute to himself just to think for a bit.

Chapter Sixteen

The nearest local library branch was an attractive, buff-coloured brick building of three stories. When he went in the door, there was a bearded man on a chair to his left, reading aloud to about a hundred school-kids, all sitting cross-legged on the floor. The actual bookshelves, going back a hundred and fifty feet, were straight ahead and to the right.

While he was at the library, Mark had another mission in mind. It was a question of looking in the right place and asking the right questions. He wasn't all that stupid, and he at least had his grade twelve. The trouble was that analyitical thinking wasn't his usual gig.

After getting himself a library card, one of the very few things that were free in life, Mark found the resource desk. If nothing else, his wallet was a little thicker. Without lamination the cardboard wouldn't last too long.

"Hi, I'm looking for the newspapers." The guy didn't bother asking about the library card.

I should have seen that one coming.

You only needed the card to take things out of the library. If he was smart, he'd grab a couple of pulp thrillers while he was in there.

The librarian got up from a desk behind the counter and took him to another room, this one up on the second floor. One fellow reader, with a shining bald dome, sat at a chair and studiously kept his head down over the racing form. Otherwise the room was empty. The ceilings were very high, with a low hum from paddle-bladed fans rotating in stately fashion. There were rafters exposed and all the utilities clearly visible, a look he had always liked when it was properly done.

"We're pretty much done with the morning crowd. You've got the place all to yourself."

The New York papers were in special racks, hanging vertically from spindles up the central gutter. That seemed straightforward enough. Schenectady and Rochester were represented too, but these were all on film, apparently. It took a couple of minutes for the librarian to show him how to locate a film strip from the approximate date, thread it into the machine and how to scroll it back and forth with the hand-knob. It was similar to the filmstrips they had in school, the image projected on a small screen on the front of a box-like viewer.

"Thank you." Mark sat and waited for him to leave.

"No problem. When you're done, just leave the stuff and we'll put it away. It's better if things go back in the right place."

"Okay." No, shit, he had more questions. "So. Let's say I find something that I need and I want to make a copy."

"Okay. What you do is put a dime in the slot here and select the item by zooming in on it, otherwise you get what's on the whole screen. You can move it back and forth, up and down and then make it full screen. Whatever's on the screen gets printed. Push the button and it spits out a copy." Three sheets for a dime, one for a nickel sort of thing.

"Okay. Thank you."

The guy turned and padded quietly off in the odd-ball sheos as Mark went to work.

Since he was at the machine anyways, he scrolled through and found the story about his arrest in the Schenectady Daily Gazette. June fourth, nineteen sixty-six. It was on the second page, and all it really said was that a man named Mark Jones had been charged with assaulting a police officer on that particular day in history. He made a copy of that for some reason he couldn't really explain.

"What about the friggin' girl?" He went through to the end of the roll but saw no mention of it.

Finding his own little story again, he went backwards through the early part of the film-strip.

Finally he he had what might be it, a story about a missing girl. It was a couple of days before his arrest. If her body had ever turned up or if she had simply showed up back home at some point, there didn't seem to be anything about it in the paper. Her name was Gwen Kassmeyer and she was still in high school at the time of her disappearance—alleged disappearance, as he was now thinking of it.

It wasn't exactly evidence, but missing, murdered and abducted young women—the lady in the story was about seventeen, should have been big news. It should have been splashed all over the place. Why in the hell he should feel guilty about it, was a very good question. There was this horrible feeling that everyone knew. It was a bit like having a set of cross-hairs painted on the back of your head and everyone could see it. It was kind of irrational. Emotions didn't have to be logical.

In his experience, they merely had to be painful.

There was nothing there, not that he could find. There were always going to be doubts. He jotted down the name of the girl, the by-line of the reporter, and the address and phone number of the paper from the editorial page masthead.

Then he turned off the machine, leaving things just as they were, just as instructed.

Going to the rack of New York papers, he selected the Times as the most credible, the least sensational, and quite frankly the biggest and most thorough paper. Surely they would have something on dead hookers found in bathtubs in shit-hole apartments on Easy Street.

***

Jackie.

Searching the actual papers was ten times more time-consuming than looking at a film strip. His fingers were dark with ink, and he was careful not to touch his face. The pages were relatively huge, and he had to keep flipping and scanning the headlines, left to right and top to bottom.

You had to be careful or you would miss something. There was tension between the shoulders and sooner or later he was going to get a headache.

Glancing up at the clock on the wall, Mark had already spent forty-five minutes at it so far. It was nice to sit in a half-decent chair though. Now this was really living. He sat up and took a breather, consciously conserving his attention span. There were plenty of things to ruminate upon.

Living without tables and chairs was terribly debilitating. He'd been sleeping badly for days.

At some point, someone would come to check on him.

All he had to go on was the date of his release, the date of his arrest...and O'Hara's name too.

Finally he had it.

Jackie Alviar, twenty-nine years old. According to the news, she had a chequered past, with a spotty criminal record including shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, loitering, vagrancy and prostitution offences.

Other than that, she was the girl-next-door. The kind you bring home to smother. It looked like the paper had used a mugshot, possibly even a morgue photo. It looked more or less like the dead lady in his bathtrub. Hookers were rarely beautiful. They were just available, and desperate.

Happy hookers were a myth. They were fallen women. The reality was far different from the puerile fantasies of those who didn't know any better.

Jackie.

It had to be the one. She had been found dead in a bathtub in the one-hundred block of Easy Street, and the police were treating it as a homicide.

No shit, Sherlock. His heart beat a little faster, he had to admit. Jackie had a kid, presently staying with grandparents. That somehow made it more real.

Having found that, he went forward through the rack, skipping front pages and sports sections, eliminating financial and other sections. After a while, he was up to yesterday's evening edition.

There was nothing there.

Instincts still aroused, it struck him that he could look up Roy Olivetti and then Sylvio Rossi.

"So. How are we doing?"

Mark just about jumped out of his skin, although he'd been half-expecting it. Quiet as it was, this was one dude who had learned to walk very quietly indeed. Maybe it was the crepe-soled earth shoes, the soles thicker at the toe than at the heel. The whole building was very solid, with textured concrete walls and carpeting throughout.

"Holy. Shit. I don't know, buddy." Mark had a thought.

It was all in how you asked the question.

"You guys have a photocopier, right?"

And how much is that going to cost me...

***

His new friend and colleague was a dude named Burt Keeler, resource librarian.

After hearing Mark's rather breathless story, he nodded abruptly. He lifted a panel in the service counter and took Mark into the back room. Keeler sat down at yet another desk, dialed nine and then, apparently, a familiar number on the house phone. Mark waited, palms sweating slightly as he marveled at how helpful people could be sometimes. The guy was getting paid for his time, that was for sure, and Mark's was an interesting story.

Perhaps the city could afford it.

It was an interesting feeling to hear your name being given to a perfect stranger on this screwy little mission.

There was a muttered conversation, as Burt knew someone, not at the Times but the Daily News.

The answers he was getting seemed to be short.

Burt said goodbye and hung up the phone.

"Okay. They haven't got much on the dead hooker. Not much more than you know, really." He sat back in his swivel chair, steepling his fingers on his ample belly. "As for the girl up north, Teddy's going to make a call. He's a busy guy, and I don't know when he'll call back. But if you leave your number—"

He stopped on Mark's quick head-shake.

"I'm sorry. I don't have a phone."

"Ah. Tell you what." Burt tore a sheet off a small pad and wrote a phone number on there. "This is Teddy's number."

"Shit. Thanks, but—"

Mark opened the red file folder the guy had given him, clipping the slip of paper onto the edge of his other sheets so he wouldn't lose it.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Mister Jones. Teddy's a good guy. He'll take the call and he's usually there, too. He likes office hours, and what he calls telephone stories. You'd be surprised by how much of that goes on. Sometimes it's just a photographer, or a stringer or a freelancer, and sometimes it's a phone-in tip from a reader. The reporter, sitting on their ass at their desk, follows up when they have questions or think it might make a good story. Anyhow. He likes people. He's a writer first and foremost—and his instincts are probably highly aroused by this point. Now, I need to get back to the counter. Lunch is coming and we have to cover for each other." It was a small branch and they only had so many people.

Keeler had a few stories of his own, by the sounds of it. Mark, on the other hand, might never see Keeler again.

Two minutes later, Mark was at the bus stop with a few pages of notes. There was the feeling that he had just somehow taken back control of his own life. Mark, free for the first time in years, was seeing each experience as if it was brand-new.

I will probably never see Burt again. The funny thing is that I will probably remember him—

Then there was Amy.

He wondered where she was right now, and what she was doing.

Every so often, she must—or might, be thinking of him.

Chapter Seventeen

He was just going up the front steps of the building when trouble reared its ugly head again.

There were two uniformed officers just coming out of the front door. The shorter one looked up and his face lit up.

"There he is."

Shit. He stopped, raising his hands.

Officers Lang and Stubbs—again.

"Hey. Uh, hi. What can I do for you—"

Shit.

Lang stepped forwards smartly, baton at the ready as Mark froze in place, hands halfway up, as much a knee-jerk reaction to that baton as anything else.

"Shut up."

"Yes, sir."

Stubbs grabbed him and spun him around, pulling down hard on his left hand and giving him a quick rap on the head.

"Ah—ah." Involuntary tears sprang from Mark's eyes at the unexpected pain.

The hat wasn't much protection and he would have a goose-egg for sure. Designed to provoke as much as intimidate, Mark struggled with his reactions to a short, sharp blow to the skull. Two cops, with guns, and batons, and it just wasn't worth it.

There was absolutely nothing he could do that wouldn't make it worse.

"Ah." Oh, Jesus, oh, fuck...

"I said shut up."

Tears flowed.

"Are you Mark Jones?"

They were going through his pockets. Lang had a look in the wallet.

"Yeah, it's the same guy."

"I'm Mark Jones." He stood there, breath ragged, sagging in their grasp, and half the neighbourhood was watching. "Yes, officers."

Again, he'd been so intent on his own problems that he'd failed to understand the significance their unmarked but fully-equipped sedan.

There was always somebody illegally parking there, so much so that you tended to ignore it after a while. It was one of many.

What was he supposed to do, anyways? If they really wanted him, sooner or later they would have come back. Mark had nowhere else to go. You could only run so far and for so long. It was a big city and a real small town, when it came down to that sort of thing.

It was the only home he had, although the thoughts of a bus ticket to St. Louis crossed his mind as they marched him across the sidewalk. They each had an elbow, and Stubbs the baton at the ready.

Home...where the fuck is my home?

They shoved his head down and forced him into the back seat. The two of them got in up front and Lang talked on the radio for a while. Mark's head was really smarting and it was hard to staunch the tears, as angry as he was.

They didn't seem in any hurry to go, but, as he was learning, they never did. Cops took their sweet fucking time about everything. What was scary as hell for the suspect was simple, everyday routine for them. They would not be rushed. Standard operating procedure would be followed.

Protocols would be fucking well observed...

Accurate notes would be taken at all times...

Stubbs, in the passenger seat, found his notebook and a pencil on the centre of the front seat.

"Where were you about an hour..." He checked his watch. "...and fifteen minutes ago?"

Hah!

Hah.

"I was at the library." He grinned at the looks on their faces, his own face still wet. "Why? Whatcha got for me this time, boys?"

Fucking pigs.

***

Stubbs made a radio call downtown, where presumably they would check it out by phone, or send a couple of officers who happened to be in the area. Mark prayed that Burt would be in.

"So anyways, Mark, what we got is another dead hooker."

"What? Ha, big deal. Where?"

"Oh, a couple of blocks away. It's probably nothing, really."

"Hmn." And the first person you thought of was me...

You son of a bitch.

The radio crackled, the voice came and Mark wondered how anyone ever understood anything on that thing. It didn't sound much like O'Hara.

They seemed to get it though.

Stubbs uttered a deep and heartfelt sigh.

Mark's bowels were about to explode, and he had been just about to mention that fact.

"Well, well, well."

"What? Well, what?"

Lang turned and gave him a look. He and his partner exchanged another kind of look.

"Yeah. Well. It seems, as if your story checks out."

Seems. What kind of a word was that.

Still they sat there. They had some form of unspoken communication. Mark had little choice but to try and keep it in perspective. He clenched down hard, on the sphincter.

Argh.

No, that ain't right.

This just isn't right.

"You know what, guys?"

"What?"

"I'm out on parole for the next three years. I'm a convicted felon, and a mental case, and it's true that I'm not working. This sure is a bad neighbourhood. But I'm not a killer. Boys, I give you my word of honour, as a gentleman and a scholar. I am on my best fucking behaviour. Take it or leave it. Now, can you please let me out of here? Because I have to shit like there's no tomorrow."

"All right, Mister Jones. No need to get your panties in knot."

"No, seriously." Mark did his best to keep a level, even friendly tone. "Officers. I'm doing everything in my power to stay out of trouble. And just so you know—I was in your grade ten class, Stubbsy—and you, too Lang. You were a fucking moron at the best of times, also a substitute on the volleyball team. It's because you weren't any good, but you got lucky—no one really cool, no one really athletic goes out for volleyball. Not if they stand a chance of making the football or the basketball team—which clearly none of us ever did. You were in grade eleven and twelve together. I know, because I was too. Barry Kaczynski's phys-ed class. He was a stern disciplinarian, as I recall. See, I left St. Louis and came to New York. I stayed with my aunt, went to school here and studied music in my off-time. Both of you guys, ass-wipes as you are, got the strap once or twice, and so did I. You can't lie to me on that one. So it's not like you don't know me, because you do."

Two heads cranked around as if set on gimbals and they stared at him.

"Fuck, yeah! Now, I know where I seen you before." Stubbs had the grace to look impressed, although not particularly sorry, when Mark told him he had kept up with the music and had even played in a few bands.

Slowly, the clouds cleared from Lang's face as he listened and then he had him too.

Mark Jones—the horn player. P.S. Sixty-Four—Public School Number Sixty Four. He'd just appeared one day, a new kid in eighth grade...

Mark had a stab of regret for his Aunt Myra, dead a few years now. What a nice lady—and how she had fussed and bothered over him in a way that his own parents sort of hadn't. His mother and father had been going through a rough spot in their marriage, and everyone, even him, had leapt at the opportunity to get rid of Mark for a while. Mark had the chance to go to New York and live there, the jazz capital of the world. Young and stupid, he'd acted out once or twice, then realized what he was risking and had to quit. That must have been the first real onset of maturity—the possibility that he could be sent home might have carried some weight. He owed his aunt a lot, and had tried once or twice to say it.

Mark, at least, was where he had wanted to be—away from home and in the big city. Not that he hadn't hated school—everyone did, but at least he had something to compare it to. Middle America, the Corn Belt and unspeakable conformity even among the would-be rebels...or the Big Apple. Where the whole world met in one place, and everything was possible.

They sat there grinning like fiends, enjoying or enduring, a brief trip down memory lane.

As he recalled, Stubbs had the kettle-drum from grade nine on and the fact was, he wasn't even very good at that. They laughed when he told them that.

Also, Lang might have played the triangle at some point.

***

At some point, they realized they were letting him go.

"Sorry about that, Buddy. Maybe next time, eh—" Stubbsy grinned amiably, but he might very well half-mean it. "Mark Jones. Whoever would have thought?"

"Ah, yeah. Well. It's really been good seeing you guys again."

Lang got out and opened the door, removing the cuffs. He gave him a polite nod and clambered back in. That lunk-head hadn't changed much in all the years.

Mark watched the unmarked police car pull out into traffic. Turning, there were still people sitting on the steps.

"What was that all about, Mister?"

They knew him, now. They'd seen him come and go. Somehow, he had become one of them.

"Oh, nothing, really. Just another dead hooker." He cleared his throat. "Her throat was cut from ear-to-ear."

They broke up in a fit of laughter and he went on.

"It's okay. They'll never pin nothing on me." Squeezing past them on the stairs, he nipped up to his apartment.

The babble of excited talk died away down below as he ran up the stairs. Just this once, he didn't care how much noise he made.

Fuck them.

There was no sign of Amy. Duke didn't show up on his door in the first minute and he grabbed his horn after taking a quick leak.

If Karpov was still playing, or even just still alive, the place to go looking for him would be the Flamingo.

***

He'd had his best shave in many days.

It felt pretty good.

One of the larger jazz clubs on the lower East Side, the Flamingo was one of the legendary birthplaces of New York jazz, blues and some other musical genres and movements.

Some of the biggest names had played there and some had gotten their start. Over the years the place hadn't changed much. Jazz was fading, and other clubs had closed or switched to a more popular genre. There was still that core audience. The fact that Karpov was a legend himself probably helped to keep the doors open. He was there every working night, or so it was said, holding court with his cronies. Karpov knew everybody, or so it was said. Whether player, singer, band-leader, or merely well-heeled and well-behaved fans, they were all welcome at his table.

Mark's only real advantage was that he'd met Benny Karpov and Benny had heard him play.

That was years ago. The thing was to control your breathing.

Benny and his current lady friend had been upstate, and Mark had been playing with a small group that quite frankly wasn't even as good as him—collectively or individually, however one wanted to look at it. Karpov had come up beside him in the men's room. As they stood side by side at the urinals, he'd even said as much.

"You're better than them guys, buddy."

Mark would never forget that so long as he lived. He'd been so tongue-tied at the time that he couldn't speak, or tell Karpov his name or anything. Mark couldn't even pee—he stood there with his pecker in his hand, wishing, as Benny finished, washed his hands and then exited the men's room.

What in the hell did it actually mean, anyways? Probably not much when push came to shove...

The horn had always been a kind of substitute, a way of expressing himself in a man for whom words were sometimes hard. Even then he'd learned to write them down and really pare them down. Each word had its own unique combination of notes and tones. Music was just a different form of language, or so it seemed to Mark, and that was when he began writing his own music.

Song lyrics were something else, but even then he'd managed to write a few that, at least in his own mind, might not sound too bad with the right voice and arrangement.

Mark got off the bus, found the club a half a block away and after one bad moment, marched up the front steps.

There was no hesitation. He was going to do this. He had nothing to lose.

Not any more—with the possible exception of Amy. He had no real rights with her—it was all hopes and dreams. It was all wondering what was going to happen next with that one. Sooner or later they would have to figure things out.

If they didn't like him showing up uninvited, he'd turn around, walk out and they'd never see him again.

He walked in through the inner lobby and there were people there. No one gave him a second look.

It was early afternoon and the hall was dim and cool after the glare and heat of the busy streets outside. The lights were all the way up in the club.

There were a few musicians onstage, ready with bass and trombone, drums and piano. Band-master Doc Sokolovich was tuning them up and putting them through a few numbers. Benny had developed Parkinson's disease and so his own career was over.

It was a big story at the time. Mark reviewed it as he walked down the sloping aisle to the front.

He'd bought the place a few years ago, back around 1965 as Mark recalled. Karpov sat at his habitual corner banquette, with the latest of a long string of statuesque redheads looking bored and sulky beside him. You'd have to be selling a lot of booze to keep up the mortgage on a place like this. The same was probably true of the lady. Mark had only been in there once or twice, as a customer rather than a performer.

"Hi, Benny."

He didn't even look up.

"Hello, stranger." The lady gave Mark an assessing look, taking in the battered horn case and his shabby coat.

Mark was still wearing the jeans and smudged Adidas, but he was wearing his best shirt. He hadn't shaved, and all of his facial scars, relics of a pugnacious nature and some boyhood experiences of the little-league hockey variety, stood out in pale relief among the dark stubble.

Not taking her eyes from Mark, she nudged Benny in the ribs with her right elbow. Benny was reading music sheets. They were blanks, filled in by hand by whoever was composing some new number. You could get them in any music store. Benny's hand made a characteristic jerk and he cussed under his breath.

Sighing, he looked up and threw the pencil down.

"Ah, yes, young man. Can I help you?"

"My name is Mark Jones. I play the trumpet..."

"Yeah, well. We're not really looking for anyone right now."

"Oh, come on, Benny." For some reason, maybe she just liked him, but the lady was clearly on Mark's side.

"Doc."

Benny spoke in a low tone, but Doc must have seen Mark come in and he turned on a dime.

"Yes. Benny?"

Benny sat up, and leaned back, and put his arm around the girl.

"All right, Mister Jones. Show us what you got." Benny's eyes took him in, carefully, head to toe.

It was intimidating enough. There was the urge to flee.

Do not waste this man's time.

With a nod, Mark turned and headed down through the pit and then up the short flight of stairs to where Doc stood waiting. One or two of the others looked up, noting the case in his right hand as a matter of course. He removed the coat and hung it on an unused microphone stand off to one side, then came back to the centre stage mic.

He tapped on it, a concussive note in the stillness. They looked at each other.

Ah.

A horn man.

Benny says to give him a chance.

Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky.

Whisper, whisper, whisper...

Mark could read their attitudes like a book.

And now, he would proceed to kick their asses.

Where did all this contempt come from, anyways.

Fuck you.

Chapter Eighteen

Doc tapped his stick on the lectern where he kept his sheet music, all bullshit, but he liked to have it around according to an interview from a few years back in Village Voice.

He give Mark a look.

"And where would you like to start, young man?"

"I want to do Low Down Dog, Big Joe Turner. Or how about, ah, How Long Blues, whichever you prefer."

Doc gave Mark a quick nod, turned to the boys, and tapped his stick again.

"How Long Blues—" There was a long breath of air, their eyes on Mark, who was hoping against hope that he wouldn't blush or stutter or hit a wrong note right out of the box.

No big chunks of phlegm, please.

A bit tired, a bit jaded they might be, but it was also a welcome respite from hard work and boring old rehearsal. They'd played it a million times and they still liked it. What the hell.

They'd seen it all and watching someone destroy themselves in front of the real pros was always compelling—always instructive, always with that tinge of pathos. Some guy's dream, shot down in flames. Poor son of a bitch. That could have been me—and probably had been, a time or two.

He'd worked his whole life for that moment, and he was always going to be the last one to figure it out.

The drummer started them off and then Mark put the bell to his lips and began to play.

Doc threw Mark a curve ball after a minute, and segued into John Coltrane's Spiritual. It threw him off only for a second and then Mark was once again faking the sax.

"Stop." Mouth open, Doc turned and gave Benny a shocked look.

"What?"

The thought hung in the air.

Well—that was quick, and the guy not bad, either.

Mark's heart sank as they settled into a hushed silence.

He stood there waiting. Mark thought he'd been doing all right, but it had been a long time—a very long time. Benny whispered something to another man leaning in for instructions.

The guy went away as Benny sat and smoked inscrutably. The other musicians muttered and whispered among themselves. Mark looked at Doc for guidance but he just shrugged.

You either run or you wait. You could quit. The choice is yours.

The choice is yours.

You could always shit your pants.

The fellow came back from somewhere, a battered black case in his hand.

Mark's heart began to pound (it was still pounding) as the man brought it up to the stage.

Staying at ground level, he put it down and gave it a good shove.

"Mister Jones?"

"Benny?"

It was right there. A sober-looking Doc kicked the case lightly, sending it two inches closer to Mark's left foot.

"Open it."

"Sir?"

"It was in the lost and found. Mister Jones. Someone must have forgotten it. Or maybe he fucked up a good gig and left a big tab or something. I forget which." Benny had never forgotten anything or anyone, especially a horn or sax man, and they all knew it.

He opened up the case.

Mark found the horn out of tune and loose in the joints. He could only waste so much time fucking with it. He did the best he could. Some poor bastard's broken-down old saxophone.

That mouthpiece hadn't been washed in some time...fuck.

Doc saw that he was ready and started them again, picking up where they'd left off.

The reed was maybe a bit dry. It'd been there a while, in the lost and found.

Getting into the tune again, his body began to move and shake.

The lady was smiling, biting her lip and her hand stole over and Benny took it and gave it a squeeze.

They wound up the tune to a hand-clap from the lady at least, and Benny puffed furiously at the hundred-millimetre cigarette in its amber holder.

"I love that backwards shuffle." She stared at him up on stage, nudging Benny again. "What's that bit where you're sort of leaning from side to side, and bending at the hips?"

She was a lot smarter than she looked and Mark began to sweat.

They hadn't thrown him out just yet.

"I'm just moving, Ma'am. Miles. Autumn Leaves."

Doc nodded at the boys and for the love of God, but he even brought out his little tuning pipe and blew a thin clear note. Doc's head turned and he gave Mark a quick wink.

The band members laughed, but it was a good laugh.

Mark handled his parts no problem, even improvising a riff or two when Doc gave a sardonic nod at the guy on the drums. A tall, thin reedy fellow with narrow shoulders and a cheap black suit, everyone else fell silent as he thrummed slowly on the bass and Mark had beads of sweat on his forehead as he put everything into it. His hips went back and forth in a double lean, like a skier on the moguls.

Finally, he came up for air. The guys looked at each other, nodding and grinning.

"Take Five." Dave Brubeck.

The band sighed, thinking it was just another number, but things were going okay and the kid looked all right so far. They went along with him, perking up a bit as this was more than just the routine practice and jam.

***

After working their way through In the Mood, with Mark back on the trumpet, Doc made them take a quick break. The anonymous fellow was at Benny's table, head down, working on the sax.

Hopefully he could do something with the old thing.

Mark hadn't played in a while and he seemed to have been doing pretty well with it. Benny and the lady were whispering back and forth, back and forth...

Mark turned to Doc.

"What sort of a crowd do you get here?"

"Hmn. Blues, progressive, not so much swing but you can get away with it. Give it a funkier, more aggressive arrangement, and go nuts on the solo. You'll be all right if you don't abuse the privilege."

Mark nodded. That sure sounded good. One or two of the guys were smiling, always a good sign.

They still wouldn't quite meet his eyes yet. They knew how it felt, all right.

Sudden death, in overtime.

Karpov and the lady were waiting and the other guy set the sax down on the tabletop to listen.

"All right, boys. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." Mark lifted the horn and Doc got them going again.

"One, two, three..."

After that, it was back to the sax again for a little bit of Charlie Mingus and Moanin'."

***

His session was over, and he had done very well to even get that far. Mark was wrung right out.

Just being there was a dream. Doc and the band were back to their regular practice. It was an amazing group, all of them gifted and very professional. They didn't always agree, and there was some discussion back and forth in between numbers, but when they played they played very well indeed. It wouldn't always be this way of course. They would have had bad days and even worse days along the way. They had a lady singer and a couple of the males had real good voices...

Mark sat on Benny's right, and Mona was on Benny's left. Benny had bought him a beer.

Holy, shit.

She leaned forward, squeezing Benny's upper thigh and studying Mark. Biting her lip, smiling inscrutably, she leaned back and watched the band.

"Mark, this is Dale Cromwell."

Mark took a good look, having heard the name. He'd never seen his picture anywhere, in spite of reading the music mags all the time, at least before his current troubles began. Cromwell was their horn player—and the man who had brought the sax from the back room. He was a tall, good-looking dude about a hundred and eighty pounds, with thick, wavy hair. Very distinguished.

"Oh. Pleased to meet you."

"Yeah, me too, Mark. You've very good, incidentally—"

Coming from Cromwell, this was high praise indeed. But someone had said Benny was looking for a horn player.

"Lots of emotion, lots of little signature flourishes. You have a unique voice on that thing."

Cromwell looked at Benny and grinned. Benny's eyes were downcast, his mien sober.

"Thank you."

This didn't look too good all of a sudden. Those cold amber eyes came up from the table.

"Okay, Mark, here's the deal. I'm not really looking for a horn man. However, I'm always looking for new talent. And you can obviously play the horn. The question is, how are you at arrangements? Can you back Dale up, without drowning the man out and engaging in a duel—unless we decide that's what we want. Can you play the sax, when we need it, anytime we need it. I want to see some chemistry when you guys play."

"Uh...sir. Yes. Sir."

Dale grinned and the lady sipped champagne.

"...but what's really interesting is that Ed Hanrahan is getting kind of old. He's been on alto sax for years. His wife's not well and he wants to take her home to Omaha where they can be closer to her family. He was born just up the road, I forget, some shit little town out there." Benny was Big Apple born and bred.

Anything west of the Alleghenies was a foreign country.

"You seem okay on the sax. You're still young, and hopefully capable of learning a new trick once in a while. Do you want the job? It's thirty-five a week. Free drinks, we have a bit of food every night, within reason."

Mark's mouth opened but no sound came out.

Dale slapped Mark on the shoulder.

"Of course he wants the job. Right, Mark?"

Mark nodded dumbly.

Of course he wanted the job. The trouble was that he couldn't speak or even breathe properly.

He'd just scored a regular gig with the Benny Karpov Orchestra.

Benny nodded, pleased.

"Be here Thursday night. Seven at the latest. You work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Sometimes we get a special gig, a festival somewhere close and we like to do that once in a while. It pays pretty good, too. That's over and above your salary. Sometimes we get a big name in and we play backup, and we have to be good enough for them to want to come here and play. Today, we're writing new material, which we do once in a while, and that's by invitation only...congratulations, young man."

Mona said the same thing and so did Dale.

"Congratulations, Mark."

"Thank you."

"Sundays are rehearsal. Start at one, but we wind that up by two or three o'clock and the rest of the time is your own. Some of our guys do a lot of sessions work and you can pick up some useful money there too."

"Absolutely." Mark bit his tongue, holding back the word sir. "Sounds good."

"Okay. We wear suits and ties here, so I want you to look real sharp. Black or charcoal-grey suit. I'm not a big fan of brown, although I've seen a few good ones. Blue, I don't know—it depends. White shirt, tie as you like, but colourful is good. Do you have a suit?"

"I'm sorry, mine's kind of a light grey." Mark began to sweat a little. "I've really only got the one."

So near and yet so far.

Benny's hand, shaking slightly, went to his inner breast pocket. He pulled out a well-stuffed billfold and peeled out a dizzying number of twenties. There had to be two hundred dollars there.

"Okay. Go see Mister Wong. West 25th Street. It's between Broadway and 6th Avenue in the Flatiron, hopefully you can find that. Don't cheap out. It's a good investment. You can pay that back, no interest. Fifteen dollars a month. That okay?"

Mark bobbed and grinned, unable to speak. The money was in his hand somehow.

Dale nodded, seated on Mark's right and studying him a little.

"Take the sax with you. Get a little practice, as much as you can." Dale stood to let him out of the booth.

The tall trumpet player, confident in his own position, afraid of no other horn man in the world, clapped him on the shoulder one more time and headed up to the stage where they were labouring a bit through a new tune by the sound of it.

"After you've been here a while, we'll see about getting you a better one."

"Sure, Benny."

It was a question of how to open up as Doc and the drummer argued over a minor point. They weren't exactly shy about it.

"I write too, Benny."

Karpov nodded, not looking up from the sheet music in front of him, making some faint marks with a pencil after giving it a look and rubbing some things out.

"Yeah, I know, Mark." Of course you do. "Anyways, the accountant will have some forms for you to sign. Not right now, he's not in today. We'll worry about that on Thursday night."

That smile took all sting out of it. It was just a fact. Mark wrote music and Benny somehow knew it about him...Benny had a mind like a steel trap. Or maybe a guillotine.

Fuck, I'm not that good, am I?

Benny studied them on stage as the orchestra started up again, squinting, listening intently. His mind was somewhere else, Mark a bit of a distraction.

"Okay."

Mona winked, nodding, and waggled her fingers bye-bye at him.

That was one nice lady.

He nodded, grateful for her help, whatever intuitive and telepathic form that might have taken.

He took another gulp. He had questions, but later might be better.

Benny looked up.

A withering smile crossed his seamy, wizened face.

"What, are you still here?"

Mark Jones could take a hint.

"Yes, Benny."

Standing, he downed the rest of his beer. Waste not, want not. The latches were secure.

Taking the two horn-cases, one in each hand, he beat it for the door and the street.

"We'll talk to you later."

One look back and Mona, eyes still on him, blew him a kiss. He just about cried on the spot.

Holy, shit.

I've just scored a job with Benny Karpov—and Dale fucking Cromwell!

Chapter Nineteen

Mark arrived home with a few parcels and a whole new attitude. With all the pot-smoke, still lingering in the apartment, he wished he had some way, maybe some dry-cleaner bags or something, to keep the film of yellow smoke-stains off the shoulders and collar. It was a good feeling though, and he still had money left over.

The shoes were going to be fine as well. It was lucky he had found a pair of black ones on sale, seventy percent off. His old ones had disappeared, along with most of his stuff, over the course of the last few years.

The last thing he expected to see when he came in the door was Amy.

"Hey."

"Hi." Amy was barefoot and radiant.

The floor had been freshly swept, possibly even scrubbed, if the liquid detergent and damp rag sitting on the kitchen counter by the sink was any indication.

She was wearing cut-off jeans and a halter top and her hair smelled like strawberries.

Setting his stuff down. Mark opened the fridge, slightly stunned to see green vegetables, a gallon of milk, bread, peanut butter and jam, more stuff than he could take in immediately. More stuff than he could reasonably eat. That had to be some kind of a sign.

There were still a few beers, stubbies in brown glass bottles of a brand that Mark had never heard of. He pulled two of them out to celebrate.

"Wow. What's up?"

"Oh, I don't know." There was a mischievous tone. "I would hate to see the poor guy starve to death."

She took a good look at the shopping bag on the countertop.

Her mouth opened at the heavy black paper, with the logo in silver script, prominently displayed.

"Oh." Mr. Wong's.

He smiled, tightly.

"Come on. Check this out." They had a lot to talk about, but Mark turned and was heading to the bedroom.

"Mark." This time the tone was distinctly different.

He turned back.

"Yes, Amy?"

"That creepy cop was here again."

***

She'd brought her own shopping, thinking to stay over for a few days. Mark had no problem with that. After looking for Duke to let her in but not finding him, she'd resorted to the fire escape, getting lucky in finding his front window open.

"You shouldn't have done that—really."

All of a sudden he was terrified—why is she doing this.

He took her in his arms again.

"Don't be falling off that God-damned fire escape."

"I know, I know. Anyways, I wasn't here five minutes when he came knocking at the door."

"And what did he say?"

"Well, nothing really. I told him you weren't here and I didn't know when to expect you home. I offered to give you a message but he just ignored it."

"That's it? What else did he say?"

They were standing in the living room, Mark's new clothes temporarily forgotten.

"That's it. Thank you, young lady, and he was gone."

Her eyes travelled to the bedroom door, where his new suit lay on the corner of the bed.

"So, what's up with you?"

Right about then Duke was at the door, and then it was Maude, with Duke paying her a little more attention today. Mark wanted to be a little bit careful about what he told all of those people—Amy included.

Even so, talk tended to revolve around the mysterious and sensational events around the building.

They were all very happy for him when he finally made his announcement. Now the suit, that impressed the hell out of them—even Duke, whom Mark would have thought sartorially imperturbable.

When the pounding started up from somewhere above, Mark threw his head back and laughed and then they all did.

Thank Christ for beer.

After a while, what was becoming a small party turned to other topics, gossip about their fellow human beings included. More than one stranger came and went, and more than one joint went around, and more than one person made a quick trip to the corner liquor store. The temptation to put on his new clothes and play the horn for them was almost overwhelming, but he just couldn't do it.

That would just be nuts and he knew it.

It was a small building, and after a while everybody knew everything about everybody else.

In that sense, number ninety-nine was one big happy family. However temporary a state that might be.

It could only be, temporary.

***

Mark's bedroom door was locked from the inside. Occasional muffled noises came from in there.

Tiring of the hard maple chairs, Mark and Amy were cuddling, half asleep and pretty drunk, on the parka, which wasn't being helped by this sort of treatment. Thankfully, in another week or two he wouldn't need it. Tempted to burn it, his better instincts told him to hang onto it for next year. But maybe things would work out. Maybe things would be better, somehow, some way, in some shape or form.

For one thing, he wouldn't be in Bellevue.

The bedroom door opened, the light on inside, and Maude came out looking very pleased with herself.

The windows were open, the curtains billowing in and out, and their faces were hidden by a bar of shadow.

"Bless you, my children." Some kind of odd-ball witch, at least according to her, she made some sort of obscure hand-signs and then cracked the door.

She stopped and turned in the opening.

"May Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, watch over you."

The latch clicked into place. Unusually for this building, she had learned how to close a door quietly behind her.

"Holy."

Amy giggled, snuggling up close, arms around his neck, but he struggled free.

"I think she's nice."

"Hmn." Mark unwrapped himself and got up. "Ruthlessly nice, in fact."

She was always going around and giving people food. This was a recognized diagnosis...

Going to the bedroom door, Duke was positively embedded in the warm and yielding waterbed.

"Huh." The figure, looking like Wiley E. Coyote stuck in the desert floor after falling from a very high cliff, the satiny coverlet tossed aside, all arms and legs, sheets all over the place, snored asunder, oblivious to the world. "I've been wondering where you guys got off to..."

The snoring continued and the figure didn't stir.

He turned back.

Amy nailed it.

"Shit. The nerve of some people's kids."

Mark laughed.

He stood there, looking at Amy, up on one elbow and possibly wondering what was in the fridge and easy. If so, she knew more about it than he did.

"What I was thinking...is why."

She chuckled, low and throaty.

"Well, they are young, Mark." Coming from her, this was an interesting statement.

"No, not them. I mean this—all this."

Amy sat up cross-legged, more awake now.

"What do you mean, Mark?"

"All these bodies. That ain't cool, baby. But all them bodies got to be coming from somewhere. It has to be happening for some reason."

That reason might be unfathomable.

But a reason there must be. Somebody somewhere knew what that reason was. An interesting thought.

If only we knew what questions to ask—where to even start.

"There's something beautiful about all of this."

"What?"

Mark snorted.

She was awake now.

"Sorry. Just something I read somewhere."

He stood at the window, looking out over the street. It was totally deserted, not a car or a bus or a body moving, a quiet moment having overcome it.

As Amy went into the kitchen and snapped on the light, yawning, Mark went back into the bedroom.

"Duke, Duke, Duke, what are we gonna do with you, boy."

Duke lay there, naked as a jaybird, with a ridiculously small thing, encrusted with cubic zirconiums it was not, and a bush that would make a Doukhobor proud.

Mark leaned over and gave that hot damp shoulder a shake, averting his eyes from his friend's pecker.

Duke's eyes popped open in sublime incomprehension.

"Huh?"

Mark couldn't help but grin. It was just so stupid, the guy was practically drooling, but Duke was his friend or so it seemed.

"Come on. Either you get up and go home on your own—or I call the mental health people and tell them you've been threatening to kill people."

"Huh?"

Mark grinned, waiting.

"I'm not kidding buddy, I'm tired and this is my bed."

Duke lurched up from the bed. Mark handed him his clothes, boots, and jeans, although there didn't seem to be any socks. He was pretty sure that must be it.

Taking the clothes, stark naked, Duke headed for the door as Amy set the water on to boil.

Unexpectedly, he stopped just at the door and looked back.

"See you tomorrow?"

Mark nodded.

"Sure. Why not."

Amy came out of the kitchen in time to see Duke walk out the door, naked as the day he was born.

Chapter Twenty

Why, why, why.

Why.

That was but the question...

***

Making love to Amy on the waterbed was almost funny. It worked all right, better in some ways when he let her get on top and work her own magic. She giggled at the look on his face as he peered over her shoulder and saw that white little bum, everything naked, all that smooth, creamy skin, and not a stitch of clothing between here and there. His neck ached from bending his head to get at her nipples, and there was a good long session where they did the sixty-nine, with Amy on top. How many long and lonely nights he'd spent since puberty.

She took great delight, indulging her power as a woman, in making him come while she stared deeply into his eyes.

The internal waves of the bed, water sloshing back and forth had their own logic. After a time, she fell off to one side, collapsing beside him. They stared into each other's eyes.

Mark wanted to talk, not his favourite thing but it was better than letting her get away.

"Do you believe in free love?"

She laughed at the solemn look on his face.

"Have I ever sent you a bill?" Putting a finger across his lips, she shushed him. "Come on, Baby. It's my turn."

His face went all wooden.

"Come on, Amy. I'm trying to be serious here."

She smiled.

"Poor Mark, so full of questions—" Such sad, beautiful eyes.

He shook his head. If she really worked at it, she could almost make him angry.

"All right. Shit. Here goes. An actual statement. Rather than a question—"

Her face went still and soft, listening. Really listening, just this once, and making a point of being seen to be listening.

"I'm in love. With you. How did this happen—how did we happen?"

"So." She stroked his face, just looking, feeling, and wondering. "Well. I don't know—"

"I love you." It was true.

It did happen.

It had happened.

That was all that really mattered.

The trouble was that it hurt so much to say it, and all of a sudden the darkness swept over him and the tears came out of nowhere. Mark Jones cried like a baby, for probably the second time in years. Suddenly it all became clear to Amy. This was not a child, this was not about a toy or a candy or a blanket. This was about a grown man who'd had enough. This was about keeping it inside for far too long. This was about injustice, and people not caring, and this was about hunger and loneliness and despair and good people dying and bad people thriving and all the shit that happens in life.

It was about the two of them and no others. A man and a woman and all that that implied.

It was about truth, and trust, and being vulnerable no matter how strong you were. He probably did love her. Nothing else could have wrung this moment out of such a man.

Any man, really. Any life-long bachelor...none of the men she'd interviewed had been stupid, exactly, far from it in most cases.

"Aw." She stroked his brow, rising up and looking down into that squished-up raisin of a face.

It was about finding somebody.

Almost anybody, when it came right down to it—

He had reverted or something—he was like a three year-old kid, all crushed and bruised inside.

"It's okay, Mark."

She held him to her breast as his strong body heaved and spasmed and she marveled anew at all the pain people held inside.

Especially the artists, the drummers and the painters and the poets and guys who played the horn.

But maybe not for much longer.

No longer.

Not until death do us part.

This one was a keeper.

***

Mark, in all the excitement of getting work, and having Amy there, plus all the comings and goings of Duke, Maude and other party animals, had completely forgotten.

He had a phone call to make. Amy was in the bathtub. It was with some small measure of pride that he took out his pen and note-pad and left her a note. Opening the file folder Keeler had given him, he took the phone number down by writing it on the back of his hand. It was pissing down rain, and he left the papers at home, all together in one place. He left a quick note for Amy—they were short of tea bags. She wasn't a big coffee drinker, and there were one or two other things he could think of. Now that he knew he'd be working, he almost had a surplus, an abundance. That one had come out of nowhere. Life was full of surprises...

He'd be back in half an hour, but she would most likely come out of the bathroom and find him gone. He was a bit shy about sticking his head in there and giving her some bogus explanation of where he was going. The odds of getting out of the bathroom again anytime soon were slim.

As for the phone call, she didn't need to know about that just yet.

Locking the door on account of people like O'Hara, not to mention thieves, it was a rough neighbourhood. Amy was alone in the bath. Then there was Duke, who had a way of presuming his welcome, and then there was Maude, showing up with a plate of something half the time, and doing it at all times of the night and day.

That one was a bit different.

The night before, Maude had shown up at his door, and when Amy answered it, Maude was wearing nothing but a housecoat. She was barefoot. With a friendly smile, she handed in to a stunned Amy a dozen eggs and what must have been three pounds of pea-meal bacon which she said was on sale but she couldn't really use after all.

That one was a bit hard to explain to Amy, without knowing a little more about Maude.

According to Duke, half the people in the building were suffering from some sort of undiagnosed, untreated but nevertheless serious mental illness. The other half were at least getting treatment, this also according a grinning but half-serious Duke.

When you considered the income level, and how few people in the building actually seemed to be working once you'd had time to observe, there probably was a grain of truth in it.

It was like they were all suffering from something.

The rain poured down. In a minute his coat was heavy and sodden, the jeans soaking it up from the air and the shoes absorbing water from the pavement. It was impossible to avoid the inevitable puddles in a city where sheer entropy ensured that the infrastructure was always breaking down and the city couldn't always keep up with it. His toes were already damp.

He still wasn't taking those nickels for granted. Anything but.

Shit had a way of happening and Thursday night seemed a long ways away.

The phone booth was steamy but mostly out of the rain. The glass didn't even reach the ground and the wind was strong and gusting.

The switchboard put his call straight through to the newsroom, and a bored, effeminate but definitely male voice answered.

"I'd like to speak to Teddy Irvine, please."

"And may I tell him who's calling."

"Ah...it's Mark Jones."

"Oh, yes, please hold on, Mister Jones." The line hummed and then clicked.

Another voice came on.

"Theodore Irvine, features, human interest, tear-jerkers a specialty. Hi, Mark?"

"Yeah, hi, sir, how you doing—"

"I'm doing fine, Mark. How are you?"

"Uh. I'm doing okay. So, uh, Burt Keeler called you—" This was nuts.

Just plain nuts. Mark wasn't a cop, he wasn't a detective. He wasn't Miss Fucking Marple or Mike Shayne, for crying out loud. He was tempted to hang up on the spot.

Irvine knew all about him, and it was all scary shit Mark didn't want to deal with.

"Okay, Mark. I'm afraid I don't have much for you."

"Okay." Shit.

The line buzzed and he could hear typing over the adjacent traffic noises.

"Let's see here. Just hang on a sec."

Mark could imagine him riffling through a steno pad, or more likely frantically searching through a pile of message forms, hastily-scribbled notes and bits of paper all over a desk heaped with rotten old back issues, heaping ashtrays and half-full coffee cups with mold growing in them.

"Okay. Here we go. Gwen Kassmeyer. She was at a friend's house, hiding out from her father who she said beat her whenever he thought she was going out with boys. Typical Biblical tyrant-complex. She returned home when some friends told her the police were looking for her, where, no doubt, she would have gotten another good beating. She graduated from high school, left home immediately, got married and moved to Missouri where she and her husband have, ah, two girls and a boy." All of this in a little over four years.

Four years when he'd been inside. Another punch in the guts. She was living a life. That was for sure. Hopefully it was all worth it to her.

"Okay."

"Jackie Alviar. The case is still open, and the police have no suspects. Roy Olivetti, presumed gangland hit, no suspects. Case still open. Sylvio Rossi, cousin to Roy Olivetti, presumed gangland hit...no suspects." Case still open.

"What? What?"

"Yeah. It's what they say, sometimes, when they, ah, don't really have any other theories or any viable suspects. It's more political than anything. The police budget comes up about the same time every year. It's almost a kind of cop-gossip, but they have to tell us something off the record, sometimes just for perspective. There's always that give-and-take. I have sources, some of them pretty good, some of them pretty...uh, I don't know. I don't always know."

"Okay."

"Anyways, I hope this has been helpful to you. Look, if there's ever anything I can do—"

It was the brush-off, or so Mark interpreted it.

"No. Thank you. You've been very kind."

The man hesitated, and Mark could hear voices in the background suddenly getting louder with proximity.

"Mark, I want you to know that you can call me anytime. I really mean that. I'm a journalist, first and foremost. Burt says you're a jazz horn player. I've heard, never mind how, that you're pretty good and maybe even potentially great."

What? Where the fuck was he getting this stuff...all them sources, eh.

"Sir?"

"Let me know if you get anything. Anyways, we're getting close to lunch-time. I have a powerful thirst as I often do, and I'm going to wish you the best of luck...okay?"

"Uh...thanks, Teddy. Mister Irvine."

"Excellent. Keep the faith, Mark. The world needs good people. Have a nice day and I gotta go. My editor's piles are acting up and he can be a real bitch at times."

That was it.

"Sure." That sounded bloody cold.

"Mark. Passive aggression is the best kind of aggression. I want you to think about that, just for a bit. Okay? Don't let the world push you around. I want you to promise me that."

"Uh—okay."

There was a click and the line went dead.

Who in the hell was this guy?

He stood there in a phone booth in the rain.

Who the fuck was that guy.

Slowly, Mark's hand, seemingly disembodied by the surreal nature of the things he had just heard, hung up the receiver and he rattled and banged the bi-fold glass and aluminum door open.

Some oxygen would be nice. What the fuck was that all about?

There were one or two things he needed at the store. Amy would be wondering.

So that was it, then.

He wasn't guilty of abducting and killing anybody up in Schenectady.

Which was something of a relief.

When a man is going mad, or has gone mad, or is being told he is going mad, or that he will go mad, or thinks that maybe, he really has gone mad, and therefore none of his perceptions can be trusted, he will doubt—or believe, the strangest things.

Also, there were the dreams, which were vivid in the extreme and one of the reasons why he had believed himself capable.

Amy was waiting at home—

Home.

What a word that was, so pregnant with meaning. A man's home was his castle. It was symbol of hope, desire, peace and plenty.

It was also an illusion.

We are all alone, inside.

Anything else was just bullshit.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mornings were good. This was a distinct change in attitude.

The sheer joy that was Amy stood out all the more due to contrast with his previous life.

The last few years had been demeaning, degrading, demoralizing. Downright dehumanizing, at lot of the time, for one such as Mark Jones. She had made everything mostly all right again.

Not everything, though.

He had an unpleasant duty to perform, which meant going out into the rain in his shit-coat, getting increasingly heavy and increasingly onerous by the minute. Later on, he might stop in at the shit-store and see if they had a two-bit raincoat with bits of tobacco and tiny dead sticks in the pockets. Something with a bit of a ring around the collar and impenetrable sweat-stains in the armpits.

Once a month he was required to attend at his court-appointed psychiatrist's office. Mark was extremely lucky to be a part of a pilot project. Otherwise he couldn't have done it, not at the going rate of a fifty dollars an hour. The thing was, that psychiatric supervision was a condition of his release.

This was his first interview with Dr. Lischka since getting out of Bellevue. He'd never met the dude, but staff and social workers had set it all up in the hopes of making it work. The problem for them was that Mark's home was listed as New York City on all their own internal documents.

Whenever they asked, he always insisted that he would like to go home—where the work was, not incidentally; and in the end they had come round. It was better than letting him go, only to see him wandering the streets of Rochester for the rest of his life. Even the system could see that. They lived in Rochester for the most part and it wasn't a huge town. Reluctance at seeing the results of a mistake right in front of them might have had something to do with it. Rochester was a small city, but like all American cities, they already had enough of a homeless problem without adding one more.

It was so easily avoidable. All they had to do was spend a few bucks and ship him out—case closed. He was now officially someone else's problem.

For Mark, it was a case of sticking to your guns. It was a miracle that it had even worked.

It might even be worth it. Hell, it already had been.

The doctor was located halfway across Manhattan and he had to transfer from one bus to another. Going by all the marble, granite and bronze in the front lobby, and a very fashionable location it was, the doctor was making a living if nothing else.

All them government cheques, perhaps.

The place was what one might expect, with upscale but clearly commercial furnishings. There were some inoffensive artworks on the walls, including the standard Norman Rockwell fare, replete with grandfatherly GPs, bald heads, pince-nez, massive syringes and scampish-looking small boys with their bare buttocks exposed, in something that must have once passed for humour, possibly even art.

Leaving his coat, pockets carefully empty, (the Big Apple was the Big Apple after all) on the rack in the outer room, Mark was finally meeting the doctor. It was a nice, big room, all done in heavy oaken darkness, smelling masculine with stale pipe tobacco and lots of leather-bound books. In a nice, homely touch, the doctor had a few bits of ash on his vest and there was just the faintest hint of Aqua-Velva. Like many psychologists, the shoes were slightly scruffy, a mark of distinction much like a fighter-jock's mustache.

Judging by the pictures on the wall and the desk, he was married with a couple of small boys. The doctor liked fishing and khaki vests with a lot of pockets when he wasn't golfing.

There was an unspoken form of communication going on here.

They shook hands and sat.

"Ah, Mark, how are you."

"Fine, Doctor."

Freud was a neurotic.

Jung was a freak, man.

"Okay, Mark, just relax. There's no need to be nervous. Basically we just need to verify your compliance with the outpatient treatment plan. Do you understand?" The doctor had to ask that, of course, being as much a bureaucrat as anyone else confronted with all the forms.

"Uh, yep."

Picking up a pen, the doctor began to fill out the forms that were stacked in front of him.

It was an awesome responsibility.

More than anything, they were inclined to cover their own asses first and foremost. Any doubt would count against you in their minds.

They were trying to find out if he was a danger to the community. Was he a danger to himself or anyone else. If he said the wrong thing, he'd be tossed right back.

"Uh, yep."

"Good. Very good. So. How have we been?"

"Uh, yeah, uh. Pretty good, really. I've only been out a few days—"

He was just getting back on his feet again, Mark concluded rather lamely.

Keep it short, keep it sweet and to the point...

Don't give them nothing you don't have to.

Don't tell them Nietsche was impotent—they don't want to know.

Doctor Lischka nodded sharply. The biggest part of his job was listening, really listening.

"I see, I see." He glanced at his mimeographed case-notes. "Well, we might as well get right into it, then."

He studied the man before him, blinking very slowly and Mark tried not to squirm under the gaze.

"Okay. Here we go. Have you been hearing voices?"

"Ah, no."

"Hmn. Do you feel that you might want to harm anyone?"

"Ah, no. Not really."

"Not really?"

Mark cursed himself. Never qualify with these guys—you have to be sure, and very sincere when you answer. There can be no doubts at all.

"Nope. Not at all." Out of nowhere a smile came, and it must have been just the right response.

Stick to your guns.

It is the truth, after all.

The doctor smiled.

The doctor wasn't such a bad guy.

He was human too.

Right?

"Okay. Do you think, feel or otherwise believe, or have any reason to think, feel, believe, or otherwise apprehend, ah, that someone might want to harm you?"

"Ah, no." He shook his head and tried a smile. "I mean, it's a rough neighbourhood and everything, but nothing like in the way you mean."

"Okay, very good. So. Uh, what's been happening?" The doctor was uncertain.

This was a good time to keep it simple. What the doc didn't know wouldn't hurt Mark.

The doctor was nervous, the doctor was insecure.

The doctor was an asshole.

"Well. Ah, I got an apartment. I got a bed. I got a couple of chairs and some stuff for the kitchen. I got a job, which is fantastic...really."

"Oh, wonderful. That was quick. Where are you working?" The doctor's voice was calm, soothing, reassuring, and Mark had no idea of how he was doing but it seemed okay.

"Ah, the Flamingo."

"Oh, really." The doctor was already flipping through his forms and notes, possibly wondering if Mark was restricted from alcohol consumption or entering the sort of premises where it was sold.

He knew the place, all right. The doctor would have all the best lifestyle magazines, some of them were in the waiting room. He might even read them once in a while, and as jazz clubs went, the Flamingo was definitely known.

"Jeez, that's all right, eh?"

"Yeah. Ah, yes, sir. I mean, doc." Mark grinned from ear to ear. "Yeah. It's a miracle, really."

The doc laughed, the tone must have been just right.

That's the way you do it.

You can lick them by smiling.

Mark had carefully read his own release documents and couldn't find any mention of the prohibition of alcohol. That was no guarantee, once he'd studied the obscure language and archaisms of the text. It was like they didn't want the patient to understand it. They wanted you to slip up and go back inside. They wanted to load you up with a bunch of shit.

There was no way you could read a doctor's handwriting upside-down, and you probably couldn't read it right side-up either. Somewhere in there they must have Mark's profession down in one of their little bureaucratic boxes. The doctor would be more concerned with catching up with his medical history and getting an impression of his newest patient. The doctor let the silence continue.

It was all part of the test, probably.

"Well. Good for you." The doctor didn't ask what Mark would be doing there and sometimes it was best not to volunteer information.

Lischka's eyes were skimming across a page.

"I got a girlfriend." Mark heaved a deep sigh. "At least I think I do. There are things I want to tell her, you know?"

The doctor, eyes on his notes, picked up his pen and scribbled away and Mark flushed.

He took in some air, let it out with a rush. He settled more comfortably in the chair.

Fuck doctors, anyways.

"There are things I wouldn't mind asking her."

"Hmn. Yeah. Women—can't live with them, can't live without them."

Mark laughed.

"That's not exactly what I meant. But women these days are different. I mean, times have changed, and they really do have minds of their own."

"What's her name?"

"Amy. She's an anthropologist—" She was the kind of girl who would burn her bra on the front steps of City Hall, that sort of thing.

"Oh, really." The doctor sat up straighter, impressed.

There were plenty of mentally-ill people in the world, but so few of them were intelligent, well-spoken and able to articulate. Most of them didn't do very well in school, and opportunities to broaden the mind were few at the lowest levels of the social fabric.

The American social fabric was being ripped apart, and Mark had been isolated, very isolated.

Coming out into the community was fraught with challenges. It was early in the relationship. A certain type of psychopath came across as erudite and extremely intelligent. It would be slow going at first, as Lischka assessed his patient. There was the history of serious violence—against a police officer, no less. Right in police headquarters, which was not that unusual in his experience. Confronted with the awful reality, people freaked out, kicking, biting, scratching, and foaming at the mouth—

"Okay. Just to clarify, approximately how many personalities have manifested themselves so far? And, have any new ones identified themselves, or disrupted your equilibrium in any way, shape or form, ah, recently?" He was intently reading the third page now, eyebrows raising and his mouth moved in a quirky fashion more than once. "I mean, it must be a bit, ah, scary, finding yourself all on your own, out in the world again after so long...right?"

"Ah, no, doctor. Nothing like that."

"And you've been taking your meds?"

Upon his release, he'd been provided with a week's supply of medications. It was still in his suitcase. He hadn't been taking it, and sooner or later the doc was going to ask where his pharmacy was, or come up with some question that he really couldn't answer without thinking about it. That was the thing with a lie, you couldn't think. You just didn't have the time. It had to come naturally. The key was to have those answers all prepared and ready to go. All of a sudden he was praying that the doctor wouldn't ask to see the bottle, or fucking well want to count the pills or something God-awful like that.

"Ah, yes, sir." Mark impulsively sat up a little straighter. "Yeah, I've been feeling pretty good. Ha. I haven't even had a cold in a while."

The doctor nodded, pausing the pen on the page.

Mark was definitely sweating under the arms, hopefully it wasn't beading up on his forehead.

The thing was to sort of mirror the doctor's own body-language, all of that professional confidence, practicing oozing out of his pores as it were.

Mark resisted the urge to stroke his chin or touch his face in any way. Let the doctor do it all he wants.

Stroke that beard, asshole...

Mark sat there, open and confident, sitting up fairly straight and looking as calm as he could manage. No fidgeting, hands clasped in his lap.

Breathe, deeply and calmly...

Crazy Old Bill might have been right.

It was all about body control—and the key to body control was resting posture and breath-control.

It was all about being centred, and calm, and knowing your own worth, and that they were wrong—just plain wrong.

It was all about justice.

It was all about thinking crazy thoughts, and looking out for number one, and staying out of trouble.

For a couple of seconds, he put himself back in the square, playing his horn for a little girl.

Anything for you, my dear—

There.

It was enough.

Back to the present.

"Do you ever feel that people can read your thoughts or that your thoughts might be leaking out somehow, Mark?" Those ingenuous blue eyes fixated on him.

The thing was to drop your own eyes and really think about the question—(after all, no one ever looks up their own symptoms and so therefore I couldn't have anticipated this in advance). For this he had to thank Bill, who had found him a book on detecting liars and the like. Mark never would have thought of it, that one was all Bill. Poor Bill—they'd pulled all his rotten old teeth and put him away a long time ago.

There were a million books out there. When you got right down to it, they had a hell of an influence.

Mark had sat there in the library and studied his alleged (and developing!) illness thoroughly, preparing for just such a day.

Mark's eyes came up and he answered.

"Uh—no." He laughed nervously.

It was, of course, exactly what he was thinking. It was exactly what he was afraid of, and yet self-reporting was an important part of this supervisory process. You just had to stick to your story, perhaps even believe in it...do your best, anyways.

This shit-head unfortunately had lot of power over his life—then there was the parole officer, with an appointment there coming up next week. That one was scary too, but the first questions they asked were bound to be similar—and they'd be looking for a certain type of answers. This was good practice. They wouldn't toss him back for no reason. They had a stake of some kind in all of this—his big success. He would tell the parole officer all about Doctor Lischka. He would tell them he had a job, an apartment and a girlfriend and let them draw their own conclusions...

Mark appears to be successfully reintegrating into the community.

We should encourage him and give him all the support the system can provide.

Mark sat there with a half-smile on his face.

"Good. Good for you. Just one or two more questions, and then we'll cut you loose. You seem to be doing very well."

"Ah. Thank you...doc." Something let go in his guts, but he ignored it as best he could.

"Okay. Let's see here. Seven or eight personalities, eh. Are any of them with us here today?"

Again, those freaky eyes had him nailed.

Mark grinned, this time it wasn't so easy to fake.

Cut you loose...eh.

"Nope. They've all been pretty quiet lately." He took a long breath and threw himself into the role. "Yeah, I have to admit. Them pills seem to work, doc. A miracle of modern science, really. Things are going great and I've been feeling a lot better. It's good to be out of the hospital. I'll tell you that much."

"Hmn." The doctor hit him with a trick question. "So. What sort of side effects are you having from the meds?"

That one was easy. Mark launched into some minor complaints, feeling a bit dozy for a while after the morning dose, being constipated sometimes. Sometimes he was trembly in the knees, weak in the legs, wonky head, eyes unable to focus on fine print, and all that sort of thing.

The key thing was to stick to a routine. Don't get all stressed out over shit.

To sleep properly, to eat properly, and not hide out from the world. The doctor nodded at all of this, seemingly impressed.

But all in all, Mark figured he was doing pretty well and he had no real complaints...

"Yeah, I got to be honest with you, doc. Sometimes the voices were telling me stupid shit. Even knowing it was bullshit, knowing it was just the illness, all irrational stuff and holy, fuck, you even knew it at the time. But, uh, well, it was still pretty tough. Imagine all those voices talking. All at once, all telling you to do something...stupid. Those meds are a real fuckin' lifesaver, doc."

The doctor nodded, eyes down, listening intently, hopefully hearing exactly what he wanted to hear.

That was the key, according to Bill. Give them what they needed to do their jobs.

It seemed to have worked, and that was the important thing.

***

It was a funny thing about the meds. Mark had been taking the meds and fighting off their effects for pretty close to four years. The things knocked you on your ass, especially at first, and made a zombie of you for most of the day. They had their God-damned routine too—waking you up at five a.m. with a glass of juice, and breakfast wasn't until eight. At Bellevue, they brought you your pills morning, noon and night. They stood there and watched you take them. The more anal-retentive staffers would sometimes make you open your mouth and show them that you weren't just hiding the things under your tongue, only to spit it out as soon as their backs were turned. But Mark was the perfect patient. Mark understood that he had a problem, an illness. Mark wanted so very badly to get well. Mark was sweetness personified for the staffers. Carefully, using a little human psychology, a bond of trust had been built, and after a while, they weren't watching you nearly so closely. Problem patients made themselves known quickly enough and the staff tended to focus their angst on the bad ones.

Mark knew all about angst, he'd read up on it extensively.

With blood tests once a month, you had to take at least some of the meds, or they wouldn't show up in your blood at all. Since body chemistry varied by individual, the key thing was to turn in consistent results, hopefully normal results, but results nevertheless. If they read consistently low or high, that could be explained away by the doctors themselves as the medications were so-called first generation. It was a pioneering field insofar as fine pharmaceuticals went (Bill's input here). Gobbling a whole bunch of them the day before the test would show an abnormally high level. But Mark's routine at Bellevue had evolved over time, and he knew as much about it as anyone. The trouble was. He hadn't had such a long break without the meds in quite a while, and that would require some thinking. He'd also been feeling pretty good physically, and would have preferred to stay that way.

The shrinks at Bellevue had started him off with the lowest possible dose. By carefully managing what he told them, he'd managed to stave them off from the inevitable escalation. This escalation would happen in most cases. But Mark Jones was lucky. He had only a mild case of insanity.

Just a little touch of it. Just enough to keep him out of the big house. One of the neat things about the library at Bellevue was the sections on psychiatry and mental illnesses. It had probably been envisaged, originally, as a resource for staff and parents, guardians, spouses, to understand the nature of the illnesses the patients, loved ones or family members, were suffering from. Not actually having anything particularly wrong with him except a natural dislike of jail, plus some documented episodes of depression, he'd had to fake it every inch of the way. He couldn't relax for one minute, or he'd slip up and then he'd be in a shit-load of trouble.

The whole mental-illness thing had been a bit of an inspiration.

What a rat I am—desperately trying to survive and nothing more sometimes.

That was a humbling discovery. He'd been forced to confront that. All of this was just a sidebar.

The real problem was that he hadn't been thinking and now the doctor wanted him to take a blood test.

Short of cash as he was, and busy (and incarcerated for much of the time since his release), Mark hadn't actually filled the prescriptions provided by thoughtful staff at Bellevue prior to his release into the wilds of urban reality.

Doctor Lischka had given him a form and the address of a walk-in lab. All he had to do was to beat their test and make sure the proper results were in before next month's appointment. The doctor had been a bit vague, decidedly casual about when he might go in. Mark knew enough not to push that much more than a few days. Get in there and get it done. Start thinking about a cover story—tell him you didn't get the scrip filled for a few days, because you were waiting for payday. Sell him a big sob story.

More importantly, all of that could wait until next time.

Sorry, doc, I accidentally dropped my pills in a puddle in the rain. I shall try to do better in the future—

Do whatever it takes to stay outside.

And maybe there really were little voices in his head.

This looked like a job for Duke. Other than that, he would have to do the research. Thank God and Andrew Carnegie for the library system.

There was just no way he was going back.

Not to jail and not to Bellevue, either.

According to Bill, any system could be defeated by using its own rules against it. It was good advice if you could take it.

In order to do that, you had to stay cool.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mark got off the bus fifteen blocks from home. For one thing, walking burned off energy, and he had a couple of days to kill. The whole doctor's visit thing had stressed him out, more than he cared to think about. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. It might get a lot more invasive when he saw the parole officer.

The fact that he was actually guilty of an offense wasn't much of a help. That one should never have happened.

He wanted to think about Amy, which was a good feeling but there were still questions.

There were always going to be questions. He knew so little about her, her life, her family, where she was coming from and where she might be going. They really needed to sit and talk, rather than just screwing all the time.

She was an amazing girl.

He couldn't get over it, but.

There might be times when it was better to set someone free.

It was a hell of a thought.

Am I really that bad?

Do I really hate myself that much.

That was another kind of a thought.

With only the grubby white parka for a coat, Mark had left it at home. He was relying on the thickest of his undershirts, and wearing two shirts, a thin cotton one of his own and a thicker, corduroy one that Duke had given him. Even so, it was a distinctly chilly sort of day in spite of the brilliant sunshine. It was barely tolerable in the sun, and cold as hell in the shade. You really had to hustle along to build up a bit of body heat. He wasn't the only one pushing the season. It said something about people slugging along the sidewalks, hands in pockets and clearly shivering in thin slacks and cotton shirts and not much else. He'd always marveled at the girls in their skirts, with the cold breeze going right up there all the time and their bare toes sticking out.

No wonder women were rebelling.

Nothing beats a good pair of socks, when you get right down to it.

Mark made a couple of stops at thrift stores along the route. While there were one or two nice jackets there, neither one was quite long enough in the sleeves for him. The prices were such on these desirable items—both dark brown leather bomber jackets, that if Mark was going to buy one, it had damned well better fit.

Not finding anything else, his mind curiously blank regarding household furnishings—although a lamp or two might be nice if he ever got a couch, he walked the last six blocks in a deadened mood. A pillow would be good. A kitchen table would be good, unfortunately, it didn't look like it was happening today. One more stop, for no particular reason. Browsing the music shop wasn't much fun, not without a record player and not much in the way of disposable income. It had been years. The band names lately were incomprehensible. Names like The Velvet Raincoat, Toe Jam, the Cantaloupes, and the Insects, for crying out loud, it didn't make any kind of sense. It was a whole new generation of kids coming up, and it was like they had their own language.

It was the highly-symbolic and completely arbitrary language of rebellion, fueled mostly by hyper-active glands and a lot of pimple cream. In that sense, it didn't have to make any sense at all, and the kids would love it.

Out on the road and with no real permanent home, all of that had fallen by the wayside. It would be nice to think that things might be different, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future. Band members couldn't bring much along with them on the bus or the train, and record-players were bulky and all too easily damaged. Instead of listening to music, you got to play it yourself. Yet in order to get something good, you also had to give up something good—which was leisure, or security, or financial success, or whatever.

If only he knew what to do next.

The usual gang of suspects were sitting on the porch when he arrived. The difference was that he knew some of them by now, including his would-be mugger. The kid, who couldn't be much over fourteen or fifteen, smiled and nodded a bit sheepishly upon seeing him. Tall for his age, it was no substitute for experience, or even just maturity.

Mark lifted his eyebrows in acknowledgement and kept on moving. The stairwell smelled, of cooking, tobacco smoke and something else, hopefully not urine. So far, the building seemed okay on that score. Some buildings were a lot worse, that much was for sure.

When he opened up his apartment door, Duke was already there, waiting for him. He must have used the fire escape.

Sooner or later, Mark would have to talk to Duke about that sort of thing—

"Hey, man. I seen that cop again—at least I think it was him."

"What? Who? Which one?" Mark immediately thought of Lang and Stubbs and his heart sank a little.

Some guys just couldn't take a hint. They seemed to have a bit of a thing for one Mark Jones, well-known community psychopath...killer, stalker, little-girl slasher.

"Yeah. I think it was him. I was just coming down the hall and he was hanging around outside your door." Duke had gone to another apartment where he knew no one was home.

He knocked, got no answer and so he went away again, keeping it as plausible as possible in his words.

"You mean, like a uniformed cop?"

"No, plainclothes."

Ah.

"Ah. Did this guy have...ah, shit. Blue eyes, silver hair going straight up? Glasses, anything like that? Six-foot one or two, well over two hundred pounds, but not fat—gun on the hip?" O'Hara didn't do the shoulder-holster thing for some reason.

He wasn't trying to hide the fact that he was a cop, or that he was armed. He wasn't too worried about being cool.

"Sky blue blazer, white shirt, red tie?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

Unusually for him, Duke hadn't immediately reached for his pocket. Finally he pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboro's and offered Mark a slightly bent one. He took it but stuck it behind the ear for later. Smoking was not too swift for a horn-player. More than one career had been destroyed by the unfortunate tendency for a big chunk of phlegm to come flying out and gum up the works, and usually just in the middle of a difficult passage to boot. You either quit smoking or people got real tired of you. Pretty darned quick.

"Fuck. I wonder what the hell he wanted..."

"So, who was that?"

"It sure sounds like O'Hara. A fucking detective. He's the one that sent me to the welfare office. Shit. Here's your ten bucks, incidentally."

Mark pulled out his thin and worn leather wallet, a gift from his aunt many years before.

"Thanks, man." The look on Duke's face told Mark that he'd been thinking about that ten bucks, but had been sort of hesitant to bring it up.

"Oh, hey, no problem. Ah...how much is a bag of pot?"

Duke brightened up a little more.

"Nickel and dime, just like I said."

"Yeah, but what does that mean, Duke? Bear in mind, I'm just new to all of this—although I have smoked the stuff once or twice before." It was a part of the scene, and while Mark wasn't crazy about it, he had in fact had one or two puffs over the years just to be sociable.

You could hardly escape the smell of it in bars, clubs, or at private parties, and he'd never made a big thing of it. Stepping out the stage door, into an alley and half the band was there puffing away, and what were you supposed to do, what were you supposed to say?

It was a part of the scene, an acknowledged, some would say important part of it. The whole lifestyle was an alternative to square-ness, and pot was just one element of the attitude.

Buying the shit was another thing, but Amy seemed to take having it and smoking it as a matter of course. She was ten years younger than Mark, and had that college experience to account for it. He was pretty sure she hadn't been a virgin either.

Not hardly.

It might help Duke out, in fact it probably would. Duke didn't get welfare for some reason. It was a bummer, but he must have his reasons, because virtually anyone could get it. Whereas a loan might not be such a good idea—he was a dope dealer after all. His future would be nothing if not uncertain. Hand over the money and write it off, sometimes that was the only way. Mark could only afford to help out so much, but it might help the guy. How Duke made it through a month was a pretty good question. His habits seemed relatively expensive, and about as regular as clockwork.

"Well, hey, dude. You get a quarter ounce for five bucks, a half an ounce for ten bucks. An ounce for thirty. It's good grass, man, the same shit you've been smoking." He went on. "You can sell a half a bag and that way you get a half a bag for ten dinero. That's pretty cheap smoke."

Mark nodded, reaching into the wallet again for a five. There was such a thing as hospitality as well.

"Yeah, well, I don't want to sell dope." It's not like Mark really knew anyone that wanted any. "That's more of a pain in the ass than anything."

Not real diplomatic, but true as far as Mark was concerned. It was also illegal. It was a game for losers.

Besides, he had work now...you really don't want to screw that up.

On that thought, Mark turned and headed for the fridge to get Duke a beer.

Beer now, beer was cheap and legal. No one had the right to question it.

O'Hara. What in the fuck was he doing here?

Yeah. It had to be him—

For whatever reason.

Either the guy really gave a shit for some reason—liking jazz or whatever, or they had another dead body on their hands and some reason to believe it was all connected. He really didn't impress as being queer, although the family portrait was no guarantee. The jazz world had its own brand of queer and Mark was not unfamiliar with the phenomenon. A lot of them married, somehow impregnated a woman, had three kids and a dog and lived a double life.

Hopefully O'Hara wasn't after his ass—

For real.

For that, I would buy a knife.

And use it.

The key thing was not to get angry, not to get uptight.

The thing was to let it roll off of him, like water from a duck's back.

That probably wasn't it anyway.

***

For the first time, they had gone up to Duke's apartment. There were some good chairs, but the overall impression was one of poverty—or just not caring. O'Hara was looking for Mark, who didn't much want to be found. Also the wind direction was just right. The smoke would go out the window, and since it was getting close to payday, people would be looking for Duke anyways, looking for fronts. Duke didn't have a phone. He weighed up seven grams of buds for Mark, and let him have a couple of rolling papers. Nothing beats a cash sale, and he was always happy to smoke a sampler with a customer.

"These buds are dry. Nice and hard, and it's still a full finger." According to Duke, an ounce of weed would be four fingers in a baggie.

Mark hadn't seen a set of triple-beam scales since high school science class. Apparently the dope world had converted to the metric system quite a long time ago...

"Half a bag, two fingers."

Whatever the hell that meant. Between Amy and Duke, Mark was learning a whole new language.

Duke rolled up a joint and sparked it.

Having left a note for Amy, who still didn't have a key but would probably try the window, Mark could only hope that being out of the loop for a while would be okay. There was also the horrible feeling that he should be trying to control something. Shit was happening and he didn't know what it was. O'Hara was bad news. Pure, gut instinct. One way or another.

"So. Tell me about Maude. What's up there, dude?"

"Oh, man, I don't know." Sex was one thing, a relationship might be another. "It's like she's got these motherly instincts. At the same time, she's completely housebound and sort of a born dependent. I mean, she's nice and everything."

Maude was dumb as a stick and accident-prone. She was the first person who had ever shown Duke any kindness. He laughed when he said it. He shrugged a lot when he talked about her.

Duke went on to explain about her illness, the fact that she was on medications, and pretty much unemployable by anybody's standards for pretty much any line of work he could name.

She wasn't Duke's cup of tea, apparently, and yet he was still blushing.

Maude was something like forty years old, she had never been married, and had never had a baby.

Theoretically, this explained much in psychological terms. All those motherly instincts.

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Hey, Mark, how's it going." The bedroom light snapped on overhead.

Mark sat bolt upright, whipping off the coverlet, which was surprisingly hard to do in a waterbed.

"Shit."

It was Detective O'Hara, standing over him, right beside the bed. He had a long and speculative look on his face as his eyes slid over the room.

"Holy, Jesus, you scared the shit right out of me." Mark blinked at the cop, whose jacket was hitched back suggestively, revealing the pistol on his belt.

His hand hovered casually over the butt, near enough as made no difference.

"Sorry about that, Mark."

"Ah, yeah." Amy was gone again, after yet another night of partying, drinking, smoking hash and other things, and then they'd had some pretty wild sex.

His glance darted around the room.

What evidence had they left behind?

Her clothes appeared to be gone, and he rubbed his eyes.

Shit.

"Come on. Get up."

Mark swung his legs over the side, trying to bite back the resentment. Fucking O'Hara wanted something. That much was evident.

"Detective."

"It's okay, Mark, I just want to talk to you."

"Honestly, you got no right to come walking in here—whether the door was locked or not. Whether you're a cop or not, or whether you got a fucking God-damned fucking key or not—"

"Shut up." O'Hara's hand was on the butt of the gun now.

"I need some pants, for crying out loud." This was too much. "Who in the fuck do you guys think you are?"

What in the hell was their problem?

"Fine. I'll shoot you right there. Get moving."

"Fuck, people have rights, detective." Mark's voice had gone up half an octave.

O'Hara stepped back, training and experience coming to the fore. His fingers curled around the gun-butt. Mark was kicking up a fuss, uncharacteristically for him.

"Get." O'Hara beckoned with the left hand. "Come on, Mark. Don't make me get tough."

"Argh."

He lumbered up out of the bed.

Mark shuffled out into the living room, O'Hara following watchfully. He would have been stark naked, except that during the night he'd had to pee, and he'd remembered that he'd left the curtains open on the front windows. His underwear was thankfully pretty clean, but for how much longer no one could say...

"What in the hell is this about?"

Mark's mouth fell open when he spied a coil of thick manila rope on the chair nearest the door.

"Detective. What in the hell—"

O'Hara pulled the gun and pointed it at Mark's nose.

"I told you to shut up, punk. Creep. Weirdo."

The cat came in the window just then. It hadn't been seen all day, not since the night before last.

Mark had concluded that it might not be his cat after all, and that maybe someone else was feeding it. He didn't think it was in heat. When it went to rub itself on Mark's leg, O'Hara's foot lashed out and he kicked the thing as it went past.

Mark's blood was quickly coming to a boil.

The trouble was that gun.

***

O'Hara had him seated on one of the maple chairs in the living room, hands cuffed and with the chain through the spindles of the back. The detective was going through the place in a half-hearted search. It seemed like he was just taking a look around. He opened the front closet, just inside the door and grunted.

Whatever he was looking for, he wasn't going to find it in there. Mark didn't own a single coat-hangar.

Keeping the gun pointed at Mark, he took another quick look in the bedroom. Mumbling to himself, he took a quick walk down to the end of the hall. The linen closet was shallow, shelved from a couple of feet above the floorboards all the way up to the top. He tried the kitchen. The kitchen pantry was bigger. This was a small room of about three feet wide by four feet deep, with more shelves and even some wooden bins for potatoes and the like at floor level. He snapped on the light, and Mark could see him in there, seemingly at a loss.

"What's this about, Detective?"

Mark's face was flushed with anger. He couldn't really resist a cop, not one with a gun pointing at him, but this was outrageous. Were they all like that? His thoughts went back to Schenectady.

The detective came out, his face clearing. He put the gun away.

"It'll have to be this one, then."

Ignoring Mark, he picked up the coil of rope and went to work. There was a sickness in Mark's stomach as the man revealed a noose and slip-knot arrangement. Kids often made them for fun, hanging them up on the way to school as Halloween approached. He'd done it himself, more than once, on Devil's night. The other end of what was only eight or ten feet of rope went over the steel pipe of the coat hanger, stretching from side to side inside the closet.

"What...in the hell..." Is going on here.

"This is not your day, Mark."

"I asked you a question, Detective O'Hara. But why don't I just answer it for you? A certain kind of psychopath revisits the scene of the crime."

With a smile, O'Hara took out the keys to the handcuffs.

"Well, I guess I can understand your feelings in this matter. You don't know what's going on, and you feel you deserve an answer. Hmn." He appeared to consider the prospect as Mark's guts churned. "Not a bad guess, actually. Honestly, the quicker I'm out of here, the better it is for me. I'm a busy man and my time is precious. Mark. I'm going to have to ask you not to struggle too much, or it will leave a lot of marks on your wrists." Those deadly eyes impaled him. "I just want to know that I remember the face of every man I ever killed. It haunts me sometimes, it really does."

Tears sprung to Mark's eyes as the bastard unlocked the cuff on the left wrist, yanked him to his feet, and kicked the chair away simultaneously. Mark was kept off balance the whole time, and then the cuff was snapped back on.

"You'll never get away with...this."

"You'll never know, will you? By the way, if you give me too much trouble, I'm going after the girl—what's her name, Amy. Right? You understand?" O'Hara gave him a rap on the side of the head with the barrel of the pistol. "You get it, punk?"

"Argh. You're not going to kill me—you're too fucking stupid."

"Hah. Good one."

"Yeah. Just when you think you know Ed O'Hara, he turns on you. In the final scene, he turns out to be a prick."

O'Hara wasn't taking it too personally. He shoved Mark into the closet, giving him another rap on the head. He flipped the noose over Mark's head, giving it a quick one-handed yank, tightening the noose. Sharp fibers stung his neck and Mark, trying to spin, kicked at the detective's groin but O'Hara was obviously expecting it and took it on the hip-bone. Painful it might have been, it wasn't enough to make much of a difference.

"Right. Fat lot of good that will do you."

Mark shuddered. This dude was going to kill him. He was really going to do it. He watched as O'Hara pulled something out of his pocket. Taking a blood-stained knife out of a plastic baggie, he dropped it carefully on the floor. Sealing the bag, he put it away. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of an inner pocket, it was bagged in plastic as well. He turned and went into the kitchen.

"I'm thinking there's a dead hooker just around the corner."

"I'm thinking you may be right." O'Hara gave him an approving nod. "Yeah, you catch on real fast."

"Detective...why? Why?"

O'Hara came back. He stood there admiring his handiwork, not quite sure perhaps how, or if he could really do it. Mark weighed a hundred and seventy pounds. He would be kicking and screaming, and it would take two hands to lift him off the ground...the solution was to choke him into unconsciousness and then lift him. Either that, or get him to stand on the chair and then tie off the rope. Kick the chair away. Perhaps that was best. The trouble with these shit-hole apartments was that the pipe brackets holding up the coat rod would come right out of the wall, and that wasn't what he wanted at all. Perhaps choking was best after all—

Mark's mouth opened as the detective put the gun securely away and stepped in to finish it. He pulled out a large handkerchief, opened it and then folded it diagonally...he was making a gag, hoping to keep Mark as quiet as possible.

Mark's mouth snapped shut and he stared, trying not to hope.

Mark's voice couldn't be too loud, or O'Hara's instincts would be aroused. But he had to keep him occupied for as long as possible...

Words to a song he'd written a long time ago came to him.

"You are strong but I am wise. We shall meet again—in hell, O'Hara. In hell."

O'Hara nodded thoughtfully.

"Right on. You wrote that yourself."

"It's all bullshit, you know—it's all fake. It's all a lie. I did it to get out of jail, O'Hara. Sure, I had a mental illness. I've suffered from severe and chronic depression since I was a kid. But the Establishment is bullshit. I plead self-defence. The fact is, you're a million times crazier than I am."

What Mark saw but O'Hara missed was Amy's purse, sitting on the floor in the far inner corner of the room. It was in the shadows, beside his parka and the two horn cases.

The detective appeared to consider it. This guy was a real sadist, to be toying with his victim like that. Like a music critic, only worse in some ways...O'Hara, apparently humoring his victim, drew the other chair over, and sat on it backwards, grinning at Mark.

"It really doesn't matter, Mark. You can take that little secret to the grave with you...besides, I wouldn't trust no one over thirty."

He went on, for which Mark was grateful. Otherwise he was thirty seconds from dissolution. A lot of pain stood between here and then.

"Gambling is nothing more than the study of probabilities." He pursed his lips. "A lot of people are going to die here tonight. I want a nice, tight little solution to my case, Mark. It's nothing personal. It's just that you happen to be available. But like poker, police work is the study of your fellow human beings. Your arrest reports, even your little stints in jail, will conveniently disappear."

"What in the hell are you talking about, Ed?" Mark tried to make his voice reasonable, friendly almost. "What, so this is the big insurance job, eh? Hey, it's not like I love the system any more than you do. Maybe I can help you, Ed."

O'Hara snorted.

"You are helping me, old buddy, old pal. Can you dig it."

Mark sighed, deeply, and as loudly as he could.

"Ed. I have to pee—"

O'Hara laughed and it was his undoing. He threw his head back and really laughed.

Noisy as the building was at the best of times, O'Hara hadn't heard her opening up the bathroom door or creeping down the hallway with a short length of lead pipe in her hands...

"Ah. Mark. You slay me, you really do."

Just at the last possible second, O'Hara began to turn, hearing the squeak of the floorboards, but by then the pipe was already swinging.

The look on her face was intense, having no doubt seen and heard enough out of this guy to have no hesitation at all.

"You bastard."

Whunk.

The impact sounded a lot like Babe Ruth knocking another one out of the stadium.

This one was going out of the park.

The detective went down like a sack of potatoes and it was like for a moment, the whole building went quiet.

Which was kind of unusual, for good old number ninety-nine.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The pounding from above started up, Man-Child as he was known, being totally oblivious to anything in the outside world as people like that often were. Amy desperately struggled to get a hand into O'Hara's pocket, looking for the key. He was a bit overweight and the polyester slacks were tight. He was laying on his side, out like a light.

"They're on his belt."

"Oh, shit—okay."

With a rope no longer around his neck, Mark was practically dancing in rage. The urge to kick that slightly-pudgy face, lying face-down on the floor was practically overwhelming. Would he ever like to bust that cocksucker's ribs.

I really should be able to do it...it was a personal failure.

She pulled out the key ring. Holding it up, she looked at Mark in horror. O'Hara's body twitched and they both stepped back.

"Shit. It's a real small one—hurry, try it."

He turned around and she grabbed at his wrists.

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck—" It was the third one she tried, and then both of Mark's hands were free.

She threw the cuffs aside.

O'Hara, after a few initial twitches, had subsided into a low moan, his hands pushing feebly at the floor but his eyes were still unfocused. They were unfortunately open again, which meant bad news in anybody's book.

The right arm moved just as Mark was going forward to pull the gun off the guy. Mark couldn't see the gun, it had to be under him somewhere. He was a big, heavy guy, and he was moving again.

Mark stepped back in panic.

O'Hara made another little snuffling sound. The head came up off the floor and gave itself a little shake.

"Come on." He grabbed Amy's hand and pulled her towards the door. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Remembering the cat, Mark shoved Amy out into the hall.

"Go up to Duke's—if he's not home, Maude lives down the hall on the same side. She's right at the back."

She nodded.

"What—what are you going to do?"

"The cat—the fucking cat."

Amy seemed to understand, and so did he. She backed off down the hall, turning and sprinting upon hearing another low groan from O'Hara.

Mark wouldn't have much time, but the window was open and the cat was smart enough when you got right down to it.

Theoretically, he really should call the fucking cops...

***

Amy wasn't being left behind. Duke pulled the clip on a Colt .45-calibre pistol. He took another look and then inserted it. Snip, snap, and the thing was all set to go.

It seemed like Duke had a pretty good idea of how to use it. Mark nodded and opened the door after a peek through the peephole and a long listen.

Cocking the gun, Duke led. He went through first, all set to shoot. The three of them crept down the stairs, ears straining for any sounds of O'Hara. No one came out or up or down while they were in the stairwell. Duke checked around the corner. Mark's hallway seemed relatively quiet, just the usual sounds of television coming from behind the usual doors. The east end of the hallway was very quiet, but that guy worked afternoons somewhere and the lady on the other side was a real church-mouse.

The apartment door was closed—and O'Hara was armed.

Duke moved to the far side, gun leveled. Mark, keeping Amy way back, reached, turned the knob and gave the door an awkward shove inwards. Using the ultimate extension of his wrist and his hand, the door frame ensuring a short throw.

He stepped back, realizing that Amy was just in the way, and yet she wasn't leaving the two of them either. He gently pushed her back some more—

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened, an unexpected outcome, and yet what they had all been hoping for. Duke took a quick look, standing with some protection from the doorframe. He pushed the door in and stuck the gun in and had a good look.

"Where was he?"

Shit.

"Laying right there on the floor." Mark risked a look.

O'Hara was gone. The rope was gone. The knife was gone. There hadn't been much else there to begin with. The chair was still in the closet. The closet door was still open.

The cat, on the other hand, had come out of hiding and was sitting there with an expectant look on its face in the dead centre of an otherwise empty living room.

Thin cotton curtains billowing on the front window sort of implied a method of escape. They'd been away long enough, that O'Hara might have just as easily taken the stairs. Of necessity, Mark had been forced to explain as best he could before Duke could sort of see the need to get involved...which he would have much preferred not to do. There was just no way. Duke never would have let Mark have the gun and go off on his own with it. Not for any reason. For one thing, it was registered in his name, necessary for concealed-carriage of a firearm.

In that sense, he was just being a responsible person.

Mark had a few choice words.

"Fuck. What—what do we do now, Duke?"

With an imperative jerk of the head, Duke indicated that they should all go back upstairs.

Mark nipped in and grabbed the cat before it could get away again, and this time grabbing his wallet and the keys. Interestingly, the knife and what was presumably his suicide note were gone.

"Mark—my purse."

"Right." He grabbed it and tossed it in her direction, with Amy making a good if hasty catch.

The door was locked when he left.

For all the good that would do.

***

Duke's apartment was only going to be so safe for so long. What O'Hara might do next was open to guesswork. It was a safe bet that he wasn't going to take it lightly. He'd just been about to kill a man, and surely now that Mark had escaped, he must do something.

Surely Mark would call the police and freak out. O'Hara would do something.

The only real question was what. And when, and how. As to why, that was almost irrelevant.

"The fucker was trying to kill you." Duke was finding it hard to accept. "This is just nuts."

He had only his faith in Mark and Amy's corroboration to go on. It was Amy that had convinced him—her being real smart and all of that.

"Yeah. It is nuts—maybe there really is no other motive." Cop goes nuts, starts killing people.

For no reason at all, other than some severe and undiagnosed mental illness of a sort that left your faculties intact and no one around you remarked upon—and of course cops could get around on the public dime. They had all sorts of mobility.

It could be just as simple as that. It would make a wonderful headline for the tabloids, or a cheap psychological police procedural...

Shaken as they were, Mark and Amy needed a plan. The apartment was off-limits...probably forever, thought Mark with a horrible sinking sensation. There wasn't much there to hold him—a couple of horns and some clothes. A toothbrush.

"What are you thinking, Mark?" Amy had a good point.

"You and I have to get the hell out of here."

Duke nodded sharply.

"Yeah—I might be all right. But you guys definitely got to go."

It was right about then a female voice, coming from somewhere in the building, up above on the next floor by the sounds of it, began screaming in a hysterical fashion.

Duke strode to the door, opening it up, gun in hand. The first thick tendrils of smoke came in and somebody right about then pulled the fire alarm.

Duke closed the door with a quick slam.

"Shit. Where's that fucking cat?" The thing had leapt out of Amy's arms and bolted into the inner rooms.

Duke shoved the gun down the rear waistband of his pants.

He'd rather lose a buttock than a testicle...or worse.

As Mark and Amy tried to corral a suddenly-skittish animal, Duke went through the place in a quick flurry of precise, no-nonsense maneuvers. Money went into one pocket, a large bag of dope in another. His best hash-pipe went into the bag, and a pair of jeans, a favourite shirt. There was a silver-framed picture of an elderly woman, presumably his mother...

A half-finished pulp novel. He had a few small things. It all fit into a gym bag. A look of sadness crossed his face and he fell into a chair for a minute. After thirty seconds he put on some shoes, got up and pulled on his jacket. There was smoke coming in from under the door.

"Fuck."

"Shit."

"Oh..."

They only had so much time.

"All right. Let's get the hell out of here. You guys better take the fire escape. Do that now. I have to check on Maude, then there's that old lady on the fifth...good luck. Run, guys. Run and don't come back. Don't stop running until you get to the coast."

Mark's mouth opened to protest, and then Duke's hand went to his pocket. He pulled out the wad of cash, forcing Mark to take it.

"I want you guys to promise, okay. You too, Amy. Even if you're safe, he'll be watching you—you can almost count on it."

Amy began to sniffle, nodding.

Mark stood there, unable to speak.

Everything was changing again—fuck.

Duke handed Amy an envelope, picking it up off the table beside the door where he kept the keys. For some reason they weren't in a big hurry. The building was all masonry, although the smoke would be death if they didn't get going.

"What's this?" She was mystified, besides, they needed to get.

"My draft notice. Don't worry about me, okay? Maybe we'll catch up someday."

Duke gave Amy a strong shove towards the window. There was definitely a lot of smoke coming in, getting pretty heavy now.

His draft notice. Of course. Mark suddenly understood the life-style. It was all about denial—

Only when she was halfway out did Duke turn back to Mark.

"Let's swap wallets. Please. Just trust me on this one."

Mark sure as hell didn't have any great plan. He handed over his wallet, accepting Duke's in return.

"When you get so far, just dump it in a ditch, okay?"

"Sure, Duke."

"I'll be in Canada if you need me—and I'll be careful to lose your wallet in Montreal. Something like that—capiche?" If he left it behind in the right place, some responsible person would find it

The right thing to do, would be for them to turn it in to the police—a nice touch.

"Wait. Wait." One more inspiration.

Duke whipped off his leather bomber jacket.

"Here. Let's swap coats. That fucking cocksucker's probably right outside, you know that, right?"

The roar and crackle of flames was right on the other side of the ceiling.

"Shit." Mark stripped off the parka even as the temperature climbed and the air was getting real bad. "Whatever you want—I'll hang onto this for you."

Duke looked at him.

"Sure." He swallowed. "Good luck, buddy."

That would have to suffice. There might even be some wisdom in it. As for Mark, he was plumb out of ideas. He was losing his friend.

Duke might turn out to be the best friend he ever had—

He and Mark shook hands quickly. With a nod in the direction of the window and the fire escape, Duke opened the door and went out, bent at the waist and feeling his way along the wall. That was the last thing Mark saw before slamming the door. After some initial yelling and the pounding of feet on stairs and fire escape, it was terribly quiet out there. It was just smoke, lots of thick, billowing smoke of a highly noxious nature. The air was hot and billowing up from below.

The cat, the cat.

The God-damned cat.

Mark's face was inches from Amy's feet.

He wanted out of there real bad, and going down that damned fire escape in the middle of the night was going to be something else. His heart was really going. So far it had kept going...

The cat struggled in his arms and he was ever so grateful when she reached in and took it from him.

Let her handle the damned thing for a while.

Sooner or later, if this kept up, the way things were going, Mark Jones was going to get angry.

Very, very angry.

Chapter Twenty-Five

He did up the bottom of the jacket. Taking the cat from Amy, he stuffed it into the top, sort of in front of his left shoulder and under his arm, hurriedly zipping it to the neck. With his left arm slung under the cat's weight, he led off, holding the rail with his right hand. Amy was right at his back, one hand on his shoulder and one on the handrail.

Each floor was about ten feet in elevation and then he was poised on the brink. Ten or twelve feet to safety. There were people boiling out of the front doors and down the front steps. Mark wasn't exactly sure how this particular fire-escape stair worked. It was probably sprung on torsion-bars. He put his foot on the swinging section and it pivoted downwards under a bit of weight.

"Okay, just wait until I'm down." Mark bent at the waist again, trying to keep the cat from falling out of the bottom of the jacket, but he wanted both hands to hold on. "Here we go."

The stairs tilted more steeply, and he cursed, not sure if he should be going down backwards or what. But they had been designed for people in a panic, which he was trying not to do. That sort of implied just running down frontwards...

Everyone was yelling, and there were sirens in the distance. Hopefully they were heading for this building but it was a big city and there was always a fire someplace, always sirens going somewhere. Sirens, always in the background noise, in some sort of horrid urban process of life, death, and renewal.

There were more people on the fire escape, crowding down from above. Their voices were high-pitched and Mark had better get on with it. They were going to cause problems for Amy, and the whole apparatus was shaking under his feet.

He stepped forwards as boldly as he could, and the thing leaned farther with a long, agonizing screech.

Wouldn't that be just like a slum-lord like Olivetti? The fire escape wasn't worth shit, and Mark found himself grabbing the cat through the coat again. He stomped, ultimately jumping up and down on the second and third steps, hunched over like Quasimodo, and finally the damned stairs let go with a lurch. The stairs fell the last eight or ten feet, Mark going weightless for a moment before the end hit the sidewalk with a crash. He came close to falling, only a quick grab at the rail saving him.

The cat kicked, squirmed and clawed, and Mark hurriedly got down the last few steps and out of the way.

Amy didn't hesitate, following him down and out onto the sidewalk where people were milling around, looking up and around, trying to see who was there and who wasn't...women were screaming, children were crying and the males were cursing whole-heartedly.

"Argh." Mark undid the top of the jacket, and the cat's head popped out.

Seeing all the commotion, the animal hesitated, and he tried to calm it. If the thing got away from him, they'd never catch it.

Amy grabbed his other arm.

"Come on."

Mark turned, looking back up at the building. He'd lived there a little over a week, ten days at most...minus the three nights in a cell.

Lurid orange flames poured up and out of the top two floors. The windows glowed red below that, including his own unit. The roar and crack of the flames was horrific, a pillar of smoke lit and backlit by the lights of the city all around. Three people came down the fire escape, coughing and gasping, eyes watering. The smell of smoke, like burning garbage, was intense even in the clear air at ground level. People were congregating across the street and there was at least one cop, on the scene and stopping traffic in both directions.

He found himself crying, as Amy tugged and pulled at him.

His eyes searched the crowd.

"Mark. Mark. We have to go—"

"Fuck. Where's Duke—"

He saw the black people from across the hall—there seemed to be a half a dozen of them, which accounted for about as many as he had seen. There was the guy from the laundry room, and the woman, and the child. There was the little old lady...the deaf guy from the second floor. There was the grey-faced fat guy with the backpack, Mark had never been sure if he lived there or what. There were a lot of people he didn't recognize, passers-by most likely.

The sirens were getting louder and two police cars came around the corner a couple of blocks up.

Navigating the mess of stopped traffic, they slewed to a halt and men began jumping out.

They turned and tried to un-snarl the traffic. There were more sirens as the fire trucks became visible, red lights flashing from blocks away as they raced inbound.

Just at the curb was a familiar, scruffy blue sedan.

O'Hara.

Mark's jaw dropped. It couldn't have been fifty feet away, and there was someone in there. The dark silhouette of a head and shoulders was clearly moving around in there, probably on the radio.

His feet began to move and Amy wept, dragging him along. The cat's head stuck out, as the thing began to wiggle and move again, if it had ever truly stopped.

Wailing sirens began to wind down as the first two fire units slowed to a crawl and then stopped.

The car door opened and O'Hara got out. He stood beside the vehicle, looking up at the building, the microphone on its curling extension cord up to his mouth. Turning to and fro, O'Hara's eyes swept the crowd, both sides of the street and Mark's guts froze as the deadly blue eyes swept over him and Amy.

Just then, the front door of the building opened and Duke came out, head down, hood up and sweeping Maude along in front of him.

She hadn't been out of the building in years—

She was hysterical, her crinkly blonde flower-child hair flailing around as she backed up, beating on Duke's chest as she desperately tried to get back in. Maude was making a big thing out of it, a real scene, and then O'Hara turned.

Mouth open, Mark pulled Amy into the mouth of the second alley.

Duke gave Maude a shove as O'Hara spied him. Duke was yelling at Maude, at people, and someone, someone from the building who must have known something about Maude, ran forward from a clump of people on this side, but a few yards on the other side of the building. They grabbed Maude, hugging her close and fighting with her as she put her head down and then just slumped, falling halfway to the ground. More people grabbed arms and legs and tried to deal with her hysteria.

That white parka stuck out like a sore thumb.

"No." No.

O'Hara slammed the door. He was running past the front of the car, drawing his gun.

The noise was such that it was like a silent film.

O'Hara was shouting and Amy was crying and trying to drag Mark away.

Fuck.

"Fuck."

Duke had a horn case in the other hand...it was that fucking horrible scuffed, matte-black colour and Mark hadn't seen it at first. How the hell Duke had managed to manhandle Maude and hang onto the thing was a mystery, he really shouldn't have been able...

"No!" No.

O'Hara had the gun up. Duke was about to melt into the crowd as firemen raced past, pulling hoses and nozzles up the front steps, although it was already a foregone conclusion. O'Hara couldn't shoot without hitting them.

Duke dropped the case, flinging it aside from his left hand as he spun, dropping into the gun-fighter's crouch as known to every kid in the whole wide world from comic books, film and television...

Duke's gun spat flame but O'Hara was already firing.

***

They were in the train station, completely numb.

Grand Central was never quiet, but at this time of night, shortly before dawn, they could at least talk and hear themselves think.

Mark was sick at the stomach, nauseous at what had transpired. Amy, shocked herself and sympathetic, struggled to control the cat, who had been constrained long enough.

"We've got to do something about this creature."

Mark nodded, wondering if they should just let the thing go. But to do that was irresponsible, and would probably doom the animal to a short, brutal and nasty life on the streets or in the train yards or in the tunnels under the city.

"Extra! Extra! Read all about it!"

Mark raised an arm.

"Yeah. I'll take one." For a dime, Mark's arms sagged under the weight of all the news that was fit to print.

Number Ninety-Nine Easy Street was plastered all over the front page, probably because a photographer had gotten to the fire at just the right moment and they had some good pictures...

***

Amy had the cat inside her sweater, grateful it wasn't very big. The thing had simmered down under her gentle administration, scratching it under the chin and cooing and murmuring in reassuring tones. The real problem was the harsh, loud announcements over the loudspeakers.

These were increasing in frequency as the day began and they would have to make a move soon.

"What does it say?"

Mark's eyes raced across the page, and then he rapidly turned the pages, trying to find where the continued story picked up in an inner section.

"Okay. No one injured in the fire—that's good." Tears sprang to his eyes, at the thought of his friend, risking his ass, trying to get the people out when he could have gotten clean away himself.

The significance of Duke borrowing his coat was also deeply troubling. He must have gone back to Mark's and grabbed the horn—

"Go on, go on." Amy's own stomach was rumbling.

They hadn't slept in what seemed like days, and the fact was that they had to do something—

Mark's heart began to race when he spotted O'Hara's name.

Slowing down, he read it aloud for her benefit.

"...New York City Police Detective Ed O'Hara was dead at the scene of a shooting that occurred in front of the building at the time of the fire..."

It was like he just couldn't get any air.

"...Detective O'Hara, according to witnesses, was shouting incoherently, with his weapon drawn, running around at the scene. The detective was observed to discharge his weapon at a second victim. Elmer Barrett, of Ninety-Nine Easy Street, returned fire and killed the detective with several shots. He is presently in hospital with injuries that are described as critical..."

Fuck!

Duke was alive.

Mark lowered the paper, staring off into the infinite distance, shiny stone walls notwithstanding.

O'Hara dead and Duke alive.

With Amy peering over his shoulder in the garishly bad light, he read on.

"According to unnamed sources, Detective O'Hara had been struggling with depression and alcoholism as a result of divorce and separation from his wife and children. The detective had taken a number of sick days over the past few months and was seeking help for medical problems. As for the motive in the shooting, police are not speculating, and information is being withheld pending the outcome of a full investigation."

Whoa.

Holy, crap.

Even so, there must be more to it than that—O'Hara might have been nuts, but that was rarely enough to make a man kill. He just had too much to lose, and in the story they said he had been seeking help.

Hmn.

Mark quickly read to the bottom of the story, disappointed that there wasn't much more.

"Shit." He folded up the paper after dumping a lot of supplements and inserts that he wasn't going to read in a nearby trashcan.

"Shit. Amy. What in the hell are we going to do now?"

***

It was Thursday night, and Mark had made it in to work.

He had a half-decent used trumpet and a sax that wasn't quite such a nice instrument as the one lost in the apartment, but it was in much better shape. Mark had picked them up in a pawn shop, making a small down payment and signing on the dotted line.

He'd bought some clothes, doing his best. Benny would have read the papers and would accept things at face value, when it came right down to that.

Mona and Benny were at their table with a few guests. While he was pretty sure Mona wasn't a predator, her eyes came back to him often enough...

There was a reasonable crowd in the club for a Thursday night. The low murmur of people's voices rose and fell, following some unknown but mass social logic of its own as the waiters plied their trade in a slow ebb and flow.

Amy had agreed to stay away, badly as she wanted to be there to witness this moment. Mark had stayed with her and Sandy for a couple of nights while they tried to figure out what to do. The answer had eventually made itself obvious—to do nothing.

Nothing at all.

Duke would live. With his injuries, shot through the lung like that, he was safe enough from the draft board. With a bit of luck, he might never have to serve at all. Still in intensive care, Mark would be visiting Duke (or Elmer) the minute the doctors allowed it. In the meantime, they just had to wait—and to worry, and to try and get on with their lives.

An expectant hush came over the big room.

There was a smattering of applause from the more aware.

It was seven o'clock and Doc was beaming and waving at the crowd.

Doc leaned into the nearest microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Mister Dale Cromwell..." Some of the more female members of the audience definitely sat up a little straighter upon hearing it.

He heaved a deep sigh, purging his lungs of CO2, nodding at Dale as the fellow came onstage.

Mark was standing six feet behind him, just off his right elbow.

Dale was impeccable in the clothing, his hair perfect and looking very pink and scrubbed in the slight jowls he was developing.

Having Amy there would have added to the pressure. More than anything, Mark just wanted to get used to it.

Fuck, I just want to get used to it—

Doc tapped his stick and they were ready.

The house lights came down as Dale put the horn up to his lips and began to blow.

This was it.

This was real.

This was now, baby.

End

About Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of eighteen novels, numerous novellas and other short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology, later going on to study fine art. He began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines over thirty years ago. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time. Louis enjoys cycling, swimming and good books.

> Louis Shalako <

