the streets are crowded. People going to work. Or looking for work. Or tourists coming into the city. A hippy woman on her cell bumps into a reedy little black dude struggling past with a Great Dane that looks more horse than dog. A Korean pushes a bike with a bent wheel. Homeless guys push shopping carts filled with cats and blankets, booze and busted-ass dreams. Men with loud ties pass women with short skirts. Children run to school, mothers trailing after.
None of these people get it.
It’s not their fault. He knows that. They’re ignorant. Blind. Eyes stapled shut. It’s like how nobody in this city looks at anybody else. They don’t look because they don’t want to see. Someone gets mugged, another yells “rape,” and nobody comes calling. People get beaten to death in stairwells, cries rising up through the building so that half the apartments can hear it, and by the time someone calls the cops, the body is cold, the blood is thick, and the killer is on the L train ten blocks away.
They don’t know what lies beneath. What walks around them.
Maybe it’s because they know. Secretly. They feel it vibrating in the deep of their bones, twisting in their stomach like an unspoken and misunderstood fear. Some part of the primal animal mind tells them, hey, right now, something awful – not someone, but something – might be walking right next to you. Sizing you up for a snack. Thinking to drag you down into the dark and stuff you full of its fingers and tongues and lay eggs in all your holes. The monsters are here. You know it, I know it – so why even look?
Mookie’s not blazing. Not right now. So he’s just as blind as the rest of them.
But that doesn’t change what he knows.
He knows that the monsters are real.
And they’re here. Hidden in plain sight.
Skint is an ashy, dry-skinned albino. Sells flowers all around TriBeCa to make a buck. At least, that’s what he wants people to think. Nora knows him for something else: he’s a guy who brings people together. He knows everybody. Sets up meetings. He’s not an info broker like that Snakeface in Chinatown, but he can plant a whisper in every ear that matters.
He’s also not human. Not all the way, anyway.
He’s a half-and-half. Were she Blazing, she’d see a long-limbed freak with skin like cracked vellum and eyes like unpopped blood blisters.
Thankfully, right now she’s Blind.
She shoves a cuppa coffee in his free hand. In the other hand, he holds a bundle of roses. Other flowers sit in makeshift containers around his feet.
“Little Miss Thing,” Skint says. “Whadda you want?”
“Bought you Starbucks,” she says, smiling.
“I don’t drink Starbucks. Their coffee tastes like burned pubes.”
“I think you’ll like it.”
“I said I don’t drink this nasty-ass–” Suddenly he stops. Weighs the cup, finds it lacking. Skint’s dusty eyebrows lift in a curious arch and he pops the top. He sees the money curled inside. “Yeah, OK. What?”
“Don’t act so surprised I’m coming to you.”
“I just figured you were done in this town. Hadn’t heard much from you in the last few months. One minute you were selling Blue, next minute, poof.”
A jogger in a blue knit cap almost knocks her off her feet. She gives him the finger and barks some profanity about the jogger’s mother, then turns back to the albino. “Yeah, well. Things cooled down. But I’m back. I need you to get word out.”
“To who?”
“To everybody. All the gang heads.”
He looks at the cup. Then back at her. “This for that?”
“It’s enough. Besides, when I’m done, there’ll be more. A lot more.”
He’s dubious. That’s fine. Let him think she’s blowing hot air. He says, “I think you’re a bad investment, so let’s just call this charity, eh? What’s the message?”
“I want you to tell them that the Boss is a dead man. That it’s time to take back the city. You tell them I have a guy on the inside and a plan to bring it all crashing down.”
He laughs. “Big talk. And sounds like bullshit.”
“Just tell them, already. Unless you like all this?” She sweeps her arms as if to encompass the grandeur of standing on a shitty city corner. “The Organization doesn’t think a split-skinned freak like you is fit to kiss Zoladski’s dirty shoes. You’re a nobody out here. A piece of monster trash. But that can change. You can make them kiss your feet. Then kick them in the