6

 

        “Wait here,” Puck said after making me pull over in front of a liquor store on Straight Street near Broadway.

        “Where are you going?” I asked as Puck struggled to open the door with the arm the hospital had put into a sling. He had refused the cast.

        “Just wait and keep the engine running,” he said and popped out, vanishing through the door to the store before I could shout for him to stop.

        I saw the flash through the window and then heard the boom as Puck rushed out, a still-smoking revolve in his free hand, and loose bills stuffed into the sling with his broken arm.

        “Go! Go!” she screamed as he jumped into the car again.

        “Where?”

        “Anywhere! Just not here. Drive!”

        So I drove, gunning Charlie’s car through the narrow streets, the rumble of its power engine echoing off the stone faces of downtown’s legal and business district. We ran red lights each time Puck shouted for me not to stop, until we rolled into Paterson’s East side, numbered streets and avenues rising as we drove.

        “Let me out along here somewhere,” Puck said, when we reached Madison Avenue.

        “You like it here?”

        “I said pull over,” Puck snapped. “Of course, I don’t like here. This neighborhood is full of whops and Jews. But it’s quiet and the cops won’t think to look for me here.”

        “Then what will you do?”

        “That’s my worry – you take your precious car and go home, and don’t let anybody catch you, and if for some stupid reason you do, don’t tell anybody where I’ve gone.”

        “I don’t know where you’re going so that’s no problem.”

        “I got business downtown,” Puck said.

        “But we just came from downtown.”

        “I know that. Just go,” he said, standing on the sidewalk, leaning down to talk to me through the window. “We’ll meet soon.”

        He was still standing on the sidewalk as I drove away. But I caught sight of him in the rearview mirror as he slipped back into the shadows like a ghost.