Short Ride to Nowhere by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online Page A

a moment, so was he.

9
     

    He took the West Side Highway up into Harlem and then cut over and threaded his way through the upper region of Manhattan, in no hurry at all.   He enjoyed the way the neighborhoods shifted so completely.   You could feel the difference in the air as you turned a corner, noting areas that had been gentrified, the ones that were populated by Columbia students, the ones that were gang territory, the bodegas packed tight with Hispanics, the salsa beat playing on and on.   The smell of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers came on stronger and stronger as the winds brushed down out of the south Bronx and floated over Manhattan.   Police cars and ambulances swarmed out of the ghettos.   There was so much yelling everywhere.   You didn’t know which way to look.   He let out a yowl of laughter.   It had been waiting inside him for the chance to break free.   There was something about it that invigorated him, just being here.    He knew what it meant.  
    Once he would’ve been terrified to drive these streets, to let himself be seen in the open, but now he met everyone’s gaze.   No one could say shit to him.   They knew.   They knew that no matter what they had they had more than he did.   No one would bother him.   He wanted to race over to the east side and find his ex and her new beau and show them that he was no longer afraid.  
    Jenks parked on 210 th in front of a freshly painted building with a buckling brick stoop.   He stepped carefully up the broken steps and found the buzzer to the correct apartment.   There was no name on the label.   He pressed the button and waited.   There was no buzz or response.   He tried the old gag of buzzing all the apartments at once on the hope that someone would open the outer and inner locked doors.   Again there was no response.   He waited for someone to leave the building.   He kept checking his watch.   After an hour of no one entering or exiting, Jenks caught wise and tried the outer door.   It was unlocked.   So was the inner one.
    He proceeded up the sagging stairwell.   Televisions and stereos were on inside the apartments.   The buzzers downstairs must all be shorted.   Either that or these people just didn’t give a shit who came knocking.   Both possibilities seemed perfectly acceptable.  
    At the sixth floor he started checking apartments.   He found 6F, Katrina Beck’s former residence, and knocked.
    The door swung open before Jenks even pulled his hand away.   The guy had just been waiting there on the other side, hoping for something to happen.  
    He stood 6'2, went maybe two-forty of mostly muscle.   Wearing a stained wife-beater, greasy hair falling in his eyes, nine days of stubble.   His breath smelled like an overflowing toilet in the far corner of hell.   He filled the doorway and put on a dead-eye look, staring down at Jenks and yet somehow looking through him.
    “Who are you?”
    “My name is Jenks.”
    “What do you want?”
    “I’m looking for Trina Beck.   Does she still live here?   Does she ever stop in?”
    “She rip you off?”
    Might as well go with it.   “Yes.”
    “I got nothing to do with that.”
    “I understand.   I’d just like to talk to her.”
    “You can’t.”
    “It’s just a misunderstanding.”
    “She never misunderstood anybody or anything in her life.   You want to kick her to shit and rob her.”
    “I really don’t.”
    Jenks couldn’t tell which side the guy was on.   Was he trying to protect Trina or was he waiting to hurt her himself?   Jenks had lost the thread already.   He had to take control.
    “Does she have a daughter?”
    “What?”
    “A daughter, around seven years old or so?   Does she?   Did she?”
    “Did she?”
    “Yes, did she?   Does she?”
    “What the hell do you want here?”
    “I told you.”
    “You didn’t tell me shit.”
    “Who are you?” Jenks asked.
    Jenks could feel the fight coming.
    It took shape in his mind even