Chapter Fifty-Seven

WHITE MIKE GETS off the train back uptown and is beeped by his most amusing customers. The thuglings, White Mike calls them in his head. Timmy and Mark Rothko. They have missed his call to set a place. So he figures he’ll make the little fuckers walk. Instead of calling, he sends a text message for them to meet him at Forty-fifth and Fifth in an hour. White Mike wants to walk down Fifth Avenue. He likes looking at all the pretty girls as they pass by. Fifth Avenue is a river of them. White Mike feels like he looks good himself. Sometimes he catches girls staring at him from a distance, and he thinks they do this because he looks a little like a movie star with the overcoat and the jeans. He walks with a purpose, he has somewhere to go. I have something to do, he thinks, and that is important, and it makes him walk a better way, and it clears the afternoon.