A serialized noir novel: Chapter Seven
PUG, YOU OKAY?”
Tommy’s muffled voice came from some distant location outside. Pug didn’t really know the answer, so he remained silent and awaited clarity.
“Who the hell’r you then?” spit a wheezily asthmatic voice behind Pug. It was coming from the person holding the knife to his throat. “I’ll cut your ass if you lie to me, my man,” the voice nearly whispered.
“I’d explain,” croaked Pug. “But I’m feeling preoccupied with this knife to my throat.”
Pug passed the next seconds, silent except for the heartbeat throb in his ears, by puzzling out how he’d tourniquet his slashed throat with only his bare hands as compress. By the time he’d figured out that he’d be quite fucked in that instance, the knife lifted ever so gently from the seam that it’d dug. Pug took this as prospect for peace.
“Looking for a friend, might be staying here,” he said. “Name’s Sam, Sam Jones.”
“Don’t know anyone by that name,” said the voice. “What’s he look like?”
“Black dude, bald, wears a hoody,” said Pug. “Face like he’s either trying to solve a puzzle or was just hit by a passing fart, always squinting and such.”
The blade fell.
“Shit,” the voice said. “Think I’ve seen that dude.”
Pug turned around, and standing there was a long-haired, skinny white guy with a blonde mustache and a grin that was a few teeth light. His name was Dave, and this was his bedroom.
Tucked into the far corner was a king-size mattress flush against the wall on a carpet of cardboard. An assortment of paperback books, water-damaged and torn at the corners, were scattered about.
“I like the coolness of the basement,” he explained. “Good for snoozing.”
A one-two knock shook the single pane of basement window. Tommy’s confused face peered in.
“Ah, just go around, mate?” Dave shouted. “Could’ve knocked, you know,” he muttered to Pug.
“Next time,” Pug said, and analyzed the bump already growing at the end of his left elbow to test for a break. He figured that he got lucky during the fall, but it still stung like hell.
They carefully navigated the staircase, just loose planks balancing on the rails, and met Tommy upstairs in the back hall of the darkened main floor. Black shapes lined their path and torn faint- grey carpet muffled their steps. Dave lifted and forcibly pulled the back door off its stuck frame, letting the street light from a block over stream in, highlighting a disturbed layer of dust that rained a fine coat over Pug.
“Oh yeah,” said Dave. “Heads up.”
They got the story in the kitchen around the center island’s flickering candles, shadows from the rusted chandelier dancing in chaotic assembly on the cracked ceiling above. Dave was not in the house alone, a few others lived at the joint.
When notified about this, the house suddenly seemed to breath around Tommy and Pug. Shut doors. Flung open windows. Pacing footfalls. The creaks of projects, ways to pass the time. Dave pulled back the curtain of a kitchen window, and the newcomers saw the moonlit field of waist-high barrels in the yard, there to collect drinkable and flushable water. They’d also run a clandestine extension cord a few houses down for emergencies.
“Like blending a kick-ass margarita,” croaked Latch, a squat woman who’d scurried in with a pile of loose ice cupped in her T-shirt. She funneled the ice into the blender, followed by a couple of limes, sugar, the rest of a Jose Cuervo bottle, and began churning. She poured the concoction in four equal glasses, and they all toasted a long and happy life, a quick and easy death.
“Whew, boy now,” said Latch. “Sometimes the only cure there is for a long-ass day.”
She’d spent the early hours staggering to Grand and Wood to collect change from the morning commuters, combed lawns and gutters for bottles and cans, hiked the mile to the Alliance Recycling Center to trade them in, and back to her spot at Grand and Wood for the afternoon commuters before hiking back home, however temporary it was. Dave, Latch, and the rest were told they’d be able stay “for awhile” without any problems from the city’s squatter patrol.
“Our understanding is, whoever owns it doesn’t care much about it,” said Latch. “Now, at least. They’ll pluck it when it’s ripe for development. But we did them a favor, now they’re doing us one.”
“What favor was that?” Tommy asked.
Latch glanced at Dave and was met with an upturned eyebrow, then a worried stare at the ceiling’s flickering dancers.
“Small errands,” Latch said. “Making sure cars were moved during street sweeping, taking shit to the post office, that kind of thing.”
Reggie, a rail-thin black man, strut into the kitchen with an easy smirk on his face. Latch gave him a sip of margarita and he introduced himself. Reggie was wearing an Oakland Raiders Super Bowl XXXVII championship tee.
“Nice find,” said Pug, nodding at the shirt.
“Found this in Goodwill’s dollar bin, you believe that?” Reggie said, pulling at the heavy cotton. “Priceless, far as I’m concerned.”
Dave relayed who the newcomers were looking for, and Pug flicked on his phone and scrolled to a photo.
“Yeah, I seen him,” said Reggie. “Been staying up top for awhile now.”
Reggie led them up the winding staircase, where they heard scuffles and coughs behind the top floor’s four doors. A shadow scurried past a cracked door, a snore was rattling from inside another. Reggie pointed ahead, and Pug knocked one-two on the door. No answer.
“Haven’t seen him for a minute,” Reggie said.
Pug twisted the knob and pushed in, and uttered a meek “Hello?” to no response.
He poked his head in and was hit by a fresh gust of wind blowing in through the gaping hole where a window should’ve been. Beyond the threshold, in the distance on the shiny new bridge, the flashing yellows from the highway workers gave way to the first tail of exiting red lights, and soon after the blinding whites from those coming back east.
When his eyes adjusted, they revealed the silhouette of a man in a chair, facing out, gazing at the same bridges. The man’s head was rocking to the beat of some unheard music.
“Shit, sorry,” Pug said with embarrassment, and quickly pulled shut the door.
He turned to Tommy, who offered nothing in comfort. He waited a moment for a response, and when none came, he opened the door again.
“Hello?”
The nodding of the man’s head continued, but nothing else. He crept toward the chair, the floorboards creaking with each step. “Sam?” he asked. The ocean swell of the distant whirring traffic was overtaken by nearby sound, a slightly wet sloshing, a gnawing almost.
Pug tugged an arm, and when he did, the rat that’d been noshing on the dead man’s face scurried out the window. It climbed onto a telephone wire and shuffled west, out toward the shadow of that old steel bridge, forgotten in the dark next to the bright lights of its shiny, new neighbor.
* * * * *
Note: To download the much easier-to-read and way-better-designed PDF of this chapter, go here. If you want to download a PDF of all seven chapters of Part One, head here. If any of this is to your liking, head to oaktownoir.com to sign up.
