Cult of the Nosferatu by Mark Redfield

Author:Mark Redfield [Redfield, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby

THIRTEEN

PIGEONS

“Making phone calls! That’s all you watched her do?” Gregory was unsuccessfully containing his fury at the panhandler called Chicken Charlie. “Did you at least overhear the phone calls?”

Charlie was pretty uncomfortable about this entire situation. He called the phone number as requested when he finished observing the woman in the red coat. A taxi-cab whisked him away and plopped him on the doorstep of the church. He was stuffed in this dark room, which felt like a meat locker and was suffering grueling questions from two cloaked men. The tall, black man he knew. He ‘employed’ Charlie. The other one he couldn’t make out. Green eyes glowed at him— the white hair— yeah, he’s the guy Charlie’d seen at the meetings here. He hangs out with the Princess, as Charlie’s friends fondly called Kristina. The guy’s green eyes were really beginning to bug him.

“Yeah, yeah, her mom. She was talking to her mom, I think.”

“You think,” Cyrus interjected.

“No. I’m sure. It was her mom. Then her dad. She said that, you know. ‘Hi, mom. Hi, dad.’ You know?”

“And that’s it?” Gregory said.

“Yeah, yeah. She returned to her seat. And that’s when she ate some toast. And that’s when the manager threw me out. So’s I stayed outside and watched through the window. And that’s when Officer Shanley threatened to put me away. And that’s when I walked away. And that’s when I called you up. Just like you asked.”

Gregory turned his back on the panhandler. Cyrus placed a hand on his assistant’s arm. He never released his eyes from Charlie.

“We are very limited in this world, you and I, Charlie,” Cyrus said. “People do not understand the barriers we must overcome to survive.”

“Yeah, you’re right. That’s exactly what I tell the guys. You know, people just don’t understand our plight. Aw, well, life’s a bitch.”

“So very true,” Cyrus said. And he closed his green eyes.

‘Chicken’ Charlie got his nickname by never taking a dare. It was a trait he picked up in grade school; the name he acquired from his bums in the street. His friends always hung out at Penn Station. They used to inhabit the terminal but now that the good city devised laws to keep them out of the thoroughfares, the gang moved below into the yards and tunnels underneath the train station.

The railroad yards were a great home, especially during the summer months because they stayed cool. And when the trains whizzed into the station the breeze through the tunnels brought welcome relief.

One particularly humid, hot, and hazy afternoon, Charlie had made a big stink about the meaning of the name ‘geek’. Beanpole Bennie had been called that by a passerby and he boasted to the gang that the word stood for a brainy-type, like a mathematician or accountant. Charlie brought him down soundly and insisted that a geek was a crazy person who bit off the heads of chickens. The rest of the guys wouldn’t believe Charlie, but no one seemed to have a dictionary to prove it.

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