Free Tragic by Robert K. Tanenbaum

complained.
    “That was before this,” Bebnev said, pointing to his eye. “I take all risks, you do shit. Take it or leave it.”
    DiMarzo snatched the envelope from Bebnev’s hand. “We’re done, asshole,” he spat. “Don’t call and don’t come around.”
    “Fine, little pedik, ” Bebnev snarled. “I don’t hang with homos. I have new friends.”
    “Yeah, I can see that,” DiMarzo replied. He turned to leave but stopped when he saw a large man who’d just come out of the bar standing across the street staring at them.
    Even from that distance, he could see that the man had a long, jagged scar running from the top of his big bald head, across his nose, and down to the jawline on the other side. Although it was winter and cold outside, he was wearing a T-shirt that seemed to barely contain his muscular chest and arms, which were covered with dark tattoos. The man took a drag on a cigarette and tossed it down in the gutter without taking his eyes off DiMarzo and Bebnev.
    “I think I’d avoid that bar for a while,” DiMarzo said to Bebnev, nodding toward the man.
    Bebnev looked in the direction indicated and DiMarzo saw him swallow hard. But he managed a weak smile. “I’m not afraid of him,” he said. “But I have other things to do.”
    With that, Bebnev scurried off down Brighton Beach Boulevard in the direction of Coney Island. DiMarzo watched him go, and when he turned to look back across the street, the large man was gone. He shuddered and trotted up the stairs to the train station above. If I never see Bebnev and Little Odessa again, it will be too soon, he thought as he pulled out his cell phone and called his friend Gnat Miller.

6
    M ARLENE PAUSED OUTSIDE THE E AST Village Women’s Shelter to wait for three raggedy, middle-aged women to move from her path into the building. Noting the tattered layers of clothing, she marveled that such people survived the brutal winter months in New York City, where sunlight rarely made its way down through and between buildings to warm the streets. She knew there were never enough beds in shelters to house Gotham’s street people, nor, for that matter, enough space on steam grates or protected nooks around buildings to shelter them from the elements.
    On closer inspection, these three seemed livelier than most, more like hard-luck gypsies than down-and-out street people as they huddled together while carrying on an animated conversation. One was a large black woman who’d stuffed her copious dreadlocks beneath a colorful scarf and rolled her eyes and muttered; the other two were white, at least beneath the grime that coated their faces, one thick and the other perilously thin. But they didn’t seem to belong to the streets like other homeless people, at least to Marlene; it was more like they were acting out parts in a play.
    Nor did they seem to belong at this shelter. The former deli onAvenue C and 6th Street wasn’t a way station for the homeless, but a refuge for women from many walks of life trying to escape violent domestic situations.
    The shelter had been started by Mattie Duran, a stocky, combative woman with long dark hair, a swarthy complexion, and an even blacker personality. She’d executed her stepfather, in his sleep, the man who raped her since childhood, and she’d served time in prison, which had done little to improve her social skills or outlook on life. Fifteen years earlier, she’d shown up in New York City with a trunk full of cash obtained under mysterious, probably violent, circumstances. She used the money to open the shelter as a place of refuge for women and children in immediate danger from the men in their lives.
    After opening, Duran refused all funding from national, state, and local governmental resources. She wasn’t going to let them have that kind of control over how she ran her shelter. Instead, after her own money ran out, she relied on private donations to stay open.
    Marlene started volunteering at the shelter