The walk to Böeecker Street is as quiet as the threat in Big Joe´s glances. As tense as the wrestling round between loyalty and doubt that goes down in Candy´s jumpy eyes.
The ronstant rain that is soaking them sounds like a marching drums, and from time to time its beat mixes up with the buzzing of fear that comes off Corey like he is a broken radiator, about to go up in flames and burn down the place.
They pass the harbour district, the police precinct, then the train station. Lowlifes and businessmen, opulent houses and rotting estates. Finally, Bleecker Street is close.
By foot, only five more minutes to the alley. 24 pruny poles, 7 broken street lights, two trashed bus stops with bent signposts, and one miserable looking park with hundreds of used needles and a few dazed or dead junkies that scattered across bug infested bushes.
Big Joe knows the town, and its outskirts better than his own fucking babushka. He knows Bleecker Street, and how to get there. With confidence, he leads Candy and Corey on, like he reads short cuts from an internal map which is engraved inside his eyelids. Left at the next bend, and their destination will be on the right. Vot´ na konez´-to, finally! But no rushing, there is smysla net in it, not a point. He just walks on, slow and steady. Determination is clung to his every step, and for leader that´s appropriate.
When they turn left, Bleecker Street opens up in front of them like an abandoned insane asylum in a fucking nightmare. It is a dead-end alley that is half swallowed by shadows and rot. Still standing strong, Big Joe spots the "studio" of the artisan, a falling-down shack, with the paint peeling off, empty bottles piling up in front, and the windows boarded. Above the door, a crooked sign that is moved by wind, and hard to read,"Engravings"
Big Joe was here before. Sometime ago. Once or twice. Maybe many times. With bratva who love this spot, close to the harbour were they gather. With the ocean breeze around, and a dedushka inside whose milky eyes cannot see clearly anymore, but read minds, and these days his shaking hands would only stay steady on a job.
That is enough, the engraving on the loose silver bracelet that Big Joe has around the wrist can tell. Серега, it says, to remind Big Joe who he has been before he was him. Serega, loyal, honest, with a wide soul and a damn deep dwell that holds dreams of roaring engines.
The bracelet slides up and down, when he approaches the door. Like a shepherd, his sheep, the nightmare sky gathers its clouds above his head, and kills the shine that the polished surface of the silver only just gave off. Now it looks dark, the inscription faded.
With his hand on the splintered surface of the wooden door, he halts, looks at Candy, s neshnosti, tenderly, looks at Corey v gneve, angrily, looks at the door s napryazheniyem, with tension, then groans, and pries it open.
A, da nu nahui! He is attacked by air with the goddamn stink of dust, old wood and melted metal. It comes over of them like a ghost that was locked into coffin for too long, when the hinges of the door welcome them inside with the creak of an attention-seeking kitten. Oj, mámochki, ushasno eto, just terrible, that sounds! Big Joe leans against the door to keep it open for Candy, and the creaking stops.
They are in. In the shack, in the dust, in the twilight, in the silence, in the stench, and in trouble perhaps.As goes for Candy, she is in a place where her doubts in Corey overpower her with intensity. It is place where she came for Sherry Jones. Despite the dim light, Big Joe sees it clearly.
Candy's eyes take some time to adjust to the dark. They stay blind for minutes, and force a silent halt. Unlike her, Big Joe finds his way around in an instant. Without much effort, and from the very start.
He moves around the place like he is at home, somewhere na Kavkaze, in the Caucasus Mountains, where the summers are a buzzing cloud of swirling mosquitoes and the doors open inwards, or in winter not at all, blocked by 25 feet of fresh snow that are piling up outside. Bratva understand, and artisan on Bleecker Street does as well. Maybe just because he was one of them.
All of a sudden, Big Joe freezes. Corey is gone. He has the wrinkles of a boxer dog across his forehead and anger in his evers word when he turns to Candy.
"Blyad`! Gdje mudak? Where Corey!?"
He nudges her, goddamn pissed-off, when his eyes finish their scan of the place and return with empty hands. Like a headless tambourine player the jingles, the rage makes the dusty air in his lungs rattle, and in the silence all around his melody of pissed-off is loud enough to draw attention.
"Who's there?" the old artisan croaks like a dying crow.
He is a geezer. Low in his face, a pair of eyes that is milky with cataracts. Big Joe only calls him Boris. They´ve known each other long. Why does his voice didn´t sound like he is not expecting anyone.
Did bratva not say big Big Joe will come for visit?
With potonok Corey? It was their plan!
Even so, Boris is squinting over to them, with shock and worry plastered on his face. Like a woman who only knows that she is pregnant when the gordforsaken child slips out in the fucking bathroom of a closed down rest stop, where she is tossing and turning on a ground that smells of piss, cheap ammonia and now metal of her pool of blood.
With that look on his face, Boris sits behind his workbench, and his glances get stuck on the way out of the trap that he has built around himself from high piles of tools and metal scraps.
When Candy sees him squinting at her like after a handful of sand in the face, she walks a step towards him, slow and cautious, but then flinches. At the pressure of a hand that grabs her shoulder like a baby mouth a mother´s swollen nipple. She is too scared to turn around and check whose hand it is, and when she meets Big Joe´s eyes like oh my god, what´s that, he does it for her. He turns around, looks who´s there, and sees…
Liar, padonok, Corey!Must have snuck up like fucking hyena. The eyes locked with him, he hears the tambourine inside of him pick up the pace, and plays along with it.
"Where you went, Corey, huh? " he grunds. "Hiding in corner like pussy, da? Ty tokoy mudak!"
Candy, now turned around to Corey too, is about to break the fight that she senses coming up like a lacy bra in a cheating husband's car, a marriage.
She opens her mouth, but Corey is faster.
"Relax, tough guy," he scoffs. "Went for a smoke."
He is talking, all calm and steady, like someone who has accepted his faith, but his body is still oozing out fear, dirty piece of shit! During a silent staring match that no one can win in the darkness, he adds, "The cigarette bud is just outside the door, bud. Go check, if you don't believe me."
No respect for anything! Big Joe hates nothing more, especially if it means no respect for him. His eyes are twitchy like legs when cumming.Silence, menacing, and then the jingles rip off in his tambourine.
A fucking hurricane of whisper jumps at Corey to rip his head off and feed it to a cat, "Zatknis´ bl´ad, shut the fuck up! You got der'mo vmesto mozgov, shit for brains! Ub´yu ya teya, I will fucking kill you!"
He clenches the fists like a straight guy, the anus in the shower room of an overcrowded jail. Then he knocks Corey off his feet, not with the clenched fists, but with his shoulder. It comes at him faster than a horn in the early morning, and the moment it hits, Big Joe is hit as well. By the old artisan´s voice that struggles out from behind the tool piles to say, "Walk up, I know you there, I hear it!"
Kakoy bardak bardok, what a mess! Big Joe casts Candy a glance that says "Davai ty, go!" and she starts to get moving, but then Corey jumps the queue like in a godforsaken supermarket, and he is blocking the entire fucking conveyer belt with a huge load of his shit.
Startled like a duck in a hunting ground, the artisan ducks down as he reaches him, and his milky eyes go sour, when he appears above him like smoke above a burning fucking house. All shaking lips, Boris opens his mouth, but towering over him, Corey grabs the word from him like a tough big lowlife, the purse from an old lady´s hand. In his eyes the bulb of the lamp that stands on the table flickers on and off. Big Joe watches it like, Chert vos´mi, kokogo chuya, fucking shit, what the hell! When he sees that Corey´s lips start moving, he for once rushes. Over to stop it. He pushes Corey, the liar, the patonok, a step back, all sharp and taut motion, then half smiles at intimidated Boris and shakes hands like bratva, long and firm handshake with the fingers tangled up like the legs of mating spiders.
"Eto ya, Boris, bratenok, spokoys´ya," he says, sounding like a first year altar boy, all devoted.
Then he switches to English,"I brought you friend," he adds, and grabs the liar Corey at the shoulder to pull him close, with a grip that could break a brick, and Corey´s shoulderbone. Nu eto bylo by ideal´no, just perfect!
"Ah, Serega," Boris gasps, still shaking Big Joe´s hand. "Kak davno ne videlis', long time no see!"
Then he smiles at Corey awkwardly like happy face killer. "Kto zhe tvoy drug, who is friend of you?"
Before Big Joe can reply, there is Candy. His eyes welcome her in like Russian mamochka a good daughter, and he points at her, distracting Boris from Corey.
"Vot posmotri, eto Candy, tebe nryavitsya, da?"
Candy, thrown off by her own name in a sentence that she doesn´t understand, meets Big Joe´s eyes looking for guidance which eventually she gets., when he says, "Nu, davay, Candy! Show him picture of pendant!"
She hesitates, then grabs her phone, her muscles tense and her hands are shaking like sho´-pa of big girl right after slap. Amused, Big Joe watches Corey standing next to her, and barely breathing, molodez, as she opens the picture.
Slowly her hand pushes it towards the milky eyes. That of Boris take their time to pour out glances. Long time. Too long, too much tension building in the room, it might burst at the seams like belt after feast. Big Joe wants to release it and moves his lips, but then he hears Candy talk.
"Excuse the unannounced visit, Sir, it is just, if you could look at this and tell me if you maybe recognize the piece?"
She barely gives him time. After a second of quiet room she presses out a sigh, a narcissist in the silence, all attention-drawing. Right after it, she adds, "Tiffany of the jeweller's down on mainstreet, told me you might be able to help. It… is could be really important."
Bors squints at the pendant, hard and harder. Then all at once a flicker of recognition gleams in his eyes like a dirty secret in the dim light. He meets her eyes and smiles.
"Yes, krasotka. I made. Long time ago." His shaky finger taps on the picture. "It has inscription… 'C'. Initial of person it was made for."
Big Joe who was observing Corey to finally catch rat bends over the phone as well. First time he sees picture. First time he sees pendant. His features shift and he looks back at Corey, the look on his face, all O poschel´ ty, fuck!
Where Candy? When his eyes go check, they find her leaned forward and quietly asking Boris, "Sir, do you remember who it was for? Or the name of the person who ordered it?"
"Yes," Boris exhales what sounds like a gunshot in the oppressive silence. No one moves, no one breathes. No one thinks, they are all waiting for him.
"Ordered by krasotka," he mumbles, "beautiful woman who calls herself Daniella. Made order for husband. His name, Corey, Corey Warner."