Shella Read online

  I took a bus from there to Port Authority, then I walked to the hotel.

  When I let myself into the room, I could feel how empty it was. Misty’s clothes were gone from the closet. There was a note on the bed.

  I don’t know how to say this. I hope you come back and read this, and I also hope you never come back, and then you won’t read this. I don’t know, I’m leaving, you don’t want me anyway. I need to have a man, I guess that makes me weak. Maybe you don’t need anybody. I don’t think you do. I know you’re looking for her, whoever she is, but I don’t know why. I guess it doesn’t matter. There’s a man who comes in the club, he asked me did I want to move in with him. I never said I would, I never even went with him, not while I was with you, but I’m going now. I paid the room rent for three weeks, so they wouldn’t put your stuff out. If you’re not back by then, I guess maybe you’re not coming back. I never knew your name. But I did love you, I swear.

  I lay down on the bed, closed my eyes. Thinking, I have to go see Monroe before I start looking for Shella again.

  JOHN

  I’m not a plotter. Shella always said the only thing that kept me from going to jail all the time was patience. Because I always know how to wait.

  I tried to think it through. Monroe, he never knew where Shella was. He could never find her—it was all talk. Liar’s talk. Big, boasting talk, showing off. But it worked on me. He was my hope—I made him into something and he just played it out.

  He used me. Then he got scared.

  Monroe would know I got away in Cleveland. He paid them for a body and he didn’t get one. He’d be afraid now. I don’t like it when people are afraid—it makes them smart. He didn’t know where I was, but that wouldn’t matter anyway. He’d know I’d be coming for him. And all I knew was the poolroom where he’d be.

  So what he’d do, I thought about it, what he’d do is be afraid. Have a lot of people around him, watching for me. I didn’t know where he lived. Nothing.

  If I went back to the bar where I first connected with him, he’d know. They’d send me someplace and there’d be more people waiting for me.

  I have to kill him. He lied to me. He made me lose time when I could have been looking for Shella. I did work for him and he didn’t pay me. I have to kill him. I tried to talk to Shella. In my head. I couldn’t see her, but I knew what she’d say.

  It didn’t take me long to pack. In the top drawer of the dresser, where I kept my underwear and socks, there was a picture of Misty. A big picture, black and white. In her dancer’s costume, smiling. On the back was a red kiss, in lipstick. Tiny little writing under it, in pencil. “In case you ever want to look for me, I’ll be there.” And a phone number. The area code was 904. There was a phone book in the room. In the front, it had a map of the country, with little spaces marked off. What the area code covered. 904 was the top part of Florida.

  Nobody paid any attention to me when I walked through the lobby—the room rent was paid. I got my car out of the garage, paid the man, and drove through the tunnel to Jersey.

  I followed the turnpike. Right at the speed limit. All the way through Pennsylvania into Ohio. I pulled over in Youngstown, got a motel room, slept a long time.

  The next night, I drove past Cleveland, right on through to Indiana. Got off near Gary, found another room.

  I slept through the day again.

  That night, I found the strip, just outside of town. They all look the same, those bars. There’s so many.

  No sign of Shella.

  In the morning, I kept going west. When I saw the signs for Chicago, I pulled over by a pay phone. I dialed the number Misty had left. A woman’s voice answered. Young woman.

  “Could I speak to Misty?” I asked the voice.

  “She’s not here right now. If you’ll leave me a number, I’ll have her call you back.”

  I hung up. I guess the woman was Misty’s friend. Maybe Misty would call her once in a while, check in. Everybody has a friend.

  Stony Island Avenue, that’s what the sign said. The whole neighborhood was black, but a lot of people in the cars were white. A pass-through zone. I got back in the car, pulled in behind a white man in one of the those rich, dark boxy foreign sedans. I just followed him until we got downtown, then I peeled off and drove around until I found a place where I could park.

  I bought a couple of newspapers. Then I found a room and went to sleep.

  At night, I went to some of the places I found in the newspapers. The more you pay, the nearer the girls get. Like bait. Table dancers, lap dancers. Some of the girls could dance, most of them couldn’t. Some of them could act—it looked like they were really getting worked up doing what they did. Most of them, they just looked glazed. Nobody looked at anyone’s face.

  I kept spending money. Not that much money—I didn’t have to get that close to know if it was Shella.

  One joint had a sign in front: LIVE GIRLS. It made me think about something, but it didn’t stay in my mind. I went inside. It was the same.

  The next night, I went north. Uptown, they called it. The first place I tried said TOPLESS, but it was full of hard drinkers, not even looking at the girls.

  In another joint, I was sitting at a table near the back. A big guy in a shirt cut off to show his muscles was sitting at the next table, yelling at the girls, calling them fucking dykes, cunts, all like that. The bouncer came over, told him he had to leave. The guy kicked up a fuss and the bouncer got his arm up behind the guy’s back, walked him out the door. I didn’t pay attention, just watched the front so I could see the whole selection of girls before I moved on to the next place.

  I felt a hand on the back of my neck. “You too, asshole.” It was the bouncer, pulling me up and out of the chair. I stood up and I felt the kidney punch coming—I got my elbow into his lower ribs as I brought my heel down hard across his ankle. His hand let go—his face came over my right shoulder and I kept it going into the top of the table.

  People were watching. I got up. The bouncer fell on the floor. In the front, the girls were still moving their bodies, the music was still loud.

  I went out the front door. The guy in the cut-off shirt was walking up the street toward the bar. There was a gun in his hand. His face was crazy.

  I didn’t go far. Whatever I did in the bar, the guy with the muscles was about to do worse. The cops would be coming. I found another bar in the next block, not a strip joint. They were playing music up on a little stage in front, chicken wire all across, like they were in a cage. I tried to sit in the back, listen to the music. Country music, I guess it was. It was so loud my head hurt. One guy finished his bottle of beer and threw it at the musicians. I saw what the chicken wire was for—they kept right on playing.

  After about an hour, I left. It was still early.

  The last bar I went to, it was like a place where people do business. The waitresses were topless, and they had dancers and all, but they had booths in the back. I saw men talking to each other, not even watching the girls.

  One booth was empty. I ordered a steak sandwich and a rum and Coke from the girl, did what I always do.

  I was just going to leave when the Indian sat down across from me.

  He put his hands on the table, turned them over once, like it was a secret greeting I’d recognize. All I could tell was his hands were empty. I looked to my left, kept one hand under the table, measuring the distance to him in my mind.

  “There’s nobody else,” he said, like he knew what I was thinking.

  I just watched him, listening to the sounds of the joint, feeling for a change in the rhythm. If there was anyone else, I couldn’t pick them up.

  Time passed. He nodded over at the pack of cigarettes I had on the tabletop. “Okay?” he asked.

  I nodded back. He shook one out, lit it with the paper matches I had there.

  He smoked the whole cigarette through, real calm, smoking like he was enjoying it, not nervous or anything. His right hand had a long jagged scar across the
back. He ground out the smoke in the ashtray.

  “You all right with this now?” he said.

  “All right with what?”

  “This place. Talking to me.”

  “Talk about what?” Thinking that maybe he had others outside—by now he’d had enough time to surround the place.

  “I followed you from Morton’s.”

  “Morton’s?”

  “Where you dumped that bouncer.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know. I want to talk to you … about some work.”

  “I’m not looking for work.”

  “Not a factory, my friend. Not a car wash either. Your work. It’s my work too.”

  “What?”

  “I know what you do. I have work for you. You want it or not?”

  “No.”

  He just sat there, the way people sit in prison. Like time doesn’t matter, even the time they’re doing. I was going to leave first, give him my back. The waitress came over. He didn’t stare at her breasts, just ordered a hamburger and a Coke.

  “Costs the same as liquor,” the waitress told him.

  “That’s all right. And bring my friend another of whatever he’s drinking over there.”

  The waitress took away my empty shot glass and the water glass with the Coke and melted ice in the bottom. I ate in a place once where they emptied the ashtray with you sitting right at the table—emptied it into a napkin, left a fresh one there for you. She didn’t do that. In joints like the one we were in, they take away the empty drink glasses so you don’t sit there sucking on the ice. And so you don’t keep track of how many you had.

  She brought the guy his hamburger, set up my drinks. I sipped the Coke. He nodded, like I was telling him something.

  “You really an Indian?” I asked him.

  “Half Chickasaw, half Apache. My name’s Wolf.”

  “Wolf.” I said it again to myself. It didn’t sound right.

  He saw what I was thinking. “It’s really a longer name. It means something like Wolf of Long Eyes. The spotter-wolf for the pack. But it doesn’t translate so good, so I go by Wolf.”

  “Why’d you come after me?”

  “You want to know why you didn’t pick me up, tracking you?” I didn’t know how he could tell that. “I didn’t come after you myself,” he said. “I sent it out on the drums. Saw you in Morton’s, got the word to my people. I just waited where I was until they got back to me. Then I came in.”

  “So you got a whole … crew out there?”

  “Uptown’s got the largest collection of off-reservation Indians in America. Different tribes, but it don’t matter to the whites. They can’t see us, can’t tell us apart—it’s like having yellow skin in the Orient.”

  “You been in the Orient?”

  “Oh yes. Vietnam. Where I learned my trade. Where’d you learn?”

  I didn’t say anything, wondering how he knew.

  “You don’t use guns, do you?” he asked, like we were talking about fishing tackle or something. “We all use different things, get the work done. Is that a special style?”

  “Style?”

  “Like kung fu, or akido, you know what I mean. I never saw anyone do that before … put all their weight in one place.”

  “What do you want?” I asked him again. Thinking maybe this was the end of it for me. You hear about other guys in the business, how some of them like to make a ceremony out of it, talk to the target before they get it done. Telling me about his tribe and all … maybe he was trying to tell me I could take him out but it wouldn’t help, there’d be others outside.

  “I heard about you,” he said. “Not your name. I heard about you for years.”

  “Not me.”

  “Oh yeah. You. I earned my name. I’m never wrong. I saw death through a little round circle of glass so many times, until it got so I could see it through concrete. You and me, we’re the same. Brothers in the blood. There’s men who hunt for trophies, go out into the woods in a Jeep wearing pretty clothes and blast a deer through a scope. They stalk, but they don’t see. You and me, we hunt for meat. Meat to eat, meat to live. It’s how we live. It’s how the pack hunts.”

  “I don’t have a pack.”

  “I know. But you don’t do it for fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “They call themselves professionals. You know, the greaseballs in the fancy suits, dogs on leashes, do what they’re told. They don’t have a pack either, they just think they do. And when the bracelets come on, they start to sing. Rats run in packs too, but they don’t live for the pack, they live for themselves. There’s psychos too. They like the taste. After a while, they get to need it. You’re one of us, you just don’t know it.”

  “I’m not anything.”

  The waitress came back, cleared off the Indian’s dishes. He held up his empty glass, looked over at me.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  The girls were circulating around the tables, getting the men to buy them watered drinks. They didn’t come near the booths.

  “You’re looking for a woman,” the Indian said. Like it wasn’t a question.

  “I’m not looking for anybody.”

  “You’re not hunting,” the Indian said. “You were hunting, you’d be looking for a man. It wouldn’t take you that long to see if he was in a place. You go in and out, watch the dancers, make sure you see the whole shift. Then you try another place. It’s a woman you’re looking for.”

  I thought about it. I’d never find Shella the way I was going. After Monroe …

  “If I was …?”

  “Nobody knows Uptown like my people do,” the Indian said. “If she’s here, I’ll find her for you.”

  “For what?”

  “What? For what? What’s that mean?”

  “What do you want? In exchange.”

  “Does it matter?” he asked me.

  I told him about Shella. I can see her better when I talk about her … that’s why I do it in my head. He listened, that’s all he did, waiting for me to finish.

  “There’s things you can make different,” he said when I was done. “Lose weight, gain weight. Contact lenses. Cut your hair, dye it a new color. You can cover scars, change tattoos. Buy a whole new face, you got the money.”

  “I know.”

  “And things you can’t.” Like I hadn’t said anything. “You don’t have a picture, right?”

  “No.”

  “Show me how tall she is, barefoot.”

  I held my hand just between my eyebrows and my hairline, like a salute.

  He turned over the menu, just a blank piece of white paper on the back. “Show me the distance between the centers of her eyes.”

  I put my hand on the paper, spread my thumb and forefinger, closed my eyes, seeing her face. When I got it right, I opened my eyes. He took a black grease pencil out of his pocket, put a little dot at each end of the space I made. I took my hand away. He connected the dots, as straight and true as a ruler. Folded the paper, put it in his pocket.

  “She ever get busted?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Felony pops?”

  I nodded.

  “Ever do time?”

  “Not real time. Not since she’s been grown. Ten days here, a week there. Sweep arrests, a stolen car once. Nothing big.”

  “Maybe they’d have printed her?”

  “Sure.”

  “We can’t look past Uptown,” the Indian said. “Don’t come back here.”

  I tried other places around Chicago. Music bars on Rush Street, fancy joints near the lake, dives on the South Side.

  When I got back early one morning, the Indian was waiting in my room.

  I didn’t ask him how he got in—I’m no good at it, but I know it’s easy to do.

  “She’s not in Uptown,” the Indian said.

  “Thanks anyway,” I told him, but he didn’t get u
p to go like I expected.

  “If she was printed, I know someone who could find her.”

  “Who?”

  “A crazy man. He’s a trader. Never pays money for work. We did something for him …”

  I just looked at him, waiting.

  “…and he made good. Did what he said.”

  “Somebody told me that once … that they could find her.”

  “It’d work the same way as a job—he’d have to pay up front.”

  “You work for him?”

  “No.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “There’s something we have to do. Not you and me, we … my people and me, okay? There’s places we can’t go. Where you could just walk in.”

  “And I do this work, this work for you, and then I get to see this guy, right?”

  His face was sad, like I told him somebody just died. “No,” is all he said.

  I waited in that room. He lit a cigarette, smoked it all the way through. I didn’t move.

  He ground out his cigarette butt on the windowsill, took a deep breath.

  “I’ll take you to him. He’ll ask you some questions, make sure you’re the right man. If he makes the deal, he’ll find her for you. Wherever she is. Then you do it. Whatever he wants. When you finish with him, you do this thing for us. Then it’s done.”

  “And he’ll find Shella for me?”

  “He’ll find her. No promises what he’ll find. She could be in jail, could be dead.” He looked over at me. “She could be with a man,” he said, like that was worse.

  “I know.”

  “And you get it up front. But if he finds her, you owe him. Straight up.”

  “And you too.”

  “Me too.”

  I told him I’d do it.

  I didn’t look around Chicago anymore. Just waited on the Indian. Stayed in my room. There was no TV, so I listened to the radio. It was mostly hillbilly music. I kept it turned down low, next to my head. They played this song once, I never heard the name of it. A man’s going to be hanged in the morning, so his woman goes to the warden. She gives him her body so he’ll call the hanging off. But it happens anyway. She did it for nothing. I thought of Shella—how she’d do that.