Latte Trouble - By Cleo Coyle Page 0,74
Ron Gerson, famed for his prime rib—but for the most part, urban spaces that once held meat processing plants were transformed into chic restaurants and trendy clubs catering to all clientele. With retail gentrification came changes in housing, and many a loft that once quartered factory workers now housed co-ops for the wealthy.
The limousine continued to wend its way through Saturday-night traffic. Sidewalks teemed with laughing partygoers, illuminated by the garish fluorescence of the Hotel Gansevoort. We were moving quite slowly now, and I causally rested my arm on the door handle. As the limo slowed to a crawl, I tried once more to throw the door open, only to find its lock firm as ever. Once again, I heard Tiny’s annoying chuckle, a deep rumble.
The limo halted in front of a driveway until there was a break in the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk, then it veered into a dark, narrow alley lined with garbage cans and dumpsters, a stream of brackish water running down the middle of the cobblestone surface. We stopped in front of a brick wall bearing the flaking remnants of a hand-painted sign, part of a fifty-year-old billboard hawking “Gansevoort Hams, Bacon, and other Quality Pork Products.”
The driver stepped out and opened the door from the outside. Tiny’s strong hand closed over my upper arm and he pushed me forward. I gripped my evening clutch as my heels hit the stone street. In the alley’s dim light, other senses took over. Smell, for one. Rotting garbage, mildew, and urine surrounded me. Lovely.
It would be a horrid place to die, and I considered trying to break free of Tiny’s grip, kicking off my heels and running back to the crowded sidewalk. But even if I made it out of his grasp, I doubted I would get more than a few feet before he grabbed me again, or worse—
Did he have a gun? I suddenly wondered. If I tried to run, would he shoot me in the back?
While I pondered these charming possibilities, Tiny and his partner, who was short and wiry like my father but barely in his thirties and wearing a penny-dreadful moustache, led me to an anonymous steel door unmarked and undistinguished, except by layers and layers of graffiti that covered every inch of its surface. A kind of industrial throbbing sounded from the other side of the portal, as if gigantic engines were constantly turning inside the brick building.
Tiny continued to clutch my arm as he banged the door with one massive hand, his pinky ring clacking loudly against the metal. A bolt was thrown, and the door yawned. From the opening, a ghastly lavender florescent hue illuminated the gloom and a pounding wall of techno dance music washed over me.
A dark shape framed by the light came into view. I could feel the man’s eyes studying me, then my abductors.
“Yo, Virgil, it’s us,” said Tiny.
The silhouette in the doorway nodded, then backed up to admit us. Tiny pushed me over the threshold, and in the lavender light I saw that the man guarding the door was draped head to toe in a finely tailored ebony suit. Pale green eyes locked with mine.
“Welcome to the Inferno,” he said without smiling.
The space I entered seemed massive, yet most of its size was lost in dark shadows. To my right was an island of light where a neon bar served up cocktails to a handful of languid lounge lizards.
“This way,” said Tiny, pushing me toward a long inclined ramp that led down to the next level. The floor was concrete, with tall wooden barricades on either side. I realized with a start that I was following the livestock chute. Cattle, pigs, or sheep once ran down this very concrete slope to the slaughter. I hoped I wasn’t following in their hoofprints.
At the bottom of the ramp a wooden gate blocked our progress. Tiny looked up and I followed his stare—surprised to see a man in a leather apron and chaps standing on a wooden platform suspended above us. He gripped a large sledgehammer with both hands, the muscles on his hairy arms rippling against its weight.
“Where is he?” Tiny asked the gatekeeper.
“The Fourth Circle,” the man with the hammer called back. “And watch what you say. He’s in a real pissed-off mood.”
A loud clatter sudden enough to make me jump, and the wooden gate rose. Beyond it only a long concrete hallway illuminated by indigo neon tubes lining the floor, the walls, the ceiling. At