Page 19 (1/2)
I bought our next round Any co a pimp's money pay for his booze seeiven rise to them He was visibly drunk now, but only if you knehere to look The eyes had a glaze on thelaze on his wholeup his end of a typical alcoholic conversation, wherein two drunks take polite turns talking aloud to their own selves
I wouldn't have noticed this if I'd beenhiot to hi between us
I tried to keep the conversation on the subject of Kim Dakkinen but it wouldn't stay there He wanted to talk about everything that rong with New York
"You knohat it is," he said, leaning forward, lowering his voice, as if eren't the only two customers in the bar by now, just us and the bartender "I'll tell you what it is It's niggers"
I didn't say anything
"And spics The blacks and the Hispanics"
I said soht over it "Listen, don't tell uy I been partnered with a lot, Larry Haynes his naood as they come I'd trust the man with my life Shit, I have trusted him with my life He's black as coal and I never ot nothing to do hat I' about" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand "Look," he said, "you ever ride the subway?"
"When I have to"
"Well, shit, nobody rides it by choice It's the whole city in a nutshell, the equipment breaks down all the time, the cars are filthy with spray paint and they stink of piss and the transit cops can'tabout, shit, I get on a subway and I look around and you knohere I an country"
"What do you mean?"
"I ot all these new Chinese i in, plus there's the Koreans Now the Koreans are perfect citizens, they open up all these great vegetable markets all over the city, they work twenty hours a day and send their kids to college, but it's all part of sonorant and bigoted but I can't help it This used to be a white city and now there's days when I feel like I'm the only white man left in it"
The silence stretched Then he said, "They smoke on the subway now You ever notice?"
"I've noticed"
"Never used to happen A guy ht murder both his parents with a fire axe but he wouldn't dare light up a cigarette on the subway Now you gotaway Just in the last few months You kno it started?"
"How?"
"Re on the PATH train and a PATH cop asked hiun and shot the cop dead? Remember?"
"I remember"
"That's what started it You read about that and whoever you are, a cop or a private citizen, you're not in a rush to tell the guy across the aisle to put out his fucking cigarette So a few people light up and nobody does anything about it, andin the subhen it's a waste of ti a law and people stop respecting it" He frowned "But think about that PATH cop You like that for a way to die? Ask a guy to put out a cigarette and bang, you're dead"
I foundhim about Rudenko's ht ho television set And so we traded horror stories He told of a social worker, lured onto a tene to her death I recalled so I'd read about a fourteen-year-old shot by another boy the saers to each other, the killer insisted that his victihed at him Durkin told me about some child-abuse cases that had ended in death, and about a hter because he was sick of paying for a baby-sitter everytime the two of them went to the un blast while she hung clothes in her closet There was an air of Can You Top This? to our dialogue
He said, "Theback the big black chair"
"Think it'll happen?"
"No question the public wants it And there's one way it works and you can't tell me it doesn't You fry one of these bastards and at least you know he's not gonna do it again The hell, I'd vote for it Bring back the chair and televise the fucking executions, run commercials, make a few dollars and hire a few ot the death penalty Not for murderers For ordinary citizens Everybody out there runs a better chance of getting killed than a killer does of getting the chair We get the death penalty five, six, seven times a day"
He had raised his voice and the bartender was auditing our conversation now We'd lured hira television set I don't kno I missed that one You think you heard 'euess"
"There are eight million stories in the naked city," he intoned "You reram? Used to be on television some years back"
"I remember"