Under the Stars

Loser

Queens never really slept. People liked to romanticize that fact. They put it on postcards beneath pictures of the skyline, stitched it across sweatshirts in overpriced souvenir shops, repeated it like it was something to be proud of. The city that never sleeps.

Frank had lived here long enough to know better. Cities slept all the time.

Office buildings emptied before sunset, storefronts rolled down their steel gates, families locked their doors and turned off their lights. The city slept just fine. It was the people who didn't.

Some worked until dawn because one paycheck wasn't enough anymore. Others spent the night wondering if the footsteps outside their apartment belonged to the neighbor upstairs or the man who'd threatened them three days ago.

The streets don't stay alive because New York is magical, they stay alive because there's always someone desperate enough to keep moving.
Frank knew the difference. He'd spent enough nights wandering these blocks to know which convenience stores kept a shotgun under the counter and the apartment buildings that had mothers who'd leave the hallway lights on until their kids came home. At the moment he wasn't focused on the city, he couldn't pay attention to anything but the mission ahead of him.

He rested one forearm against the weathered brick wall bordering the rooftop, letting the city settle around him the way it always did. Sirens echoed somewhere in the distance, muted by blocks of concrete and glass. A subway rumbled beneath the street, its vibrations carrying through the soles of his boots. Rain lingered in the clouds overhead, close enough to smell but too stubborn to fall. It mixed with the scent of hot asphalt, old garbage baking in alleyways, cheap gasoline, and food drifting from a twenty-four-hour deli across the street. It wasn't pleasant but it was familiar. He blocked it all out, letting each feeling fall to the back of his mind.
Frank raised the binoculars again.

The warehouse sat exactly where it had for the last four nights, an aging brick building tucked between an abandoned machine shop and a fenced-in storage yard littered with rusting shipping containers. During the day it passed for another forgotten piece of Queens' industrial district.

At night, it became something else. Two men stood outside the loading dock. One leaned against the wall with a cigarette dangling lazily between his fingers, exhaling smoke into the humid air as though he hadn't a care in the world. The other kept checking the intersection every few seconds, not enough to look nervous but enough to be noticeable by Frank.

The man with the cigarette wasn't really smoking. At least, not because he wanted one. Every few drags, his eyes wandered toward the intersection before snapping back to the warehouse door. His shoulders stayed stiff, one hand never drifting far from the pistol beneath his jacket. The cigarette had burned almost to the filter without him seeming to notice. The second man was worse. He paced in short, restless circles near the loading dock, pausing every few moments to glance at his watch. Every time a car rolled past, his head turned just enough to follow it before convincing himself not to stare.

Neither of them looked relaxed. They looked like men waiting for something they couldn't afford to miss.
Frank let the binoculars drift toward the cargo van parked beside the loading dock. A white van, void of any company logo, and no windows in the back. The kind of van contractors bought by the hundreds because nobody ever remembered seeing one. Its headlights were off, but the hood still shimmered faintly beneath the streetlights, so it was still warm. It hadn't been sitting there long. The rear suspension sat lower than it should have, it was carrying a heavy load. Could've been crates, could've been weapons, could've been bodies... He'd heard enough muffled voices through the brick walls while circling the block earlier to know the building wasn't empty.