I left the narrow, scythe-shape neighborhood merging vaguely into the cold indifference of the lanes. Parral has nothing left for me now. Hell, not much to begin with.
3:21. A bus came to an empty stop at my left just when I was thinking if I'd run into any more trouble riding the metro. Skipping two steps up the slanted stairs. The driver keeps his eyes on those bloated fingers strangling the steering wheel with a leather pad as it creaks. By the look in his brown eyes occupied. He’s either reminiscing something explicit or on the edge of a breakdown, though one does not exclude the other.
I took my time counting the cents and nickels from all the pockets and sewing lines on my jacket only to end up a couple of number behind the digit. Reluctantly, I nib a perfectly unbent 10 buck between my ring finger and pinky before snapping it by the board between the driver seat and the bus door.
The driver rocks his head back onto the padded seat out of reflexes before rotating his giant eyeballs to the bill. The bold top squints them eyes at the dollar before tilting his head to me through the swill glass, his face looking progressively akin to the stretch marks on the hips of some south continent whores in Little Italy. He flicks the green piece of paper while keeping the eyes of an empty boiling pot at me as if reinforcing the idea he's either mentally challenged or had a problem with me. The driver raises the southwest corner of the green paper at the reflection of the sun on side-view mirror to check the national emblem.
After a time longer than anyone with eyes needed, he deliberately counted the change through the bucket under gap on shield glass, gray tongue licking his thumb at each coin he flipped. When he's done, the coins fall one by one off his glistening, fat fingers and into the blue plate under the board.
I take the paper and leave the scattered coins and a smile to him. I'm not in a rush or a few years younger is the greatest blessing in his lifespan.
The sound of rain on hot coals bursts as the door closes behind me. The bus is mostly empty, save for a girl in fur lying across three seats and using her hand-weaved bag as a pillow. I pick the last row by the window and lump under the emergency button.
The ride goes on and off, stretching few miles drive into almost half an hour. But that's a realization coming much later, while I'm considering my options at disposal.
The father of parral don’t lie, that's an unbreakable rule of constant. But before today, I had never heard he'd refuse an inquiry. I believe the story of the psychopath wench is the only thing he knew, which faintly relates to Xiao. What intrigues me more being there's something very wrong with Nan to the point even an information broker's unwilling to disclose.
Rubbing shoulders with these businessman for so long. I’ve learned the concept of ‘Not for sell’ depends drastically.
Call it morbid curiosity. Watching hundreds of faces pass by the window side like stamps on a long-winded letter printed on my pupils. The Friday night's gathering’s starting to develop an appeal to me.
***
At the heart of the lanes where a three-story high, humdrum bare compound could be Pulitzer Prize-worthy if she wears the neon strips right. But it's barely 4 in the afternoon. The lights are off and her bare, repellent features of years drowning in night shows. The office slugs haven't dig their way out of the concentration camp yet, and the crooks and freelancers are just your ordinary citizens window shopping the lottos across the street, waiting for the cigar bar with the railing half shut yet to open.
It's the dead of hours around here. You won't find anything worth your while, not that it's a good idea for foreigners or folks from other districts to loiter around the block. The scarier things lurking in the alley are simply bored and looking for something to go off......and the pigs as well.
Five stores away, a black and yellow police patrol car caught my attention. It double-parked across the two-lane traffic in front of a fishing store that sells a lot more than gears.
Slanting sun braces half the street, half the road. Like I said at this moment there isn't many folks around to the point you can see the stomped bird shit on the bricks and hear the door lock bolting as a blonde cop in civilian clothes, jeans, and combat boots step out of the patrol car. He's wearing the lightest version of the Kevlar vest I've seen with a radio strap on the collar.
A shiver down my spine rang a second before he reached for something inside the vehicle which doesn't have a plate or serial number on the back, and the scorching sun could not penetrate its windows.
I shorten the length between my steps and walk closer to the row of parked four-seaters on the left side.
I couldn't see what the hell is he looking for inside but a piercing beep loud enough to wake any slackers on a siesta decided for me to change a route and lose all interest. That sound of switching channels on the portable can be recognized by a toddler. Fucking hell, with the amount of publicity they get it's weird if anyone does not.
Those ain't dolls on a payroll.
A burly man in a hoodie sprints past me and straight across the two-lane road causing even noisier honks and tires screeching from bikes.
If any of the previous signs ain't enough, The cop just brought up a polymer helmet from the back seat and holds it under the armpit as if it's an evening newspaper.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Not giving what's happening another glance, I pace through the pavement and into one of the catacombs-like alleys. The raucous radio sound is a very distinguishable trait of the NDU. Some call it 'the head start' or 'the whistle' cause most of the time when you hear one of those it'd be in a movie or somewhere that's turning into a smolder.
In a very compendious sense, every gang and criminal in the city is paying the cops to not get the NDU on their tail.
Straight from the branches of national guards (not that it's more rectitude, but the price isn't open for us) the unit's about three hundred in number, usually used upon terrorist attacks, riot control, some excessively broadcasted decapitation ops. And the fact that a squad's in Faust, in the lanes means someone fuck up in every single way to the point it pisses off Mr. Gov.
I draw a very Impressionism path around where I saw the unit and took an extra 8 minutes to the narrow entrance of the market. Heard a scatter of shots and bangs when I cut through the back of a courtyard, and it ended before I gone past the front gate.
The unit operating in the city did not go as discreetly as they'd hope. A clear wave of interest and footsteps are leaning misgivingly up the north blocks where the shots echo. You can almost smell the adrenaline of the pedestrian's pores and the sweet and sour at the bottom of their tongues as the latest gossip manifests itself so close.
The men in stone-washed jeans and black leather shoes in front of newsstands tilt their heads before resuming chatting with the owners, the kids in sea blue school uniforms are rout out the street with their parents' hands on their shoulders while being transfix on the ones in dirty sports shorts. They race to the scene hoping to scavenge a few bullet cases on the ground in exchange for their next meal with the amiable adults in suits at Piao Jie or with one of the Russki's newly appointed cannon folders on the street for something prettier. Depends on their skin tone.
News travels faster than telephone line in Euforia, a quarter of the freelancers in the panes had heard the news by now on a conservative estimate. Within 4 hours, the news will start pouring in; small shifts and wild speculations will surface the next day. I suspect Lev had known it a week ago.
***
Past the fourth vending machine I saw on this street, the familiar details all around guide me to the particular basement stairs of an unremarkable, equally filth-layered, dead end of little illumination even in daytime.
Second-hand sunlight glazes the narrow seam of twisted shape through the cable lines and balcony cages before painting a stitch mark of brightness on the concrete ground, inches by the stairs down.
My steps seem louder without the occasional pacing of welcomed pedestrians of the market. Some also called it Baghdad.
The closed wooden door of the first floor underground now stands without the shoutings and greetings of crude language and the stairs smell of something rotting silently with the humid and uncirculated air simmering.
By the last four levels, the beckoning drums under my feet became apparent with the space underneath hollowed. And the now brimming dark breeds a room full of them to make the squeaks and thumps louder in your skull.
Myths and rumors has it, a group of kids once came here for dares and giggles but they ran into something worse than the candy man.
I let my hand guide me through the narrow hallway to the second set of stairs while my eyes slowly adjust from blaring sun to the dim basement. You don't even need eyes to understand the second floor is in much better condition than the first, at least in terms of smell and litter on the ground. With the usual green and teal neon sign right of the clunky entrance turned off, the visibility ain't much better than a floor up. And only because of the near pitch black environment, I saw the red dot on the peephole camera blink to life for a second.
Stynx doesn't have scheduled opening hours even if the owner claims it does. The earliest I've seen was 3 pm, the latest being 7 pm, closing time is sunrise. But in the past five years, the bar had never skipped a night. With all the bullshit happening around the city lately, the business ought to be booming for Lev.
I lean my left shoulder on the elevator door point my index at the red behind tubes of neon and raise an open palm between my face and the door.....Five seconds later the neon remains unlit. I flip him and punch the only button on the elevator pad, sharp edges of cracked stainless steel surface stab my wrist.
That ought to become a joke someday.
A steady hum echos the well, like an old man on church choir before it becomes a car's tires grazing the asphalt. The door next to me opens up like a giant stretching its eyelids, that painless grim white, more yellow than white greets the leaden space. Again, who the fuck designed an elevator at second floor underground?
I step into the confined space of four at maximum. The lower half's red metal fell to erosion with dots of black spreading from the gray, heavy wool carpet which wasn't three months ago. I flip a side up with the tip of my sneaker, and the color underneath made me kick it back. The door closes the dark behind me.
I push the B5 button with a graffiti
under, the abbreviation of a shoreline dialect which roughly translate to....
'Dip yer nail in the pond...... It won't bite.'
The light above totters while the cable above them runs an ominous bang roll it retracts. I lean back on where the broken mirror used to be(Fun fact: I'm 90 percent sure I broke it), now the empty wooden frame's cover by a poster of Gypsy queen cigarette.....at least it's the same lass.
My right hand runs in jacket layers out of habit. Everyone smokes in the lift, it's almost a custom at this point since most agree the smell of tobacco and cancer is better than dry piss and mold. And so do I, but all I got on me is half a box of matches.
The other thing everyone agrees on, is that elevator rides are unbearable without alcohol or nicotine. One gives you an imaginary audience, the latter lasts longer than checking your watch.
It's 4:12. And the whiff of fermentation is coming off under the carpet.
***
The lift doesn't have a floor indicator. The sudden stop as if an earthquake's enough to notify anyone. Giant's stainless steel eyelids move to the sight of a Chinese sweatshop. The fourth floor underground is, to put it mildly, a fucking mess in all specs.
The stairs up are blocked on this floor but the way down is link by incandescent lights and smokers and balls of peanuts by their feet. Blades and veils of smoke coming from downstairs. Smell of opium intensify the already inordinate floor.
The basic layout is the same as Stynx but there isn't a big piece of iron between the rooms. In contrast to the other floors, B4 and 5 are already bustling at this hour with not just the Philippines and chinks in lose black suits and cheap trousers, the freelancers in whatever the fuck they feel like can also be spotted in all corners of the place browsing, exchanging hand gestures and threats to burn their house in the night.
Patrons from downstairs wander off the staircase and lump down next to the elevator door. I give the trail of happy, skinny men and women on the stairs a closer look to make sure cricket ain't one of them. Entrance to the market is through the small pathway between three conference table. They spread along the wall from the exit's left to the stairs on the other side, peddlers behind the counter stack their shit over each other's but never mistaken which is which.
Lights coming from bulbs taped on walls, neon strips on metal wire meshes which also hang vests and polyester jackets, but mostly from the 2 meters in height carmine-red striper sign leaning next to the entrance on the left, her mouth faintly agape as if yet to decide your position but few of her teethes broke off years ago making that grin look more of an invitation than seductive. Her left upper arm swaying towards the entrance forcibly with a checkered flag in hand stays the same just as the neon tubes running her outlines are cranked to a blaring glow in comparison to the otherwise inconsistent lighting of the doorstep to the market.
'Dip yer nail in the pond...It won't bite.' The sign above the narrow doorway reads in Chinese.