At the end of the meeting, at Karloff’s nod, Will hands Joey a new cell phone. A stripped down, cheap disposable, untraceable Joey assumes, many functions disabled, presumably hot. “This is how we’ll reach you.” Karloff looks wordlessly at him after that. Another cell phone, Joey. You’re back in the club, Joey. But don’t fuck it up.

Joey is dropped off on a street corner in Brooklyn. The warehouse section. Two streets Joey’s never even heard of. Will presses a fifty-dollar bill into Joey’s palm and takes off, without a word.

Joey Richter has nowhere to go. Has nowhere to spend the night.

He’d already spent all his earnings on rent and basic living expenses before he went inside. And he’s not about to make his way to jail to retrieve his wallet and personal items that were being held for him during his imprisonment.

There was two hundred bucks in his wallet but he’s sure that’s been lifted by now. A couple of credit cards, canceled he’s sure, since the bills haven’t been paid in six months. He didn’t even think about trying to make the minimum payments on them. He never expected to be out.

And the client’s cash that the kid Zack had passed him at the GreenGirl to forget everything, to call things even…boy he could use that now. But the state isn’t about to hand that money back to him, and who knows where it is anyway?

He’s sure his crummy apartment is gone. He’s behind six months on the rent now, and the fat, lazy landlord, big TV blasting in his ground-floor apartment all the time, probably saw the news and has learned all about Joey Richter.

If he shows up there now, he can’t pay him any of the back rent, and the guy will be terrified to have a guy like Joey living there anyway. Of course, the apartment is so crummy that maybe nobody else wants it, and if it’s empty, he can hand the landlord a fifty for the night. Muscle his way in, frighten the guy, just for the short-term.

Karloff didn’t offer him an advance, and he didn’t dare ask for one. Maybe Karloff assumed Joey has something saved from all his previous work for them. Or maybe he knows how fast Joey’s cash disappeared in high-roller hotel suites, on high-priced dope and expensive call girls to pay for a temporary connection to a world that otherwise passes him by, and how it is always pretty much gone by morning. Most likely Karloff doesn’t care either way.

Basically penniless, homeless, newly employed in a job that will pay nothing, Joey Richter heads down the street. A free man. Who is anything but free.

Just fifty bucks and a cell phone to his name.

33.

33.