Page 36 of Antihero

so far? 37k 4 arm. 54k 4 finger. w interest @ min payment itll b paid off in … hang on … 429 months.

Evan rubbed his eyes. With no insurance company to negotiate costs, Lesandro was bearing the full brunt of the not-so-free market.

Cover his expenses anonymously, he texted. Draw from the Luxembourg account, alias Timothy Rackley.

kk

The helicopter banked, lifting Evan’s gorge, and he pocketed his RoamZone and tightened his grip on the harness.

They perched not on the roof of the UN but on the crumbling playground asphalt of a fenced-in Title I school, the surrounding streets not unlike the East Baltimore ’hood he’d come of age in. As he climbed out, ducking beneath the rotor wash, he spotted black and brown faces filling the windows of the nearest classroom. The sight brought him back to the Pride House Group Home, foster brothers all around, Evan one of the few white boys in the mix.

He gave a finger flare of a wave and the kids smiled big and waved back, a few jumping up and down on their chairs. A helo setting down on their basketball court might as well have been Santa landing on the roof.

Evan cut back to the subway station and retraced the route the young woman had been carried, skirting the edge of gentrified Art Deco refurbs. Big ugly residential buildings thrust up, interspersed with old-school tenements. Crammed streets, gridlocked traffic, plenty of sidewalk jostling. Check-cashing joints, bodegas, a ubiquitous Pret a Manger. Street vendors hocked busted watches and junk antiques on bedsheets unfurled across the sidewalk. Incense wafted into his face, seasoning the scent of halal-cart kebab. Five-foot-tall South American women sold mango on Popsicle sticks. Basement dry cleaners, cobbler shops, and braiding salons spoke to a vibrant belowground economy. A windowless van screeched up to the curb, and a young African man rolled up a cluster of knockoff Vuitton purses in a blanket like a giant joint and climbed in. The van made another pimp stop twenty feet up the street, vacuuming in another laborer working slave wages.

Evan came to the half block where the young woman and her pack of kidnappers had evanesced. Slowing down, he examined stoops and balconies, storefronts and foyers. A night laborer with a jackhammer made unsteady progress against a sidewalk rippled by the unruly root of a honey locust. A giant moving van overspilled the bike lane, block letters screaming from the back: HOW’S MY DRIVING? CALL TO REPORT.

Evan cut around it, staying tight to a row of dilapidated brownstones, staring up at the sprawling limestone veined darkly with water infiltration. A drainpipe swung free, rotted through vertically like a slender canoe. The smell of garbage was strong on the air, singeing the back of his tongue.

Irregular movement on a subterranean stairwell drew his eye.

A tatter of fabric fluttering like a sniper’s wind sock.

He felt it, an electrical surge at the base of his throat. He moved past the arrowhead fence tops hemming the subterranean level and eased down the slick concrete steps.

Snagged on a lifted splinter of rust from the handrail, the ribbon was no more than six inches long and half as wide. His heart rate ticked up as he reached to pull it free.

Tiny lilies against a blue background.

He stared down the half dozen steps to the barred door below. Set his jaw.

Descended.

Improbably, the door was unlocked. Someone had left in a hurry.

He tugged it open, the loose rubber sweep rasping against the ground.

The smell of mold rushed him, overpowering a chemical reek.

He stepped inside. Crappy subflooring, a few patches of carpet, a tragic pink couch, and a bed positioned in the center of the room like a prop. Or an instrument. In several spots, faint specklings of scarlet varnished the ticking stripes of the mattress.

His heartbeat quickened once more, though it remained shy of ninety.

Beside an empty jug of hydrogen peroxide, an uncapped black Magic Marker, and sundry other trash was a discarded ski mask.

He stared at it.

The missing eyes stared back.

Ominously, the door to the bathroom had been removed. He eased forward another few steps, clearing the sight lines beyond the tub. His boot nudged a splotch of carpet, and he looked down to see a silver-dollar-size impression indenting the stiff fibers, like the peg of a pogo stick. A tool? A weapon? The prong of a floor lamp?

A form cast a shadow across the doorway. “The fuck are you?”

At the threshold stood a ruinous woman, her face a Shar-Pei collapse of folds and smoker’s wrinkles. Stained sweatpants, sweatshirt with matching stains, feet shoved into stretched-wide house slippers. Blond hair with startling black roots taken up in a ponytail, flares of wiry gray wisping out at the sides.

She scratched her thigh with the muzzle of a plasticky Kel-Tec 9-mil that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in generations. “This is my place.”

“Doesn’t look like you sleep here.”