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The wind had teeth.
Icy fangs tore at his exposed flesh, yet he smiled. The skin on his bare arms bristled at the wind’s hostile caress, yet he stayed his ground, wrapped within the doorway’s cold shadows. The hood of his sleeveless sweatshirt was pulled low over his brow, concealing his hunter’s eyes beneath a second layer of darkness. The shirt’s deep blue hue merged with the shadows, enveloping him in stillness.
He had learned the value of patience over the past four years. Confined and surrounded by enemies, those jealous or fearful of his status, he had learned to hunt. When to wait and when to strike. When to kill.
Now he was free and the city was his to hunt. So now he waited. And watched.
His prey, oblivious to the danger poised across the street, huddled against the wall of the community centre, seeking what refuge he could from the bitter wind. The building’s south end and small parking lot were brushed by the yellow–orange hue cast from old and failing lights, and skeletal trees laid down sickly shadows in the flickering illumination. Beyond the community centre and its frozen playfields, a park lay encased in icy darkness.
His prey had been busy tonight despite the cold, busy selling. But now as the hour reached the heart of night, business was slowing. Only the most desperate of crackheads would be out at this time, in this cold. And a desperate crackhead was a moneyless crackhead. His prey would soon be heading home.
The hunter’s lips pulled back in a grinning snarl. The wait was almost over.
Marvin Gaye was cold. Fucking cold. Every time that bitching wind blew across the soccer field behind the community centre it cut through his jacket, shrivelling up his nuts as if he was standing balls naked. He couldn’t stop shivering and when he stomped his feet they felt like clumps of ice shoved inside his Nikes. And his fingers burned. How could they be burning when it was so fucking cold?
He reluctantly freed his hands from what little comfort there was in his pockets to check his watch. Three o’clock. Fuck this, it was time to go home. Six hours standing out here was enough. Cold or not, it had been a good night. He had started the night with pockets empty of cash but filled with an eight–ball of crack to sell. He was down to the last of his crack — so little that he had it all stuffed down his crotch instead of hidden nearby — and had hundreds of dollars, mostly tens and twenties, squirrelled away in pockets, socks and underwear.
Marvin glanced at his watch again. Definitely time to go. Even the cops had stopped cruising by and scaring off his customers. Fucking pigs. But the cold had also worked in his favour, keeping the pigs inside their warm cars and off his back. The last thing he needed was another trip to the cells on a trafficking charge. Marvin was a small–time dealer, just a step or two above a crackhead himself. He had been on the streets of downtown Toronto since he was fourteen, selling rock since he was seventeen and using since he was nineteen. At twenty–four, he was a burned–out old man, a wasted scarecrow of the boy named after his mother’s favourite singer. If Marvin had ever known who his namesake was, the knowledge had long ago been burned away in the acrid smoke of his crack pipe.
Marvin was about to pack it in when he spotted a final sale coming his way. How did he know? With some, it was a familiar face. Others, a deep–set need in the eyes. But this one….
“He must be hurting for a fix bad,” Marvin laughed to himself, watching the fool cross Queen Street, his arms startlingly bare. “Or he’s one crazy–ass mother.”
He waited impatiently, shivering inside his parka. How this fool could be out like that…. Marvin wrapped his hand around the knife tucked inside his coat pocket. If this fucker was crazy enough to let himself freeze to death, there was no telling what he would do.
“Hey, man, you looking?” he called out when the crackhead drew close, raising his voice to be heard over a gust of wind. The wind grabbed the crackhead’s hood and snapped it off his head, revealing a scalp shaved clean on the sides, leaving only a band of short dark hair.
The man raised his head. Marvin saw eyes as cold as the wind and realized two things simultaneously: this was no crackhead and he was in deep shit.
Marvin tried to pull out his knife and that’s when things got very bad. Very quickly. Very painfully.
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