Chapter 19

                The car rumbled through the streets of the legal district, the sound of the powerful engine echoing off the stone edifices. People glanced up from the shadows, eyes squinting, suspiciously like wolves or coyotes caught over stolen meat. Theirs was the kind who never saw daylight, who thrived on the drunk stumbling out of the bars, or the women too weary to outrun them. Each morning the police picked up the victims for tagging at the morgue, names and faces that sometimes remained anonymous, reported in the newspapers as John or Jane Doe.

                Then, the neighborhood changed as the car rolled under the railroad bridge and headed up Market Street, lower story buildings crowding against each other in an image of old time Paterson tenements, although instead of Jewish, Irish or Italian signs advertising sales in the store windows, Spanish words filled the glass. Like most white people of Paterson, Maxwell understood none of it, and resented his own ignorance.

                Slowly, the car's vibrations seduced Maxwell, the way they generally did, part of the reason he sometimes took long drives, his body easing down into the seat, his head pressing against the head rest. One of Uncle Charlie's brothers had bitched about the car once, calling it nothing more than an engine with seats, a statement that any long ride revealed as unfounded.

                The car's power wasn't in the engine at all, but in the way it made the driver feel, as if the throbbing and movement was a result of some inner spirit inside the man, each turn of the key a new creation, a reshaping of the world around himself in a way that Maxwell was never able to explain in words when he was a kid, and now, after he had rediscovered car.

                Aristotle, as Creeley had often pointed out, once said even God could not change the past. Maxwell had no desire to change anything, just travel back to that more innocent time with Uncle Charlie, and at moments like these, he almost managed that bit of magic. He seemed to become part of the machine, his brains and its brawn forming a single entity that somehow went beyond the artificial barriers of time. At times, he could almost see his uncle in the corner of his eye seated in the passenger side, laughing over the remarkable connection. The feeling did not come with every drive, nor had it come immediately to Maxwell, especially during those years when he had first sat in the car with Charlie learning to drive.

                "It's what happens sometimes with cars like this," Charlie told Maxwell. "when you learn to drive it well enough, when you begin to feel all its quirks and its abilities, then, at one point when you're not expecting it, you slip into its spirit somehow."

                Charlie never explained it better than that. He'd had no time to ride much later after the army took him, and the car, for the most part, sat unused in the garage.

                Later, after Maxwell recovered the car from the ruins of the junk-yard, where it had likely been towed straight from the garage by Ed, Charlie's brother, Maxwell felt it, more and more often, especially after long rides out to visit Creeley at the lake, he and the car floating along the highway at 75 miles per hour.

                But sometimes, when he was particularly worn, he eased into that frame of mind even on short rides like this, finding that zone within himself where he could forget Jack, the city or the world. And now, he found himself even deeper than usual, even with Jack chattering beside him -- Jack, as oblivious to Maxwell as Maxwell was to him -- ranting on about the details of the day and the prospects for the night. Jack talked about Paterson, how he hated being stuck here more than he hated being stuck anywhere else before, hated feeling so dirty after work, or after a long walk along the street -- where the stain of the city spread over him, and how when he became the president of GM or IBM or ATT, he would find a clean and proper place to live, a place like Wyoming or Montana...

                Maxwell stopped listening, vaguely noting a car with engine running in the shadow of the street where Maxwell would have turned normally if visiting Patty, a car -- the black Trans Am -- roaring, with a flood of suddenly turned on headlights and suddenly engaged gears, out onto the street behind Maxwell's car, swooping so close that for an instant Maxwell believed the cars would collide.

                Maxwell slammed on the brakes out of reflex, twisting the wheel with hopes of sliding away from the Trans Am now just in front and to the left of him, he hoping to minimize the damage when metal struck metal. Jack let out a single, sustained howl shaped out of the word "Shit!" a scream that filled the interior of Maxwell's car like a siren.

                The odor of oil and burning rubber mingled with the scent of Maxwell's own sweat as his patched car spun, tires squealing in protest against the unnatural change of direction, engine whining like a terrified steed as its struggled against Maxwell's down shifting of gears -- gears which themselves ground in a clash of metal teeth, it with the other sounds an orchestration of impending disaster. Maxwell's previous limbo had turned into a sudden gush of hell, as the sensations of movement seemed to become suspended in time, he floating there, watching himself and Jack spinning in an action that lasted seconds yet for him went on and on, seeming unwilling to come to an end.

                Just how the cars missed each other remained another mystery of physics Maxwell could not later explain, a complicated formula of motion, friction, and human response that interacted in time to prevent the disaster -- the Trans Am ceasing its advance as Maxwell's car slid away, gray plumes of smoke rising from under both vehicles as if both had caught fire.

                Then everything stopped. Seconds ticked passed before the Trans Am sped away.

                Jack looked acutely shaken as he stared after the vehicle, his voice a croak as he tried to speak.

                "That son of a bitch did that deliberately," he finally managed to get out.

                "I agree," Maxwell said, but too weary to chase the Trans Am as he might have done another time,  his fingers still tightly gripping the steering wheel, even though the car had ceased to move. Other cars -- the normal evening traffic -- swarmed around them in a buzz of horns and made Maxwell suddenly aware of their precarious position, diagonal angle with the curb, the rear of the car jutting out into the lane. He engaged the gears, but the car had stalled, and it took another moment for him to get it going again, the starter whining again and again as if refusing to chance another confrontation with the black Trans Am. Then, with its usual dramatic last minute magic, waiting until the battery was just about to give out, the car coughed and coughed again, grumbling begrudgingly to life, running so rough for a moment that it teetered again on the verge of death.  When the engine calmed enough, Maxwell engaged the gears, easing the vehicle back into the proper direction, then waited out a line of traffic so as to start again along the road, a bus, several cars, a truck, then another bus, then finally a clear space into which he slipped the car.

                "You know who was in that Trans Am, don't you?" Jack asked.

                "What do you mean?"

                "That Trans Am back there cut us off deliberately, and you weren't surprised," Jack said.

                "Forget it, Jack. It wasn't important."

                "Maybe not to you, but I like to know the details of an assassination attempt."

                Maxwell sighed, finally glancing at his roommate.

                "I think he was paying me back for showing him up last night," Maxwell said.

                "Showing him up? How?"

                "We sort of had a race last night and I won."

                Jack seemed to ponder Maxwell's statement. "All this is connected to the girl from last night?"

                "An old boyfriend."

                "He's your girlfriend's ex?" Jack said, a sharply elevated note to his voice.

                This time, Maxwell glanced sharply at his room mate. "You seem to know more about the driver of that car than I do," he said. "You want to tell me about it?"

                Even in the dim light that now filled the car's interior, Maxwell could see the changing colors of Jack's face, the deep blush instantly replaced by something as extremely pale.

                "I never said I knew anything about the driver," Jack said.

                "But you've seen the car before?"

                Jack glanced away, out the passenger side window. The low stubble of brownstones and three family houses giving way to the highway's on ramp, the on ramp Maxwell had used the night before, though now instead of turning west, he turned east, passed the large green sign that said: "New York -- 16 miles."

                "I don't believe you," Jack said bitterly. "You live in this fucking town all your life and yet you still don't know what's going on."

                "Get to the point, Jack."

                "The point is your darling girlfriend's ex is the biggest fucking dope dealer in the city of Paterson."

                "Him? In the Trans Am? Are you sure?"

                "The only one who doesn't know it, is you," Jack said, beads of sweat showing on his forehead. "Something your darling girlfriend failed to tell you, letting you dump on him last night."

                "She did mention something about him being the boss," Maxwell said.

                "And you ignored her? Are you so naive as to think you can dump on The Boss and not have him come after you later?"

                "So he's a drug dealer and he's pissed off, he did his thing, now we're even."

                "Maybe," Jack mumbled.

                "Jack," Maxwell said. "You seem to have issues here that have nothing to do with me. Do you want to talk about them?"

                "No."

                "Jack, you're getting me pissed off. If you know something about this character, tell me. So far your fearful allusions have me thinking he's some kind of mass murderer."

                "I don't know as much about him as you think I do," Jack said in a weak voice. "No one does."

                "But you said everyone knows who he is."

                "Everyone recognizes him enough to stay out of his way," Jack said. "You don't need to know what makes a twister work, just how to take cover when it turns in your direction."

                "But you've must have heard something about this character," Maxwell said.

                "I've only heard that he's mean," Jack said. "And that it's dangerous as hell to cross him."

                "Have you ever crossed him?"

                Jack's face paled again. "I don't want to talk about it."

                "You've bought drugs from him?" Maxwell pressed.

                "Just pull over and let me out here," Jack said, working at the handle of the door despite the car's speed.

                "Not in your life."

                "Then I'll get out when we reach the George Washington Bridge," Jack said.

                "What will you do then walk home?"

                "If I have to."

                "It would be easier just to tell me the truth, Jack. I'll find out eventually anyway."

                Jack was silent again for a long time, and when he spoke, his voice barely rose above the sound of the engine.

                "If I tell you, will you promise not to toss me out of the loft?"

                "Are you telling me things are that bad?"

                "You could take it badly."

                "Tell me."

                "Promise first."

                "All right," Maxwell said, after a long sigh. "I promise. What is your problem? Why are you so afraid of this character in the Trans Am?"

                "I owe him money."

                "For drugs?"

                "Some for pot, some for coke, mostly for losing horses."

                "Horses?"

                Horses, cards, numbers. It's all the same."

                "You mean as in gambling?"

                "Yes, I mean gambling."

                 "How much do you owe"

                "You mean if I totaled everything up?"

                "Exactly."

                "About $25,000."

                "WHAT?"

                "It's not as bad as it sounds," Jack said. "One good horse and I'll be even again. Two good horses and I won't need to bet any more."

                "You can't depend on that."

                "What would you have me do, pay it back with what I make at the Greasy Spoon? Maybe I can make a deal with The Boss to pay him $5 a week out of my tips."

                "Don't be a wise ass," Maxwell said. "Relying on a horse to get you out of debt doesn't seem very logical."

                "Short of holding up a bank, I don't see another way out," Jack said. "And without some way out of this, I might just as well put a bullet in my head."

                "Don't talk like that," Maxwell said. "There must be something we can do."

                "We?" Jack said. "What have you got to do with this?"

                "I'm your friend."

                "Then you're also a fool. You've already crossed the boss once with his girlfriends. You don't need to put yourself in deeper with me."

                "I'm not getting myself deep into anything," Maxwell said, then glanced up in time to turn the car onto the highway's express lane, the car's wheels rushing over the pavement as the speedometer showed 100 miles per hour. He eased the speed down, automatically checking the rear view mirror for signs of the police, although it was not a police car he saw there, but the ghostly black shape of the Trans Am, just then slipping onto the highway's local lanes, then at the first exit, abandoned the highway altogether.

                         *******************

                A horn blared, then a second. Maxwell turned the car through the narrow downtown streets, trying to sort out the mage, and recall the order of Westside streets from his last time here.

                "We've got to get over to the Eastside," Jack said, clearly impatient with the delay.

                "I know, I know, I'm trying to figure out how," Maxwell barked. "I've forgotten how bad this side of town can be, streets turning in on street, all the one way streets going the wrong way. I should have turned East on 14th. That's one street I know that goes straight across to the other side."

                Another horn blared, as a delivery truck swerved around Maxwell's car, its rusted box nearly scraping the window on Maxwell's side.

                "And the traffic! These people are insane. We're lucky they don't just drive over us."

                "Maybe we should park" Jack suggested. "It's not that far a walk, and we do have to make a stop for your friend in the country."

                "If I can find a spot I will," Maxwell said, his head already spinning with the confusion, his lack of sleep making everything seem louder, brighter and more violent than things actually were.

                "There's a spot," Jack shouted, and pointed towards a stretch of curb half way down the block.

                Maxwell steered the car towards it, pulled up so that the tires squeaked against the concrete, then shut off the engine -- which supered and coughed, more or less indicating how Maxwell felt.

                "I wonder if it is safe to leave the car here," Maxwell said, as he removed and pocketed the keys.

                "As safe as any place in New York," Jack said.

                "No, I mean from tickets. I've never been able to make sense of any of the signs in this city," Maxwell said. "Street cleaning, snow removal, alternate side parking, the signs never make it clear as to what time is what."

                "It's night now, you're fine. You mostly have to worry about that crap during the day," Jack said. "At night you have to worry about the other thieves, the ones without uniform or elected office, who might steel your wheels even while you're moving. But with this rust bucket, I doubt we have much to worry about."

                Maxwell glanced back at the car before following after Jack, the matted metal seemingly as inappropriate here as it did in Paterson, looking as if still abandoned after all these years and all Maxwell's efforts to heal the rusted wounds.

                 "It's raining," Maxwell said, causing Jack to stop and frown and hold up the palm of his hand.

                "Damn," Jack mumbled. "Just what we needed. But hell, we'll be dry enough inside the bar. Come on."

                Still, Maxwell dawdled, the spray touching his cheek as he glanced around at the street and the line of brownstones, metal banisters thick with ivy. Things stirred in the dark even here, even in the wealthy twilight of the West Village, dark things taking shape only when Maxwell studied them closely, noting the sharp glint of their eyes and the rasping sound of their breath. He could read their message in their movements, could hear the soft sniffing, snuffles and clearing of throats.

                "Are you coming or not?" Jack asked. "I don't want to spend all night at this the way you did last night."

                "Yes, I'm coming," Maxwell assured him, his soft sneakered step echoed by the shuffling and sniffing of slow pursuit, shadows moving within shadows, crossing Hudson, then Seventh as Jack and Maxwell crossed, stirring behind them along the tight and twisted streets around Sheridan Square, and onto Bleeker Street where the tourists swelled and bartered and crowded in the doorways of gift shops, the sound ceasing altogether as the rain increased, as the tourists whimpered, and Jack's step hurried on, this thick soles slapping at the puddles of water.

                When they neared Washington Square Park, Maxwell slowed again, the ragtag sound of pursuit once more evident, now growing louder and more regular, indicating more than one set of feet. The one or two pursuers Maxwell had counted back before Sheridan Square now sounded like an army.

                Jack seemed unaware of the sound and Maxwell said nothing, although pushed Jack to hurry out of the park, feeling the need for the crowds of Broadway and streets along the east side near McSorley's.

                ***********

                 McSorley's Old Ale House, a red brick building at 15 East Seventh Street opened its doors on February 17, 1854 and never closed, bearing the same mahogany bar, icebox and potbellied stove it had the day it opened, and still had saw dust on its floor. Portraits of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, Jenny Lind, John F. Kennedy, decorated its walls, as did the 1865 wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth.

                For years, paper money collected was kept in a rose cash box and coins in soup bowls.

                Above the bar hung an odd assortment of the bar's history, a chair that people claim industrialist Peter Cooper favored and that Abraham Lincoln in 1960 a speech up the block where the Bowery Ends.

                It has been called a sleepy place, although when the college frat boys descend upon the place, it got lively enough.

                Over the years since its founding the place has had six owners. Old John, after whom the place was named, died in 1910, at the age of 87, and he used to like to sit up close to the big belly stove with the other aging Irishmen that made up the place's original clientele. The place was modeled after public houses in Ireland. The original name was the Old House at Home, which was changed in 1908 after a storm blew down the original sign.

                While rumor claimed Abe Lincoln once visited the saloon, no proof has been found.

                Except for a experimental period from 1906 to 1908, McSorley's never sold hard alcohol, and managed to stay open during prohibition by selling "near beer" of less than 3.5 percent alcohol -- though as later owners were quick to point out, the bartender could hit a hidden pedal allowing them to serve the stronger beer to their regular customers.

                For most of the century, women were not allowed in the place, sparking numerous protests in the late 1960s and a court order in the 1970 requiring them to admit women. Even then, it took over a decade for the bar to install "a ladies room."

                        *****************

                The place struck Maxwell with the same sense of age as if he had stumbled into a wine cellar, although not a bottle of wine could be found, only portraits of dead presidents hanging on the walls with an assortment of other junk, some of which seemed to lack any historic value: as if some idiot in the past had chosen to hang up his trash rather than take it out to a trash can.

                It was the last of its kind, part of that now mostly lost tradition that celebrated the Irish roots of the neighborhood, when street gangs and burlesque shows dominated the Bowry, and sailors straight from the docks swaggered their way down the streets looking for drink and for prostitutes.

                In some ways, Maxwell had made the trek of twenty miles only to step into a piece of history that reminded him of Paterson, of that grand sense of adventure preserved, the way the great falls had preserved the carved names of then generals Washington and Lafayette. Although not nearly as old as the Passaic Hotel, built just before the Civil War, McSorleys struck Maxwell as the kind of place in which revolutionary plots might have been hatched, conspirators hidden behind cobwebs and mugs of beer, plotting out the overthrow of the English Government.

                Washington never came here, but rumors claimed Lincoln did, and more confirmed was the list of other notables who had sat at these tables and drank from these lagers of beer, artists and musicians, Politian’s and crooks, writers and reporters, each adding their own name to the growing legend that made the place such a monument to local history. Most of those that came were ordinary people, early on Irish friends of Old John nodding off in front of the woodstove as they age, replaced by successive generations of the curious, who crowded through the doors and took their place as the bar, staring up at the assortment of stuff on the walls, squinting to recognize the faces in each portrait.

                Most of the place seemed held together with dust, Maxwell thought, from the old clocks and sailing ship stocks over sailing scenes carved in Ivory, wooden oars and strips of canvas to the very tables and chairs. The only items apparently free of dust were the beer glasses themselves, six ounce glasses stacked upside down behind the counter, the drip of recent washing still thick around their mouths like foam.

                "This is the fun and exciting place you've been harping on about all this time?" Maxwell asked when they had found seats at a large round wooden table in the rear, its surface thick with carved initials. "It feels like a tomb."

                "It livens up later," Jack said. "We're just a little early."

                "Later?" Maxwell said, glancing up at the face of a huge clock behind the bar. He had to squint to read the numbers, and then, translate the roman numerals into a more modern version of time. "It's already after ten. How much later does it need to get?"

                "This is New York, not Paterson," Jack said, lifting his hand to attract the attention of a waitress. "You can't expect people here to roll up the sidewalks at ten the way they do in New Jersey."

                Maxwell let out a long sigh. "I supposed it doesn't matter," he said as the waitress arrived. "I'm here to get drunk, not socialize."

                "And you shall indeed get drunk," Jack said, then ordered two dozen glasses of beer.

                "Hey! Whoa! What are you doing?" Maxwell cried, making a grab for the waitress' arm to hold her back but she was already out of reach and on her way to the bar to fill their order. "What the hell do we need two dozen beers for?"

                "That's the way you have to order booze here," Jack said. "The glasses are small, and later on the waiters and waitresses are too busy to make it back to the table very often."

                "But two dozen?"

                "It's custom," Jack said. "It's how you pick up girls here. You set the glasses at the center of the table, drink them, invite other people to sit and drink, and soon you're all singing and laughing and having a good old time. Later, someone else sits down, orders a second round, then other people order the third."

                "All of two dozen glasses a round?"

                "You'll see. It works fine. Trust me."

     Jack's plan worked too well. Even before the bar got so crowded so as to make it impossible to move or breathe, people gathered around the table, sloshing down what looked and tasted like slightly green beer. With each glass, Maxwell could taste not only the bitter bite of hops, but also the bleach-based soap with which the bartenders cleaned the glasses.

                Between the cigarette smoke billowing across him like the trail of a coal-burning locomotive and the beer, Maxwell felt woozy after only three glasses -- and still Jack urged him on, shoving a fresh glass at him whenever Maxwell's current glass sank below half. After six glasses, Maxwell arrived at what he would have called a mild drunk, after nine, he dreaded the long walk to the car, let alone the drive back to New Jersey.

                "Jack," he whispered, touching his friend's shoulders, a friend then deeply engrossed in reading the palm of some slumming Madison Avenue model. Although the blonde woman smiled continuously, her blue eyes had a touch of ice.

                "Jack," Maxwell said again, more insistently.

                "What is it?" Jack whispered back out of the corner of his mouth. "Can't you see I'm busy here?"

                "I think it's time we headed home."

                Jack glanced up from the palm to study the clock behind the bar, mouthing off the Roman numerals as if trying to interpret them and struggling to make the translation. "But it's only a quarter to one!" he said. "Bars here are open to four."

                "I know, Jack, but we still have to make a stop on the way home."

                "What stop?" Jack said, the model's hand still locked in his grip.

                "You know. For my friend in West Jersey."

                Rosie had advised Maxwell over the telephone to come to the tavern after closing, and since the bars closed earlier in New Jersey than in New York, and both he and Jack still had to walk cross town before driving back to Paterson, he had to leave now.

                Jack's pupils dilated as he let loose the woman's fingers. "Oh yeah, I forgot," he mumbled, and grabbed up his last half glass of beer, draining it.

                "You're not going yet?" the model said, her pink painted lips pursing with clear disappointment. "It's so early and you haven't told me if I'm going to find true love or not?"

                "I'm afraid he has to," Maxwell said, pulling Jack up by the elbow, though the chair limbs and Jack's limbs seemed tangled. "We both have to work in the morning and we have a few chores to do before we get home."

                "Maybe another time?" she asked hopefully, and wound have given Jack her phone number had not her boyfriend protested, and so, sagging a little, she promised to meet Jack back here at some as yet underdetermined date, a future chance meeting that would not likely come about.

                As Maxwell had predicted earlier, walking proved a problem, with both men just drunk enough to need each other for support, he and Jack weaving through the forest of tables and chairs towards the front door, banging into this table and that chair, upsetting on man's elbow just as the man lifted his glass to drink, and another woman's hand as she attempted to redo her makeup. Most of the other patrons laughed well aware of what their own attempts would look like when they chose later to leave.

                Out on the street, Maxwell felt some of the mist leave, the dust and cobwebs of history fading as harsh, cold reality sprung up around them. The footsteps that had plagued them earlier began again nearly as soon Jack and Maxwell started towards the car again.

                Maxwell stiffened, gripping Jack's arm more tightly in order to move him along the sidewalk on a more or less straight line. Maxwell had seen drunks attacked in Paterson, easy victims stumbling from bars at 3 a.m. He imagined New York City no different in its regard for the inebriated tourists, especially when those tourist still had a few good dollars in their wallets and more than enough gold and silver jewelry. But somehow, Maxwell knew that the clattering, disorganized footsteps tagging behind them had not arrived as part of some accidental encounter.

                "Hey, what's your hurry," Jack growled, wrestling himself free of Maxwell's grip.

                "We have to get home," Maxwell said, "and I don't know how long this business with Rosey is going to take."

                Jack, even in his inebriated condition, sensed some of Maxwell's agitation and frowned, hurrying along at Maxwell's urging as best as his wobbly legs could.

                             **************

                A gloom hung over Washington Square Park when they arrived there. Someone had turned off the lights around the arch, and many less windows from the university buildings glowed. Those lights that marked the walkways through the park seemed to cast deeper shadows among the trees. Only the open space around the fountain seemed unchanged, with a few late night singers wailing out Bruce Springsteen tunes to the out of tune strings of a 12-string guitar. To the left, between the outer ring of the fountain and the squat brick buildings that housed the public toilet, two men tossed a Frisbee, the scuff of plastic resounding through the park at odd intervals, making up a rhythmless music of its own, both that and the guitar isolated sounds in an otherwise silent park.

                Even the city beyond the park seemed unable to dent this silence, the sirens of police cars, ambulances and firetrucks more sadly symbolic than real. They stumbling footsteps echoed, out of rhythm with the music, though the clatter of those Maxwell heard behind them was no better.

                 Through the trees behind, Maxwell glimpsed movement, light shirts against the dull background, though the number remained unclear.  Maxwell turned Jack sharply and changing their direction towards the fountain circle, stumbling over the roots of trees as they took the most direct way across the grass.

                "Hey what gives?" Jack asked.

                "Nothing important," Maxwell said, needing time to sober up a little, feeling his head too full of mists to think clearly. "I just want to hear what those musicians are doing."

                "But you said you wanted to get back to New Jersey."

                "This will only take a moment," Maxwell said.

                He wanted people around them, and the musicians were the only people in the park. He and Jack burst into the open. Again Maxwell stopped, glanced right, then left, as if he'd expected someone to shout at him. No one did. But the sound of the out of tune 12-string guard rose, then fell, accompanied by the wailing voices of three men who could not sing.

                Staring passed these three men towards the trees on the far side of the circle, Maxwell made out movement in the darkness, as the clattering pursuers also changed direction. Then, something bright flashed, like plastic or metal catching light. A knife, maybe, Maxwell thought, or maybe a gun.

                "What's wrong now?" Jack asked, turning from a dozen steps ahead to hurry Maxwell along with a stare.

                "We're being followed," Maxwell informed him.

                "Followed?" Jack exploded. "By who? And why?"

                "I don't know by whom, but I can fully guess what they want," Maxwell said. "They've been following us since we parked the car. My guess is that the two of us look and sound like a couple of Jersey hicks. And if that wasn't enough evidence, our car has Jersey license plates."

                "You think they want our money?"

                "Probably, or they could want to have some fun with us."

                Jack seemed to ponder the information for a moment, then shook his head. "I think you're just having the big city jitters," he said. "Believe me, Max, I come here quite often. People in New York aren't nearly as vicious as myths made them out to be. We look and sound no different than anybody else, and even if we did, who would be insane enough to want to bother two grown males. You even look like a cop with your short..."

                His words trickled off as the sound of chains chinked from out of the darkness, a sound soon followed by the appearance of shapes, a pack of human wolves oozing from the corners of the park.

                "Ah shit!" Jack said, when the figures became clear enough under the park lights for him to make them out.

                "You know them?" Maxwell asked, shifting his feet, dropping his hands, centering himself, as he counted off the number of members in the approaching gang. He took clear mental notes about which one had a knife and which one a chain, and also noted none seemed to have anything more lethal, such as a gun.

                "They work for the boss," Jack said in a low voice, his shoulders sagging a little.

                "Here?"

                "They must have followed us from New Jersey," Jack said. "That son of a bitch must have recognized me when he cut us off."

                "Is the boss here, too?" Maxwell asked, squinting to make out the features of the approaching thuds, trying to determine which would make the most likely candidate.

                None looked intelligent enough to run the kind of operation Jack claimed the Boss ran. Of the six that approached, four wore jeans and leather jackets, the other two badly fitting suits, all bearing the same vaporous expression empty of anything except the desire for violence, each the stereo-typical image of savage that left no room for any other impression.

                The most vicious looking of these grinned as he advance, holding a piece of pipe in one hand as he brushed his long, blond and greasy hair out of his face with the other.

                "Hey, Jackie," this figure said. "What are you doing over on this side of the Hudson? Taking a little night on the town? Did you forget about our little agreement?"

                "I didn't forget, Hutch," Jack said in a faint voice.

                "Then why haven't you come to see us with our money?" Hutch asked, slapping his palm with the iron pipe, ceasing his advance about a dozen feet away from Jack. The other five stumbled to a stop on either side of him.

                "I haven't managed to raise it yet," Jack said. "I need a little time."

                "Did you hear that, fellahs?" Hutch said, glancing around as his gang. "Jackie needs a little more time."

                Then, with the laughter draining from his face, Hutch glared at Jack again.

                "No way," Hutch said. "You can't just make payments when you want. It's time for a little lesson."

                "Why don't you leave him alone," Maxwell said, sagging a little, but the adrenalin sobering him enough -- if barely.

                Hutch turned his attention to Maxwell. A scar under the thug's lower lip twitched like a nervous maggot thirsting for blood.

                "What did you say to me" Hutch asked.

                "Jack said he would pay you when he could, and he will," Maxwell said. "So why don't you go home and tell your boss to learn some patience."

                It was as if Maxwell had lighted a fuse. Hutch swung his pipe at Maxwell's face. Maxwell stepped back, swinging his body around so that he moved in the same direction as the pipe, grabbed the arm behind the pipe, twisted it causing a howl and the pipe to clatter on the ground.

                Hutch in a fit of fury swung his fist as Maxwell's face.

                Maxwell avoided this, then struck at Hutch three times with the tips of his fingers, one blow at Hutch's throat, the second at Hutch's chest cavity, and the third -- at Hutch's stomach.

                Hutch's expression changed, the rage blinking out of his eyes and replaced by surprise, and pain. Hutch fell to the ground beside his pipe, hands feeling towards his wounds, as if unable to make up his mind as to which hurt most.

                The other five shuffled back, staring down at their fallen comrade, then up at Maxwell.

                Each seemed to suspicious about what kind of trick had allowed Maxwell to overcome their leader so easily.

                Hutch tried to speak, but his angry command came out as a painted gurgle, making him seem something of a tragic clown.

                "I think your friend is hurt," Maxwell said. "Maybe you'd better take him to a doctor."

                The others continued to stare and shuffled back.

                "Hey!" Jack yelled. "Didn't you hear the man. Pick up your Goddamn friend and get him out of here."

                At this, two of the remaining gang inched forward, grabbed Hutch by the arm pits, then -- half dragging and half carrying him -- made their retreat again, this time the whole gang fleeing out of the park.

                Jack stared after them, then looked down at the iron pipe lying on the ground. He nudged it with the tip of his shoe, then glanced at Maxwell.

                "You weren't afraid, were you?" he asked.

                "Of course I was afraid," Maxwell said. "Anyone who gets into a fight should be or he isn't human."

                "But you handled him so..."

                "I've trained for many years and his attack was clumsy."

                "Clumsy?" Jack said. "I've seen that man fight before. He's mean, he's quick and he's ruthless."

                "He's still clumsy," Maxwell said. "Now let's get back to Paterson. This kind of thing always makes me feel a little ill."

Paterson main menu
email to Al Sullivan