Brainquake Read online

  All he had to do was to say, “Hello, I am Paul. I would like to talk to you.” That was all.

  He had meant to ask his father many times what kind of courage he meant. The day he was picking up bets for him and told him he wanted to be a poet…that was the day he should have asked him, but that night his father died in his arms and the phone kept ringing and a woman asked for Barney and things happened so fast. The man who took care of the funeral told him it was all paid for. And Paul alone at the cemetery. Soaked. The grave was covered with canvas to keep the rain out and a voice said, “Your father fixed a spot for you to be a mailman.” It was Hoppie. He offered Paul $50 a week to learn how to be a mailman and Paul nodded.

  His taxi was halfway to Pegasus. What was he going to tell the Boss about not keeping the appointment with Dr. Adson? The appointment was for him, not the Boss. He never lied to her. But now… He would tell her he was in the park because he liked the park.

  There was no need to mention Ivory Face. Why should he? He didn’t know her. He had never spoken to her. As he piloted his taxi through the streets he knew so well, he remembered Hoppie teaching him. For a whole year, every day, while he was getting $50 a week and living alone in the Battery shack, Hoppie drove him through every street and alley in New York City that Paul had to know if he got the job of mailman.

  He should be with Ivory Face right now. He knew that she was lonely, had followed her a few times, saw where she worked, never saw her with anybody until that stranger, and now even he was gone…

  In the first year under Hoppie’s tutelage Paul learned landmarks he could spot blocks away, even at night.

  Nights when he wasn’t working, he tried to write poems, read books his mother had given him, studied words in the dictionary.

  Hoppie taught him how to back up fast without lights in a dark alley, how to avoid blind dead ends, how to escape from a pirate by driving behind 24-sheet billboards on empty lots through camouflaged rubble.

  Paul learned how to lose a pirate on wheels in the snow, the rain, on the waterfront, on roofs, in the subway, in elevators, markets, theatres, bus depots, train stations, airports, in churches, in a crowd, a rally, at ballgames and how to use streets under construction.

  He learned how to use a gun to protect the mail the way the FBI used guns to protect the United States.

  In the third year of training he learned how to carry the bag. Not too fast. Not too slow. How to use store window reflections to spot a pirate following him. He had to carry the bag the way Hoppie did. Like a businessman carrying a briefcase. He had to learn what to do if, making a delivery, he came across an accident near the drop.

  It was forbidden to go to the same barber twice, shop at the same market, eat at the same place, buy his clothes at the same store.

  He learned how to drive a hyped-up taxi, a small van, a motorcycle.

  He learned to avoid traffic jams by taking shortcuts. He learned he must never drive fast unless fleeing from a pirate. He was taught how to use a Polaroid. Off work, he knew that he was under surveillance by Hoppie.

  For three years, he had periodic brainquakes. They didn’t show in his cipher face. Hoppie was unaware of the attacks. He had annual physical checkups by a company doctor, always passed, lucky he never had a brainquake in the doctor’s office.

  Hoppie did all the talking. That suited Paul. The final day at the end of the third year, Hoppie took him to meet the Boss for the first time. On the way, Hoppie braked.

  “Goddam it, Paul, I forgot!”

  Hoppie U-turned, almost sideswiping a passing truck.

  “Jesus Christ, Paul, I’d’ve had my ass reamed if I didn’t take you to Yonkers first. There’s a place you got to see before you start carrying the bag.”

  “What place?”

  “Your future, goddam it,” laughed Hoppie, “is in Yonkers.”

  In the suburb of New York, they pulled up to a big isolated house. It was surrounded by trees. It was kept very clean. He knew what the word future meant. His father had explained it very clearly. He couldn’t understand why this big house was his future.

  Inside, Hoppie took him on a tour. Paul saw old men playing cards, chess, checkers, staring out windows. Many had canes to help them walk.

  “For retired bagmen,” Hoppie said. “When you’re pensioned off, you can live here for nothing or you can live alone. Most bagmen, the older they get, the more they’re hungry for a little company. Most of ’em here are over the hill with no memories. Those attendants there in white shirts are also retired bagmen who like helping the older ones.”

  Hoppie took him to the cemetery behind the house.

  “Only for bagmen. Few guys in any goddam other business get this kind of security when they’re old.”

  After Paul had had a good look, Hoppie led him back to the car.

  At a fast clip, Hoppie drove Paul to the Pegasus Building. On the way, he asked Paul if he was scared to meet the Boss. Paul didn’t understand what he meant. Why would he be scared?

  “How about the job? You scared of pirates, of guys coming after you with goddam machine guns?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Good,” Hoppie said. “Good boy. Only one thing you should be scared of, and that’s the people you work for.”

  “Why?”

  Hoppie drove a while, silent at the wheel, then looked over at Paul beside him. “You treat them well, they treat you well. Better than well. Like you just seen. But that’s a two-way street. You treat them bad, you break the faith or do something you shouldn’t’ve, you steal or rat or if you ever, ever talk to the fucking cops…there’s no mercy. You need to understand that. No mercy.”

  Hoppie waited for Paul to nod, to say or do something to show the words were penetrating that thick skull of his, but he just watched, blank. “I keep my nose clean, Paul, so I got nothing to be scared of. But that don’t mean I never been scared. Because I seen what they done to other guys. This one time…” He shivered, and the car swerved slightly as it ran through him. “This poor stoolie bastard. They put a hit out on him. The hitter caught up with him outside his home, busted the bastard’s spine. Then he slammed him up against the wall and drove spikes through his hands and feet. Into the wall. Left him hanging there for his family to find. Fucking crucified him. Goddam poor stoolie.”

  Paul said nothing. But the image stayed with him.

  * * *

  For four years Paul carried the bag without incident, until one morning at eleven o’clock. His small cream-colored van was rolling at 35 mph. Traffic was normal.

  He was 24 years old. Making a delivery to a man waiting for him in the toilet on the second floor of the Criminal Courts Building. The man was a judge who had a private can in his chambers on the third floor, but Paul didn’t know this. He just knew where to go when. The judge had seen Paul every month for four years for the few seconds it took Paul to transfer an envelope containing $200,000 from his bag to the judge’s briefcase. The judge never remembered Paul’s face.

  The delivery, one of the easiest on Paul’s route, turned shaky when a pirate’s blue sedan appeared on Paul’s left. The pirate waved his gun for Paul to pull up at the curb. Paul gunned the hyped-up engine, leaving the pirate far behind. Paul knew the exact escape route and took it. It would take as little as 28 seconds to lose the blue car, as much as a full minute. It depended on how fast Paul zigzagged through the tied-up traffic in front of the Criminal Courts Building. He heard gunshots. Women were screaming. He braked hard into the stalled car in front of him. He could see the blue sedan in the rear-view mirror coming fast.

  Paul seized his gun, heard the flute drowning out more gunshots and men yelling. The brainquake hit. It lasted in pink for seven seconds. Paul saw a crazy man firing into a crowd of people and then the man was shot dead by a cop. In his rear-view mirror Paul saw two cops lifting the dead pirate out of the blue sedan. Paul waited twenty minutes for the traffic to start again, parked his van in the regular spot, made the delivery to the
judge in the men’s room. From a corridor phone booth in the building, Paul phoned the Boss and reported what happened.

  “Did you get a photo of the dead pirate?”

  “He had no face, Boss.”

  He gave her the license number of the blue sedan instead.

  * * *

  In his sixth year as a bagman he discovered a new emotion.

  He was headed to a night drop only a short walk from his shack. Fireworks were exploding in the sky. Battery Park was jammed. People were celebrating the hundredth birthday of the Statue of Liberty. Paul used an alley packed with cars, headed toward his drop’s building. A big dog appeared, trotted beside him sniffing his bag.

  There was a gunshot as people cheered the American flag bursting in red, white and blue lights. The dog yelped. Fell. Paul ducked behind the dead dog. Paul’s eyes were glued on the darkness, watching for the second burst. It came. Paul fired three times.

  Paul ran toward the pirate in the darkness, lit sporadically by flares exploding in the sky. He frisked the body for ID, found none, took his camera from his pocket and grabbed a shot of the young dead face.

  Then Paul went on toward the building. He dreaded to go in—to go up. He feared heights. Always did on this drop. He went in, pushed the button. The silent ascent of the elevator sucked the wind out of him.

  He got off at the fortieth floor, wondering when the pirate had spotted him around Battery Park. Had he been waiting for Paul? How did he know this shortcut?

  The elevator opened and he went down the long corridor to the back door of the drop, where a man in a tuxedo was waiting for him.

  The man led Paul into a huge penthouse and up a flight of stairs to an office that had no lights on inside. Through a big window Paul saw that a party was on, on the building’s roof. The sky burst with more colors. He saw the illuminated Statue of Liberty and hundreds of boats. Waiters carried trays of champagne glasses. There were other men in tuxedos. Women in evening dresses. A hired band on the roof played the national anthem.

  The guests were from different countries, many dressed in their national garb. White. Black. Oriental. Paul had no idea, then, that they were representatives of the international cartels of dope trafficking and money laundering.

  Laser beams on the Statue of Liberty were blinding as the guests sang along with the Star-Spangled Banner while Paul transferred $15 million in cash from his bag into the open fat briefcase held by the drop on the desk.

  The next morning the Boss was staring at the photo Paul had taken, and Paul was sick.

  He had killed a boy. The new emotion made him queasy. He felt guilt for the first time in his life.

  The Boss saw that emotion, not in his face but in the way he shook. She gave him a drink of water that he gulped down. It didn’t help.

  “You shouldn’t feel bad about it, Paul. That thirteen-year-old bastard was an addict with a record. Two years ago he bashed his mother, busted her skull for a few bucks in her purse. They put him in a reformatory, but he broke out, and on the way out smashed in the head of a cop in a squad car with a brick. The gun he shot at you with? Was the cop’s gun. Only reason he missed hitting you was probably because he needed a fix, his hands were shaking so he hit the dog instead. The little bastard didn’t know what you were carrying, he was just looking for anyone he could get a few bucks off, and he would gladly have killed you for those few bucks. You’re guilty of nothing, Paul. You killed an animal, in self-defense.”

  It took Paul years to overcome that guilt.

  * * *

  In ten years Paul had become a seasoned bagman. Sometimes the Boss would briefly invade his cocoon with talk. It was okay. He liked her. She was warm. She never tampered with his cocoon after working hours. They never talked about Barney.

  For ten years Paul had read a book every four days, and he kept writing poems. For ten years he stood above the fray of the business that paid him. He was not a player. He was just a mailman. He never cared where the money came from or to whom he delivered it or if he carried five thousand or five million or fifty million in cash.

  He’d never again felt guilt about the job.

  U.S. mailmen carried dirty money and they slept well. Workers in munitions plants made war money and they slept well. Politicians, bankers, and businessmen made dirty money and they slept well. Judges, lawyers, cops, doctors, dentists made dirty money and they slept well.

  Paul slept well every night in his Battery shack, despite the noise of rutting cats whining for relief in the decayed graveyard behind the shack.

  But for the last two months Paul hadn’t been able to sleep because of Ivory Face.

  11

  The Boss was placing stacks in his bag. “I know what happened, Paul. You thought he’d open your brain with a buzz saw so you sat down in Central Park to work up your courage and got caught in that riot.” She glanced up at his bandaged bruises and torn clothes. “You’re very lucky. Thirty people were seriously injured, they’re not out of the hospital yet. You’re tougher than they are.” She put a gentle hand on his arm. “I alerted Johnson you’ll be late. Still feel you can make the drop?”

  Paul nodded.

  “I phoned Dr. Adson when you didn’t show up, made an appointment same time tomorrow.”

  Paul nodded. She closed the bag. Paul picked it up.

  “What did you drive to Johnson last week?”

  “Motorcycle.”

  “Use your taxi.” The Boss waited a moment. “Did you get a whiff of poppy in his darkroom last week?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “A pirate’s loose, Paul. A bagman’s dead.”

  Paul left.

  The moon was over Manhattan. Paul drove slowly, hoping that Ivory Face wouldn’t move to another place. He’d have trouble finding her. He didn’t think she’d go pushing the carriage in the park again for a long time—if ever.

  He glanced at the gun on his seat. Then at the rear-view mirror. He turned on the radio, got the news.

  “…spokesperson reports the police are investigating partial fingerprints found on the baby carriage and the concealed gun…”

  Headlights were tailing him, keeping the same distance. Paul maintained the same speed, turned the next corner.

  Paul saw the headlights behind him turning the corner, maintaining the same distance.

  “…In a statement, Lieutenant Zara indicated that Michelle Troy was being offered police protection….”

  Paul increased his speed. So did the car, maintaining the same distance.

  Michelle Troy.

  So Ivory Face now had a name.

  Paul’s taxi whipped into a familiar alley barricaded with wooden sawhorses topped with red reflectors. He smashed through them. Didn’t bother weaving to avoid a bullet—Paul knew the pirate wouldn’t chance hitting the gas tank and losing the bag in flames. The pirate’s car kept the same distance.

  “…Dr. Todd McCarthy of the Medical Examiner’s Office said the baby suffered no internal injuries…”

  The taxi jackhammered over exposed sewer pipes. Paul battled to keep control. The pirate car stayed on him, closing the distance between them. The taxi erupted from the alley and almost crashed into the water truck moving slowly up the street. The pavement was wet. The taxi slid sideways, brushing gas pumps at a corner gas station.

  Paul saw the pirate car skid into a pump.

  The taxi shook as the explosion spewed shards of glass. Paul pulled into a side street, stopped as he heard the flute playing. The last of the newsman’s words were drowned out by the brainquake.

  When the second pump exploded it was in pink. Paul saw Ivory Face running toward him, naked, and throwing the crying baby into his headlights.

  His head resting on the steering wheel. Smoke drifted past Paul. The smoke was no longer pink. Through the pain in his head he heard sirens. Real sirens. Not a mirage.

  It took Paul ten minutes to get to the drop, bypassing streets police and fire trucks were using. Paul finally approached Johns
on’s shop. The window was dark except for a buzzing neon sign selling PASSPORT PHOTOS and two little spotlights aimed at a blowup of a baby and one of a wedding couple.

  Parking in the alley behind the aging gray pickup that bore the words JOHNSON’S PHOTO STUDIO, Paul got out with his bag, glanced down the long, deserted area. Sirens still blaring, but in the distance. A cat sniffing trash cans behind the butcher shop next door to Johnson’s.

  Through the barred back-door window, in a thin streak of light coming from the open door of the backroom’s small fridge, he saw Johnson sprawled on the floor. One hand was still in the fridge. His arm kept the door from closing.

  Removing a loose brick from the wall, Paul took out the key, unlocked the door, went in, closed the door, pulled the blind down, checked the body. Johnson was still alive. Paul swiftly pulled out the tray of ice cubes, pulled down Johnson’s trousers and shorts, packed ice cubes on Johnson’s balls, pulled out a bottle of milk, poured it down Johnson’s throat. Johnson coughed, gagged.

  Paul spotted the pipe on the floor, smashed it with his foot, flushed the ball of gummy opium down the toilet. Johnson opened his bleary eyes, watched Paul transfer the bundles of cash into a big cardboard box labeled PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER. Paul put the cover back on the box, phoned the Boss.

  “Mail delivered. Pirate, but he crashed.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pirate dead?”

  “Yes.

  “Get a photo of him?”

  “Cremated.”

  “His wheels, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Johnson back on opium?”

  “Drinking milk.”

  “Don’t forget Dr. Adson in the morning. Get some sleep. Good night, Paul.”

  Paul put the phone down, closed his bag.

  “I owe you again, Paul,” Johnson mumbled.

  Paul left. Johnson packed more ice cubes on his balls.

  12

  Paul’s headlights swept past a big cat caterwauling in the graveyard. His beams flooded the clapboard shed as he drove in, switched off the motor. He sat and thought about his attack.