Don DeLillo: Running Dog

You won't find ordinary people here. Not after dark, on these streets, under the ancient warehouse canopies. Of course you know this. This is the point. It's why you're here, obviously. Wind comes gusting off the river, stirring the powdery air of demolition sites. Derelicts build fires in rusty oil drums near the piers. You see them clustered, wrapped in whatever variety of coat or throwaway sweater or combination of these they've been able to acquire. There are trucks parked near the warehouses, some of them occupied, men smoking in the dimness, waiting for the homosexuals to make their way down from the bars above Canal Street. You lengthen your stride, although not to hurry out of the cold. You like that stiffening wind. You turn a corner and move briefly into it, feeling your thighs take shape against the dress's pleasurably taut weave. Broken glass shines like white mica in the vacant lots. The river has a musky tang tonight.

Eastward now, you see four letters spray-painted on the side of a building. Mongrel scrawl. ANGW. But familiar somehow, burning a hole in time. And it comes back now from a distance of more than twenty years. The visit to Salzburg. The cousins, the games, the museum. Four letters engraved on a ceremonial halberd. Your father's explanation: _Alles nach Gottes Willen_.

Weapons have become godless since then. Weapons have lost their religion. And children have grown up to find they have traveled curious distances. You feel it's imminent now, one more corner to turn, someone there, that silent bargaining that has nothing to do with goods or even services; only what you truly are, night-cruising souls agreeing to each other's terms. A dark elation grows with every step you take.

All according to God's will. The God of Body. The God of Lipstick and Silk. The God of Nylon, Scent and Shadow.

The young man drove an unmarked car north on Hudson. His partner dozed in the seat alongside. Turning west toward the river, Del Bravo expected a certain picture to present itself. Stacks of crates and cardboard boxes. A construction scaffold fronting an old building. Trucks and earth-moving equipment. Derelicts around a fire. Experience told him this is what he'd see.

He hadn't expected a woman. Coming this way, striding nicely. She had long hair, darkish blond, and from twenty yards, and closing, he could see how attractive she was. Her black coat was open, revealing a bright red dress.

No kind of professional in her right mind would patrol deserted areas. She was eye-catching all right. If she was in the business at all, she wasn't working streets. An unlisted number. A white high-rise in the East Fifties. To Del Bravo, easing up on the accelerator, she was a discrepancy in the landscape. A welcome sight, sure, but also slightly disquieting-she didn't fit the picture.

After she passed the car, he watched in the rearview mirror as she approached the demolition site, moving in that nice brisk sexy stride. A perennial all-pro, he thought. The radio squawked. He figured he'd swing around the block and catch her again at the end of the same long street. With nothing better to do, he wanted a second look.

"Wake up, Gannett."

"What's doing?"

"Be alert, G.G. There's something I want you to look at."

"Where are we?"

"Just wait'll I make this final maneuver here."

"I think I was dreaming."

"Where the hell is she?" Del Bravo said.

"I was dreaming about rocks. All these big rocks on a beach. They were huge enormous rocks. I was there but I wasn't there."

The street was empty. Del Bravo let the car inch forward. No one in sight. It had taken him very little time to circle the block. At the rate she was walking she should have reached this part of the street right about now.

The fire was untended. There'd been some men standing around the fire in that vacant lot. It was still blazing. No one there. This he considered a near-discrepancy.

The headlights picked up dust, a fairly heavy accumulation. It seemed to be coming from the second-story level of a construction scaffold in midblock. A possible discrepancy. No dust a couple of minutes ago. Dust now. Building should be unoccupied. Crew's gone home.

"You were there but you weren't there."

"That's the way I dream sometimes," Gannett said.

"I want to look in this building here."

"What for, Robby?"

"Hand me the flashlight."

Del Bravo moved through a narrow alley between the gutted building and the one just east of it. Out back he found the windows boarded up, just as they'd been on the street side. He went to the front of the building and took a longer look at the scaffolding. He felt the dust in his eyes and mouth. Gannett watched from the front seat, sniffling a little.

"You're not thinking of climbing, are you, because I'd hate to have to get out of the car to give you a hand-hold."

"We both know the only thing your hand can hold."

"What are you looking for, Robby, so I can show some interest."

"If I reach that strut, I'm up and over."

Del Bravo hoisted himself up a series of interlocking rods and beams until he reached the second-story platform, about eighteen feet above street level. There was an unblocked window here, the one they used to empty the building of its contents. Del Bravo directed the light inside. Piles of floorboards bound together. Large chunks of plaster. Room walls all gone. Plumbing dismantled. He heard Gannett's voice below.

"Floor's liable to give."

The flashlight beam picked her out through clouds of plaster dust just as he was stepping through the window. He took a short-barreled.38 out of the shoulder holster under his lumber jacket and played the beam of light across the floor. He moved slowly forward, immediately wary of protruding nails, more generally concerned by the aura, the presences, a field of unnamed sensation.

She was on her back, vivid in the gray haze, head twisted to one side. There was blood still coming out of her, midbody, beneath the rib cage. All this dust, and the way her head was turned, and the condition of her clothing, indicated there'd been a struggle. A brief one, obviously.

Del Bravo looked for a weapon near the body. Plaster and wood dust filled his nostrils. He smelled perfume as well, and sweat, and noticed that her mascara had run and that the thick layer of face powder was cracked in places. No trace of pulse. The blood came out. He made his way back to the window.

"Call in, G.G."

"What do we have?"

"Body, one, female."

He went over the whole area, stepping over objects, careful not to disturb the positions of things. He put the gun away and squatted by the woman's body. He heard Gannett climbing up the scaffold. Events had been such that the woman's coat had slipped off one shoulder, and her dress, of that shimmering red material, had twisted up toward the left side of her body. Her bra had become loose on the opposite side and he could see it was all padding.

From a position on all fours, he directed the light down under the bra, spotting dark bristles of recently shaved hair. Without touching the body he moved the flashlight slowly over her hands, face, hairline, neck and legs.

Gannett came in the window, panting and cursing. Del Bravo lighted the way for him, watching his partner approach in a hunched manner, although the ceiling was fifteen feet high. Gannett crouched down beside him.

"What do we have?"

"What we have is either a lady with a hormone problem- don't get too close."

"What do you think, Robby, knife?"

"I think definitely knife."