Deeper
I follow her into the broken building. The ghosts of what it was and has become cling to the walls they are radiating with rancid fried food, stale smoke, and fetid sex. Following here is harder than the roof tops, the only light is filtering through dirty windows and its poor light at that. There is drug paraphilia, crumbling walls and all sorts of garbage on the floor. Holes in the walls, ceiling and floor she avoids, so I do as well. The stairs are a different story, I don't think they will hold her weight never mind the two of us combined, but they do, barely. We pass closed doors one or two of them have dead bolts. I wonder what the hell would be in here that someone is keeping locked up. The rooms that no longer have doors have dirty blankets or curtains covering them, still useful for something. I can hear sounds and I'm disgusted at the level of people's depravity. My hands ball into fists, she'll be sorry if this is her idea of a joke.
We end at a set of double doors. The stench coming from the room is filtering through the door and almost unbearable. She opens the doors and walks through I follow expecting the worst and am not disappointed. There are about five mattresses on the floor, all five have something on them, when I look closer and realize they are people, or what used to be. There are some bodies that are on nothing more than a blanket and one unlucky whore on nothing more than a pile of blood and shit stained newspaper.
"Every woman in this room's been attacked."
"Where's the one from last night?" She points to the pile of rags on the newspaper. I walk over to the corner, reluctant to turn my back, but I'm not that way for long. The thing on the paper is dead. It has a swollen black eye and a puffed lip, which just may have been her natural state, you can never tell with them, but I don't see much more wrong with her. If she was beat up, she must have hit somewhere else other than her face. I understand most pimps won't hit their skanks in the face, figuring most men won't pick up a broken whore.
"She's dead," someone says from behind me, and I jerk around. A tall black figure is coming towards me with something in his hands. I ball my fists, widen my stance and get ready for the fight that's coming. I look over to Sagittarius if this was her plan, to get me in here and have someone try to kill me why she didn't let the lowlife's in the alley do it confounds me.
"Why is he here?" the man asks he pushes me out of the way.
"Nosey white boy."
He walks over and puts a sheet, that was in his hands, over the dead body.
"What happened to her?"
"Internal hemorrhaging, we didn't get to her in time and the cops didn't bother to take her to the hospital."
I have nothing to say back to that. The cops were assholes to everyone not just the Negros.
"You need to leave." He walks over to one of the live ones and checks bandages and applies some thick foul smelling ointment to a hole in her shoulder and covers it with a rag.
"I'm going to find out who's doing this and stop 'em."
"Why, afraid he's going to start taking Miss Ann once he's done with the sistas in Harlem?" He got up and stands over another body. "Baby doll, you know better than to bring some white boy here, especially a costume."
He looks at her, I recognize it, seen it in enough faces. You can never get away from the sex. It is in the music they play on the radio, the magazines on the newsstands, the ads on every billboard.
"Where were they found?"
"They were dumped at different places. I can show you."
"Better just tell me."
"No," she says shaking her head. She starts to walk out of the room but the man stops her.
"You let him be. Let him go out, run around and find nothin'. You stop bein' stupid." He reaches out to grab her but she skids away from him. She walks through the double doors and I follow her outside. The wind has picked up and I could smell the burning of a house fire not too far away.
"Who you wanna see first?"
"The last one, where was she found?"
"Cops picked her up near the FDR."
"That's not going to help, she could have been coming from anywhere."
"Tesha said he pushed her out the car. Sick prick."
"Where did they find you?"
She didn't answer right away just stood stiff, finally she asks, "Why do you think that?"
"You said every woman in the room, I assumed it included you." She keeps quiet but sizes me up instead of answering. She steps up to me, close enough where I don't think I'm in any danger from her bow and arrow. She's too small and pitiful to be any physical threat and I let my guard down, slightly.
She looks at my face, following the pattern with her eyes. She takes her hand and pokes my face. I punch her in reply. She stumbles back about two steps but other than that she takes the punch well.
"Don't touch me."
"I'll remember." she smiles shaking her head.
"Just show me so I can get rid of you."
"They found me in an alley on 186th street. You got a car or walk everywhere?"
"You can learn more about the city when you are in it."
"Also takes you 8 hours to get anywhere." She shrugs and starts walking uptown.
I don't need her here and the sooner she shows me where they found her the sooner I can get rid of her. I haven't had a real partner since Night Owl don't need one and don't want one.
We walk in silence, kept out of sight of most people either that or they avoid us. She keeps quiet and doesn't prattle on like most women do but I need some information and have to ask.
"Who was that man back at the house?"
"Clef." I wait for more but she says nothing.
"Is he a doctor?"
"No."
I don't have time for this baby bullshit. I grab her by the neck, pulling her off the ground and squeezing.
"Who is he and why is he at the house? I'm trying to help you people, maybe you keep that in mind?" She doesn't say anything, doesn't fight against me, doesn't scream, or claw at my hand, she just takes it looking at my face again. I drop her and she crumbles to the ground.
"He's name is Clef Jackson. He was a medic in the army but ain't no black man can get a job nowadays no matter what his trainin' is. So he does what every other black man in this neighborhood does, he sells drugs, runs numbers, does a little enforcing. When the girls need help he can usually do it so it was a gimmie that he would help now."
"Was that so hard?" I ask walking away.
We make it to 186th street and she points down an alley.
"Near the green dumpster, I wasn't good enough to be garbage."
"How long ago?"
"They found me here two nights ago."
"You go to the cops?"
"So I could get laughed at?"
I shrug and go down the alley. She doesn't follow me and I guess I understand why. I know how it feels to be thrown away. I look around the alley, it stinks and there is a rat chewing on something that looks like a cat carcass and I think that's karma and I've heard Karmas a bitch.
