Shella (14 page)

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.