The Cocaine Chronicles Part 10

"Now I could gag you, but we have to talk to you first. You scream at all, you get this." He reached in his pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned push-b.u.t.ton knife. He hit the b.u.t.ton and I was staring at a saw-toothed eight-inch blade.

"I won't scream," I said.

"Good. By the way, you were really excellent back there at the bar," Baines said. "The whole fiance bit was a real good improv.

You're fine, for an amateur."

"Look," I said, "I have a hundred bucks in my pocket. Just take it."

They looked at one another and laughed.

"He thinks we want money," Baines said.

Nicole reached down and held up my chin. "Look at this picture," she said.

I looked at the snapshot she thrust at me. A young blond woman with a nice face, a cheerleader's freshness, but with slightly big teeth. The photo looked to be several years old. The woman seemed vaguely familiar.

"I don't know her," I said.

"You f.u.c.king liar," Nicole replied. "She met you in that same bar two years ago. Her name was Gail. Gail Harden."

I tried but I couldn't quite recall her. Still, there was something- that overbite.

"You remember her, don't you?"

"No," I said. "There's some mistake. I never knew her."

She kicked me in the ribs with her high heels. I groaned, shook my head.

"You were all she could talk about. Roger, the ad genius. Roger, who made love to her for five weeks. Roger and she were going to get married."

"Married? No. No way I ever told her that."

"Then you do admit you knew her."

Now I remembered. Two years ago. I had just gotten back from the Hamptons and wasn't quite ready to give up my good times. She was sitting in the Head one evening, just before it got dark, dressed in this pretty little flower-print gown. She just looked so young and summery. The perfect way for me to launch back into work.

"Okay," I said. "We went out for a few weeks. Three, maybe four times, but that was it. And I never promised her anything . . ."

"Bulls.h.i.t, you gave her c.o.ke, right?"

"Maybe."

Now it was Ronnie's turn to kick me in the ribs. I groaned and thought I could feel my organs leaking blood.

"Okay, I did. So what? Everybody does a little toot or two. C'mon. It wasn't like it was her first time."

"No, but it was the first time she'd fallen in love. Then you dumped her. She called you over and over, begged you just to call her back, to be her friend."

"That's not how it works," I said. "When it's over, it's over.

I didn't want to lead her on. I never promised her anything. You bring her here and ask her in front of me. You'll see."

"That would be kind of hard," Nicole said. "My sister went home to Minnesota and hung herself. She left these poems all about you."

She dumped a book that looked like a journal in front of me.

It fell open and I saw poems written in colored inks. The kind a junior high school girl might have written.

"No, that's a lie," I said.

She stuck another picture on the floor. A police photograph of Gail hanging from an attic beam. She had on that same summery floral dress. She had long, beautiful legs, like her sister's. Suddenly, I didn't know why, I began to pray, "Oh G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d . . . You can't blame that on me. She must have been unstable to begin with, right? She must have been crazy."

"She loved you. You turned her onto drugs, made her crazy for you, then you dumped her. You murdered her, as surely as if you'd kicked over the chair she stood on."

"Who are you, her brother?" I said, crying.

"No, I'm Nicole's husband, a.s.shole. We planned this for a long time. We were going to invite you out to dinner with us . . . but you turned the tables on us. But it doesn't matter. You can just as well drink your dessert right here."

He pulled two small vials out of his big Burberry coat. One red, the other blue.

"See these?" he said. "One works like battery acid. The other will just make you violently ill, but you might survive. We're going to give you a chance. Drink either one, then wait five minutes.

You'll know. They're both bad, but the poison makes you start to bleed from your ears, nose, and a.s.shole. The other one will only destroy most of your intestines."

"Bulls.h.i.t. You're nuts. I'm not drinking either one of them," I said.

"If you don't," Nicole said, "we'll knock you unconscious and pour the one with the poison down your throat."

Up until that point I'd been scared but somehow numbed by the whole thing. I mean, there was an air of unreality to the whole strange affair thanks to the c.o.ke, but it was rapidly wearing off.

"Which one will it be, Rog?" Baines said. "The red bottle or the blue?" He put them close to my lips; that's when I began to scream.

"Help me! Help, they're killing me!"

"Wrong answer," he said, slamming the gun b.u.t.t down on my head.

I came awake in a white room, my stomach burning, my throat scorched by fire. I tried to talk but it felt as though someone had used a flamethrower on me. Then I tried to move my arms, to signal somebody for help, but I was strapped to a gurney, like a madman. That made sense because I was was a madman, a madman burning alive from the inside out. a madman, a madman burning alive from the inside out.

I thrashed my bashed-in head from side to side, looking for help, making dying-bird noises.

Suddenly, the white curtain flew back and there was a tall woman who looked like a doctor peering down at me through thick gla.s.ses. Behind her was . . . Wease. My c.o.ke dealer.

"Weease," I croaked.

"Keep calm, Mr. Deakens," the doctor said.

"Gonna . . . Gonnaa . . . die," I croaked. "Poisoned."

Wease moved forward.

"No," he said. "They pumped your stomach. You're gonna make it, Rog."

"Besides," the doctor said, "whatever you drank wasn't poison. It was a habanero-pepper drink. It only feels like it's going to kill you."

I fell back on the gurney and shut my eyes.

"What the f.u.c.k you drink that stuff for?" Wease said.

"Made me," I croaked.

"Who?"

"Don't know. People . . . met at the Head."

Every word felt like someone poking barbed wire into my throat.

"Oh, the chick at the end of the bar and the big guy in the coat?"

I nodded, a bilious stream of liquid fire coming up my throat and nose.

"The police are going to want to talk to you, Mr. Deakens," the doctor said. "And you too, sir."

She glanced at Wease, who furtively looked away from her into the hall.

"Hey, I was just in the 'hood and heard a scream," he said. "I don't need to talk to any cops."

Before she could say another word, Wease was out the door.

Guess he wanted to get rid of his stash before the Village cops came.

I started to give a little laugh, but the pepper drink came up inside me again, and I fell back, gagging, choking, and generally sounding like a guy with throat cancer.

The doctor put a needle in my arm, and right before I fell asleep I thought of the d.a.m.nedest thing. Not the way they'd tricked me, not the way they'd beaten and humiliated me, but instead I thought of Nicole's kiss. The softness of it, the perfection of her flesh. How I was sure, so sure, I loved her. How even now, after all this had happened, I wanted to kiss her again. Absurd as it was, it was almost a happy memory, and I'd have been content to go out with it, but right before I lost consciousness I saw the sister, Gail Harden, hanging from the rafters, and I wanted to die. Just let me go to sleep, G.o.d, and never wake me up again. Just let me go to sleep, G.o.d, and never wake me up again.

I was weak as a kitten when they let me out of St. Vincent's the next day. Two detectives, Barrett and Strong, came to see me, and I man- aged to whisper the whole d.a.m.ned story to them. About halfway through I broke down and said, "Maybe it would have been better if they had finished me off." Strong, a big guy, with a mobile, sympathetic face, put his big hand on my shoulder and shook his head.

"You can't think that way," he said. "Girl kills herself, could be a ton of factors."

"Yeah, but I was the main one," I said.

The two cops looked at each other.

"You got your house key?" Barrett said.

I fished into my pants. It was gone.

"Maybe we better take you on home," Strong said. "Let's call for the wheelchair."

We were a block away from my place at 77th and West End when I saw a lamp and clothes, my clothes, spread all over the street. Mostly underwear and mismatched socks, a few old paperbacks, a pile of CDs.

I followed the cops to my third-floor walk-up and saw the front door lying there, half torn off its hinges. Inside, it looked like a hurricane had swept through the place. My Eames chair was smashed, "Murderer" was written all over my paintings. The silverware was gone, the lava lamp I'd kept around for laughs, smashed. Books, records, CDs, all smashed into a thousand pieces.

In the bedroom, a strong box I kept far back in the closet was gone. Which meant so was $10,000. Somehow I didn't mind.

"They got you good," Strong said.

"We're gonna dust this place," Barrett said.

"Fine," I said. "That's great."

I picked up an overturned chair and sat down in the midst of all the debris. It was like I was the emperor of some Third World country that had suffered a coup d'etat.

During the next few hours, more police came . . .

The cops made calls on their cell phones. Pleasant technicians came and did their work, just like on television. People were sympathetic in my building, but there were no witnesses.

I went to the precinct and ran through mug shots until my eyes were red, but found no one who looked like either of them.

In the coming days I felt strangely disa.s.sociated, out of my body.

And then that phase ended and I began to feel a monster depression, as though I had a thousand pounds of fat hanging off my frame.

I dreamed constantly of Gail Harden. It was as though the photograph had come to life. I saw her doing a lot of c.o.ke, getting wired out of her mind, then stepping on a chair, putting the noose around her neck . . . and then swinging to and fro, while outside the snow fell silently over Minnesota.

Night after night the same images. And every time I saw her I fell deeper and deeper into the snow outside her house. I was caught in a snowdrift and my blood and bones turned to ice.

I tried to forget it, her, I tried to forget Nicole's kiss-the first kiss I'd ever been really struck by . . . Zing went the strings . . . of the murderer's heart.

But it was no use. I felt the kiss on my lips, and saw the vials of poison in front of me, one blue, one red.

I'd always thought I was strong, very strong. But I knew now I was weak, n.o.body could be weaker than me.

I made it down to the Head and spent 500 bucks on c.o.ke, thinking that it was the only thing that would pull me out of it.

Every day I snorted the s.h.i.t just to get out of bed. Every afternoon, every evening, and every night.

But the images of Gail Harden wouldn't go away. If anything, the c.o.ke made them stronger.

I lay in bed at night, my nose running, my head pounding, listening to Billie Holiday on an old CD. That's when I started to hear it in the kitchen. A sound, like a chair being moved. I leapt from my bed, made it out there, but I was too late. She had hidden.

In the closet, in the pantry, in my filthy little toilet. I couldn't see her, but that didn't matter, I knew she was there. Gail Harden was coming back.

How I wished it was Nicole.

At some point Barrett and Strong caught up to me. I was walking down West End, going nowhere, when they pulled up in their Cavalier and beckoned me to get in.

I did as they said. Nowadays, I did as anyone said.