Silent Prey

flattening . . .
    He felt Cortese go: could feel the essence go. He couldn’t measure it—not yet—but he could feel it. He bathed in the feeling, clutched at it; fired a half-dozen photos, the motor drives going bzz-whit, bzz-whit behind his head. And finally the magic something slipped away. Bekker jumped to his feet, frantic to hold on. He leaned over Cortese, his eyes four inches from the other’s. There was something about death and the eyes . . . .
    And then Cortese was gone, beyond Bekker’s reach. His body, the shell of his personality, went slack beneath Bekker’s hands.
    The power of the moment spun Bekker around. Breathing hard, he stared at a reflection of himself in a polished stainless-steel cabinet. He saw himself there a dozen times a day, as he worked: the raw face, the sin face, he called it, the cornrows of reddened flesh where the gunsights had ripped through him. He said in a small, high voice: “Gone.”
    But not quite. Bekker felt the pressure on his back; his spine stiffened, and a finger of fear touched him. He turned, and the dead man’s eyes caught him and held him. They were open, of course. Bekker had carefullytrimmed away the eyelids to ensure they would remain that way.
    “Don’t,” he said sharply. Cortese was mute, but the eyes were watching.
    “Don’t,” Bekker said again, louder, his voice cracking. Cortese was watching him.
    Bekker snatched a scalpel from a stainless-steel tray, stepped to the head of the table, leaned over the body and slashed at the eyes. He was expert: it only took a second. He carved the eyes like boiled eggs, and the vitreous aqua leaked down Cortese’s dead cheeks like jellied tears.
    “Good-bye,” Bekker said dreamily. The ruined eyes were no longer threatening. A gumball dropped, and Bekker went away . . . .
     
    Thick stopped at the curb, rocking on his heels, waiting patiently for the light. Thin snapped a cigarette into the street, where it exploded in a shower of sparks. The cars went by in a torrent, battered Toyotas and clunking Fords, fender-bent Dodges, pickups and vans blocking the view ahead, trucks covered with graffiti, buses stinking up the streets with noxious diesel fumes, all rolling past like iron salmon headed upstream to spawn. Through all of it, the taxis jockeyed for position, signaling their moves with quick taps on their horns, an amber warp to the woof of the street. New York was noise: an underground rumble of trains and steam pipes, a street-level clash of gears and motors and bad mufflers, a million people talking at once, uncounted air conditioners buzzing above it all.
    All of it congealed in the heat.
    “Too fuckin’ hot,” Thick said. And it was; he could feel it on his neck, in his armpits, on the soles of his feet. He glanced at Thin, who’d stopped at the curb besidehim. Thin nodded but didn’t answer. They were both wearing long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves rolled down to their wrists. Thin was a problem, and Thick didn’t quite know what to do about it. Hadn’t really known, he thought wryly, for almost forty years now . . . .
    The walk sign flashed on and he and Thin crossed the street. A traffic-light pole, splattered with pigeon shit and encrusted with the grime of decades, sat on the corner. At the bottom, and up as high as a hand could reach, it was covered with fading posters. Above that, two street signs were mounted at right angles to each other, a bus-stop sign faced the street, and a temporary traffic-diversion sign pointed an arrow to the left. Above all that, a spar went out to the traffic signal, and another supported a streetlight.
    Oughta put one in a fuckin’ museum someplace, just like that. Our own fuckin’ totem poles  . . .
    “Dollar . . .” The woman on the sidewalk reached up at him, holding a dirty hand-lettered card: “Help me feed my children.” Thick walked past, thinking that it was impossible that the woman had children. In her forties, perhaps, she was withered as a week-old carrot, her emaciated legs sprawled beneath her, her bare feet covered with open sores. Her eyes had a foggy-white glaze, not cataracts, but something else. She had no teeth at all, only dimples in gray gums, like the vacant spots left by corn kernels popped from a cob.
    “I read this book about Shanghai once, the way it was before World War Two,” Thick said as they passed on. Thin looked straight ahead, not responding. “The thing was, begging was a profession, you