cry of the city
*
*
The blonde from the Bulletin is right, after all. You find him easily in the bar she suggests.
Midnight on a Thursday, the bar’s all but empty. The bartender is distracted, arguing loudly into a telephone in Spanish or Portuguese, turning his back to the bar to cup his hand around the mouthpiece. You’re dressed smart, or, well, okay, smart on the bottom - black cigarette pants and plain green sneakers - but the top half you planned specifically in case of adversity on his part - tight, white, scoop neck cleavage-showing, pink-bra-peeping tank top. What can you say? If there’s one thing you feel secure about, it’s your knowledge of and experience with the whims and drives of men.
Especially the leches. Was Frank Castle a lech? You weren’t sure, had never heard specifically anything to lean you toward that conclusion, but had noted the weird look in the blonde when she spoke of him - half warning, half something you couldn’t quite place. All in all, it didn’t matter, any direction this went, you were bound to find out for yourself.
The top of the stool wobbles when you slide in next to his tall frame, hoisting yourself up to sit. You pull your messenger bag off of your shoulder to set it on the bar. His baseball cap is pulled low, head bent, shoulders hunched inward, elbows on the bar on either side of his drink - which looks like whiskey, or maybe rum. You tell the man behind the bar you’d like a Jack and coke, and he doesn’t ask for I.D. You smile facetiously. Frank - the man you assume to be Frank - lifts his glass to his lips and when he speaks, his voice is gravel.
“Seat’s taken.”
“Yeah?” You make a show of glancing around the bar, though you know he’s alone “By who?”
“Doesn’t matter. Not you.” His eyes don’t glance your way, cleavage top be damned. The bartender comes and sets down your drink in front of you without a coaster. He asks if you wanna start a tab.
“Oh, it’s on him,” you say cheerily, raising the cold drink to your lips with both hands and nodding over to Frank.
The barkeep walks away. “Not looking for a drinking buddy,” Frank intones sternly but quietly, barely glancing in your direction. He downs the rest of his drink and pushes the empty glass forward, side-eying you up and down as he swallows but not meeting your eyes, “Or any other kind of company.”
You roll your eyes slightly but can’t really be offended, given that your actual occupation isn’t much of a stretch from “escort.”
“Very funny. If I were a hooker would I really wear jeans and sneakers to try to pick up a customer? And a purse as nerdy as this?” You gesture towards your black bag on the counter, a “WHAT THE FRAK” patch in big yellow letters staring back at you. “Come on, Frank. Especially for a man like you, I mean, show a little leg maybe? Or at least something that shows off a little more ass. I, for one, have always pegged the big bad Punisher as a total ass man.”
Aaaaand there it is. He stills. He looks at you full-on for the first time, his dark eyes meeting yours, regarding you seriously, trying to place you. Trying to place any familiarity, trying to read you. His eyes dart across your face and down your long hair. His jaw clenches tightly, moving under his stubbled flesh. Your drink sits forgotten. You stare back openly.
“Alright, let’s go,” he says suddenly and quickly, and the unmistakable click of the hammer of a gun being pulled back rings in your ears. You clench your teeth and purse your lips. Fuck your fucking sarcastic mouth. It would for sure get you killed one of these days.
His large hand wraps around the top of your arm, pulling you not un-gently off the bar stool and onto your feet. He pushes you in front of him and digs the barrel of the gun into your back, pushing you to walk forward toward the door. You snatch your purse off the bar at the last second.
The temperature has dropped and the cold night hits you in the face as he leads you out onto the empty sidewalk. The street is empty. There are no cars or people walking by, no sound at all save the wind in your ears and the honking of horns a few streets over. Coldness starts to lick up your bare arms, and you shiver.
He walks you down the sidewalk just a bit to the side of the brick building and gives you a little shove. You turn and look at him. He jerks his gun toward the empty, dark alleyway.
“Go on, girl,” he says roughly.
You glance down the narrow alley. “I’m not going in there with you,” you say skeptically, trying to sound braver than you feel. “You’ll have to shoot me.”
A mean, bitter smile breaks out on his handsome face as he laughs at you. He glances toward the street casually and then lowers his voice sarcastically, conspiratorially, like he was letting you in on a secret. “I’ve shot people for less.”
Your chest sinks but you rally. You try to steady your breath. You pray the intel you got from the blonde was accurate and not skewed by whatever that look in her eye had been. The gun in his hand shines dimly in the lamplight.
“No, you haven’t. You’re not the big, ugly beast they make you out to be. Or so I’ve heard. That’s why I was looking for you. I need your help.”
He stills for a beat, head cocked slightly to the side. Suddenly, he raises the gun fully and points it straight at your head.
His voice bellows loudly into the darkness. “Who gave you my name? How’d you know where I’d be tonight? Who are you?!”
“Shit, shit, okay!” You rush to get your words out, you’d clearly spooked him. “My name is Illana, I got your name from some lady down at the Bulletin, sh-she told me I should talk to you after her paper told me to basically fuck off with my information…” He pulls the hammer back again and presses the gun roughly to your forehead, “She told me where I could find you! Some blonde, her name was like, Carla, or something she-”
“-Karen?”
“YES! Karen! Karen, that was it, yes, Karen!” The words tumble out of your mouth hysterically, “See, okay? I’m telling the truth. I’m not here for any danger in any way or to threaten you or to try to fight you at all.”
He steps back, the pressure of the barrel leaving your head.
“Wouldn’t be much of a fight, would it?” He says, and finally lowers the gun. That mean smirk that pulls up half the side of his mouth is back. His voice is almost jovial. This guy was definitely a fucking psycho.
“I need your help,” you repeat, hitching your bag further up your arm and rubbing the place on your forehead where his gun had been. Adrenaline is rocketing through your veins, making you sway.
He stares at you blankly before tucking his gun back into his black coat.
“Not interested.”
He steps around you and starts walking away. You follow.
“Don’t you at least wanna hear my pitch?” You have to power walk to keep up with his long strides. Still, there’s a subtle vibration of nervous energy vibrating out from the core of your chest, making your teeth chatter, but you try to mask it.
“Nope.”
“Please? People I care about could be in trouble! Good, mostly innocent, people.”
He laughs harshly. “That ain’t my MO, sweetheart. If you’re looking for a savior, better start looking elsewhere. This shit hole city has no shortage of boyscout vigilantes.“
“Oh, yeah, like that red-spandexed asshole?” you say bitterly, referring to the first name you were given before Frank’s. “Yeah, Blondie told me about him first, met with him on some fucking rooftop. He wouldn’t help me, he could barely look me in the eye.”
Frank stops suddenly and wheels around. He steps into your space, backing you up slightly, his face hovering above yours.
An intimidation tactic.
You tilt your head to meet his dark eyes, trying to square up with him, though he was at least ten inches taller than you and packing heat.
“Red and black costume, horns? Practically an altar boy.” His tone lowers accusingly , eyes narrowing as he scans your face, reading you. “Why? Why wouldn’t he help you?”
You smirk at him facetiously.
“Devil of Hell’s Kitchen? Ironically, very pious. Got a big gold cross where most people have a heart. Doesn’t think too highly of sex workers.”
You breathe in the deep smell of him through your nose, refusing to break eye contact. He leans back finally, assesses you snidely.
“I thought you weren’t a hooker.”
“I’M not…technically, but I work for a company called Diamond Dogs-”
“The porn company?”
You push the heat in your cheeks down, you're used to this. “Not just movies, anymore, now they got their hands in worse. You know, ‘diversifying,’” you say sarcastically, rolling your eyes, shifting from one foot to the other, “Strip clubs and live shows and, yeah, prostitution now, too. 'Private parties’ they host for Hell's Kitchen's upper, upper crust. Invite-Only. All-you-can-eat-buffet of girls. It’s seriously shady shit."
You study him as he stands silently, absorbing what you've said, surely assessing you in front of him and wondering to himself how deep. How deep are you in? Not as deep as it goes, Frankie, but deep enough.
The light from an overhead street lamp skims his face and sets his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks in pure darkness. He looks like a demon. You must be crazy to trust him, but he's all you got.
You tried going to the cops (against your better judgement) when Alice and Mercedes first stopped showing up for their shifts at the club, after you'd gone to their shared apartment and found it empty. Once they heard the name of your employer, they basically laughed you outta the precinct. Dirty fucking cops. They only care about you in this city if you've got the green to show for it, and even then, it's just a waiting game to see who comes along with the bigger wallet- the more enticing offer. At least the Blonde at the paper - Karen, he says - was sympathetic after her boss shooed you away. At least she tried to help, in whatever small way counts.
You couldn't risk going to a P.I. who may start digging too far if they spot a headline or a big payout in their future. Couldn't risk opening the door of a corrupt, shady business to someone who may dig a little deeper than you needed to go- especially since you're still apart of that shady business, a company that was quickly picking up a bad habit of mysteriously misplacing their women.
No, all you cared about was finding your friends (hopefully alive) and keeping your own skin intact. And you needed someone like Frank to do it. Someone just dirty enough to over-look the shitty bed you’d made for yourself, but just virtuous enough to wanna help out a few “damsels” in distress.
"Please, Frank. I need your help. I can't go snooping, I'll lose my job, or wind up missing, like the other girls, my friends. These girls were my friends, and they were young and they never did anything to deserve whatever it is that happened to them - the cops say they're probably in the wind, that they left town on their own, but I know them, they wouldn't do that without telling me. We were like family. Please," you plead, "these were someone's actual family, someone's sisters and daughters. Could you imagine if this was happening to your daughter?"
He steps out of shadow and leans down toward you suddenly and roughly, voice a deadly whisper. Your stomach drops, you'd gone too far, yeah, okay, yeah, you knew about his daughter and his son and his wife, everybody did, but you were panicked and scared and desperate and desperation had a funny way of pushing people to the edge of their humanity, not caring about the aftermath, and for a fleeting moment you think he may actually hit you.
“Leave me the fuck alone," he spits out, turning now for good.
Your hand raises, unthinking, reaching toward him, desperate, “Please, Frank, I-” but he doesn't stop walking, doesn't even slow.
“Or next time, I pull the trigger.”