Death Comes Too Late by Charles Ardai

Author:Charles Ardai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

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And so, on to Times Square. Huge hotels alternating with construction sites where, in a few months, there would be more huge hotels. Theaters alternating with porn houses, transvestites in evening gowns with spandex-clad streetwalkers. Guys walking along the street, shifty-eyed, as though casing every joint they passed. Jesus freaks belting out the gospel through boombox loudspeakers: Repent, repent, or your sins will not be forgiven! And me, with my two-in-the-morning redeye and a bazooka in my pocket. I fit right in.

The streets were quieter, emptier at two A.M. than at, say, two in the afternoon. But that didn’t say much. Everything was open, everything was lit bright as day by lighted signs in every corner, everything was moving, filled, alive. The parts that were dark would have been dark at noon—Times Square kept its own stock of shadows that paid no attention to the clock.

I walked through the light and the darkness, under scaffolding and around pits in the pavement courtesy of Con Ed. I caught the eyes of everyone I passed, looking for I didn’t know what. I had the uncomfortable feeling with so much gun under my hand that I was ready at any moment to pull and fire, pull and fire, though I didn’t pull and I didn’t fire and God help me if I had, because I think everyone else on the street was better armed than I was.

I walked all the way up to Fiftieth Street, then back down to Forty-First. I could have passed Elvis a hundred times and not known it. He could have been in Howard Johnson’s, or the Fun Shop (Fake I.D., Mr. Presley? Step right this way), or the Gemini Twin which was currently showing the hot double feature of Busty Love and In Diana Jones. He could, if I’m completely honest about it, have passed me on the street and there’s a chance neither of us might have seen the other. They were big streets and we only had two eyes each.

Of course, when I say “he could” and “I could,” those are highly contingent coulds. He could have passed me on the street if he hadn’t been a pile of bones moldering in the black dirt of Memphis, Tennessee. I could have seen him chowing down on a burger through the window at Beefsteak Charlie’s if the food at Beefsteak Charlie’s had been good enough to raise the dead. Which didn’t sound like the Beefsteak Charlie’s I knew.

But I looked anyway. I didn’t know how long I had to keep looking. I figured someone would let me know.

It was closer to dawn than midnight when I finally saw my fat, sideburned friend again. He was coming out of an all-night drugstore carrying a white paper bag. I raised my hand to wave him over, but when he saw me he dropped the bag, reached inside his denim jacket, and whipped out his gun.

From behind me, a voice shouted Duck!

I bent at the knees and fell forward, turning as I fell to keep my face and the sidewalk from meeting.

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