The Steel Kiss

Puzzling. Yeah, yeah, something’s weird. was the police girl—Red I’m calling her, after the hair—planning to arrest somebody else? Hard to say. She could be after me for lots of the mischief I’ve been up to. Possibly the bodies I left in that sludgy pond near Newark some time ago, weighted down with barbells like the sort pudgy people buy, use six and a half times and never again. No word in the press about that incident but, well, it was New Jersey. Body-land, that place is. Another corpse? Not worth reporting; the Mets won by seven! So. Or she might be hunting for me for the run-in not long after that on a dim street in Manhattan, swish goes the throat. Or maybe that construction site behind club 40°, where I left such a pretty package of, once again, snapped head bone.

Did somebody recognize me at one of those places, cutting or cracking?

Could be. I’m, well, distinctive looking, height and weight.

I just assume it’s me she wants. I need to get away and that means keeping my head down, that means slouching. It’s easier to shrink three inches than grow.

But the shot? What was that about? Was she after someone even more dangerous than me? I’ll check the news later.

People are everywhere now, moving fast. Most are not looking at tall me, skinny me, me of the long feet and fingers. They just want out, fleeing the screams and gunshot. Stores are emptying, food court emptying. Afraid of terrorists, afraid of crazy men dressed in camo, stabbing, slashing, shooting up the world in anger or thanks to loose-wired brains. ISIS. Al-Qaeda. Militias. Everyone’s on edge.

I’m turning here, slipping through socks and underwear, men’s.

Henry Street, Exit Four, is right ahead of me. Should I get out that way?

Better pause. I take in a deep breath. Let’s not go too fast here. First, I should lose the green jacket and cap. Buy something new. I duck into a cheap store to pay cash for some China-made Italian blue blazer. Thirty-five long, which is lucky. That size is hard to find. Hipster fedora hat. A Middle Eastern kid rings the sale up while texting. Rude. My desire is to crack a bone in his head. At least he’s not looking at me. That’s good. Put the old jacket in my backpack, the green plaid one. The jacket is from my brother, so I’m not throwing it out. The sports cap goes inside too.

The Chinese Italian hipster leaves the store and goes back into the mall. So, which way to escape? Henry Street?

No. Not smart. There’ll be plenty of cops outside.

I’m looking around. Everywhere, everywhere. Ah, a service door. There’ll be a loading dock, I’m sure.

I push through the doorway like I belong here, knuckles not palm (prints, of course), past a sign saying Employees Only. Except not now.

Thinking: What lucky timing, the escalator, Red next to it when the screams began. Lucky me.

Head down, I keep walking steadily. Nobody stops me in the corridor.

Ah, here’s a cotton jacket on a peg. I unpin the employee name badge and repin the shiny rectangle on my chest. I’m now Courteous Team Member Mario. I don’t look much like a Mario but it’ll have to do.

Just now two workers, young men, one brown, one white, come through a door ahead of me. I nod at them. They nod back.

Hope one isn’t Mario. Or his best friend. If so, I’ll have to reach into my backpack and we know that means: cracking bones from on high. I pass them.

Good.

Or not good: A voice shoots my way: “Yo?”

“Yeah?” I ask, hand near the hammer.

“What’s going on out there?”

“Robbery, I think. That jewelry store. Maybe.”

“Fuckers never had security there. I coulda told ’em.”

His co-worker: “Only had cheap crap. Zircons, shit like that. Who’d get his ass shot for a zircon?”

I see a sign for Deliveries and dutifully follow the arrow.

I hear voices ahead, stop and look around the corner. One little black guard, skinny as me, a twig, is all. I could break him easily with the hammer. Make his face crack into ten pieces. And then—

Oh, no. Why is life such a chore?

Two others show up. One white, one black. Both twice my weight.

I duck back. And then things get worse. Behind me, other end of the corridor I’ve just come down. I hear more voices. Maybe it’s Red and some others, making a sweep this way.

And the only exit, ahead of me, has four rental cops, who live for the day they too have a chance to break bones…  or Tase or spray.

Me, in the middle and nowhere to go.

CHAPTER 2

Where?”

“Still searching, Amelia,” Buddy Everett, the patrolman from the 84, told her. “Six teams. Exits’re all covered, us or private security. He’s got to be here somewhere.”