New York Minute

Thursday Night, 7 July 1977

WEST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN

On the far side of a lot cluttered with rotting garbage, dumped furniture and torched cars, the abandoned, elevated West Side Highway loomed like a curtain about to go down on New York City. Beyond, on the Hudson River waterfront, squatted the Christopher Street Pier, once the berth for classic ocean liners and cargo ships, but now dark, derelict and a haven for both furtive and brazen figures meeting to do what they dared not elsewhere. Most of Manhattan was brightly lit, but the waterfront was darkness, with the lights of New Jersey farther away than the width of the river.

William Kane waited on a slice, extra pepperoni, when he spotted a wraith he pegged as trouble approach from the darkness underneath the West Side Highway. The pizza joint was tiny, dirty and Kane wasn't optimistic about what was warming up in the oven, but he'd been following Alfonso Delgado all evening, it was almost midnight, and this was the only available food west of Washington Street.

Kane sat at one of two sticky surfaced Formica tables crowded along the wall, leaving barely enough room for someone to slide past to the counter. One of the long fluorescent lights was out, tilting the light in the joint. It was hot and oppressively humid. The absentee owner wasn't going to waste money on air-conditioning with two ovens going full blast and a single employee slaving away in the midst of a sweltering New York City July. Kane's chair was angled toward the propped open door, back to the wall.

The junkie entered reeking of sweat, desperation and the aforementioned trouble. Not just because he was strung out, a person couldn't swing one of the dead rats by the piers without running into the like, but also by the tense hitch in his shoulders and the one hand in the pocket of the stained olive drab Army field jacket. He was dirty white with filthy long hair of indeterminate color, scraggly beard, tall and thin in his worn-out, done with life, mid-thirties. A muscle on the left side of his face danced to the dark beat of his subconscious.

The stained field jacket presented history a former soldier like Kane could interpret via the subdued patches: the winged dagger of the 173rd Airborne on the right shoulder and Screaming Eagle of the 101st on the left. These indicated combat and current assignments, although both were in this guy's past. The standard embroidered US Army tag above the right pocket. The man earned a smart point for removing the nametag above the left pocket given the not-as-dirty-strip of exposed jacket along with the outline where the name and a combat infantry badge and jump wings had recently resided.

Kane hoped the youngster behind the counter wasn't willing to die for minimum wage and paltry tips.

The junkie eyed Kane and shifted to the pizza maker. "The cash. Now. On the counter."

Kane was only slightly better dressed than the junkie, but he was cleaner. Jungle fatigue pants dyed black with pockets on the thighs. The cuffs were banded over the tops of faded green canvas uppers and worn black leather jungle boots. He wore a gray t-shirt, covered by a slightly too long unbuttoned, blue denim shirt, with the sleeves rolled up as far as they would go. A rust-stained, green canvas map case rested on the Formica table.

Kane was six feet, lean, with an angular face smeared by two days of not shaving and topped with thick, black hair, poorly cut and not recently combed. Thirty-two hard years had sprinkled some gray in the hair and chiseled lines in his face. His eyes were green, a gift from his father's side of the family.

"Oh, come on," the pizza maker said. "Gimme a break. Second time this month and it's only the seventh."

The junkie pulled a small nickel-plated revolver out of the pocket and jabbed it around. "The cash." He checked Kane once more. "Don't get any ideas."

Kane had his hands flat on the map case. "I've run out of them today, sarge. I just want my slice. Got places to go. People to see."

"Yeah, don't we all," the junkie said. The revolver was crap; one of those cheap .22 caliber pieces the press titled 'Saturday Night Specials'. Their more realistic moniker was 'suicide specials'.