I nod toward the knife, ask, “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”
They pause and look at each other, then back at me. The thin one asks, “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
They stare at me like they’re trying to light me on fire. I can’t believe no one is seeing this but it’s late and the block is empty. I shrug at them. “Are you new at this? What are you looking for, you fucking morons?”
The thin one steps forward, holding the knife up. “The jump drive.”
“You mean the thumb drive?”
He pauses. “I call it a jump drive.”
“You know what? I don’t have the patience for this.” I pull the umbrella from my belt and click the button on the side. The canopy stays wrapped but the stick snaps out to full length.
The thin one steps toward me and asks, “What are you going to do with that?”
I guess it is pretty funny, the sight of me standing there holding it out at my side like a broadsword. It’d be even funnier if it were a regular umbrella, and not a steel rod with a Kevlar top.
The thin one stops laughing when I swing it at the knife. It flies from his hand and lands on the steps to my building. He reels back with a fist full of broken fingers.
The shock is greater than the pain so I drive my fist into his stomach to even the two out. He leans forward and I’m about to bring my fists down onto his back and put him on the ground when I see the heavy one scrambling for the knife. He gets it and comes at me, swinging it in the air but leaning away from it like he’s afraid of it.
I sidestep, but the thin one is falling forward and gets in my way. He shoves me into the path of the heavy one. I’m off balance, so I put my forearm up and the blade clicks off bone. A floodlight explodes under my skin.
I grab the wound and back up to the parked cars lining the block. I roll over a hood and into the street to put something between me and them. But by the time I’m steady on my feet the two of them are turning the corner at high speed.
And still, there’s no one around to see what happened.
I take some deep breaths of cold air, try to tamp down the adrenaline screaming through my blood. After a few moments, the pain shows up.
Bombay opens the door and looks at the arm of my jacket, at the charcoal cotton now deep black and shiny. He shakes his head and says, “You’re lucky I don’t have to work tomorrow.” He steps aside and lets me in.
His apartment is in the same state it’s always in: Covered with the corpses of pizza boxes, tortilla chip bags, bottles of diet soda, and more laptops than I can count. Comic book posters clutter the walls wherever there aren’t bookshelves loaded with graphic novels.
As I make my way to the table near the kitchen he says, “You are a walking oxymoron.”
“Because?”
“You are the most brilliant stupid person I know.”
“Emphasis on the stupid. Am I right?”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”
“You have to laugh. Better than the alternative.”
Bombay sets down a first-aid kit and puts a towel under my arm. This is the second time I’ve been slashed and he’s had to sew me up. The previous occasion was actually completely unrelated to my job—a girl I was seeing thought I was flirting with her friend. She was also mixing meds with Riesling. The broken stem of a wine glass can cut pretty damn deep. I don’t like hospitals, and Bombay likes to be prepared. It’s a good combination.
He douses the cut in cheap vodka from a plastic jug and it feels like fingernails scraping out the raw skin. Once the excess blood washes away, it doesn’t really look that bad. A three-inch gash on the back of my forearm, midway between elbow and wrist. It’s deep and a little ugly but manageable.
Bombay sets down a shot glass and fills it to the brim with vodka. Next to it he places a large white pill. “Oxy with a vodka back.”
“No drugs, no booze. Not right now.”
“You’re really doing the sober thing?”
“For the time being.”
“I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Fuck you.”
“This is going to hurt.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Bombay roots around in the kit and pulls out a spool of heavy purple thread.
“C’mon man,” I tell him. “Really?”
“If you’re going to make me sew up the hole in your arm, you damn well better believe I’m going to have some fun with this.” He nods toward the shot. “Last chance.”
I hold the base of the glass and consider it. But then I remember the hardwood floor and I push it back toward him. “No dice.”
“You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“What if they report it to the cops? I’d rather not deal with that bullshit.”
Bombay nods. “Can’t believe you’re sober.” He pounds the shot, leaves the pill.
“I am full of surprises.”
“Didn’t know you were so stupid, either.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.”
Truthfully, no one knows me better than Bombay. And no one knows him better than I do. For example, his name isn’t Bombay. It’s Acaryatanaya, even though that name is so far in his past, most people don’t know it.
Bombay isn’t a devout Muslim, but he was raised in the religion and occasionally dabbles in things like not eating pork. It never lasts long, but it’s enough he occasionally catches shit for it.
We started junior high at the same time, and while it’s never been totally safe to be a Muslim in America, it was especially dangerous in the years following 9/11. Because even though New York has a reputation for being progressive, it’s often not. On the second day of school I came across a bunch of kids calling him a terrorist and shoving him into a locker.
I made them stop. I don’t like bullies. I didn’t like how I got picked on for having a girl’s name, I don’t like other people getting picked on for anything else. Especially for things they didn’t do.
Anyway, it got bloody. I got suspended for a week and by the time I came back to school, Bombay and I were inseparable.
When I told him my name was Ashley but everyone called me Ash, he said he wanted a nickname too. I asked him where he was from. He said Bombay. Technically Mumbai, but that didn’t have a nice enough ring to it.
We work well as a unit, because his first response to a problem is to think through it instead of hit it. Pretty much the opposite of me.
Bombay grips my arm as best he can without slipping on the blood and makes the first pierce. In cuts through the jumble of pain like a hot beam of light. I grit my teeth, think about cupcakes and bunnies.
The blood is making his fingers slick. They slide off the needle so he takes a moment and resets his grip. “So what did you do to deserve this?”
“This wasn’t even my fault. It was two random guys.”
“What did they want?”
“Who knows?”
He moves fast. I don’t like the feeling of the thread worming its way through my skin. By the time Bombay is halfway done the pain has faded into a gentle buzz. A thing I can live with.
He says, “You can’t bring her back, man.”
“I never said it would.”
“Then why?”
“There are other things to be gained.”
He stops mid-stitch and looks up at me. “Like what?”
“What if this guy hurts someone else?”
“And what are you going to do if you manage to find him before the cops do?”
He pulls through the last stitch and ties the loose ends of thread. I pour a little more vodka over the wound and it’s suddenly much less scary to look at. As he’s placing a bandage over it I tell him, “There’s a certain way a man’s supposed to act.”
“Like this, you mean.”
“You know what I mean.”
Bombay pats tape onto the bandage and leans back in his chair. “Are you really going to kill him?”
“Why do you need me to say it?”
“If you want to toss him a beating, fine. It’s deserved. I’ll even help if you want. But you can’t go killing people. And I know you have a reason, but just because you have a reason doesn’t mean you should do it.”
“I don’t know what you want to hear,” I tell him, checking to make sure the bandage is tight.
“It’s not about telling me the right thing. Don’t make this sound like a hang-up for me. You can’t just kill someone, man. Blood doesn’t wash away blood.”
“I’m not trying to fix this. I know I can’t fix it. But someone has to stop him.”
“I know you must be a mess right now, but please, for me, ask yourself who you’re doing this for.”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying.”
It happens without me thinking about it. The muscles in my fist ball up. And my instinct is to throw it at him. He doesn’t see my hand in my lap because his view is blocked by the table, but he sees something in my eyes and that makes him slide his chair back to put some space between us.
Breathe deep. I tell him, “Regardless of how things were between me and Chell, this is our home. This is where we live. And I will not tolerate this.”
Bombay pours himself a shot and throws it back. He pours another but lets it sit on the table. He reaches for it, but instead of taking it he says, “Then go catch all the rapists. Go stop every murder. Why don’t you go be a cop, if this is how you feel?”
“Cops are sanctioned bullies. They get their badge and their gun and then they’re more concerned with what the job can do for them, not what they can do for the city. All we have is each other. There are good guys and there are bad guys, and the good guys need to stand up for one another.”
“You’re Spider-Man now? With great power comes great responsibility? Do you even hear yourself?”
“My hearing is fine.”
Bombay takes the bloody towels and the vodka into the kitchen. He says, “I only say this because I love you. You do understand that, right?”
“Say that to my face, you pussy.”
He doesn’t say anything back.
My conscience tells me to go into the kitchen, hug him, thank him for being a good friend. I ignore it, ask him, “Make any headway on the crap I gave you?”
He comes out drying his hands on a dish towel and carries a laptop over to the table, pulls up a browser, and types in the URL from the business card.
It leads to an all-black screen with Noir York in big, white lettering. Underneath that it reads: New York is the brightest city in the world, but if you look close enough, you see the dark underbelly festering below the surface.
There’s nothing else on the screen. No buttons, no links.
Bombay says, “Now watch.” He clicks a couple of buttons, opening a small white screen of messy text. He pulls over a pad and a pen and writes down a phone number.
I ask, “How did you do that?”
“I pulled up the source code for the page.”
“Talk to me like I’m not a nerd.”
“The source code is what the site is built out of. The programming language. Sometimes people hide clues in it. It says you have to look ‘below the surface.’ It’s not fancy, but it’s decently clever.”
“What does it say?”
“Just a phone number.”
“How do you know it’s a phone number?”
“Because it’s ten digits long with a six-four-six area code.”
“You are such a nerd.”
He shakes his head. “You are really bad at saying ‘thanks.’”
“Fact.”
He hands me the sheet of paper. I fold it up and put it in my pocket and ask, “Can you tell me anything else about the site?”
He clicks at the keyboard for a little bit and calls up another website. “There’s this thing called a ‘whois’ search, which is how you figure out who owns a URL. When you buy a domain, you have the option of blocking it as a privacy setting. This person blocked it.”
“Can you get around it?”
“Maybe. Might take a few days. If I do it, do you promise to not kill anyone?”
“I love you too much to promise you anything.”
He stares at me for a moment, then his shoulders sag. “I’ll figure it out.”
Next he takes out the thumb drive. He doesn’t put it in the computer, just leans forward holding it in his hands. “Do you know what this is?”
I don’t want to tell him it’s what I almost got stabbed over. I say, “Of course I don’t.”
“It’s a Steel Drive.”
“Elaborate.”
“It’s military-grade. You could run this over with a tank. The encryption is impossible to crack. If you enter the wrong password ten times it self-destructs.”
“For real?”
“For real real. I mean, it doesn’t explode like a bomb, just the chip inside burns out.”
“Can you break in?”
“Dude, if you actually manage to crack this open there’s an epoxy that snaps the chip. I’m pretty good, but even if you took this to an elite hacker, they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. Where did you get this?”
“Chell’s apartment.”
“You stole it?”
“She’s not using it. Any idea where she got it?”
“They’re available to the general public. About a hundred bucks. I actually wanted to get one. They’re pretty cool.”
“Any idea why Chell would have one?”
He shrugs.
It doesn’t sit right. Military-style indestructible hard drive. I wasn’t even going to take it. Now I’m glad I did. Bombay plugs it in the side of the laptop and a prompt screen appears.
I ask, “Any ideas?”
“A few.” He types and hits enter. The screen shakes like it’s angry and the number six appears in the corner.
Bombay says, “Huh.”
“What?”
“Someone has already tried to get into this thing. Three bad attempts.”
He types two more, and both times it comes back wrong. The number drops to four. Bombay says, “The three most common passwords are ‘password,’ ‘sex,’ and the person’s birthday.” He takes the drive out and hands it to me. “You have four more tries before it’s useless.”
“I’m glad there’s no pressure.”
He closes the laptop and cracks the top of a diet soda. “You look like you need some sleep.”
“That is probably correct.”
“You can crash here if you want.”
“Need a little fresh air.” I get up and walk to the door, turn. “Thanks, man.”
“Any time. Please don’t come back here bleeding anymore. I’m not sure if you realize this, but people have a finite supply.”
“I’m getting a lot of reminders about that lately.”
At the ATM I’m very tempted to check my balance, but the fear holds me back. I ask for twenty dollars and the machine spits it out. Enough for a pack of smokes and a granola bar.
What I didn’t tell Bombay, what I can’t tell him because I don’t want to hear the words out loud, is I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do when I find this guy. I do know it’s going to be long, and it’s going to be bloody, and it’s going to end up with him dead.
Just the thought of Chell screaming, helpless. Thrashing. It hurts so bad to think about, but then I realize that’s just the charred skin from where I’ve wrapped my hand into a bloodless fist around my cigarette. I drop it to the pavement, brush the loose tobacco off on my jeans. There’s a little scorch mark on the fat pad under my thumb.
Breathe deep.
The door to my apartment is kicked in, splintered around the lock. My muscles deflate. This is fucking ridiculous.
The place is a wreck. Everything has been tossed. Drawers are pulled out. Clothes scattered everywhere. The cushions have been sliced open. The plates have been smashed on the floor. Which is just mean.
I panic, run for the scanner. It lives on a little table by the outlet in the kitchen. It’s been knocked over and unplugged. I plug is back in and a calm, tired voice says, “10-27, 221 5th Street.” Incinerator fire, a few blocks away.
Small wonders.
I check the apartment. Nothing seems to be missing, not that I have anything worth stealing. The scanner is the only thing with sentimental value. I can buy more clothes. My television is smashed too, but I hardly ever watch it.
Probably the two assholes who tried to mug me for the drive did this. They must have been coming out and seen me.
If they were in here, they saw my murder map on the wall. I get a little sensitive about the information I’ve written down, so I stand in the kitchen and stare at the wall and wonder if there’s anything there I should worry about. I can’t think of anything, so I fall onto the couch and pull the drive out of my pocket. It can’t have a tracking chip in it or else they would have gone to Bombay’s apartment.
Someone knows I have it.
The door. I need to fix the door. If Aziz stops by and sees it, he’ll come in and then I’m out of here.
My phone buzzes with a text from Dave: Groper struck again.
I wing my phone against the exposed brick wall and it shatters into pieces, then I curl into the couch and prepare to pass out. If someone wants to break in and kill me, so fucking be it.