James Baldwin - Stained Glass

I knew of a prolific Polak hitman called The Iceman, one of the top names who worked with one of the big Italian families out of the Gemini Club. He’d had a long, successful career, mostly due to a policy of periodically culling all of his friends. Watching the shadow passing back and forth in my kitchen, I wished I’d thought to do the same thing. Nic was too thorough by half. But how had they gotten in past the wards? Ah… dammit. The Wardbreaker.

Nine days turned into two weeks. I got to know the gangs in the area. They were more curious than hostile: everyone wanted to know why some crazy Euro bum was living in a dumpster near Ali’s store, hounding off anyone who tried to fence his TVs. The cigarettes I’d taken from the Yao Shing dockworker came in handy. Guys with names like Dogg – with two G’s – Kenny Main and Choonie got smoking and talking with me during the daytime. My low opinion of the police and my ability to teach them some Krav Maga went a long way.

As time dragged by, the days got shorter and the weather was got wetter and colder. Every day, I set up at Times Square and read the secondhand newspapers to keep track of the date. I lost weight and put on sinew, keeping up my fitness routine as best I could while I scraped and saved for the two things I needed most: a first aid surgery kit, to get whatever Sergei had implanted in me out from under the skin of my stomach, and a gun. Dogg had fixed me up a filed Browning for two hundred and fifty and I was at one ninety-five. Another week, and it would be mine. With a gun, I stood a better chance of mounting an assault on my apartment.

Before I knew it, it was the 20th of September, a Friday. I set up as usual in the blustery afternoon, and it wasn’t long before the first client of the day passed by on her way back from work: a chubby office woman with big hair and too much makeup. She put my fee down in change.

“Okay, look. My boyfriend and I broke up last night. He broke up with me because… well, he says he just found someone else and he doesn’t love me anymore. I just can’t believe it. Is it true?”

She had a voice like a nasal buzzsaw. Dutifully, I shuffled the cards and laid three of them out on the cloth in front of me. “Unfortunately, ma’am, it seems to be the case. He’s not coming back.”

“What do you mean he’s not coming back?” Her eyes widened.

I tapped the Ten of Pentacles. “He’s made his decision. This is the card of happy families. I’m sorry.”

The first hint that something was off was when her eyes darkened and her features pinched. I was already moving when she kicked out with her foot at my bowl, upending coins, bills and salt across my altar cloth. “Here’s what I think of your fucking gypsy bullshit, asshole!”

Rage burned a thin tunnel of fire straight to the pit of my stomach. Slowly, I rose. I wanted the knife. I wanted to draw it through the soft flesh under her chin. It had been weeks since I’d killed, weeks since I’d touched anyone in that solemn, thrilling way. I looked through her, to her bones. Maybe she saw it in my eyes, because her whole manner turned rabbity, quick and frightened. She fled with a scream of impotent rage, handbag flying out from her arm.

The ruckus turned heads, the crowd murmuring and milling. Snorting angrily, I chased my money and crammed it back into the bowl, then set about scraping up the salt from the baseboard I used as my office. I was dusting my hands off when the next person came forwards, a small, old man with a trembling lower lip and a face like a walnut shell.

“In all my days, I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “Look at you.”

“What’s your problem?” My eyes narrowed.

“You and your filth, just down the road from a house of the Lord!” He pointed at me, stepping closer.

“Hey, back off.” I left off cleaning to stand again. Old as he was, I was cut from weeks of street living and hard exercise. He was taller, but I had twice his bulk and half his age.

“The Voice tells us to bring flaming fire and everlasting destruction to the ungodly and those who obey not the gospel of Christ,” he proclaimed. “The righteous will wash their feet with the blood of sinners like you!”

I regarded him in stony silence while he ranted. “I care more about ear wax than I do about your ‘voices’. Go away.”

“Don’t think I don’t know you! I know because I believe and God’s secret is with those who loved Him. God is true and all men are liars!” He was getting up in my face now. “So repent before God’s judgment be upon you!”

This was definitely going to draw a crowd, and if the law came in, it wasn’t going to be on my side. “What? You lose your handler? Go to your church or the old folks home or whatever you need to do, but get out of my face.”

“The Lord have mercy on you,” he said, in a surprisingly loud and effective voice. “Why do you defile this street with the sign of the Illuminati? Do you think you can stand against me , the Anointed?!”

What Illuminati? I glanced aside at the prominent pentacle on my sign. After finishing the deck of cards, I’d drawn on the sign itself out of boredom. I did my best to loom over him, taut with the dark knowledge that my tolerance for human bullshit was at an all-time low. “One last time. Back it up.”

People began to stop and stare, gathering for the fight.

“Ever since I was born again into the Holy Spirit, I keep running into things like you. Even though I send out love to everyone in my presence, you, YOU don’t like it. You don’t want it! Satan’s tool! Reptile!”

The blood beat in my temples. I was hungry, I was cold, and after nearly a month of living like a junkyard dog, bereft of magic, alone and numb from the driving need to survive, I was going to lose my temper. “Let me tell you what. Go pick up a big fucking rock and throw it at me with everything you got. Cast the first stone. Then I’ll have something other than my fist to cram down your gaping cockhole.”

“Evil!” He spat at me venomously, a big yellowish glob of slime that struck my still-reasonably clean sweater with a wet ‘splat’.

I punched him hard enough to knock him off his feet and pitch him into a squealing pack of people, who screamed and moved out of the way as he tumbled to the pavement. A younger man advanced on me uncertainly, expression puzzled. He wasn’t sure who he was meant to be helping.

“I received the love of God! I received the love of God!” Bleeding from the nose, red in the face and glowing with self-righteousness, the old man picked himself up off the ground. He spat at me again, but he was further away and he missed. Onlookers were restraining him, catching arms and pulling him away. “How dare a sorcerer touch someone chosen by God! The Voice will show me the way!”

“You want another one, govno? ” I cocked a fist and stepped forwards again, even as the younger man put his hands up and warded me back.

“Pervert! Thug! I’m an old man!” He spat, frothing at the lips, and clutched his arm as if I’d broken it. “This is assault! Someone call the police!”

Several people gave me dirty looks. I stared at them until they couldn’t meet my eyes anymore, and they left.

I was shaking with rage. If I hadn’t been cut off from my magic, I’d show them sorcery for real… but my rage and my Will were as useful as a cut brake cord. There was nothing to do but pack up and move on. Disgusted, I crouched in front of my bag to find something to wipe the mucus off my shirt.

“Excuse me?”

The voice was feminine, melodic and girlish. Hunched over my bag, I turned my head and looked up at her. The girl was only a little taller than me, small, neat, and nervous in a brown skirt-suit. Her hair was a shoulder-length tumble of dark gray waves pressed down under the rim of her fur hat. Her eyes were narrow, almost Asiatic, her cheeks ruddy and round, her lips full and cushiony. I would have picked her as Far-North Native American, save for her eyes. They were a vivid gold-gray color, like big cat’s eyes. The details filtered in one at a time, marching mechanically through the filter of cold fury and adrenaline shock.