Siegel, James - Derailed

“Hey yourself,” the hooker answered. Like old friends.

“How you doin’, Candy?”

“How d’ya think,” she said.

“Great night to work, huh?”

“You got that right.” Just making conversation, one pal to another.

I was sitting there listening to them. But I wasn’t actually hearing them.

I was remembering.

When I’d arrived at the pier, I saw Winston sitting in the rented blue Sable, just as he was supposed to be. I watched him sitting there for ten minutes, then fifteen, before I noticed that a window was open. That Winston wasn’t moving a muscle—hadn’t moved his head in all that time. Hadn’t lit a cigarette, hadn’t coughed, or yawned, or scratched his nose. Stock still, still as a still-life: Man in Blue Car. Something was wrong. That open window, for instance — the sleet blowing straight in. Why was that?

I crossed the street finally to take a quick look, quick because I was expecting Vasquez any minute, and I was supposed to have come alone. Winston’s eyes were closed as if he were sleeping. Except he didn’t appear to be actually breathing. And the window wasn't open; it was broken.

I got into the car and tapped Winston on the shoulder, and Winston ignored me. And then I leaned across the front seat to get a better look at Winston’s hat, which was when I realized that it wasn’t a hat. It was pulp. Half of Winston’s head was gone. I threw up — my vomit mixing in with the various pieces of Winston’s head. And I was about to run out of the car screaming when I saw the hooker being dropped off by that Jeep. So I stayed put.

Did you see anyone get in or out of the car? they'd ask her.

And she’d say no.

Unless she decided to walk across the street and ask for a cigarette.

The Sable was starting to smell. Even with the broken window letting in steady gusts of frigid air.

“You’re keeping safe, right, Candy?” the policeman was saying.

“You know me,” she said.

No one had bothered to say anything to me yet.

I was tempted to turn the ignition and take off. There were two problems with that, of course. One was that Winston was sitting behind the wheel. And the other was that the policemen, who so far were still ignoring me, would more or less have to notice me if I suddenly gunned the engine and took off.

But now, finally, one of them did look inside the car.

“You,” he said.

“Yes?”

“You conducting a transaction with Candy here?”

“No. I just gave her a cigarette.”

“Something wrong with her?”

“What? No . . . she’s fine.”

“That’s right, Candy’s a honey.”

“I just was . . . having a smoke.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Your old lady know you go around looking for hookers?”

“I told you. I was just — ”

“What about your buddy here? He married, too?”

“No. No . . . he’s single.” He's dead.

“Both of you out looking for hookers and you aren’t doing any business with Candy? Why’s that?”

“Officer, I’m sorry if you misunder — ”

“What are you apologizing to me for? Tell her you’re sorry. Freezing her ass out here and you two guys don’t give her the time of day. What’s with your friend over there?”

“He’s . . .” Dead, Officer.

“Maybe you should show Candy some appreciation.”

“Sure.”

“Well?”

“Oh . . .” I fumbled for my wallet. My hand was shaking so hard, it was difficult to actually get it into my back pocket. I finally managed to grab an indeterminate bunch of bills and held them out to her.

“Thanks,” Candy said listlessly, taking them and stuffing them into the top of her negligee.

“What about him?” the policeman asked. “What’s your name?” he asked Winston.

Winston didn’t answer him.

“I said, What’s your name?”

Winston still didn’t answer him.

I was picturing myself in the back of the police car, being driven downtown — wasn’t that the expression? I was picturing myself being booked and fingerprinted and given one call. I didn’t even know a lawyer, I thought. I was picturing facing Deanna and Anna through a scratched plastic partition and wondering where on earth to begin.

“Okay. Last time,” the policeman said. “What’s your name? ”

And then.

A sudden crackle, and a staticky voice broke through the excruciating silence like a clap of thunder on an oppressively humid afternoon.

“. . . we have a . . . uh . . . ten-four . . . corner of Forty-eighth and Fifth . . .”

And suddenly the policeman was no longer asking Winston what his name was. He was saying something to Candy instead—“Catch you later,” it sounded like. And the police car left—just like that, vroooom, gone. Mere seconds from discovering a man with half a head and another man sitting calmly next to him in a front seat covered with vomit and brain matter, and it was suddenly, inexplicably, over.

And finally, at last, I could let it out.

I could cry for Winston.

TWENTY-FOUR

It occurred to me almost by accident. I was driving to nowhere in particular. I was following the West Side Highway and trying to keep from shaking.

Winston was dead.

Winston was dead, and I’d killed him.

Hadn’t I cornered him in the bar that night and more or less forced him into doing this?

I tried to work it out — what happened, exactly? Vasquez had said come alone, but maybe Vasquez hadn’t trusted me to come alone, so he’d come early to sniff around. Is that what happened? There was Winston in a blue Sable just sitting there, and maybe Vasquez got suspicious and confronted him, and maybe Winston got belligerent — remembering this was a man who’d been in prison, who was used to doing things to people before they did it to him. Only not this time. And Winston had ended up with half a head.

That made sense, didn’t it? It was hard to tell if it really made sense, because I was scared senseless.

I was almost suffocating from the stench inside the car now. And it was then that I remembered another awful smell sniffed from the front seat of a moving automobile. The mind worked like that sometimes, playing a kind of charades with you — stench an d car and what do you get?

Memories of Sunday afternoons spent motoring down to Aunt Kate’s house in southern New Jersey. To get there, we had to take the Belt Parkway down to the Verrazano Bridge, then go straight through the heart of Staten Island. Passing not much of anything along the way, just a supersize mall here and there with a megaplex cinema showing seventeen different movies all playing at once. Then, smack in the middle of nowhere, it would hit with terrifying swiftness. A vomitous odor would suddenly assault us through the cracked-open windows, through the air-conditioning vents and sunroof. The odor of garbage, the stench of landfill. Huge mounds of dun-colored earth on either side of the highway circled by clouds of screaming gulls. Fishkill.

I’d close the windows, Deanna holding her nose right next to me and Anna screeching in the backseat. I’d turn off the air-conditioning and make sure the sunroof was locked tight, but the odor would still come in. It was like sticking your head in a garbage pail, and no matter how fast I drove — and I’d hit the accelerator for all it was worth — I couldn’t drive fast enough. I couldn’t outrun the smell, not until I’d traveled a good fifteen minutes or so and the landscape turned sweetly suburban.

An hour later, drink in hand on Aunt Kate’s backyard deck, I could still sniff it on my clothes.